from Bruce
Anecdotes
Heroes
• In April 2011 a 44-year-old tourist named Helen Beard, from Worksop, England, saw a one-year-old toddler dangling from the fourth-floor balcony of an Econo Lodge hotel in Orlando, Florida. She ran beneath the balcony and watched as the toddler fell, striking the third-floor balcony. Ms. Beard managed to break the fall of the toddler, who was taken to a hospital. The child’s mother, 20-year-old Helena Myles, said, “I’m thanking the Lord above right now for saving my child’s life. I’m also thanking that lady because she was an angel sent from heaven.” She added about her daughter, Jah-Nea, “She’s perfectly fine. Not a scratch on her body.” Ms. Myles said that a friend had been watching Jah-Nea at the time of the fall. She said, “I’m not upset with anyone. I’ve had it out with my friends. But other than that, I’m thanking God right now that my child’s here.” Ms. Beard said that she is not a hero: “Absolutely not. I did what needed to be done. I didn’t want a fuss. Anyone would have done it. I think you just act instinctively. I ran. I knew I needed to catch her. I had to do something. I guess I was hoping someone else would catch her, but I was the one who was there.” Orlando authorities awarded Ms. Beard a Medal of Merit. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said, “Mrs. Beard showed unusual instinct and initiative when she exited from the swimming pool area and was able to catch the child as she fell, thus saving her from extreme physical injuries and/or death.”
• San Quentin State Prison has convicts who are also heroes. Selected nonviolent offenders are trained to be paramedics and firefighters. They live in a firehouse outside the prison walls but are still on prison property. They respond to emergency calls, including calls from prison and from San Francisco Bay. In April 2011 the prison emergency workers succeeded in saving the life of a woman in her 40s (no name given), but unfortunately they could not save the life of 44-year-old James Laurel. The couple had been boating. Mr. Laurel tried to start the engine and fell overboard in the bay. When he tried to get back in the boat, he capsized it and it sank. The couple were in the water for approximately 90 minutes, and Mr. Laurel was not wearing a life vest. A tower guard heard a cry for help and then sent the convict emergency workers to try to save the couple. They saved the woman, but Mr. Laurel was pronounced dead at Marin General Hospital. Prisoner Derrick Edgerly dove into the water to try to save the couple. He said, “I took my turnouts [a firefighter’s protective clothing] off, went over the wall and went into the Bay. There was no fear or hesitation. The guy needed help.” Mr. Edgerly added, “It’s an opportunity out here to show people that even though we made a mistake and we have some debt to society, we are still human beings, and we care for people and want to help people.”
• When mixed martial arts fighter Jon Jones and his trainers, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, saw a theft in progress in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, they took action. The thief was breaking into a car and taking items. The three men shouted at the thief, who started to run away. They chased him and Mr. Jones, the youngest of the three men, caught him first and tripped him. The other two men made sure that the thief was not armed. While subduing the thief, the three men used mixed martial arts techniques: foot sweep, double-leg, and arm bar. Police then arrived and arrested the suspect. Almost eight hours after chasing the burglar, Mr. Jones defeated Mauricio Rua with a third-round TKO in a mixed martial arts fight. By the way, when the three men saw the theft in progress, they were on the way to a waterfall to meditate. After subduing the thief, they made it to the waterfall. Mr. Jackson said, “It was an incredibly beautiful waterfall.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Track: "dark matter"
Album: REVENGE OF THE PLANTS
Artist: The Irradiates
Artist Location: Besançon, France
Info:
“Since 2007, the four scientist musicians (former HAWAII SAMURAÏ, STEF & ARNO, ANTENNA TRES and LOST BOYS members) work in research and development at the Scientific Surf Rock Research Department.”
the irradiates are:
Dick Den's: guitars, theremin
Arno: guitars, analog synth, percussions, vocals
Macst: bass, percussions
Buanax: drums, percussions
Hunter King, a fan, wrote: “The Irradiates are members of Hawaii Samurai and Arno De Cea, which makes a killer surf group by arithmetic alone. Definitely a strong Man or Astro-man vibe, too. Favorite track: ‘Shut Up, Let's Grow!’”
Price: €0.50 (EURO) for track; €5 (EURO) for 12-track album
Genre: Worldwide Scientific Surf Rock
Links:
REVENGE OF THE PLANTS
The Irradiates on Bandcamp
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
What’s Happening
When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Marine layer burned off just in time for the sun to go down, confusing the hell outta the poor defective rooster.
Special Tony Award
Angela Lansbury
The folks who hand out Tony Awards believe five is not enough for Angela Lansbury.
The Tony Awards Administration Committee announced Monday that the legendary actor will receive a 2022 special Tony for lifetime achievement in the theater, making it her sixth.
Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957 in “Hotel Paradiso” and won Tonys for “Mame” in 1966, “Dear World” in 1969, “Gypsy” in 1974, “Sweeney Todd” in 1979 and “Blithe Spirit” in 2009. Other Broadway credits include “A Little Night Music,” “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” and “Anyone Can Whistle.”
The “Murder, She Wrote” star has six Golden Globes and 18 Emmy nominations as well as an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures. Lansbury also has a National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honor.
Ariana DeBose will host the Tonys on June 12.
Angela Lansbury
Pine View Class President
Zander Moricz
The senior class president of Pine View School for the Gifted took the stand at his graduation today and delivered his graduation speech. He knew he had to tread carefully, but the student had already come up with a plan.
Zander Moricz wanted to use this time to speak about his experience as a gay student or criticize House Bill 1557, which supporters call the “Parental Rights in Education” ...colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. However, Moricz had been warned that his microphone would be cut off if he made any mention or reference to that law. After organizing a student walkout against the then-pending legislation and a similar protest in downtown Sarasota he decided to deliver his speech in a creative way.
He spoke about his curly hair. His curly hair was a part of who he is. So, he learned to embrace it.
Moricz said the principal told him such comments would be “polarizing and not school appropriate.” He said his face turned red. “I’m told that my human rights are controversial and therefore not appropriate for school setting. I’m the class president and my human rights are not appropriate for my speech at my school graduation.”
“I used to hate my curls I spent mornings and nights embarrassed of them trying desperately to straighten this part of who I am but the daily damage of trying to fix myself became too much to endure,” Moricz said.
Zander Moricz
SiriusXM Buys Team Coco
Conan O’Brien
SiriusXM has acquired Team Coco, Conan O’Brien’s podcast network and digital media business, including his popular podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Team Coco’s staff will continue to produce the network’s slate of podcasts and collaborate on new content for SiriusXM.
The deal includes a five-year talent agreement for O’Brien to remain host of his namesake podcast, which will continue to be available widely.
He’ll also collaborate with SiriusXM to create and exec produce a new full-time, original Team Coco comedy channel for SiriusXM subscribers.
The agreement also includes distribution of select video from Conan’s podcast as well as from the archives of his long-running late-night show on TBS, live events and merchandise from the Team Coco brands.
Team Coco launched a decade ago and has garnered more than 1 billion annual video views across YouTube and Facebook. It averages 180 million annual podcast downloads and reaches 17 million fans across social media. Its flagship podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, which was developed with Stitcher’s Earwolf, ranks as one of the five most searched-for podcasts and recently won two Webby Awards. The deal lends Team Coco the promotional power of SiriusXM, Pandora and Stitcher listening platforms – “amplifying the network’s voices and extending the Team Coco brand to new audiences,” the announcement said.
Conan O’Brien
Once
Lara Logan
When Lara Logan reached the heights of American journalism more than a decade ago, as the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, her bosses didn’t think twice about sending her to cover the biggest stories in the world. Producers clamored to work with her as she landed interviews with a Taliban commander, chronicled the Arab Spring and tracked the Ebola outbreak. Former President Barack Obama called her to wish her well after the most traumatic event of what seemed like a limitless career: She was sexually assaulted while covering a demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011.
But today Logan cuts a far different figure in American media. Instead of on national news broadcasts, she can be found as a guest on right-wing podcasts or speaking at a rally for fringe causes, promoting falsehoods about deaths from COVID vaccines and conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
Recently, she downplayed the seriousness of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol on one of those shows. “This is now the crime of the century?” she asked sarcastically. She has echoed pro-Kremlin attacks on the United States, accusing Americans of “arming the Nazis of Ukraine.” And she has compared Dr. Anthony Fauci and Hillary Rodham Clinton to some of Hitler’s most notorious henchmen.
Her latest project is a forthcoming documentary on voting machines called “Selection Code” that is being financed by Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow, who has helped spread some of the most outrageous myths about the 2020 presidential election.
But her transformation, into a star of far-right media, is one that former colleagues who worked closely with her said did not come out of nowhere.
Lara Logan
Billions of Dollars
Jared
Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin traveled through the Middle East in the weeks before Trump the big grifter left office, ostensibly to raise money for the Abraham Fund, which was supposed to fund various development initiatives in the region. The New York Times reported on Monday, however, that the fund was essentially a shell, that it dissolved after the former president left office, and that Kushner and Mnuchin’s own firms went on to land hundreds of millions of dollars from the nations they visited while working in the White House.
Kushner has since pitched investing in his firm, Affinity Partners, as a way to uphold the Abraham Accords, the 2020 peace agreement between the U.S., Israel, and the UAE that inspired the creation of the Abraham Fund, according to the Times.
The report comes a month after the Times reported that Affinity Partners received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund six months after Trump left office. The fund’s advisers thought Kushner was too sketchy to warrant such a large investment, but they were overruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Times noted on Monday that Mnuchin received $1 billion from Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, plus $500 million from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar.
Mnuchin reportedly met with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in the final weeks of his run as Treasury secretary, and skipped a planned meeting with Kuwait after the attack on the Capitol. Kushner, meanwhile, made three trips to the Middle East between the 2020 election and Jan. 5, 2021. They both stocked their investment firms with government employees who had previously worked on the Abraham Accords, according to the Times.
The brazenness of the apparent corruption is astonishing but at the same time not very surprising given the Trump administration’s habit of using the levers of the government to enrich the personal wealth of its officials and their allies. Kushner’s financial ties the Middle East feel especially egregious, however, given that his interest there was predicated on bringing peace to the region. The idea that a real estate scion with no foreign policy experience was going to bring an end to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts was laughable at the time it was proposed, but it’s unlikely Kushner had many reservations about his ability to mediate the conflict. In her new book, Here’s the Deal, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway bashed Kushner as a “shrewd and calculating” know-it-all.
Jared
Seven Years Later
Texass
Not many people charged with felony crimes go seven years without ever standing trial. One of them is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The twists and turns of how the Republican, who is on the cusp of winning the GOP nomination for a third term Tuesday, has yet to have his day in court after being indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 has little comparison in American politics. And along the way, it has upended what it means to be a compromised officeholder in Texas.
Four different judges have overseen his case at some point. Where a trial would happen — if it ever does — has ping-ponged from Dallas to Houston to Dallas again. All the while, other clouds have gathered over Paxton: the FBI is investigating him over separate accusations of corruption, and the State Bar of Texas is weighing possible reprimands over his attempts to baselessly overturn the 2020 election.
No single reason explains the delays. But altogether, Paxton has become an example of how powerful allies and acts of God can drag out career-threatening criminal charges, and allow a politician to rise above being written off as a political goner.
Paxton, who faces five to 99 years in prison if convicted, has pleaded not guilty. His attorneys point out that Paxton invoked his right to a speedy trial and blame the holdup on special prosecutors, who have spent years in a protracted battle over how much they're getting paid and where the case should be tried.
Texass
Motel Room Has Waiting List
Indiana
Authorities said the two had a relationship for at least two years. Vicky White, 56, and Casey White, 38, were not related.
Their time as fugitives ended May 9 in Evansville, Indiana, about 300 miles north of the Alabama jail, when authorities tracked them down at Motel 41 and a short car chase ensued.
The couple had stayed at Motel 41 in room 150 for a week, planning to stay there another week, before their plan was foiled. They initially checked into the motel with the help of a transient man whom they paid to book the room.
A desk receptionist, who asked not to be named, said Monday that people are interested in renting room 150.
The average room costs $63 per night, the receptionist said. But room 150, on the ground floor, now costs $75 to $100 to book. The receptionist said interest from the media has also been high.
Indiana
Alternative Theory Revived
Gravity
Out in the dark depths of space, our models of the Universe get messy. A new study looking at the ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy AGC 114905 has revived a controversial theory (or more accurately a hypothesis) of gravity, and given us more questions than answers about what's making our galaxies tick.
It all starts with dark matter – or in this case, no dark matter. Although most cosmologists agree there's something out there called 'dark matter', causing spiral galaxies to rotate faster than they should, even dark matter doesn't answer all the questions we need it to.
So, it's not a bad idea to look at some alternative options. You know, just in case we are never able to find the stuff.
One alternative hypothesis to dark matter is called Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) or Milgromian dynamics framework. This hypothesis – first published in 1983 by physicist Mordehai Milgrom – suggests that we don't need dark matter to fill in the Universe's gravity gaps, if we calculate the gravitational forces experienced by stars in outer galactic regions in a different manner to how Newtonian laws suggest.
Gravity
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