Don’t worry. You are not losing it. Ireland is in the “cone” of uncertainty in that map below. Hurricane Ophelia is the 10th consecutive hurricane to form in the Atlantic basin this year. According to University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy, the last time ten consecutive storms became a hurricane was 1893. While a very interesting factoid, the “elephant in the room” is that Ophelia is headed to Ireland. It is rare, but not unprecedented.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2017/10/12/you-are-not-hallucinating-a-hurricane-is-headed-to-ireland/amp/

Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for five days in 2015 after refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, is touring Romania in support of a campaign to block legal recognition of such unions there.

The group Liberty Counsel, which represented Davis when she vaulted into the national spotlight, says Davis and the group's vice president of legal affairs, Harry Mihet, are touring the Eastern European country to discuss the effects of same-sex marriage in the U.S.

Davis, who remains Rowan County's clerk, was jailed for contempt after refusing to issue marriage licenses in compliance with the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made it legal for gays and lesbians to marry in every state. Her office now issues licenses without her signature.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/kim-davis-fights-gay-marriage-in-romania/article/2637091

“After Newtown, nothing changed, so don’t expect anything to change after Las Vegas.”

How often have you heard that said? Yet it’s not true. The five years since a gunman killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, have seen one of the most intense bursts of gun legislation in U.S. history—almost all of it intended to ensure that more guns can be carried into more places.

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Since Newtown, more than two dozen states have expanded the right to carry into previously unknown places: bars, churches, schools, college campuses, and so on. The most ambitious of these laws was adopted in Georgia in April 2014. Among other provisions, it allowed guns to be carried into airports right up to the federal TSA checkpoint.

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So it’s not at all true that “nothing changes.” In fact, a remarkable research paper published in 2016 by Harvard’s Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra, and Christopher Poliquin found that between 1989 and 2014, the most probable policy response to a mass shooting was a loosening of gun laws.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/more-killings-more-guns/541905/