Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalWhat I learned eating at 8,000 Chinese restaurants
Many people in America love Chinese food, but David R Chan is perhaps in a league of his own.
Mr Chan, a 72-year-old former tax lawyer based in Los Angeles, claims to have dined at nearly 8,000 Chinese restaurants across the US and counting. Each is archived in a spreadsheet that he has maintained for four decades, along with thousands of restaurant business cards and menus.
If you visit one Chinese restaurant per day, it would take more than 20 years to reach his current count - 7,812 restaurants.
From pineapple buns and pork belly to chicken feet and tea-smoked duck, the Chinese restaurant "collector" documents his food conquests almost daily on his social media accounts.
Though his food journey started as part of a search for his identity as a Chinese American, Mr Chan said, over the years it has become itself a chronicle of the rise of Chinese food and changing dynamics of Chinese culture in America.
Mr Chan isn't a typical Chinese food critic, and he insists he isn't even a foodie. He has no aptitude for using chopsticks, he said, has given up tea to avoid caffeine and adheres to a low-sugar, low-cholesterol diet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59356176
Update on my brother
My brother, who we were afraid we might lose just a few weeks ago, is now in rehab at Alta Bates in Berkeley! He was finally diagnosed with LG-1 autoimmune encephalitis, which isn't exactly common, but leave it to him to have something weird, as my other brother (the doctor) said. He started to rally after his third plasmapharesis, and had a total of five of those. He still requires assistance getting out of bed, and he has some short term memory deficits, but on the whole is doing much better than expected. Hopefully he will be home for Christmas!
The search for extra-terrestrial life is going to look at our nearest galactic neighbor
Scientists are starting to look for life in our galactic backyard.
Alpha Centauri, two stars that at just over four light-years (about 25 trillion miles) away are the closest sunlike stars to our solar system, is the focus of a new effort to find planets that could reveal signs of life. The project centers on building a small space telescope — dubbed TOLIMAN after a medieval name for the star — that will go into Earth’s orbit in about two years and could start detecting planets by about 2025.
Although Alpha Centauri is right next door in astronomical terms, no planets have been detected around its binary star system. If any are found, their atmospheres could be scanned for the “biosignatures” created by extraterrestrial life — a relatively new astronomical technique that could allow scientists to determine by telescope if there’s alien life, especially microbial, on distant planets.
More than 4,000 alien planets have now been confirmed, but they’ve been largely discovered thanks to lucky alignments, said project leader Peter Tuthill, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney.
“There’s a little bit of a dark secret that astronomers have been keeping,” he said. “We’re not actually very good at finding planets.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/search-extraterrestrial-life-going-look-nearest-galactic-neighbor-rcna6313
She's 10 years old, and she's already the CEO of her very own cosmetics company
Whether it's babysitting or flipping burgers, most people's first jobs do not compare to what Paris Muhammad is up to. At just 10 years old, she is the CEO of her own makeup company called Paris Place LLC.
The fifth-grader from Georgia made history becoming the youngest ever member of the Conyers-Rockdale Chamber of Commerce in Georgia last month.
"I started my business when I was seven years old," said Muhammad. "Me and my nana, we started selling air fresheners and body oils. And a year ago, we added lip gloss to my collection."
Her mother, Tenisha Odom, said she knew early on that her daughter had a passion for cosmetics.
"I would see little patches of makeup on her face, and I'm like 'Are you in my lipstick or in my makeup?'" said Odom. "And she would, you know, kind of give me the side eye, so I know she was doing something."
Her makeup is already being sold in beauty supply stores in three states — Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia — and can be shipped across the country. Muhammad said her products are for everyone.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/23/1058165187/10-year-old-cosmetics-ceo-paris-muhammad-paris-place-llc
The biggest problem facing the U.S. electric grid isn't demand. It's climate change
The power grid in the U.S. is aging and already struggling to meet current demand. It faces a future with more people, who drive more electric cars and heat homes with more electric furnaces.
Alice Hill says that's not even the biggest problem the country's electricity infrastructure faces.
"Everything that we've built, including the electric grid, assumed a stable climate," she says. "It looked to the extremes of the past — how high the seas got, how high the winds got, the heat."
Hill is an energy and environment expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served on the National Security Council staff during the Obama administration, where she led the effort to develop climate resilience. She says past weather extremes can no longer safely guide future electricity planning.
"It's a little like we're building the plane as we're flying because the climate is changing right now, and it's picking up speed as it changes," Hill says.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/24/1040529860/the-biggest-problem-facing-the-u-s-electric-grid-isnt-demand-its-climate-change
Joanne Shenandoah, hailed as 'Native America's musical matriarch,' has died
Joanne Shenandoah, the celebrated Native American singer-songwriter who performed before world leaders and on high-profile stages, has died. She was 63.
The Native American Music Awards & Association posted on its website that Shenandoah, described as “Native America’s musical matriarch,” died Monday night in Scottsdale, Arizona, after complications of abdominal bleeding.
“Joanne’s beautiful embellishing voice, strong Iroquois traditions, unequivocal elegance and courteous grace made her a prominent role model and highly respected musical matriarch among Native American communities as well as the mainstream music community at large,” the organization said. “She sang with deep roots from her ancestors and flawlessly incorporated her oral traditions into contemporary Folk, Country and Americana formats.”
Shenandoah was a member of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation, and grew up in central New York state.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/11/24/joanne-shenandoah-native-americas-musical-matriarch-dies-death-obituary/8746742002/
Neo-Nazis Are Using the Waukesha Attack for Propaganda
Only a day after a man drove his SUV into a Christmas parade in a suburb of Milwaukee, killing five people and injuring 48, right-wing extremists are using the incident as propaganda, spinning it as a calculated terrorist attack perpetrated by a left-wing radical.
Without knowing the motives of the driver, a Wisconsin man named Darrell E. Brooks Jr. with a history of domestic violence and a recent arrest for vehicular assault, far-right Telegram channels are full of terror allegations—despite categorical police statements rejecting that terrorism had anything to do with the tragic events.
For example, one post by a neo-Nazi prepper account called out mainstream media for some sort of coordinated cover-up, describing the incident as “blatant anti-white terror attack.”
However, while police in Waukesha alleged the attack on the parade was intentional, they say that Brooks had just left the scene of a domestic disturbance and was not acting upon any terrorist influence or organization, but was in some sort of disturbed haze.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w8jn/waukesha-parade-telegram-conspiracy-theories
Police: Knoxville man demands pizza with AK-47
A Knoxville man could face decades in prison after he allegedly held employees of a Little Caesar’s restaurant at gunpoint with an AK-47 after being told it would take 10 minutes to make his pizza.
Officers responded to the store on Cedar Bluff Rd around 9 p.m. on Nov. 5 where witnesses said the suspect, later identified as Charles Doty Jr. became angry after being told about the wait and asked for free breadsticks. An incident report states he then left the store to wait and returned with an AK-47 in hand, demanding the pizza immediately.
Another person in the store who had already gotten their order handed Doty her pepperoni pizza and he fled the scene before police arrived.
Surveillance video showed the suspect threatened an employee who was attempting to leave from his shift and prevented him from freely doing so. That victim then fled the lobby to the back room of the business and called 911.
https://www.wate.com/news/police-knoxville-man-demands-pizza-with-ak-47/
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WTF? Entitled much? My grandson works at a Little Caesar's in another town. He's a big kid but no match for an AK-47......
Tiger Update (was: Animal Cruelty)
Tiger seems to realize in some way that he is safe and that there are people who care. He now comes to the front of his kennel when spoken to softly and actively invites petting, at least from Natalie and sometimes from others. Yesterday he allowed me to scratch his ears through the bars. I almost cried!
We have realized that he is definitely blind in his right eye, and we think that the vision in his left eye may be limited. This would make him a special needs kitty and, of necessity, an indoor cat. We do, however, think he can be adopted by the right person. I've proposed to the Animal Care Manager that we hold a Special Needs adoption event and she is actively considering it. We recently took in a little calico kitty who is also blind in one eye, and we have some other animals with special needs...one eye, deafness, health conditions, advanced age, etc...that would require adopters with special understanding. We know they're out there and we just need to put these animals front and center.
Officer convicted of rape gets home detention after judge finds no evidence of 'psychological injury
A Baltimore County police officer convicted of rape was allowed to remain on home detention, prosecutors announced Monday, after a judge determined at the man’s sentencing that there was “not evidence of any psychological injury to the victim,” even though the woman claimed she received therapy.
Anthony Westerman was convicted in August on multiple counts of rape, sexual offense and assault of a 22-year-old woman in 2017. Westerman, 27, who was separately convicted of assaulting another woman in 2019, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for second-degree rape.
But Circuit Judge Keith Truffer suspended all of the sentence but four years of home detention for the 2017 conviction while Westerman pursues an appeal. Truffer also sentenced Westerman to just one day in jail for the 2019 assault, which he described as a “boorish” act, according to prosecutors.
Scott D. Shellenberger, the state’s attorney for Baltimore County, said in a news release that Truffer “determined that there was not evidence of any psychological injury to the victim despite the fact that she indicated she has received therapy for the attack on her and that the Judge had stated at the time of the verdict that what had happened to the victim ‘may be the most traumatic moment of’ her life.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/11/23/baltimore-officer-rape-house-detention-westerman/
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If I said what I wanted done to this judge it would get me suspended from DU.....
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 06:34 PM
Number of posts: 10,989