Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalRussia's Hilariously Bad Excuses for Why Everything Sucks
Russias Trade Ministry has decided that white copy paper is now dangerous for Russians health and must be avoided at all costs.
We have learned that this kind of gleaming, white office paper is harmful to human health, Deputy Trade Minister Oleg Bocharov said, according to RIA Novosti.
It turns out that paper with a rougher texture is better for your eyes.
The reality is much simpler: Sanctions imposed on Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered the illegal invasion of Ukraine in February has left paper manufacturers without whitening chemicals for paper. Normally, Russian manufacturers relied on imports from Finland to do the trick.
But the government is scrambling for a way to explain away the changes in paper qualityparticularly because officials have yet to formally admit that Russian forces are fighting a full-fledged war and continue to claim that they are not attacking Ukrainian cities. Kremlin officials continue to tell Russians that their forces are simply a part of a special military operation meant to demilitarize Ukraine.
Already, pulp and paper mills in Svetlogorsk, Kondopoga, and Turinsk have begun shifting to produce paper successfully without the use of bleach as a result of sanctions, RIA Novosti reported.
Its not the first time that the Russians have had to fudge the record in recent days due to struggles following the invasion.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-hilariously-bad-excuses-for-why-everything-sucks-after-vladimir-putin-waged-war-on-ukraine?ref=home
Thought y'all could use some laughter. This is on par with the old Soviet system.
Weeks after she was denied a protection order, a Michigan woman and her family are dead
A Michigan woman was denied a protection order against her husband two weeks before she and her family were found dead Sunday in an apparent murder-suicide, court documents show.
Tirany Savage, 35, filed for the order June 24 in Michigans 34th Circuit Court, claiming her husband, Bo Eugene Savage, had recently bought a gun, repeatedly threatened suicide and refused to leave the familys home, according to documents published by NBC affiliate WPBN of Traverse City.
I do not want my safety or my sons safety in jeopardy, she wrote, according to the order.
The order was denied three days later by a judge who found insufficient evidence of immediate or irreparable injury, according to documents obtained by the station.
The judge, Troy Daniel, wrote that Savage could request the order in divorce court, the documents show. Tirany Savage filed for divorce last Thursday, the station reported.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/weeks-was-denied-protective-order-michigan-woman-family-are-dead-rcna38132
The most dangerous time in a woman's life is immediately after she separates from her partner. Proven again. Sleep well tonight, Judge Daniel.
Dr. Oz Is Already Benefiting From 'Dark Money' and Citizens United
Celebrity doctor and Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz has plenty of personal wealth to help fund his upstart campaign. And while the TV doctor might be a political neophyte, his fundraising operation has incorporated a sophisticated techniquewhat one expert described as legalized money laundering.
Like so many aspects of todays campaign finance system, it traces back a decadeto the Supreme Courts watershed Citizens United decision.
The Oz setup involves a somewhat confusing super PAC, which has a dark money nonprofit twin. The super PAC has raised more than $4 million, including a donation from the nonprofit.
That pairing was made possible thanks to Citizens United, which gave rise to super PACspolitical committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money.
Brett Kappel, campaign finance specialist at Harmon Curran, explained the arrangement.
The Supreme Courts Citizens United decision allowed corporations, including nonprofit organizations, to make unlimited contributions to Super PACs, which then could spend those funds on independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates, Kappel said.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-oz-is-already-benefiting-from-dark-money-and-citizens-united?ref=home
Alex Murdaugh Somehow Hits New Low With Charges He Murdered Wife and Son
As if the dozens of charges for financial crimes and allegedly attempting to stage his own killing were not enough, Alex Murdaugh has a new problem: murder charges implicating him in the deaths of his own wife and son.
A Colleton County grand jury on Thursday indicted the 63-year-old former lawyer on two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in connection with the June 2021 killings of his 52-year-old wife, Margaret, and their 22-year-old son, Paul. They were both found fatally shot near the hunting dog kennels at the familys 1,700-acre estate in South Carolinaand Murdaugh was the one who called 911.
Over the last 13 months, SLED agents and our partners have worked day in and day out to build a case against the person responsible for the murders of Maggie and Paul and to exclude those who were not, SLED Chief Mark Keel said in a statement. At no point did agents lose focus on this investigation. From the beginning I have been clear, the priority was to ensure justice was served. Today is one more step in a long process for justice for Maggie and Paul.
The indictment does not provides many detailsincluding what allegedly prompted the slayingsbut does state that Murdaugh fatally shot his wife with a rifle and his son with a shotgun, allegations his attorneys deny. While the prospect of such charges was teased in the media in recent days, their announcement represented the most disturbing episode yet in the saga of the once-prominent lawyer, a man whose downfall has taken on the veneer of a Greek tragedy.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alex-murdaugh-disgraced-former-south-carolina-lawyer-charged-with-murder-of-wife-and-son?ref=home
Another chapter in the miniseries
Meet the Kooks Who Think NASA's Telescope Is a Space Cannon
The space community has been abuzz this week after NASA unveiled five stunning, highly anticipated new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. While the pictures stirred the awe and wonder of normal people, they also became a target for good old-fashioned idiotser, conspiracy theoristswho believe that the photos are fake, or really evidence of enormous aliens, or that Webb is a giant space laser, actually.
Welcome to the age of the Webb Truthers.
Before we proceed any further, though, its worth heeding the words of Nietzsche: If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. A few hours down the rabbit hole of any conspiracy theory might just have you putting on the old tin foil hat yourselfso be warned.
Theres a wide range of inane theories and speculations about the new Webb images origins, with some claiming that the pictures were created by CGI, Photoshop, Hollywood special effects, or some combination of all of the above. Some are even saying there might be a more diabolical reason behind Webb, suggesting that it could be weaponized against people on Earth.
Hollywood is capable of great visual effects, one Twitter user wrote in reply to a NASA tweet about the telescope. Just sayin... This is all fake. Another user claimed that the photos are fake because every star has the same pixel pattern.
In one of the more herculean examples of mental gymnastics, one Twitter user said Webbs snapshot of SMACS 0723, a region of the sky that provides a view to a dazzling amount of galaxy clusters, is actually computer generated. Plus, President Biden, who personally unveiled the image Monday, purposely named it SCAMS backwardsafter all, the best way to dupe everyone into believing your scams is to leave little clues to your lies in plain sight.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-conspiracy-theory-kooks-who-think-nasas-james-webb-telescope-is-a-giant-space-cannon?ref=home
Oh FFS!
Why adoption won't fill the gaps of a Roe-less America
In the immediate wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, social media filled with images and memes playing off a viral tweet: A clean-cut couple beams at the camera while standing outside the Supreme Court building and holding a sign reading We will adopt your baby. (Slate has the full story on the couple featured in that photo.)
In a post-Roe world, there is already a renewed focus on adoption as a supposed solution for unwanted pregnancies. Indeed, in the arguments before the Supreme Court last year, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that adoption is a foolproof substitution for abortion. Yet the rhetoric around adoption too rarely takes into consideration the person having the baby who will be adopted.
Kathryn Joyce, an investigative reporter at Salon, has been covering adoption in America for over a decade. Her book The Child Catchers is one of the best ever written about the messy intersections of capitalism, Christianity, and adoption, digging deep into the ways the adoption industry wrings every dollar it can out of an incredibly fragile period in the lives of everyone it touches. (Disclosure: I am adopted.)
Joyce and I talked recently about adoption rhetoric at a time when American reproductive rights have been gutted. That rhetoric touches on so many other aspects of American life, most notably race and class.
For decades now, theres been a pro-choice rejoinder to anti-abortion activists: What are you going to do with all these extra kids you want to see born? Are you prepared to adopt all these kids? Joyce said. And the answer is: kind of? A lot of people will say, Thats exactly what we want.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23200880/adoption-abortion-roe-we-will-adopt-your-baby-kathryn-joyce
This article explains a lot. These people are positively infuriating. So smug.
Mo Farah says he was trafficked to the U.K. and forced into child labor
Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah says he was trafficked to the U.K. under a false name and forced into child labor, revealing stunning details about the painful path that culminated in him being awarded a knighthood.
"Most people know me as Mo Farah, but it's not my name or, it's not the reality," Farah said in a new documentary about the track star.
"The real story is, I was born in Somaliland, north of Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin," he added.
Farah has previously said he came to the U.K. as a young child with his parents, fleeing the war in Somalia. But he now says his father died when Farah was four years old, and that he was soon separated from his mother and other relatives.
"I was brought into the U.K. illegally under the name of another child, called Mohammed Farah," he said. At the time, he was around 8 or 9 years old.
The documentary, made by the BBC and Red Bull Studios, includes footage of visa documents that Farah says were faked, bearing his photo and another child's name.
"I know I've taken someone else's place. And I do wonder, what is Mohammed doing now?" he said in the documentary, clips of which are posted on the BBC's website.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1111002952/mo-farah-trafficked-child-labor
Russian General Dead as 'Big Shot F*cking Command' Taken Out
Ukrainian forces took out yet another Russian general in a massive counterattack in Kherson, local authorities said Tuesday.
A general and five Russian military officers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian headquarters using the U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARs), according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a representative of the Odesa regional military administration.
After a strike by HIMARS on the headquarters in the Kherson region, Major General [Artyom] Nasbulin, the head of the 22nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces (military unit 73954, Simferopol), was killed. Colonel Kens, whose death we announced yesterday, died there as well. And apart from him, the commander of the 20th motorized rifle division (military unit 22220, Volgograd) Colonel Andrei Gorobyets, the head of the operational department of the headquarters of the 20th MRD, Colonel Koval, the head of artillery of the 20th MRD, Colonel Gordeev. In total more than 150 died, including 5 officers, Bratchuk said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Russian-installed authorities in the occupied Nova Kakhovka confirmed a Ukrainian strike on the area but made no mention of the Russian general and officers killed, claiming instead that Ukrainian forces had used American HIMARS to strike a warehouse storing a chemical compound that caused a massive explosion.
Russias RIA Novosti, citing local Kremlin-backed authorities, said at least five people were killed, seven were missing, and up to 80 were injured.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/another-general-killed-as-russian-leak-admits-big-shot-fucking-command-was-obliterated?ref=home
I've lost count, but Russia is running out of generals so much that they had to call up a 300 lb+ retired one a couple of weeks ago. He looked like Meal Team 6 and Gravy Seals all in one.
The state took children from their parents -- then failed to give them a 'real' education
Michigan is catastrophically failing to provide many of the most vulnerable children in its care with a quality education, delaying some teenagers graduation by years or leaving them so frustrated that they drop out of school, according to foster youth, their advocates and educators whove tried to help them.
NBC News spoke with 10 current or former Michigan foster youth who collectively spent time in more than a dozen residential facilities in recent years, either because social workers couldnt find a family to take them or because the state said they needed treatment for mental health or substance misuse issues.
All of them attended classes for months or years with other young residents of those facilities.
All of them were assigned schoolwork and completed it, they said.
Some thought theyd received quality instruction from caring teachers. Others recalled being largely parked in front of computers or handed packets of worksheets.
But all of them learned a difficult lesson when they moved out of these facilities and tried to transfer to a public school: The classes they took in the state-funded, state-licensed institutions didnt necessarily count toward graduation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michigan-foster-care-education-rcna37467
Appalling. Just appalling.
When it comes to darker skin, pulse oximeters fall short
Over the past two years, the pulse oximeter has become a crucial tool for tracking the health of COVID-19 patients.
The small device clips onto a finger and measures the amount of oxygen in a patient's blood. But a growing body of evidence shows the device can be inaccurate when measuring oxygen levels in people with dark skin tones.
A study published on Monday only adds to this concern.
Researchers analyzing pre-pandemic health data also find those measurements resulted in patients of color receiving less supplemental oxygen than white patients did.
"We were fooled by the pulse oximeter," says the study's lead author Dr. Leo Anthony Celi, who's clinical research director and principal research scientist at the MIT Laboratory of Computational Physiology.
"We were given the false impression that the patients were okay. And what we showed in this study is that we were giving them less oxygen than they needed," he says.
These sobering findings are bringing more urgency to educating patients and medical professionals about the shortcomings of the pulse oximeter and to designing new models that can work reliably regardless of someone's skin color.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/11/1110370384/when-it-comes-to-darker-skin-pulse-oximeters-fall-short
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