We respond…
I may have more to say tomorrow — but an entire generation of STEM science mavens… dozens of them now NASA wonders, and more than a few of them astronauts of color… have long credited her role on the original “Star Trek” — as inspiring them.
Letting them know that girls — and girls of color, especially — belong in space.
Travel well — but travel light — you ran a gravity defying, fantastic nearly 90 year race. We are all so very proud of you… smiling widely now.
नमस्ते
Ingenuity was mostly a proof of concept / working model program.
It has wildly-exceeded all expectations — so now, its next-gen iteration will be used (or, several of them will be), to ultimately zip about, collecting the core sample tubes Perseverance is now dropping on the Barsoomian surface. That isn’t likely to be before 2033… but it will happen, thus:
…[T]he Mars Sample Return campaign will no longer include the Sample Fetch Rover or its associated second lander. The Sample Retrieval Lander will include two sample recovery helicopters, based on the design of the Ingenuity helicopter, which has performed 29 flights at Mars and survived over a year beyond its original planned lifetime. The helicopters will provide a secondary capability to retrieve samples cached on the surface of Mars….
Now you know — onward to the forest preserves, here — for a oxygen bath. . . and a long walk. Smile….
नमस्ते
John wrote this evening that a certain Commander in Chief “took an ungracious victory lap when he came through his bout with the current variant of the Covid virus this week….”
But he identified the wrong one.
Remember this one, idiot? He made his secret service detail sit inside a closed car with him, while took a lap around Walter Reed — well before he was cleared by his own docs… remember, chump?
Then he stood on the terrace and pretended to salute? What a tool.
Damn.
We wanted to update the readership, on this suit — since she’s back from maternity leave (genuine congrats, on the baby girl, now two years behind your baby boy, BTW!) as of this Friday, and because… the federal securities class action plaintiffs in the middle district of Florida have completely revamped and amended their 104 page complaint, as of two weeks ago, thus:
…Owens’ promotional post generated a lot of media attention, and Newsweek noted that the value of LGBCoin rose more than 37% in value in the days leading up to her tweet….
Even more importantly, the trading volume of LGBCoin spiked over 425% the day after Owens’ announcement that she was “ALL IN” on LGBCoin, according to historical price data from Coinmarketcap.com….
[The main promoter of the coin wrote] I know Candace Owens has promoted this coin. There’s going to be some other very big names, very soon. They’re going to be talking about it and uh, this is your chance to get in early…. Please share this with as many people as you can — 10, 25 friends, 50 friends. Share it, let’s get the word out, we need to — we need to bless [Koutoulas]….
[To be clear, the prior complaint named her personally, as a named defendant/target — through discovery, the plaintiffs may re-add her as a named defendant, once they learn exactly where her coins are, or went.] This is going to cost the couple. Millions? I don’t know.
But it is well-pleaded. And the law is clear: one cannot promote something one is selling off, in the same breath, under the applicable federal securities fraud laws.
Buckle-up — it will be entertaining.
And… he was ever a politician more than a lawyer, even then (he rose from committeeman, through the 22nd Ward, to the city council here, as an alderman). But always genuinely good, kind, and upright guy. Even then.
Fast forward about forty years (or so)… and this morning, Scott Johnson wants to wail on and on, about an intemperate tweet he sent. It doesn’t reflect in any manner his forty years of fine public service. It is unfortunate. It was wise for him to delete it.
That said — Scott and John and Steve were all noticeably silent — when Tangerine exhibited not one momentary lapse, but was repeatedly video-taped mocking a reporter with a neurological disease, was video-taped saying “grab her by the p*ssy”, was credibly accused of sexual assault by one of his former acquaintances, and of forcible rape by his ex-wife, engaged in a well-documented fat shaming campaign against one of his Latin former beauty contestant winners… and on and on, over decades of public life.
That. Is. Who. Trump. Is.
But these sycophants only mention (and condemn) the occasional slip of the hand, by a democratic politician / lawmaker.
Charming. Et tu, Brutus?
Yes I think it more important to note a four decade long public record of unending blatant misogyny by Trump, guys — than one slip in a minor figure’s otherwise blameless life.
Cheers.
So, like all Americans (I suspect) I believe criminal guilt or innocence is finally decided in the courtrooms. I respect that he has not been found guilty (yet). But I have closely reviewed the available evidence — mountains of documents, texts, emails and call logs… and it seems an almost certainty he did, in fact, in secret work for his OWN benefit, against US interests — in consortium with agents of the UAE. And he received funding of well over $370 million from UAE entities for it (as we’ve previously reported). [That last bit is undisputed.]
So it is a little. . . precious, that a guy out on a $250 million bail/bond… is butt sore, that he has an ankle monitor, instead of being locked up for the last year, awaiting trial. Overnight in court filings, as his September trial looms, he moves to ditch the ankle jewelry, thus:
…[B]ecause of the suspicion that the device engenders, Mr. Barrack has repeatedly been detained by security during approved travel due to their confusion over his release conditions and the GPS monitoring device. This has even led to him being placed in a holding cell, even after showing Customs and Border Patrol agents the Court’s order permitting his travel. The GPS device also risks significant prejudice to him during trial — Mr. Barrack may enter and exit the courthouse in the presence of jurors, and his GPS device may need to be examined by courthouse security or otherwise be noticed by members of the jury….
He can wear a suit with looser fitting (at the ankle) pants to cover it. End of story. He’s only spent three nights, in total in a county lock-up — since his arrest last year. He’s lived like a king, in Aspen, at right — and in LA and in NYC… each at very tony digs.
I think… he should get used to the monitor, and given the billions of dollars still at his disposal (and he may move up to one million dollars at a time without telling anyone, under his current conditions of release — plenty to buy safe passage out), once convicted… he will be a very high flight risk. He can buy surgery, and a stealthy boat ride, in a snap. . . and disappear. So I say the ankle monitor stays… on.
Onward, smiling — to a nephew’s birthday and shrimp grill, this afternoon.
नमस्ते
About once every two weeks, like clockwork, Hinderaker takes off on a screed, decrying what he sees as the public schools telling parents how to raise their children — and what to teach them. This he feels is the greatest threat we face, as a nation, to our future. [Not climate collapse, of course.]
He waxes almost poetic (almost!) about how the Founders would never have stood for such a public education system. [One that taught most of what whyte Americans have… they actually… stole. Either directly — or through ancestors, here.]
And so… he screams that PARENTS should (alone!) decide what to teach their children — even as to matters of unassailable biological science. Preserve the liberty rights of parents, at every turn, he intones. Their children belong to them (as any chattel would, he thinks), to raise as they alone see fit.
So — if it were not such a serious matter, and a glaringly HATEFUL and dishonest anti-trans position he increasingly feels compelled to voice — I might laugh at his latest, of tonight. I might.
But I cannot, as he says openly he wants retribution, retribution against (wait for it!) parents… who, with their children and their health care providers (and their psychologists, presumably)… decided to allow a child under age 18 to move (in most cases, non-surgically) toward the gender with which they feel most closely aligned (regardless of at-birth morphology). [Usually in a completely-reversible fashion, if the child is not yet 18 or older.]
W H A T ? !
So — in any decision a parent and child together, privately, makes (health related) with which he disagrees… the parents should be… punished by force of law. [Let us be clear: as with any surgical procedure, the parents do think deeply before acceding to an underage person’s wishes. They always do. We all know it — as parents, even considering just… a tonsillectomy.]
But if (in John’s insane alternate history US) a parent wants to teach his children that only whyte X-tians are fully human, and all others (yellow, brown, red and black are inferior “mud” animals)… and encourage them to act out on these miscreant beliefs, at a public school or in a church, or at the mall… well, that’s just “muh freedumb“… he would say.
[No punishments at law, even if they end up burning crosses on a neighbors’ lawn — that’s political expression in his deeply-warped world view.]
Hinderaker — as we’ve shown repeatedly — is unable to put together even three consistent sentences on just about any topic that requires 21st Century thinking. But he will write 25 page tomes… on 19th Century ways of raising kids, and mis-treating people he regards as inferior to him, and even on long-discredited economics theories… as though he alone is the smartest guy in every room he enters.
What. A. Loser. And his cry for “accountability”? It is just a wish — his wish — for a lynch mob to assemble, anew.
Out.
As we predicted just last week, the labor rights movement, and the forces of well-organized and start up unions… will be duly skeptical of this buy, by Team Bezos.
In any event, here’s the latest, from a “peoples’ rights” outlet:
…On July 21, Amazon announced that the corporation would buy One Medical, a national chain of healthcare clinics and services based in San Francisco, for $3.9 million. In response, unions and labor organizations marched in San Francisco’s Financial District against the deal on July 26. The march was attended by the newly-formed Amazon Labor Union (ALU), with ALU president Chris Smalls leading chants at the helm of the protest, as well as the California Labor Federation, San Francisco Labor Council, ALU, California Nurses Association, Teamsters Local 665, and Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). . . .
Labor leaders worry that Amazon’s encroachment into healthcare would enable a corporation with a bad user data privacy reputation to access patient medical information. Amber Baur of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western State Council told KTVU, “HIPAA [The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] protects patient information…
But of course, if they opt in for that, there’s ways to use that in marketing, and we know that Amazon cares most about that consumer data. It’s why they’re in all these sectors.”
On July 1, Amazon revealed that it gave footage taken through Ring personal surveillance cameras to law enforcement, without obtaining a warrant. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos admitted that “[Amazon has] a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business, but I can’t guarantee you that that policy has never been violated.”
While Amazon moves forward with their acquisition of One Medical, more labor action can be expected in the future….
Fascinating that Bezos thinks it a good idea to say… hey, we may have violated the law here — but look the other way… because we are a really big company. Just fascinating. Onward, with a grin.
नमस्ते
Tonight in a new bit of detached from reality fever dreaming, Hinderaker preposterously opines that Tangerine “might win” a libel case against CNN (should he file one).
The theory advanced — by a tiny DC firm for Tangerine — would seek to prove that (wait for it!) because Trump “subjectively believes” he won the 2020 election, CNN libels him every time they say the assertion (of a stolen 2020 election) is “false”.
So John now believes… he too can sue CNN every time they call him a “climate change denialist” – because he (and only he!) subjectively doesn’t believe in climate science.
Damnation.
This is the dumbest loser of an argument I’ve seen in about 20 years.
If I believe that I am Napoleon Bonaparte reincarnated (even though I’m over three feet too tall)… I can sue you for libeling me, if you say “nah… he’s just a Chicago lawyer”.
Of course Hinderaker once knew more law than this.
Any objectively true statement about a public figure (“Trump lost 2020”) cannot ever support a successful libel claim, in the US.
Garbage does stink, John. As does… Tangerine.
Out, grinning.
That first lil’ rover was more a demo project than anything else.
Even so, it proved that all these later “mighty things” could be accomplished, over 40 million miles away, into the night sky… like a coal, rising… with a moan. We too were personally entering a new era that year… hard to figure where the time went. But go, it did. Smile….
Though we now fly helicopters on Barsoom, we do fondly remember those first few sweet nights, over a X486 desktop, and 9600 Baud dial up modem:
…When a daring team of engineers put a lander and the first rover on the Red Planet a quarter century ago, they changed how the world explores.
On a July evening in 1997, Jennifer Trosper drove home from work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory holding a picture of the Martian surface to her steering wheel. Earlier that day, the agency’s Pathfinder mission had landed on Mars encased in protective air bags and taken the image of the red, rubbly landscape that transfixed her.
“As I was on the freeway, I had that image on my steering wheel and kept looking at it,” Trosper said, reminiscing. “I probably should have been looking more closely at the road.”
Given that Trosper was the mission’s flight director, her excitement was understandable. Not only had Pathfinder landed on Mars, a feat all its own, but it had done so at a fraction of the cost and time required of previous Mars missions. And, the next day, the team was set to change the course of Mars exploration forever: They had sent instructions to Pathfinder to extend a ramp so that history’s first Mars rover, Sojourner, could roll down onto the planet’s surface….
Believing that nothing exceeds… like excess — we still await a vision, of St. Elmo’s Fire — from the chopper now zipping over the surface of Mars. That would indeed be a sight to behold (even as a digital streaming HD file).
And as we’ve said — since the stunt would pose no danger to the craft — I think the team ought to have the mast cam on the Perseverance rover authorized to just shoot a lil’ footage — of a late evening lift-off and short flight — and soon (while everything is working perfectly as designed). It could be to commemorate that night, 25 years ago.
What a would we live in, now. . . robotic cinematography, all forty million miles distant, across the vast silent blackness of space. Whoosh. . . grinning ear to ear.
नमस्ते
