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A photo of protesters outside the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., shared on the original Indivisible Denver Facebook page in January, before the split.
A photo of protesters outside the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., shared on the original Indivisible Denver Facebook page in January, before the split.
Indivisible Denver, a collective formed to oppose the agenda of President Donald Trump and hold local officials accountable, has undergone a division of its own. Co-founder Eric Shumake, who recently told us about weekly protests against Senator Cory Gardner dubbed the Sunday Gardner, has split off from numerous ID members who are now part of a separate outfit.
Shumake’s concerns included the fear that the organization was being co-opted by the Democratic Party. This contention and others are rejected by Mark Stalnaker, speaking on behalf of the newly formed group, which, like Shumake’s, calls itself Indivisible Denver — though the designation CD1 (for Denver’s 1st Congressional District) is sometimes used.
Over the years, plenty of political organizations have imploded or achieved far less than their members had intended because of infighting. Both men hope their version of Indivisible Denver avoids this fate. …
Can America still be trusted with classified information?
Nothing to see here
With friends like these.
American allies have been worried about sharing intelligence with the new administration since the day US president Donald Trump took office. So, obviously, none will be thrilled about reports that Trump shared top secret intelligence—seemingly provided by Israel—with Russia’s foreign minister and US ambassador.
On the surface, things look terrible: Israeli officials have told Buzzfeed they’re “boiling mad and demanding answers.” Meanwhile, a senior European official has said his country might stop sharing intelligence with Washington since it “could be a risk to our sources”:
BREAKING: European official to AP: Country might stop sharing intel with US if Trump gave classified info to Russian diplomats.
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 16, 2017
There’s no doubt this is a bad mis-step. It has reportedly endangered an Israeli intelligence source’s life. According James Walsh of the University of North Carolina Charlotte, author of The International Politics of Intelligence Sharing, it breaks “a de facto rule: you don’t share intelligence with a third party unless you get explicit permission from the party that gave it to you.” …
ROBERT MUELLER: A MOST WELCOME SPECIAL COUNSEL
As special counsel, Robert Mueller will evidently have wide latitude and authority in pursuing his investigation of connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.
In a week of mind-bending political developments, there is finally some good news. On Wednesday evening, the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller, a former F.B.I. director, as a special counsel to oversee the F.B.I.’s investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and the Russian government.
“In my capacity as acting attorney general I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,’’ Rod Rosenstein, the deputy Attorney General, said in a public statement.
Several aspects of this development are encouraging, beginning with the fact that it was Rosenstein who did the deed. With the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, having recused himself from dealing with the investigation following the revelation that he had made misleading statements about his meetings with the Russian Ambassador, Rosenstein demonstrated the independence for which he had been known until last week, when he wrote a memo to Sessions that effectively recommended the firing of James Comey, now the former head of the F.B.I. …
Impeachment seemed impossible a few days ago. Not anymore.
The announcement that Robert Mueller III, the former FBI director, will oversee the Russian probe strengthens the spreading sense that Donald Trump is finished
‘What makes this appointment fatal to the president is not Mueller’s well-earned reputation for doggedness.’
The “presumption of regularity”. It is a term largely unfamiliar to those outside legal or governmental circles but one that all Americans should now learn. Born of centuries-old common law, the presumption stands for the idea that government officials are presumed to act lawfully and in proper discharge their office – absent evidence to the contrary.
Every elected and appointed official enjoys this presumption. It is not easily squandered. It is meant to withstand errors in judgment and lapses in leadership. What it does not indulge is a clear pattern of abuse. Once the presumption collapses, the official is no longer fit for office.
This is the position that Donald Trump now finds himself in. What took Richard Nixon more than five years Trump has managed to accomplish in the narrow compass of four months. He has confirmed the worst fears of those who questioned his fitness for office. All the same, 10 days ago, his staunchest critics might have called Trump a national disaster but essentially unimpeachable. Now it seems like just a matter of time before he is removed from office.
The announcement that the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has appointed Robert Mueller III, the former FBI director, to serve as special counsel overseeing the Russian probe only strengthens the spreading sense that Trump is finished. …
Dems walk tightrope on impeachment
Democratic leaders have a message for those members of their caucus beating the drum to impeach President Trump: not so fast.
“I would suggest … there needs to be a full investigation first,” Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday. “We need to get to the facts, and let the facts lead where they may.”
In the eyes of several Democrats, however, the facts already lead to impeachment.
The Justice Department on Wednesday night announced it was naming a special counsel to investigate Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, a response to longstanding calls from Democrats. …
How Does This End?
Four alternatives for the scandal-plagued presidency of Donald Trump
The rise and reign of Donald Trump has already earned its place as one of the most dramatic political stories in modern American history. The question now: How will it end?
After a dizzying 10 days of bombshell revelations in the press and multiplying scandals at the White House, the Justice Department announced Wednesday night that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including its alleged ties to the Trump campaign. This latest development all but ensures that Washington will remain in the grips of crisis and controversy for the foreseeable future—but what happens next is an open question.
In a range of interviews with Capitol Hill Republicans, Trump allies, and veterans of past presidential scandals, there was broad consensus on only one point: The fate of the Trump presidency has never been more uncertain.
But past presidencies, and Trump’s own record in public life, suggest four dramatically different alternatives that may play out in the months and years to come. …
Why Donald Trump can’t fire his way out of ‘Russia thing’ this time
Appointment of Robert Mueller to investigate Kremlin collusion bypasses president and demonstrates seriousness of the allegations against his circle
By sacking James Comey, Donald Trump triggered a chain of events that dramatically deepens scrutiny of his administration.
With the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, the future of Donald Trump’s presidency has become significantly more precarious.
Since coming to office Trump has acted as if the post was an elected monarchy – and up to now, he has been cosseted in that illusion by a largely servile Republican party. But what differentiates the US presidency from a monarchy, even under these conditions, are the permanent institutions, made up of civil servants, prosecutors and lawyers. Trump derided them as “the swamp”, in which everyone was for sale. Now “the swamp” has struck back.
Trump compounded his firing of the FBI director, James Comey, by smearing his reputation and putting it about that the boss had lost the faith of the rank and file. That offended phalanxes of investigators with extensive skills and powers – not the sort of people you want to alienate.
Trump made matters worse by manipulating the newly appointed deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, in a half-hearted feint to make it look like Rosenstein had provided the impetus for Comey’s sacking. …
In 60 Seconds, A ‘Daily Show’ Guest Brilliantly Exposed The Danger Of ‘Post-Truth’
“What post-truth does is it paves the way for regime change.”
Trevor Noah had historian Timothy Snyder on to “The Daily Show” this week to discuss his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Snyder is a Yale professor who specializes in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. He has spent a lifetime trying to understand how fascism and authoritarianism transform from an idea into a reality. He has written book after book breaking down the patterns and signs to look for.
So when Snyder had the stage on “The Daily Show” this week, he capitalized on it by succinctly explaining to the public the steps through which authoritarianism, or fascism, or whatever you want to call it, can become a reality anywhere, even in the U.S.
@goldengateblond it's only 80sec
but it's 100% why the exploitation of the late Seth Rich is happening.@TimothyDSnyder @TheDailyShow @Trevornoah #Truth pic.twitter.com/QvWowCsvnY
— MyTweetsKillFascists (@Humancipator35) May 17, 2017
In just 60 seconds, Snyder broke down the process by which authoritarian figures convince you to stop trusting your eyes and start trusting the myth. In today’s society, we often refer to this as a working within a “post-truth.” It’s a new word for an old thing, something we often convince ourselves couldn’t happen here. Snyder argued that is not true. …
“The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”
from On Tyranny
The president is not a child. He’s something worse.
President Trump speaks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak during their meeting in the White House in Washington on May 10.
We were wrong, it turns out. Anyone cannot be president. Anyone can be elected president (any man, that is), but not anyone can be president.
After the careless, boastful revelations of his great intelligence to Russia, the firing of the FBI director, the new allegations that he asked James B. Comey to just “let this [Michael Flynn investigation] go” and the months of conducting himself without any curiosity, reverence for history, or ability to avoid mistakes, many columnists lately have been calling President Trump a child, or a bull in a china shop. This is, I think, unfair to children, and to bulls. Bulls have done a good job running Wall Street. Sometimes children are not cruel on purpose. Children can sit still and are often unable to stick their feet into their mouths, and sometimes will let you get more ice cream than they get.
He is something more terrifying than a child. Children can learn.
The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear. Suddenly the fact that he wouldn’t play by the rules makes total sense. It wasn’t that he refused to, that he was playing a long game. It was that he was a wild animal who eats fish and climbs trees, and English words were totally unintelligible to him. In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy. But at the time everyone cheered. It was good TV. Also, he was your bear. …
The Ghost of Mike Flynn
The retired general’s short tenure as national-security adviser continues to haunt the White House.
The ghost of Michael Flynn haunts this White House.
He only served as national-security adviser for 24 days. But Flynn propelled Donald Trump’s fledgling presidency into a constant state of accelerating crisis. Some of the key events of the last two weeks—the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Trump’s reported ask to Comey to stop investigating Flynn—lead back directly to the melodrama of Flynn’s brief tenure.
And the Flynn shoes have continued to drop, one after another: Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for documents related to Flynn’s contact with Russian government officials. NBC News reported on Wednesday evening that Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are now subjects of a criminal investigation as part of the FBI’s probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Also on Wednesday night, a New York Times story revealed that the Trump transition team knew Flynn was under federal investigation for his clandestine lobbying work for the Turkish government even before Trump’s inauguration. And McClatchy reported that Flynn, before the inauguration, was looped into the Obama administration’s plan to partner with Kurdish forces to retake Raqqa—and told them to delay it, which happened to align with the wishes of his Turkish clients. …
What Does the President Owe, and to Whom Does He Owe It?
A special counsel can investigate criminal misconduct—but he can’t examine the bigger questions surrounding Donald Trump.
For the chronically indebted businessman Donald Trump, it was a win every day the creditors did not foreclose on him.
President Trump will manage the remainder of his presidency the same way.
The appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the Trump-Russia matter will spell vexation in the medium term and may spell danger in the long term. But in the here and now—the next days and weeks, easing into months—the appointment brings relief.
Republicans in Congress have gained a new excuse to revert to their prior enabling of Trump’s misconduct: A special counsel has been appointed!
Instead of defiantly lying, the White House staff can now refuse to answer questions outright: A special counsel has been appointed!
Fundamental questions of national security and public integrity will go unexplored as the special counsel focuses on narrow legal matters. The public debate will be starved of new information as the special counsel proceeds in legally required secrecy. …
Mar-a-Lago: When A Millionaire Bankrupts An Entire Town
Before the election of *gulp* President Donald Trump, most people weren’t all that familiar with his Mar-a-Lago club. Membership costs more than a normal house, and also Florida has alligators, so why bother?
That was the attitude before President Trump started taking little trips down there anytime he needed a weekend getaway, and now it’s the public’s business what’s going on at Margs-a-Plenty. It’s not unusual for a president to need to take a retreat to someplace like Camp David, but Camp David is kind of tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Mar-a-Lago, on the other hand, is situated in an area that around six million people actually inhabit. We sat down with some folks who live down there to see what it’s like to live near the president’s “second White House.”
Mar-a-Lago Is A Literal Island Of Wealth In A Sea Of Crime
Obviously, Donald Trump is a very rich man. He owns a lot of fancy buildings, and the people who buy real estate from him tend to cough up a lot of money for it. So for Mar-a-Lago to be Trump’s favorite place to visit, it must be a very well-off area, right? Well, sort of.
“It’s an island of money,” explained Jim, who lives and works in West Palm Beach. “Get back on the mainland and it’s back to lower-middle class.”
“The part where Mar-a-Lago is is essentially one road with mansions on either side,” continued Alyssa, who is from nearby Boca Raton. “All of Palm Beach is really nice.”
Just to give everybody a quick geography lesson, Palm Beach is home to Mar-a-Lago. Right across the waterway is the creatively named West Palm Beach. And while Palm Beach is an ideal place for rich people to live and schmooze, West Palm Beach has crime rates on par with Chicago, a place that our president may very well actually be scared of. According to Alyssa, the nearby Delray Beach “has a reputation for being the drug rehab clinic capital of the U.S.” Lake Worth also has some major violence problems. So basically, if one of America’s most violent cities decided to lay a medieval-style siege to Mar-a-Lago, they might be able to pull it off for a hot minute. …
Hear Me Out: Let’s Elect an AI as President
Is it possible that someday we will elect an AI president?
Given some of the recent occupants of the White House, many might consider it an upgrade. After all, humans are prone to making decisions based on ego, anger, and the need for self-aggrandizement, not the common good. An artificially intelligent president could be trained to maximize happiness for the most people without infringing on civil liberties. It might even learn that it’s a good idea to tweet less—or not at all.
Sure, on first glance the idea is far-fetched and a little bit ridiculous. It’s not clear, for example, how an algorithm, no matter how lucid, could host a state dinner. Still, AI politicians are the likely culmination of trends already underway. Think about cars. Tesla owners are thrilled to let their Model S’s drive themselves, and auto manufacturers are rushing to produce vehicles that won’t even have steering wheels. Within a decade, tens of thousands of people will entrust their daily commute—and their safety—to an algorithm, and they’ll do it happily.
Why? Because it will make their lives better. Instead of sitting in traffic, drivers—now passengers—can watch a movie or get some work done. The increase in human productivity and happiness will be enormous. At the same time, it’ll make us safer. More than 30,000 people die in traffic accidents every year in the US alone, and almost all of those deaths are attributable to human error. Self-driving cars are poised to reduce that number significantly.
Similarly, we’re not very good at governing ourselves. The US government is mired in gridlock, name-calling, and partisan entrenchment. We vote for people because we like the way they look or talk, not because of policy positions. We elect politicians who we hope will embody our ideals and values, only to be sorely disappointed when they seduce the interns and demand briefcases of unmarked bills. We want our politicians to embody our highest ideals. They usually don’t. …
Artificial intelligence is getting more powerful, and it’s about to be everywhere
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There wasn’t any one big product announcement at Google I/O keynote on Wednesday, the annual event when thousands of programmers meet to learn about Google’s software platforms. Instead, it was a steady trickle of incremental improvements across Google’s product portfolio. And almost all of the improvements were driven by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — the software’s growing ability to understand complex nuances of the world around it.
Companies have been hyping artificial intelligence for so long — and often delivering such mediocre results — that it’s easy to tune it out. AI is also easy to underestimate because it’s often used to add value to existing products rather than creating new ones.
But even if you’ve dismissed AI technology in the past, there are two big reasons to start taking it seriously. First, the software really is getting better at a remarkable pace. Problems that artificial intelligence researchers struggled with for decades are suddenly getting solved. …
Meet PatriotHole, the Onion’s New Right-Wing-Skewering Mockery Machine
The best word to describe PatriotHole’s launch probably won’t ever apply to the site again: quiet. Sometime this morning, The Onion‘s spinoff brand ClickHole became PatriotHole, a new site promising to provide a “loud light in the darkness.” True to claim, the site features a color—a shade of ’70s chain-restaurant orange Breitbart News readers might recognize—as loud as its voice and an attitude much like that angry uncle you ignore on Facebook. It was all so very, very Onion.
PatriotHole, according to a welcome post, presents “the internet’s last stand against the tyranny of Leftist Media” and offers an online haven for anyone with an InfoWars bumper sticker. “We felt that ClickHole wasn’t reaching its beautiful click potential because it was marginalizing these groups in this growing market of people who like to say things louder than normal people,” says Editor in Chief Matt Powers. “Our audience was too quiet and we wanted to court the loud people. So ClickHole has boldly become PatriotHole in this climate where volume equals truth and truth equals clicks.” …
$6.40 an hour for nine years: how I got stuck in a career as a Walmart employee
I believed that I would only be working at Walmart for a few months. I was wrong, but staying for so long taught me valuable life lessons.
‘I felt like a failure with no future, no money, no assets, and lots of credit card debt’.
“you don’t know shit!” is a hard lesson to swallow, but it was one of the first things I learned when I started my nine-year career as a sales and inventory control associate at a Walmart in Laramie, Wyoming.
When I was hired by the company at $6.40 an hour, I believed I would only be working there for a few months before I landed a cool gig at a non-profit in Denver, or had my manuscript discovered by Random House. I had dropped out of college to pursue my dream of becoming the next Stephen King. I thought I was wise beyond my years and looked down on many of my new co-workers: soon I would be living in Denver, Santa Fe, or even New York City while they would still be stuck at the local Walmart.
ld be hiring a kid from Wyoming with only a high school degree and no work experience in the midst of the recession.
Almost nine years later, I was still working at the same store. I was broke, in debt, and Walmart was one of the few employment options in town. …
Awkward interactions with coworkers you barely know are a secret key to success
Office Space
You don’t have to be friends.
There are reams of academic studies on the highs and lows of workplace relationships: the value of a mentor, the damaging effects of a toxic colleague. But the literature is largely silent on the coworkers who make up the vast majority of our office interactions—the ones we barely know, and rarely work with directly. Like that lady who sits by the copier, with the plant on her desk. Or that guy in sales. No, the other one. Tim? Tim. Or Tom.
The academic term is “indifferent relationships.”
Jessica Methot, an associate professor of human resource management at Rutgers University, studies these relationships, which most of other researchers overlook. She has found that this large, bland body of colleagues we probably can’t name (and who can’t name us) in fact plays a crucial role in innovation and productivity.
“Asking acquaintances for input is likely to elicit a broader and more diverse set of perspectives” than talking to friends alone, Methot says. This makes sense: the people you’ve chosen as your friends are more likely to think the way you do, and less likely to spot what you’ve overlooked. We also may be more inclined to experiment with new ideas around people we don’t know that well. …
My Family’s Slave
She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.
The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.
Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.
To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.
After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave. …
6 Scary Realities Of Working With Actual Psychopaths
“Psychopath” is the “literally” of mental illnesses, a phrase that’s tossed around frequently, but rarely used correctly. It’s become our catch-all for “dangerously crazy.” But it’s a very specific diagnosis, characterized by impulsivity, a very high drive for reward, and little to no remorse. It’s a diagnosis that neuroscientist James Fallon is both professionally and personally familiar with. We spoke to him, and Professor Kent Kiehl — who has spent years analyzing the psychopathic brain through a pioneering MRI study — as well as “Sasha,” who currently leads group-therapy sessions in a Midwestern jail. She has attempted to treat (arguably more than) her fair share of psychopaths in that correctional setting. Here’s what they told us …
#6. You Can Actually See Psychopathy On A Brain Scan
In 2006, Fallon was finishing a study on Alzheimer’s. Poring over countless brain scans, including one of his own, which he’d submitted as a control subject. Fair enough; he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. But he did know an abnormal limbic system when he saw one — and he knew that low levels of activity in the part of the brain that governs emotional life and social interaction are … less than ideal.
“I got to the last scan, I looked at it and chuckled. I called the technicians in, and said, ‘You mixed the files? This is a dangerous person who shouldn’t be walking around, a psychopath!’ I had to peel back the name (on the scan). Of course it was me.”
“We either have ourselves a psychopath or an internet commenter.”
He refers to it as “that moment Gandalf knocks on your door,” summoning him on a great mission. He told his wife of many decades, who wasn’t surprised. Then he just let this knowledge lie for a couple years, like so many of us do when it comes to disturbing things like lingering health concerns, or recently purchased exercise equipment. …
In the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling ice – and rapidly rising seas – could spell disaster for a warming planet.
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is so remote that only 28 human beings have ever set foot on it.
Knut Christianson, a 33-year-old glaciologist at the University of Washington, has been there twice. A few years ago, Christianson and a team of seven scientists traveled more than 1,000 miles from McMurdo Station, the main research base in Antarctica, to spend six weeks on Thwaites, traversing along the flat, featureless prairie of snow and ice in six snowmobiles and two Tucker Sno-Cats. “You feel very alone out there,” Christianson says. He and his colleagues set up camp at a new spot every few days and drilled holes 300 feet or so into the ice. Then they dropped tubes of nitroglycerin dynamite into these holes and triggered a blast. Sensors tracked vibrations as they shot through the ice and ricocheted off the ground below. By measuring the shape and frequency of these vibrations, Christianson could see the lumps and ridges and even the texture of a crushed continent deeply buried beneath the ice.
But Christianson and his colleagues were not just ice geeks mapping the hidden topography of the planet. They were mapping a future global disaster. As the world warms, determining exactly how quickly ice melts and seas rise may be one of the most important questions of our time. Half the world’s population lives within 50 miles of a coastline. Trillions of dollars of real estate is perched on beaches and clustered in low-lying cities like Miami and New York. A long, slow rise of the waters in the coming decades may be manageable. A more abrupt rise would not be. “If there is going to be a climate catastrophe,” says Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat, “it’s probably going to start at Thwaites.” …
Researchers Stumble Upon Potentially New Energy Source While Drilling Into An Earthquake Fault
During the course of a research study, scientists stumbled on a significant discovery that could well prove to be a potential energy source. While drilling deep into the Alpine Fault in New Zealand, the researchers discovered water, which was much hotter than expected.
The researchers deduce that if harnessed properly, this hot water could generate electricity and may provide industries such as dairy farming with direct heating. The discovery was a surprise as hot water or geothermal energy underneath the Earth’s surface is normally linked with volcanic activity.
However, the area where the scientists drilled had no volcanoes. The researchers also predict that the energy source could have a massive presence as the Alpine Fault, which was drilled, extends for hundreds of miles along New Zealand’s South Island. The drill site is located close to New Zealand’s popular tourist destination Franz Josef Glacier. …
‘Baby Dragon’ Dinosaur Found Inside Giant Egg
The newly named species first gained fame on the cover of a 1996 National Geographic.
A gigantic cassowary-like dinosaur named Beibeilong incubates its eggs in an artist’s rendering.
More than 20 years after gracing the cover of National Geographic as “Baby Louie,” a tiny dinosaur found curled inside its egg, finally has an official name: baby dragon.
The newly described species was a giant bird-like dinosaur that laid eggs up to two feet long in nests the size of a monster truck tire. Scientists who recently studied the 90-million-year-old fossil in detail have called it Beibeilong sinensis, or “baby dragon from China,” according to a study published May 9 in the journal Nature Communications.
“I imagine them as very birdlike,” says study co-author Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary—much like an overgrown cassowary, an ostrich relative. Beibeilong would have towered over an ostrich, though; adults may have been more than 25 feet long and weighed more than three tons. …
Why Did a Chinese Peroxide Company Pay $1 Billion for a Talking Cat?
Inside the strange courtship between industrial behemoths and Western video game studios.
Samo and Iza Login were Slovenian high school sweethearts who studied computer science in college and then decided, in 2009, to get into the business of apps. Steve Jobs had introduced the Apple App Store the year before, and it was easy to believe that an overnight fortune was just an eccentric idea away. With $250,000 they’d saved while working for local IT companies, the Logins—who legally changed their surname to sound techy—started a company called Outfit7. Alongside six friends, they set up an office in the capital, Ljubljana. Their first few attempts bombed: a soccer app, a travel guide to Iceland, a “wealth affirmation” tool that shared financial mantras. They tried apps about healing crystals and ones that sent digital hugs. “Obviously,” says Samo, whose close-cropped graying hair contrasts with Iza’s red, “this is not what the majority of users are looking for.”
Then, after six months of misfires, the Logins built a children’s game in which an animated cat, Talking Tom, repeats in a high-pitched helium squeak whatever is spoken into an iPhone’s microphone. If a user feeds Tom hot peppers, pets him under his chin, or flicks his stomach, he responds with belches, purrs, and groans. Samo says he was optimistic that kids would love it, but acknowledges that “the whole team had some doubts.” One feature, added later, requires Tom to make regular stops in the bathroom, where he ceremoniously relieves himself into the toilet.
This, apparently, was what users were looking for. Talking Tom Cat was an instant hit, launching a franchise whose titles have reached No. 1 in more than 100 countries on the App Store. Today, almost 350 million monthly active users support the apps, and Tom’s YouTube channel has more than 2 billion views. Unlike many mobile app creators, the Logins have proved adept at turning popularity into profit. Playing Talking Tom triggers an onslaught of advertising and in-game purchase offers, and Outfit7 earns more than $100 million a year. In early 2016 the Logins decided to cash out, hiring Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to find the most lucrative deal. …
This Post About Dog Pee Will Change Your Life
Eyes away from whatever you’re looking at. No need to keep reading stressful, news about our President, fidget spinners, stuff dying, any of that.
You like dogs, right? Good. Let’s talk about dogs. What about them? I don’t know, let’s talk about their pee. Ands their butts, sure.
Did you think pee was sterile? I used to think that. It’s not. In fact, pee (specifically dog pee, that’s what we’re talking about right now) has a zoo of bacteria living in it, much like poop and skin have lots of bacteria living in them. In fact, there are more species in dog pee than either dog butts or dog genitalia.
When the human microbiome gets messed up, people get sick. Maybe when the urinary microbiome gets messed up, dogs get sick? “Outside of routine preventative health care, bacterial cystitis is one of the most common reasons dog owners seek veterinary care with estimates that 14% of dogs will suffer a UTI during their lifetime,” writes a team of scientists in a study published today in the journal PLoS One. Think about the dogs! …
WHEN DOCTORS LITERALLY “BLEW SMOKE UP YOUR ARSE”
When someone is “blowing smoke up your arse” today, it is a figure of speech that means that one person is complimenting another, insincerely most of the time, in order to inflate the ego of the individual being flattered.
Back in the late 1700s, however, doctors literally blew smoke up people’s rectums. Believe it or not, it was a general mainstream medical procedure used to, among many other things, resuscitate people who were otherwise presumed dead. In fact, it was such a commonly used resuscitation method for drowning victims particularly, that the equipment used in this procedure was hung alongside certain major waterways, such as along the River Thames (equipment courtesy of the Royal Humane Society). People frequenting waterways were expected to know the location of this equipment similar to modern times concerning the location of defibrillators.
Smoke was blown up the rectum by inserting a tube. This tube was connected to a fumigator and a bellows which when compressed forced smoke into the rectum. Sometimes a more direct route to the lungs was taken by forcing the smoke into the nose and mouth, but most physicians felt the rectal method was more effective. The nicotine in the tobacco was thought to stimulate the heart to beat stronger and faster, thus encouraging respiration. The smoke was also thought to warm the victim and dry out the person’s insides, removing excessive moisture. …
All That’s Left To Say Is That The President Is A Big Dummy
Donald Trump is a very stupid dumbass. Like even for a pampered inheritance baby, he’s exceptionally dumb! Just a big idiot. His brain came out of a can with the word “Hormel” on it. He’s stupider than shit. A stiff breeze could beat him at checkers.
This is not news to literally anyone, but it’s nice to be able to just say it, you know? I can say—or type, or screech in the middle of the produce section of my local supermarket—that the president of the United States of America is a salt-cured degenerate moron who couldn’t reason his way out of a T-shirt, and the freedom to express this truth goes at least some small distance toward mitigating the horror of it being true. It’s even sometimes kind of fun.
In this respect I am lucky; not everybody has this freedom. Like for example, reporters at respectable publications like the New York Times (or Washington Post, or Politico, Wall Street Journal, or whatever), who must cultivate sources in Trump’s administration and/or keep open the possibility that their publication might interview the president himself someday, generally cannot publish a sentence like “Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is a big dumb crap-bag who does not have two neurons to rub together beneath the roadkill fox he pretends is his natural hair,” even though it’s true and possibly even flattering to the president. They have to come up with less explicit ways of communicating this fact. Like, for example, when you need to say that the leader of the free world struggles to maintain a level of conversational impulse control that would not bedevil even a dim kindergartener:
Some of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers fear leaving him alone in meetings with foreign leaders out of concern he might speak out of turn. General McMaster, in particular, has tried to insert caveats or gentle corrections into conversations when he believes the president is straying off topic or onto boggy diplomatic ground.
…
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
It’s the question we’ve all pondered: if there was a mass knife fight between all the American presidents, who would win?
VICE News runs through the four ways that Donald Trump could stop being president. She explains why the 25th amendment might be more difficult to use in removing a president than impeachment.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Stephen uses the top of his monologue to address the latest controversy out of Trump’s administration. No, the other one.
With the NATO summit in Brussels coming up soon, world leaders are making sure there aren’t any sharp corners or bottles of bleach within reach.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
The Trump-Russia probe gets a special prosecutor, and Fox News downplays a purported memo from James Comey suggesting Donald Trump may have committed obstruction of justice.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
Today’s Portrait of Canadiocity takes a look at the Y from CSNY: Neil Young.
The feds crackdown on marijuana dispensaries and grow-ops takes an unexpected twist in Oshawa.
Where were you the day Canada was changed forever?
THANKS to Comedy Network and The Beaverton for making this program available on YouTube.
Max has no idea that not all animals are friendly. The dog was ready to jump out the car window after him and Max just wanted to watch.
Max decided to clean under his cage. He is making the floor squeaky clean.
Thanks to Apple and Fitbit Smart Watches are a great way to keep us honest and track data you couldn’t before – because you actually didn’t care about tracking it and probably still won’t.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Me critical analysis of a cat stuck in a bloody pipe. Poor little bugger.
Hi, can I get a large fry?
FINALLY . . .
John Oliver Says Denver Kidney Dialysis Giant DaVita Owes Apology to Taco Bell
The main report in Last Week Tonight With John Oliver‘s May 14 episode tore into the kidney dialysis industry, with a particular focus on Denver-based DaVita, a company the HBO host said owes an apology to Taco Bell because of CEO Ken Thiry’s comparisons between his firm’s business practices and the approach of the fast food giant.
The sprawling, 24-minute-plus piece, on view below in its entirety, is the second Last Week Tonight investigation in just over a month with a strong Colorado flavor. The April 2 edition took on marijuana laws in Colorado and beyond, spotlighting several stories previously covered in this space.
DaVita’s decision to move to Colorado was big economic news here circa 2009, and the construction of its local headquarters has stood out among many big Denver projects in recent years. The building’s size and scale makes sense given DaVita’s success. Last Week Tonight points out that the company generated $789 million in profits last year. Moreover, of the approximately 7,000 out-patient dialysis clinics currently operating in the U.S., around 70 percent of them are owned either by DaVita or its main competitor, Fresenius Medical Care.
The man credited with DaVita’s rise is CEO Ken Thiry, who Oliver describes as a “showboating musketeer,” and for good reason. Multiple videos of company events show Thiry dressed in medieval garb while making splashy entrances; he rides in on a horse at one bash, does tumbling moves to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” in another. The former Bain & Company powerhouse’s choice of wardrobe is influenced by his love for the movie The Man in the Iron Mask, and he gets a jolt out of getting his employees to chant, “All for one and one for all.” …
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
Ed. More tomorrow. Probably. Not?