Trump warned: send help or risk making Puerto Rico crisis ‘your Katrina’
• President to visit Puerto Rico next week to see Hurricane Maria damage
• Trump tweets about island’s ‘massive debt’ despite growing crisis
Donald Trump will visit Puerto Rico next Tuesday, to see some of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria on the lives of 3.5 million Americans. As the president announced the visit, however, one Democratic congresswoman who was born in Puerto Rico warned that his lack of attention to the disaster so far risked making it “your Katrina”.
The White House said on Tuesday Trump had also made additional disaster assistance available, “by authorizing an increase in the level of federal funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures”.
But it took the president five full days to respond to the plight of the US territory. When he finally did so on Monday night, his comments on Twitter were so devoid of empathy it threatened to spark new controversy.
Hot on the heels of the billowing dispute he single-handedly provoked over African American sporting figures protesting against racial inequality during the national anthem, Trump effectively blamed the islanders – all of whom are American citizens – for their own misfortune. …
21 unexpected things that Donald Trump thinks are beautiful
American Beauty
The man loves coal.
Donald Trump is a man who finds beauty in many unexpected places. As The Washington Post noted back in July, he used the word “beautiful” 35 times over the course of just 30 days.
What is most noteworthy about Trump’s preferred adjective is not simply that he uses it so often, but the ways in which he applies it. Notwithstanding his many, many comments about beautiful women—including his political opponents, members of the media, and first ladies of foreign countries—he finds beauty in a lot of inanimate objects, some very controversial. He’s also found beauty in the body language of at least one gorilla.
Presented without commentary, here is a list of 21 of the most surprising things that Trump has called “beautiful.”
1. Sleeping gas
“They have a gas, that’s a beautiful sleeping gas, that puts people to sleep.” — In an interview with Howard Stern, describing a theoretical technique for stopping terrorist hijackings on airplanes, shortly after 9/11 …
The racial wealth divide is worse than people think—and it’s growing
Progress?
Lenny Clay outside his barbershop in Baltimore. In 1961, when Clay opened his shop, the neighborhood was busy, bright, full of hard-working black families and black-owned businesses.
Wealthy white households control the vast majority of the nation’s economic resources, and they appear to have no idea how the rest of society lives.
It’s pleasant to think history is marching towards a more fair and equitable society. Things might be a bit rough around the edges right now, but there’s progress, the story goes.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the deep racial wealth divide in the United States, the numbers just don’t back this up. Rather than closing, if we don’t take steps to change the course we’re on, that gap could go on growing forever.
A pair of recent research papers bears this story out.
The first comes from a group of Yale psychologists who looked at public misperceptions around racial economic equality. The researchers looked at black and white populations from low-income and high-income households alike and compared their assessments of racial economic equity. …
6 Deadly Realities Of Being Muslim And Gay Around The World
In Islam, homosexuality is all about location, location, location. In some places, being a gay Muslim is like winning the anti-lottery, where the main prize is base-jumping lessons without a parachute or a trip to an actual concentration camp. Things are miles better in the U.S., where Muslims are much more accepting of homosexuality than, say, Evangelical Christians. And then there are all the places in between. We sat down with Khaled and Omar to find out what it’s like to be gay in Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries like Jordan and Pakistan. They told us …
#6. The Quran Doesn’t Explicitly Condemn Homosexuality, But Plenty Of People Do
Here’s an interesting thing about the Quran: Unlike the Bible, it doesn’t condemn homosexuality outright. All it does is recount the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, wherein God destroys two whole cities because of the male population’s “immoral” behavior. That’s largely taken to mean homosexuality, but the story also mentions that the people there tried to rape angels, so hey, maybe that’s what God didn’t like so much.
Some prominent Muslim clerics denounce homophobia because it isn’t supported by the scripture. Sadly, Khaled never met anyone like that when he was coming to terms with his sexuality. “I realized that I’m different when I was nine, probably. At that stage, I started having dreams of the guys in the Gillette commercials hugging me. After some time, those dreams turned into wet dreams. It freaked me out — thinking about yourself that you are a different misfit is a horrible experience. I was 13 when I stared going to the library at school [during] the break to look for information, and I found that the encyclopedia, an Arabic one, talks about homosexuality as a horrible lifestyle — it makes people sick, causes diseases and eventually death, and that it is not accepted in Islam.”
Now, a lot of this might seem similar to what gay men in conservative Christian communities go through, but it can be so much worse in Muslim countries. In Jordan, being gay can get you thrown down the stairs, so Khaled’s concern was more than justifiable. “I tried to be a good Muslim,” he continues. “But every time I heard that the punishment for practicing homosexuality in Islam is to be killed, I would shake and get terrified. I literally hated my life, I was in a dilemma all the time. I love God and I don’t want to upset him, but I couldn’t overcome my needs.” …
Zealandia drilling reveals secrets of sunken lost continent
South Pacific landmass may have been closer to land level than once thought, providing pathways for animals and plants
Lord Howe Island is part of Zealandia, the Earth’s newest continent.
The mostly submerged continent of Zealandia may have been much closer to land level than previously thought, providing pathways for animals and plants to cross continents from 80m years ago, an expedition has revealed.
Zealandia, a for the most part underwater landmass in the South Pacific, was declared the Earth’s newest continent this year in a paper in the journal of the Geological Society of America. It includes Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand.
On Wednesday researchers shared findings from their two-month-long expedition, one of the first extensive surveys of the region, announcing fossil discoveries and evidence of large-scale tectonic movements.
“The discovery of microscopic shells of organisms that lived in warm shallow seas, and spores and pollen from land plants, reveal that the geography and climate of Zealandia was dramatically different in the past,” said Prof Gerald Dickens of Rice University.
Researchers drilled more than 860 metres below the sea floor in six different sites across Zealandia. The sediment cores collected showed evidence of tectonic and ecological change across millions of years. …
How Hollywood created its own worst enemy in Rotten Tomatoes
D’OH!
Hurts, doesn’t it?
Rotten Tomatoes, which scores movies on its Tomatometer based on the share of critics on the site who gave “good” or “bad” reviews, is the go-to barometer for US films. And Hollywood encouraged it all—until things got rough.
Fairly recently, the review-aggregation site’s Certified Fresh seal of approval adorned DVDs, trailers, and other marketing materials for major movies. Its scores were featured prominently in film advertisements, just as superlative-laden blurbs (“a masterpiece,” “the best movie of the year”) quoting legendary film critics like Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, and the New York Times’ A.O. Scott were used to sway audiences to see one movie over another.
That changed this year.
Studios, producers, actors, and industry insiders turned their backs on the site. Film director and producer Brett Ratner, of the Rush Hour films, called Rotten Tomatoes “the destruction of our business” in March. One major movie-company chief told the New York Times (paywall) last month that it was “his mission was to destroy the review-aggregation site.” A few studios, like Sony, withheld reviews until just before a film’s release to lessen the impact of Rotten Tomatoes scores on the opening-weekend box office. And others quietly shunned the scores and pulled them from their marketing materials or gave them less prominence. …
EasyJet Joins Forces With U.S. Startup to Develop Electric Plane
• Wright Electric targets battery-powered plane within a decade
• EasyJet CEO: ‘We can envisage a future without jet fuel’
EasyJet Plc is working with a U.S. engineering startup to develop a fully electric commercial plane within a decade, the low-cost British airline said Wednesday.
Founded last year by a team of engineers and battery chemists, U.S.-based Wright Electric is setting its sights on designing an aircraft that can fly 335 miles. That would cover 20 percent of the passengers EasyJet flies today, the airline said in a statement. Since demonstrating that the technology works in a two-seater plane, Wright has worked with EasyJet this year to scale up to commercial proportions.
Battery-powered planes offer a way to reduce fuel costs, typically among the biggest expense for airlines and proportionally more so for short-distance carriers like EasyJet. Being first to market with an electric aircraft potentially gives the Luton, England-based carrier a leg up against rivals such as Ireland’s Ryanair Holdings Plc in an ultracompetitive market.
EasyJet’s average flight time is under two hours, so it wouldn’t be as constrained as long-distance carriers by the limited range of a battery-powered aircraft. Beyond saving on fuel costs, an electric plane also would cut emissions and noise, the airline said ahead of its annual innovation day at Gatwick Airport near London. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Several White House officials are accused of using private email accounts, and President Trump basks in the controversy he created after lambasting NFL players who protest.
THANKS to Comedy Centrail and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Max just can’t keep his bird lips off the door.
Ed.More tomorrow? Probably, Possibly. Maybe. Not?