(Probably been reading too much, but not enough comics, yet. Miss Scarlet’s Mysteries and Sherlock are helping. Enjoy.)
C’est la Vie by Jennifer Babcock for January 04, 2025
Kinda.
Author: ali redford
I love dogs and people. I want living creatures to thrive. I love to cook, and share the food, but ya gotta get in line in front of the dog.
Must Read
New Orleans Attack by Clay Jones
Attacks in Las Vegas and New Orleans Read on Substack
I’m from Louisiana, mostly. But I always tell people I’m from the part of the state that’s not fun, which means I’m not from New Orleans because that’s the impression most people get when I say I’m from Louisiana. Yes, I am a Saints fan. Who dat?
It breaks my heart to see New Orleans suffer. While I haven’t been there in over two decades, it’s a city I love. While every city is different and has its own character, New Orleans is special. I read somewhere a long time ago that the four most distinctive cities in this nation are Boston, Austin, San Francisco, and New Orleans. I don’t know if I believe that because I’d throw New York City and Chicago into that mix.
But like New York City, New Orleans knows how to rebound after a disaster. While 9/11 was hard, it didn’t destroy NYC. Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans and the city was down for the count, but it’s back. And I assure you that an ISIS-inspired terrorist from Texas isn’t going to take the city out either.
And now I want an oyster po’boy.
What New Orleans nor the nation needs right now is Donald Trump.
Trump has blamed this attack on President Biden, open “border’s,” and immigrants. He also trashed law enforcement. But the thing is, this attack wasn’t perpetuated by an immigrant but by a U.S.-born citizen who’s in the military.
Donald Trump probably followed a false news report by Fox News, which they quickly corrected, but Trump doubled down on his lies.
But Trump isn’t just any American citizen. He’s the president-elect. He is receiving an intelligence briefing daily which means he knows he’s lying.
The election is over, so what the hell is Trump campaigning for? He’s scaring America so it’ll go along with his hate agenda, especially when he starts rounding up immigrants along with his enemies.
Creative note: I thought I had my idea for this in my head yesterday. But I went north to Northern Virginia last night and when I started work this morning in a different location, I decided I didn’t like my original idea. But then this hit me.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go watch)
“Cloud Forest Beauty”
Peace & Justice History for 1/4
| January 4, 1961 The longest recorded labor strike ended after 33 years: Danish barbers’ assistants had begun their strike in 1938 in Copenhagen. |
| January 4, 1965 The Free Speech Movement held its first legal rally in Sproul Plaza of the University of California at Berkeley. |
| January 4, 1974 President Richard Nixon refused to release tape recordings of Oval Office discussions and other documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee investigating illegal activities of the president’s re-election committee. Nixon’s attempted suppression didn’t work.  Listen to the “smoking gun” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january4
I Would Not Have Thought To Measure This-
(It’s been decades since I’ve lived in a place with public transit; when I read the title, I thought they meant human jerks. I was pleasantly educated.)
The device that measures jerks on public buses
December 11, 2024 Ellen Phiddian
A jerking, lurching bus ride can be enough to put someone off their lunch – or even dissuade them from using public transport.
But just how much do public buses jostle passengers?
Measuring this, according to one team of researchers, might help to make the vehicles more comfortable.
The researchers, from University of Technology Sydney, have published a recent study in Scientific Reports.
According to co-author Dr Anna Lidfors Lindqvist, bumpy bus rides aren’t just annoying. They can carry health risks.
“Passengers, especially if they’re a little bit elderly or if have a pre-existing injury, those sorts of sudden changes can actually make it worse,” she tells Cosmos.
“If that’s a blocker for elderly people to take public transport, that’s a great area to further look at.”
In addition, studies on frequent or professional drivers and passengers have suggested that long-term exposure to engine vibrations could be linked to chronic pain conditions like lower back pain.
The team set out to measure the speed and direction of vibrations and sudden movements on public buses, to give them a baseline for improving bus bumpiness.
One of the researchers – Md Imam Hossain – took rides on 30 public buses driving different routes around Sydney, carrying an inertial measurement unit (IMU).
“An IMU can gather the acceleration in vertical and longitudinal as they’re ported backwards, side to side, and up and down, as well as then being able to measure the rate of change in those directions,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
They were particularly keen to measure “jerks” – jolts caused by sudden acceleration or braking – which are a strong indicator of bus ride discomfort.
They found that, on average, passengers experience 0.12 times the force of gravity in acceleration, with peaks at 0.44 times.
They’ve got several different ideas for reducing jerks.
“There’s a lot of different sorts of suspension – like where they use air suspension, rather than pneumatic suspension, that’s usually a softer ride,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
Softer seats – like those used in coach buses or for truck and bus drivers – are also more comfortable.
“Cushioning a seat is enough for it to be a softer ride in terms of the overall vibration from the seat. Whereas, the jerk itself is a little bit more difficult to have a mechanical solution because your body will still move the same.”
Lidfors Lidqvist says that the transition to electric buses is a mixed bag – they don’t vibrate like diesel engines, but they can accelerate much faster.
“This is really another open question: does that then introduce another sort of jerk?”
But buses don’t need to be wholly redesigned for more comfort. The team thinks that driver training can also help.
“Bus driver behaviour is also a factor, and so is the traffic environment that they’re exposed to. Peak hour traffic looks very different than if it’s off peak,” says Lidfors Lindqvist.
In this study, Hossain sat at the same seat on the bus each time for consistency. But there are more and less comfortable zones on a bus, according to Lidfors Lindqvist.
“Other research, will tell you that you’ll find that the ride is often a little bit softer if you sit on top of the wheel axis, for example,” she says.
“But that jerk movement, when you move back and forth when the bus takes off or stops – that will remain pretty much the same, because it’s just your body in relation to the vehicle itself.”
The team is now interested in looking at the connection between buses and human injuries, as well as optimising bus comfort with efficiency of the ride, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Originally published by Cosmos as The device that measures jerks on public buses
Supt. Ryan Walters Convinced He Knows Things
I was simply reading this, then saw a bit about Supt. Walters. The news, as humorously presented as Wonkette does, is still sickening as to RWNJ logic, and none of us needs that. However. I did promise to update regarding Walters. So, here’s the link to the article, with the snippet about Walters. -A.
If We Can’t Blame Teachers Unions For Terrorism (Yes, Really!), Then The Terrorists Will Win by Rebecca Schoenkopf
It’s all a game of gotcha. With bodycounts. Read on Substack
(snip) “For his part, Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools chief who has been trying to Jesusify the state’s entire public school system, was pretty sure that these men committed these acts because the US school system taught them to hate America — to hate America so much that, again, they both joined the Army. Like big America-haters often do.
“Walters said:”
‘What a terrible day when we see terrorist attacks on American soil. It’s absolutely tragic and we’ve got to look as a country on how these things happen. We absolutely have to shut down the border, we can’t allow terrorists to come across the border. We also have to take a look at how are these terrorists coming from people that live in America?
‘You have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil, you have the teachers unions pushing this on our kids, the radical Left wants people to hate this country. They’ve completely destroyed the integrity of the FBI by making them more concerned about DEI than about protecting Americans. It’s a major part of this.
‘And look, this is a real uncomfortable truth, and I know the Left is going to lose their mind, but listen: We cannot allow our schools to be terrorist training camps. We cannot allow our schools to teach our kids to hate this country. We cannot allow our kids to be taught that this is an evil country.
‘That’s why we’re getting back to the basics in Oklahoma, to make sure that our kids love this country, understand American values, understand the role that the Constitution, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence played in American history. Because we want patriots, and that’s going to be the focus of our schools.
“I suppose it’s possible that these men simply forgot that they hated America for several decades and then went on to commit terrorist attacks against the United States after remembering that they learned that Columbus committed genocide and that many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves in school — but it does seem a tad unlikely.” (snip)
Peace & Justice History for 1/3
| January 3, 1961 A nuclear reactor exploded at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killing three military technicians, and released radioactivity which, in the words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission, was “largely confined” to the reactor building. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands and heads had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste. ===================================================== January 3, 1967  Carl Wilson Carl Wilson of the the Beach Boys was indicted for draft evasion. Claiming conscientious objector status, he eventually won his battle against the charges. ===================================================== January 3, 1971 On her first day as a member of Congress, Bella Abzug (D-New York) introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops from Southeast Asia.  Bella Abzug Born in the Bronx in 1920, one month after the passage of the U.S. Constitution’s 19th amendment granting women the right to vote, she was the first Jewish woman elected to Congress. After attending Columbia University Law School, she practiced civil rights and labor law for twenty-three years. Throughout her career, she was known as one of the most vocal proponents of civil rights for women, as well as for gays and lesbians. Background on the indomitable Bella ======================================================= January 3, 1993 The United States of America and the Russian Federation agreed to cut the number of their nuclear warheads to between 3,000 and 3,500 (nearly half).U.S. President George H.W. Bush, just before leaving office, and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty – Start II – in Moscow. Start II marked the biggest reduction in nuclear arms ever agreed, eliminating land-based multiple warhead missiles, and putting limits on submarine-based missiles.  Read more ======================================================= January 3, 2003  Brazil’s new leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, suspended purchase of 12 new fighter planes, saying money could be better used to relieve hunger. More about Luiz Inacio |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january3
Any Excuse to Crank Up Muse
or no excuse at all, really, but they’re a fine accompaniment for this!
5 black holes stories to muse about
January 2, 2025 Imma Perfetto
There was no shortage of mind-bending new science about black holes this year, these are just 5 of our favourites.
Blast “Supermassive Black Hole” by English rock band Muse and enjoy!
Scientists take even crisper images of supermassive black holes
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration made the highest resolution black hole observations ever from the surface of Earth, capturing M87* and Sagittarius A* at the centres of the Messier 87 and Milky Way galaxies.
Black hole “starving” galaxy to death
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) identified a black hole that confirmed the theory that some supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel needed to make new stars.
Black holes are getting caught in “traffic jams”
The complex dynamics of black holes in the centres of galaxies, including how they slow down and interact with each other, were revealed in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered
The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission found a massive stellar black hole, named Gaia BH3, just 2,000 light years away in the constellation Aquila. It is 33 times the mass of our Sun, more than 50% bigger than the next biggest stellar black hole – Cygnus X-1.
First black hole triple system discovered
A black hole was discovered with two orbiting stars for the first time. One star orbits the black hole, V404 Cygni, every 6.5 days. The other orbits at a significantly greater distance and makes the same trip every 70,000 years.
Originally published by Cosmos as 5 black holes stories to muse about
Representation: People who received Presidential Citizens Medals Today
They won’t get nearly the jabber that Liz Cheney’s and Bennie Thompson’s medals are getting, and all are good people. I emboldened a bit especially pertinent to this blog.
Biden Giving Liz Cheney A Fancy Medal Today, So That’ll Make Trump’s Butt Itch by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Every 2024 Presidential Citizens Medal winner is a better human than the bastard who’s about to be president again. Read on Substack
The first time Donald Trump was president, one of the ways he absolutely beclowned the office and rendered it meaningless was who he’d pick to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other similar honors.
Historically, such awards went to people who had done something important. Under Trump 1.0, it was more like “Here is the presidential medal of excellence in giving me money!” It went to Miriam Adelson, AKA one of Trump’s big bucks no whammies donors. (That’s the one where he got in trouble recently for saying Adelson’s award was better than Medal of Honor winners, AKA the military’s highest honor.)
Trump gave the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, before that guy waddled off to hell. He gave it to Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan, for excellence in doing congressional coverups for Trump or something.
We are sure Trump 2.0 will make those recipients look like American patriots.
The Presidential Citizens Medal is the award just below the Medal of Freedom, and Trump didn’t seem to give much of a shit about it during his first term. He awarded it in 2019 to a 9/11 first responder, posthumously. But that appears to be it. The award is given to someone “who has performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens,” so you can see why it might not get Trump very excited.
President Joe Biden is big on giving it, though. In 2023, he gave it to people like Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Aquilino Gonell, who protected Congress during the terrorist attack Trump’s supporters committed on January 6, 2021. (He awarded it posthumously to former Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died after he was assaulted by Trump supporters at the Capitol that day.) Also to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers Rudy Giuliani owes all his money to, for repeatedly lying about and defaming them.
In all, he gave it to 12 people who in various ways defended American democracy from Trump’s attacks in 2020.
Now, today, Biden is giving another set of 20 of these medals for 2024, and damn, they are just more people Donald Trump could never ever fucking be, not in a million years, not if he went to the Emerald City and grabbed the Wizard by the pussy and begged him for a soul, or for integrity, or decency, or goodness. (In this mental image Elon is in drag as Dorothy, obviously.)
Liz Cheney is getting one for her work on the House January 6 Select Committee, and all the ways she’s stood up to defend democracy the last couple years, so that’ll piss Trump the fuck off.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who co-chaired the January 6 Committee with Cheney, will also receive the medal.
We are sure Trump will have some sort of hallucinatory conniption about how they deleted all the evidence that TOTALLY EXONERATES him, because once Trump gets an incorrect conspiracy theory mangled up inside that big ugly head of his, he never gets free of it.
On top of those types of folks, there’s Mary Bonauto, who argued Obergefell v. Hodges, AKA the marriage equality case, before the Supreme Court. Plus Evan Wolfson, perhaps the single most important activist over the decades of that fight.
You can check out the whole list here. On top of a number of former politicians like Bill Bradley and Chris Dodd, it’s full of people with bios that read like that of Diane Carlson Evans, who “founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation to ensure female service members received the recognition they deserve.” Plus civil rights leaders and more women’s rights leaders, and so on and so forth.
And this posthumous award, which seems to contain a pre-emptive rebuke for the incoming Hitler wannabe administration:
Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi
In a shameful chapter in our Nation’s history, Mitsuye Endo was incarcerated alongside more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. Undaunted, she challenged the injustice and reached the Supreme Court. Her resolve allowed thousands of Japanese Americans to return home and rebuild their lives, reminding us that we are a Nation that stands for freedom for all.
The entire list is a rebuke of Trump, really. American heroes, all.
But yeah, the Liz Cheney part is the part that’s gonna stick up Trump’s ass and give him sideways bowel movements. Bet those sting REAL bad. (snip-comments on the page)
Scottie's Playtime 