What a rough week for Scottie

Hello all great and wonderful people on the innerwebs. I am having a week that seems like a month of bad news. Let’s take everyone back to Monday. Monday Ron and I did our early morning walk as we try to do before it gets too hot in Florida, even though by the time we get to it these days it is well into the high 80’s and headed into the 90s. Been even higher this year than other Florida summers. We do our morning walk together. We have done this over the years off and on when we had time in the mornings together for over 32 years. We really value our time together.

In the past decades we used to just take drives together our head out in the morning and go somewhere and have breakfast and then just drive to some place we never had been, have lunch, look around and then go home to have supper on the way home.

About our morning walks. We started out riding bikes and progressed through me riding a scooter when I was in a wheelchair to me using a walker to now, when I can walk short distances with a cane. We start out together and end up back at home, Ron sees me safely inside and then goes on for an extended walk at least as long as the one we did together. We have been trying to increase my distance. But as most of you know my spine is destroyed and my back muscles are in flex / spasm constantly to lessor or greater degrees. The muscles in my back have been out of control for the last 5 months since I twisted my back trying to carry a shopping bag of soda into the house.

So what is happening is every morning when we walk my back muscles start going crazy from the work out their receiving from my walking. Well by early afternoon I can hurt so bad I cannot sit in my computer chair even with my medications, so I go lay down. I get up late in the day and try to work on the blog, and because I am taking extra medications I get so sleepy I go to bed early.

Tuesday morning I got up at about 5:30 AM, and after feeding the inside and outside cats, making coffee, and starting the computers the router did it’s 6 AM reset. For some reason I have not figured out, this new router needs to be restarted regularly and the settings allow you to set the time for it to do it. We all decided 6 AM was the time to have it done.

The router reset just as I was bringing both computers online, and then everything I tried to do was sluggish and I had no access to the internet. I reset the router. Still no internet. Restarted the computers, no internet. Restarted the modem. Still no internet on the computers, restarted both the router and the modem, and both computers, still no internet. The home alarm system had no internet and was running on cellular back up. But I missed that clue at the time. I used my phone to check the internet provide and there was no outage. So as everyone else was still sleeping I figured it was a great time to dump and rest / reinstall both computers my computers as I had not done it in a while, and I try to do it about every three months.

Ron came out of the bedroom at 8:30 AM and informed me he had no internet on any of his devices. I tried his living room / kitchen TV. No internet. I now realized it was in the router. So I tried to access it and finally with my phone got in and couldn’t find a way to fix the issue with that. I got one computer up and accessed the router admin system and still with the advanced settings couldn’t see a problem or reason it wouldn’t connect to the innerwebs. I gave up and used the pin hole insert to reset the router and when it came up set up the router again. Still no internet. I was frustrated as I have been working on this with different devices for about four hours. I was just about to get out the old router when I remembered sometimes routers when first setup won’t accept the incoming data link of the modem. They need the modem to be reset to do the handshake that locks them together. I restarted the modem, and the internet came back on.

Great, I checked all the household devices and they all had internet again, James checked his and they had internet. Now there were just two that were down, my computers. So I started the work of re-dumping them and cleaning the drives and then the hours long task of updating and reinstalling all my programs. Then Ron and I went for our walk. When I got back, I got the secondary video computer well on the way to being fully updated but my back started hurting so bad I couldn’t sit in my chair. So I went to lay down. I got up about three hours later and started on the computers again. The secondary computer was going well, but the blogging computer was not doing well at all. I got hours into it and had to stop. I have two nearly identical 34-inch 4K monitors from the same manufacture. With the picture settings the same the main blogging computer on the third window update followed by the driver update for the new video card the screen would darken with the white looking gray / blue as if you were looking at the screen through a filter that made it darker and less bright. Thinking it was an error on my part I dumped the computer again and started over. Nearly half a day wasted. But that night before going to bed the same thing happened. I asked Ron if he had seen the same thing I did, and he agreed.

This morning I got up and after feeding both the inside cat and the outside ones, making coffee, starting my computers, I dumped the main one again, returning it factory specs. By this morning the video computer only needed the strong security / cleaning programs I run. Then when Ron got up and had a cup of coffee we went for our walk. When I got home I finished doing the installations / updates on the video computer. Other than the tweaks it was done. But before I could do more than the second big windows 10 updates my back was screaming so bad, I had to go to bed. When I got up 3 or more hours later, I started in on the main blogging computer. I got it to the point where I could install the right graphics card driver. I got it in, and I was not happy with the way the white displayed but I went into the monitor settings I took the brightness up 25%. I took it from 50% to 75%. I tweaked a few other settings in the display. I don’t like to do it that way as you can overdrive the monitor systems and cause the monitors to burn out / stop working sooner. But it worked, and I got the white back to being bright white. That tells me that as everything else is the same the main monitor is either failing at a faster rate than the blogging one or there is something in the hardware that makes it so much different than the other one despite they are the same make and model. I could have done that the first time, but I had to make sure I had not made a mistake. So for the next few hours I watched videos and posted some on the video computer, and worked to get all the updates and security programs installed in the blogging computer. I can say now at 6 PM (7 PM by the time I post this) on Thursday everything is set other than running the defrags and a few small tweaking programs. So I am back. There was a lot of things I seen online I would love to post, but I will spend the next few days replying to comments until I catch up. Just remember I have my morning walk and then have to rest when my back gets too bad. Loves and hugs to everyone, I have missed you. Scottie

No sex ed in Florida’s largest school district this year, says school board member

Remember this was for older kids, and the parents could have just withdrawn from the classes. At the school board hearing there was 38 parents / students who wanted the books used and the classes given. Four parents were against it and only three of them spoke. Yet the maga minority got their way. Because of the way the law is written any parent can sue and get big money from the school district and the school personal personally. Same as the abortion laws, designed to cast fear of ruin for doing what the maga minority disapproves of. Hugs

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota talks to Miami-Dade School Board member Luisa Santos, who says there will be no sex education in Miami-Dade County schools because of controversy against the use of new textbooks.

A 17-minute flight? The super-rich who have ‘absolute disregard for the planet’

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/kylie-jenner-short-private-jet-flights-super-rich-climate-crisis

Kylie Jenner is far from the only celebrity to make short hops using private jets despite mounting concerns over the climate crisis

Private jets are seen on the tarmac at Friedman Memorial airport in Sun Valley, Idaho. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Oliver Milman, graphics by Andrew Witherspoon

Thu 21 Jul 2022 05.00 EDT

Kylie Jenner has faced a torrent of criticism for her decision to take her private jet on a flight that lasted just 17 minutes. But the practice of taking brief journeys on luxury aircraft appears to be common among the rich and famous despite mounting concerns over the climate crisis.

Jenner, the 24-year-old socialite and businesswoman, has faced online opprobrium after she posted an Instagram picture of herself and her partner, rapper Travis Scott, on the runway of an airport between two private jets with the caption “you wanna take mine or yours?”

According to an automated Twitter account that tracks celebrity flights based on transponders and tail fin marking, Jenner’s flight on 12 July lasted just 17 minutes, taking her from Van Nuys in Los Angeles to the nearby town of Camarillo. The model had earlier taken a 27-minute trip in her jet, a $72m Bombardier BD 700, to Van Nuys from Thermal, California.

She was subsequently attacked by Twitter users for her “absolute disregard for the planet” and for being a “full time climate criminal”.

It’s estimated that her 17-minute jaunt would’ve resulted in a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, which, while in itself not a huge amount, is about a quarter of the total annual carbon footprint of the average person globally. The trip would have taken Jenner about 40 minutes in a car, causing just a fraction of the emissions.

But Jenner – who took an even shorter flight, lasting just nine minutes, between the same two locations in June – is far from the only celebrity to make short hops using private aircraft rather than driving or using public transport.

A review of the Celebrity Jets tracking account shows that just in the past month, the rapper Drake took an 18-minute flight from Hamilton, Ontario to Toronto; Kenny Chesney, the country music singer, was in the air for just 20 minutes between Akron, Ohio and Pittsburgh and the actor Mark Wahlberg took a 23-minute flight from Dublin to County Clare in Ireland, among other short trips.

Many of these brief flights are to “park” an aircraft at a convenient or less expensive location, or are part of a longer, two-part journey, but many appear to have an unclear rationale, such as the decision of Floyd Mayweather, the boxer, to fly 14 minutes from Las Vegas to nearby Henderson, then to fly 10 minutes back on Sunday.

“I’m not surprised people are upset, they are right to be mad at this,” said Jack Sweeney, creator of the Celebrity Jets account, which uses data from a company that tracks aircraft transponders.

Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, has a similar account that just tracks the private jet of Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire head of Tesla. In May, Musk took a 28-minute flight in his jet between Houston and Austin, Texas, but Sweeney believes he should be judged differently for this.

“With Elon he’s just trying to be as quick as possible and efficient for work, but someone like Kim Kardashian (who has taken long and short private jet flights) is posting ‘Kim Air’ and flexing and all that,” he said.

Private jets are responsible for around 4% of all aviation emissions, according to a 2016 study, with the airline industry keen to point out that flying in general comprises just a small fraction of the overall sources of planet-heating gases.

However, private aircraft still emit more than 33m tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than the country of Denmark, and because they carry so few people they are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, per passenger, and 50 times more polluting than trains, researchers have found.

“These startlingly short flights show the immense impact of the wealthy in overall aviation emissions,” said Scott Hochberg, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“The problem starts at the top with Kylie Jenner and other celebrities with private jets, which have a much larger impact than commercial aircraft on a per passenger basis. But it also includes many others, as the US constitutes the bulk of the wealthy elite that have the luxury of flying.”

Emissions from private jets flown in the US have surged since the 1990s and will balloon further as larger and more polluting aircraft come onto the market. Short trips using private jets are not solely an American phenomenon; in 2019, one tenth of all flights departing France were private jets, with half traveling less than 500km. The frequent use of aviation is the domain of the world’s wealthy, with just 1% of the global population responsible for half of the emissions associated with flying.

“There are plenty of alternatives to private jets and wanting to avoid traveling with the hoi polloi isn’t a good enough reason for excessive pollution,” said Nikita Pavlenko, fuels team lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation.

“These short flights have emissions that are small in relative terms but per person they are staggering. Aviation emissions are growing exponentially year over year and private jet pollution is growing more than general aviation.”

Major US airlines have announced climate plans that include commitments to ramp up the use of low-emission sustainable aviation fuels (or SAFs), such as cooking oil or hydrogen, with Joe Biden’s administration last year unveiling a goal of a 20% cut in aviation emissions by 2030. This target, however, is voluntary and there has been no significant shift by the industry towards lessening its climate impact.

“Aviation decarbonization is largely all talk and little substance in the US,” said Pavlenko. “As for celebrities, they need to set a positive example and ditch the planes. At the very least, they should exhibit some leadership and use sustainable fuels or a zero emissions plane when that becomes available.”

Florida Woman’s UNHINGED School Board Speech

Florida school board candidate Alisabeth Janai Lancaster suggested doctors who prescribe hormone blockers to trans children ought to be lynched, and was met with applause. Wos breaks it down on Rebel HQ.