A new microcontinent-

I think it’s exciting news!

New microcontinent being born between Canada and Greenland

July 18, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

An incompletely rifted and submerged microcontinent has been recognised tens of millions of years after the tectonic shifts which birthed it began.

Understanding how microcontinents are born may help in disaster prevention during earthquakes.

Ice covered fjord on Baffin Island with Davis Strait in the background. Credit: Image Makers / Photographer’s Choice RF / Getty Images Plus.

The newly recognised microcontinent exists on a tectonic plate boundary between Canada and Greenland which has formed the Davis Strait. This strait connects the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay.

Scientists have identified a 19–24-kilometre-thick fragment of continental crust about 400km long in the ocean off the west coast of Greenland which has been dubbed the Davis Strait proto-microcontinent.

A study into the microcontinent’s formation is published in Gondwana Research.

The geologists created a reconstruction of the plate tectonic movements spanning roughly 30 million years which led to the proto-microcontinent’s formation.

Proto-microcontinents are defined by the authors as “related regions of relatively thick continental lithosphere separated from major continents by a zone of thinner continental lithosphere.” Lithosphere simply refers to the hard, rocky outer shell of our planet.

They rule out the formation being another feature on the crust, such as a continental ribbon.

View of greenland country, in the artic with the atlantic ocean and artic ocean — Credit: Ianm35 / iStock / Getty Images Plus.

Initial rifting between Canada and Greenland began about 118 million years ago. Seafloor spreading began about 61 million years ago, stopping roughly 33 million years ago to create the Davis Strait.

Between about 58 and 49 million years ago, the scientists say the seafloor spreading between Canada and Greenland shifted from northeast-southwest to north-south. This cleaved off the Davis Strait proto-microcontinent. This seafloor spreading stopped when Greenland collided with Ellesmere Island to the north.

Colour coded map of greenland and canada — Crustal thickness inversion overlain with proposed extent of the Davis Strait proto-microcontinent. Credit: L. Longley et al / Gondwana Research.

The research can be used to understand how other microcontinents are formed around the world, including the Jan Mayen microcontinent northeast of Iceland, the East Tasman rise southeast of Tasmania and the Gulden Draak Knoll off the coast of Western Australia.

“Better knowledge of how these microcontinents form allows researchers to understand how plate tectonics operates on Earth, with useful implications for the mitigation of plate tectonic hazards and discovering new resources,” says co-author Dr Jordan Phethean from the University of Derby, UK in an article on Phys.org.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/earth-sciences/greenland-canada-microcontinent/

Things happened on this date in history:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july191848

POLITICO: We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable.

We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable.
Two American surgeons witnessed the civilian carnage of Israel’s war on Hamas.

Read in POLITICO: https://apple.news/A2cNc-aIBTg-lali5Eci4qQ

Shared from Apple News

Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie

World Court says Israel’s settlement policies are in breach of international law –

World Court says Israel’s settlement policies are in breach of international law – https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/world-court-says-israels-settlement-policies-are-breach-international-law-2024-07-19/

Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie

News about ACA

I read CBPP so I can write my congresscritters about things they should be doing in we the people’s house. Here is a piece from CBPP, about the good the ACA has done for we the people.

ACA Drove Record Coverage Gains for Small-Business and Self-Employed Workers

JULY 17, 2024, 10:06 AM

Millions of small-business and self-employed workers gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Their uninsured rates reached record lows in 2022, due in part to policies that stabilized Medicaid coverage and enhanced premium tax credits to lower the cost of health coverage for millions of people in the ACA marketplace. States that adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion also played an important role. Extending and building on these policies will drive further progress.

Self-employed workers and small-business employees have had persistently higher uninsured rates than employees of large businesses. Relatively larger shares of small-business and self-employed workers have lower incomes, making health insurance premiums less affordable. And small businesses have long been less likely to offer health coverage to their employees than large businesses, frequently citing lack of affordability, while facing higher administrative costs per worker and less ability to pool risk.

Before the ACA, small-business and self-employed workers were often limited to unaffordable coverage options in the individual and small-group markets. In the individual market, insurers could charge people with pre-existing medical conditions like cancer or diabetes much more — or deny them coverage altogether. In the small-group market, where many small businesses purchased health insurance, high medical costs for one enrollee could cause insurers to raise premiums for the whole firm.

The ACA addressed these challenges through several key provisions:

It established marketplaces with financial assistance available to low- and moderate-income workers to help more people purchase affordable comprehensive coverage in the individual market. It made financial assistance available for people who lack access to affordable coverage through their employer, a common condition among small-business and self-employed workers.
Insurers were prohibited from denying coverage and charging higher premiums for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Insurers in the individual and small-group markets were disallowed from charging higher premiums due to people’s health status or most other characteristics, including occupation or industry, and insurers were required to set premiums based on the health care costs broadly spread across their customers in the market. For example, in the small-group market before the ACA, one worker’s expensive illness could cause the premiums for the whole firm to spike.
Small-business and self-employed workers with low incomes became eligible for coverage under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which let people with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level enroll in Medicaid in states that adopted expansion.

As the ACA’s major coverage provisions went into effect, the uninsured rate for employees of small businesses (those working for firms with fewer than 100 workers) dropped from 25.2 percent in 2013 to 17.4 percent in 2016. In recent years, their uninsured rate fell further, and in 2022 reached a record low of 16.3 percent. There were 4.9 million fewer uninsured employees of small businesses in 2022 than in 2013.

Trends for self-employed workers were similar, with their uninsured rate falling from 27.3 percent in 2013 to 18.4 percent in 2016, reaching a record low of 16.4 percent in 2022. The number of uninsured self-employed workers fell by 1.3 million from 2013 to 2022.

Together, more than 6.2 million small-business and self-employed workers have gained coverage since the ACA’s major coverage provisions were implemented.

Coverage improvements for both groups were driven by enrollment in the ACA marketplace and Medicaid. From 2013 to 2022, Medicaid coverage increased by 2.5 million for employees of small businesses and 1.3 million among self-employed workers, according to Census data. And 2.6 million marketplace enrollees aged 21-64 were small business owners or self-employed in 2021, an analysis of Treasury Department tax data found using definitions of small business ownership and self-employment based on income and other factors. That accounted for about a quarter of all marketplace enrollment.

These gains can be advanced further. Recent enhancements to premium tax credits in the ACA marketplace lowered the cost of health coverage for nearly all of the 19 million people receiving the credits, cut the number of people who are uninsured by 4 million, and helped drive record enrollment in the marketplace in 2024. These enhancements, set to expire after 2025, should be made permanent and built upon. And for workers below the poverty level, state or federal action is needed to close the Medicaid coverage gap in the states that have not adopted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

TOPICS:

HEALTH

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/aca-drove-record-coverage-gains-for-small-business-and-self-employed-workers

The Silicon Valley Would-Be Vice President

This guy was writing on Substack, but was one of the ones who really left when Nazis were not invited to go elsewhere. He is generous enough to invite readers to follow him to where he writes now, and even provides a free piece fairly often. This one came today. He’s pretty spot on.

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JD Vance is an obvious, bald-faced opportunist. It makes sense that Trump would pick him as his Vice Presidential candidate; they probably understand each other quite well.

It can’t have hurt that a bevy of tech billionaires told Trump to pick him, and it’s not unreasonable to assume they gated funding on that choice. Elon Musk has pledged to give $45 million a month to a PAC newly formed to back Trump; Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, former Yammer founder David Sacks, and VC Chamath Palihapitiya have also raised money for the group. Eponymous Andreessen-Horowitz founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz pledged donations and Keith Rabois has also reportedly pledged a comparatively paltry $1 million. (The Winkelvoss twins are also donors, but I wouldn’t exactly call them Silicon Valley insiders.)

Andreessen explained why, saying that the future of America is at stake:

Biden’s proposal to tax unrealized capital gains is what Andreessen called “the final straw” that forced him to switch from supporting the current president to voting for Trump. If the unrealized capital gains tax goes into effect, startups may have to pay taxes on valuation increases. (Private companies’ appreciation is not liquid. However, the U.S. government collects tax in dollars.)

One could argue, of course, that the future of America is at stake. As The 19th reported about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s suggested plan for a next Trump administration whose authors include over 140 people who were a part of the last one:

Much of Project 2025 relates to gender, sexuality and race, aiming to end most all of the federal government’s efforts to achieve equity and even collect data that could be used to track outcomes across the public and private sectors.

The other sweeping changes it proposes include firing civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists, removing the Department of Education, gutting our already-insufficient climate change protections, reinstating the military draft, conducting sweeping immigration raids and mass deportations, and condemning more people to death sentences while making them swift enough to avoid retrial.

All this despite being on shaky legal ground:

Some of these ideas are impractical or possibly illegal. Analysts are divided about whether Trump can politicize the civil workforce to fire them at will, for example. And the plan calls for using the military to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale, which could be constitutionally iffy.

Trump has lately distanced himself from the plan in public, but privately said something quite different at a Heritage Foundation dinner:

“This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do, and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

For his part, Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, said out loud on Steve Bannon’s podcast:

We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.

JD Vance is walking this line too. My employer, ProPublica, recently reported that he, among other things, believes that the Devil is real, and that he had some unpleasant things to say about trans people:

He said that Americans were “terrified to tell the truth” and “point out the obvious,” including that “there are real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women.” He added, “I think that’s what the whole transgender thing is about, is like fundamentally denying basic reality.”

So, yes, all things considered, it feels a bit like America is in the balance.

What’s particularly bald about involvement from the Silicon Valley crowd is that they are, according to them, overlooking all of this and concentrating solely on their business interests. If policies like a tax on unrealized capital gains or tighter anti-trust actions are enacted, those investors may have to re-think some of their investment strategies.

For what it’s worth, those taxes are only applicable for individuals with a net worth of over $100M, with payments at an automatic minimum tax rate treated as prepayments against future realized gains. The effect could actually be to encourage startups to go public and realize their value sooner, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing for the ecosystem (but might limit the heights private valuations can reach). Given that people with that level of worth don’t usually make taxable income, this new levied tax on investment gains makes sense as a way to encourage the very wealthy to pay the same sorts of tax rates as the rest of us — but, clearly, Musk, Thiel, et al feel differently. (Invasive thought: where’s Sacks and Palihapitiya’s podcast co-host Jason Calacanis on this? Is he a sympathizer or just an enabler?)

Do tighter regulations and a new minimum tax for the wealthy risk the future of America, though? Maybe they have a different definition of America than I do. If, to them, it’s a place where you can make a bunch of money without oversight or accountability, then I can see how they might be upset. If, on the other hand, America is a place where immigrants are welcome and everyone can succeed, and where everyone has the freedom to be themselves, all built on a bedrock of infrastructure and support, then one might choose to take a different view. The tax proposal at hand is hardly socialism; it’s more like a correction. Even if you accept their premise, single-issue voting when the other issues include mass deportations and gutting public education is myopically self-serving, leave alone the barren inhumanity of leaving vulnerable communities out to dry.

Responses by prominent Republican supporters to the inclusion of a Sikh prayer in Punjabi in the Republican National Convention — one line reading, “in your grace and through your benevolence, we experience peace and happiness” — lay bare what the unhinged Christian nationalist contingent believes in:

Andrew Torba, CEO of the far-right social media platform Gab, ranted to his 400,000 followers on X, “Last night you saw why Christian Nationalism must be exclusively and explicitly Christian. No tolerance for pagan false gods and the synagogue of Satan.” Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers seemed to agree. “Christians in the Republican party nodding silently along to a prayer to a demon god is shameful,” he posted.

From my perspective, there are no upsides to a Trump win. Even if you accept the idea that Project 2025 has nothing to do with him (which, as I’ve discussed, is laughable), his own self-published Agenda 47 for his next administration is similarly horrible, and includes provisions like sending the National Guard into cities, destroying climate crisis mitigations, mass deportations, and removing federal funding for any educational institution that dares to teach the history of race in America. It also includes a version of Project 2025’s call to fire civil servants who are seen as disloyal. JD Vance wants to end no-fault divorce(ironically, given his running mate), trapping people in abusive relationships. The effects on the judicial system from his first administration will be felt for generations; a second administration will be similarly seismic. He will gut support for vulnerable communities. I have friends who will directly suffer as a result of his Presidency; he will create an America that I do not want to bring my son up in.

Silicon Valley is supposed to invent the future. That’s what’s so inspiring about it: for generations, it’s created new ways of sharing and working that have allowed people to communicate and work together wherever they are. These new moves make it clearer than ever that a portion of it has never believed in that manifesto; that it is there solely to establish itself as a new set of power-brokers, trying to remake the world in their own image. The rest of us need to oppose them with our full voices and everything we can muster.

The Silicon Valley Would-Be Vice President

Ben (the writer) says, “I’m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society. Sign up to my newsletter to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.”

It’s OK to Break the Law

The presumptive major party nominee for president has been convicted of a felony. He and his party don’t believe it should apply to him. That same individual nominee for the most powerful office in the world has committed fraud, stealing from his charity. He as committed fraud and cheated students hoping to learn to be a entrepreneur, solidly implanting the understanding that real business acumen comes only be defrauding the customer. This same presumptive major party nominee for president has been shown to have allowed himself to be bribed by governments of the world, and the party has shown itself to be ok with that. The same individual has removed secret documents from the government, refused to return them despite repeated requests, then claimed victimhood when those secret documents were recovered despite his obstruction and treason. His party is ok with that.

This same party wants to make America great again, and sees that nominee as the man for the job.

Come to find out, the presumptive nominee of the other major party is old.

To follow up on reports about OK public schools-

It’s dated a few days ago, but it only made my phone stream today. I don’t usually read a lot of hard news on the phone; I like my desktop. Anyway. This looks like fun, especially reading that final comment from the OSDE office. 😈

Report: Norman Public Schools will not follow Walters’ attempted Bible mandate

by: Spencer Humphrey/KFOR

Posted: Jul 13, 2024 / 06:36 AM CDT

Updated: Jul 12, 2024 / 10:17 PM CDT

NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) — Norman Public Schools will not require its teachers to teach from the Bible, despite a recent memorandum from State Superintendent Ryan Walters attempting to require them to do so, according to comments made by the district’s superintendent in a recent report.

In a report published by the Norman Transcript on Friday, Norman Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Nick Migliorino is quoted saying NPS will not follow guidance laid out in a recent memo from State Superintendent Ryan Walters, in which Walters told districts teachers would be required to incorporate the Bible into their lessons.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Oklahoma teacher and local reverend express concerns about Ryan Walters’ Bible mandate

“Effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specified grade levels,” the June 27 memorandum from Walters said.

Migliorino told the Norman Transcript, NPS does not plan to follow that memorandum.

“I’m just going to cut to the chase on that. Norman Public Schools is not going to have Bibles in our classrooms, and we are not going to require our teachers to teach from the Bible,” Migliorino told the Transcript. “The standards are clear and our curriculum is very clear. And we’re not going to deviate from that. I don’t know. I’m just going to be direct on that one.”

Migliorino went on to tell the newspaper NPS will continue to follow the legal standards already in place regarding usage of the Bible in school.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Several religious leaders tell Supt. Walters to keep religion out of classrooms

He said that means Norman schools will continue to have copies of the Bible available for students to read or for teachers to incorporate into lessons if they choose, but they will not make it a requirement.

“We’re gonna follow the law, we’re going to provide a great opportunity for our students, we’re going to do right by our students and right by our teachers, and we’re not going to have Bibles in our classrooms,” he told the Transcript.

“It’s comforting that Norman Public Schools wants to follow the law and wants to follow protocols and isn’t going to follow a rogue executive edict from a state superintendent that doesn’t respect the law,” State Senator Mary Boren (D-Norman) told News 4 on Friday.

Boren said Walters likes to talk a big game — but it’s just that.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Walters chooses Project 2025 co-author, other conservative activists to draft social studies curriculum for Oklahoma public schools

“He doesn’t even have executive power. I mean, he doesn’t, he doesn’t get to do an executive order that has legal impact on local school districts,” Boren said. “Legally, even though he can print all the paper he wants to, it doesn’t have the backing of the Constitution, doesn’t have the backing of state statute.”

A spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told News 4 in June that state law “already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and enables teachers to use them in instruction” if they choose, but it does not require teachers to use them.

News 4 reached out to the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) Friday to get Walters’ response to Migliorino’s comments asserting NPS will not require teachers to teach the Bible.

“Oh yes they will,” is all OSDE spokesperson Dan Isett told News 4 in response.

https://kfor.com/news/report-norman-public-schools-will-not-follow-walters-attempted-bible-mandate/

Reading comics over lunch

This is me and Corky. She’s got a grudge because she’s on a food strike and is hungry, and I gather from that that she believes I’m not dressing up her food well enough. This being the 3d day of her strike, she gets straight food and nothing else until she eats it. And she will, but she won’t like me until after she eats.

Foolish Mortals by Tom Horacek for July 18, 2024

Foolish Mortals Comic Strip for July 18, 2024

https://www.gocomics.com/foolish-mortals/2024/07/18

Tenacious D’s Trump shocker

So, I enjoy Jack Black’s talent, however he applies it; he’s multi-talented. I’ve read headlines this week, and yesterday afternoon during a jog, I decided to read one of the stories about something the band Tenacious D said post-the Don shooting. I’m going to put it in here, just for general comment. I’ll add mine at the bottom. If you click through to the page, there are a couple of vids, and a photo or 2 I didn’t copy.

Tenacious D’s Trump shocker upends a career of perfectly judged musical comedy

Dave Simpson

Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s duo are on hiatus after an off-colour comment about the Trump shooting – a rare misstep after years of arena-filling antics

Is this the end of Jack Black’s spoof rock band Tenacious D? It could be, after his bandmate Kyle Gass’s comments on Sunday led his more famous partner to cancel their world tour and announce “all future creative plans are on hold”.

The band were midway through a show in Sydney when Black suggested his bandmate make a wish for his birthday. “Don’t miss Trump next time,” Gass responded, apparently referring to the attempted assassination of the former US president the day before. Both have long been critical of Trump, but Black seems to have quickly realised the joke had crossed a line. “I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” he later said in a statement, claiming to have been “blindsided” by the comment.

For his part, the equally mortified Gass wrote: “The line I improvised Sunday night in Sydney was highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake. I don’t condone violence in any kind, in any form, against anyone. What happened [the shooting] was a tragedy, and I’m incredibly sorry for my severe lack of judgement.”

If this is indeed the end, it’s a sad and sorry demise for a partnership which always seemed to know exactly where to draw the line. Their shows may long have been littered with F-bombs, references to sexual deviancy, drug abuse, inflatable Satans and a parody of a power ballad titled Fuck Her Gently, but it’s always been in good fun and there’s never been anything actively, properly outrageous. Equally, as Gass’s comment about improvisation suggests, what makes this howler so out of character is that their stage routines are usually meticulously scripted with the same precision they bring to the visuals (giant robots, dragons and all) and the music.

Anyone who’s seen a Tenacious D show will know that they weren’t just a great spoof rock band, but a fantastic rock band in themselves. Partly, this was because, like This Is Spinal Tap, Black and Gass had a deep knowledge and indeed affection for the subject they were sending up.

Their gigantic rubber demon was based on 80s rocker Dio’s real-life 18ft dragon, Denzil. Their “sound crew solo” drily went “check, 1-2”. From Black’s operatic metal vocal to their exquisite guitar duelling, the musicianship has always been impeccable and while their songwriting wasn’t always as good, their best epic anthems could almost have been lost rock classics themselves (had they not been full of lyrics about beasts and farting). The masterful Tribute retold the meet-the-devil-at-the-crossroads myth so well they created the “greatest song in the world”, promptly forgetting how it went (hence the “tribute”). Such masterly, knowing tomfoolery enjoyed the respect of “real-life” peers from Beck to Pearl Jam. Dave Grohl was certainly in on the joke when the oft-called “nicest guy in rock” agreed to star as Satan in the video for Tribute, and then also the 2006 Tenacious D film The Pick of Destiny.

At the heart of their art was a deep, decades-long friendship between Black and Gass, which produced such wonderful chemistry onstage. Having met as struggling actors who formed the group in 1994 as a joke, before films such as High Fidelity or School of Rock turned Black into a superstar, their bond was strong enough to survive Black’s career upturn. The actor-singer once knowingly compared the duo to “Simon and Garfunkel and Black Sabbath mixed together” and indeed, just as Art Garfunkel’s voice needed Paul Simon’s songs and vice versa, Black’s comic timing benefited hugely from the classically trained Gass’s formidable abilities as a musician and comedic foil.

two men with guitars performing — Tenacious D performing at the AO Arena in Manchester in May. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Their fortunes certainly waxed and waned – The Pick of Destiny flopped at the box office – but 2012 album Rize of the Fenix hit the US and UK Top 10 and this latest tour returned them to arenas around the world. On their recent British dates, audiences chanted “D!” and sang along with every word. One of the funniest bits was a sketch in which Gass dramatically “left the band”, leading Black to respond with a heartfelt ballad titled Dude (I Totally Miss You). Only time will tell whether the seemingly now genuinely estranged pair will get the band back together.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/16/jack-black-tenacious-d-kyle-gass-trump?CMP=share_btn_url

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So, first, I can easily see how this comment could escape a person’s head in that particular moment, aloud, before the person could get ahold of it. I’m not certain, though, because I’m not a popular performer, whether the additional exhilaration of performing would make it easier or more difficult to get ahold of a phrase than, say, me in a conversation with people who may or may not disagree with me. Obviously, as anti-gun as I am, it’s not something I’m going to say, and I don’t recall it occurring to me at the time of the shooting, even in the dark-humored part of me that does exist. But I’m not seeing why this is so bad for this band, really. They ought to do a few fundraisers for gun control/mass shooting locations/things like that, I think, but I’m not sure this is go-away-and-never-show-their-faces-again bad, especially since it was a single sentence, not a tirade, and there was an ASAP apology that seems sincere. Others’s mileage may vary, so let’s talk.