The kids aren’t alright.
The New York Times reported that Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas, saw a spate of suicides since moving to remote learning in March. Administrators also received 3,100 alerts of suicide risks or students in need of support through the district’s mental health monitoring system
News personality Glenn Burns writes :
A STRANGE SIGNAL
The Parkes radio telescope in Australia has picked up a faint signal while observing Proxima Centauri, a star 4.25 light-years from Earth.
This star has at least two planets, one of which is a super-Earth that orbits in the star’s habitable zone — the region around a star where a planet with the right conditions could host liquid water on its surface.
The signal showed up during five 30-minute periods over several days, all while the telescope was pointing directly at Proxima. When the telescope was turned away from the star, the signal vanished. This is very promising!
We could have received a signal from another civilization…time will tell! We still have to figure out if it’s real and what it actually says!
Tens of thousands of people reported outages from Boston to New York to Washington and locations in between, according to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks complaints about service disruptions.
People also reported outages on several other services, including Gmail, Zoom and Slack as well.Verizon acknowledged the disruption to its service, although it didn’t say whether problems with Fios were the root cause of customers’ unreliable access to various internet services. Google (GOOGL), Slack and Zoom did not report any outages.“We are aware of an issue impacting the quality of Fios service throughout the Northeast corridor,” said Rich Young, spokesman for Verizon. “Our network team is fully engaged. We are working through the root cause and have already seen service levels start to restore.”
The US Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the outage.“We have seen reports of internet-related outages on the East Coast, making it difficult for people to work remotely and go to school online,” said Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a tweet. “The FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is working to get to the bottom of what is going on.”close dialogWe read all day so you don’t have to.Get our nightly newsletter for all the top business stories you need to know.Sign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.
Source CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/tech/verizon-fios-outage/index.html
The great awakening!!
After a mix-up over names, the family of Rogelia Blanco were informed that the pensioner died of COVID-19 on Jan. 13 and her funeral was the next day, the La Voz de Galicia newspaper said. Due to coronavirus protocols, they were unable to attend.
An 85-year-old woman believed by her family to have died from the coronavirus surprised her relatives by returning to her care home nine days after they were told she had been buried, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Some interesting palace, or in this case Vatican intrigue.. The British press is doing its best at furnishing the world inside gossip about the state of the Papacy..
Some interesting palace, or in this case Vatican intrigue.. The British press is doing its best at furnishing the world inside gossip about the state of the Papacy..
Francis was forced to cancel three events at short notice over the weekend, after his ongoing issues with sciatica struck the 84-year-old again. Matteo Bruni, a spokesman for the Vatican, confirmed that due to the return of his condition he would not deliver Mass on Sunday, as well as attend a meeting with diplomatic corps on Monday, which has now been rearranged. This is the latest in a string of cancelled appointments he has made due to the condition, which affects the back and legs, after he skipped New Year’s Day Mass.
And this:
His health has become a concern for insiders, including Vatican author Lynda Telford, who said she was fearful for the future of the Church if Francis stood down.
And the writer told Express.co.uk that the Vatican will struggle to maintain order if someone similar to Francis’ predecessor, Benedict, took over.
Ms Telford argues that Benedict’s traditionalist views “put off” those with a more modern mindset who could be tempted to join the Catholic Church.
So that leaves us with the question .. if anything written above is actually true and not just tabloid speculation, what would happen if Francis had to step down?
First order of business: What happens to the prophecy of the popes that seems to indicate Francis is “Peter the Roman.” And “the end” comes after, whatever the end may mean..
And second..could Benedict polish up his red shoes and become Pope all over again?
Two amazing questions that have no answers, just experts who theorize on them.
Ever since Benedict XVI announced he would become the first pope in 600 years to resign, Catholic theologians, canon lawyers and others warned of the potential confusion in having two popes living side by side in the Vatican, one reigning, the other retired but calling himself “emeritus pope” and still wearing the white cassock of the papacy.
Their worst fears came true this week.
In a saga befitting the Oscar-nominated movie “The Two Popes,” Benedict co-wrote a book reaffirming the “necessity” of a celibate priesthood. There was nothing novel with his position, but the book is coming out at the same time Pope Francis is weighing whether to ordain married men in the Amazon because of a priest shortage there.
20,000 National Guard troops were called to keep the Inaurgation of Joseph R. Biden Jr safe on January 20 .. a tension was building around the nation, the media informed us.. Threats and rumors of threats were abounding on social media.
The internet had become a raucous and caustic venue since the election.
We were doomed, it would.
And then, as the early morning snow and clouds broke to allow sunlight to shine down on President Biden and Vice President Harris, a miracle was brewing.. A moment was about to occur that, maybe, forever changed the course of American history. No, it was not Biden’s oath or speech.. and no, it was not Garth Brooks zipping around the audience with his massive cowboy hat.
It was a Bernie Sanders. Decked in his coat we have seen him in countless times, and dazzlingly massive mittens someone made for him from recycled plastic.
This image, quite frankly, made America great again.
The internet is a vast wasteland of memes of yesterday. Only the strong survive.. so often they live on forever in brief compilation videos.. songs.. now and then old funny images from the mid 2000s or 2000 teens will show up in a GIF.
The Bernie Sanders meme, however, felt different. This was a coming of age meme moment in a way.
When the image of Sanders was captured by a Getty photographer at the Inauguration, it trended immediately. And while Joe Biden was making a speech he hoped would be a blockbuster call for unification, the Internet got moving.. mass production began.
By nightfall when Bruce Springsteen was attempting to sing his heart out at the star studded Virtual Gala, people around the nation were busy sharing the image of Senator Sanders. By morning, his image took over all forms of social media..
And within a day, people of all ages, races, colors and creeds were popping Sanders into their profile pictures, local businesses were putting him in their parking lots, spas were putting him in their waiting rooms, and restaurants at tables.
He is showing up in historical photos.. in the Game of Thrones.. In horror movies, and in the most GHOST.https://www.facebook.com/v2.3/plugins/post.php?app_id=249643311490&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df3461a927b3d568%26domain%3Dcoalspeaker.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fcoalspeaker.com%252Ff309848364eea44%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=552&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FCoalSpeaker%2Fposts%2F3630815953704191%3Fcft%255B0%255D%3DAZWyNneISKfNBnzXxhWG_5ptpLZAkuQKc7PseYaVfeSuE7D0B9lK6dhEtHYXj9UrmSG-EG59N5mRuaLBw47lZYMn1-thJdH1eH1T0sPblXN0NHnpAiGLf6mCeenBsq4Dw_2fj7VH0u279C-Q5FX7BL29yWcHHmMcorPLt3dM4qrkV9-JDQlP2KHvw9V4pCzW4Sk3YOiJ84_AP_piSaA-j231%26tn%3D%252CO%252CP-R&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&width=552
Esquire talked to the Getty photographer who captured the image at the right time.
Smialowski, the Washington D.C.-based photographer who was working the inauguration behalf of the global news agency AFP, isn’t a stranger to having a front row seat to history or even going viral, but his shot of Sanders has served as a unique lighthearted respite during a lead-up that was anything but. The eye behind the iconic shot spoke to Esquire about the photo that inspired the masses. “It’s not a great photo, but it is a nice moment,” he says.
Brenden Smialowski said,
When I captured the moment, I had just decided to swing back, take it, and then I transmitted that photo from my camera to my editor. So there were three moments there and if your timings are not just right, it wouldn’t have come together.
The next morning I had a bunch of emails from bosses and such. I think when there’s a webpage that automatically drops Bernie into a photo, I think that makes it pretty clear that it made it.
But one more comment that he said, and this one we think, is what summarizes the moment:
I grew up without the Internet and have seen it all evolve since and in the early days, it was fairly lighthearted, fun, goofy and jokes. Maybe it feels like the early days.
Maybe it does..
The internet was fun at one time! The wild west of the information superhighway. A few years ago, the notion of “digital decay” was noticed.. At that time it became apparent: The old internet was slipping away. Some sites like Archive.org or oneterabyteofkilobyteage are active in trying to keep some of the old alive.. We wrote in 2013 that one day online users will not even know what Geocities was. That day is now.
So when the Bernie Sanders memes started circulating, those who lived through the early days of the net felt a magical nostalgia. Others felt the feeling for the first time.
Innocence, it seemed, was reborn.
For four years, memes were made to attack other political sides. Some had a biting sense of humor.. some had a cruel bite.
Each and every day, a new scandal erupted. CNN went into “breaking news overdrive” .. they declared the end of Trump. Democracy. The nation.. they ate up their ratings with no remorse.
The nation was driven into a constant ad sick medical condition of @realdonaldtrump Twitter addiction.. His account remained the must-go to location on social media as he opined on everything important and not, and threatened other nations with nuclear war.
Twitter got immediately dull when former President Trump was banned.
And the nation grappled with the aftermath of his presidency.. all of those public battles. All of the rolls of paper towels thrown to hurricane victims.. all of the weather maps with sharpie written all over them were over.
Foes suddenly had no one to hate and fans suddenly had no hope .. we were lost as a nation. Neither side felt comfortable. Neither side felt right..
The normal transition of power is always painful for the losing side. But this time half of the losing side wanted to lose.
Then came that Sanders photo. That little snapshot of a moment in time. With it, a seemingly noticeable cultural reset.
The world will adapt to change. There will be political fights … there will be claims of biased news coverage.. All of the old political factions will brand themselves for the new post-Trump age. Everyone involved with journalism and politics still looks to be grasping in the dark for their posture.. What the end result looks like may be a redux of pre-2016 years.
The staged events.
The canned talking points.
The typical news briefings with little said.
In a strange way the media may not yet realize what they just lost: The President who gave the press access of virtually everything! Trump loved the attention.. Chopper talk, hours-long press events… Sure, the relationship with horrid but both sides fed on each others egos and worst instincts.
That is why the innocence of the Sanders image is so vital in restoring something, at least among the distanced factions of Americans.
Good jokes or memes are tension breakers. Bernie became that..
Goodwill can end as quickly as it begins.
Hopefully it sticks around for a while.
Even if it doesn’t, we can look back at the short-lived moment when Bernie made America Great Again.
Larry King, the celebrated television and radio host, has died at the age of 87, weeks after battling COVID-19.
King’s production company announced his death in a statement on Saturday.
‘With profound sadness, Ora Media announces the death of our co-founder, host, and friend Larry King, who passed away this morning at age 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles,’ the company said.
‘Ora Media sends our condolences to his surviving children Larry, Jr., Chance, Cannon and the entire King family.’
No cause of death was given, however, it comes three weeks after King was hospitalized with coronavirus.
Those who aren’t old enough to remember may not realize how important each night of LARRY KING was, how he had the top political players, Hollywood stars, and pop culture icons. Nightly for years.. And he took calls, too..
Larry King was an unlikely TV.. A MASSIVE ego and a huge amount of talent and intelligence..
End of an era with his death..
Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert, said he suffered mild side effects after receiving a second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
“I was hoping that I wouldn’t get too knocked out. I did for about 24 hours. Now I’m fine,” he said at a White House event Thursday.
Fauci, an adviser to President Joe Biden on Covid-19, said he felt fatigued and achy, “not sick.”
The mild side effects are consistent with what vaccine manufacturers reported in their clinical trials, and are signs of the body’s immune response to the inoculation.
MORE..
After several people had apparent allergic reactions at one California clinic, state health officials on Sunday told providers across the state to pause administering doses from one COVID-19 vaccine lot that arrived from Moderna.
The move, made “out of an extreme abundance of caution,” means that 330,000 doses distributed to 287 providers across the state can’t be used amid an already slow vaccine rollout.
“A higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions were reported with a specific lot of Moderna vaccine administered at one community vaccination clinic,” California State Epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said.
Martin Luther King skipped the ninth and eleventh grades and never graduated from high school. He enrolled in Morehouse College in 1944 when he was just 15.
He completed his doctorate at Boston University when he was 25.
His actions and words eventually worked to modernize and change a world that severely needed it.
While more work is to be done, his dream gets closer to being fulfilled as time goes by..
