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Thursday’s Forum
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30 responses to “Thursday’s Forum”
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Videos of the flash flooding in Nepal, massive toll of dead and missing:
https://bsky.app/profile/mlafrance.bsky.social/post/3mtyl757mss2n
https://bsky.app/profile/mlafrance.bsky.social/post/3mtylcot4qs2n
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Gift link to NYT:
Nepal’s disaster management authority raised the number of missing people on its side of the border to more than 800, including about 400 foreign tourists, in an update on Thursday. Among the missing Nepalis were tourists, local residents and dozens of personnel from various security forces and government agencies.
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The deadly flooding in Nepal on Wednesday was likely set off at least in part by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier and cascading thousands of feet to the valley below, according to an initial assessment by a group of geologists and glaciologists. The phenomenon is known as an ice avalanche.
“It looks like a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometer to the valley bottom,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who studied satellite imagery to analyze what happened.
“The bottom looks like a bomb exploded — it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier,” he said.
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Thailand stop to give USS Abraham Lincoln crew first regular port visit in months
The Navy aircraft carrier at the center of an uproar about conditions sailors have faced on its latest deployment will visit Thailand next week for its first regular port call in more than nine months, according to Thai officials.
The news comes just days after the USS Abraham Lincoln departed the Middle East following more than 200 days in a combat zone supporting U.S. military operations against Iran, including a maritime blockade against Iranian ports.
Lincoln and two other carrier strike group ships are expected to visit the country Sept. 2-6, English-language newspaper the Bangkok Post reported Tuesday, citing Thai defense ministry spokesman Rear Adm. Surasant Kongsiri, who said the visit will be for rest and relaxation.
The Thai navy said in a Tuesday statement that three ships from an American carrier strike group were scheduled to make a short stopover in eastern Thailand for recuperation.
Read elsewhere that the stop was going to be Pattaya Beach, a resort area in Southern Thailand.
Pattaya Beach (40 years back) was an R&R destination of choice for men stationed in the Far East. I’m sure, like most of the world, it has developed greatly since then. But then, 1000s of young men, couped up on ships for 100s of days, let loose is going to cause some issues.
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Why did John Radcliffe, CIA Chief, fly a quickie trip to Moscow?
One write up:
CIA chief used Moscow visit to warn Russia against attacks on NATO allies, helping Iran
CIA Director John Ratcliffe warned Russian officials in Moscow this week not to escalate conflict with America’s NATO allies, in particular Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in response to Moscow’s stalemated invasion of Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. spy chief also used the rare, unannounced trip to the Russian capital on Tuesday to press Russia to reduce military and economic support for Iran, according to one of those two people and a U.K. official with knowledge of the trip.
I’m guessing the Baltic reason was the main one and one based on real intelligence that alarmed the intelligence establishment.
The Iran reason, I’m guessing, was just a target of opportunity since Ratcliffe was going anyway. However, I suspect that Putin would view that as Trump being wea
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Only politically correct science is allowed to be taught. Lysenkoism is alive and well in DoD.
A civilian geography professor was fired from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., for pushing back after department officials barred faculty from teaching that humans contribute to climate change, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
Adam Kalkstein, a climate scientist who spent 17 years teaching future Army officers, said he consistently received “outstanding” appraisals of his work. When leadership last year imposed a ban on teaching that humans contribute to climate change, he tried to comply but ultimately pushed back, saying that it was a disservice to the cadets’ education.
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Idle thought of the morning.
If the Trump administration can dictate to the USPS the nature of and requirements for mail in ballots, what is stopping them from declaring some sort of security emergency and authorizing the USPS to open and examine our mail.
Or is that already allowed in some obscure section of some obscure law?
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RIP Tim Curry.
I was fortunate enough to work with Tim, and he became a friend.
One of my favorite recollections is hanging out, about 20 years ago, in the Silverlake home of a mutual friend during a Christmas Party, and listening to him tell me about the London party scene in the early and mid 1970’s.
I saw him last about 9 months ago, and it was obvious his health was declining. But he was a relatively private person and claimed he was fine – well as fine as he could be given his stroke.
He was talented, kind, acerbic, sarcastic, and most of all, human, and I will miss him. A world without Tim Curry and Dolly Parton is a bit less fun, and a bit less kind.
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We were able to hire him to provide the off-screen voice of the leader of an evil organization in Martial Law for several episodes. Alas, when it came time for our two-part finale in which he would finally be revealed, CBS refused to pay his fee and we had to recast. One of the great disappointments of my career!
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Let’s see the MAGAt’s go after Little Bobby for perjury like they tried with Fauci!!!
https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-kennedy-samoa-vaccines-mmr-ba6ad3ffadca48599b1c178a392fb37b?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share -
I’m taking my last tranche of vacation next week (we have an insane amount of paid vacation days). I’m off starting Saturday, and won’t return to work until Sept. 17th; thanks to the Sept. 16th Independence Day holiday.
The plan is to make pan pizza, this time hopefully better. And to begin writing a novel. Hopefully noting will hamper my time off. In June, when I took some time, there was construction or remodeling or something in some apartment upstairs, and the daily racket didn’t let me concentrate, and at times I wasn’t even able to watch TV.
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Heartbreaking news for, well, someone I suppose, the NFL has eliminated the Pro Bowl.
I confess I liked watching the game, for a few minutes. Past the novelty of seeing players in the same uniform but different helmets, and identifying which ones played, it was a pretty lame game.
Naturally enough, the players didn’t make much of an effort, holding back in all aspects. After all, the game counted for nothing. Not just the result, but the quality of play. In preseason the score is meaningless. But how you play may determine how much you’ll play in the season, or whether you’ll even have a job.
I’ve heard this is the same in other sports, like baseball and basketball, which have or had some kind of all-star game.
It’s a classic “great in theory but doesn’t work in practice.”
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Fans of 1980s cartoons will be sad to learn that Peter Cullen has died. He was best known as the voice of Optimus Prime, but did countless other voices as well.
Ok, he did roughly 1 or 2 voices.
But he had many roles, and that did lead to the oddity that was Voltron being narrated by Optimus Prime and Eeyore being a depressed Optimus Prime.
ETA: Ratko Mladić has also died. He was not as beloved as Peter Cullen, as he was a genocidal war criminal.
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Symptomatic of how narcissistic he is, sees the lake (and America) as extensions of himself.
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One of the more interesting aspects of this nonsense is if and when the various online map providers will rename Lake Ontario. The answers will range from soon for the USGS National Map (it hasn’t changed yet, but of course it will have to), to never for MapQuest (it still shows the Gulf of Mexico). But Google, Apple, and Microsoft/Bing???
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