Odds and Ends — 10 August 2024

about 1 month ago (Edited)

We’ve got two Honeycrisp apple trees in our backyard. The one on the right has been a consistent heavy producer for seven or eight years now, the one on the let not so much. But this year, both of them are covered in apples. Enough that we won’t be able to eat them all. So I guess it’s about time to think about canning a bunch of applesauce to have over the winter months.

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Robots Have Been About to Take All the Jobs for 100 Years

Russia's economy faces a demographic disaster and risks seeing its population reduced by half by the end of this century, think tank says

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

COVID-19 drops to 10th leading cause of death in 2023

Politics:

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1821951619073749336

An accurate headline. More journalists need to speak the truth like this:

Trump Spews Lies, Disparages Harris’s Intelligence, Insults Jews, and Rambles About “Insane Asylums” in Unhinged Press Conference

The Truth About Trump’s Press Conference

Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.
And then, once everyone cleans up and shakes the debris off their phones and laptops, so much of what Trump said seems too bonkers to have come from a former president and the nominee of a major party, so journalists are left trying to piece together a story as if Trump were a normal person. This is what The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described as the ‘bias toward coherence,’ and it leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.

https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1821716233705668834

What On Earth Did We Just See?

Most media accounts do not come close to capturing the wretched shambolism of it all, and some reporters scrabbled desperately for nuggets of coherence in the former president’s rolling gibberish…
This is the kind of performance from Trump that, if the Republican party was still a functioning institution, would have a lot of people panicked and wondering about how to get him to drop out.

https://twitter.com/traecrowder/status/1821272795487367434

Rep. Meeks on Trump presser: Maybe ‘he’s not all there anymore’

Maybe?

https://twitter.com/OurShallowState/status/1821921522967310738

Russia struggles to repel Ukraine's deep Kursk incursion

https://twitter.com/EdKrassen/status/1821664834464968746

GOP Nominee in North Carolina Advocated Military Coup

Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee to run K-12 public education in North Carolina, filmed a video after attending the January 6 riot at the US Capitol urging then-President Donald Trump to put ‘the Constitution to the side’ and use the military to stay in power.
In a deleted Facebook livestream she filmed from her hotel room, Morrow called for mass arrests of anyone who helped certify the 2020 election.

https://twitter.com/PotbsH/status/1821882758102130789

Will Anything at All Happen With Trump’s January 6 Case Before the Election?

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1821918335979622767

Trump Claims He Has Helicopter Trip Records and Threatens to Sue

Former President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon vehemently maintained that he had once been in a dangerous helicopter landing with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, and insisted he had records to prove it, despite Mr. Brown’s denial.
When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice. As of early Friday evening, he had not provided them.
Mr. Trump has a history of claiming he will provide evidence to back up his claims but ultimately not doing so.

https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1821856449003450650

MAGA is gearing up for another “stolen election” canard, preemptively claiming it’s impossible for Harris to win in November.

https://twitter.com/thejackhopkins/status/1821979639792664844