News For Xala

[newsforxala]

Unfortunately my ability to follow news closely was bent wildy out of whack by the Democratic presidential nomination process. The propaganda of those in power pushing reality out of the news began to so eerily remind me of the 2016 election that I had to look away. And covid broke what little news-following tenacity I had left. Am I the only one to notice that there is no actual news anymore? Nothing left but 'what to cook in quarantine', and the breathless repeating of: 'when will the sports start again? when will the sports start again?' Anyway, with apologies to Xala, I'm done with the news, at least for now. If you still have the need for interesting tidbits, check out my new postings at Paraleipomenon where I am slowly dumping the giant pile of tiny writing leftovers I've been amassing for years. There's hundreds more to come. I find them pretty entertaining, but maybe that's just me looking at myself in the mirror.

[newsforxala]

Archaeologists found a 4000-year-old copy of the "The Book of Two Ways" — a guidebook for the afterlife in ancient Egypt, and the world's first illustrated book.* The Earth has picked up a second moon in the form of a small asteroid, maybe the size of a car, that will orbit Earth for about two weeks before heading off into space again.* This February was one of the least snowy Februaries in NYC on record.*

[newsforxala]

The decline in economic activity in China during the corona virus pandemic has so dramatically reduced air pollution that satellite photos from space can see the improvement in the air quality in Chinese cities. The global economic slowdown that is likely to result from the corona virus may end up showing a dramatic decline in the release of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere this year.* 8,300,000,000 metric tons of plastic have been produced in total worldwide, so far. At the end of their lives, 9% of those plastics were recycled, 12% were incinerated, and 79% of them ended up in landfills or the natural environment.* 79,000 tourists will visit Antarctica this summer.*

[newsforxala]

Kenya is fighting the biggest swarms of desert locusts in 70 years. The swarms can eat as much food as 35,000 people each day, and if not stopped can grow 500x as big by this summer.* Paintings made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often used newly developed bright synthetic colors — including a cadmium yellow used in Munch's The Scream. The colors are note very stable and are now fading away to pale whites.* There are literally twice as many cows as people in Montana.*

[newsforxala]

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that, taking into account the amount of time ride-hailing vehicles spend traveling around without a customer, a ride-hailed trip creates 47% more emissions than just taking a private vehicle.* Astronomers and marine biologists worked together to discover a correlation between sunspots and the occurrence of beached gray whales.* In December a dead sperm whale washed up on a Scottish beach with 220 pounds of plastic in its stomach.*

[newsforxala]

The Los Angeles Police Department is sitting on 320 million images of license plates taken by automated license plate readers. 99.9% of those images have nothing to do with any criminal investigation.* Researchers found that walking barefoot reduces the strain on our bones, ankles, knees. And joints and calluses make walking barefoot more comfortable without reducing people's sensation of the ground.* Other researchers found that thickly-cushioned "maxmial" sneakers causes runners to hit the ground harder and roll their ankles more.*

[newsforxala]

New research shows that the temperature of the average human body has dropped to 97.5 degrees from the 98.6 average when it was studied 150 years ago.* This January was the hottest ever recorded, and 2020 has a 50/50 chance of being the hottest year ever, globally.* There's $4,200 in cash in circulation for every person in the US. Eighty percent of that money is $100 bills. The treasury and central banks have no idea where all those $100 bills are.*

[newsforxala]

"Bomb cyclone" Dennis has washed a 250-foot, 2200-ton ship up on the Irish coast. It had been abandoned more than a year ago in the Atlantic after engine failure, and drifted ever since.* The only plastics for which there is any kind of recycling market at all are #s 1 and 2. 3 through 7 are virtually worthless.* There are over 300 miles of sidewalk scaffolding in NYC.*

[newsforxala]

The reticulated siren, or leopard eel, is a 2-foot-long legless salamander that lives only in a few swamps in the Southeastern US. It is one of the largest animals in the US to be newly formally described by scientists in the last 100 years.* The Lockport school system in Western NY became the first in New York State to operate a facial recognition system to monitor its students.* "Bomb cyclone" Dennis is creating 80-foot waves in the North Atlantic.*

[newsforxala]

School lunch program desperately need middle-class people to start having their kids buy lunch in order to be able to afford to keep recent gains in the quality of school lunches.* Over the last 20 years, an area the size of Ohio has been cut down in Canada's boreal forest -- mostly to be turned into toilet paper for the US.* Researchers have determined that some pieces of ambergris have floated in the ocean for 1000 years.*

[newsforxala]

The Census will use an algorithm to anonymize the data that will be collected. This algorithm has the unfortunate side effect of lowering the population of some small rural communities. In some cases whole towns may disappear.* A 2010 paper found that the retail cost to hire human beings to solve CAPTCHA test — the login/signup tests used to determine if you are a human being or a computer — is as low as $1000 for 1 million passed CAPTCHAs.* In recent years, bumblebee populations have declined 46 percent in North America.*

[newsforxala]

There are plans to launch 5 times as many satellites into orbit in the next 10 years as the total of all the satellites launched since Sputnik in 1957.* Fireflies make up 38% of known insect species. They are threatened globally by Habitat loss, pesticides, and light pollution.* 36 million trees die in US urban areas each year.*

[newsforxala]

Mumbai police are experimenting with decibel meters attached to stop lights that detect when honking gets too loud and reset the stop light timer to remain red longer.* Researchers used tiny radar detectors mounted to the legs of albatross to find ships that had turned off their transponder tracking devices to make it easier to get away with illegal fishing.* 17,300 ruminant byproducts — like sheep's lung for haggis — were confiscated at American airports over the last four years.*

[newsforxala]

Farmers in the Midwest are seeking out John Deere tractors from the 1970s and 80s because with no computer in them they are easier and less expensive to repair.* A 19-year-old jumped to his death from the top of the Vessel sculpture in Hudson Yards, NYC.* 29 mammals have been declared extinct in Australia since Europeans arrived. 2 mammals have gone extinct in the US since Europeans arrived.*

[newsforxala]

The tooth of a pterosaur was found embedded in the body of a 150 million year old fossilized cephalopod, showing that these flying dinosaurs probably ate squid.* After the Superbowl victory of the Kansas City Chiefs, Trump tweeted a congratulations to the "Great State of Kansas." Unfortunately the home city of the Chiefs is Kansas City, Missouri.* It is likely that the Iowa caucuses turned into a shitshow last night because of glitches in the voting app developed by a company called Shadow, and financed by a Democratic digital strategy organization called Acronym.*

[newsforxala]

Trump is the only president since polling became a thing to never have had the support of a majority of Americans.* Historians discovered a fourth Soviet spy was working at Los Alamos in the 1940s developing nuclear weapons. This one may have been the sole person responsible for conveying enough information to the Soviets that they were capable of developing a nuclear weapon only a few years after the US did.* A 150 million year old fossil of an extinct species of sea turtle shows that it was crushed when it was stepped on by a giant sauropod dinosaur.*

[newsforxala]

The militant anti-fascist group Antifa released a call for people to participate in actions on the NYC subway today for "No cops on the MTA, free transit, no harassment period and full accessibility... Fuck the police."* A study found that the rapid increase in heat during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD turned the brains of at least one victim to glass.* The creator of the sculpture in front of CIA headquarters that contains an encrypted message still not completely solved 30 years after it was made has released a third and final clue to help the crazy people trying to solve it: "NORTHEAST."*