Monday, March 22, 2021

And another day back to mass shootings, of Covid increasing, statehood movements, photos of migrant detention, Facebook police hate groups, harassment, more accusations, NFL dementia tests, and an underground lunar ark comes to a close:

“The fact that Mitch McConnell and Republicans see a bill that protects voting rights, fights gerrymandering, and pushes back against big money in politics as detrimental to their ability to win elections says everything you need to know about today's GOP.” -- Alex Padilla

Deaths

US: 555,945 (+631)

World: 2,735,205 (+7767)

Cases

US: 30,576,962 (+55,197)

World: 124,291,478 (+439,757)

10 people killed, including 1 officer, in Colorado supermarket shooting. -- And now back to our regularly scheduled mass shootings.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s anywhere safe anymore sometimes. And this feels like one of the safest spots in America, and I just nearly got killed for getting a soda and a bag of chips.” -- Ryan Borowski, Boulder shooting survivor

COVID-19 is increasing in Michigan. Why it may be a warning. Experts and officials fear that a combination of loosening restrictions and spread of the U.K. variant might be causing the rise in Michigan -- a potentially troubling sign for other areas as mass vaccination rolls out...”The largest number of outbreaks are in K-12 school settings at 162, with 54 new outbreaks reported this week," said Callo-Lyon. Children ages 10-19 now have the highest COVID-19 case rate in Michigan, a rate that "is increasing faster than that of other age groups."

Long-term Covid can affect multiple organ systems, highlighting treatment challenges.

The GOP prepares to go on the defensive as D.C. statehood movement gains momentum. -- The citizens of D.C. get taxed without any votes in Congress. Yeah, that’s fair. </sarcasm>

Border Patrol numbers show another jump in the number of children held in custody for more than 10 days.

Photos of migrant detention highlight Biden’s border secrecy. President Joe Biden’s administration has tried for weeks to keep the public from seeing images like those that emerged Monday showing immigrant children in U.S. custody at the border sleeping on mats under foil blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions. -- This is unacceptable and needs to stop.

Cops’ posts to private Facebook group show hostility, hate. In a private Facebook group called the Pittsburgh Area Police Breakroom, many current and retired officers spent the year criticizing chiefs who took a knee or officers who marched with Black Lives Matter protesters, whom they called “terrorists” or “thugs.” They made transphobic posts and bullied members who supported anti-police brutality protesters or Joe Biden in a forum billed as a place officers can “decompress, rant, share ideas.”

Sex Addiction Is Not a Thing. But sex addiction is an outdated diagnosis that does not appear in the current diagnostic manual for mental health professionals, the DSM-5...For example, sex doesn’t activate the same pathways in the brain as addictive drugs, and you can’t develop tolerance to it or withdrawal from it...The people most likely to think they have sex addictions are not people who have a lot of sex, but rather people who have religious or negative views about sex.

Biden dispatches top officials to Mexico, Central America as border crisis grows.

LGBTQ students at Christian colleges face more harassment, survey finds. LGBTQ students at Christian colleges face more bullying and harassment and are far more likely to experience isolation, depression and harm than their straight classmates, according to a new survey commissioned by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, or REAP, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ students at taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities. Gender-nonconforming students are particularly at risk, the researchers found: Twenty-two percent reported bullying or harassment, compared to 5 percent of cisgender students. Fourteen percent reported being sexually assaulted, compared to 2 percent of their cisgender peers.

Six more women accuse Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct. At least 13 lawsuits have been filed accusing the NFL star of improperly touching massage therapists.

Lawyers battle over ‘race-norming’ in NFL dementia tests. The court-appointed lead lawyer for thousands of retired players suing the NFL pledged Monday to try to remove race as a factor in dementia testing, but lawyers for Black players demanded he release the data on payouts by race in the $1 billion concussion settlement. They argue that Black men are being denied awards that average more than $500,000 because of testing methods that assume Black people have lower cognitive function than white people.

The $113 billion deal to telecast NFL games through 2033 is head-swimmingly large - until you consider that the very survival of broadcast networks as we know them may depend on it.

Florida bans toilet-invading iguanas and 15 other invasive species. Non-native reptiles have long been considered risks to Florida’s ecology, economy and resident health and safety, so much so that authorities have encouraged Floridians to humanely kill animals like the green iguana, which has been known to crawl into sewers and emerge on the other end of an unfortunate homeowner’s toilet bowl. The state spends about $8 million dollars each year in an effort to mitigate the invasive species.

Engineers want to build an underground lunar ark, filled with millions of seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from Earth's species, hidden in a network of tubes on the moon to provide a genetic backup for the planet in the event of a doomsday scenario.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.