And another day of data, texts, far too little vote fraud, D.C. suing the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, raising the debt limit, settlements, a topless sunbathing ban, the religiously unaffiliated, and the ‘Doomsday glacier’ comes to a close:
“It’s weird living in a country where people think it’s the greatest nation in the world, even though we all know it doesn’t give us basic healthcare, doesn’t protect workers or even make sure we have a living wage, and spends the money that could fix these problems on bombs.” — Joshua Potash
“For attempting to overthrow our democracy to install an autocrat, Mandel calls Flynn a ‘Patriot.’ For helping to preserve the Republic and hold Trump accountable, Kinzinger is a ‘traitor.’ This is the 2021 Republican Party.” — Ron Filipkowski
"There has been no stronger case in our nation’s history for a congressional investigation into a former president.” — Representative Liz Cheney
Deaths
US: 821,335 (+2020)
World: 5,336,803 (+8544)
Cases
US: 51,136,442 (+118,160)
World: 271,727,845 (+930,957)
Data indicate omicron is milder, better at evading vaccines. The omicron variant appears to cause less severe disease than previous versions of the coronavirus, and the Pfizer vaccine seems to offer less defense against infection from it but still good protection from hospitalization, according to an analysis of data from South Africa, where the new variant is driving a surge in infections...Still, some experts cautioned that it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the outcomes from omicron since the variant is still quite new and hospitalizations can lag weeks behind infections.
Kroger to end paid COVID-19 leave for unvaccinated workers. The company will no longer offer paid emergency leave to unvaccinated employees who contract COVID-19, according to a Kroger spokesperson. Under the policy, unvaccinated workers who get the virus can use earned paid time off or apply for unpaid leave.
Texts show top Trump defenders’ private alarm on Jan. 6. As a mob overran the U.S. Capitol last January, some of Donald Trump’s highest-profile defenders in the media — and even his own son — sent urgent text messages to the White House chief of staff urging him to get the then-president to do more to stop the violence. But they did not publicly display that same sense of alarm mere hours after the deadly insurrection. And they have since joined some of the country’s top Republicans in downplaying Trump’s role in the attack — part of a larger effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6.
Far too little vote fraud to tip election to Trump, AP finds. An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election. Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.
D.C.'s attorney general is suing the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups for allegedly conspiring to terrorize the city on January 6 and violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a law to try to protect Black citizens from violence and intimidation.
Senate votes to raise debt limit by $2.5T, avoiding default. The 50-49 party line vote came just one day shy of a deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who warned last month that she was running out of maneuvering room to avoid the nation’s first-ever default. The measure now moves to the House where a vote could come as early as Tuesday night, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Victims of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar have reached a $380 million settlement with USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and their insurers after a five-year legal battle, an attorney for some of his victims said.
Women call on Supreme Court to strike down town's topless sunbathing ban. The specific question that the petition asks is whether "protecting traditional moral sensibilities" — the overarching defense for the Ocean City ordinance — is an important governmental interest that a municipality can use to support what the petitioners consider a discriminatory gender-based classification…The court document further argues that the ordinance stems from "longstanding discriminatory and sexist ideology in which women are viewed as inherently sexual objects without the agency to decide when they are sexual and when they are not."
About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated. Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious “nones” – people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity. Self-identified Christians of all varieties (including Protestants, Catholics, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Orthodox Christians) make up 63% of the adult population. Christians now outnumber religious “nones” by a ratio of a little more than two-to-one. In 2007, when the Center began asking its current question about religious identity, Christians outnumbered “nones” by almost five-to-one (78% vs. 16%)… Still, the available data indicates that Americans are growing less religious by this measure, too. Random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone surveys conducted in 2017 and 2019 found fewer U.S. adults saying religion is “very important” in their lives compared with previous telephone polls. And the 2021 NPORS finds that 41% of U.S. adults now say religion is “very important” in their lives, 4 points lower than the 2020 NPORS and substantially lower than all of the Center’s earlier RDD readings on this question. — Religion is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to be a good person. Leave the pews.
Utah Makes Welfare So Hard to Get, Some Feel They Must Join the LDS Church to Get Aid. Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.
A former NFL player who killed 6 and took his own life had 'unusually severe' stage 2 CTE, expert says. In football, CTE can happen not just from hard hits that result in concussions but from the constant rattling of the brain inside the skull that happens during tackles and other plays. These repeated hits are known as subconcussive hits and can result in the tau buildup in the brain. CTE develops when the protein begins clumping around small blood vessels and elsewhere in the brain. From there, the protein spreads and destroys other parts of the brain. There is no cure. -- Stop watching football.
U.S. warns new software flaw leaves millions of computers vulnerable. While the vulnerability is unlikely to threaten the security of people’s personal devices, it could be used to gain a foothold to hack practically any organization.
Scientists warn a critical ice shelf in Antarctica could shatter within the next five years. As the rapidly heating planet alters the landscape of the Arctic region up north, scientists have discovered disturbing and alarming signs at the southern end of the planet, particularly in one of the ice shelves safeguarding the Antarctic's so-called "Doomsday glacier." Satellite images taken as recently as last month, which researchers presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union Monday, suggest the critical ice shelf keeping together the Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica — an important defense against global sea level rise — could shatter within the next three to five years. Antarctica's Thwaites glacier is known as the "Doomsday glacier," due to the serious risk it poses during its melting process. It has dumped billions of tons of ice into the sea, and its demise could lead to irreversible changes throughout the planet.
Earliest female human infant burial found in cave in Europe. She only lived for little more than a month. But 10,000 years later, her burial is helping shed new light on her society...The discovery gives insight into the funeral practices of the Mesolithic era, also known as the middle period of the Stone Age, from which there are few recorded burials. And experts say that the richly decorated remains may also help illuminate how the period's hunter-gatherer society viewed its young and female members.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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