Friday, April 8, 2022

And another day of coup plot texting, a false sense of security, falling back into poverty, trans kids fearing AL law, ordering endangered animals on Facebook, and Will Smith banned from the Oscars for 10 years comes to a close:

“After all, tomorrow is another day.” -- Margaret Mitchell

Deaths

US: 1,011,665 (+569)

World: 6,199,213 (+3772)

Cases

US: 82,034,738 (+46,460)

World: 497,782,559 (+1,233,531

Scores feared dead in Kramatorsk railway station strike. Scores of people, including children, were killed Friday after two rockets hit a railway station in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region as thousands tried to evacuate the area, Ukrainian officials said.

'We control them all': Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows ideas for overturning 2020 election before it was called. Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump's eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that "we have operational control" to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures…"We have operational control Total leverage," the message reads. "Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now."

The text from Trump Jr. is revealing on a number of levels. It shows how those closest to the former President were already exchanging ideas for how to overturn the election months before the January 6 insurrection -- and before all the votes were even counted. It would be another two days before major news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner on November 7. The text also adds to a growing body of evidence of how Trump's inner circle was actively engaged in discussing how to challenge the election results. — Without consequences for trying to overturn the 2020 election, Republicans will try again if a future election result doesn’t go their way. 

People have false sense of security about Covid risks among friends – study. Research shows people believe they are less likely to catch virus from friends and family than strangers…The team from University Carlos III in Madrid, Spain, say their experiments also suggest this so-called “friend shield effect” appears to be stronger among those who are politically conservative rather than liberal…Reicher said studies had also found that people not only trust friends more, but trust members of the same group, such as supporters of the same football team, more even when they are strangers. “There is no moral judgment associated with being infected. Anyone can have Covid, whether friend or foe, acquaintance or stranger,” Reicher said. “And, paradoxically, the more we assume that ‘people like us’ won’t have the virus, the more likely we are to get it from them.”

Payments from the expanded child tax credit were reducing child hunger and poverty. But since Congress failed to renew it, families who need the money the most are already falling back into poverty. The impact of stopping the monthly payments was devastatingly swift, according to an assessment from the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy's monthly tracker. It estimated that 3.7 million children were kept out of poverty in December when the last child tax credit payment was made. In January, the first month without the deposits, 3.7 million children fell into poverty.

Former Florida Election Commission Attorney Sentenced to 72 Months in Federal Prison for Conspiracy and Distribution of Child Pornography. Eric Matthew Lipman, 60, of Tallahassee, Florida, was sentenced to 72 months in federal prison for conspiring to distribute, receive, and possess material constituting child pornography, and distributing material constituting child pornography after pleading guilty on December 13, 2021. The sentence was announced by Jason R. Coody, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida.

Trans kids fear Alabama laws targeting medicine, bathrooms. Alabama is among multiple states with Republican-controlled legislatures that have advanced bills not only to block medical treatment but to ban transgender children from using school restrooms or playing on sports teams that don’t correspond with their sex at birth. The Alabama medication bill is one of the most far-reaching: It would put doctors in prison for up to 10 years for prescribing puberty blockers or hormonal treatment to trans kids under 19.

Keep your waist to less than half your height, guidance says. If you're 175cm (5ft 9 inches) tall, for example, then your waist measurement should be less than 87.5cm (34 inches) - or half your height. Measuring waist-to-height ratio can be used for both sexes and all ethnic groups, as well as highly muscular adults, it adds. But waist circumference measurements are not accurate in people with a BMI over 35, pregnant women or children under two.

It Took Us Less Than 24 Hours to Order an Endangered Tiger on Facebook. It took just half a dozen messages and less than 24 hours to line up the deal. Thanks to Facebook, it’s about as easy to find someone selling an endangered jungle cat as it is to adopt a domestic shorthair…With Myanmar’s military coup 18 months ago ushering in a new era of political upheaval and economic collapse, the illegal trade in wild animals and their body parts has exploded on the country’s social media…Efforts this week showed how quickly and easily an individual can acquire some of these specimens—either alive or dead—and the ways in which the world’s biggest social media platform is facilitating the trade and slaughter of critically endangered species…“With Asia’s track record as a breeding ground for many recent zoonotic diseases, this sharp uptick in online trade of wildlife in Myanmar is extremely concerning,” Shaun Martin, WWF-Asia Pacific’s Regional Illegal Wildlife Trade Cybercrime Project Lead, said in a statement. Perhaps more concerning, though, is the existential threat that this booming industry poses to the creatures themselves. Many of the more vulnerable animals being traded in social media groups—including the slow loris, the Asiatic black bear, and the most at-risk species of pangolin—are not known to exist anywhere in the world outside Southeast Asia.

Film Academy Bans Will Smith From Oscars Ceremony for 10 Years. Smith will retain the Oscar that he won and remains eligible for future Oscar nominations and wins.

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

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