Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalThe jokes kinda write themselves
Spousal unit and I were on the way back from a shopping trip musing about the prevalence of John Deere tractors in Ukraine and videos of them hauling away various bits of Russian military equipment amid the start of planting season. He suggested that John Deere could have a whole new series of commercials featuring Ukrainian farmers, with a percentage of sales going to Ukrainian relief.
"And you think YOU got trouble planting potatoes?"
Your contributions welcome. 
Senators call for investigation of Hertz after hundreds of rental car customers claim false arrest
Two U.S. Senators are urging the federal government to investigate Hertz rental car company's business practices that have led customers to make hundreds of allegations of false arrest.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the Senate's Consumer Protection Subcommittee, wrote to the company this week about Hertz customers being arrested for driving rental vehicles the company incorrectly reported as stolen.
That currently is the focus of a lawsuit in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Blumenthal requested information on the company's policies and practices and demanded that Hertz "swiftly correct course."
Blumenthal cited USA TODAY's reporting on the false arrest claims in his letter calling Hertz practices "staggering in magnitude and devastating in impact."
"I write to express serious alarm over reports suggesting that Hertz has, for years, wrongly reported customers to law enforcement for vehicle theft," the letter addressed to Stephen Scherr, CEO of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/31/hertz-arrests-senate-warren-blumenthal-investigation-rental-car/7233969001/
Anti-Abortion Activist Bragged About 'Dumpster Diving' for Fetuses
The anti-abortion activist accused of storing fetal remains in her home has spent years tweeting about scouring abortion clinic grounds for fetuses and then burying them.
Lauren Handy, indicted Wednesday for allegedly blockading an abortion clinic, has not hidden her interest in creeping around abortion clinics. In a Twitter thread published in October 2020, Handy said that, by 2016, she was “regularly dumpster diving” at a Maryland abortion clinic to retrieve fetuses for a “proper burial.”
The anti-abortion activist accused of storing fetal remains in her home has spent years tweeting about scouring abortion clinic grounds for fetuses and then burying them.
Lauren Handy, indicted Wednesday for allegedly blockading an abortion clinic, has not hidden her interest in creeping around abortion clinics. In a Twitter thread published in October 2020, Handy said that, by 2016, she was “regularly dumpster diving” at a Maryland abortion clinic to retrieve fetuses for a “proper burial.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx9dn/lauren-handy-fetuses-dumpster-diving
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What a HORRIBLE person
How a bunch of Starbucks baristas built a labor movement
For Reese Mercado, the decision to unionize came after they watched a customer physically assault a former coworker over enforcing vaccine requirements at their Starbucks store. For Hayleigh Fagan, it was when she got a company-wide letter from the Starbucks Vice President telling employees not to unionize. For Hope Liepe, it was the hypocrisy of calling employees “partners” but not treating them that way.
Since the first corporate Starbucks location voted to unionize late last year, 10 others have voted. Only one store has voted against unionizing. The latest and largest Starbucks to unionize is the company’s flagship store in Manhattan, which voted 46-36 on Friday to unionize. One of just three Starbucks roasteries in the country, this location is an important milestone for the Starbucks union since it has many more employees than a typical Starbucks (nearly 100) and shows that the Starbucks union can be successful in the company’s manufacturing arm as well. Even more notable, they’ve voted yes in the notoriously difficult-to-unionize food services industry, where high rates of turnover and a more easily replaceable workforce make union organizing extremely difficult.
Starbucks employees around the country say they’re seeing successful union votes at other locations and thinking they could improve conditions at their own stores by doing the same. Some 160 other locations in 28 states are slated to vote in the coming weeks and months.
They’re hoping to use collective bargaining to get a number of improvements, including higher pay, more hours, and better safety protections, a more necessary change since the erstwhile latte makers became front-line workers during the pandemic. They want more say in what their working lives are like, and they want to hold a company that talks of progressive values accountable.
https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive
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Ya gotta start somewhere, why not Starbucks?
Why seed banks aren't just for doomsday
Imagine an eerie slice of concrete on a frozen northern isle, holding a vault of seeds against the end of the world. The words "seed bank", might conjure up the so-called Doomsday Vault, on the island of Svalbard. There, collections of the world's crops are held in stasis in case of future need, like a catastrophic volcanic eruption, a world war, or rapid sea level rise.
But what most people don't fully comprehend is that the Vault is primarily a back-up, a very placid hard drive of genetic material from a kaleidoscope of far more active facilities all around the world. These gene banks are managed by foundations, universities and governments. In some circles, the World Vegetable Center in Taiwan is famed for the completeness of their aubergine collection. Peppers, too, are a specialty, and gene bank manager Maarten van Zonneveld has a particular yen for the mung bean.
More than 132,000 samples of rice varieties reside in the International Rice Genebank in the Philippines. Wheat and corn and their little-known wild relatives swell the storage facilities of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center not far from Mexico City. Other crops have their devotees, and their collections, dotted around the globe.
By and large, these resources are available to plant breeders looking to create better, hardier, or tastier crops. "The gene bank is part of open science," says van Zonneveld. It's there to serve.
But with the rise of large-scale genome sequencing, these repositories are starting to play a new role. If you want to know the evolutionary history of the chili pepper, or how to breed a chickpea that can survive climate change, the seed bank is an intriguing dataset to draw on. It's not just for Doomsday. It's for the day after tomorrow.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220331-why-seed-banks-arent-just-for-doomsday
The heavy losses of an elite Russian regiment in Ukraine
In any war, there are units that distinguish themselves and others that become symbolic of failure. The 331st Guards Parachute Regiment had high hopes of being the first, but now represents the disintegration of Russia's plan for a quick war.
The regiment's commanding officer, Col Sergei Sukharev, was killed in Ukraine on 13 March, and was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal. At his funeral, deputy defence minister Gen Yuri Sadovenko said the colonel "lived for the future, for the future of our people, a future without Nazism".
In any war, there are units that distinguish themselves and others that become symbolic of failure. The 331st Guards Parachute Regiment had high hopes of being the first, but now represents the disintegration of Russia's plan for a quick war.
The regiment's commanding officer, Col Sergei Sukharev, was killed in Ukraine on 13 March, and was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation medal. At his funeral, deputy defence minister Gen Yuri Sadovenko said the colonel "lived for the future, for the future of our people, a future without Nazism".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60946340
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War's human toll and the lies of the enemy regime
UPDATE: Wears Valley wildfire spans 3,700 acres, currently 5% contained
Despite rain moving across East Tennessee overnight, officials reported the fire that broke out in the Wears Valley community of Sevier County has now burned 3,700 acres.
Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said that the Wears Valley wildfire, officially referred to as the Hatcher Mountain-Indigo Lane fire, has burned over 3,700 acres and is currently 5% contained as of Thursday morning.
At least 100 structures have been damaged or destroyed by the blaze but Waters said no fatalities or missing persons have been reported.
More than 200 fire personnel are working in the area to combat the wildfire. Waters said Thursday that five firefighting vehicles were damaged as part of the fire.
https://www.wate.com/news/wears-valley-wildfire/live-east-tennessee-officials-update-wears-valley-wildfire/
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It's not getting any better, folks. The wind is driving it.
How tensions between the police and media boiled over one chaotic night in LA
Bodycam footage shows police shooting rubber bullets at reporters. Smartphone videos capture police taking them into custody. Throwing them to the ground. Striking them with batons.
Over the past two years, 200 journalists have been arrested or detained while doing their jobs, right here in the U.S. Journalists have complained that police kept them far from the action, shut them down, even brutalized them and destroyed their equipment — in short, intimidated and prevented them from reporting.
One night of chaos in Los Angeles stands out, however, both for illustrating the collapse of the relationship between these two powerful institutions — the police and the news media — and for helping to spark reforms in California.
A year ago this month, as police prepared to sweep Echo Park Lake of homeless encampments, protests broke out. The reporters who descended on the scene to record it were caught in the middle, as police were unable or unwilling to distinguish between reporters and activists.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1087495900/echo-park-protest-lapd-journalist
U.K. Spy Chief Says Russian Army Is a Mess, Downed Own Plane
Vladimir Putin “massively misjudged the situation” in ordering the invasion of Ukraine and surely knows just how poorly things are going for Russian forces even though his closest advisers are hiding the truth from him, according to the head of Britain’s spy services.
In a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra on Thursday morning, GCHQ director Sir Jeremy Fleming said the Russian leader’s “unprovoked and premeditated attack on Ukraine” has been “shocking in every sense of the word.” He also said Putin, a former KGB officer, was caught completely flat-footed by what he found.
“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Fleming said. “He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime. He overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory. We’ve seen Russian soldiers—short of weapons and morale—refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”
Throughout the past 36 days, Putin has consistently been misled by top Russian military and intelligence officials about the army’s progress in Ukraine, declassified U.S. intelligence has reportedly shown. During a stop in Algiers on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Putin’s inner circle is not telling him the truth about the war and the true bite of economic sanctions on Russia’s economy. An unnamed senior U.S. intelligence official told the Associated Press that Putin’s advisers are “scared” to give him an accurate version of events, and that those deceiving him include Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gchq-chief-sir-jeremy-fleming-says-russian-military-is-bloody-mess-shot-down-own-plane?ref=home
Soldiers 'Irradiated' From Digging Trenches in Chernobyl
Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials.
The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of the country’s nuclear power stations, said the Russian soldiers had panicked and fled.
“It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this morning to the Ukrainian personnel of the station," the agency said in a statement on Telegram, adding that a small number of Russians still remained at the facility.
The agency said it had also confirmed reports of Russian forces digging trenches in the Red Forest, “the most polluted in the entire exclusion zone.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-troops-suffer-acute-radiation-sickness-after-digging-chernobyl-trenches?ref=home
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Another fcukup by the Russian army..........
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 9,965
