August 18, 2020

Passerby Saves Near-Death Hiker, Stranded for 2 Weeks (man finds him twice!!)

Passerby Saves Near-Death Hiker, Stranded for 2 Weeks
'Never had we found somebody who had been out for that long'


https://www.newser.com/story/295084/family-out-for-a-hike-saves-a-hiker-near-death.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

John Utsey was hiking with his two kids in New Mexico's Santa Fe National Forest on Saturday when his daughter got out of sight. He called out loudly and heard her answer from around a bend, farther up the trail. "Then I heard somebody else answer from way off," Utsey tells KRQE. The voice led him 600 yards off the trail, down a steep hillside, to the spot where a hiker lay close to death. The man had been stranded for a full two weeks—half of that time without food, per the AP—after injuring his back. "He couldn't stand, he couldn't move. He was delirious," says Utsey. He'd only managed to stay alive by dragging himself to a stream to drink. "His lips were all chapped ... [and] bleeding. His tongue was swollen. He was super gaunt and skinny," says Utsey. "I was like, 'This guy really needs help.'"


Utsey and his kids gave the man all of their food and water, then hiked back to the trailhead to call 911. He gave authorities the man's GPS location, but firefighters failed to find him after an eight-hour search. That's when Utsey jumped into action yet again. He returned to the Windsor Trail on Sunday morning, found the hiker, called 911 again, and eventually directed two separate crews to the man's location. "Never had we found somebody who had been out for that long," Santa Fe Fire Capt. Nathan Garcia tells KRQE. "He seemed kind of at the end when we did actually encounter him." Firefighters have not identified the man but say he is an experienced hiker over the age of 50. He's now recovering in a Sante Fe hospital.

https://www.newser.com/story/295084/family-out-for-a-hike-saves-a-hiker-near-death.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

August 18, 2020

Gap closing flagship store on San Francisco's Market Street / hasn't paid rent for 2,785 stores

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Gap-closing-flagship-San-Francisco-Market-Street-15492883.php

Gap Inc. announced this week it is closing the flagship location at 890 Market Street and its store in the Embarcadero Center this month.



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An SEC filing posted in April revealed Gap stopped paying rent for its 2,785 North American retail stores for the duration of government-mandated closures, an expense totaling some $155 million.

The failure to pay led to a handful of legal standoffs between Gap and its landlords. Major retail landlord Simon Property Group LP., filed a lawsuit against the Gap this month, stating the retailer is "taking opportunistic advantage" of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

In late March, the company announced that it was furloughing the majority of its store employees in the United States and Canada, "pausing pay but continuing to offer applicable benefits until stores are able to reopen."

To further cut expenses, the company said in April that it would "reduce head count across its corporate functions around the world" and reduce pay for its leadership team and members of its board of directors.

Gap didn't share the number of jobs lost with the S.F. store closures but said, "as with any store closure, we are encouraging employees to find opportunities at other locations within our family of brands."

August 18, 2020

the cost of a slowdown in the mail

https://twitter.com/MbTboy/status/1293948807240019969

One of my prescriptions that come in the mail is 5 days late already. The other is 2 days late. I asked my dr to write an interim prescription. Insurance doesn’t cover. So it’s $7,500 and $1,200 out of pocket.
@realDonaldTrump
sabotage of USPS will kill Americans.
@GOP
SILENT

August 18, 2020

Lawrence O'Donnell mailed a bday card to travel 3 miles on July 28th. it arrived 18 days later

https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1294735777415548931

I mailed a birthday card with a 1st class stamp at a Post Office on July 28 hoping for delivery on August 1.

It arrived today August 15.

It took 18 days to travel 3 miles.

Last year’s birthday card arrived the day after I mailed it at the same Post Office.

Vote early.

August 18, 2020

Treat Williams tweet: I've been crying for 30 minutes. I love this country. Let's save it VOTE

https://twitter.com/Rtreatwilliams/status/1295533597542227973

August 17, 2020

Covid-19 is now the No. 3 cause of death in the US. & testing to find and isolate cases has dropped

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html

Just as more students head back to school, health experts are worried about a disturbing trend in much of the country: decreasing testing combined with high test positivity rates.

In other words, Covid-19 is still spreading rampantly, but there's less testing to find and isolate cases.
The number of tests performed each day in the US has dropped by an average of 68,000 compared to the daily rate in late July, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.

Fifteen states have conducted fewer tests this past week compared to the previous week: Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, Washington state, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

August 17, 2020

"First, they came for the mailboxes."

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-mailboxes-sorters-usps-2020-election-louis-dejoy-20200816.html

Trump’s coup-by-mail is underway. America can’t wait until November to fight back | Will Bunch

First, they came for the mailboxes.

The once-fantastical notion of a political or military coup in the United States has long lingered in the American imagination. Older Boomers might remember, for example, the book and movie Seven Days in May. It’s a riveting plot line because, in a nation with a 231-year tradition of peacefully transferring power, a coup was always something that Can’t Happen Here. Americans’ knowledge of how coups even work comes mostly from stories on NPR from faraway lands where soldiers seize a nation’s key choke points, as tanks roll onto the tarmac of the international airport and camouflaged men appear at the state TV station.

Now ... It’s Happening Here.


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This is a nine-alarm fire for American democracy, and so I’m doing something here that I usually work hard to avoid — writing about the same topic twice in one week. Because it’s that damn important. The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan (buy her book) wrote this weekend “if journalists don’t keep the pressure on Postal Service problems, they will be abdicating their duty” — and she’s right.

One reason to keep hammering on the issue is that the idea of politicians so brazenly hijacking USPS is such an alien notion to most Americans that people aren’t thinking clearly, proposing normal-democracy solutions to a problem created by authoritarianism. It was only a few months ago that many folks — myself included — pleaded for the Trump administration to listen to Democrats in Congress and agree to a multibillion-dollar bailout of financially troubled USPS. Now, that makes no sense. It seems that we could give DeJoy $1 trillion and he’d still be throwing letter sorters in the trash. Likewise, what’s up with folks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the perpetually “concerned” Sen. Susan Collins sending sternly worded letters to DeJoy, calmly making sure he’s aware of the premeditated crimes he’s committing in broad daylight?

Trump may be a narcissistic buffoon who’s wrong about nearly everything, but unfortunately there is method to the madness of slowing down the mail. As of right now, even after a week of bold, negative headlines about what’s happening at USPS, a staggeringly high number of Americans plan to vote by mail in November — nearly half, according to some recent polls.

August 17, 2020

Republicans are in a No-Win Position on the Post Office

https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/politics/republicans-are-in-a-no-win-position-on-the-post-office

Trumpian Illogical Deals

President Trump said mail-in voting would lead to the greatest rigged election in history.

Yet, Trump also said he would approve billions of dollars in funding for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) as part of a coronavirus relief package if Democrats make concessions on certain White House priorities.

"Sure, if they gave us what we want. And it’s not what I want, it’s what the American people want," Trump said during a news conference, as reported by The Hill.

President Willing to Accept Fraud

One does not or at least should not be willing to accept "the greatest rigged election in history" for other concessions.

Yet, this is the kind of deal Trump repeatedly is willing to make.

Huawei Revisited

Recall Trump's claim of major security concerns over Huawei's 5-G phone software. Yet the president was willing to allow Huawei software if China would buy more soybeans.

What kind of sense does that make?

Something either is a security risk or isn't. And if it is. you do not bargain it away for soybeans or in Covid negotiations.

Lies or Stupidity?

There are only two possibilities in play.

Trump is a liar.
Trump is stupid enough to bargain away genuine security concerns to make a deal.
Is it #1, #2, or both?

August 17, 2020

With 'Nobody Going to Work,' Private Bus Companies Are Worried About the Future

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/nyregion/nyc-bus-commute-decamp.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

With ‘Nobody Going to Work,’ Private Bus Companies Are Worried About the Future
One company has suspended all operations for the first time in 150 years. Others have drastically reduced service and are pleading for financial help from the federal government.

No other city in America is as reliant on mass transit as New York, with millions of daily riders usually cramming into subway cars, trains and buses run by sprawling public agencies.

But, before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100,000 commuters also depended on a string of private bus companies to get them to their jobs in the city.

Now, however, with fear of infection keeping most workers away from their offices even as New York slowly reopens, that herd of buses has thinned and the companies that operate them are struggling to survive.



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“Through World War I, World War II, 9/11, the housing crisis, Hurricane Sandy, people were still going to work,” Mr. DeCamp said from his company’s headquarters in suburban Montclair, N.J. “Right now, you’re just seeing nobody going to work.”

DeCamp’s daily ridership had fallen from more than 6,500 passengers to less than 400, Mr. DeCamp said. With no pickup in sight, he felt he had no choice but to park his fleet of about 50 buses and furlough his work force, which included about 110 unionized drivers and mechanics.

August 17, 2020

Museum's Future Clouded by Chance Discovery: Swastika Hiding in Plain Sight

The swastika on the floor of a studio at the Kunststätte Bossard.Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times

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Museum’s Future Clouded by Chance Discovery: Swastika Hiding in Plain Sight
The discovery of a Nazi symbol in the mosaic floor of a German museum has prompted bitter debate about its creator’s past and the institution’s role.


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JESTEBURG, Germany — In 1911, the Swiss artist Johann Bossard came across an empty property in the grasslands near this small town south of Hamburg. Inspired by the location, he purchased the land and together with his wife, Jutta, spent decades building his life’s great project: three esoterically shaped art-covered buildings and a landscaped garden. Since 1997, the site has been a museum known as the Kunststätte Bossard, and an off-the-beaten-path destination for fans of expressionist art and architecture.

But in 2017, Alexandra Eicks, an employee on the site, made a discovery that threw the project in a more sinister light. Ms. Eicks was preparing for a children’s art class when she noticed a geometric shape on the studio’s mosaic floor that nobody at the museum had seen before: a swastika. Because the tiles had been installed after the Nazis’ rise to power, it raised the possibility that the Bossards held more troubling views than had previously been known.

Three years later, the mosaic is at the center of a pointed debate in this pastoral corner of northwestern Germany. Activists are demanding the swastika’s removal, but the museum says the whole site is a “Gesamtkunstwerk” — a total work of art — that should not be altered impulsively, and that the symbol should stay so it can be used to educate visitors about the country’s past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/arts/design/swastika-germany-museum-kunststaette-bossard.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=727931411&impression_id=cd19efd5-e086-11ea-9bdf-b769e62228b7&index=5&pgtype=Article®ion=footer&req_id=944665708&surface=most-popular