Since the story of The Great Seal has already been shared in the article and the comments here, I just recently read a book on the Soviet space dogs.

Strelka’s puppy, Pushinka, was given to Caroline Kennedy, but only after a thoughrough exam!

Pushinka (Russian: Пушинка, lit. ‘Fluffy’) was a dog given by the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, in 1961. Pushinka was the daughter of Strelka, who had travelled into space aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2.

Pushinka arrived at the Kennedy White House after Jacqueline Kennedy had spoken to Khrushchev about Strelka at a state dinner in Vienna. Mrs. Kennedy asked about Strelka’s puppies, and one was subsequently sent by Khrushchev to the White House. Pushinka was examined by the Central Intelligence Agency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center over fears that she might be concealing an implanted listening device. Pushinka was x-rayed, screened with a magnetometer, and inspected by sonogram. She was found to be free of subversive devices.

The White House electrician and kennel manager, Traphes Bryant, trained Pushinka with peanuts to climb up a ladder to Caroline Kennedy’s playhouse and slide down the other side.

Rosie came up yesterday with the Irish PM. MTG’s boyfriend, the guy that heckled Zelensky about not wearing a suit, asked why they let Rosie move there and Trump laughed and said good question. The PM had no clue what they were talking about and it got awkward.

A US reporter questioned the Taoiseach about Ms O’Donnell’s departure from America.

“Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland? I think she’s going to lower your happiness levels”, the reporter enquired.

Micheál Martin laughed nervously as President Trump told the reporter “Thank you, I like that question”.

Ugh, I can’t stand the thought of them signing this deal! I get so frustrated every time he entertains it. I don’t want to see them get screwed over while the US still benefits.

The only thing potentially positive is if signing actually gets real help sent there, and the US somehow gets sane people back in power that will repeal the deal or at least amend it more favorably because it was made through coercion.

The lack of a promise to actually send military aid though, plus the profiteering that usually happens when the US “helps” someone makes me really want Europe and friends to come through before he makes a deal with the US.

I did a behind the scenes tour at a facility and got to go in the hippo paddock. It looked like what they’d have to hold animals at Jurassic Park. All kinds of mechanized 4 inch steel bars and gates to keep them separated from each other and the works in confinement.

They showed me the command to get them to open their mouths and we got to toss them some food. Those mouths and teeth are even wilder up close!

Hippos are one of my fav animals, and I think they are the true king of beasts. So of course I reached out to touch its snout. It felt like the world’s largest strawberry. Smooth and leather, and the dimples for the hairs felt like where the seeds are. So sturdy, yet gentle at the same time. A real amazing experience.

Truly underrated animals by most people.

Spent a year working at a dry cleaners. The first time I opened that machine and got blasted in the face with perc vapors I imagined it must be like being exposed on a planet with a methane atmosphere. That is some harsh stuff. After that job I inventoried hazardous chemicals at a pharma research site, and nothing they had hit my lungs and eyes like perc. The labs at least had good ventilation. Dry cleaning is a harsh business. It was disgusting and dangerous in all kinds of ways no other job I’ve had has been.

My pleasure!

I was able to find it!

It is Planet Money - The Trade Fraud Protective 23 AUG 2024

Audio and transcript at that link, or you should be able to find it on your podcast app of choice.

It’s also power steering hoses in Thailand, not fan belts in Vietnam, so I hope that’s still ok. 😉

I heard about this a few months back on a podcast about auto parts. China just shipped the fan belts they were making to a warehouse in Vietnam, rebranded them, and shipped them to the US, tariff free.

They did some sort of chemical analysis on the Made in China and Made in Vietnam belts and the formulation of the rubbers was identical.

Enforcement to counter this would likely eat up too much of the tariff money, so it just won’t be done. China will still get paid the same, and at minimum we’ll eat China’s additional shipping costs.

I don’t disagree that what you’re saying shouldn’t be controversial, but after the crying they’ve had about athletes taking a knee, a one-off promotional beer can, and whatever other snowflake stuff I’ve repressed memories of, it just sounds extremely risky.

Lethal response training as a whole definitely needs work, but it’s something beyond the abilities of volunteer vets and animal handler. It feels like a psychological issue more than an educational one I obviously care about the animals, but shooting people is a greater priority, and reducing that should in turn help the doggos also.

Rescues have no guaranteed funding. I have not encountered one anywhere in the world that gets a single cent of public money. They also get free help rescuing animals on occasion from police. Even the hint of going after them politically I can guarantee would get them a Bud Light style boycott and nobody wants to be the private business or donor that supports the shelter that hates cops. They don’t have time or resources to deal with that. Drama is the last thing a rescue needs.

Not everyone can pull off the Edna look.

The referenced article from Cardinal News goes into much more detail.

In an interview with Virginia State Police on Feb. 8, Bell portrayed his second visit to the polls as a joke, according to the special agents who testified. In a recording of the interview, he said, “I was messing to see if they were gonna let me vote again to see what kind of fraud was going on.”

He told the agents, “But I went in and gave them my ID and then it showed up [that] I’d already voted.” He added, “So I was doing a little detective work.”

Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Rutherford took a dim view of Bell’s account, and noted that he was not authorized to test the system. The crime, Rutherford pointed out, is “attempting to vote twice, not voting twice.”

Would punishment fix this guy? Probably not. But now that this judge opens the door for other people to conduct their own tests, where does this stop? How many Trumpies do we let test the system? The poll workers have real jobs to do, and they don’t need guys like this there. Laws like this are supposed to be good laws because they deter the action, rather than have to actually punish someone for doing one dumb thing, but if you allow the dumb thing, you negate the law itself.

Lots of great stuff in the Cardinal article too, like this nugget at the end that is very interesting:

The jury deliberated for an hour and came back with a not guilty verdict. When the seven women and five men were polled about the verdict, Juror 12 said, “That’s not my verdict.”

Judge Michael Doucette sent the jury back to work on the verdict, and while they were out for about 10 minutes before coming back with a unanimous decision, Rutherford said he’d never seen a juror announce that he did not agree with the verdict. Juror 12 declined to comment after the jury was dismissed.

A senior Taliban official told The Telegraph of frustration from moderates with the more hardline elements of the regime.

“Someone should stop the supreme leader. Many within the Taliban are angry and worried that, with everything the leadership is doing, we could lose Afghanistan as quickly as we took it,” he added.

“They are worried that as soon as an alternative to the Taliban appears, the people will revolt, and the West will bomb us again,” the official explained.

I don’t know if any country is eager to return after the failures of Russia and the US. The worry about another warlord type offering even a few lost freedoms back though absolutely seems like a valid concern though to the current regime.

It’s better to have been overly cautious than to find out after the fact you left yourself too open to danger. I’m glad you were able to realize the situation you could have been in and were able to act on it despite the difficulty involved.

I don’t know you, but no matter who you are, I’d prefer you to be safe and happy. Nobody deserves to be miserable or scared.

I’m sorry you had to deal with all that to be safe. I hope you are in a better situation now. 😔

While the principle of our justice system is supposed to be the whole “better to let someone guilty go free then to punish someone innocent,” that’s naturally going to leave quite a number of people never getting the justice they deserve.

I have no clue what the right way to punish people is, but I feel people definitely have valid anger at the justice system even if things have been done by the letter of the law. The law is not perfect by design, so we should absolutely have the right to criticize it.

I think there is just a general feeling of frustration for how the law is being used. The theory being the laws are there to protect innocent people from accusations from corrupt actors, but the reality is that the ones that are caught red handed are taking advantage of those protections to continue to get away with things, dispose of evidence, etc while slowing the wheels of justice for years. See Trump, Ken Paxton, Bob Menendez, and so on.

While not a violation of the literal law, it is a violation of the supposed purpose of those laws.

ETA: Also, anyone stuck living in these jurisdictions is also being forced to continue to pay these peoples’ salaries and be subject to their corrupt will in the meantime. I imagine it isn’t a great feeling to have these people being in charge of things, and as a citizen who is supposed to be the one being served by this person, you as an individual, city, or state, have no protection from this person, while a crook’s livelyhood is being protected instead. It’s like if you couldn’t get a restraining order against someone until they were convicted of a crime.

It’s a pretty long article, but there’s some fascinating stuff in there. Let me leave you with this bit to entice you to read it:

But it’s Bethel’s school of supernatural ministry, which has been called a “Christian Hogwarts”, that is often credited with its growth. The program was founded by Kris and Kathy Vallotton, the senior leaders of the church, and teaches students that they can perform miracles and heal through prayer. “Students will learn how to read, understand, and ‘do’ the Bible, how to practice His presence, to witness, heal the sick, prophesy, preach, pray, cast out demons and much more,” the school website states.

People travel to Redding from around the world, more than 100 countries, to attend the vocational program. Students have been known to approach people in the city, particularly those in casts or with walkers, to offer prayers for healing. The focus on “supernatural power” is fundamental to the church, which in 2019 asked members to pray for the resurrection of a two-year-old girl.

“This is the bind we’re in,” she said. “Shasta county is in this weird extremist sandwich where we have the rightwing pushing for guns and splitting the state. And there is the other extreme side of the sandwich that is Bethel church. Then the middle where people are trying to figure out how to survive in this place.”

I don’t recall where they all were, but I do remember there being a string of these power station shootings for a while. It’s somewhat nice to know the reasoning behind it all now, though also more disturbing seeing how widespread it is and not just a couple of local yahoos. Both these women deserve to put away.

My unsureness was only about the level of responsibility for Durov, though it seems some of his charges are for his complicities in allowing things like this to continue and failing to cooperate with requests to do something from authorities. It does sound like he is now cooperating to turn over any evidence he may have about crimes arranged over Telegram, so why I don’t feel this should give him a free pass, it’s good he may allow other crimes to be prevented or prosecuted.

I don’t follow much of this news lately, as I’ve just been overwhelmed by it becoming such a regular thing, so I’ve had to catch up on all these details.

Humber has one heck of a backstory. Meth addict dildo seller turned Nazi audiobook narrator.

I don’t know how to feel about the arrest of the person running the platform. I typically lean toward siding on it’s the responsibility of the posters for what they post, but at the same time, if you are knowledgeable people are using something of yours for a crime, and not just anything, but terrorism or supporting murder, it seems like he should definitely have some share of the responsibility for not even taking any form of action.

Agents recovered various firearms from her bedroom and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Clendaniel is prohibited from possessing a firearm because she is a convicted felon.

Evidence used in the trial included transcripts of recorded phone conversations between Clendaniel and a confidential informant, revealing that she wanted to obtain a high-powered rifle to shoot through substations in Reisterstown, Perry Hall, White Marsh, and more locations.

I tried to find data about how seriously straw purchases are being treated these days, as enforcement always seemed very lax. This is how this person seems to have obtained her weaponry. A straw purchase in the case of firearms is when someone buys a firearm with the intent of it ending up in the hands of someone else. It is common to have a partner or acquaintance purchase a gun to get around the background check.

I searched for “straw purchase jail” to try to find conviction rates, and oddly all the results looked to be only from Pennsylvania, and are pretty recent. There does seem to be some enhanced penalties put into place nationally, after a number of mass shootings traced back to straw purchases.

Prosecutors say Clendaniel has been in communication with her co-defendant, Russell, through Dallas Humber, an alleged transnational terrorist group leader from California. Humber is accused of soliciting hate crimes, the murder of Federal officials, and conspiring to provide materials to terrorists. The communication between Clendaniel, Humber and Russell persisted until July 2024.

Prosecutors allege this communication shows that Clendaniel is still conspiring during recorded phone calls while incarcerated.

Before receiving the sentence, Clendaniel addressed the courtroom saying she is more likely to hurt herself than others. She says she still retains her national socialist beliefs, which she has had since she was 13 years old, but that she would not act on them.

Judge Bredar explained that she is not being sentenced for her beliefs, rather she is being put behind bars because she was prepared to act on them and cause significant harm. He said he is not convinced she wouldn’t act on them in the future.

And she has learned nothing. Hopefully she will continue to incriminate herself on a regular basis to ensure she serves the full 18 years of her sentence.