Zorro
Zorro's JournalEcuador's Troublemaker volcano sends lava flying in fiery explosion
British volcano photographer Dr. Richard Roscoe documented the spectacular eruption of a little-known active stratovolcano in the Amazonian Andes of Ecuador known as “Reventador” in early December. Reventador is Spanish for “troublemaker.”
Roscoe and a German colleague captured the rumblings and fiery explosions with wide-angle videos using moonlight alone by applying a unique filming technique at a specific rate and sped up the video to show the activity over the course of a three-day period.
Reventador’s last recorded major activity was in 2002, when a huge eruption occurred with almost no warning and its pyroclastic flow of gas and matter wiped out a nearby valley and damaged pipelines. Dr. Roscoe said.
Volcanologists say Reventador is undergoing another explosive phase with gas and lava spewing from vents in its summit.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3926105/ecuadors-troublemaker-volcano-sends-lava-flying-in-fiery-explosion/
Quite a natural spectacle.
Track Palin called cops 'peasants,' asked father to shoot him, court documents say
Source: LA Times
New details emerged Monday about the arrest of Track Palin, the eldest son of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, with charging documents saying he broke into his parents’ home and beat his father, who was brandishing a gun but refused to shoot.
Track Palin, 28, was arrested Saturday and is charged with first-degree burglary, fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief; he remains in custody. A court filing describes a chaotic scene at the family’s home in Wasilla, Alaska, when Track Palin confronted his father over a truck he wanted to pick up.
His father, Todd Palin, had told him not to come to the home because Track Palin had been drinking and taking pain medication, according to a sworn police affidavit and charging documents.
“Track told him he was [going to] come anyway to beat his ass,” according to an affidavit filed by Wasilla police Officer Adam LaPointe.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-alaska-palin-20171218-story.html
Quite the little cuddlebunny.
Trump seeks public exoneration as Democrats and Republicans battle over ending Russia probes
The White House and Republican lawmakers are pressing for an end to multiple investigations into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia, aiming to clear the president as soon as possible before the taint of scandal further damages his presidency.
President Trump expects to be publicly absolved of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III by year’s end or soon after, and several people around him say the often-impulsive president could erupt in anger if that unlikely timeline is not met.
Some associates believe, or hope, that Trump will fire his three lawyers if he is not exonerated, opening the door for a more combative approach to the Mueller investigation that he sees as an affront to his legitimacy.
Republicans leading House and Senate probes are pressing for a rapid conclusion to their own investigations of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Doing so would reinforce Trump’s argument that links between his team and Russian intelligence have been over-hyped by the media and his political opponents.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-russia-probe-20171217-story.html
Republican traitors. Betraying their country since 1968.
Baffled DNC Plant Roy Moore Not Sure What Else He Could Have Done To Defame Republican Party
HUNTSVILLE, AL—Scanning his mind for any minority groups he could have demonized more forcefully, Alabama Senate candidate and secret Democratic operative Roy Moore admitted Tuesday that he wasn’t sure what else he could have done to destroy the Republican Party’s reputation.
“When Nancy [Pelosi] sent me here, I was convinced that revealing myself as a pedophile would be more than enough, but now I’m just at a loss,” said Moore, who admitted he thought DNC chair Tom Perez was going over the top by suggesting he say gay marriage had made the U.S. the source of all evil, but that didn’t even budge the polls.
“I mean, I stood on a stage and wistfully recalled the era in which slavery existed in this country. What else am I supposed to do? I’ve been really digging deep to vilify the GOP and make myself unelectable, but I still might win.”
At press time, Moore was kicking himself for not sabotaging himself more egregiously by claiming he supported a ban on assault weapons.
https://politics.theonion.com/baffled-dnc-plant-roy-moore-not-sure-what-else-he-could-1821234868
It's The Onion, folks.
Roy Moore's Defeat Means Ted Cruz Retains Status as Most Despised Person in Senate
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Roy Moore’s defeat in Alabama’s special election means that the Texas senator Ted Cruz will easily retain his status as the most despised person in the United States Senate, congressional insiders confirmed on Wednesday.
According to those insiders, Cruz had been secretly hoping that Moore’s election would displace him from his unenviable position as the most vilified pariah in the upper chamber.
“Cruz was praying that, if Moore got in, that might change the daily conversation around here from ‘Who has to sit next to Ted?’?” one Republican colleague said.
Cruz, whom colleagues deem even more insufferable than such other senatorial ass-clowns as Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton, was reportedly “distraught” upon learning that Moore would not be joining him in the U.S. Senate.
“Ted was absolutely positive that Roy would have been more hated than he is,” one Senate colleague said. “But, to tell you the truth, it would have been close.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/roy-moores-defeat-means-ted-cruz-retains-status-as-most-despised-person-in-senate
A fake engineer got busted waiting for a wax. She was just arrested again, cops say.
A woman who state police say used her fake engineering firm to try to trick a South Florida city into giving her a $33.3 million construction contract was arrested Friday and booked into Miami-Dade County jail, records show.
But it’s not her first time behind bars in this case. She was arrested earlier this year while waiting at a wax salon.
Janet LeGrand bonded out of jail in July, facing a charge of organized scheme to defraud. On Friday, state insurance investigators accused her of the same crime and added a charge of failing to provide worker compensation coverage as required by law, an arrest warrant shows.
LeGrand’s recent arrest comes months after Homestead police say she duped dozens of employees into working for her fake engineering company, the Bleu Network. Over the years, LeGrand ultimately stiffed several people out of thousands of dollars, according to Miami-Dade County’s wage-theft office.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article189057499.html
She must be a hell of a salesperson.
Jobs are everywhere, just not for people over 55
Job openings have been at record highs and the unemployment rate has edged down to all-time lows. But it’s a very different story for older unemployed Americans, especially ones out of work for over six months — the long-term unemployed.
A stunning 33% of job seekers ages 55 and older are long-term unemployed, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute. The average length of unemployment for the roughly 1.2 million people 55+ who are out of work: seven to nine months. “It’s emotionally devastating for them,” said Carl Van Horn, director of Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, at a Town Hall his center and the nonprofit WorkingNation held earlier this year in New Brunswick, N.J.
And, recent studies have shown, the longer you’re out of work — especially if you’re older and out of work — the harder it becomes to get a job offer.
The job-finding rate declines by roughly 50% within eight months of unemployment, according to a 2016 paper by economists Gregor Jarosch of Stanford University and Laura Pilossoph of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “Unemployment duration has a strongly negative effect on the likelihood of subsequent employment,” wrote researchers from the University of Maryland and the U.S. Census Bureau in another 2016 paper.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobs-are-everywhere-just-not-for-people-over-55-2017-12-08
Trump's Slurred Speech Tied to Low Battery in Putin's Remote
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J.Trump slurred his speech during his announcement about Jerusalem on Wednesday because of “low-battery issues” with Vladimir Putin’s remote, the White House said on Friday.
Speaking to the White House press corps, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Trump’s slurred speech was “a case of what happens when President Putin doesn’t change the batteries in his remote frequently enough.”
“President Trump makes public appearances several times a day,” Sanders said. “In the course of those appearances, President Putin’s remote can drain its battery very quickly.”
Calling Putin’s remote-control operation of Trump “far from glitch-free,” Sanders said that there have also been problems with the Russian leader’s attempts to control Trump’s thumbs when he tweets in the early-morning hours.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trumps-slurred-speech-tied-to-low-battery-in-putins-remote
Who are Republicans really? Look to Alabama.
Just how disordered have our politics become? And how off-the-rails is the Republican Party?
The good people of Alabama will help answer these questions in next Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate. The whole world will be watching them decide whether party and ideology top decency and moderation; whether there is simply no end to the extremism Republican voters are willing to tolerate in their ranks; and whether a majority in their state believe that being a credibly accused sexual predator is better than being a Democrat.
They will also be telling us what they think the word “Christian” means.
The outcome is likely to be determined by the consciences of conservatives, and of a specific kind: those who see Mitt Romney and Republicans like him as far more reflective of their moral sense than is Judge Roy Moore, the GOP’s ethically defective nominee whose indifference to the law led him to be removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court twice.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-are-republicans-really-look-to-alabama/2017/12/06/3d655860-dac2-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html
FDA Confirms Psilocybin Reduces Risk Of Mindlessly Following Society's Rules Like Fucking Lemming
SILVER SPRING, MD—Following months of research into the psychedelic compound’s effects, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed Thursday that psilocybin could significantly reduce the risk of mindlessly following society’s rules like a fucking lemming.
“After numerous clinical trials, we can state with a high degree of certainty that ingesting small doses of psilocybin greatly decreases the chances of blindly marching in lockstep like a bunch of goddamn sheep being led to the slaughter,” said FDA Chief Scott Gottlieb, noting that brain-scan data collected from a double-blind study indicated that a 3.5-gram dosage of psilocybin could greatly enhance the probability of busting open the doors of perception and freeing users from their mind-prisons.
“We found that study participants were far more likely than the general public to cut the marionette strings that had been controlling them their entire shitty lives. In addition, test subjects also entered a heightened state of awareness of the fact that the entire social order is a sick fucking joke perpetrated by the man.”
Gottlieb cautioned that not all the results were as positive, however, noting that many users experienced a deep depression resulting from watching the masses sleepwalk through life like pathetic automatons.
https://www.theonion.com/fda-confirms-psilocybin-reduces-risk-of-mindlessly-foll-1821046978
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