February 17, 2022

Museum Security Guard Adds Eyes to Painting's Faceless Figures

The guard at a museum in Russia has been suspended after he used a pen to draw on “Three Figures,” an avant-garde painting from the 1930s.

A detail from “Three Figures,” by Anna Leporskaya, after a security guard penned eyes on two of the faces in the painting.Credit...The Art Newspaper Russia, via Associated Press

A security guard who recently vandalized a 1930s-era painting during his first shift at a museum in Russia has been suspended for what a top official at the museum called “a stupid mistake.”

In December, the guard at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia, used a ballpoint pen to draw eyes on two of the faceless subjects of “Three Figures,” which the artist Anna Leporskaya painted from 1932 to 1934. The painting, which was on loan to the center from a museum in Moscow, was part of a temporary exhibition of avant-garde artwork.

The Yeltsin center, which is dedicated to Russia’s first elected president, did not announce the vandalism at the time. But after a report of the incident last month by The Art Newspaper Russia drew international attention, the center said in a statement that “there was an accident.”

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Alexander Drozdov, the executive director of the center, identified the guard as Alexander Vasilyev and said he had been suspended during a police investigation of the vandalism. The guard is employed by a private security company and had been working his first shift at the museum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/world/europe/russian-painting-eyes-security-guard.html

Quite a way to start your first day on the job...

February 17, 2022

Report says San Diego now is nation's least affordable metro area, surpassing San Francisco

Monthly analysis compares median home price with local incomes. Drop in S.F. housing prices made a difference.

The “San Diego discount” apparently still lives.

The term, which you don’t hear so much these days, suggests that pay here is comparatively less than elsewhere because people want to live in San Diego. It was often invoked in the sports world, particularly regarding the great Tony Gwynn, who remained a San Diego Padre his entire career even though he could have received more money signing on with another team.

The notion also was applied to San Diego at large, and sometimes was used interchangeably with the more familiar “sunshine tax” — meaning the cost of living, particularly housing, is higher in desirable places to live like San Diego.

Those, essentially, were the underlying factors in a housing-related survey that said San Diego had become the least affordable metropolitan area in the nation.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/columnists/story/2022-02-16/me-sd-smolens-affordable

February 17, 2022

St. Petersburg company pushing for bill that would prohibit higher local wages

Power Design donated to the political committees of key legislative players but says it had nothing to do with writing the bill.

A St. Petersburg company that paid millions to settle a wage theft case is pushing a controversial bill that would prohibit local governments from setting a minimum wage higher than the state’s current $10 an hour for employees and contractors.

The company, Power Design, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the political committees of key legislators, including the bill’s sponsors. And the company is tied to a mysterious group lobbying on behalf of the bill.

A Power Design spokesperson said the company didn’t write the bill but cares about its goal.

“The genesis of SB 1124 was a group of developers and construction tradesman efforts to rectify the impact that local wage ordinances are having on residential projects (especially affordable housing projects) and entry-level positions,” David Redden, a Power Design spokesperson, said in an email.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/02/16/st-petersburg-company-pushing-for-bill-that-would-prohibit-higher-local-wages/

We don't know nuttin' about nuttin'...and that ain't our fingerprints all over dat bill...

February 16, 2022

Tomorrow -- Feb 17 -- is the anniversary of Rush Limbaugh's death

February 16, 2022

There Republicans go again, siding with thugs

The Republican Party has completed its transition from the “law and order” party to the party of thugs, violence and harassment.

Eight Senate Republicans — Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.), Mike Lee (Utah), James Lankford (Okla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), John Hoeven (N.D.) and Rick Scott (Fla.) — wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to protest the creation of a no-fly list for passengers who lash out at airline personnel attempting to enforce mask requirements. They claim the list “would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.”

Seemingly. Only defenders of anti-mask thuggery would be unable to make the simple distinction between the two categories.

In reality, the problem of violence against airline personnel and disruptive conduct requiring pilots to turn flights around has become pervasive. That’s why Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian asked Garland earlier this month to address the problem by creating the no-fly list.

The only surprise here is that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who went berserk over Garland’s vow to investigate threats and violence against school board members, did not also sign the letter. He, along with a slew of other Republican senators recently accused Garland in grossly misleading letter of “policing the speech of citizens and concerned parents.” Right-wing media picked up the issue as well, claiming that parents were being labeled as “domestic terrorists.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/16/republicans-support-violent-passengers/

February 16, 2022

Which U.S. communities sent money to support the Canadian trucker protests?

Residents in wealthy enclaves across the United States — from Beverly Hills, Calif., to suburbs of Austin, to Florida beach communities — sent millions of dollars to support trucker convoys that occupied the Canadian capital and shut down commerce at key border crossings between the two nations, according to a Washington Post analysis of leaked fundraising data posted online over the past 48 hours.

The richer an American community was, the more likely residents there were to donate, and the biggest number of contributions often came from communities where registered Republicans made up solid majorities, according to the review of more than 55,000 U.S.-based donations through the Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo. The site, which had suffered multiple security breaches over the past year, emerged as a fundraising magnet early this month after the better-known online fundraising platform, GoFundMe, stopped accepting donations for the convoy. GoFundMe pulled away after saying the occupation born out of opposition to vaccine requirements for truckers violated its policies.

Hackers began to extract the information about donors to the controversial protest shortly after the Super Bowl began Sunday evening, the site’s co-founder Jacob Wells told The Post in an interview. Someone posing as a donor was able to make changes that gave the intruder administrative powers. The hack did not necessarily reveal donors’ identities, he said, because users are not required to give a real name or authentic email address to send money. But the site requires a donor to supply a zip code when making a credit card transaction to guard against fraud, Wells said, thereby revealing the locations of nearly all U.S. contributors.

“It’s true, this was a campaign funded almost entirely by Canadians and Americans,” Wells said. “And it’s not over, we’re pursuing every legal means to continue to get the money where donors intend it to go.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/02/15/american-donors-freedom-convoy-zipcodes/

February 16, 2022

Steve Bannon's Richie Rich Friend Just Filed for Bankruptcy

The Chinese financier behind Steve Bannon’s right-wing projects and the social media app Gettr filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday, claiming to only be worth $50,000 to $100,000.

The move came just days after a New York judge ordered Guo Wengui, an anti-communist fugitive and self-styled billionaire, to cough up $134,000,000 in fines for moving his super-yacht out of U.S. waters amid a lawsuit brought by Hong Kong creditors. It also comes amid layoffs at Gettr and infighting within the anti-Beijing dissident network Wengui launched with Bannon.

The $28 million yacht—on which Bannon was famously arrested—was missing from Guo’s self-valuation in the Connecticut bankruptcy filing. Also absent was his $68 million penthouse overlooking Central Park; a holding company tied to Guo that purchased the pad reportedly filed for bankruptcy two years ago.

Neither Guo’s attorneys nor Jason Miller, co-founder of Gettr, immediately responded to requests for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/guo-wengui-steve-bannons-supposedly-rich-pal-just-filed-for-bankruptcy

February 15, 2022

Coastal Sea Levels in U.S. to Rise a Foot by 2050, Study Confirms

Sea levels along the coastal United States will rise by about a foot or more on average by 2050, government scientists said Tuesday, with the result that rising water now considered “nuisance flooding” will become far more damaging.

A report by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies also found that, at the current rate of warming, at least two feet of sea-level rise is expected by the end of the century.

“What we’re reporting out is historic,” said Richard Spinrad, the NOAA administrator, at a news conference announcing the findings. “The United States is expected to experience as much sea level rise in the next 30 years as we saw over the span of the last century.”

Mr. Spinrad said that while cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit warming was critically important, the projected sea level rise by 2050 “will happen no matter what we do about emissions.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/climate/us-rising-sea-levels.html

February 15, 2022

When 'Freedom' Means the Right to Destroy

On Sunday the Canadian police finally cleared away anti-vaccine demonstrators who had been blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, a key commercial route that normally carries more than $300 million a day in international trade. Other bridges are still closed, and part of Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is still occupied.

The diffidence of Canadian authorities in the face of these disruptions has been startling to American eyes. Also startling, although not actually surprising, has been the embrace of economic vandalism and intimidation by much of the U.S. right — especially by people who ranted against demonstrations in favor of racial justice. What we’re getting here is an object lesson in what some people really mean when they talk about “law and order.”

Let’s talk about what has been happening in Canada and why I call it vandalism.

The “Freedom Convoy” has been marketed as a backlash by truckers angry about Covid-19 vaccination mandates. In reality, there don’t seem to have been many truckers among the protesters at the bridge (about 90 percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated). Last week a Bloomberg reporter saw only three semis among the vehicles blocking the Ambassador Bridge, which were mainly pickup trucks and private cars; photos taken Saturday also show very few commercial trucks.

The Teamsters union, which represents many truckers on both sides of the border, has denounced the blockade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/opinion/canada-protests-black-lives-matter.html

February 15, 2022

Pastor Resigns After Incorrectly Performing Thousands of Baptisms

The pastor of a Catholic church in Phoenix changed one word in administering the sacrament, rendering baptisms performed there invalid, the church said.

The Rev. Andres Arango was leading a baptism at St. Gregory Catholic Church in Phoenix last year when some people in the pews heard a slight variation in the religious ritual.

“We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Father Arango said, his voice echoing in the church as he poured the holy water.

But there was a problem.

Saying “we baptize” was incorrect. The Vatican instructs priests to say “I baptize,” and if it is not said that way the baptism is deemed invalid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/us/catholic-priest-baptisms-phoenix.html

Well, not as bad as a botched circumcision, but whatever...