These are all recent headlines (and links to the stories). I call 'em diet-headlines for obvious reasons.

Russia fires on Ukrainian vessels in Black Sea; 2 wounded

US makes preparations to sail warship into Black Sea amid Russia-Ukraine tensions

Mikhail Gorbachev: George H.W. Bush and I Ended a War Together. But Peace Is Now in Jeopardy

Trump names new Joint Chiefs chairman

John Kelly, Trump’s Chief of Staff, to Leave White House

Brutal week: Dow plunges 1,150 points

I'm sure someone could do a series just on global warming and turning the planet into Venus before our kids grow old, but this is what's keeping me up nights.

Now ... what was that about not wanting to impeach Trump right away? The GOP support of Trump in the Senate has already started to fracture, and they are not known for staying on a sinking ship. Once they start throwing him under the bus, it'll be amazing how quickly they turn on him.

Oh yes, here's the clip from Galaxy Quest that I think best describes the GOP:

So does anti-matter fall up or down? CERN is trying to find out ....



Also ...

New antimatter gravity experiments begin at CERN

If it falls up, I hope they call it Upsidaisium!

> And when was domestic violence decriminalized?

Feb 7, 2017 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-signs-law-decriminalizing-domestic-abuse-57070

Also earlier ...



Btw, I'm finding this really interesting so far ... https://mothersanddaughters.themoscowtimes.com

There was lots of coverage of the existence of the Russian 456 rules, but I almost gave up on finding the actual list. I'd wanted to know too and was hoping someone else had found it

Btw, I found one story that was pretty cool,

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/captain-svetlana-medvedeva-paved-way-for-russian-women-to-enter-mens-professions-58973

She sued to be able to captain a boat and got mixed results in the courts. The "court recognized her rejection of employment as discriminatory" but then refused to order any change in behavior by her employer. So she won a symbolic victory but didn't get the job.

One thing I thought was interesting is that all of these 456 jobs are basically "dangerous" and women can legally be hired into them if the job is made safer. But the culture there is that it's just fine for men to work stupidly dangerous jobs, but not women. Crazy!

That took some serious googling!

A nice article on it: http://www.prospektmag.com/2017/03/one-hundred-years-modern-russian-women-banned-serving-456-professions/

Includes a real pointer to the list (in Russian): http://elementy.ru/Library6/p162.htm

And feed it to google translate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Felementy.ru%2FLibrary6%2Fp162.htm&edit-text=

Don't know if you still care, but that was a challenge!

Remember this stench. If the GOP forces Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court, the Dems need to beat the drum and remind every voter of the GOP's true colors for years to come. We need to not just just take the majority in the Senate, but drive them out and get to 67 votes. The Supreme Court is no place for low life political operatives.

The good news is that Kavanaugh is deeply unpopular. The bad news is that the GOP will be unrestrained in their depravity and I'm still waiting to see just how low they can go.

For all those who think it's not harmful to believe in fairy tales, this baby was found dead "... in her crib from malnutrition and dehydration". The father is not just an anti-vaccer, but also believed that it's God's will that the weak should be allowed to die. His behavior is completely consistent with his vocal religious beliefs.

Before someone objects that this is just an insane extreme, let me point out that it's a matter of degree, not kind, that separates this murder from socially acceptable behavior based on one's faith.

Really? Yes. Just one example: my wife's grandmother refused diagnostics or treatment of whatever illness it was that took her life. It was completely socially acceptable to just let her die because of her "Christian Science" faith. We never found out what illness took her ... it could have been something trivial to cure.

Believing in fairy tales is evil. It distorts priorities, causes immoral and irrational behavior and frequently hurts others.

Yes I'm an unapologetically angry atheist. It's not difficult to guess why.

A 10-month-old died after her parents refused to get help for religious reasons, police say

So I've been without cable for a while, and I'm stuck. We can't seem to get by without a live feed of MSNBC. But all of our options to get MSNBC either really suck or send some of our $$ to Fox.

Anyone have a good suggestion?

The list so far:
- Pluto.tv - NBC/MSNBC feed is confusing & not live. Slow slow service.
- Youtube tv - supports Fox.
- Sling - supports Fox.
- DirecTV Now - supports Fox.
- Fubo.tv - supports Fox.
- livenewsmag.com - supports Fox.
- Playstation Vue - supports Fox.
- Amazon/Prime/Channels - Amazon is much too evil to even consider using.
- NBC News App (Apple TV) - not live, subset of the broadcasts. Better than nothing, but ...!

I had high hopes of NBC streaming it directly, but according to what I've been reading they're not thinking of streaming live feeds of MSNBC (NBC News Streaming).

I'd rather go without MSNBC than see another dollar go to Fox.

Apologies if this is the wrong forum to ask, I couldn't find a good match for 'ethical shopping'

The Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford University) has taken a fresh look at the Drake equation and concluded that we are likely alone in the galaxy and in the observable universe, dissolving the Fermi paradox.

FHI: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox


Vox: Why haven’t we found aliens yet?