Helping Hand

Stupidity

 

Americans Killed in the Afghanistan Withdrawal

 

Diversity

 

The Joker

Illegal Immigrants

 

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> The 111th Tour de France begins tomorrow with Stage 1 from Florence, Italy (More) | Team USA gymnastics trials for Paris Olympics began last night; see full results (More) | Jury orders NFL to pay $4.7B in damages in class-action antitrust lawsuit (More)

> Kinky Friedman, musician, satirist, and novelist, dies at 79 (More) | Bill Cobbs, Emmy-winning character actor, dies at 90 (More)

> Southern Cal's Bronny James will join his father LeBron James on the Los Angeles Lakers after being selected 55th overall in the NBA Draft (More) | NHL Draft begins tonight (7:30 pm ET, ESPN); see full first-round mock draft (More)


Science & Technology
> Google adds 110 languages to Google Translate—nearly doubling the number supported—after training the platform on its PaLM 2 AI language model (More) | Company to test facial recognition and tracking at its Seattle campus; visitors not allowed to opt out (More)

> Woolly mammoth extinction happened suddenly instead of a gradual die-off due to inbreeding, new study suggests; last remaining population lived on Siberia's Wrangel Island, disappearing about 4,000 years ago (More)

> Researchers grow 3D brain models using cells from different people in a single organoid for the first time; approach may lead to methods to test new drugs without needing human patients (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +0.1%, Dow +0.1%, Nasdaq +0.3%) as investors await today's release of the monthly personal consumption expenditures price index (More)

> OpenAI strikes multiyear licensing deal with Time magazine; deal gives OpenAI access to 101 years of Time content to train its models, allows Time to use OpenAI's technology to develop new products (More) | The Center for Investigative Reporting sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement (More)

> Walgreens shares close down 22% after company discloses it will shutter an estimated 650 to 700 underperforming US stores over a multiyear period (More) | Amazon plans to launch discount store with shipping directly from China in bid to counter Temu and Shein (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> US Supreme Court rejects Purdue Pharma's $6B OxyContin settlement that shielded the Sackler family from future lawsuits (More) | Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now (More) | ... and blocks the Environmental Protection Agency's interstate air pollution regulation (More) | ... and limits the Securities and Exchange Commission's use of in-house tribunals to enforce regulations (More)

> Former Uvalde, Texas, schools police chief criminally charged for response to 2022 school shooting that killed 21 people (More) | Judge sets June 2025 trial date for man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022 (More)

> Oklahoma superintendent orders public schools to teach the Bible for grades 5 through 12; move comes a week after Louisiana became the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom (More)

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

Americans

 Just for clarification, when I speak of Americans, I am referring to those people who are citizens of the United States of America, not those of Central or South America.

I will always be proud to be an American regardless of what my forefathers might have done several hundreds of years ago.  What is done is done and the best we can hope for is not to repeat the past going into the future.

However, I am not so sure that we are not doing exactly that.

We are more divided TODAY than the history books tell us we were divided during the CIVIL WAR.  That may seem not to be true, but I see it every day when I watch the FOX News, CNN, CBS, or MSNBC or when I read the news that is posted online, especially the social network forum of "X" (formerly twitter).

Now the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can tell these social media companies to take down content...

Not only do we make a point of letting everyone know that we HATE TRUMP but we are also attacking his supporters and his appointees (guilt through association).

On the other side of the coin, conservatives attack Biden, his son, as well as his cabinet members as being just as blatant in their actions as the President (more guilt by association).

I read an article earlier when some talking head says this judge is not up to the job or in over her head (meaning lack of experience) because she made a ruling that he did not agree with.  WHO'S PREJUDICE here???

I grew up in a house where both my parents were obviously biased against blacks inside the privacy of their own home, but in public would bend over backwards to help them.  I tried to live my life different in the sense of not being hypocritical.  But what amazes me now is BLACKS are typically more RACISTS than whites and don't hide their feelings at all.

NOW...  after years of SILENCE, we find that the USA is sitting atop a HOTBED of ANTI-JEWISH sentiments that were heretofore hidden.  The Jewish hate that I am witnesses seems worse than what might have been going on in Germany before the concentration camps were built and filled with Jews.  

Even now, it is still hard for me to believe that this is going on here.

For a variety of reasons over the last FOUR years, the global respect for the USA has substantially declined as evidenced by articles published in their newspapers.  

Americans are typically oblivious to this... 

AMERICA IS IN A BAD PLACE RIGHT NOW AND SHE NEEDS TO FIND A WAY TO EXTRACATE HERSELF BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE...

Somewhat Political

 

The Early Universe at Cosmic Dawn

The Cosmic Gems is one of the most highly magnified objects in space, thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration)





Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have observed five extremely dense proto-globular clusters along a hair-thin arc of glittering stars. The discovery could help them understand how the earliest galaxies formed.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered what could be the earliest star clusters in the universe.  JWST spotted the five proto-globular clusters — swarms of millions of stars bound together by gravity — inside the Cosmic Gems arc, a galaxy that formed just 460 million years after the Big Bang.


The Cosmic Gems arc gets its name from its appearance: When seen from our solar system, the star-studded galaxy looks like a hair-thin crescent due to the powerful gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy, which magnifies and distorts the distant galaxy's appearance.     READ MORE...

Supreme Court on Jan. 6th

 

Toast

 

My Bad

 

Hostages

 

Supportive Wife

 

Distress

 

Wake Up

 

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> The Atlanta Hawks take France’s Zaccharie Risacher with the top pick of the 2024 NBA Draft; Round 2 kicks off this afternoon (4 pm ET, ESPN) (More) | Team USA women's soccer 18-player roster announced for Paris Olympics (More)

> Investigation into "Friends" actor Matthew Perry's death reportedly could result in charges against multiple people involved in supplying Perry with ketamine (More)

> UEFA European Championship Round of 16 set; see latest bracket and schedule (More) | ... and Copa América group stage continues; see latest standings (More)


Science & Technology
In partnership with Eli Electric
> Daily multivitamin use shows no association with lower risk of death, including from cancer or heart disease, new research finds; study tracked almost 400,000 participants over 20 years (More)

> World's first usable titanium-sapphire laser on a microchip demonstrated; prototype is 10,000 times smaller and 1,000 times cheaper than commercial versions of the powerful research-grade laser (More)

> Scientists capture early moments of butterfly metamorphosis at the microscopic level, shedding light on how the insect's unique scale architecture forms on its wings (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +0.2%, Dow +0.04%, Nasdaq +0.5%); Nasdaq set for nearly 19% gain in first half of year, led by Nvidia and AI boom (More) | Amazon tops $2T market cap for first time as shares hit all-time high (More)

> Federal judge to likely reject $30B settlement between payment processors Visa, Mastercard, and merchants who say they have overpaid in credit card processing fees—which are often passed down to consumers (More)

> Japanese yen falls to weakest level against the US dollar since 1986; the yen has so far fallen 12% against the dollar this year, with analysts citing the gap between Japanese and foreign interest rates as a reason for the drop (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> US Supreme Court rejects lower court ruling restricting the Biden administration from contacting social media companies to remove misinformation (More) | The court is also planning to allow Idaho doctors to perform abortions in medical emergencies, per opinion accidentally published early (More)

> Bolivian general Juan José Zúñiga arrested after a failed coup attempt at the presidential palace; Zúñiga claims he was acting at the behest of the president (More) | Kenyan President William Ruto backs down on plans for tax hike following violent protests earlier this week and police crackdown (More)

> Centrist George Latimer defeats Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D, NY-16) in most expensive primary race in US history; total spend was $24.8M, almost $15M from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC (More)

SOURCE:  1440 News

Variation

 Believe it or not, there is variation in everything that we do and if, you are like me there are lots of things that I do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual basis.

So...  what am I talking about?

What about the time it takes you to drive to work in the morning.  If you left at the same time each morning, drove the same route, at the same speed, it would take you different times for you to arrive at work.  Don't believe me?  Keep track of your time for a week and see if I am not right.

What you might encounter:

• inclement weather than might slow you down
• a traffic accident that might slow you down
• more traffic than expected that slows you down
• your vehicle might develop a mechanical problem
• you may need to get gas
• you decide to stop for coffee
• a policeman slows traffic down

It is this unexpected variation that will typically alter the amount of time that it normally takes you to drive to work.

What you do to attempt to reduce the time...

• leave the house earlier
• take a different route
• drive faster than normal
• bring coffee with you
• make sure you don't need gas

So, what have you learned?

If you accept the fact that everything has variation, the in order to reduce the variation, you must be willing to CHANGE THE PROCESS.

The variation that is inherent in ALL PROCESSES comes from:

1. materials
2. labor (manpower)
3. methods
4. environment
5. machines

What materials do you use when driving a car?

Gasoline and Oil

Windshield wiper fluid

Brake & transmission fluid

What about labor (manpower)?

That would be you as driver

• do you know how to drive
• did you get plenty of sleep
• do you have good hearing/eyesight
• do you have good coordination/reflexes

What about the methods?

• do you use good driving techniques
• are you mindful of those around you
• do you maintain good posture or slouch
• are you talking on the phone
• speed of the vehicle

What about the environment?

• is it raining or snowing or sleeting
• is it windy, or foggy
• is it very hot or very cold 
• time left the house
• other traffic on the road
• the route you are taking

What about machines?  The vehicle being driven

• is it tuned up correctly
• are the tires properly inflated
• is it a new vehicle
• if used, how old
• is the windshield and mirrors clear
• does it need oil
• does it need radiator water

Each one of these areas has variation and while the variation in some areas is minute, there is other variation that could impact your time more.  Let me explain...  air pressure in one or more tires being incorrect is not going to impact the variation of time to work as much as a traffic accident or being stopped by highway patrol for driving too fast.

Next time, you are doing something simple like cooking breakfast, mowing the lawn, washing the car, going out to dinner, spending time at the gym, or filling up your vehicle with gasoline, each one of these processes is loaded with all sorts of variation that alters the time it takes you to complete the process.

Somewhat Political