Thursday, March 27
Robert Reich
Where the HELL are the Democrats?
Friends,
I’ve asked this question before. Now I’m SHOUTING it.
Where the HELL are the Democrats?
It should be the Democrats’ moment — the time when Democrats are everywhere, on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s eyes.
But Democrats are nowhere. AWOL. Almost invisible.
They’re squandering this opportunity.
Can you imagine a more important moment for Democrats to sound the alarm? At the request of a Republican president, the richest person in the world is taking a sledgehammer to Social Security, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, the entire Department of Education, and much else that Americans need and want.
He’s doing all this so the president can give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest members of our society and the biggest corporations in America.
Worse, the president chose this man for this job because he sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting the president elected. And this man, already one of the government’s biggest contractors, is salivating over the prospect of turning even more of government into his or other corporate hands.
At A Glance
Listen to first-known recordings of how sharks sound.
New two-clawed dinosaur species unearthed.
Two-in-five Americans have relatives who immigrated through Ellis Island. (via YouTube)
Photo captures both the lunar eclipse and Northern Lights.
A Ford exec kept score of his colleagues' verbal flubs.
Turn map locations into watercolor slide puzzles.
"The Office"-style Chili's to open near Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Irish pub on remote island seeks new owner.
Clickbait: James Webb reveals cosmic tornado. (w/photo)
In The NEWS
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Track and field to become first Olympic sport to require genetic testing on female athletes (More) | USC star JuJu Watkins tears ACL, will miss the remainder of March Madness (More)
> "Good Night, and Good Luck," starring George Clooney, hauls in $3.3M to break weekly box office record for a Broadway play (More) | "Adolescence" pulls in 66.3 million views in its first two weeks, a Netflix record for a limited series (More)
> Two-time UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez sentenced to five years in prison on attempted murder charges (More) | Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and French soccer star Michel Platini acquitted by Swiss court of corruption charges (More)
Science & Technology
> OpenAI announces image generation capabilities wrapped into its ChatGPT chatbot; integration effectively merges DALL-E image generator into the company's flagship product (More)
> Climate researchers recreate shifts in the Atlantic jet stream over the past 600 years, linking shifts in the global winds to historic weather events (More) | What is the jet stream? (More)
> Study reveals the neurotransmitter dopamine helps baby birds learn how to sing; the reward molecule helps reinforce learning circuitry in the brain (More)
Business & Markets
> US stock markets close up (S&P 500 +0.2%, Dow +0.0%, Nasdaq +0.5%) (More) | Consumer confidence index over future of US economy falls to 12-year low (More)
> Pioneer music streaming service Napster acquired by 3D technology firm Infinite Reality for $207M (More) | Vertical farming company Plenty files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after raising nearly $1B (More) | Online trading platform eToro Files for US initial public offering (More)
> Chinese EV giant BYD reports record annual revenue of roughly $107B for 2024, outpacing Tesla ($98B) (More) | Samsung co-CEO Han Jong-Hee, credited with helping to boost Samsung's television business, dies of heart attack at 63 (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> PBS, NPR heads testify today on federal support for public broadcasting in House subcommittee hearing (More) | Senate committee advances nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (More) | Social Security chief nominee Frank Bisignano testifies at confirmation hearing (More)
> Japanese court orders Unification Church to dissolve after 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led to probe into group’s political ties (More) | World's longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamata, receives record $1.4M payout after being acquitted of 1966 murders (More)
> Pope Francis' doctor says medical team considered ending treatment when he came close to death over a breathing issue during his hospitalization (More)
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Retirement
When you think of retirement, of what do you think?
Are you not old enough to start thinking about your retirement?
When do you think that process should start?
Believe it or not, you should start thinking about your retirement, the day you graduate from high school even though you might not start working until you graduate from college.
Why?
Cumulative Interest Earning...
It may not seem like a big deal to you at 18 years of age, but it you start saving $2.50/day at that age and do so every day for the next 40 years... at the end of those 40 years, you will have $500,000 and you will then be age 58 and still too young to draw Social Security.
You will have this amount of money because of Cumulative Interest Earning...
If you and your wife did this together, you would have ONE MILLION DOLLARS and if you and your wife saved $5/day, the two of you would have TWO MILLION DOLLARS...
Your money would be invested into a Mutual Fund which are nice and safe investments but which over a TWENTY-YEAR PERIOD OF TIME tend to generate, on average, 8-10% each year.
We are not really talking about the stock market or buying individual stocks as mutual fund invests in hundreds of stocks at one time so, if one loses, one gains... the gains always outweigh the loses. But, the ROI (interest earned) is typically LOWER than in the stock market.
How much money do you throw away each day?
Never-Before-Seen: UCLA Physicists Discover Mysterious Spiral Patterns on Solid Surfaces
Hundreds of regular patterns spontaneously emerge on a small germanium chip.
A curiosity about tiny dots on a germanium wafer with metal films led to the discovery of intricate spiral patterns etched by a chemical reaction. Further experiments revealed that these patterns emerge from chemical reactions interacting with mechanical forces through a deforming catalyst. This breakthrough marks the most significant advance in studying chemical pattern formation since the 1950s. Understanding these complex systems could shed light on natural processes like crack formation in materials and the effects of stress on biological growth.
University of California, Los Angeles doctoral student Yilin Wong noticed tiny dots appearing on one of her samples, which had been accidentally left out overnight. The layered sample consisted of a germanium wafer topped with evaporated metal films in contact with a drop of water. On a whim, she examined the dots under a microscope and couldn’t believe her eyes. Beautiful spiral patterns had been etched into the germanium surface by a chemical reaction.
Wednesday, March 26
Siblings and Families
How close are you to your brother (s) and sister (s)?
It is not that easy an answer for several reasons.
- do you have one brother and one sister?
- do you have just one brother or one sister?
- do you have two sisters?
- do you have two brothers?
- what is the age difference between your siblings?
- did you parents have a favorite (s)?
- was there any bullying going on?
- the various career paths that were taken.
Influences
The closer the years in between, typically the closer the siblings.
The influence of the parents influences the closeness as well.
The financial wealth of each sibling (s).
The career path of each sibling (s).
The mobility of each sibling (s).
Probably the most important issue that I have been able to discover that separates or brings siblings together is:
WHAT THEY HAVE IN COMMON
That may not seem like much of a big deal but it is because if two siblings have very little if anything in common, then there is absolutely no reason for them to get together outside of the parents. Once the parents are deceased, there is NO REASON for them to get together.
This HAVING SOMETHING IN COMMON holds true for parents and children as well.
If the parents are uneducated and the child or children are, then there is very little in common and no reason to get together, outside of respect for holidays. Grandchildren present a reason to get together but after they reach a certain age, the reasons start to diminish.
Most of American families for these reasons are no longer close. The family unit is breaking down.
Robert Reich
A fitting monument to Trump?
Friends,
Imagine we are alive a decade from now. We’ve survived Trump, Vance, and Musk. We are trying to cope with the wreckage they’ve left us with — trying to put back together our government, our democracy, our Constitution.
What do you believe will be a fitting monument to the memory of Trump?
I raise this question because Trump’s Republican lapdogs in Congress aren’t waiting until after the Trump regime to come up with such a monument.
They’ve already filed a rush of bills seeking to honor Trump while he is still in office.
It’s a brown-nosing effort without precedent in congressional history — revealing the lengths Republican suck-ups are willing to go to curry favor with the nation’s would-be dictator.
At A Glance
Why Americans are working less. (w/charts)
Squeaky clean space stations are making astronauts sick.
... and SpaceX rocket leaves glowing spiral in the sky.
The hidden effects of March Madness. (via YouTube)
How old is your body? Science says to stand on one leg.
Hummingbird chick uses caterpillar disguise to scare predators.
The US businesses still using typewriters.
Plane turns around after pilot forgets passport.
Clickbait: Parrot dances and belts to Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody."
In The NEWS
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Ari Emanuel steps down as CEO of Endeavor, the talent agency he founded in 1995, as part of deal to take the company private; Emanuel will remain as CEO of TKO Group, which owns WWE and UFC (More)
> NCAA women's basketball tournament Sweet 16 field set; see latest bracket (More) | University of Virginia women win record-tying fifth straight NCAA swimming and diving championship (More)
> French actor Gérard Depardieu's sexual assault trial begins; Depardieu is accused of sexually assaulting two crew members on a movie set in 2021 (More)
Science & Technology
> UK officials report world's first known case of H5N1, also known as the bird flu, in sheep; risk to general public remains low, health officials express concern the strain could mutate into more dangerous strain (More) | Zoonotic diseases 101 (1440 Topics)
> Marathon runners metabolize brain-cell insulation known as myelin as fuel during races; MRI study shows brain recovers over the course of around two months (More)
> Mathematicians decode patterns of how people walk in large crowds; model allows predictions of when crowd movement transitions from orderly to chaotic (More)
Business & Markets
> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +1.8%, Dow +1.4%, Nasdaq +2.3%) as President Donald Trump signals he might exempt some countries from reciprocal tariffs expected April 2 (More)
> South Korean conglomerate Hyundai announces $21B US investment, which includes $5.8B steel plant in Louisiana (More)
> Georgia jury orders Monsanto parent Bayer to pay nearly $2.1B in damages to man who says Roundup weed killer caused his cancer; Bayer faces more than 177,000 lawsuits involving the weed killer (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg says US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly included him in Signal group chat where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of military plans against Yemen's Houthi rebels (More) | See original report (More) | US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy resigns after five years in the role (More)
> Turkey detains more than 1,100 people following mass protests after Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was arrested over corruption charges; İmamoğlu had emerged as a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (More)
> Oscar-winning Palestinian director of "No Other Land" documentary reportedly attacked by Jewish settlers in the West Bank and detained by Israeli military (More)
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Poliltics
Politics...
What is it?
What is it not?
The American people elect politicians to positions so that these elected officials can make decisions on our behalf.
Currently, we have two main political parties: the democrats and the republicans. The democrats represent our liberal views concerning how decisions should be made while the republicans represent our conservative views.
Consequently, whichever party wins a particular election, the other party will automatically be AGAINST just about everything that the winning party wants to do on behalf of the American people.
Politics takes place on the Federal level with the President and the Congress being elected by the general public with the Supreme Court and other judges being elected by the party that is currently in charge.
Then there is the State and Local level of politics which works in the same way with governors, state legislatures, mayors, city councils and judges.
Along each level of election, Americans are exposed to the influences of one party over another party in making decision for their citizens and residents.
This is AMERICAN POLITICS and immediately creates an ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP between the citizens of our country. Over the years, this adversarial relationship has become more and more intense and has created a level of HATE between the two parties that has never been seen before.
Our political future is in question...
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