What This Is About

 

Welcome, first-time readers, to my personal blog page, where I have been publishing essays for the past 15 years. Since the start of the pandemic, I have also been posting these essays at Meta (aka Facebook), but for a number of reasons I'm in the process of phasing out that practice.

I'll continue providing a summary of the day's most significant news stories there, plus occasional essays and promotions of other writers' work, which I do frequently.

But this will continue to be the permanent space for my work, along with my photo site, "Sidewalk Images."

As the pandemic recedes for most (though not all) of us, we must deal with the aftermath. Except for the most privileged, life has been more or less on hold since March 2020 when the lockdowns began.

Early in 2021, the vaccines arrived and ever since then we have been crawling out of a deep hole back toward some sort of sense of normality.

In the process of doing so, it's clear that damage has been done -- to our lifestyles, our social mobility, our psychology and explicitly to our mental health.

Many peoples' lives have been on hold. It is not just the generation of young people who have had to hit "pause" on the restart button as they graduated from school, signaling the moment they normally would have begun their entry into professional life and transitioned from their families to a larger role in society.

Many of the rest of us face the same challenge.

In my case, the pandemic coincided with my retirement after a 55-year career and a series of debilitating illnesses. So I spent the entire lockdown recovering strength and preparing to re-enter society.

While doing so, since I am a writer, I inhabited the meta verse in a very public way, sharing my daily musings for a large multinational Facebook audience.

This has been fun and satisfying.

But my personal circumstances are changing. I need to start earning at least some income again. I am going to need to find a place to live. I need resume my own life.

I know I am not alone in this dilemma so I can only hope that some of my new Facebook friends will "stand by me" during this transition.

(BTW, comments are enabled below but no one has used them for many years.)

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

* Origin of Virus May Remain Murky, U.S. Intelligence Agencies Say -- A declassified report said a clearer answer would require more information from Beijing or new discoveries and reiterated divisions over natural causes vs. a lab leak. (NYT)

* FDA authorizes Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children 5 to 11 (WP)

* VIDEO: Covid-19 Pandemic ‘Far From Over,’ W.H.O. Says -- Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, called for “global coordination” to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control, after the number of cases and deaths worldwide increased for the first time in two months. (Reuters)

* ‘Astounding’ new sensors make U.S. nukes more powerful and more accurate. But they may create additional security perils. (WP)

* Case Against Cuomo ‘Very Solid,’ Sheriff Says of Move to File Complaint -- The district attorney has not committed to prosecuting the former governor, and experts called the sheriff’s decision to proceed independently unusual. (NYT)

* Climate Consensus Sought After Decades of False Starts (WSJ)

* National climate pledges are too weak to avoid catastrophic warming. Most nations are on track to miss them anyway. (WP)

* An Electricity Crisis Complicates the Climate Crisis in Europe -- Prices for power have soared, and some politicians are now trying to use that as a lever to slow action on climate change, a strategy with far-reaching consequences. (NYT) 

* Scientists tracked a mysterious signal in space. Its source was closer to Australia --

A mysterious signal that appeared to be emanating from Proxima Centauri put scientists on a hunt to track down its source. What they found was that it had a decidedly earthbound origin. (NPR)

* Earth gets hotter, deadlier during decades of climate talks (AP) 

* Britain sees ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ discovery of complete Roman statues(WP) 

* Abortions Fell by Half in Month After New Texas Law ;(NYT) 

* Leaders have expressed “broad support” for a landmark deal to establish a 15% global minimum corporate tax that aims at deterring multinational countries from using clever accounting to elude taxes by using low-rate havens. (AP)

 * During Jan. 6 riot, Trump attorney told Pence team the vice president’s inaction caused attack on Capitol (WP) 

* Microsoft topples Apple as most valuable company -- Apple lost its crown as the world's most valuable public company to Microsoft on Friday, as the iPhone maker's shares continued their downward slide. (Reuters)

* As vaccination mandate looms, New York prepares for shortage of firefighters, police (Reuters)

* Rare ‘Penis Plant’ Blooms For First Time In 25 Years (The Onion)

*** 

 "Stand By Me"

Writers: Leo Robin, Ralph Rainger 

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No, I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand
Stand by me

So darlin', darlin'
Stand by me, oh, stand by me
Oh, stand, stand by me
Stand by me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand
Stand by me

And darlin', darlin'
Stand by me, oh, stand by me
Oh, stand now, stand by me
Stand by me

Darlin', darlin'
Stand by me, oh, stand by me
Oh, stand now, stand by me
Stand by me
Whenever you're in trouble 
Won't you stand by me?
Oh, stand by me
Won't you stand now?
Oh, stand, stand by me

It's All Our Imagination

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” -- George Berkeley

_________________

On one of the warmest evenings of the year, a group of neighbors celebrated a man's 80th birthday with champagne and shortbread -- the latter a nod to his Scottish roots. A dozen people  across all age ranges from a few months to the birthday boy sat around a small table perched at the edge of a street.

He quoted Berkeley, the great Irish philosopher, who questioned whether anything we consider real actually exists outside of our consciousness. Mere objects like the table and chairs we were using are ideas perceived by the mind and therefore cannot exist without being perceived.

It's an attractive notion when one scans the news each day, as I do as a public service. When sorting headlines and news summaries from the major news organizations and a handful of minor ones, I rely on journalistic judgement to choose the ones I endorse.

This does not mean I agree with the point of view in these articles; I rarely commit to that. Rather, it means these are the things going on that I think all should know about.

Then again, if all of these things are mere projections of our minds, maybe we should join together and thinks of a few solutions.

Perhaps we could imagine solutions for the problems these headlines capture -- war, violence, poverty, cruelty, destruction, mayhem, planetary decline.

All we need to do is imagine a better world.

***

My decision whether to publish my essay at Meta (formerly Facebook) is now a day-to-day one as I transition away from the social network. In any event, all of my essays, with links to the headlines and archives of thousands of essays and photos are available at my personal blog site: <http//www.hotweir.blogspot.com/>.

FRIDAY NEWS HEADLINES:

* Facebook Renames Itself Meta -- The social network, under fire for spreading misinformation and other issues, said the change was part of its bet on a next digital frontier called the metaverse. (NYT)

* The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them -- Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a longstanding trend, but many employers said there’s a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste. (NYT)

* Gen Z is growing up during a pandemic. They have a message for the rest of us (CNN)

* Chief federal judge in D.C. assails Jan. 6 prosecutions: ‘The rioters were not mere protesters’ (WP)

* Lawyer John Eastman, architect of a Donald Trump scheme to overthrow the 2020 election, admitted to a progressive activist posing as a fan that he was counting on former Vice President Mike Pence to thwart American voters and toss Joe Biden's victory. But Pence turned out too be too much of an "establishment guy at the end of the day," Eastman complained on video. [HuffPost]

* Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s slashing rhetorical style and divisive politics allowed him to essentially take over the Republican Party. His supporters are so devoted that most believe his false claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. But the same tactics that have inspired fierce political loyalty have undermined Trump’s business. (Reuters)

* Keep or Replace? The Fate of the Minneapolis Police Is in Voters’ Hands. -- In the city where the “defund the police” movement took off, voters will decide next week whether to replace their Police Department with a new public safety agency. (NYT)

* A landmark congressional hearing to probe the extent to which the oil industry misled the public about global climate change featured executives of some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies and industry trade groups further downplaying climate science. None of the industry representatives would commit when asked to pledge to no longer direct funds to efforts aimed at obstructing climate initiatives. [HuffPost]

* Biden unveils $1.75 trillion spending plan, but divisions delay economic agenda (WP)

* Afghanistan's Taliban government is pressing for the release of billions of dollars of central bank reserves as the drought-stricken nation faces a cash crunch, mass starvation and a new migration crisis. (Reuters)

* In Afghanistan, a girls’ school is the story of a village (AP)

* Climate Change Became the Largest Part of Biden Spending Bill -- As paid family leave and other priorities were taken out of the president’s plan, the largest piece became a $555 billion plan to fight climate change. (NYT)

* Wages and salaries jumped in the three months ending in September by the most on records that date back 20 years as companies are forced to offer higher pay to fill a near-record number of available jobs. (AP)

* Los Angeles is aiming to run entirely on clean energy by 2035. If successful, it would be the first major U.S. city to do so. (WP)

* A criminal complaint charging former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo with a misdemeanor sex offense was filed in a court in Albany, the state capital, the first prosecution stemming from a misconduct scandal that led to his resignation. (Reuters)

* The CDC has unveiled a stringent new standard that's expected to bring the number of children ages 1 to 5 considered to have high blood lead levels from about 200,000 to about 500,000. (NPR)

* The University of California, San Francisco, is opening a $535 million brain research facility that will be the largest neurology and neuroscience center in the country. (SFC)

* Lawmakers say they will propose constitutional changes to theCalifornia’s recall election process. (AP)

* One Marin farm tested sprinkling seaweed powder over its dairy cows’ alfalfa and hay. The result was a drastic decrease in methane emissions. (SFC)

* The Turnarounds That Sparked Michigan and Michigan State to Undefeated Starts (WSJ)

* Paid Leave Struck Down By People Who Do Combined 4 Hours Of Work Annually (The Onion)

***

"Imagine"

John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Back Home, Reconsidering

In recent weeks, my audience at Facebook appears to have fallen precipitously to the point that I've tentatively concluded that it is no longer worth my time to publish essays there. I'll continue here on my personal blog as I have been doing for many years.

This is part of an ongoing struggle to find a role for myself in retirement. For over a year and a half, posting my long essays on Facebook filled a void in my life now that I don't have a job or any professional obligations to fulfill.

Having hit the artificial limit of 5,000 "friends" quickly after I started, I've been treading water on audience development ever since.

Probably half of that total are "soft" members, who joined my network but never return to read anything.

The number of regular readers is probably closer to 100 loyal friends.

I have also failed to earn any ad revenue here at Blogspot, so the days that ads will appear here probably are numbered.

It's time for me to re-evaluate what I am doing. The status quo isn't working for me on any level.

***

TODAY"S HEADLINES:

* China’s Weapon Tests Close to a ‘Sputnik Moment,’ U.S. General Says -- Gen. Mark A. Milley said China’s testing of a hypersonic missile “has all of our attention.” (NYT)

* The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing's pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses. (Reuters)

* Facebook in 2019 was told of ‘social civil war’ in Poland, triggered by negative posts (WP)

* Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is blocking Congress from providing American workers with paid family and medical leave, leaving the U.S. as the only industrialized nation without such a mandate. Manchin privately expressed concern about the cost of paid leave, and the potential for fraud. Supporters were especially frustrated that the possibility of a federal paid leave mandate was killed after the pandemic made so clear how essential it is for workers to be able to take time off without losing their jobs. [HuffPost]

* Starbucks said all of its U.S. workers will earn at least $15 — and up to $23 — per hour by next summer. The wage announcement comes as employees in Buffalo, New York, are trying to form a union to give them greater leverage on issues like understaffing of stores and worker training.[AP]

* Singapore is looking into an "unusual surge" of 5,324 new infections of COVID-19, the city-state's health ministry said, its highest such figure since the beginning of the pandemic, as beds in intensive care units fill up. Meanwhile, parts of northeast China are on heightened alert as COVID-19 returns. (Reuters)

* Yosemite Falls Surges After West Coast Storms Bring Needed Rainfall -- More than six inches of rain fell over Yosemite National Park in central California over a 36-hour period, causing the waterfall to surge after a dry summer. (NYT)

* Historic rain and snow begin to refresh California lakes and mountains (WP)

* Australia is fighting fire with fire, but the nation is running out of time (WP)

* Dr. Deborah Birx, the former response coordinator for the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, told a House subcommittee that the White House messed up a chance to prevent up to 40% of America's deaths from COVID-19. She blamed Trump’s reaction on his dealing with a reelection campaign that she said made the White House “somewhat complacent.” [HuffPost]

* The U.S. Congress will today open a year's worth of investigations into whether Big Oil deceived Americans about its role in climate change, with Democratic lawmakers planning to grill the chiefs of four oil companies and two lobby groups. (Reuters)

* 

Communities across the United States are reconsidering their approach to gifted and talented programs in schools as vocal parents blame such elite programs for worsening racial segregation and inequities in the country’s education system.

Communities across the United States are reconsidering their approach to gifted and talented programs in schools as vocal parents blame such elite programs for worsening racial segregation and inequities in the country’s education system. (AP)

* Intelligence Agencies Failed to Predict Rapid Fall of Kabul (WSJ)

* How Will We Live if Covid Is Here to Stay? -- Rather than debate how to end the pandemic, we need to debate how to live with it. (NYT)

* California is readying 4,000 sites to administer over a million Covid-19 vaccines to children ages 5 to 11. (CNBC) 

* U.S. economy slowed to a 2% rate last quarter in face of COVID (AP)

* Cheap, generic anti-depressant may reduce severe Covid-19 disease, study finds (CNN)

* Alaska did well early in the pandemic. Then the misinformation and distrust kicked in. (WP)

* Israel Advances Plan for New Settlements, in First for Bennett Era -- Approved despite the objections of the United States, critics say the new homes will consolidate Israel’s presence in the West Bank and make it harder to create a Palestinian state. (NYT)

* ‘When do we get to use the guns?’: The ongoing danger of false election fraud claims (WP)

* Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party could lose its majority in Sunday's general election, polls show, potentially turning new leader Fumio Kishida into another short-term prime minister and triggering a return to political uncertainty. (Reuters)

* Taliban Allow Girls to Return to Some High Schools, but With Big Caveats -- In some provinces, teenage girls have been allowed to return to secondary schools, though some teachers and parents still have doubts about what this means about Taliban rule. (NYT)

* Poll Finds Most Americans Would Swap Democracy For $100 Best Buy Gift Card (The Onion)

So It Goes

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait. -- Balzac (1834)

_____________________________________

There's a hopeful story buried in today's news. Another rich guy has developed an interest in saving the local news business, in this case in Baltimore -- definitely a place that could use some good old-fashioned kick-ass reporting.

(Like pretty much all places, actually.)

I don't mean to sound glib. All week so far I have been focusing on developments in my profession that can be considered promising. 

* Peter Richardson's closer look at how Hunter Thompson helped shape journalism in the U.S. from his time in the Bay Area.

* Multiple news organizations combined on the "Facebook Papers."

Now, a Maryland hotel magnate, Stewart Bainum, has committed $50 million to start the Baltimore Banner. Please read the article. It's blueprint for what needs to happen all across the country.

Let's just hope we have enough conscientious rich people.

***

With a nod to Balzac and the way his meaning has been interpreted over the past 187 years of wealth and crime, if you've ever wondered what motivates investigative reporters to do their work, this pretty much sums it up.

We see a few men amass great fortunes while the mass of people struggle to get by. One way or another, these rich men come to dominate the levers of power in society, both for better and for worse.

There could be no philanthropy without wealth, other than the charitable acts of the human heart, and those turn out to be how most of us survive life's rougher moments.

The poorest people I've ever encountered were in Central and South Asia and they also were the most generous too strangers in need of food or the place to rest their head.

But in our impossibly privileged world in the West, most basic comforts can be taken for granted most of the time for most of the people. 

The system goes on. Unless we have investigative reporters tracking down the new crimes that soon enough will yield new rich people who can become the new philanthropists, nothing will ever change.

C'est comme ça que ça se passe.

***

In personal news, Ancestry.com reports that I am apparently one percent less Scottish than previously believed. It's unclear which one percent we're talking about here, but there's a small fingernail I've always suspected could be from Wales.

Also, Ancestry believes it may have discovered a man who was my fourth-great-grandfather, John Stanley Weir, who lived in North Carolina in 1780.

Actually, that seems highly unlikely, since my paternal grandfather's family only arrived in North America  (from Ireland to Canada in 1830 -- 50 years later. I suppose against all odds my grandmother, Alice Jane Armstrong, could have had a Southern ancestor named Weir, but the DNA tree remains silent on that score.

On a much more immediate matter, Happy 23rd Birthday to my youngest!

THE HEADLINES:

* Bainum unveils plans for new ‘Baltimore Banner’ news site — and hires Kimi Yoshino, a top L.A. Times editor, to run it (WP)

* America ‘on fire’: Facebook watched as Trump ignited hate

 -- The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot. (AP)

* Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation (NYT)

* Here’s how Facebook’s algorithm shapes your news feed (WP)

* Facebook Faces FTC Probe Over Its Internal Research (WSJ)

* Floods, flames and heat: A year of extreme weather presents a devastating new reality -- As leaders descend on Glasgow, Scotland, for this year’s climate conference, most of the world is already feeling the repercussions of their inaction (WP)

* U.S. billionaires would pay tax on unrealized gains from their assets to help finance President Joe Biden's emerging social-policy and climate-change legislation, according to a proposal unveiled by the top Senate Democrat for tax policy.  (Reuters)

* The deluge California received over the past few days was nowhere near enough to end the drought. (AP)

* Billions of barrels of wastewater laced with toxic chemicals that were disposed of in the state’s Central Valley may be leaking into the ground. (Grist)

* A new U.N. report finds the world’s biggest economies are failing to slow global warming (WP)

* F.D.A. Panel Recommends Covid Shots for Children 5 to 11 (NYT)

* New cases in the U.S. down nearly 60 percent since delta variant surge (WP)

* Pharmaceutical company Merck agreed to allow other drug makers to produce its COVID-19 pill, in a move aimed at helping millions of people in poorer countries get access to the potentially life-saving drug, a United Nations-backed public health organization said on Wednesday. (AP)

* Yes, You’ll Want to Vaccinate Your Kids Against Covid. An Expert Explains Why. -- Just because Covid-19 is sickening and killing fewer children than adults does not mean that children are free from risk. (NYT)

* Yes, young children are at risk of covid-19. They need vaccines. (WP)

* President Joe Biden stumped for Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe for governor of Virgnia, painting the race as an urgent referendum on Trumpism in the Republican Party. Polls show that McAuliffe is neck and neck with GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin before the election next week. “Extremism can come in many forms. It can come in the rage of a mob driven to assault the Capitol. It can come in a smile in a fleece vest,” Biden said, a direct attack against Youngkin’s campaign garb. [HuffPost]

* Half its original size, Biden’s big plan in race to finish (AP)

* Hertz Links Up With Uber to Offer 50,000 Tesla Rentals (WSJ)

* The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Islamic State in Afghanistan could have the capability to attack the United States in as little as six months, and has the intention to do so, a senior Pentagon official told Congress. (Reuters)

* A cyberattack paralyzed every gas station in Iran (NPR)

* Hong Kong's legislature passed a new film censorship law to "safeguard national security", though critics say it will dampen creativity in its world famous movie industry and further reduce freedoms in the former British colony. (Reuters)

*  The big dump of precipitation prompted several Tahoe resorts to open for ski season over Halloween weekend. (SFC)

* Greyhound To Send Chimps On Pioneering Bus Trip From Buffalo To Atlantic City (The Onion)