As of today, every American is eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. For yourself, your neighbors, and your family — please, get your vaccine. pic.twitter.com/o75JYpGe6r
— President Biden (@POTUS) April 19, 2021
3 mRNA vaccines in development that aren't Covid: Immunizations for influenza, malaria and cancer https://t.co/HnKwtVI3f9 via @medical_xpress
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) April 18, 2021
Crazy to see and hear the first helicopter on Mars power up. Such an exciting time to be alive. pic.twitter.com/wKWjT4wa6Y
— Bluto (@BlutoTweets) April 19, 2021
But seriously — one of my favorite movie memories is the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (I was there opening night, in 1977!) when the camera pans over the NASA workroom, and there are a bunch of female and non-White extras just strolling through, doing their jobs. That was not standard, back in those days. And now…
Nasa staff celebrate in control room, as confirmation of the historic flight on Mars is received via satellite https://t.co/FLmUBDxhmG pic.twitter.com/VZgZv7ZQWH
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 19, 2021
debbie
Does anyone know how far away Perseverance was from Ingenuity when the test took place?
RandomMonster
What fresh hell will this day bring?
I mean, good morning.
Baud
No telling what America could achieve if we didn’t have to so much of our national energy simultaneously trying to maintain and tear down racial privilege.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
LiminalOwl (fka The Fat White Duchess)
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! ?
SFAW
@Baud:
I was going to attempt a semi-joke about the “racial privilege” enjoyed by all Those People, what with all the special treatment they get, such as police “escorts” wherever they go.
But, ya know, it’s just so effing depressing, and tiring, that Doing Anything While Black is still so much of a thing in 2021. Not to mention that cynical bullshit from McQarthy re: Rep. Waters.
Baud
Oh, Angus King on MJ essentially threatening filibuster reform if the GOP doesn’t deal on infrastructure.
dmsilev
@debbie: A few hundred feet, roughly. Far enough away that if something went catastrophically wrong with the helicopter, the rover would be safe. Close enough to take pictures and to serve as a radio link to the helicopter (which only has a very short range radio).
debbie
@SFAW:
Would have thought he’d have proposed censuring T**** for his remarks before the insurrection (or for anything said since June 2015). //
geg6
@Baud:
I saw that! Gives me hope.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Thanks. I couldn’t figure out the scale for the life of me.
SFAW
@Baud:
That’s great; I just wish/hope Manchin and Sinema would get on board. Doesn’t seem likely (re: Manchin), but maybe he’s staking out a position, from which he can move “because the Other Party has violated their (implied) promise to America and the American people by obstructing everything.” Maybe.
debbie
@Baud:
Why is there any hesitation about the filibuster, court, etc.? You just know what McConnell will do the instant he returns to the majority.
JPL
@Baud: And did Joe say good luck with that. bah humbug
SFAW
@debbie:
McQarthy’s still trying to get his statement (“there are two people I think are paid by Russia: Trump and Rohrabacher” [not verbatim, but close]) expunged from any/all public record.
Yes, I know your comment was snark.
Kristine
@Baud: Good news to start the day. I hope two of his fellow senators listen.
rikyrah
About the new proposals by the Democrats
Christina Henderson (@chenderson) Tweeted:
I read this and just smile thinking of all the Hill staffers who’ve worked diligently for years on these bills & white papers, getting their bosses comfortable with the idea, building outside support, & waiting for the right political moment.
https://t.co/cwb5tTidn8 https://t.co/ztrqSFRgc1 https://twitter.com/chenderson/status/1384463794060120068?s=20
satby
Hope Ozark has a safe and happy trip to meet his new granddaughter, and belated congrats to Just Some Fuckhead on the twin grandbabies! Good news to start a cold, dreary day here in SB, where 1-3 inches of snow, followed by two nights of hard freeze is expected.
I took memorial pictures of my beautifully blooming spring bulbs last night; even if I cover the flower beds the weight of blankets plus snow would break their stems. I will cut a few bouquets for myself though.
Geminid
There is a good article in Politico this morning, concerning tensions and hard feelings among Georgia Republicans. The report centers on the recent Cobb County Republican convention, where the race for County Chairman was easily won by the trumpiest candidate. (Cobb County is just northwest of Atlanta).
The article had three interesting data points: in 2012, Mitt Romney carried Cobb County by almost 13%; in 2016, Hillary Clinton won Cobb by 2 points; and last year Joe Biden carried Cobb County by 14%, a swing of 27 points in only 8 years. Some of this is due to demographic change, some to an energized Democratic Party, but a lot probably can be debited to the hard right turn by the Republicans.
satby
And after not commenting for over a day and from a different device my first one today is labelled a duplicate. What bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
The one thing that bugs me a little about Biden’s tweet is that it’s not every American–it’s every adult American. (I could breathe a lot easier if it were every American. We need to be able to vaccinate kids–requiring the vaccine in schools would probably do a lot to smash this thing. I guess that’s likely coming pretty soon.)
rikyrah
Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) Tweeted:
Apparently, it’s easy for Republicans to separate themselves from their morals and commitment to defending our democracy when there are campaign checks involved. https://t.co/3VXH7YobCf https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1384477132290727936?s=20
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
Hoping that the next age group approved before Fall will be 12-15 year olds. That would take care of high school aged children, and they could open back up without fears. Including extracurriculars.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Our coffee maker quit. Send help!
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: My daughter is in that group and she wants so badly to get vaccinated. Teenagers are a big chunk of cases right now, though they’re certainly not the ones getting the sickest.
rikyrah
Thread
Jennifer Cohn ✍? ? (@jennycohn1) Tweeted:
No more whataboutism:
Zip ties, gallows, murdered police officer, 4 more deaths, false imprisonment, Molotov cocktails, bombs, urination, defecation, destruction & theft of govt property, confederate flags, “Hang Mike Pence!” “I wanna see executions!” “We’re coming 4 u Pelosi!” https://t.co/yUyuzX8u2e https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1347983421327372288?s=20
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: That’s good. If you’ve always voted one way, that first vote for the other party is big one. You’ve broken the spell and quite possibly won’t fall back under it.
rikyrah
Ohio folks, what say you?
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) Tweeted:
The Democratic Mayor of Dayton, Nan Whaley, has announced a bid for Ohio governor.
“When you’ve been through what Dayton has … it molds you, puts a little steel in your spine, makes you strong enough to stand up to the biggest bullies and fight.” https://t.co/dsjCQvKmJV https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1384476943140065292?s=20
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor: ???
germy
I don’t understand this. We’ll need boosters for the COVID vaccine but not the mRNA vaccine for flu?
rikyrah
What competent leadership can do ??????
Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) Tweeted:
85 million adults fully vaccinated — fully vaccinated.
90 days ago that number was … 400,000.
This country can do great things. https://t.co/F99uJRayiK https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1384471454058745858?s=20
germy
This is very exciting. I’m really hoping for this.
WereBear
Restricting ourselves to the well-off white man pool has… not gone well.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Why do I have this image of teenagers shooting up vaccine behind the school gym?
Baud
@WereBear:
Incest always results in deformaties, eventually.
Michael Cain
The Mars helicopter runs Linux! Also Python and the OpenCV computer vision software. GitHub is working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to put a special symbol on the profile page of everyone who committed code changes to the specific version of the various packages used by the ‘copter.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Get a French press. We gave up on coffeemakers years ago as their half-life crept towards mere months…
Kathleen
@rikyrah: I like her. She’s running against my mayor, John Cranley, about whom I have mixed feelings.
Catherine D.
Since this is an open thread, has anyone seen “road recycling” in action? It’s going on in front of my house right now. Three huge semis are very slowly going along the road shooting flames out from underneath whatever gizmo they’re towing. The last one seems to be spraying an asphalt-like top, and a roller brings up the rear. Guys walk alongside the semis hitting any fiery pine cones with water. Bizarre!
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Do they serve meals in your condo community? If so, is there breakfast at least coffee option until you can get a new one? I would totally freak out about no coffee because that is the only thing that gets me going first thing in the morning. It would be disaster for me.
germy
germy
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kathleen: There’s a cafe that has coffee. Mr DAW made an emergency run this morning.
Karen S.
@Baud: This Toni Morrison quote seems apt here:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Good!
Michael Cain
@Catherine D.:
I’ve seen it being done to an asphalt parking lot. As you say, very strange looking. And stinks! Worse than fresh asphalt being put down.
Catherine D.
@Michael Cain: This doesn’t smell, but the noise is driving me crazy.
germy
Birds of a Feather:
Baud
@Karen S.:
Wow. Toni Morrison is almost as perceptive and eloquent as I am.
germy
Spanky
@germy: Why does the state hate local business?
//, obvs
Fair Economist
@germy:
The idea would be to use mRNA targets based on highly conserved sequences rather than the exposed outer proteins, which mutate a lot. The same basic idea could be used against coronaviruses as well.
Generally speaking, the vaccines from this approach are expected to be less effective against the target strain because they’re not going to be able to blanket a virion in neutralizing antibodies but perhaps it’ll be effective enough. Inferior results against the target strain would be compensated for by superior results against related strains.
germy
Then maybe there’ll be a time when we won’t need yearly COVID vaccine boosters…
germy
@Spanky:
When we visited the cottage a few years ago we noticed some historical markers pockmarked with bullet holes. A guide said he suspected the shooting had come from guards from a nearby prison who were pissed their jail was shutting down.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: But does she wear pants?
zhena gogolia
@germy:
inorite????
germy
@zhena gogolia:
I got my second pfizer shot yesterday, so in two weeks I’ll be “fully vaccinated” but I’m not comfortable with throwing my mask away and strutting around unprotected.
And I fully expect to be harassed in public for wearing a mask in a few months. It’s happened already. I was walking from the bank to a store, and kept my mask on (I didn’t want to touch it) and some young guy made a comment.
Where I live, guys in pickup trucks like to yell stuff at pedestrians. And I’m sure they’ll be triggered by the sight people insisting on masks at the end of this summer.
It is what it is.
hueyplong
@germy: I hit shot 2 + 2 weeks in 27 minutes. I’ll keep wearing a mask too.
If it’s not the mask, the butthurt RWNJs will find something else about which to make their unhappiness known. I’m over spending any time contemplating their delicate fee-fees.
Kay
This whole thing is interesting. Here’s Manchin in March:
Yesterday the largest coal workers union comes out in favor of green energy reforms (with conditions) and Manchin comes out as sponsor for the PRO Act- pro labor union legislation.
Everybody knows the “green energy” economy is coming- now it’s just a matter of who designs it and Republicans are, once again, on the sidelines. It’s coming whether they like it or not, they’re just opting to pretend it isn’t.
germy
@hueyplong:
I don’t care about their feelings. It’s my feelings… I hate being harassed when I’m going about my business.
I live in upstate NY. There are entire counties up here where no one wants the vaccine. They set up vaccination clinics and no one shows up.
Kay
@germy:
It’s true here too. The Trumpy parts of the country are going to keep this virus on a low simmer for years. It’s such a shame. A lot of people will die of a preventable illness.
I’m not ashamed that I’m glad that me and mine are vaccinated. I am. You can lead a horse to fucking water…
I was all for equalizing opportunity for the shot but they’re going to have to do some of this themselves. I’m not their mom.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
As I discussed the other day, my dentist gave me a very hard time for being masked last week. And I’m in blue CT.
hueyplong
@germy: Ha ha, I live in NC, the place to which upstate NYers relocate. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
I just go about my business and pretend to enjoy the triggering of their squawking. After a while, you’ll shift from going through those motions to actually enjoying it.
The key (and the mask helps) is not to let them know how much you’re enjoying it. That further annoys the critters and makes them a little bit dangerous.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: God damn isn’t that the sad truth. What might we be if fail sons like Dumf didn’t insist on polluting the national discourse with their childish antics?
Ksmiami
@Kay: well infertility is a result of Covid so maybe our future will be better if right wingers can’t breed…
germy
@hueyplong:
I remember once I grinned and waved at some people in a truck who yelled at me. I got the impression I ruined their fun.
hueyplong
@Ksmiami: Problem is, the worst of them are beyond breeding age.
Of course, the year 2035 informs me that in some ways that’s not so much of a problem.
Kay
@Ksmiami:
My daughter and son in law put off the baby’s christening until they could have one. A gf of one of her brother’s in law said “you can’t come unless you’re vaccinated?” She said “yes, that would be correct”
The Constitutional Right to Attend Private Parties is again being violated. This is worse than when they stopped inviting Trumpsters to vacation homes on Martha’s Vineyard.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
There’s some notion of a hybridized return to live court in the near future. If I’m not allowed to attend remotely, I have vowed not to wear pants, as a sop to my custom of the previous 13 months….
germy
(Onion)
Ruckus
@hueyplong:
This.
It is the point for so many of them, getting any kind of approval of whatever it is that floats their boat. Don’t live your life trying to make an idiot smarter, it is a waste of time and effort. If they could be made smarter they wouldn’t be idiots in the first place.
Jeffro
@germy: thanks! I love stuff like this (especially Roman-era finds in Britain). Very cool dig in Italy though!
Jeffro
@Kay: I saw that too! HUGE news that got buried in all the other usual crap of the day.
If (mostly GQP) politicians can’t demagogue about “good-paying coal jobs” and “bringing back coal” anymore…if it actually WORKS to bring miners out into the sunlight and pay them (and their kids) well to install solar panels…that’s just a huge, huge game-changer.
They’re already scrambling to try and re-position themselves, bless their shriveled little hearts. I think I saw something by Kevin McQarthy about how “Republicans have always been for fighting climate change” or some other such bullshit. Good luck with that, Kevin!
Ken
Congratulations, though I am again reminded that there are going to be hundreds if not thousands of doctoral theses in psychology and sociology about “these unprecedented and trying times”.
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hire another one, and this time pay them a living wage. //
MomSense
@germy:
Republicans don’t care about children. Someone should design some kind of poster with an almost to term fetus inside the womb, the pregnant mom wearing a mask asking everyone to mask up for her unborn baby – and then maybe the assholes will cooperate.
L85NJGT
@Kay:
There’s a large lignite fueled plant in North Dakota that feeds the Twin Cities. It is closing this year. The locals are adamant that the transmission infrastructure not be repurposed for green energy.
For sure a new coal plant will drop from the sky some day.
Kayla Rudbek
@germy: same here. I would much rather have a jab (or multiple jabs) in the arm instead of radiation treatments.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Heh.
germy
prostratedragon
@Michael Cain:
Open source!
Open source!
VeniceRiley
@germy: It does not say you won’t need boosters for that mRNA flu shot. One could be required, but it would be the same, and there would be no new formulation rush every year that has to guesstimate. That’s why flu shots vary in effectiveness every year…. More than one strain, or they guessed slightly wrong. Having a shot that works means not having to WAIT for the outbreak to get the version then rush production. Everyone can just get their shot or booster (if one is needed) already distributed to the front lines of healthcare before the season starts.
VOR
Some time ago the epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm predicted we would be dealing with COVID into 2024. Why? Because it is a big world and there will be pockets where people aren’t vaccinated so the disease will have a reservoir. At the time, I was thinking those pockets would be in 3rd world countries but perhaps they will be in US counties with a lot of Trump voters. I know several Trump voters who STILL think COVID is just a hoax and refuse to vaccinate.
VOR
@L85NJGT: There is a small scale photovoltaic solar farm near my house. Some people complained about the noise – from a solar farm!
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Is it leaving to take a better position elsewhere?
Sorry for your loss (truly, I get it). We have a fancypants espresso maker that has required repair several times over its (checks watch) two decades of service. We have an Aussie repairman who makes housecalls.
#CoffeeSnob
Good coffee begins with good water, sadly absent in many households. Hope you rectify your situation quickly, this is how civilization collapses.
trollhattan
@VOR:
Was out for a drive last weekend that took me into the Sacramento River Delta and past a hunk o’ land housing the region’s television broadcast towers. To my surprise, the land has sprouted a Very Large collection of PV panels. Dual-use like that is smart.
Read an editorial recently from some ag newspaper from down valley (Devin Nunes country) that railed against the insidious progress of solar power and how if we weren’t careful, we’d find all of our ag land “papered with Chinese solar panels.”
I wish I were making that up, but it’s an accurate quote.
Ksmiami
@Kay: quelle horror non fete! See with rightwingers we need to punch back harder and faster. They can’t handle themselves in a real fight…
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Saw a piece, probably from public broadcasting, about land in southern GA being used for solar farms, while also being used for grazing by sheep/goats/etc. Evidently that far south shade is good for the grass in the heat of the summer.
And of course in southern Arizona parking lots are being roofed with solar panels so that shoppers’ and employees’ cars won’t be baking hot after being in the Sonoran Desert sun for a few hours.
People still buy black and other dark color autos out there! I can’t imagine… silver/white for me, if I have a choice, everywhere.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
Agreed. Costs more to elevate the panels but then you can use the land beneath. Our utility has several wind farms in the Carquinez Strait on grazing land, where cattle continue to graze as though nothing was different. Stupid cows.
Ken
I’m sure they’d avoid the wind towers if they realized how easily they could be decapitated, were they to make an eighty-foot vertical leap
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I think I would have walked out.
L85NJGT
The anti PV talking point are all warmed over coal industry FUD from the 1970’s. Like there hasn’t been a massive change in scale and efficiency in forty years. Another favorite is old farts blathering on about “base load”.
Rule of thumb in the PV industry is 30% overproduction – and still costing out less than coal or nuclear. I read an industry opinion piece on building a 50% overage and not bother with long haul grid ties. Probably not the way to go, but it gives some idea of the margins they have to hammer the competition.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Sprang for a pricey upgrade when the trusty ol’ unit did finally give up the ghost. Happy as the proverbial mollusk ever since with the decision to get the Technivorm.
Villago Delenda Est
For the MAGAts out there, OHJB should urge them NOT to drink bleach.