"Any day now, millions of cicadas will commence their every-17-year trek from the earth’s innards to Washington’s lawns, trees and the slurping tongues of hungry dogs. The cicadas will no doubt disrupt baseball games, barbecues, weddings and dining alfresco, but if history is any guide, Brood X, as this band of cicadas is known, might also invade Washington's largest industry: politics......"
I know I have been brooding a lot lately; however, wildlife is one area where God shows his hand on a daily basis and how else can one see a pestilence sent to parasites?
They should -- and probably will -- make a movie:
"Nature at its craziest: Trillions of cicadas about to emerge" by Seth Borenstein Associated Press, May 5, 2021
COLUMBIA, Md. — Within days, a couple weeks at most, the cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) will emerge after 17 years underground.
When the entire brood emerges, backyards can look like undulating waves, and the bug chorus is lawnmower loud.
The cicadas will mostly come out at dusk to try to avoid everything that wants to eat them, squiggling out of holes in the ground. They’ll try to climb up trees or anything vertical, including Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury. Once off the ground, they shed their skins and try to survive that vulnerable stage before they become dinner to a host of critters including ants, birds, dogs, cats.
It’s one of nature’s weirdest events, featuring sex, a race against death, evolution, and what can sound like a bad science fiction movie soundtrack.
Like, you know, CVD!
Some people may be repulsed. Psychiatrists are calling entomologists worrying about their patients, Shrewsbury said, but scientists say the arrival of Brood X is a sign that despite pollution, climate change, and dramatic biodiversity loss, something is still right with nature, and it’s quite a show.
Raupp presents the narrative of cicada’s lifespan with all the verve of a Hollywood blockbuster: “You’ve got a creature that spends 17 years in a COVID-like existence, isolated underground sucking on plant sap, right? In the 17th year these teenagers are going to come out of the earth by the billions if not trillions. They’re going to try to best everything on the planet that wants to eat them during this critical period of the nighttime when they’re just trying to grow up, they’re just trying to be adults, shed that skin, get their wings, go up into the treetops, escape their predators,” he says.
That's how everything in my paper reads every day, truth be told.
“Once in the treetops, hey, it’s all going to be about romance. It’s only the males that sing. It’s going to be a big boy band up there as the males try to woo those females, try to convince that special someone that she should be the mother of his nymphs. He’s going to perform, sing songs. If she likes it, she’s going to click her wings. They’re going to have some wild sex in the treetop.
“Then she’s going to move out to the small branches, lay their eggs. Then it’s all going to be over in a matter of weeks. They’re going to tumble down. They’re going to basically fertilize the very plants from which they were spawned. Six weeks later the tiny nymphs are going to tumble 80 feet from the treetops, bounce twice, burrow down into the soil, go back underground for another 17 years.”
“This,” Raupp says, “is one of the craziest life cycles of any creature on the planet.”
They really are perverts, getting all horned up about insects and pestilence while trying to create a germ-free world.
What is wrong with these people?
America is the only place in the world that has periodic cicadas that stay underground for either 13 or 17 years, says entomologist John Cooley of the University of Connecticut. The bugs only emerge in large numbers when the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees. That’s happening earlier in the calendar in recent years because of climate change, says entomologist Gene Kritsky. Before 1950 they used to emerge at the end of May; now they’re coming out weeks earlier.
Though there have been some early bugs, in Maryland and Ohio, soil temperatures have been in the low 60s. So Raupp and other scientists believe the big emergence is days away — a week or two, max.
Cicadas who come out early don’t survive. They’re quickly eaten by predators. Cicadas evolved a key survival technique: overwhelming numbers. There’s just too many of them to all get eaten when they all emerge at once, so some will survive and reproduce, Raupp says.
This is not an invasion. The cicadas have been here the entire time, quietly feeding off tree roots underground, not asleep, just moving slowly waiting for their body clocks tell them it is time to come out and breed. They’ve been in America for millions of years, far longer than people.
When they emerge, it gets noisy — 105 decibels noisy, like “a singles bar gone horribly, horribly wrong,” Cooley says. There are three distinct cicada species and each has its own mating song.
They aren’t locusts and the only plants they damage are young trees, which can be netted. The year after a big batch of cicadas, trees actually do better because dead bugs serve as fertilizer, Kritsky says.....
That's when my hearing went on the shit that bugs me.
Let's get one thing clear: people are not insects and should not be experimented upon, period.
The Globe then took the time to hawk a book for a certain politician who $aw her net worth triple in 2020. I'm not saying she should be burnt at the stake, but someone filed a complaint based on coverage thereafter.
Let us all say a prayer as boulders fall from heaven and the world is capsized in a bid to censure the light and run us into darkness. The wrestling match is all too real, folks, as they try to derail one of the handful of heroes who are standing against this madness (may he be consumed in the fires of hell).
The stampede toward the exits has begun and even fierce foes are secretly defusing tensions and officers say they are keen to get back to a job they love and, hopefully, to become a focus of tourists’ cameras again before heading to sea, and there ISN'T GOING TO BE ANY MORE TOURISM, folks, because of the vaccination lag as Italy turns to flower power to help spread the vaccine message that sure does stink.
"As the U.S. faces a reckoning over its history of racism, some Native American tribal nations that once owned slaves also are grappling with their own mistreatment of Black people. When Native American tribes were forced from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to what is now Oklahoma in the 1800s — known as the Trail of Tears — thousands of Black slaves owned by tribal members also were removed and forced to provide manual labor along the way. Once in Oklahoma, slaves often toiled on plantation-style farms or were servants in tribal members’ homes. Nearly 200 years later, many of the thousands of descendants of those Black slaves, known as Freedmen, are still fighting to be recognized by the tribes that once owned their ancestors. The fight has continued since the killing of George Floyd last year by a Minneapolis police officer spurred a reexamination of the vestiges of slavery in the U.S. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations were referred to historically as the Five Civilized Tribes, or Five Tribes, by European settlers because they often assimilated into the settlers’ culture, adopting their style of dress and religion, and even owning slaves. Each tribe also has a unique history with Freedmen, whose rights were ultimately spelled out in separate treaties with the U.S. Today, the Cherokee Nation is the only tribe that fully recognizes the Freedmen as full citizens, a decision that came in 2017 following years of legal wrangling......"
They kill two birds with one stone there as the jew$paper needs to minimize the far greater Holocaust™ than the, you know, while flogging Black slavery again as they remake the history of the country and its enemies, both foreign and domestic, in an attempt to impact future generations to come and bury the past.
If you want to get Real, State Police on Saturday were looking for a driver and vehicle involved in a hit-and-run in South Boston late Friday night that critically injured a pedestrian who was hungry.
The Boston Children’s Museum reopened Saturday after being closed since December due to COVID-19, or you can go fishing off Cape Cod during the burial at sea for a 50-year-old Secret Service agent who died while training during his shift at the Bush family compound at Walker’s Point(?).
I can't make it any clearer than that.
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"Scotland election results complicate hopes for independence referendum" by Mark Landler New York Times, May 9, 2021
LONDON — Hopes for a swift path to independence in Scotland were dampened on Saturday, as early election results showed the dominant Scottish nationalist party falling just short of a majority in the country’s parliament.
The results, if confirmed after the votes are fully counted by Saturday evening, would deprive the Scottish National Party of a symbolic victory in a closely-fought election. That, in turn, is likely to stiffen the determination of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain to deny Scottish voters the chance to hold a second referendum on independence, yet pro-independence parties were on track to stay in overall control, which will keep the flame of Scottish nationalism alive and ensure that the threat of Scotland’s breaking away will continue to bedevil the United Kingdom.
While disappointing to the Scottish nationalists, the apparent absence of a clear majority might ultimately work to their advantage, by giving them time to build support for a referendum rather than being stampeded into an immediate campaign by the pressure of an overwhelming mandate.
Still, the result would be a relief to Johnson, for whom the dissolution of the United Kingdom looms as a potentially defining event for his premiership. He remains deeply unpopular in Scotland, and it is not clear how well prepared his government is to counter a reinvigorated push for Scottish independence.
For his part, Johnson was basking in Conservative Party’s victories in regional elections across England, which left the opposition Labour Party in disarray and reinforced his reputation as an inveterate vote-getter, yet some of the same post-Brexit populism that won the Conservatives votes in working-class parts of the Midlands and northern England worked against him in a more liberal and Brexit-averse Scotland.....
Unfortunately, and partly because of Brexit, I feel all elections are now rigged. Cameron was kicked out for allowing the vote, and no amount of apartment refurbishing is going to quell the anger before he is ridden out on a rail.
Either that or he starts a war with France.
As for the Scots, the independence movement gained momentum in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit and the pandemic has further encouraged the idea that Scotland might be better off going its own way, and the Scottish National Party is led by the popular First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, 50, who remains the most popular politician in Scotland by far on issues of “competence, intelligence, being genuine and understanding ordinary people -- she comes up tops on everything,” and unlike Johnson, Sturgeon's popularity has remained strong through the pandemic because "she is perceived to understand ordinary people and then she is perceived to be genuine," but support for the SNP and for independence aren’t as high as they were in the second half of 2020 after she faced an investigation into whether she had violated a code of conduct in her handling of sexual harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond.
Related:
"A new Zulu king was named in South Africa amid scenes of chaos after members of the royal family questioned Prince Misuzulu Zulu’s claim to the title following his father’s death, and bodyguards suddenly whisked him away. The controversy over the next king has arisen after the death in March of King Goodwill Zwelithini, who had reigned since 1968. Zwelithini apparently named one of his six wives as the “regent ” in his will, but she died after holding the title for only a month, throwing the royal succession into turmoil...."
Look at the palace intrigue in South Africa, even if the role is a largely ceremonial role but with great significance for South Africa and its 12 million Zulu people.
"In a show of force, armed militiamen briefly took over a hotel in the Libyan capital of Tripoli that serves as headquarters for the interim government, officials said Saturday. Friday’s development came after the three-member presidential council earlier this week appointed a new chief of the intelligence agency. The militias, which control Tripoli, were apparently unhappy with the choice....."
The agency is Libya’s version of the CIA, the new spy chief was Hussein Khalifa, and on Monday, Najla al-Manqoush, the foreign minister of Libya’s interim government called for the departure of all foreign forces and mercenaries, including Turkish troops, from the oil-rich North African country. That was seen as a rebuke to Turkey and angered pro-Turkey factions in western Libya. U.N. Security Council diplomats say there are more than 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries in Libya, including Syrians, Sudanese, Chadians and Russians. Libya was plunged into chaos when a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. The oil-rich country was in recent years split between rival east- and west-based administrations, each backed by different armed groups and foreign governments.
Obama turned the jewel of Africa into a hellhole with his lies, damn him!
He should be punished for it, and not just with a fine.
"States asked the federal government this week to withhold staggering amounts of COVID-19 vaccine amid plummeting demand for the shots, contributing to a growing U.S. stockpile of doses. From South Carolina to Washington, states are requesting the Biden administration send them only a fraction of what’s been allocated to them. The turned-down vaccines amount to hundreds of thousands of doses this week alone, providing a stark illustration of the problem of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. More than 150 million Americans — about 57% of the adult population — have received at least one dose of vaccine, but government leaders from the Biden administration down to the city and county level are doing everything they can to persuade the rest of the country to get inoculated....."
At this point, they are treading into the criminal realm with their insistence that you take the jab, regardless of health condition.
Time to keep on moving:
"The organizer of a Grand Canyon adventure described it as a chance to trek along the South Rim, “one of the greatest hikes in the planet.” By September, at least 100 people from 12 different states had signed up on Facebook for the one-day hike. The organizer, Joseph Don Mount, said on Facebook he hoped more people would sign up for the hike. “If you want to keep inviting friends, I am determined to make this work for as many who want to go,” Mount said, according to federal court documents. A tipster sent the Facebook post to officials at the Grand Canyon National Park, where hikes had been limited to no more than 11 people per group in response to the pandemic. When a park official contacted Mount, he denied that he was planning a large-scale trip, yet, he continued to advertise the hike and to organize cabin stays and shuttle rides for dozens of people, according to court documents. By Oct. 24, the day of the hike, more than 150 people had paid $95 to register for the trip. That morning, at least 150 people showed up at the North Kaibab Trail, astounding rangers and overwhelming other visitors who struggled to steer clear of the hikers, many of whom were not wearing masks or social distancing, according to the documents. On Tuesday, Mount was charged in the U.S. District Court in Arizona with five separate counts, including giving a false report, interfering with a government employee or agent acting in an official duty, soliciting business in a federal park without a permit, and violating restrictions for group sizes for park visits and restrictions related to Covid-19. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Mount said he had arranged the trip because “with Covid and everything, people were just itching to get out. I didn’t do it for profit,” he said. Timothy Hopp, a U.S. park ranger, said in an affidavit that Mount collected $15,185 from participants for the hiking event......"
This comes as even the New York Times admits the CDC lied about outdoor transmission of the nonexistent virus that was used for unconstitutional lockdowns that were needed to protect our environment.
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The War on Terror has come home, just as "conspiracy theorists" said it would:
"From supporting US forces in Afghanistan to running Rhode Island’s COVID-19 response; How Thomas McCarthy, the executive director of the state’s COVID-19 Response Team, took the lessons he learned through multiple tours of duty and applied them to the pandemic" by Alexa Gagosz Globe Staff, May 7, 2021
PROVIDENCE — Early in his career as a cavalry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, Thomas McCarthy was partnering with local authorities to help restore governance and security in the region. He would work on projects that would ensure access to clean drinking water and help deliver essentials such as food and medical supplies to civilians.
He was a soldier in the U.S. Army Aviation Branch, and gaining the trust of local residents was a hurdle that took time to overcome. In Afghanistan, where he spent the majority of his deployments, most of the population could not access the Internet, and communication was oftentimes by word-of-mouth. In some areas, there was a tremendous amount of distrust for the local government, and because of some people’s experiences, there was little trust for outsiders as well. Engaging with the civilians on a day-to-day basis was critical.
“If you weren’t providing information and if you weren’t a trusted agent yet, that vacuum of information would very quickly be filled with someone else’s narrative,” McCarthy recently told the Globe. “While most of my time was in direct combat units, the emphasis was always on building enduring, sustainable capacity among our local counterparts to best serve the people.”
And now?
The lessons he learned in Afghanistan serve him well now, as the executive director of Rhode Island’s COVID-19 Response Team. In this role, McCarthy and his team oversee the surveillance COVID-19 testing program, data analytics and modeling teams, public health interventions including treatment and vaccines, and all operations for delivering the state’s COVID response to the public.
Why is a "health" crisis under a MILITARY command?
Because they are really WAGING WAR ON US?
McCarthy, who retired from active duty as a major in 2017, was appointed by then-governor Gina M. Raimondo in mid-February.
A native Rhode Islander, McCarthy stands shoulder-to-shoulder with state health director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott at the governor’s weekly coronavirus press conferences, presenting clear information to residents about how to get vaccinated and what they can do to help protect their households against COVID-19. He’s listened to the issues that residents have had throughout the vaccine rollout, and has been part of the operational team that has looked for ways to make the vaccine more accessible, to help eliminate hesitancy and, ultimately, build trust.
Well, you know, trust, once lost, is hard to restore.
While the obstacles he faced in Afghanistan were vastly different, he says the issues of distrust, building rapport, and cutting through misinformation during the pandemic in Rhode Island are familiar.
“Knowing that the health and safety of all Rhode Islanders is reliant on this operation to be successful has made this so unique and special from any position I held previously,” said McCarthy, who grew up in North Kingstown in a full house with three brothers and a sister. He and his wife, Jessica McCarthy, a spokeswoman for Care New England Health System, and their two school-age daughters moved back to Rhode Island about three years ago when he took a job at CVS Health.
He went from being an Aviation Task Force Commander, where he was mentoring and developing more than 60 soldiers, two intelligence analysts, and employing a cavalry troop of seven Apache and a medical team of three Blackhawks in Afghanistan to becoming the director of Pharmacy Benefits Management Innovation at the health care giant.
It was a great position, he said, but when COVID-19 hit, he was “in agony.”
As are we all.
So when do the lawsuits begin for ‘deceptive’ advertising tactics that fueled state’s opioid crisis?
At least she has the energy to take them on, as opposed to the local ce$$pool of political corruption.
What a literal piece of shit who should be charged with manslaughter.
You may be homeless by then, but the suffering is worth it.
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"For decades, the austere hospital has stood as a monument to poor urban planning, critics say, a brick-covered eyesore looming over the city’s largest park and an enduring affront to Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, yet the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital and surrounding buildings on a 13-acre campus carved out of a tree-shaded meadow in Franklin Park in the 1950s have long provided essential medical care and social services for the homeless and substance dependent that would be difficult to place elsewhere. Now, with the aging hospital slated to close in three years and city officials considering sweeping changes to the park, tensions are mounting over the fate of the state-owned property. It’s an emotional dispute that underscores Franklin Park’s importance to the city and an abiding hope that its original promise can be realized in full....."
At least you can still go to the zoo:
"Last Wednesday night, during a Boston community meeting to address the age-old problem of youngsters raising a ruckus, John Linehan, the president and CEO of Zoo New England, made a curious assertion. The noisy parties and dirt-bike traffic that have become increasingly common near the zoo as pandemic restrictions have loosened had left the facility’s animals distressed, he said. Since early on in the pandemic, scientists have been attempting to discern the various effects of the pandemic on wildlife across the world, but the effects on zoo animals, many of whom reside in urban areas that have undergone significant change during the past year of isolation, appears to remain a largely unexplored frontier. Did you know, for instance, that the reduced traffic noise in the San Francisco Bay Area has led to a shift in song frequency in white-crowned sparrows, according to a study published in Science magazine, or that Northern Italy’s improved pandemic-era air quality resulted in a boost in egg-laying by the common swift? The particulars of how this is playing out at the Franklin Park Zoo, alas, remain largely shrouded in mystery. Citing ongoing COVID concerns, a spokeswoman for the facility recently declined a Globe reporter’s request to tour the zoo and speak with zookeepers about how, for instance, the Sardinian dwarf donkeys and Madagascar hissing cockroaches have been faring amid the recent commotion....."
Maybe you should try the Aquarium instead, and it must have been a wild ride into captivity, and not so long ago, in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boston-area renters had a rare advantage in their long-running struggle with landlords to find a good apartment they can afford. That time is ending. As the region quickly opens back up this spring, with sidewalks coming to life and restaurants repopulating, apartment hunters are coming back, too. Young professionals are contemplating at least occasional trips to the office. Students are plotting their return to college, and Boston’s typically tight rental market is rapidly returning to form. Rents in recent weeks have surged toward prepandemic levels (good luck finding a job, kids) as many in Massachusetts mark the easing of pandemic restrictions with parties, vacations, and other social gatherings, one enormous group is feeling left behind: families with children under the age of 12. Young people ages 12 to 15 became eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations this week, but hundreds of thousands of younger children are not — and likely won’t be for months. That’s leaving countless families uncertain about when and where it’s safe to play, eat, and just go about their lives — even after most adults are vaccinated. Young children are much less likely to become severely ill from COVID, but it does happen, and guidance about what’s safe seems to be constantly changing, forcing vaccinated parents with unvaccinated children to make countless calculations of everyday risks when venturing out. Take Tim Langan and his family in Somerville (which is a Sh!thole from what I see).
There should be some sort of penalty for the putting kids at risk, and while outdoor mask wearing has become noticeably more mixed, putting on a face covering while going inside still seems ingrained, according to businesses and shoppers and “it would be weird not wearing it.”
What a guilt trip, but it is time to move on and put the past behind us! The fire is out and the feast is set to begin after the fall of the king in record time (possible drunk driving?)
Liberals may despair, but there may be another way to tyranny as we sail off into the sunset and blow you one final kiss before turning off the radio.
