Cowboy Who?

Be Cool, Going to School
Hickle Pickle Books #3
Smith
1994

Okay, this is a weird one. Evidently an alien pickle shows up and heads to school. I am not sure of the origin story, perhaps that is in the earlier part of this 6 part series. His name is Hickle. Hilarious, right? For reasons that are not quite clear, he is interested in where dill pickles came from. (Genealogy project?)

They went to their local library and looked up dill pickles in the OPAC and could only find out how to MAKE dill pickles. No info on the origin of pickles. Librarian tells them to go to a bigger library. (Really? That is the best this librarian can do?) They try the state library. More nothing. Finally, they call a pickle packing company. They send a letter, and a pickle company sends Hickle a book on the history of the pickle. Hickle has fun at school and likes being a pickle.

Not really sure what to make of this. I had trouble following the story.

Mary

The post Pickle Acceptance appeared first on Awful Library Books.

Good morning, and it’s a cool one again across the area. We have mostly 40s and some low-50s peppered in everywhere.

Yesterday began one of the coolest but nicest stretches of weather for us in a long while that will continue through the weekend.

Today & weekend

Look for simply spectacular autumn weather all weekend long. We’ll top off in the upper-60s today with wall to wall sunshine. Look for low-70s tomorrow and mid-70s on Sunday. Morning lows will generally be in the mid-40s to mid-50s through Sunday. Winds should be lighter than they’ve been the last couple days.

For trick or treating, look for comfortable weather this year. Expect upper-50s to low-60s north and mid to upper-60s or a tick or two warmer in the city of Houston and points south.

Early next week

A reinforcing shot of drier, cooler air will arrive Sunday evening, so you’ll notice offshore winds kick up again later Sunday and on Monday. Look for cooler temperatures again Monday with highs in the 60s for most of us. Tuesday should see low-70s with lighter winds, and Wednesday likely sees mid-70s. Morning lows look cool on Monday and especially Tuesday. Look for upper-40s or low-50s Monday morning and mostly 40s on Tuesday morning.

Look for some high clouds and warmer temps to return on Wednesday, and that heralds a pretty substantial and possibly lengthy warm-up that may linger through next weekend and into the following week.

Tropics

We knew 2020 was going to be an active hurricane season, but the absurdity of it all has still been surprising. It’s really been non-stop in the Gulf, either dealing with a threat or looking ahead to the next one since Hanna struck South Texas back in late July. Hurricane Zeta may have been the most impressive of them all for how anomalous it was.

Zeta is the strongest known storm back to at least 1850 in the western Gulf this late in the hurricane season.

Hurricane Zeta is the strongest tropical cyclone on record in this part of the Gulf this late in the year. pic.twitter.com/tpX1bnMUkO

— Sam Lillo (@splillo) October 28, 2020

Zeta peaked at 95 kts. (and I wouldn’t be shocked to see it reanalyzed at 100 kts. (115 mph) in the offseason), which shatters the record of 75 kts. that far northwest in the Gulf for this late in the year. More impressively, Zeta’s intensity ramped up 40 kts. (45 mph) in 26 hours.

Hurricane Zeta has intensified 40kt (45 mph) in the last 26 hours.

There's no record of anything close to that in the Gulf this late in the year. pic.twitter.com/V0qhipnqcr

— Sam Lillo (@splillo) October 28, 2020

The previous record from late October onward was somewhere between 10-21 kts. In that respect, Zeta is in a league of its own. Hurricane season technically runs through November 30th, but in the western Gulf, we usually shut down in mid-October. Zeta obliterated that paradigm. Why? Well, it’s not that the Gulf is super-warm. In fact, Zeta continued steadily strengthening over cooler water in the northern Gulf. The amplified, weird pattern over the West and Plains, responsible for our cold front, the ice storm in Oklahoma and parts of Texas, and the snow in the Rockies helped supercharge Zeta as it approached Louisiana.

This coupled w/ #Zeta's fast motion + juxtaposition SE of an upper trough & jet streak over TX (favoring deep-layer warm advection/ascent), should counteract the effect of cooler SSTs near the Gulf coast & result in little-no weakening of #Zeta as it nears Louisiana tonight #lawx https://t.co/MaGLV9fkt7 pic.twitter.com/el2EsbzSKy

— Eric Webb (@webberweather) October 28, 2020

This was a case where shear was actually in a sweet spot for a storm and helped it along. The deep trough and very strong jet stream winds over Texas (known as a jet streak) actually helped Zeta find an environment that would be hospitable for a low pressure system to intensify within. This further underscores that water temperatures are far from everything when it comes to hurricane intensity. In this case we had a Gulf of Mexico that was only slightly supportive for a storm, but the storm got juiced by the atmospheric pattern over the Plains and Southeast. And the end result was a memorable, odd late season storm. Zeta also will end up being the strongest storm to make landfall so late in the season on the entire Gulf Coast. Zeta’s forward speed of over 45 mph over the Southeast made it one of the fastest moving storms on record (for any date) over the continental United States.

And we aren’t finished. The National Hurricane Center has 80 percent odds that a tropical wave in the Caribbean (dubbed Invest 96L) will develop into a depression or storm in the next 5 days.

If it gets a name, it will be called Eta, and 2020 would officially tie 2005 for the most storms on record in the Atlantic basin. As much as it pains me to write this, Eta is a storm that should probably be watched from Louisiana to Florida. It’s likely to percolate off the coast of Central America much of next week before perhaps being ushered north next weekend by our next weather maker over the Plains & Texas. How exactly that plays out is TBD. This is highly unlikely to come to Texas, but there a number of model solutions that bring it into the eastern Gulf or off the Florida coast. So, yet again, another one for our neighbors to the east to watch. We’ll update you on Monday.

What’s the difference between a tech bro and a zombie?

After a process that took a couple of days, the OSIRIS-REx mission has stowed away the sample of regolith that it snatched from an asteroid last week. Shortly after ,the team discovered that small particles appeared to be leaking from the collector head, and adjusted their plans to stow the sample within the spacecraft ahead of schedule.

Now they’ve confirmed that the Sample Return Capsule is securely closed, as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission makes its way back to Earth. It’s scheduled to depart the area in March, and deliver the sample to Earth on September 24th, 2023.

I’ve officially closed the Sample Return Capsule! The sample of Bennu is sealed inside and ready for our voyage back to Earth. The SRC will touch down in the Utah desert on Sep. 24, 2023. Thanks, everyone, for being a part of my journey #ToBennuAndBack pic.twitter.com/z75ITNiGBf

— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) October 29, 2020

Last week, I started investigating how one fourth-grade Texas history textbook, Pearson’s 2016 edition of We Are Texas, presents the origin story of our state. Having taken fourth-grade Texas history myself, I suspected that our state-sanctioned literature was not presenting the complete story. More specifically, I wondered if kids were learning that the institution of slavery was but an unfortunate phenomenon that existed at the same time as Texas’s settlement, revolution, and nationhood, rather than a driving force in all of those events. The version of Texas history that I learned in school was extremely anglicized, and as a lover of both history and the Lone Star State, it was disappointing to learn the truth as an adult. So I looked at a textbook, consulted…View Original Post

The post How Leaders of the Texas Revolution Fought to Preserve Slavery appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Robots still have some trouble handling the basics when put to the test, apparently. Roborace team SIT Acronis Autonomous suffered an embarrassment in round one of the Season Beta 1.1 race after its self-driving car abruptly drove directly into a wall. It’s not certain what led to the mishap, but track conditions clearly weren’t at fault — the car had been rounding a gentle curve and wasn’t racing against others at the same time.

It wasn’t the only car to suffer a problem, either. Autonomous Racing Graz’s vehicle had positioning issues that got it “lost” on the track and cut its race short. The race was still ongoing as we wrote this, so it’s not certain how many of the three remaining competitors were going to pass muster.

It’s more than a little amusing to watch a robotic car make an unforced error, but this also illustrates the challenges of putting AI on a real racing circuit. Unlike road-oriented driverless cars, racers have to routinely navigate at high speeds where there’s less time to make decisions and react to hazards. That’s what Roborace’s initiative is trying to address, though — teams ideally learn from snafus like this and improve their AI to the point where it can gracefully run laps without making the garage crew nervous.

Randomized controlled trials of pagan spells are rarely reported in the medical literature. Here is a new addition to the world’s collection:

“Testing the Pagan Prescription: Using a Randomized Controlled Trial to Investigate Pagan Spell-Casting as a Form of Noncontact Healing,” Charmaine Sonnex, Chris A. Roe, and Elizabeth C. Roxburgh, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, vol. 26, no. 3, 2020, pp. 219-225. (Thanks to Kristine Danowski for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Buckingham, the University of Northampton, and Nottingham Trent University, explain:

Pagan spell-casting practices have received little attention from distance healing researchers. This study aims to address this gap in the literature.

Design: This study utilized a randomized, double-blind, delayed intervention design.

Subjects: Forty-four participants (30 females, 14 males) were recruited using snowball sampling (mean age=24.30; range=18–55).

Procedure: Participants were randomly allocated to either Group A or B. Participants made written requests to the practitioner about changes they would like to see in their lives and provided a photograph and personal item to be used during the intervention. Participants attended meetings once a week during which they would take part in a guided body scan meditation before completing a quality-of-life measure. Healing practices were conducted for Group A between weeks 1 and 2 and for Group B between weeks 2 and 3.

Outcome Measure: Well-being was measured using the 26-item WHOQOL-BREF.

Results: Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed a significant, positive change in general health from weeks 1 to 4 (F=4.02, p=0.025, η2=0.149). Separate analysis of variances of the four WHOQOL domains showed significant improvements across the study in the physical and psychologic domains only; there was no significant group difference on any of the outcomes….

Conclusions: The aims of this study were to show how recommendations made by Roe et al. might be implemented in subsequent RCT designs that test claims for noncontact healing, and to explore whether claims for the efficacy of Pagan healing practices could be tested within an RCT paradigm. The study described here was successful insofar as it was able to demonstrate that an im- provement in well-being can beproduced within an RCT test of Pagan spell-casting. The fact that these improvements could not be attributed to the healing interventionper se, despite the domains of improvement reflecting participant requests, highlights areas for improvement in future research with Pagan healers.

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Today's News:

If no clear winner emerges on election night, experts in global conflict warn that protesters and counter-protesters could clash in the streets, making conditions ripe for potential violence.

(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Teenage Engineering has teamed up with Capcom for its latest series of pocket-sized synths. The PO-128 Mega Man and PO-133 Street Fighter models, which each cost $89, include samples and animations from the respective game franchises. 

The Street Fighter micro sampler is based on the PO-33 and it's available today. It includes a 40-second sample memory and built-in recording microphone. The Mega Man live synthesizer and sequencer, meanwhile, has parameter locks, glide control and punch-in effects. You can get your hands on that on December 2nd. 

The product page for both devices offers a sample (so to speak) of the types of sounds you can create with these synths. The Street Fighter edition, for instance, includes Chun-Li's laugh and the iconic "Haduken!" line.

Teenage Engineering has released other variants of its pocket operator over the last couple of years, including a limited-edition Ghostly one and a Rick and Morty-themed model. Meanwhile, if you're really into the Street Fighter synth, you can buy the Honda S660 Teenage Engineering kitted out to promote it. It'll cost you at least $27,500, and the company will toss in five of each synth and some other goodies to sweeten the deal.

Teenage Engineering

The city recorded zero new coronavirus cases on Monday, for the first time since June. "Now is the time to congratulate every single Victorian for staying the course," said the state's top official.

(Image credit: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

To be read before the 2020 Presidential Election.
Register to vote, or check to make sure you’re registered to vote here.

To download a PDF of this entire list, click here.

Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them. This list will be updated between now and the November 2020 Presidential election.

Various writers have compiled this list during the course of the Trump administration. Their work has been guided by invaluable journalistic resources, including WTFJHT, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other sources, to whom we are grateful.

ATROCITY KEY

– Sexual Misconduct, Harassment, & Bullying
– White Supremacy, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Xenophobia
– Public Statements / Tweets
– Collusion with Russia & Obstruction of Justice
– Trump Staff & Administration
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Policy
– Environment

Jump to October 2020

Jump to 2020

Jump to 2019

Jump to 2018

Jump to 2017

BEFORE JANUARY 2017

1. – February 10, 2011 – In 2011, Donald Trump stoked false claims that Barack Obama had lied about his education. During a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said, “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” This is false. Numerous accounts from Obama’s college classmates refute Trump’s claim, including Obama’s Columbia roommate, Phil Doerner.
   
   
2. – March 30, 2011 – Donald Trump was a vocal proponent of the “birther” myth, claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, Trump told Bill O’Reilly, “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was… He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.” In response to the “birther” conspiracy theory, the State of Hawaii released Barack Obama’s short- and long-form birth certificate.
   
   
3. – August 6, 2012 – Over a year after the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate, Donald Trump again promoted the “birther” myth, tweeting, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” President Trump has publicly attacked media outlets for citing anonymous sources, but has himself cited anonymous sources numerous times to support the claim that Barack Obama lied about his biography.
   
   
4. – December 12, 2013 – Years after first stirring controversy about Barack Obama’s birthplace, Donald Trump implied a conspiracy surrounding the death of the Hawaiian State Official who had released Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. Trump tweeted, “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.”
   
   
5. – May 27, 2015 – Continuing to build on the debunked “birther” conspiracy, Donald Trump said Barack Obama could have claimed Kenya as his birthplace for special treatment from colleges. Trump said, “There are three things that could happen. And one of them did happen. He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK? He was perhaps born in this country. But said he was born in Kenya because if you say you were born in Kenya, you got aid and you got into colleges. People were doing that. So perhaps he was born in this country, and that has a very big chance. Or, you know, who knows?"
   
   
6. – June 16, 2015 – In his speech announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, Donald Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
   
   
7. – June 16, 2015 – In the same speech announcing his candidacy, Donald Trump said, “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” Trump’s belief that Mexico should finance construction for the wall led Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a meeting with Trump in June 2017, and again in February 2018. Peña Nieto has repeatedly said that Mexico will not fund the border wall.
   
   
8. – July 18, 2015 – Donald Trump insulted the military service of Senator John McCain, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who endured torture and solitary confinement as a POW in Hanoi. Trump said in a speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, "He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump’s comments drew boos from his audience in Iowa, as well as widespread condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike. Donald Trump himself was exempted from military service after receiving four student deferments between 1964 and 1968, and a medical deferment for a “bone spur in his foot” after graduating from college.
   
   
9. – August 7, 2015 – During the first Republican primary debate in 2015, Donald Trump clashed with moderator Megyn Kelly regarding his many controversial statements against women. In one exchange, Trump claimed his disparaging remarks about women were limited to comments about Rosie O’Donnell, to which Kelly responded, “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” The next day, Trump told a CNN interviewer that Kelly had been “off-base” in the way she treated him. “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump said. “You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
   
   
10. – August 19, 2015 – In August of 2015, just three months after Trump announced his candidacy for president, two of his supporters in Boston beat a homeless Latino man with a metal pipe, and then urinated on him. Asked by the arresting officer why they had done it, one of the attackers said, “Trump was right—all these illegals need to be deported.” During a press conference shortly thereafter, Trump said he hadn’t heard about the assault. “It would be a shame,” he told the crowd of reporters, before continuing, “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
    
    
11. – April, 2016 – Jill Harth accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. In a 1997 lawsuit, Harth stated in court documents that Trump harassed and groped her in 1993. She later dropped the suit but stood by her story.
    
    
12. – May 5, 2016 – For the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo, Donald Trump posted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl to Facebook and Twitter, captioned, “Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”
    
    
13. – May 31, 2016 – Donald Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who presided over the Trump University fraud case, saying that Curiel’s assignment to the case represented "an absolute conflict because the judge was “of Mexican heritage.” “I’m building a wall,” said Trump, “It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”
    
    
14. – May 2016 – Temple Taggart, former Miss Utah in the 1997 Miss USA pageant, claimed Donald Trump sexually harassed her. Taggart said that Trump, on multiple occasions, had kissed her on the lips without her consent.
    
    
15. – June, 2016 – Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct at the Miss USA pageant. Searles posted a photo of contestants with Trump on Facebook, saying, “One guy treated us like cattle,” and “proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property.”
    
    
16. – July 30, 2016 – Donald Trump belittled Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim American soldier who had been killed while serving in the Army, for their speech at the Democratic National Convention. In his speech at the DNC, Khizr Khan had addressed Trump’s stringent anti-Muslim immigration policies, saying, “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words liberty and equal protection of law.” In response to the speech, Trump suggested that Khan had “no right” to criticize him.
    
    
17. – October 7, 2016 – In the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, Donald Trump bragged to Billy Bush about grabbing women by their genitals without consent. In the video published by the Washington Post, Trump said, “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything… grab them by the pussy.” Trump said his statements were “locker room banter” and apologized “if anyone was offended.” He later issued a further response to the tape’s release, saying, “I’ve never said I’m a perfect person.”
    
    
18. – October 7, 2016 – Donald Trump reiterated his false claim that the young men known as the “Central Park Five” were guilty of sexually assaulting a jogger in 1989, despite DNA evidence that exonerated them.
    
    
19. – October 11, 2016 – Tasha Dixon, a former Miss Universe contestant, accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. Dixon asserted that Trump walked into their changing room in 2001 while contestants were changing. On the Howard Stern Show in 2005, Trump said about the pageant, “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore, I’m inspecting it. You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”
    
    
20. – October 12, 2016 – Mariah Billado, a former Miss Teen USA contestant, claimed that Donald Trump behaved inappropriately during the pageant. Billado said that in 1997 Trump walked into the changing room when contestants were not fully clothed. She is one of four former Miss Teen U.S.A. contestants to tell the same story of Trump’s sexual misconduct.
    
    
21. – October 12, 2016 – Rachel Crooks claimed Donald Trump sexually harassed her. Crooks said that when she met Trump for the first time in 2005 while working as a receptionist for a company in Trump Tower, Trump would not let go of her hand and inappropriately kissed her.
    
    
22. – October 12, 2016 – Jessica Leeds alleged Donald Trump made inappropriate sexual advances towards her. Over 30 years ago Leeds sat next to Trump on a plane, where he lifted the armrest, grabbed her breasts, and put his hand up her skirt. She described him as an “octopus,” saying, “his hands were everywhere.”
    
    
23. – October 12, 2016 – Mindy McGillivray accused Donald Trump of groping her. McGillivray alleged that Trump touched her without her consent while she was attending a concert at Mar-a-Lago in 2003.
    
    
24. – October 12, 2016 – Jennifer Murphy, a former contestant on the television show “The Apprentice,” said that Donald Trump kissed her without her consent after a job interview in 2005. She claimed that he had made multiple inappropriate comments to her while she was on the show and when she met with him later about job opportunities.
    
    
25. – October 12, 2016 – Natasha Stoynoff, a journalist, accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment. Stoynoff said that Trump insisted on giving her a tour of his Palm Beach estate while she was interviewing him and his wife, Melania. Trump pinned her to a wall and kissed her. Trump called her a “liar” and responded to Stoynoff’s story, saying, “Look at her… I don’t think so.”
    
    
26. – October 13, 2016 – Lisa Boyne accused Donald Trump of sexual misbehavior. Boyne asserted that at a dinner in 1996, Trump and modeling agent John Casablancas paraded women in front of their table, looking under their skirts to determine whether each woman was wearing underwear.
    
    
27. – October 14, 2016 – Kristin Anderson claimed Donald Trump groped her in the early 1990s. Anderson was at a club in Manhattan with friends when, she asserted, Trump reached into her skirt and touched her without consent, leaving her and her friends “very grossed out.”
    
    
28. – October 14, 2016 – Samantha Holvey described Donald Trump’s sexual misconduct at the 2006 Miss USA pageant. While participating in the competition, Holvey noted that Trump inspected each contestant before the event. She noted, “He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people.”
    
    
29. – October 14, 2016 – Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. Zervos claimed that Trump assaulted her on several occasions, kissing and grabbing her, and during one business meeting, “began thrusting his genitals.”
    
    
30. – October 15, 2016 – Cathy Heller accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. Heller said she was having Mother’s Day brunch in 1997 at Mar-a-Lago when Trump grabbed her, tried kissing her, and became angry when she twisted away.
    
    
31. – October 21, 2016 – Karen Virginia accused Donald Trump of groping her. Virginia described how she’d seen Trump with a group of men at the U.S. Open in 1998, and overheard him say about her “Hey look at this one!” and “Look at those legs.” After his comments, Trump approached Virginia, grabbed her by the right arm, and touched her breast. The incident lingered with Virginia for years, and she came forward with her story alongside Gloria Allred: “I now understand that I was not to blame. Mr. Trump, perhaps you do not remember me or what you did to me so many years ago, but I can assure you that I remember you and what you did to me as though it was yesterday," she said. "Your random moment of sexual pleasure came at my expense and affected me greatly.”
    
    
32. – October 22, 2016 – Jessica Drake, an adult film actor and director, accused Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual contact. Drake said that Trump grabbed and kissed her without her consent at a charity golf tournament in 2006, then made further unwanted advances by inviting her to his suite. After Drake repeatedly declined his invitations, Trump asked her, “What do you want? How much?”
    
    
33. – October 27, 2016 – Ninni Laaksonen, a former Miss Finland, alleged that Donald Trump had sexually harassed her. Laaksonen described an incident in which Trump groped her from behind in 2006.
    
    
34. – November 13, 2016 – Ivanka Trump accompanied her father on his presidential interview with 60 Minutes. Ivanka’s upscale jewelry brand used her father’s political appearance to promote a $10,800 bracelet she had worn during the broadcast.
    
    
35. – November 18, 2016 – One week after Trump’s election, 100 foreign diplomats gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to drink champagne and tour the building. One diplomat told the Washington Post, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” This indicated a conflict of interest that could have violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which forbids government officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
    
    
36. – November 18, 2016 – Even though he said he would not settle the case, Donald Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle his Trump University fraud lawsuits. The real estate seminar program was not an accredited university and used misleading marketing tactics to recruit students.
    
    
37. – November 27, 2016 – Without citing evidence to support his claim, Donald Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. This claim has been repeatedly debunked.
    
    
38. – End of December 2016 – In December of 2016, Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner, incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met at Trump Tower to establish a “line of connection.” The meeting occurred around the time that the Obama administration was placing sanctions on the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 election.
    
    
    - – -

    JANUARY 2017

39. January 10, 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Donald Trump approached him about leading an investigation into “Vaccine Safety.” The prospect that vaccination can lead to autism has been repeatedly debunked by long-running, peer-reviewed studies. Trump had supported the anti-vaccination theory on stage at the 2015 presidential debates. In September 2015 he publicly stated, “We had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, two years old, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
    
    
40. – January 11, 2017 – Donald Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon stated that Trump would “voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotel to the United States Treasury.” Two months into his presidency, no evidence existed that Trump had followed through with this promise. If Trump did accept payments from foreign states through his businesses, as his lawyer claimed, he may have been in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This clause forbids government officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
    
    
41. – January 11, 2017 – Donald Trump refused to divest from his real estate companies or place his assets in a blind trust, as encouraged by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The United States Government designates a “Qualified Blind Trust:” for executive branch employees as one where the trustee has no relation whatsoever to the government official. Contrary to this, President Trump opted to entrust business operations of his companies to his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. According to the Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Trump’s arrangement “doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every President in the past four decades has met.” By continuing to maintain a direct...

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When you think of the good folks over at XDA Developers, you might think of a community and internet forum where Android enthusiasts gather to exchange ideas, discuss about Android, share modding ideas and creations, and so on, but it looks like XDA now wants to expand being that and have since launched their own smartphone – the XDA Pro1-X.

If the design and the name of the Pro1-X look and sound familiar, it is because the handset is actually a collaboration between XDA and F(x)tec, the latter of which created the Pro1 that the Pro1-X is based on. XDA claims that they have made some tweaks to the handset such as bumping up the RAM and storage, but for the most part, the rest remains the same.

This includes the use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a fingerprint scanner, a dedicated camera button, USB-C and HDMI out, and a dual 12MP + 5MP camera on the back and an 8MP front-facing shooter. The phone will also run on LineageOS, the spiritual successor to CyanogenMod, but according to XDA, there will be versions that run Ubuntu Touch OS and regular Android if that’s what you prefer.

They have also decided to go with the inclusion of a slideout QWERTY physical keyboard, a rarity these days amongst Android devices. The XDA Pro1-X is currently on Indiegogo where it’s being sold at an early bird price of $679, which is 24% off its RRP of $899.

Source: XDA Developers

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Gov. Greg Abbott hasn’t given a reason for ordering the troops to Dallas, Houston, Austin, Fort Worth and San Antonio.

Shortly after Trump was elected, we had an idea here at McSweeney’s — a brutally simple idea. Because Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, the rule of law, democratic norms, and human decency come so relentlessly, we had a feeling that most would be lost under the avalanche.

So we asked a team of researchers to do a simple thing: catalog and continuously publish the crimes, one by one, in chronological order. They’ve done this for the past four years. The list is now close to 1,000 offenses, with at least twenty of them impeachable in any sane or self-respecting democracy.

If you have an undecided voter in your life, or can get this list out via any available channels, we encourage you to do so. None of the entries here are embellished or slanted. They are stated plainly and attributed clearly. We know the list is horrifying. We hope it will be edifying.

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes

A furniture salesman used a sports bet as insurance.

(Image credit: NPR/Pattern from vecteezy.com)

1. Write about a personal challenge you have recently faced and how it has shaped who you are today. While we would prefer you write about something other than the pandemic, we are resigned to the fact that you will probably write about the pandemic. Please just avoid using the word “unprecedented.”

2. Why do you want to attend our university? This is the only year we would actually believe you if you wrote, “I like your rural environment, secluded from the rest of humanity.”

3. Which of our unique housing programs appeals to you most, and why? In the likely event that we will not be able to provide sufficient dorm space for the entire class of incoming freshmen, how would you win a Hunger Games-style tournament to ensure yourself a spot? Be sure to account for the incoming freshmen who were admitted last year but ended up taking a gap year (i.e., competitors who have had an extra year to prepare for your battle to the death).

4. Tell us about a time when you took initiative, and discuss the outcome of your actions. Hypothetically, suppose one of our professors took too much freedom with our online semester and fled to an unknown location in the Caribbean. And, again hypothetically, whenever we email her to come back to campus, she just responds, “HAHA LOSERS YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME.” Also (please keep in mind, this is just a purely hypothetical exercise), she teaches one of our most popular freshman seminars. Would you be able to track her down for the sake of your education?

5. What unique talents do you possess that would enrich our college community? Example responses could include an abnormally effective immune system, antibodies, and bassoon.

6. Describe a time in which you publicly confronted a belief with which you disagreed. In your response, please address whether your confrontation went viral on Twitter, whether anti-maskers sent you death threats, and in which part of Florida it occurred.

7. What three words would you use to describe yourself? We know it has been a tough year, so we can just give you the first one as a freebie: hopeless. DO NOT try to be clever and write something dumb like “I think differently.” WE ARE LOOKING FOR THREE ADJECTIVES. YOU ARE NEITHER FUNNY NOR UNIQUE FOR WRITING THAT. YOU JUST LOOK PRETENTIOUS. We did not even enjoy seeing that line before the pandemic, so it is especially unwelcome during these times.

8. Which opportunities would you take advantage of while on campus (i.e., in your childhood bedroom)? Please visit our redesigned student website to browse extracurricular activities like tutoring local students but on Zoom, performing a capella but on Zoom, and playing intramural frisbee but on Zoom.

9. Who inspires you? Is it our university president, who instituted mass layoffs and a hiring freeze before increasing his own salary by 35%?

10. At the end of the day, what’s really the point of doing any of this anyway?

“When asked if a female president would have better handled the coronavirus pandemic, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said, ‘I have no doubt, especially if it were me. I have no doubt. I mean, I was born for that.”
— The Hill, 10/25/20

(President Hillary Rodham Clinton stands at the White House Press Room podium.)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: … And we will continue to work closely with my good friend, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the CDC to try to get this third wave of the Coronavirus under control. Are there any questions?

(She closes her three-inch binder labeled PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS PLAN – WELLESLEY COLLEGE SENIOR THESIS, 1969 and sets it aside next to her other three-inch binders.)

NYT REPORTER: Madam President, the election is a week away and the Coronavirus death toll now stands at over 5,000. Candidate Donald Trump recently tweeted, “The Rhodam Rona is the greatest scandal in American history. Killary Killinton must be voted out. Totally incompetent!” Many Senate Republicans are now calling for a fifth impeachment trial. How do you respond to that?

CLINTON: Well, as I’ve said repeatedly, we would have seen much fewer cases if Republican governors had chosen to comply with the nationwide mask mandate I put in place on February 1st. There’s only so much that millions of highly accurate COVID-19 tests and legions of contact tracers can do when some people simply refuse to wear masks.

WAPO REPORTER: Does that mean you refuse to take responsibility for the hundreds of attendees that have been infected at Donald Trump’s rallies throughout the summer and fall?

CLINTON: Considering we put giant signs outside the arenas that said DO NOT ATTEND THESE RALLIES! THEY ARE AGAINST THE LAW, PLUS YOU COULD DIE!, yes, I refuse to take responsibility.

WAPO REPORTER: But isn’t their defiance of the law more of a reflection on your lack of leadership than anything else?

CLINTON: Next question.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: Mrs. Bill Clinton, what do you say to the dozens of Americans who have lost their jobs due to this pandemic?

CLINTON: Look, I’m not sure what else there is to say. After the Red Wave of 2018, Republicans control three-fourths of the House and Senate. They ratified the 28th Amendment barring a female president from issuing executive orders, and the 29th Amendment expanding the Supreme Court to 13, allowing them to further erode the powers of the executive branch thanks to Justices Kavanaugh, Giuliani, Hannity, and Nugent, who were appointed by a veto-proof majority. The only reason I’m even still in office is because, during the Comey Investigation and the fourth impeachment trial, the only instance of voter fraud they managed to find after the 2016 election was one man in Vermont that successfully cast a vote for Jill Stein on behalf of his cat. And even then, the impeachment vote barely failed (thank you, Senator Romney). Also, don’t even get me started on the first impeachment trial (Benghazi), the second impeachment trial (my private email server), and the third impeachment trial (wearing an eggshell pantsuit after Labor Day). The point is, for the past four years, I’ve been stymied at every turn, my legislative agenda has been cut off at the knees, and even with all of that interference, I’ve still managed to keep the Coronavirus death toll well below that of most countries. Considering all of that, I’d say I’ve done a pretty decent job.

CNN REPORTER: Then how do you respond to candidate Trump’s tweet that quote, “COVID Clinton is the worst president in the history of the United States. Even Cheatin’ Obama was better. Sad!”

CLINTON: Next question.

CNN REPORTER: And what about the latest polls showing you trailing candidate Trump by 32 points?

CLINTON: Next question.

WSJ REPORTER: Will you accept the election results even though mail-in voting has been made illegal in 38 states and millions have been purged off of voter rolls for minor technicalities?

CLINTON: Of course. Faith in our elections is one of the few remaining pillars of our democracy.

NEW YORK POST REPORTER: But you know you’re totally going to lose, right?

CLINTON: Yeah, I’ve pretty much accepted that.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The really interesting question is whether the Internet drove this or whether a subset of all populations were suppressed cow-people.

Today's News:

Shortly after Trump was elected, we had an idea here at McSweeney’s — a brutally simple idea. Because Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, the rule of law, democratic norms, and human decency come so relentlessly, we had a feeling that most would be lost under the avalanche.

So we asked a team of researchers to do a simple thing: catalog the crimes, one by one, in chronological order. They’ve done this for the past four years. The list is now close to 1,000 offenses, with at least twenty of them impeachable in any sane or self-respecting democracy.

If you have an undecided voter in your life, or can get this list out via any available channels, we encourage you to do so. None of the entries here are embellished or slanted. They are stated plainly and attributed clearly. We know the list is horrifying. We hope it will be edifying, too.

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes