August 1, 2022

Football's Coming Home: England Women win Euro Final 2-1 in front of 87,000 in Wembley

England wins its first major international trophy after a 56 year drought, as the Lionesses beat the Germans 2-1 in a packed Wembley Stadium. Ratings will be through the roof - pretty much one of the the most important moments in women's sports in the last decade.

Weirdly, hardly a word on DU.

In his recent comedy special, Bill Burr goofs on women's sports: he starts with the USWNT (that's soccer) asking for pay parity with the USMNT. He immediately switches gears to the WNBA, noting that they play "in front of 400 fans" for the last 25 years, and challenging the "feminists" to name the their top 5 WNBA player, no, any player on their team, no, the name of the team in their city. "You can't!" he laughs.

But there was a little switch in there. He shifted from soccer to WNBA because most people can name or recognize five players from the USWNT, or, if they can't, they can't name five USMNT players either. He switches from soccer to WNBA because the USWNT is undoubtedly the best in the world, and surely don't play in front of small crowds. It is a dishonest shift, because he knows damn well that the argument he makes about the WNBA doesn't apply to the USWNT, which is the group he used to start the sequence.

Do you know why the USWNT is the best in the world while even Euro teams struggle to keep up? Two words: Title IX. Universities considered women's soccer a cheap way to comply with Title IX requirements. So the US women's sport developed competitive leagues far earlier than in Europe (and England!), where footie for girls remained a dubious proposition well into this century. Remember that Bend it Like Beckham came out less than 20 years ago, and that the characters end up in US universities. (Special note: One of the key players for England, Alessia Russo, went to the University of North Carolina...maybe some of the England fans didn't know why her number was...23!)

The English women's national team just won the Euro tournament. Let's give them some applause. Women's soccer (okay, football) is fantastic.

March 28, 2022

People are saying Will Smith ruined Questlove's Oscar moment, but nobody mentions that Questlove

slapped Gwap Lord and $mokedcheddathaassgetta on XXL Rap Roundtable.

That was the whoopdee on God.

Talmbout that yeet.

March 14, 2022

Search Intensifies for Gunman in Homeless Shootings in 2 Cities

Source: New York Times

The police in New York City and Washington and federal investigators intensified their search on Monday for a gunman who they said had been targeting homeless people sleeping outdoors and had shot at least five men, two of them fatally.

The assailant’s last known attack was early Saturday morning, when he shot a man sleeping in a doorway in SoHo in Manhattan in the head, killing him, the police said. The police are investigating whether another homeless man who was found dead on Sunday may have been killed by the same man.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/nyregion/homeless-shooting-nyc.html

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Images of perpetrator at link. I consider this news of national interest because the attacks take place in two cities, DC and NYC.

February 26, 2022

Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich gives up "stewardship" of Chelsea FC

Just announced during Man City - Everton match.

February 25, 2022

Zelensky got you stuck off the realness, they be the infamous

https://twitter.com/SaoSasha/status/1497311531041640450

February 4, 2022

In New York City Sewage, a Mysterious Coronavirus Signal

Source: New York Times

Last January, a team of researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York City’s wastewater spotted something strange in their samples. The viral fragments they found had a unique constellation of mutations that had never been reported before in human patients — a potential sign of a new, previously undetected variant.

For the past year, these oddball sequences, or what the scientists call “cryptic lineages,” have continued to pop up in the city’s wastewater.

There is no evidence that the lineages, which have been circulating for at least a year without overtaking Delta or Omicron, pose an elevated health risk to humans. But the researchers, whose findings were published in Nature Communications on Thursday, still have no idea where they came from.

“At this point, what we can say is that we haven’t found the cryptic lineages in human databases, and we have looked all over,” said Monica Trujillo, a microbiologist at Queensborough Community College and an author of the new paper.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/health/coronavirus-wastewater-new-york.html

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Fascinating science story.

January 11, 2022

Chicago Teachers to return to in-person work tomorrow, classes back on for Wednesday

House of delegates voted to suspend the labor action.

Very little given by Lightfoot/CPS.

January 11, 2022

Chicago Public Schools students to return to classrooms Wednesday after CTU suspends work action

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body has voted to suspend its labor action and return to in-person work Tuesday, ending a bitter dispute with Chicago Public Schools and setting up students to return to classrooms Wednesday for the first time in a week.

“Today’s negotiations were productive,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement ahead of the vote. “We are waiting to hear back from the CTU. We will update parents, students and members of the public as soon as we are able.”

The union’s 700-member house of delegates convened to discuss the school district’s offer, which appeared to make very few compromises. The union’s delegates voted 389 to 226 in favor of suspending the work action and returning Tuesday. The CTU’s 25,000 members are expected to vote later in the week on whether to approve the potential agreement.

Earlier Monday, Lightfoot and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in separate interviews with local and national news outlets that they felt “cautiously optimistic” they could land a deal.

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Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2022/1/10/22877240/ctu-teachers-union-delegates-cps-public-schools-proposal-contract-in-person-schooling

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CTU folds.

January 5, 2022

CPS classes canceled Wednesday after CTU votes to refuse in-person work

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Public Schools classes are canceled Wednesday as the Chicago Teachers Union voted to refuse in-person work, defying district plans because of post-holidays COVID-19 concerns.

The cancellation came despite a last-minute proposal from city leaders that introduced improved testing and safety measures but wasn’t enough to avoid upending in-person schooling for about 290,000 students at non-charter schools exactly 12 months after another CPS-CTU fight over pandemic safety measures left families in limbo for weeks.

This is the third time CPS classes are disrupted by labor strife in the past 27 months.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2022/1/4/22867100/cps-ctu-classes-district-proposal-teachers-vote-remote-learning

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Still no text message from CPS...

January 5, 2022

Chicago Teachers Union votes 73% to begin remote teaching starting tomorrow

Chicago Public Schools will now counter by cancelling classes, possibly for the remainder of the week, but definitely for tomorrow.

Fucks sake.