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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
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Today in History

1515
King Francis of France defeats the Swiss army under Cardinal Matthaus Schiner at Marignano, northern Italy.
1549
Pope Paul III closes the first session of the Council of Bologna.
1564
On the verge of attacking Pedro Menendez’s Spanish settlement at San Agostin, Florida, Jean Ribault’s French fleet is scattered by a devastating storm.
1759
British troops defeat the French on the plains of Abraham, in Quebec.
1774
Anne Robert Turgot, the new controller of finances, urges the king of France to restore the free circulation of grain in the kingdom.
1782
The British fortress at Gibraltar comes under attack by French and Spanish forces.
1788
The Constitutional Convention authorizes the first federal election resolving that electors in all the states will be appointed on January 7, 1789.
1789
Guardsmen in Orleans, France, open fire on rioters trying to loot bakeries, killing 90.
1846
General Winfield Scott takes Chapultepec, removing the last obstacle to U.S. troops moving on Mexico City.
1862
Union troops in Frederick, Maryland, discover General Robert E. Lee‘s attack plans for the invasion of Maryland wrapped around a pack of cigars. They give the plans to General George B. McClellan who sends the Army of the Potomac to confront Lee but only after a delay of more than half a day.
1863
The Loudoun County Rangers route a company of Confederate cavalry at Catoctin Mountain in Virginia.
1905
U.S. warships head to Nicaragua on behalf of American William Albers, who was accused of evading tobacco taxes.
1918
U.S. and French forces take St. Mihiel, France in America’s first action as a standing army.
1945
Iran demands the withdrawal of Allied forces.
1951
In Korea, U.S. Army troops begin their assault in Heartbreak Ridge. The month-long struggle will cost 3,700 casualties.
1961
An unmanned Mercury capsule is orbited and recovered by NASA in a test.
1976
The United States announces it will veto Vietnam’s UN bid.
1988
Hurricane Gilbert becomes the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, based on barometric pressure. Hurricane Wilma will break that record in 2005.
1993
The Oslo Accords, granting limited Palestinian autonomy, are signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House.
2007
The UN adopts a non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
2008
Five synchronized bomb blasts occur in crowded locations of Delhi, India, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 100; four other bombs are defused.
2008
Hurricane Ike makes landfall in Texas; it had already been the most costly storm in Cuba’s history and becomes the third costliest in the US.

The Selfie-Obsessed Countess of Vanity

In our modern world, smartphones allow anyone to be obsessed with their own photographs, and the internet allows those folks to broadcast their obsession to the world. But even in the days when photography was new, expensive, and relatively difficult, Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, harnessed her wealth to record herself in over 400 portraits. She wasn't a photographer, but an artist, with herself as the medium.
She wasn’t the most likeable character of her time. Once rumoured to be the most beautiful woman in 19th century Europe, a queen of both style and drama; model, mistress, self-appointed muse, narcissist; if there’s one thing to know about the Italian Countess de Castiglione– it’s that she was seriously vain. Shipped off to Paris in 1856 to compete for the affection of the reigning King Napoleon III, she wasted no time weaving herself into a highly scandalous affair with the crown, all the while cultivating her own celebrity through hundreds of elaborate, self-directed photo shoots. At a time when photography was still in its infancy, the Countess had a body of work that could be compared to Kim Kardashian’s selfie collection. It was her vanity and obsession with her own beauty that came to define her entire lifestyle, around which her status, identity, and ultimately her demise, revolved. A cautionary tale of a woman who thought her beauty would last forever…
The Countess was used and abused by the European nobility for their own ends in her younger life, which reads like gossip column fodder. But she is most remembered for her legendary vanity and her portrait obsession. Read about the Countess of Castiglione and see more images at Messy Messy Chic.

Killer Schedule

Modern lifestyles are at war with the way our bodies evolved to function.
It is 7 p.m. on a spring Friday, and the Highland Hospital emergency room in Oakland, one of the busiest trauma centers in northern California, is expecting. When the patient—a young bicyclist hit by a car—arrives, blood is streaming down his temples.

Failure to get up at least once every 30 minutes may shorten your life

You can spend a lot of accumulated time on your bottom in the course of a day. Or you can sit for lengthy spells without a break.
Both, it turns out, are very bad for you.
Whether you're a heavy sitter or a binge-sitter, racking up prolonged sedentary time increases your risk of early death, according to a study published in Tuesday's edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Key US senators demand answers on Equifax hacking

Two key U.S. senators on Monday asked Equifax Inc to answer detailed questions on the breach of information about up to 143 million Americans’ personal information, including whether U.S. government agency records were compromised in the hack.

US Senate may vote this week to add penalties for sex traffic sites

The U.S. Senate may vote as soon as Tuesday on a bipartisan proposal that would make it easier to penalize operators of websites that facilitate online sex trafficking, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Allowing a vote on the legislation would deal a major blow to the U.S. technology industry, which has vigorously opposed the measure, saying it would thwart digital innovation and lead to endless litigation.
The proposed law was prompted in part by frustrations over failed attempts to shut down the website backpage.com, which many law enforcement officials have accused of facilitating the exploitation of especially women and children to perform sexual services against their will. The company has long denied the allegations.

How Americans drink ...

Party on, old man!
Men over the age of 50 drink a lot more frequently than their Millennial or Gen X counterparts—and the same thing is true for women, a new Gallup poll shows.
About 45 percent of older men drink every day, compared to just 37 percent of 18- to 49-year-old men. Meanwhile, a comparatively less 30 percent of women over age 50 consumed alcohol in the 24 hours before the survey; 26 percent of younger women did so.
How Americans drink: Men hate wine and women rarely binge

A Florida Pizza Hut To Irma-Fleeing Employees: You Will Be Disciplined If You Leave

Residents in Florida who work at a Pizza Hut were told by the manager that workers would be disciplined if they evacuated due to the deadly hurricane that...
***
The ONLY one(s) that are going to be disciplined are those who would not allow the employees to evacuate

Hammering Pizza Hut

A  Pizza Hut in Jacksonville, Florida, is facing backlash on social media after a manager at the outlet posted a note Friday threatening to punish workers, who attempted to evacuate more than 24 hours ahead of Hurricane Irma. The post went viral since and has sparked outrage on Twitter with people criticizing the brand for risking its employees’ lives.

Bank has entire Arab-American family arrested after father tries to deposit large check from home sale

In Kansas, Sattar Ali, an Iraqi-American doctoral student was arrested along with his family after Ali attempted to deposit a large check from the sale of their old house.

Police Cases That Basically Solved Crimes Using Magic

We giggle a bit at the implausible ways detectives on TV solve crimes, like the impossible "enhance" technique that allows us to see hi-res images on low-res security video. But crimes have been solved by thinking outside the box, in ways that may surprise you. They should have called this list five police "techniques," as there are actually more than five cases here. Several of them were solved by the presence of glitter.
Glitter might look all the same to you while you're trying to get that shit off your sweater, but there's reportedly "tremendous variation" in the stuff. Bulk glitter conglomerates can boast of having tens of thousands of different types to decorate your belongings, nether regions, and disgruntled pets as you see fit. Knowing this, one can see how leaving even one fleck behind after committing a foul deed can lead investigators right back to the exact Frederick's of Hollywood where you bought your sparkly apple-flavored nipple balm.
The first recorded instance of glitter being used as trace evidence happened at the end of the Cold War in Germany, when the U.S. Army's crime lab used it to solve a sexual assault case during a local celebration. Specific glitter from the victims' Mardi-Gras-like costumes was found on the clothing of the suspects. Another time, a killer in Alaska was nabbed in part because his estranged wife had dropped glitter in his car at some point, and some of it stuck to his victim. More recently, this method was used to bust a deadly hit and run driver who denied being at the wheel, but had a hard time explaining how the exact same cosmetic glitter she wore on her face wound up plastered to the airbag.
Read about glitter, glass. mosquitoes, and other odd ways police have found a perpetrator at Cracked.

‘We are allowed to kick’

‘We are allowed to kick’: Ohio Police defend brutal beating of unarmed black man

Highest paid YouTube star shoots ‘fucking nigger’ in live video stream

Highest paid YouTube star shoots ‘fucking nigger’ in live video stream — and gamer dudes rush to his defense

Koch Brother Company Devastated Arkansas Community for Easy Profits

Destructive and Deluded Women Who Prop Up the Alt-Right

Climate Change And The Media: That Which Must Not Be Named

Climate Change And The Media: That Which Must Not Be Named

Creature from the Green Lagoon

Caddo Lake in Texas is suffering under an alien invasion. Giant salvinia was imported from South America as an ornamental plant for aquariums and lawn ponds, but some escaped in 1998 and invaded a Houston pond. In 2006 it started moving from lake to lake and has become the scourge of Texas wetlands.
Australian researchers have calculated that, given the right conditions, an M&M-size salvinia plant could blanket 39 square miles of water in just over three months. As the advancing front reaches maturity, it swells into a carpet of vegetation up to three feet thick, smothering other life in its path by consuming nutrients and blocking sunlight from penetrating the water below. Fish can’t survive. Native plants and amphibians struggle. Lake recreation halts as viny roots clog boat engines and become ensnared in propeller blades. In some areas, the dense layer of salvinia can even become a substrate for other opportunistic weeds, making it difficult to tell where the lake ends and the shore begins.
People who live among the lakes have tried many ways to control salvinia: sweeping it up in nets, building barriers, and even blowtorching it. Importing weevils seems to be the best bet, but even that program has drawbacks: lack of government funding, a climate that salvinia survives better than weevils, and the fact that importing one invasive species to get rid of another can have devastating consequences. Read about the invasion of giant salvinia at Texas Monthly.

USDA sued for 'barbaric' wild animal killings

Several organizations are joining to sue a government agency that kills millions of animals each year.
The stated goal of the USDA Wildlife Services agency is to “resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist.” Sometimes that involves educating people or scaring birds away from airports. Other times, the agency employs people to kill wildlife, including 2,726,820 animals in 2016.

Animal Pictures