Merriam Webster today:

Good morning! Today’s #WordOfTheDay is ‘misprision’ https://s.m-w.com/2K33oII

Zinnnnnnnng.… Read the rest

Another scary thing about the Greenland ice shelf:

When the remnants of Europe’s second summertime heat wave migrated over Greenland in late July, more than half of the ice sheet’s surface started melting for the first time since 2012. A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that mega-melts like that one, which are being amplified by climate change, aren’t just causing Greenland to shed billions of tons of ice. They’re causing the remaining ice to become denser.

“Ice slabs”—solid planks of ice that can span hundreds of square miles and grow to be 50 feet thick—are spreading across the porous, air pocket-filled surface of the Greenland ice sheet as it melts and refreezes more often. From 2001 to

Say goodbye to the birds.

Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.

That’s according to a new estimate published in the journal Science by researchers who brought together a variety of information that has been collected on 529 bird species since 1970.

“We saw this tremendous net loss across the entire bird community,” says Ken Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. “By our estimates, it’s a 30% loss in the total number of breeding birds.”

Rosenberg and his colleagues already knew that a number of bird populations had been decreasing.

“But we also knew that

In the annals of “stupidest thing I’ve read today” we get Pink News

ah well enough said, isn’t it. We get Pink News.

Prepare to be stunned and amazed and admiring all at once:

In news nobody saw coming today, Mark Ronson has come out as sapiosexual, which describes being attracted to intelligence in a person above all else.

The chart-topping record producer behind hits such as ‘Uptown Funk’ revealed his sexual identity on today’s Good Morning Britain.

Hosts Ben Shepherd and Kate Garraway congratulated the disc jockey for being “out and proud”.

I’d say this has got to be parody, but it’s Pink News – I don’t think they know what parody is.

Why would anybody see it coming? … Read the rest

The Department of Justice, which is supposed to work for the country not for Trump, is helping Trump keep the whistleblower report secret, according to Adam Schiff.

The U.S. Department of Justice played a key role in a Trump administration decision to withhold a whistleblower complaint from Congress, U.S. House Intelligence panel chairman Adam Schiff said on Thursday, adding that lawmakers did not know yet if the White House was involved.

Do we trust William Barr to be doing anything other than protecting Trump? No we do not. Whose fault is that? William Barr’s. He might be doing something disinterested and reasonable right now, but he’s given us way too many reasons to think he’s not. By placing himself … Read the rest

Oh, I see, it’s yet another heads we win tails you lose situation. The Intel IG is saying he can’t share the whistleblower’s report with Congress because he’s not authorized to…by the Trump-appointed DNI. On Sunday Adam Schiff was saying there is no one above the Intel IG, but apparently they’ve found a way around that.

The inspector general for the intelligence community, who is currently meeting with the House Intelligence Committee, has so far been unwilling to share details of the controversial whistleblower complaint, according to multiple sources.

Michael Atkinson has been telling the committee that he is not allowed to provide details of the substance of the complaint because he was not authorized to do so, the sources

It’s like this.

The rules are:

1. People are whatever gender they say they are

2. Cis people are comfortable with their assigned gender

3. Cis people may not reject the word “cis” as describing them

4. Only genuine trans people can be trans, and only genuine non-binary people can be non-binary

5. Cis people who say they are non-binary are wrong

The question is how it’s possible to reconcile 1 with 5, or 5 with 1.… Read the rest

Aaron Rupar on Corey Lewandowski’s in-your-face confirmation that he lied to the news media:

Lewandowski, dripping with disdain, all but admits he lied during media interviews, prompting the audience to gasp at his brazenness. Hard to believe this guy is considering a run for US Senate.

Russell Berman at the Atlantic tells the story:

If anyone really got to Lewandowski, it was Barry Berke, the attorney Democrats hired to consult on their investigation and the staff member they designated to question the witness after all the lawmakers were done. Republicans had objected to staff members having the opportunity to question Lewandowski, and judging by Berke’s effectiveness, it was clear why they would be concerned. Berke caught Lewandowski in a

The job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, oddly enough, to protect the environment, but its next move is going to be telling California it can’t have stricter admission standards than the rest of the country. Must be dirtier! Is the law!

The Trump administration will announce as early as Wednesday it is revoking California’s authority to set its own greenhouse gas and vehicle fuel efficiency standards and barring all states from setting such rules, two auto industry officials said on Tuesday.

The move is sure to spark legal challenges over issues including states’ rights and climate change that administration officials say could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump met with senior officials last Thursday and agreed

Montreal gets a new city pool. And guess what!

New Montreal City Pool Will Have Just One Changing Room & It Will Be Gender Neutral

There will only be one changeroom, and it will be for everyone.

Well, no it won’t be for everyone, because of the people who don’t want to change in front of people of the opposite sex.

• The City of Montreal has announced new plans for the forthcoming Rosemont Aquatic Complex.
• Most notabl[e] is the decision to opt for one, universal change room instead of two, gendered change rooms.
• The hope is that the decision will increase accessibility and optimize space.

Why would the decision increase accessibility? What are they thinking? What people are kept … Read the rest

Trump is in California to seek $$$ from rich people.

 Many details of his brief visit, accompanied by housing and urban development secretary Ben Carson have remained mysterious prior to his arrival, though Trump did make clear that he’d focus on the problem of homelessness in California.

By “focus on the problem of homelessness” of course he doesn’t mean provide public housing along with support for people with mental health problems or addictions or both, he means scraping up all the homeless people and driving them away, presumably to starve in a ditch somewhere cold and wet and miles from any millionaires.

Advocates across the Golden State, which has a growing homeless population and severe affordable housing shortage, have