2024 has had a lot of news, but it isn't unprecedented
Many people feel like 2024 is unprecedented for the events and news, but it is good to keep perspective that while there is a lot going on this year - it isn't entirely unprecedented. This entry looks at 1973, 1968 and 1940.
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"How the Maui wildfire devastated Lahaina, hour by hour"
It's a terrible event and the death toll keeps climbing. As of this moment, over 89 dead, from the fires that devoured Lahaina on Maui.
For two days, National Weather Service employees in Honolulu had been sending out ominous alerts about powerful easterly gusts, whipped up by Hurricane Dora passing 500 miles to the south. They hit Maui at a time when much of the tropical island had been parched by severe drought, including the drier leeward side that includes Lahaina.
The next time Vorpahl woke up, she smelled smoke. The power was out.
A fire had started in the dry grass near her home on Lahainaluna Road, on a slope just east of the highway that bypasses downtown. Power poles fell in the neighborhood, and wires had snapped — leading several neighbors to later question whether electrical equipment had started the blaze.
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Two other bits of good news yesterday
I know I mentioned the death of Pat Roberts yesterday, but due to travel I neglected to celebrate the other two bits of wonderful news from the day:
First, Donald Trump was indicted on seven counts - We had known indictments were coming from the leaks, but to finally see it is historic and going to be a huge deal. They wouldn't do it without an air tight case, and now it's just about getting through it.
Second, the Supreme Court upholds Alabama is gerrymandered is huge.
By a 5-to-4 vote, a coalition of conservative and liberal justices reaffirmed the court's 1986 precedent interpreting how legislative districts must be drawn under the landmark voting rights act, as amended in 1982. The court said that in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and one in four voters is black, the Republican-dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice.
The decision could reverberate across other states, with reconsideration of how congressional lines are drawn in areas with significant Black populations.
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So let me review:
- Overturned train in Ohio causing massive environmental damage
- Overturned truck in Arizona
- Turkey death toll from the earthquake surpasses 40,000
- Three dead at a campus shooting for Michigan State (including at least one student who had previously endured a high school shooting.)
- Ukraine still invaded and fighting for independence
Just an unthinkable and overwhelming past two weeks and I am left shaking my head wondering what is going to come next.
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Netherlands apologizes for role in African slave trade
Prime Minister Mark Rutte has formally apologised on behalf of the Dutch state for its historical role in slavery, and for consequences that he acknowledged continue into the present day.
"Today I apologise," Rutte said on Monday, speaking at a nationally televised speech at the Dutch National Archives.
"For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled and stimulated slavery and have profited from it.
"It is true that nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery … [however] the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering that has been done to those that were enslaved and their descendants."
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"A guide to getting started with Twitter alternative Mastodon"
I continue to dislike the comparisons between Twitter and Mastodon, but it is a big deal for a major newspaper to cover how to migrate or start an account on Mastodon.
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NYC Jury Finds Trump Orgs Guilty on All Counts
The Trump Organization's two affiliate companies on trial in New York City were found guilty of all nine counts of tax fraud and related crimes on Monday, as jurors ended a long trial with a swift verdict against the former American president's corporate empire.
The Manhattan jury concluded that former President Donald Trump's eponymous companies dodged taxes by playing accounting games: showering their executives with benefits, reducing their official salary, and paying them at times as if they were "independent contractors."
This trial is not to be confused with the half dozen other legal challenges currently targeting the former president. Trump is facing a quickly developing Department of Justice criminal investigation into the way he tried to cling to power in 2020 by lying to the American public about supposed voting fraud and inciting an attack on Congress, plus a probe into the way he kept classified documents at his Palm Beach mansion-club. He's also the target of a local Georgia criminal investigation into his attempts to intimidate an elections official there into flipping that election's results.
This trial is also separate from the civil case brought on by the New York Attorney General, who is trying to shut down the company and seize its assets over the way it regularly lied about its real estate portfolio—making up non-existent building space and inflating values to obtain better bank loans or maximize tax-write offs on donated land.
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GE bought out the ad space in the printed NYT today to educate folks about GE's three-way split
The New York Times on Tuesday unveiled a unique version of its weekday print paper featuring more than two dozen ads from just one advertiser — General Electric.
Why it matters: It's the first time in the paper's 171-year history that any advertiser has gotten to own all of The Times' print real estate exclusively — in addition to most of its premier digital advertising real estate.
The seven-figure campaign centers on GE's core message of focus, as it begins a plan to split into three publicly-traded companies: GE HealthCare, GE Aerospace and GE Vernova (energy).
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Two WWII planes collide midair at Dallas airshow
Two planes collided during an airshow in Dallas, ripping apart mid-air before falling in a fiery crash. A Boeing 17 Flying Fortress was struck by a smaller Bell P 63 King Cobra; both were World War II-era planes. The FAA says it's unknown how many people were on board each plane and what caused the well-rehearsed airshow to take a terrifying turn.
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Jon Stewart talks with the Crooked Media Guys
I've listened to the Crooked Media podcast folks for a while, on and off, right now I mainly just listen to 'Offline' with Jon Favreau. Enjoyed this conversation a lot.
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Screencast recording failed, will try again
Tried something new this morning, I did a screen recording as I went through my RSS feeds and read the morning's news. Foolishly, I didn't check to make sure the recording setup was working since it was the first time doing it. After I finish, I open the video to discover it had recorded my mouse movements on a black screen and no audio. So... that didn't exactly work as expected. But, I might try it again another time. We'll see.
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I have had an idea for a new RSS reader. It's a tool I want, but I don't really want to build. Currently my RSS reader pulls in 97 different feeds from varying sources, mainstream news, regional news, blogs, link aggregators, etc. One of my frustrations is when I see multiple articles on the same topic sporadically through my feed. Granted, this isn't a huge issue, but each successive article is an increasing volume of noise in the feed.
It makes sense, because I am purposefully pulling in diverse feeds, multiple places are covering a topic. And if it is an important topic, then it is good for multiple perspectives, etc. This issue is one thing preventing me from actually pulling in more feeds, with this system, the posts on the same topic suddenly become a potential value add rather than a detractor.
But at the same time, I'd really like to smooth the feed and instead see a singular entry on the topic with a prominent inclusion of "these other posts are discussing it as well."
So, I've had this idea for a while. Last night I think I found an open source project which would get me much closer and be, at the least, a first tool in looking at posts and identifying ones which have overlap. I will have to explore it further this weekend.
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Al Jazeera Live
Qatar is hardly a hero in the world, but I do enjoy Aljazeera news - especially during world crises.
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Paying For News
Currently, I pay for a Washington Post digital subscription ($100/year) which I feel is well worth it. Before that I subscribed to the New York Times, eventually dropping them and making the switch to WaPo. I do miss the NYT subscription as I quickly burn through the free articles per month, but I have a hard time getting myself to spend the money on a subscription in addition to the Washington Post. NYT is a marvel technologically, I am constantly impressed by their platform. WaPo is close behind.
More locally, I've also considered subscribing to the Seattle Times but their subscription fee is just hard for me to buy into. Most interesting to me is that the Seattle times is its own mini-newspaper network, humorously in the two northern corners of the US: Seattle & Maine. But the fact it isn't part of the Chicago Tribune or some other mega paper network is a big push for my interest in supporting it so it can continue to operate on its own.
I think WaPo's subscription level is the sweet spot of where I'd be happy subscribing to more news sites. If NYT and Seattle Times both offered a subscription at the comparable cost, I would do both of them as well. Unfortunately, both are twice that cost.
I suspect that price point is largely derived from the anchor around the price of a physical copy of the paper. The NYT (and WaPo) saw a huge upswing in subscribers during Trump's presidency, I will be curious to see how that continues with the end of Trump's era in the Whitehouse.
Curious about others' willingness to pay for news, I started this twitter poll:
[{embed}]https://twitter.com/trickjarrett/status/1350915437622509568\[{/embed}]
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