#saturday National prediction

[mycryptosuite]

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[dduane]

Is it just us, or are other people seeing this kind of thing...?

[SFX: DRAMATIC STING—DUM DUM DUMMMMMMM!]

Is this a local phenomenon, or are other people's weather outlets framing their weather headlines in increasingly clickbait-y style meant to raise the general anxiety level?

Here's the rest of the newspaper-generated copy associated with the current weather report. (I'm not linking to it: they can get their clicks somewhere else.)

Met Eireann has issued a five-day heat alert for Ireland, warning of rising temperatures as the country finally enjoys a period of dry and settled weather. Thermometers could read 22C in parts today and are set to rise "by the day" peaking at nearly 25C by Monday. The weekend's forecast also promises to be mostly dry, with just a few patches of light rain or drizzle. But don't get too comfortable - as the national forecaster has flagged a possible ominous twist in what could follow the warm spell. While long-range forecasts are notoriously subject to change, at this stage, the meteorological agency says there's a chance the weather will take a terrible turn.

...You ready for it? Brace yourselves—

It said: "Some uncertainty and possibly unsettled beyond Monday".

...FFS. [Insert OLDER WOMAN SHAKING FIST AT CLOUD.]

(laughter) Seriously. For the edification of the readership, I append here the rest of the OMG OMINOUS 111!!11 forecast... so you can see what, for some poor overworked headline writer at the Mirror, is being made to pass for high drama around here. Warning: beware of overloaded verbs.

In the meantime, Met Eireann has alerted (!!!) that Ireland will enjoy at least five days of mild weather as warm air engulfs (!!!!) the country. At present, Sunday looks to be the best day, as compared to other days, it offers the best combination of warm temperatures and sunny spells.

Oh wow, blessed relief from the overwhelming tension. I'm skipping the Thursday and Friday predictions.

Giving day-by-day breakdown of what to expect over the coming days, Met Eireann said: "...Sunny spells at first Saturday along with a few light showers before turning cloudier through the morning with some patchy light rain or drizzle developing, mainly for Atlantic counties. Highest temperatures of 16C to 21C , coolest for Atlantic coastal areas, in light to moderate southwesterly winds, fresher for a time in the west and northwest. Cloudy and humid Saturday night with just a few spots of light rain or drizzle. Temperatures not falling below 11C to 15C in light westerly or variable breezes. "Rather cloudy to begin Sunday with a few spots of light rain or drizzle. Sunny spells will gradually develop along with some scattered. Highest temperatures of 18C to 23C in a mostly light southwesterly breeze. "A warm day Monday with a mix of cloud and sunny spells, especially in the south and east. A few showers will likely develop. Highest temperatures of 20C to 24C generally in light breezes. "Some uncertainty and possibly unsettled weather in the further outlook."

(eyeroll) I was going to read the weather forecast anyway, you know? They didn't need to scare me into it.

Though what's probably actually terrifying them is the possibility that I might just go to the Met Eireann website and read the forecast for free. Without the ads and the dramatic language. Especially without the ads. :)

ETA: Oh wait, I forgot to post this one. Check this out.

[mysticstronomy]

ASTRONOMERS HAVE DETECTED A NEW GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE??

Blog#316

Saturday, July 22nd, 2023

Welcome back,

After nearly two decades of listening, astronomers are finally starting to “hear” the rumbles of gravitational waves they believe emanate from the behemoths of our universe: supermassive black holes.

The result comes from a National Science Foundation–sponsored initiative known as the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav).

Since 2004 NANOGrav has monitored metronomelike flashes of light from a Milky Way–spanning network of dead stars known as pulsars. Forged from the hearts of exploding massive stars, these city-size orbs weigh as much as an entire sun and can spin thousands of times per second. This makes them remarkably accurate timekeepers—and ideal sentinels for the especially large ripples in spacetime predicted to emerge from merging supermassive black holes.

Such gravitational waves are distinct from the kinds that were previously reported from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and other Earth-based detectors. For one thing, the waves spotted via pulsars wouldn’t all be traceable to individual merger events: they would form the so-called gravitational-wave background, the ambient rustling of spacetime built up from cumulative mergers throughout the cosmos.

Another important distinction is that in their crest-to-trough span, each of these waves should be approximately the size of our solar system—which counterintuitively makes them much harder to detect. Washing over pulsar-strewn space, these gargantuan swells in spacetime could betray their presence via minuscule offsets to the dead stars’ spins, allowing observers to glimpse them through painstaking measurements. In a collection of five papers released today, that is essentially what NANOGrav claims to have done.

“It’s incredibly exciting because we think we’re starting to open up this new window on the gravitational-wave universe,” says Sarah Vigeland, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and a member of NANOGrav.

(The collaboration’s work to date hasn’t quite met the statistical gold standard of how physicists evaluate the robustness of a finding.)

(So for now, scientists working on the project are modestly claiming “evidence for” the gravitational-wave background, not a full-fledged detection. But they’re confident that milestone will come with additional observations.)

NANOGrav is just one of several different pulsar timing array projects underway around the globe. All these endeavors follow the same basic blueprint: they use radio telescopes to monitor dozens of superpredictable pulsars for years on end to catch tiny variations in their rhythmic spinning.

Originally published on scientificamerican-com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, July 26th, 2023)

"WHAT IS STAR NIBIRU??"

[simply-ivanka]

THE DEMOCRATS HAVE BURNT DOWN AMERICA'S ECONOMY

Warren Buffett has said he expects the US government to increase taxes rather than reduce spending as the country struggles with its mounting national debt. 

The declaration, delivered Saturday, comes as the US is hard-pressed to address widening fiscal deficits, and as the national debt recently topped $34 trillion - an amount nearly as big as the entire US economy.

More concerning is the fact the Fed and other money-minded officials have no plan in sight, paving the way for the Berkshire Hathaway boss's unsettling prediction. 

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Hi!

I wanna preface this question by saying it is entirely hypothetical, and I sincerely hope it will remain so!!!

But just like I take first aid training while hoping I won't need it, I would like to ask this.

First, background explanation: As I've started in previous questions I've sent, I live in Norway. Until the last handful of years, snakes were illegal to have as pets here, but it was loosened up and some snakes became legal in the second half of the 2010s.

During Covid, lots of people who had previously never owned snakes, bought them. I have no doubt that many were good, well prepared owners who had dreamed of having snakes for decades. However, there were still MORE than enough people who didn't know what they were getting into, and as a predictable outcome, many snakes were returned to the pet stores (who are obliged to take them back) when they turned out to grow and become long bois. (Apparently, people didn't expect animals famously being many feet long to actually BE many feet long - shocking.)

There were so many returned snakes that it was written about in the national news broadcasting service.

And I need to mention that animal rescues/shelters are ...kinda not a thing here. We have vets, and we have organizations dedicated to that kind of thing in GENERAL, but homeless pets that aren't cats are very very rarely a big issue here, so they're only usually equipped to take in cats and have foster homes for cats.

The institution most people know about and call of encountering animals, are wildlife patrol, who can help assess a situation, or relocate an animal, or take them to the vet MAYBE if deemed necessary. But they don't have resources to take animals in like a rescue, and their most well known purpose is usually to track down and kill moose after people hit them with their cars and they run off with broken legs and shit. (This happens several times every winter.)

So on to my hypothetical question:

If I should happen to come across an escaped pet snake, like a ball python or boa or whatever (I don't remember which snakes are legal pets here now, off the top of my head), outdoors, I should get it to a vet or pet shop that sells snakes ASAP. Everywhere like that is closed on Sundays here, so let's say I come across this poor bewildered snake on a Saturday evening or a Sunday.

What should I do? How do I approach it? How do I handle this unexpected snake who probably cannot survive outside in Norway? How should I go about picking it up and getting it into a bucket or box or crate or something, and how can I look after it and make it comfortable until I can get it to a vet/pet shop?

This is a great and very important question!

If you see an unexpected pet snake species, approach slowly and cautiously. Even a pet snake who's used to human contact is likely to spooked by an approaching human when they're outside and likely feeling overstimulated! The best thing you can do is find a long stick to scoop the snake up and get them into a bucket/box/whatever's handy. Most snakes will freeze when you lift them up with a stick, so that's the easiest option. If nothing's handy, slowly sneaking up on them and then putting a box/bucket over them, then sliding a piece of paper or cardboard underneath and flipping it over to trap them inside can work well, too.

Since in this hypothetical you just have to look after the poor confused snake for about a day, it won't be too difficult. Your impulse will likely be to try to keep the snake warm next to a heater - don't do that! Snakes can actually handle being a bit too cold for a lot longer than they can handle getting too warm, so if you just keep them in a reasonably warm room that's comfortable for humans, they'll be okay. Set them up with a bowl of water, and see if you can make a hiding place for them by cutting a doorway in a shoebox or other small container.

Hopefully, it's something you'll never need to do, but you're right that it's always best to be prepared!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In the wake of the horrific attempt to shoot Donald Trump, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios reported Monday that advisers close to the former president say he “plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness” and by “dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America.”

Because Trump has suddenly stared death in the face, the report suggested, he has attained benevolence toward his political foes, which will manifest itself at this week’s GOP convention with a “unifying” display. As Tucker Carlson told Axios: “Getting shot changes a man.”

Tell that to Trump himself. Only a few hours after that report appeared, Trump uncorked a new rant on Truth Social that left zero doubt that he remains fully committed to the range of positions that make Trump and his movement such a profound threat to democratic stability in this country—the very same ones that have done so much to bring about the “tinder box” that Axios imagines he is now preoccupied with addressing.

This led some to chortle that media predictions of a Trump “pivot”—a stock joke at this point—have imploded yet again. But it should occasion something else too. If media figures are so eager to depict Trump as unifying, then let’s lay down a hard metric: Before such claims are made, the absolute minimum threshold he must clear is fully renouncing the authoritarian designs he is threatening to inflict on this country and its people if reelected president.

Needless to say, that’s not going to happen.

Here’s Trump’s full rant:

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

Note that Trump is positioning himself as a “Uniting” figure (when he capitalizes words, you know he’s branding himself) while also reiterating that every single legal proceeding he faces is entirely illegitimate. And note especially his evocation of “the January 6th Hoax,” which really means that Trump remains fully committed to pardoning the January 6 rioters—and to canceling the ongoing prosecution of himself for insurrection-related crimes.

Those positions are irredeemably incompatible with any stated goal of unifying the country, at a very fundamental level. They embody the notion that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with trying to cling to power illegitimately, through violent means, in defiance of the votes and political aspirations of a majority of his fellow Americans. They also embody the idea that he and his movement should not be subject to the same laws that the rest of us are. Trump is telegraphing that he won’t back off any of that in the slightest.

The effort to assassinate Trump was an abomination and the enemy of the rule of law. Yet it’s also true that Republicans are cynically trying to exploit the shooting: Many have blamed it on the message from Democrats that Trump poses a fundamental threat to democracy, self-rule, and the American experiment, claiming this incited the shooting. Clearly, as Brian Beutler aptly notes, the game is to remove from the political agenda something that’s both true and politically damaging to Trump: that he actually does threaten all those things.

Worse, Trump advisers plainly want journalists to accept the premise in his tweet-rant: that the real threat to national stability is the continued effort to hold Trump and his movement accountable for their crimes against democracy; that moving past all these crimes—which Trump would do by voiding all of them, including his own—is itself the true precondition for achieving national healing.

There are signs this scam may have some success. First, some media coverage is already slipping into a subtle fallacy. The GOP argument right now is that Democrats are depicting Trump as an existential threat to the country and this inspired the shooting. It’s not lost on news organizations that Trump too constantly depicts Democrats in similar terms: He regularly says that electing them will mean “we won’t have a country” and that a Democratic victory will only be achieved via illegitimate means. News accounts have been pointing out that both sides offer a version of this message about the other.

But these accounts often don’t make it clear that in making this charge, only one side—the Democrats—is doing so while remaining broadly faithful to what the facts actually do dictate. Indeed, Democrats are remaining faithful to what Trump and his allies are saying in their own words. Trump has not just vowed to pardon the insurrectionists and treat ongoing prosecutions of himself as a dead letter but also has refused to say he’ll accept the results of the election and has vowed to prosecute his opponents without cause, even as his allies promise to ferociously unleash the state on designated enemies of MAGA.

News accounts should make it clear that it actually is not beyond the pale for Democrats to charge that Trump poses a foundational threat to republican governance. Nor is it beyond the pale to charge that MAGA is the only major faction in American life that valorizes political violence and sees its utilization in service of Trump and his goals as good. After all, this is precisely what it means to vow to pardon the January 6 rioters and to perpetually hail them as patriots and heroes. A media failure to clarify all this will help him pose as a post-shooting unifier.

What’s more, as the Axios story suggests, the idea that Trump is pivoting to “unity” will be very hard for some media figures to resist. Taking note of this temptation, Tim Miller joked: “Can we wait to actually see some evidence before declaring him Mandela now?”

I propose we go further, by insisting on the following: No calling Trump a “unifier” until he renounces plans to pardon the January 6 rioters and prosecute his opponents, stops casting the application of the law to himself and his movement as inherently corrupt, repudiates his threat to terminate parts of the Constitution, unequivocally commits to accepting the election results, and tells his allies to stop planning to treat any election loss as illegitimate in advance. And that’s just a start.

As Trump’s new rant makes clear, he has no intention of doing any such thing. If and when he doesn’t, the idea of Trump as unifying figure will again be unmasked as what it’s always been, every time such “pivots” are promised: a sick joke that merits nothing but mockery, derision, and contempt.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah for CNN:

“America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president: Kamala Harris,” screamed the headline of an op-ed in The New York Post on Saturday penned by Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino. The longtime media figure began his article by slamming Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs as “literally destroying businesses.” Gasparino then took aim at the vice president, writing that “the American public may soon be subjected to DEI writ large in the next president of the United States, if Kamala Harris finds her way to the top of the Democratic ticket.” Gasparino’s suggestion that Harris only got to where she is because of diversity programs — not because she earned it — is despicable. It reeks of the white supremacist myth that people of color are inherently inferior to white people and, therefore, we achieve success and positions of influence not on the merits, but only with the help of a diversity program. (I once was called a “quota hire” years ago on social media by a Fox News frequent guest because at the time I was the first Muslim hired to host a national radio show.)

Gasparino’s use of “DEI hire” apparently to demean the achievements of a person of color is far from the first time we’ve seen this. In fact, just last week, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado took a page from this same vile playbook in a social media post attacking White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Boebert — who in the past suggested that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is Muslim, was a terrorist — was apparently upset with Jean-Pierre’s comments about Biden’s workday being many hours longer than she believed to be true, so she smeared her as a “discredited DEI hire.” Earlier this year, the same DEI-as-insult line was used to attack the Black mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Scott responded to the smears by stating, “We know what these folks really want to say when they say ‘DEI mayor’.” He added bluntly, “They really want to say the N-word.” The mayor later gloriously trolled the bigots, telling MSNBC that the acronym “DEI” actually stands for “duly-elected incumbent.”

[...] There’s no hiding what’s intended with these types of attacks. In fact, Gasparino was not shy on this point, writing Harris was only picked by Biden as his running mate in 2020 because as a Black woman she “checked all the boxes.” Never mind the fact that Harris had been a public servant for more than 16 years at the time: first as an elected district attorney of San Francisco, and later as the elected attorney general for the state of California, where she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. In that office, she successfully secured billions of dollars in damages from unscrupulous businesses that had preyed on Californians. Nor does it matter to her detractors that Harris was then elected to the US Senate in 2016, where she made a name for herself with her service on the Judiciary and Intelligence committees. Nope, Gasparino apparently attributes her many achievements to her being given preferential treatment because of her race and gender. He predicted that if President Joe Biden ends up remaining on the 2024 ticket and wins, it’s unlikely he would physically be able to serve four years. The result, he says, is that “Harris becomes the nation’s first DEI president by default.” Of course, none of what Gasparino said was written in a vacuum. It’s in keeping with efforts by Republicans to try to discredit both the achievements by people of color as well as efforts to address our nation’s past acts of racism and racial discrimination. That’s been evident for months, as GOP-led legislatures rush to enact laws restricting and even outlawing DEI programs in education, state government, contracting, pension investments and other aspects of civic life.

Dean Obeidallah wrote on CNN’s website calling out the racist attack of labeling Vice President Kamala Harris a “DEI hire” by Fox Business reporter and New York Post contributor Charles Gasparino. The “DEI hire” line said by right-wingers like Gasparino is nothing more than vile racism.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Daily Don]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 30, 2023

Four days ago, on Saturday, August 26, in the early afternoon, a heavily armed, 21-year-old white supremacist in a tactical vest and mask, who had written a number of racist manifestos and had swastikas painted on his rifle, murdered three Black Americans at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida. He had apparently intended to attack Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution, but students who saw him put on tactical gear warned a security guard, who chased him off and alerted a sheriff’s deputy. 

As David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put it two days later, “America is living through a reign of white supremacist terror,” and in a speech to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law on Monday, President Joe Biden reminded listeners that “the U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism, rooted in white supremacy, is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland—the greatest threat.” 

Biden said he has made it a point to make “clear that America is the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world.” He noted that he had nominated the first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, for the Supreme Court and has put more Black women on the federal circuit courts than every other U.S. president combined. Under him, Congress has protected interracial and same-sex marriages, and his administration has more women than men. He warned that “hate never dies. It just hides.”   

But in his Editorial Board newsletter, John Stoehr pointed out that the increasing violence of white supremacists isn’t just about an “ideology of hate” rising, but it is “about a minority faction of the country going to war, literal war, with a majority faction.” He pointed to former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s recent prediction of civil war because “We’re not going to keep putting up with this…. We do need to rise up and take our country back.” Stoehr calls these white supremacists “Realamericans” who believe they should rule and, if they can’t do so lawfully, believe they are justified in taking the law into their own hands. 

Indeed, today’s white supremacist violence has everything to do with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected the right to vote guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870 after white supremacists refused to recognize the right of Black Americans to vote and hold office. Minority voting means a government—and a country—that white men don’t dominate.

In the 1870s, once the federal government began to prosecute those white men attacking their Black neighbors for exercising their right to vote, white supremacists immediately began to say that they had no issues with Black voting on grounds of race. Their issue, they said, was that Black men were poor, and they were voting for lawmakers—some Black but primarily white—who supported the construction of roads, schools, hospitals, and so on. While these investments were crucial in the devastated South and would help white Americans as well as Black ones, white supremacists insisted that such government action redistributed wealth from white people to Black people and thus was a form of socialism. 

It was a short step from this argument to insisting that Black men shouldn’t vote because they were “corrupting” the American system. By 1876, former Confederates had regained control of southern state legislatures, where they rewrote voting laws to exclude Black men and people of color on grounds other than that of race, which the Fifteenth Amendment had made unconstitutional. 

By the end of the nineteenth century, white southerners greeted any attempt to protect Black voting as an attempt to destroy true America. Finally, in North Carolina in 1898, Democrats recognized they were losing ground to a biracial fusion ticket of Republicans and Populists who promised economic and political reforms. Before that year’s election, white Democratic leaders ran a viciously racist campaign to fire up their white base. “It is time for the oft quoted shotgun to play a part, and an active one,” one woman wrote, ”in the elections.”

Blocking Fusion voters from the polls and threatening them with guns gave the Democrats a victory, but in Wilmington the biracial city government had not been up for reelection and so remained in power. Vigilantes said they would never again be ruled by Black men and their unscrupulous white allies who intended to “dominate the intelligent and thrifty element in the community.” They destroyed Black businesses and property and killed as many as 300 Black Americans, then portrayed themselves as reluctant victims who had been obliged to remove inefficient and stupid officials before they reduced the city to further chaos. 

In 2005, white supremacists in North Carolina echoed this version of the Wilmington coup, claiming it was a natural reaction to “oppressive radical social policies” and a “carnival of corruption and criminality” by their opponents, who used the votes of ignorant Black men to stay in power.  

That echo is no accident. The 1965 Voting Rights Act ended the power of white supremacists in the Democratic Party once and for all, and they switched to the Republicans. Then-Democratic South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond had launched the longest filibuster in U.S. history to try to stop the 1957 Civil Rights Act; Republican candidate Richard Nixon deliberately courted him and those who thought like him in 1968.

Republicans adopted the same pattern Democrats had used in the late nineteenth century, claiming their concerns were about taxes and government corruption, pushing voter suppression legislation by insisting they cared about “voter fraud,” insisting their opponents were un-American socialists attempting to overthrow a fairly-elected government. 

This political side of white supremacy is all around us. As Democracy Docket put it last month, “Republicans have a math problem, and they know it. Regardless of their candidate, it is nearly certain that more people will vote to reelect Joe Biden than his [Republican] opponent.” After all, Democrats have won the popular vote since 2008. Under these circumstances and unwilling to moderate their platform, “Republicans need to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat.” 

Republican-dominated state legislatures are working to make it as hard as possible for minorities and younger Americans to vote, while also pushing the election denier movement to undermine the counting and certification of election results. At the same time, eight Republican-dominated states have left the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a compact between the states that makes it easier to share voter information to avoid duplicate registration and voting, and three more are considering leaving. 

In a special session of the Tennessee legislature this week, Republican lawmakers blocked the public from holding signs (a judge blocked the rule), kicked the public out of a hearing, and passed new rules that could prohibit Democrats from speaking. House speaker Cameron Sexton silenced young Black Democratic representative Justin Jones for a day and today suggested the Republicans might make the rule silencing minority members permanent.

In Wisconsin, where one of the nation’s most extreme gerrymanders gives Republicans dominance in the legislature, Republicans in 2018 stripped Democratic governor-elect Tony Evers of power before they left office, and now right-wing Chief Justice Annette Ziegler has told the liberal majority on the state supreme court that it is staging a “coup” by exercising their new power after voters elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the court by a large majority in April. Now the legislature is talking about keeping the majority from getting rid of the gerrymandered maps by impeaching Protasiewicz.  

The courts are trying to hold the line against this movement. In Washington, D.C., today, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell decided in favor of Black election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who claimed that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani defamed them when he claimed they had committed voter fraud. Not only did Howell award the two women court costs and damages, she called out Giuliani and his associates for trying to keep their records hidden. 

But as the courts are trying to hold the line, its supporters are targeting the courts themselves, with MAGA Republicans threatening to defund state and federal prosecutors they claim are targeting Republicans, and announcing their intention to gather the power of the Department of Justice into their own hands should they win office in 2024. 

After pushing a social studies curriculum that erases Black agency and resistance to white supremacy, Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Monday suggested the Jacksonville shooting was an isolated incident. 

The Black audience booed. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

As far as mass shootings, go, it was over quickly. Just before midnight on Saturday, a man carrying multiple magazines of ammunition entered the Club Q, a gay bar in Colorado Springs, Colorado, spraying gunfire. As bullets flew, two patrons at the club subdued the attacker by grabbing the gun from him, and hitting him with it. They held him down until police arrived. The first 911 call was made at 11.56pm; the killer was taken into custody at 12.02am. But in those six minutes, five people were killed, including Daniel Aston and Derrick Rump, two men who were tending bar, and Kerry Loving, a partygoer. Eighteen were wounded. As the clock struck midnight, it became a holiday for the bar’s community: Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors trans people killed in hate attacks, was observed on Sunday.

There’s a grim routine, these days, to the mass shootings in America. Some elements remain constant from shooting to shooting. Usually, the gunman is a young white man, and usually, he has a history of violence against women. There will have been mental health episodes, or previous run-ins with police. But none of this history will have stopped him from getting a gun. American mass shooters tend to use automatic or semi-automatic long guns, the kind that aren’t available to civilians in other countries. Almost always, they purchased them legally.

In the aftermath, the public makes a grim calculus. How many dead? How many wounded? The initial numbers that trickle out through the media tend to tick upward in the following hours and days, as more of the injured arrive in local hospitals and some of the wounded pass away. Americans compare the latest massacre to the others, rationalizing to keep the panic and despair at bay. “That one wasn’t so bad,” we tell ourselves. “Only three were killed.” This has become the price of being in public in America, a psychic tax that we all pay when we leave the house: that the next time, when the next gunman opens fire in a school, or a church, or a grocery store, that one of the anonymous numbers printed in the newspaper will be someone we love.

In the hours after a gunman stormed into Club Q, a morbid kind of box checking began. Yes, it was a young white man who committed the rampage – this time a 22-year-old. Yes, the shooter had a history of violence against women: the attacker was arrested last year after an hours-long standoff with police after making a bomb threat against his mother. He was charged with multiple felonies, but, yes, he still had access to guns. Yes, the killer used an AR-style long gun to murder his victims. And yes, the killer appears to have rightwing ties: he’s the grandson of a far-right California state assemblyman who supported the January 6 insurrection. On Monday, the shooter was charged with five counts of murder and several hate crimes.

There’s a morbid randomness to American gun violence – that fatal combination of scarce mental health treatment and superabundant firearms that makes America, and only America, a place where mass public massacres are common even when the nation is ostensibly at peace. But if the Colorado attack was enabled by America’s pervasive gun violence problem, it seems to have been prompted by the tenor of rightwing media, both broadcast and online, which over the past years has turned a virulent, conspiratorial and obsessively hateful eye towards the LGBT community.

In the coming days, the massacre at Club Q will be cast as an isolated tragedy, and those who point out the right’s complicity in the violence will be accused, with predictable cynicism, of politicizing the tragedy. But what happened in Colorado Springs this past weekend was the foreseeable continuation of a trend of escalating violence targeting gay spaces, and drag shows in particular.

Egged on by conservative politicians, like Lauren Boebert, social media figures, like Libs of TikTok, and traditional media scions, like Tucker Carlson, conservatives have spent the past months consuming the lie that gay and trans people are “groomers” – that is, perverts and pedophiles who want to molest children, or sterilize them, or confuse them into leading different, wrong and lesser lives. In the face of this supposed harm to the innocent, any vengeance can be justified.

The lie that gay people are “grooming” children has provided cover for violent and bigoted displays at LGBT community spaces across the country. Over the past year, drag performances and other LGBT events have been targeted with protests and violent threats in California, Idaho, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Oregon, North Carolina and New York. Violent rightwing militia groups, like the Proud Boys and a group calling itself Patriot Front – who wear masks, because they are ashamed to show their faces – have appeared at these events, menacing gay people with threats. Just last month, in Eugene, Oregon, violence erupted outside a drag show when rightwing goons appeared and began throwing rocks and smoke bombs. At that hate rally, as at others, the anti-gay protesters carried semi-automatic rifles. It was only a matter of time before they started using them.

Like most bigots, homophobes know little about the groups they target, and their hatred doesn’t hew to logic. But when pressed, they will say that gay and trans people lack the virtues that they associate with traditional masculinity – virtues like honesty and integrity; courage, discipline and willingness to protect the innocent. But it was two patrons, almost certainly gay themselves, who subdued the attacker at Club Q, risking their lives to spare more bloodshed.

Meanwhile, in Uvalde, police officers armed to the teeth – the paragons of hegemonic masculinity that the right is always insisting we worship – stood by, cowardly and immobile, while a gunman slaughtered little children. If the right sees “manliness” as a virtue, a willingness to risk yourself to help the vulnerable, then you’d think it would be clear to them who the real “men” were.

[annieqattheperipheral]

yohe's recap fri-sun. behind $wall so here u go:

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — It’s a pleasant, autumn afternoon in downtown Halifax. A bartender is shaking his head in the city’s bar district, telling tales of Nova Scotia’s favorite son while NFL games beam on background televisions.

The topic is predictably Sidney Crosby.

“He’s here all the time in the summer with Nate (MacKinnon),” the bartender said. “People never leave him alone. Sits here and signs autographs all night. He’s almost too nice for his own good, you know? But he’s just such a good guy. He just sits here and signs and signs, and just talks with everyone, and poses for pictures. People love it. You have to understand how proud of him we are.”

That much is quite clear.

Preseason games don’t typically receive much in the way of hoopla. Even Erik Karlsson’s exhibition season debut was met with thousands of empty seats at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday.

But this is different. Much, much different. The Pittsburgh Penguins are playing the Ottawa Senators on Monday in downtown Halifax at Scotiabank Centre and it’s a preseason game, only you wouldn’t know it by the buzz in this beautiful, seaside city.

As of Sunday, there were around 300 tickets available on StubHub. The majority of these are selling for more than $1,000. The average price for a ticket on StubHub is around $1,100, and the most famous Taylor in the building will be Crosby’s sister.

“It’s all pretty crazy,” said Ryan Graves, another Nova Scotia native.

Crosby and the Penguins arrived in Halifax late on Friday afternoon. They had a “team bonding” day on Saturday, which included a scavenger hunt and Crosby acting as a personal tour guide for his teammates, most of whom had never been to Halifax.

“I was definitely feeling the pressure,” Crosby said with a smile. “Wanted to make sure guys enjoyed it. It’s a great place. I’m really proud of my home and what it has to offer.”

Rest assured, the feeling from his hometown is mutual.

All across Canada, Crosby is understandably a national hero. He’s one of the greatest players of all time, an incomparable gentleman, scorer of the golden goal and captain of the greatest generation of Canadian hockey.

In Pittsburgh, Crosby is a civic icon. In a city that reveres its sports legends more than most, Crosby’s face will rest on the Mount Rushmore of Western Pennsylvania greats alongside the likes of Mario Lemieux and Roberto Clemente, singular artists whose character somehow exceeded their athletic exploits.

And yet, in Halifax, the affection Crosby receives is even more noteworthy if slightly understated, as is the custom of this province’s people. Like Crosby himself, the people here are polite and kind. Crosby always smiles when Nova Scotia is mentioned. Unfailingly.

When his name is mentioned around the proud people of Halifax, they smile in turn.

“Hard not to,” Graves said.

The Penguins practiced on Sunday morning only minutes from Crosby’s boyhood home at Cole Harbour Place. The small building was filled with hundreds of fans, who overflowed the venue for hours. Hundreds of others stood outside, patiently waiting for a glimpse of Crosby.

Graves grew up in Nova Scotia, albeit three hours away. He is the best-suited member of the Penguins to explain what Crosby’s appearance in the Maritimes means, and what his presence over the years has done for hockey in this region.

Some players from Nova Scotia reached the NHL before Crosby, but his arrival — and subsequent domination of the league — changed everything, according to his new teammate.

“You can just see from the reaction of the people,” Graves said. “You can tell what it means to this area, what he’s done. He’s the first one from out east that really had an impact on everybody. Sid was the first one to pave the way. The impact he’s had on Mac (MacKinnon), myself, (Ottawa’s Drake) Batherson … you know, you always think things are possible. But when you have someone that’s actually done that, it becomes more real. You understand the pathway that they took. It gives you someone to root for. Everyone loves him. Everyone. He’s an idol to a lot of people. Eight, 10-year-old kids love him. People my parents’ age love him. He’s had an impact on so many people. It’s really cool that the Penguins brought us here to do this.”

Some athletes like to cultivate the image of giving back to the community when, in reality, their contributions are far smaller than the accompanying hype. Crosby is quite the opposite. He’s well known to visit Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh on a regular basis, for instance, but is insistent that the media not chronicle these visits. It’s simply his way.

It was fitting, then, that Crosby’s day on Sunday was particularly full, even if he couldn’t hide from the media on this occasion.

After the Penguins practiced, Crosby returned to the ice. He participated in a hockey clinic for dozens of young Nova Scotian players, and he wasn’t alone. His good friend, Evgeni Malkin, joined him for the clinic. So did Graves. And so did the entire Penguins coaching staff, including Mike Sullivan.

“We all play because we love it,” Crosby said. “Obviously we have dreams of being in the NHL. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Hopefully it gives them the belief that, just because you’re from a small town, you can make it.”

While Crosby, Malkin, Graves and the coaching staff were on the ice, the rest of the Penguins players were signing autographs and participating in Q&As with children and other members of the Nova Scotian community. Crosby also invited and spoke with families who lost their houses during the horrific wildfires that impacted so much of Canada earlier this year.

“This whole thing has been great,” Jeff Carter said. “Everybody knows what Sid means to the community here. And I think everyone understands how many things he does for people off the ice. It’s been a special weekend for him. He’s very proud of where he grew up. That’s obvious. I think it’s been special for him, yes, but it’s also been a really great experience for all of us.”

Graves said the hockey community in Nova Scotia is an underappreciated one and that he hopes events like this underscore how passionate this province is for hockey.

“It’s all just so cool to see,” he said. “People here love this sport. They’re crazy for it. You see when the world juniors are here, everything is sold out. The Czech and Slovakian game even sold out. People love it. It’s crazy. People love the players who are from around here, too. People around here are blue-collar, hard-nosed people. It makes it fun for them to root for a person like Sidney. When I was a kid, the Islanders came here once for a week of training camp. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.”

And with all due respect to the Islanders, they aren’t Crosby.

“I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have a practice with the Penguins in my hometown rink, the place I grew up in,” Marcus Pettersson said. “Man, would that be awesome. But with Sid, everything is different. And it’s all because of the kind of human being he is.”

The crowd buzzed throughout Penguins practice on Sunday, with the massive contingent of children chanting Crosby’s name throughout.

“So, you see how he’s worshipped here,” Pettersson said. “You see it right away. And honestly, it’s because of the things he does in the community even more than the hockey player that he is. People know he’s a great person, but they don’t even understand all of it, all of the things he does when people aren’t looking, the way he treats people. People are smart, though. They know. He wouldn’t be worshipped the way he is if he weren’t a great person. He sets that standard and that precedent every day. We’ve just been walking around town, and you start to see that people are proud to be from here because Sidney Crosby is from here. I think that tells you a lot.”

As the years have rolled on, Crosby’s bond with his head coach has notably grown stronger. It was only fitting that Sullivan played a big role in the big weekend.

“It’s a great tribute to the legacy Sid has built,” Sullivan said.

Crosby and the Penguins once played a preseason game in Halifax, back in September of 2006. Given that it’s been 17 years since the Penguins have been here, it’s a pretty fair bet that this could be the final time that Crosby skates before his hometown fans.

“It’s been nice,” he said. “I never thought I’d have an opportunity to do this. I had a lot of morning practices in this rink. I had dreams of playing in the NHL. I didn’t think I’d ever be here with our team, doing something like this. You just try to take it all in and enjoy it.”

Crosby is perhaps the most hyped prospect in hockey history. Even before he was drafted, scouts and others who knew him raved about his personality and his character. This, they insisted, was a boy who was different than the rest.

“He’s just the best,” Pettersson said.

Crosby’s last NHL-related event in his hometown was in 2016 when a parade with the Stanley Cup was held in his honor.

Troy Crosby shook his head when pondering the last time the hockey world descended upon Nova Scotia to witness his son.

“Halifax has changed a lot since then,” Crosby’s father noted.

The boy, who became a man, who became a hockey god, has never really changed at all.

His homeland is all the better for it.

“This is a weekend people are going to remember for a really long time,” Graves said. “To the people here, it’s everything.”

[dailyanarchistposts]

As May Day Approaches

Following this press conference, the government hoped that its official announcements would finally take the life out of the yellow vest movement, defusing the social tension that has built up. However, in the hours following Macron’s speech, several well-known yellow vest figures expressed their dissatisfaction with his proposals, calling for further demonstrations. In the end, even if some yellow vesters were sidetracked by Macron’s announcement, it was difficult to predict whether people would massively take the streets for the 24th act of the yellow vest movement.

On Saturday, April 27, about 23,600 yellow vesters demonstrated in France. For this new day of action, the epicenter of the movement was the city of Strasbourg. As the European elections will occur in a month, an “international call” was made to gather and march towards the European Parliament. Some Belgians, Germans, Italians, Swiss, and Luxembourgers participated as well. About 3000 demonstrators walked through the streets of Strasbourg, confronting police and engaging in property destruction. In the end, 42 people were arrested and at least 7 injured—three police officers, three demonstrators, and one passerby.

At the same time, two demonstrations took place in Paris. The first, organized by trade unions, drew about 5500 demonstrators, among them 2000 in yellow vests, while the other, mostly composed of several hundreds of yellow vesters, did a tour of all the major corporate media headquarters to ask for “impartial media coverage.” Other gatherings also took place in Lyons, Toulouse, Cambrai, and elsewhere in France. (All of the figures provided here are from the French authorities.)

If we compare the total number of participants in this 24th act to the other national days of action, it is undeniable that it attracted fewer participants. Does that mean that the government has finally gained the upper hand over the movement? It’s unclear. It is possible that some yellow vesters stayed home from the 24th act in order to prepare for May Day.

Last year, the intensity of property destruction and confrontations with police during the May Day mobilization of anarchists and other autonomous rebels compelled the government to cancel the entire traditional trade union march. In view of the tense social and political situation in France today, who knows what May Day 2019 could bring?

If the government attempts to cancel or repress demonstrations in Paris this May Day, the situation could become explosive. Not only because the police have adopted aggressive new law enforcement strategies over the past few weeks, but also because several calls have been made for yellow vesters to join autonomous rebels at the front of the traditional Parisian afternoon procession for the “ultimate act.” The objective is set: Paris is to become the capital city of rioting.

Here is an English adaptation of one of the calls, entitled Pour un 1er mai jaune et noir:

For a yellow and black May Day! “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.” -Article 35 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1793) Macron’s government has decided to crush the current social protest by force, reaching a level of repression never seen before: prohibitions of demonstrations, deployment of soldiers, the use of armored vehicles, the use of chemical markers and weapons of war against protesters, jail sentences in spades, hands torn off, blinded protesters… During the demonstration of May Day 2018, the Prefecture of Police counted 14,500 demonstrators “on the sidelines of the trade union procession” (almost as much as in the traditional procession) including 1200 “radical individuals.” On March 16, at the time of act 18, it was 1500 “ultra violent” ones who were present among the 7000 demonstrators, according to the figures of this same police. Today, what frightens the state is not the rioters themselves, but the adhesion and understanding they arouse among the rest of the population. And this despite the calls, week after week, for everyone to dissociate themselves from the “breakers.” If there is one group that currently strikes France with all its violence, it is not the “Black Bloc,” nor the yellow vests; it is rather the government itself. We are calling on all revolutionaries in France and elsewhere, all those who want this to change, to come and form a determined and combative march. Because if repression falls on everyone, our response must be common and united. Against Macron and his world, let’s take the street together to revive the convergence of anger and hope. Let’s get ready, let’s equip ourselves, lets organize ourselves to overthrow him and drag him through a day in hell. War has been declared!

[1] “Proportional representation” would mean that if, for example, 30% of voters vote for the Green Party, then members of that party would receive 30% of the total number of seats. So far, legislative elections offer no proportional representation—even if a party receives a large percentage of votes, it might not gain many seats at the assembly. People have been complaining about this “unfair process,” so now the government is willing to increase proportional representation in elections. Unfortunately, for several years now, the National Front has usually received around 20–25% of votes but only currently holds 6 seats out of the 577 in the Assemblée Nationale. Increasing proportional representation will give them more power in the decision-making—although, of course, it’s not clear to what extent Macron will actually follow through on his promises. Of course, there is no option for people who have grown disillusioned with government itself: that perspective will never be “proportionately represented.” This is why the government refused outright to recognized blank votes.

[mycryptosuite]

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[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS A BLACK NEUTRON STAR??

Blog#269

Wednesday, February 8th, 2023

Welcome back,

If a star is gigantic enough, it can collapse in on itself to form a black hole. Stars that are still huge, but not big enough to become black holes, tend to explode in supernovae, eventually transforming into what is known as a neutron star.

What has long puzzled scientists is that the smallest black holes tend to be at least five times the mass of the Sun, while neutron stars are at most 2.5 times the mass of the Sun. Inside those boundaries lies what has become known as the "mass gap" — a mysterious range between the mass of black holes and neutron stars.

Now, though, a new discovery by a team of European astronomers seems to fit into that gap, suggesting a new class of objects that were thought to be impossible.

Using the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana and the Virgo detector in Italy, a team of experts discovered an unusual celestial object that's about 2.6 times the mass of the Sun.

"The reason these findings are so exciting is because we’ve never detected an object with a mass that is firmly inside the theoretical mass gap between neutron stars and black holes before," Laura Nuttall, a gravitational wave expert from the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, and co-author of the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal today, said in a statement. "Is it the lightest black hole or the heaviest neutron star we’ve ever seen?”

The object — dubbed a "black neutron star" by the BBC — was first detected in August, when it merged with a massive black hole of 23 solar masses, transforming into a final black hole of 25 solar masses some 800 million light-years from Earth.

The two objects were extremely different in mass, making it an highly unusual merger.

"It's a challenge for current theoretical models to form merging pairs of compact objects with such a large mass ratio in which the low-mass partner resides in the mass gap,"

Vicky Kalogera, professor at Northwestern University in the United States, and co-author, said in the statement.

The mass ratio was so off, Kalogera likened it to "Pac-Man eating a little dot" and "in one bite."

"This discovery implies these events occur much more often than we predicted, making this a really intriguing low-mass object," she added.

But we still can't say for certain that we know what it actually is.

Originally published on futurism.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, February 11th, 2023)

"WHAT IS OUMUAMUA"??

[whatiwillsay]

🚨SURPRISE IT'S LISTENER APPRECIATION WEEK🚨

Good morning WIWS Nation, I'm excited to announce today is the launch of our second annual listener appreciation week!

"What is listener appreciation week?" you might ask. As a sign of my undying appreciation to the listeners of this podcast and members of the WIWS community, I like to do a surprise week once a year or so to flood you guys with TONS of extra content and other fun promotions during the week! I am so immensely grateful that you guys have enabled me to foster such a wonderful space for nosy gays that sometimes I just have to show you guys with a big bang! Here are some details you need to know!

First things first! I am opening up the Secret Sessions Discord to Ashley Avignone Patrons and up for the week! We have had to close it due to some trolling for the past six months and it's getting so big keeping it safely modded has become a bit of a concern. But we're going to open it to Ashley+ Patrons for the next week and let you guys get grandfathered into it before we close it for a while to keep the size of it under control. It *will* probably be opened up again sometime in the future but it may be only open to higher tiers to again keep the population under control and able to be safely modded. If you want to join it during this special open period simply link your Patreon account to Discord by following these directions.

Secondly HUGE FUCKING ANNOUNCEMENT! Not to bury the lead sorry I didn't want anyone to miss the discord announcement BUT ME AND MY GIRLFRIEND GABRIELLA ARE STARTING A PODCAST AND IT LAUNCHES TODAY! It's called Stay at Home Girlfriends and it's a podcast where you can listen in to get advice from your cool gay aunties! Episode 1 is up NOW and you can listen on Spotify! (More apps coming soon)

and follow our socials here:

Instagram

Tiktok

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OK BUT FOR REAL THOUGH HERE'S THE AMAZING CONTENT SCHEDULE FOR THE WEEK!

Sunday, August 27th (LIVE NOW!) - Cara joins me on the Patreon for a State of the Gaylor Union. We catch up on all the latest Taylor news including some more convo about Karlie at the Eras Tour, the latest Toe gossip we've heard, and go through all the ships with a brief update on how we feel about them.

Monday, August 28th (LIVE NOW!) - Gabriella joins me on the main pod to go through my original Swiftgron master post! That's right! All this week and into the next couple weeks we'll be covering the best timeline of them all!

AND (LIVE NOW!) Gabriella also joins me on Patreon to do a juicy oversharing Q&A about our relationship!

Tuesday, August 29th - Torry from Ready to be Petty joins me on the Patreon to deep dive into the dark world of Jon & Kate Plus 8!

Wednesday, August 30th - Gabbie joins me again on the main pod to continue our trek through the Swiftgron Timeline!

Thursday, August 31st - Jenna from Date Card Pod joins me on Patreon to catch up on pop culture and check in and see how we're doing with our 2023 pop culture predictions and 2023 resolutions!

Friday, September 1st - Gabbie joins me again on the main pod for more Swiftgron Timeline goodness!

Saturday, September 2nd - Shannon from Fluently Forward joins me on Patreon to catch up on Taylor, Gaylor, and pop culture hot takes!

Sunday, September 3rd - The discord community will remain linked to the Patreon until midnight on this day!

I hope y'all are as excited as I am for THREE main pod episodes and FIVE Patreon episodes this week!!! And I genuinely, truly hope you guys feel the love from me! We have our ups and downs and nobody is perfect, certainly not me. But that doesn't stop me from being SO HUGELY AND IRREVOCABLY GRATEFUL, THANKFUL, AND APPRECIATIVE to all of you for being a part of this weird but amazing little Evidence Based Gossip community!

Remember! You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. 💙

[gean-grey-blog]

Who is involved:

Hamas, Palestinians, the people living in Gaza, the Israeli State, Israelis, and the people living in Israel. Those are fundamentally distinct sets of people and cannot be conflated, as much as they may overlap. Neither can they be conflated with Jewish or Muslim people.

What happened leading up to Saturday:

Recently Hamas seemed to be leaning towards the “legitimate party” side of their existence, albeit while still being…well, terrorists, towards absolutely everyone involved including Palestinians. 

What happened on Saturday:

A coordinated attack by Hamas on Israel’s border with Gaza. Many in Israel were killed and the death toll is still rising. Many were taken hostage by Hamas including civilians, and even children. There have been ground invasions of Israeli soil. Neither the Israeli intelligence services nor any intelligence service of a nation allied with Israel predicted this, which is heightening the fear involved.

What Israel is doing: 

Israel immediately declared war, and has now said they will put Gaza under complete siege. No water, food, medicine, electricity. They have told Palestinian civilians in Gaza to leave or be killed, but they are under siege, there is nowhere to go. Israel is now carpet bombing the Gaza strip. 

Why it might become genocide:

There are nine active stages of genocide. The Israeli State has been checking those boxes against Palestinians since their creation, but thankfully generally drew up short of indiscriminately killing mass civilian populations. Starving and bombing a trapped civilian population who have been separated based on religion, culture, ethnicity…that is extermination. 

How to keep up from here:

Read multiple sources with different biases, and compare to Reuters and AP which tend to be the closest to just the facts as you can get (still not unbiased, just less spin). The Times of Israel and most US news networks are fundamentally biased towards specifically the government and military defense of Israel. A source like Al Jazeera is going to be more biased towards the experience of the rest of the people and governments in the Middle East. If Times of Israel/US news, Al Jazeera, and AP/Reuters agree something happened, it probably happened

[beardedmrbean]

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Floodwaters breached levees in western Iowa on Tuesday, creating dangerous conditions that prompted evacuations as the deluged Midwest faced another round of severe storms forecast for later in the day.

The sheriff’s office in Monona County, south of Sioux City near the Nebraska border, said the Little Sioux River breached levees in several areas. Evacuation orders were issued and roads closed in two small towns, emergency management officials said. No injuries were immediately reported.

“Please stay out of the area for your safety,” the sheriff’s office said in a social media post.

Patrick Prorok, emergency management coordinator in Monona County, described waking people in Rodney, a town of about 45 people, to recommend evacuation about 4 a.m. Later Tuesday morning, the water hadn’t yet washed into the community.

“People up the hill are saying it is coming our way,” Prorok said.

Iowa state transportation officials said they planned to close sections of I-29 and I-680 north of Council Bluffs Tuesday because of rising floodwaters.

The flooding has damaged roads and bridges, closed or destroyed businesses, required hospitals and nursing homes to evacuate, and left cities without power or safe drinking water, the governors of Iowa and South Dakota said. Officials reported hundreds of water rescues.

Severe storms were forecast for Tuesday afternoon and evening with large hail, damaging winds and even a brief tornado or two in parts of western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, according to the National Weather Service. Showers and storms were also possible in parts of South Dakota and Minnesota, the agency said.

The weather service also predicted more than two dozen points of major flooding in southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota and northern Iowa, and over three dozen points of moderate flooding. Flood warnings are expected to continue into the week.

President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for affected counties in Iowa on Monday, a move that paves the way for federal aid to be granted.

Late Monday in Correctionville, Iowa, the Little Sioux River rose to nearly 31 feet (9.5 meters), about 12 feet (3.7 meters) above flood stage, according to the National Weather Service. About a quarter to a third of residents had evacuated Monday, mayor pro-tem Nathan Heilman said, with homes on the west and south sides of town most affected.

On Tuesday, Heilman said the water was slowly starting to recede, potentially aided by a levee breach downstream.

“That makes everything feel a little bit better,” he said. But there’s still a lot “we’re just kind of waiting to see.”

The flooding in the region, which affected areas from Omaha, Nebraska, to St. Paul Minnesota also came during a vast, persistent heat wave. Dangerous hot, muggy weather was expected again Tuesday around the Omaha area.

Storms last week dumped heavy rains, with as much as 18 inches (46 centimeters) falling south of Sioux Falls, the weather service said.

Places that didn’t get as much rain had to contend with the extra water moving downstream. Many streams, especially with additional rainfall, may not crest until later this week as the floodwaters slowly drain down a web of rivers to the Missouri and Mississippi. The Missouri will crest at Omaha on Thursday, said Kevin Low, a weather service hydrologist.

The heavy rains were blamed in the deaths of at least two people. On Saturday, an Illinois man died while trying to drive around a barricade in Spencer, Iowa. The Little Sioux River swept his truck away, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said. Officials recovered his body Monday. Another person died in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem said without providing details.

“I’ve never had to evacuate my house,” Hank Howley, a 71-year-old North Sioux City, South Dakota, resident said Monday as she joined others on a levee of the swollen Big Sioux River, where a railroad bridge collapsed a day earlier.

Outside Mankato, Minnesota, the local sheriff’s office said Monday that there was a “partial failure” of the western support structure for the Rapidan Dam on the Blue Earth River after the dam became plugged with debris. Flowing water eroded the western bank.

Eric Weller, emergency management director for the Blue Earth County sheriff, said the bank would likely erode more, but he didn’t expect the concrete dam itself to fail. The two homes downstream were evacuated.

A 2019 Associated Press investigation into dams across the country found that the Rapidan Dam was in fair condition and there likely would be loss of property if it failed. A pair of 2021 studies said repairs would cost upward of $15 million and removal more than $80 million.