5.13.2023

Imagine that!

"Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflating the attached air bag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury."*

A Tennessee company is refusing a U.S. request to recall 67 million air bag inflators

And the manufacturer disagrees.

Myself, I'd go with Stephen on this one.

*Stephen Ridella, director of NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation.

Encouraging

 Media Bias/Fact Check, an organization that assesses and monitors, well, media bias, publishes this list of  least biased news sources. It's an encouragingly long list, and worth a look. Odds are pretty good there are a couple of sources there you might find useful.

5.12.2023

Curiouser and curiouser

Here's an interesting paragraph from a NYTimes story this morning about weapons provided to Ukraine during the current conflict there. The links within the paragraph are provided by the Times, in the original.
By law, U.S. officials must monitor the use, transfer and security of American weapons and defense systems that are sold or otherwise given to foreign partners to make sure they are being deployed as intended. In December, for security reasons, the Biden administration largely shifted responsibility to Kyiv for monitoring the American weapons shipments at the front, despite Ukraine’s long history of corruption and arms smuggling.

[Emphasis mine.] 

5.11.2023

Florida, for all its Twitter fame…

 …comes off looking not so good compared to California or New York State. Chicago did well. Surprisingly, some of those big sky states (looking at you, Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Montana) did poorly. 

And more: The New York Times reviews the ravages of Covid as the public emergency — politically if not medically, at least — ends.

5.10.2023

Look, I don't want to be picky here…

 …but this headline (subhead, actually) in the Wall Street Journal*…

President Biden says border is ‘gonna be chaotic for a while,’ as thousands of migrants are expected to cross in coming weeks

…well…if it's gonna be chaotic I'm just wondering what it has been.



"The Biden administration is expecting to see as many as 10,000 or 11,000 crossings a day in the coming days or weeks, which would rival the busiest days the border has ever recorded," the story says, if that's any help.

5.09.2023

Magic!

 I produced a sock from inside a pillow case this morning — a surprising and very handy trick. As it happens, I lost a sock about a month ago. This evens me up. (I usually wear two at a time.)

Maybe I should start working birthday parties.

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