Heat waves and global warming

Intense rain and heavy flooding caused at least 12 Russian workers to fall into a sewer where they were swept away on Sunday, reports said. According to several reports, workers in Moscow were cleaning the sewers, when water levels began to rise as heavy rain fell. At least 12 of the workers were swept away in the sewer. "Unfortunately, three workers have died, rescue workers have brought their bodies to the surface," the Russian Civil Defense reportedly said to the Interfax news agency on Sunday. Russian reports state that five of the workers managed to climb out of the sewer on their own, and four were rescued by emergency personnel and received medical attention. A video of one of the rescues was posted on Telegram by Mash, a Russian news outlet. The bodies of the three missing workers were found later on Sunday. "First, the body of one victim was found, then two," Lyudmila Nefedova, head of the press service of the Moscow prosecutor's office, told RIA Novosti. Law … [Read more...] about Russian workers fall into sewer, are swept away by heavy rain

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer got fellow Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to do something few have done before: vote along Democratic Party lines. Some are calling it the Manchin-Schumer bill , and even Schumer wasn’t sure it would happen until the end. “He has different views on a lot of things, and when he backed out the week before, well, as he said it, we let the dogs loose,” Schumer explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal podcast. Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Amazon Music , or Overcast . So what nudged Manchin in their favor? Schumer thinks his colleague’s decision came down to climate change guilt he didn’t want to live with. “People were saying, ‘Joe Manchin, you could be the one person who’s standing in the way of dealing with global warming. And if you don’t, you could be the person who destroyed the globe. And he felt that. He felt that,” says … [Read more...] about Chuck Schumer Thinks This Is the Reason Manchin Flipped

Democrats pushed their election-year economic package to Senate passage Sunday, a hard-fought compromise less ambitious than President Joe Biden’s original domestic vision but one that still meets deep-rooted party goals of slowing global warming, moderating pharmaceutical costs and taxing immense corporations. The estimated $740 billion package heads next to the House, where lawmakers are poised to deliver on Biden's priorities, a stunning turnaround of what had seemed a lost and doomed effort that suddenly roared back to political life. Democrats held united, 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. “It's been a long, tough and winding road, but at last, at last we have arrived,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ahead of final votes. “The Senate is making history. I am confident the Inflation Reduction Act will endure as one of the defining legislative measures of the 21st century.” Republican amendments shunned Senators … [Read more...] about U.S. Senate passes Biden’s mega health, climate bill; House to vote next

The Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate again by a whopping 0.75%. The Reserve Bank of India has also been forced to raise interest rates further but also take other steps. These decisions in the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting are based on what the members of the MPC see as the likely course of the economy in the months ahead. But, the trajectory of the world economy, and its likely impact on the Indian economy, is imponderable. So, Indian policymakers would face two crucial problems. First, the main uncertainty is due to Russia’s war on Ukraine and the resultant economic sanctions on Russia, as well as the zero-COVID-19 policy in China that repeatedly implements lockdowns leading to global supply bottlenecks. Second, policy has to base itself on data. If it is deficient, it introduces additional uncertainty, making projections for the future difficult and causing policies to fail. This will compound the problem that results from the global uncertainty. … [Read more...] about Macrovariable projections in uncertain times

Dan Erickson, the creator of Severance , has been having what he calls “anxiety daydreams.” He’s working on the second season of the acclaimed Apple TV+ series, and though the show just got nominated for a bevy of Emmys, he’s already picturing the worst: headlines about disappointed viewers, articles analyzing his ineptitude, reviews pronouncing “the biggest precipitous drop-off in quality in the history of television ,” he told me over the phone, laughing nervously. “I don’t think it’s going to be,” he clarified, “but, I mean, that’s the worry from somebody in my position.” After all, Erickson isn’t just the showrunner of a hit drama. He’s the showrunner of a hit drama with the most discerning of audiences: the theorists. These are the fans who pick apart scenes for clues, listen to dialogue with the intensity of an FBI sting, and can anticipate entire storytelling arcs long before the show actually gets there. They don’t simply watch something; they solve it. Severance … [Read more...] about The Powerful, Unlikely Force Shaping Modern TV

The annual Perseids meteor shower , which began in mid-July and will continue until late August, is expected to peak during the predawn hours of August 11 to 13. During a regular year, at the peak of the Perseids, stargazers will have a chance to spot up to 60 to 100 meteors per hour. However, because the 2022 peak coincides with a supermoon , visibility during the peak times could be limited. The shower of shooting stars, so-called because they appear to be coming from the constellation of Perseus, is caused by the Earth passing through the trail of dust and debris left behind in the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle . The comet last passed by Earth in 1992 and orbits the sun once every 133 years. As it warms up in the sun's heat, the comet leaves a trail of dust, which the Earth passes through in its orbit of the sun during July and August. As the dust particles, most measuring only one-fifth of an inch, enter the Earth's atmosphere, they burn up and cause the spectacular … [Read more...] about Watch Perseid meteor shower 2022 tonight before supermoon ruins the show

A parent who feels like he's been "conned" after agreeing to have his dad build a computer for his teenage son has received a wave of support on Mumsnet, the U.K.-based online forum. According to a post on Mumsnet's Am I Being Unreasonable (AIBU) forum , user Glassback83 was planning to buy his 16-year-old son a PC for his birthday. But the user's father (who has been building computers "for years") said he could build one for "cheaper" than it would be to buy one from a store. So they agreed to have him do it and have the PC be a gift from the user and the child's grandparents. While global PC sales rose during the height of the pandemic , with more people working from home, the latest Mumsnet post follows a record drop in PC shipments worldwide, which saw its sharpest decline in nine years in the second quarter of 2022, according to a July 2022 report by the research firm Gartner. The decline was attributed to ongoing "geopolitical instability" following the … [Read more...] about Grandad who ‘built’ PC for teen slammed over wanting $600 from his parents