New York Times: Fields of watermelons found on Mars, police say. Authorities say rise of fruit aliens is to blame for glut of outer space watermelons. Oops.
The secret IRS files: trove of never-before-seen records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax. In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world's richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row. The reaction? Biden administration investigates 'illegal' leak of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett's tax information.
Beware the Delta Variant. A new and deadlier variant of Covid-19 may cause another wave this summer among the unvaccinated and those who only received the first shot.
Fastly outage: why it just broke Amazon, Reddit, Twitch and much of the internet. As Corinne Cath-Speth, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute pointed out on Twitter, this means "a technical hiccup in a single company can have huge ramifications." Here's an more detailed and mostly non-technical explanation of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) (Video).
And if that wasn't bad enough, CyberNews reported that an anonymous forum poster uploaded a 100GB text file containing 8.4 billion entries of passwords.
Global crime bust involving U.S., 15 other nations nabs hundreds, drugs, cash. Authorities worldwide have arrested hundreds of suspects connected to organized crime after decrypting messages sent over an FBI-controlled smartphone application popular with the criminal underworld.
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From Dementialand:
Rejecting Biden's win, rising Republicans attack legitimacy of elections. The next generation of aspiring G.O.P. congressional leaders has aggressively pushed Donald Trump’s false fraud claims, raising the prospect that the results of elections will continue to be challenged through 2024.
How America fractured into four parts. People in the United States no longer agree on the nation's purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?
Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims. Donald Trump called Joe Biden a "mental retard" during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.
QAnon supporter who chased Capitol police officer says he was deceived by 'pack of lies'. His attorney said he "fell victim to this barrage of internet sourced info" and came to the Capitol at the urging of former President Trump to "demonstrate that he was a 'true patriot.'"
Wisconsin ex-pharmacist gets prison for ruining vaccine. A former pharmacist in Wisconsin who purposefully ruined more than 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday. He is an admitted conspiracy theorist who believes he is a prophet and vaccines are a product of the devil. He also professed a belief that the Earth is flat and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were faked.
An anti-vaccine film targeted to black Americans spreads false information
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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:
Among other things, today is
- Donald Duck Day
- National Earl Day
- National Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day
- World APS Day (World Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome Day)
- Writers' Rights Day
On this date:
- 68 - Roman emperor Nero committed suicide, after quoting Vergil's Aeneid, thus ending the Julio-Claudian dynasty and starting the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors.
- 1856 - Five hundred Mormons left Iowa City, Iowa for the Mormon Trail.
- 1934 - first appearance of Donald Duck in the cartoon, "The Wise Little Hen".
- 1954 - Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashed out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" (Video)
- 1958 - "The Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley hit #1 in the U.S. (Video)
- 1959 - The USS George Washington was launched, the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. (Video)
- 1973 - Secretariat (March 30, 1970 - October 4, 1989) won the U.S. Triple Crown. He still holds the fastest speed records in all three races.
- 1980 - Comedian Richard Pryor suffered burns from freebasing cocaine. (NSFW Video)
- 1989 - "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" premiered in USA. This was the one directed by Shatner. The less said the better.
Birthdays
- 1672 - Peter the Great, Russian emperor (d. 1725)
- 1891 - Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (d. 1964) (Video)
- 1910 - Robert Cummings, American actor, singer, and director (d. 1990) (Video)
- 1915 - Les Paul, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2009) (Video)
- 1916 - Robert McNamara, American businessman and politician, eighth United States Secretary of Defense (d. 2009)
- 1922 - John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Anglo-American pilot and poet (d. 1941); author of the poem "High Flight."
- 1930 - Marvin Kalb, American educator and newscaster (CBS/NBC, Meet the Press)
- 1931 - Jackie Mason, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter
- 1934 - Jackie Wilson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1984) (Video)
- 1961 - Michael J. Fox, Canadian-American actor, producer, and author
- 1961 - Aaron Sorkin, American screenwriter, producer, and playwright
- 1963 - Johnny Depp, American actor
- 1981 - Natalie Portman, Israeli-American actress
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Miscellany
(Sky News)
Hartlepool's monkey statue to be given 'explanatory sign' to avoid offending visitors. Unless you're a visitor from France: "Legend states that the animal was the only survivor of a shipwreck off the northeast coast of England and because the villagers had never seen a monkey before, they mistook it for a Frenchman and convicted it of being a spy."
Las Vegas woman crushes three watermelons in 7.5 seconds for world record. Olson used her thighs to smash three watermelons in 7.5 seconds, nearly halving Ukrainian bodybuilder Olga Liashchuk's Guinness World Record of 14.65 seconds.
I really wasn't planning to, but here's another good reason: FDA issues warning not to eat cicadas if you're allergic to seafood. The insects share a family relation to shrimp and lobsters.
South African woman gives birth to decuplets. A South Africa woman who was expecting eight babies is believed to be a new record holder after she gave birth to 10 infants.
Categories: Covid-19, Cybercrime, Donald Trump, Internet, IRS, January 6, QAnon, Republicans, Taxes, The Big Lie
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