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Since 1994, this is the 1580th issue of Randy Cassingham’s...
| 22 September 2024: The Day the Earth Stood Still | Copyright ©2024 https://thisistrue.com |
Good Walls are Sometimes Better than Good Fences: A panicked family in Deland, Fla., called 911 at 12:30 p.m. to say someone was shooting at their house. “My girl and my sonare in the bathroom laying down,” the caller said, requesting urgent help. Volusia County Sheriff’s deputies responded in force and, sure enough, heard shots, and traced them to a neighbor on the street behind the victim’s house. Alex Kudlack, 38, was shooting at a tree in his backyard, deputies say, but was apparently not a very good shot, as bullets were hitting his neighbor’s home. A deputy’s bodycam recorded Kudlack explaining his actions: “Yeah, I’m a dumbass.” Kudlack was arrested, chargedwith shooting into a dwelling, child endangerment, criminal mischief, and — which will surprise no one — using a firearm while under the influence. (RC/WPEC West Palm Beach) ...So there were multiple kinds of shots in play here.
Doing the Wave: According to Dr. Stephen Hicks of University College London, England, scientists detected an “unidentified seismic object” under Greenland. “It kept appearing,” he said, “every 90 seconds for nine days.” The mystery was solved, he said, when “colleagues from Denmark, who do a lot of fieldwork in Greenland, received reports of a tsunami that happened in a remote fjord.” The two teams “joined forces” and figured out that a mountain had collapsed: 25 million cubic metersof rock, the equivalent of 25 Empire State Buildings, fell into the water, causing a 200m (650 ft) high “mega-tsunami.” The wave kept sloshing because, Hicks explained, “This landslide happened about 200 kilometers inland from the open ocean, and these fjord systems are really complex, so the wave couldn’t dissipate its energy.” Hicks points to climate change as the cause of the collapse: “That glacier was supporting this mountain, and it got so thin that it just stopped holding it up,” he said— perhaps the “first time a climate change event has impacted the crust beneath our feet all the world over.” (MS/BBC) ...It won’t be the last time.
Your New Favorite Running, Fitness, and Everyday Shoe.
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Yeah, Had to Run an Ad: My pointing out two weeks in a row that there are rarely ads here anymore only brought three upgrades, so I needed to get some cash in. So here we are; let’s see if I need to run another ad next week. The full edition not only has 3x the stories, but never outside ads, comes earlier in the week, and enables True to exist. Please upgrade here: it takes around 5 upgrades (not 3 intwo weeks) to skip having an ad. Thanks. (And thanxs to Xero Shoes for being there when I need an ad! They rock!)
Shopped and Sold: A would-be buyer made three offers, and finally got a contract for a Christina Lake, B.C, Canada, cabin at C$490,000 (US$369,000). Then he went to see it. “The property did not resemble that which had been advertised on the Multiple Listing Service,” Andrew Pendray wrote. “It is clear that the photographs of the property posted on MLS ... were digitally altered to show furnishings that were not actually present in the property, and more importantly to show theproperty in a better state of repair than it in fact was in.” The buyer canceled the deal and filed a complaint, and the Realtor was fined C$6,000. Pendray, who heard the case for the B.C. Financial Services Authority, upheld the penalty; his quotes are from his decision. In her defense, Realtor Lori Evans had argued that she was representing the seller, and serving her client’s interest — and that “the buyer was familiar with the property” because, years ago, his family had owned it. (AC/CTV)...And as an expert in real estate, she knows that the condition of a property never changes.
Tax Dollars, Hard At Work: “The Government of Canada continues to engage with various stakeholders and service providers to ensure a safe, efficient, and cost-effective program,” Public Safety Canada told CTV News after an inquiry. The inquiry: the status of a government program to “buy back” military style “assault” rifles. The government says there are about 150,000 such weapons in private hands, and such rifles were banned in 2020 with the promise of paying “fair market value” tocitizens who own them. So far, the program has cost “nearly” C$67.2 million (US$49.5 million); the resulting average of $448 per gun doesn’t sound like it quite covers “fair market value,” and it’s unlikely they’ve bought back all 150,000 by now, so how many guns have been taken in for that cost? None. So far, $56.1 million has been spent by Public Safety Canada to set up the program, and “almost $11.1 million” by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Of those amounts, “nearly $11.5 million” wasspent on “external consultants” for “software, logistics, communication support, and more.” (RC/CTV) ...It could be worse: it could be not “cost-effective.”
Animal Cruelty
Bear Cub Driven by Two Men from Northern Ontario to Windsor, Fed Taco Bell
Canadian Press headline
Did You Find an Error? Check the Errata Page for updates.
This Week’s Contributors: MS-Mike Straw, AC-Alexander Cohen, RC-Randy Cassingham.
Regarding the Canadian Gun “Buy Back”: The parliamentary budget officer estimated — in 2021 — that it might ultimately cost C$756 million (US$557 million) to pay “fair market value” for the 150,000 rifles, or C$5,040 (US$3,714) each.
But in my blog, I have made a proposal to the Canadian government on how to complete the buyback for much less money, with much less overhead, and do a Good Thing at the same time. See what you think: Canada & Guns. I’ve already chosen this as the Story of the Week, which graphic is available there.
Many of You Are Wondering: Are we close to shipping out? (As it were.) Seems so. Last time I said we were waiting for the next “stupid thing” ...and we got it. One requirement is that the ship’s engines run at at least 75 percent capacity for four hours in sea trial. They all did, except that one gauge in the bridge showed less than the required output, even though the gauge on the engine itself was showing accurately. Inspector’s final say:“Failed.”
It is what it is, so the company got techs in to fix the indicator, did another sea trial run, and passed. Yay! Better: the inspectors say ALL of their “findings” have been cleared. We have all the certifications we need, including the PSSC (Passenger Ship Safety Certificate), coastguard clearance, and U.K. Public Health clearance. So we can go, right?
Sure! Except.... Except another stupid thing: it concerns Harland & Wolff, the famous ship builders, who built the Titanic (“Hey, it was fine when it left here!” — the classic line heard many times in Belfast). They are the company that has been taking care of the dry dock work, and coordinating other repairs on our ship. Just as we finished up, they filed for bankruptcy (or, as they call it for a business in the U.K., Administration).
While news reports say that H&W’s Belfast operations are “not affected,” they are: they say they can no longer “accommodate” the idea of the passengers embarking there so we can leave. Luckily, the ship can leave, as it’s simply tied up at the dock, having left the dry dock long ago, but they need the Residents onboard.
What to do? Belfast does have a cruise ship terminal, so we need to move there. But since the summer season is over, they are only staffing one dock ...and it was already reserved for the weekend. So our ship will move there Monday morning. We will load up, and sail Monday afternoon. Unless there is any other sort of stupid thing in the meantime.
We Have Gotten All Sorts of Press Attention, including Kit and I being part of a pretty big feature article in the Sunday Times (of London). The eye-roller of that is, “usually” an article will be sized to fit a newspaper page, cutting from the bottom to fit the limited space, but since there is unlimited space online, the web version of the story will often be more detailed.
Not the Times, oh no no! They put it all into print, and cut off the online page! That included all of Kit and me, and another Resident we had suggested the reporter talk to. “Yeah,” the reporter commented to me in a message when I laughed at that, “tell that to my editors, their ways are a mystery to me at the best of times.” Hey dummies: this online publisher would have sent you traffic by linking the page to my thousands and thousands of readers, but not when you cut my wife and Iout!
But we have done interviews with a lot of reporters, and already a couple other articles have come out:
- At BBC this morning: Is the cruise ship stuck in Belfast finally ready to sail?, which has an eye-rolling error. We will definitely not be living “in a windowless cabin.” I did “defend” Residents who chose inside cabins, pointing out they have the rest of the nicely uncrowded ship to roam during the day. But I was never asked what sort of cabin we had.
- By AFP (the French news agency), also this morning, via France 24: Stranded cruise ship passengers bid bitter-sweet farewell to Belfast. Both BBC and AFP did video versions, which you might see on local news stations around the world.
“Sorry about the ‘stranded’” in theheadline, the AFP reporter messaged me, knowing I am adamant that we are NOT “stranded”!, as I wrote on Residential Cruising. “I had ‘stuck’,” he continued, but his editors in “Paris changed it to stranded.”
The AFP report includes a LARGE photo of me and Kit, where I’m taking a “selfie” with my phone. Except the photos really being snapped were through the front lens: I was taking pics of the reporter (with the video camera, since there’s also a TV version of the story) and the print photographer. Click the thumbnail above for an example. Hey, they’re going to direct what I do so they can “record the event” for the news? Then I’ll document what’s really happening. Heh hehheh!
More press to come. There will probably be more links next week.
Ten Years Ago in True: Classical Zero Tolerance (be sure to read the update).
Last Week’s Story of the Week (you’re welcome to share it), another zero tolerance story, is posted for easy sharing from Telegram, Mastodon, Instagram, Threads, and/or Facebook, or grab from any of those to post elsewhere.
This Week’s Sunday Reading: Yes, there IS something you can ‘do’ about mass killings beyond thoughts and prayers. Orlando: What YOU Can Do.
Again No Honorary Unsubscribe this week. Remember my sinus infection when in the Canary Islands? The one that resulted from being in the hospital with pneumonia in April? Turns out the treatment in Spain didn’t get it. It’s now deeply seated and I’m half-way through six weeks of antibiotics trying to cure it. I’m definitely dragging, but I’ll try to catch up on filling in these spaces as I have energy. Always something, it seems, and itall goes back to getting sick on Norwegian Cruise Lines. It somehow figures.
- But So Long to actress and singer Kathryn Crosby. She was the widow of actor and singer Bing Crosby for nearly 47 years (he died in 1977, and was 30 years her senior). She died September 20, at 90.
- Honorary Unsubscribe Archive.
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