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This dad breaks down the absolute mathematical absurdity of people panic buying toilet paper [CAUTION FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED: This dad uses the "sh!t" word a lot, but purely for math purposes] LINK

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by H.L. Mencken. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. H.L. Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic whose distrust of government was tempered only by his wit regarding cigar haters. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares...

The US Department of Labor sent guidance to state labor agencies on Wednesday, asking them to hold off on releasing unemployment claims data earlier than the regularly scheduled national report on initial claims, according to a state labor agency. The department asked state officials in an email Wednesday to only "provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)" and keep the exact figures under embargo until next Thursday, according to The New York Times, which obtained the email. Last week, 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits — a sudden 33% spike from...

Charges against a 20-year-old man who was accused of a hate crime in connection with the beating of an elderly Asian victim were withdrawn as part of a “restorative justice” effort by prosecutors in the case. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin made the decision on March 2 in the case against Dwayne Grayson, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Boudin, who was described in a Jacobin profile last year as a “socialist and the child of revolutionaries,” campaigned heavily on a progressive vision of criminal justice reform during the district attorney race. Grayson was initially charged with robbery, elder abuse,...

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has made girls’ education around the world a major focus of her post-White House life. On Tuesday, she appeared with three YouTube stars in a special on just that, in Creators for Change on Girls’ Education.(snip) In an exclusive preview, above, Koshy asks Obama, 56, about finding her own strength to be a “first” in her life so far — as the first black first lady and beyond. “Well it goes back to an education. I came into my role as first lady, I just wasn’t Michelle Obama. My education put me in positions to...

New York Times and Peters publish multiple false statements At least two subjects have demanded retractions, corrections Peters changes Attkisson quote to suit a false narrative Peters objects to reporting of factually correct, complete list of U.S. coronavirus deaths

European government and regulatory bodies have authorized the European Union’s telecom operators and internet service providers to apply exceptional measures, including the throttling of online speeds, to prevent network congestion amid increased demand as millions of Europeans are forced to stay home and use online collaboration and teleworking tools amid the coronavirus. The EU’s governing body, the European Commission, and the Body of the European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) gave the greenlight to telcos to take the necessary measures to ensure there is no disruption in online traffic. The move comes after Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for internal...

Home to the largest homeless population in the country, California officials are rushing to get tens of thousands of people off the streets and into shelters and tents to slow the spread of the coronavirus among one of the most vulnerable and difficult-to-reach groups.

While the country rallies together to combat the coronavirus, the media has discovered the real enemy: President Trump. Trump has been praised by rival politicians like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but the president’s daily briefings with the media have often been combative. He’s called a racist for referring to the deadly pandemic as a “Chinese virus” and his response to the coronavirus has been too slow and timid. This is rich coming from a media that for years has pilloried the president for being a dictator.

KIST researchers developed cathode material of carbon-silicon complex by simply mixing and heating silicon mixed with oil with green ingredients corn and sweet potato starch. If batteries made of this material are installed in electric vehicles, the driving range will more than double. Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) _______________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Hun-Gi Jung and his research team at the Center for Energy Storage Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Lee Byung Gwon) have announced the development of silicon anode materials that can increase battery capacity four-fold in comparison to graphite anode materials and...

An NBC News employee has died after being infected with the novel coronavirus, the network announced on Friday morning. The employee, Larry Edgeworth, worked in the equipment room at the network's 30 Rockefeller Plaza office in midtown Manhattan.

Boomers making the best of it. This definitely made me smile. Check out these ladies doing the coronavirus blues.

Two more senators made hefty stock sales before the coronavirus pandemic tanked global markets, records revealed as two other lawmakers who dumped millions in shares faced mounting calls to resign. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jim Inhofe sold as much as $6.4 million worth of stock in the weeks before panic about the coronavirus sparked a worldwide selloff, according to disclosure filings first reported by the New York Times. The additional revelations came amid widespread outrage toward GOP Sens. Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler, who reportedly sold shares after getting briefings on the coronavirus threat.

An employee of the biotech company at the center of the COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts is being criminally investigated after she defied the president’s travel ban and went to China. Of the 328 confirmed cases of the disease in Massachusetts, 30 percent of them are linked back to Cambridge-based Biogen after several employees at a conference held by the company at the Marriott Long Wharf tested positive for the virus and traveled across the country, further spreading the disease. Belmont native Jie Li is being accused of knowing she was sick and of taking medication to bring down her fever...

The World Health Organization and other sensitive souls have instructed us to stop referring to the new strain of coronavirus as the "Wuhan" or "Chinese" flu because of the racist connotations. I'm disinclined to curb my speech to placate Chinese propagandists, and it seems to me the aversion to those terms is less about racism than about averting blame. But in the spirit of comity, and avoiding disparaging an entire nation, I'm happy to call it the ChiCom Flu moving forward. There are many traditional naming conventions that don't really make that much sense. Somewhat weirdly, for example, we often...

At @realDonaldTrump’s direction, we are moving Tax Day from April 15 to July 15. All taxpayers and businesses will have this additional time to file and make payments without interest or penalties. https://twitter.com/stevenmnuchin1/status/1241002750483324930 

SAN DIEGO - U.S. officials are expected to announce new restrictions on the Southern border Friday as they try to halt the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. and Mexico have been working on plans to limit cross-border traffic, according to officials on both sides of the border. The plan is expected to look much like restrictions already announced on all-but-essential travel and trade between the U.S. and Canada. “We're looking at both our northern and our southern border,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters at the White House, explaining that the restrictions were aimed at “eliminating...

The F-16, hit by the cannon fire, caught fire and exploded having recently been refuelled and made ready for a training sortie due to take place later that day. Another aircraft received minor damage. If anyone ever needed a reminder of the lethal dangers of working with live munitions, then a recent incident at Florennes Air Base in Belgium is the ultimate wake-up call. It is thought a maintenance worker accidentally activated the six-barrel 20mm Vulcan M61A-1 cannon hitting another plane parked on the runway. No-one was in the line of fire, but two technicians were taken to the medical...

Figure outlining the structural and morphological characteristics of the two oxyfluorides syhthesized by the researchers. Credit: Ji et al. ______________________________________________________________________________ In recent years, lithium-based batteries have become widely used to power a wide range of electronic devices, including tablets, smart phones and portable computers. These batteries have different compartments, called cells, each of which contains a positive electrode and a negative electrode separated by a chemical known as an electrolyte. Positive electrodes are generally composed of lithium compounds, such as LiCoO2 or LiFePO4, while negative electrodes are usually made of carbon. The electrolyte separating them, on the other hand, can...

Precedent doesn't provide much guidance. There's a deadly coronavirus threatening to circulate through the population. The resulting government orders and social sanctions of self-distancing and self-isolating behavior are unprecedented in living memory. Operating without guiding precedents casts into doubt many longstanding practices and assumptions. First, as the Hoover Institution's Michael Auslin writes in RealClearPolitics, "After dealing with the first great global crisis of the 21st century, the world must fundamentally rethink its dependence on China." Americans are suddenly realizing they depend on China for health care products from face masks to pharmaceutical medicines, including nearly half our penicillin and nearly...