Here is the short cut to the full COVID report for Tuesday.

Well, I guess it’s official. COVID is winning the battle against us. 44 states reported “new cases” data on Tuesday and 24 of them were in the red zone, so it’s COVID 24, America 20.

The number of people hospitalized with COVID is up 43% in just one week.

Here is Tuesday’s red zone chart:

image host

Footnote: Kansas and Florida are estimated based on pre-Tuesday data.

Note that the red zones are expanding to border states. In Tuesday’s reports, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina got sucked into the vortex.

The very bad hot zones are still:

  • an area centered in Las Vegas,
  • an area centered in Joplin, Missouri, expanding through the area where four states align (Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma)
  • an area in Northern Florida stretching from Jacksonville to Orlando

This is illustrated very well by the latest NY Times graph of hospitalization hot spots

image host

… which could be:

A new horror film

A new rock band

A real thing in Big Bend National Park

It’s not as bad as it sounds. (I just love sensationalized headlines.) The acid they squirt is basically common vinegar, harmless to humans, so they sort of make their own hot and sour lobster soup. They are not lobsters, of course. “The whip scorpion, more commonly called a vinegaroon in Texas, is a member of the arachnid family but poses little danger to humans, unlike its cousins, the scorpion and the spider.”

In French

Here’s how Google Translate renders it (probably awkwardly). I can’t help. I don’t know enough French.

Summer of famine

Titane: a rare experience. Lengthy and frequent nudity from Agathe Rousselle, the breasts of Garance Marillier (see a little more) and Anaïs Fabre.

Annette: beautiful but boring. The breasts of Marion Cotillard.

Upcoming films:

Tralala: the Larrieu brothers tick off a new cinematographic genre with a light and pleasant film. Very sensual nude scene by Mélanie Thierry, who mainly offers us her ass, to see a little more.

Eiffel: classic biopic. Emma Mackey’s breasts in a sex scene.

I comete: naturalistic Corsica.

Nos frères ennemis: another oriented re-reading of the events in Algeria. The Luxembourgish breasts of Vicky Krieps.

Amants: we knew Nicole Garcia more inspired. Stacy Martin at “oilp.” (??)

Si demain: Fabienne Godet continues her quest for meaning.

La troisième guerre: the hard work of a soldier ensuring “vigipirate” (Google obviously encountered some problems translating this one)

Rouge: man pollutes to live!

Tout nous sourit: small vaudeville

Vagabondes: street school, where we keep our clothes.

Hunted: Lucie Debay gets hunted but does not suffer the extreme outrages.

L’origine du Monde: Parisianiste (I had never noticed that Vincent Macaigne was the double of François Hollande). Karin Viard still and always very naked (it will still be necessary to ensure that there has not been recourse to digital special effects because Karin appears particularly sharp and the 2 actors exhibit the cocks of porn actors).

Ni Dieux, Ni Maitres: from the right of cuissage to the Middle Ages. Flore Grimaud’s heavy chest.

Isn’t this a song?

No, not that gay anthem by Paul Shaffer.

This one:

They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And it’s raining cocaine

Twelve million dollars worth of cocaine lands on somebody’s roof in Sardinia

It did break a solar panel when it landed, but the homeowners could easily have paid for that if they hadn’t informed the police. Do you think Farmers will cover it? They’ve seen a thing or two.

The combined effects of rising sea levels and nodal cycle modulations of tidal amplitude lead to acute inflections in projections of future high tide flooding”

In human language, that means the moon is heading into a recurring cycle that makes high tides higher and low tides lower, while rising sea levels make those high tides very, very high.

In actionable terms, this is a good time to unload your oceanfront property, and move away from low-lying coastal areas. It may be cold in Minnesota, but you shouldn’t plan a retirement move to the Outer Banks, Charleston, Savannah or Miami.

NASA explains: “The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam.”

This indictment is much narrower than you might think, and the charges against the corporation are probably less significant than you might assume.

First of all, a good chunk of this consists of actions taken by Allen Weisselberg to benefit Allen Weisselberg and his family. He was using the Trump Organization to pay for things like his vacation homes and private schools for his grandchildren, and was not accounting for those as income. Based on what we know now, there is no reason to believe that Trump himself approved these shenanigans, and Trump may even be shocked to have found out about it now (as far as we know – but the point is that we don’t know). I’m not sure how the incorporation defines the ownership of Trump’s company, so I don’t know exactly how the company’s profits pass through to Trump himself, but it is possible that Weisselberg was paying for those things out of Trump’s personal pocket, which means he may have been cheating his boss as well as the tax man. Anyway, the most serious accusation against Weisselberg is that he cheated his way out of nearly a million dollars in taxes. He pleaded not guilty, but it’s difficult to imagine what defense he might present. The whole thing seems cut-and-dried.

(The indictment mentions that the scheme also benefited other company executives besides Weisselberg. Nobody is letting on who they are or what legal liability they may have, if any.)

As for the charges against the Trump Organization, well, they are trifling in the grand scheme of things. Since the executive perks should be defined as income, the Trump Organization should have been paying payroll taxes on those amounts. How big a deal is that? I quote the Post: “If Trump’s companies were convicted, they could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.” Hundreds of thousands? Really? Big fuckin’ deal. They can probably pay that out of petty cash. They probably have that much hidden in the floorboards for emergency bail money.

There may be some more significant charges to appear subsequently, but so far, it’s a tale of one embezzler. People like Rachel Maddow may try to persuade you otherwise, but up to this point Godfather Trump remains Teflon Don – nothing we have seen so far sticks to him.

Former member Jessica Joan gave an impassioned victim statement during the proceedings, in which she described Mack as “a demon of a woman” who had groomed her to be a “sex slave.” “Allison Mack is the most evil monster I’ve ever met,” she said. “She sought me out like a predator stalking their prey.”

So, stop pulling your punches there, Jessica, and say what’s on your mind.

Or maybe he’s really dead. You make the call.

“John McAfee, the 90s software magnate-turned-globe-trotting fugitive, was found dead on Wednesday afternoon in a Spanish prison cell just hours after a court authorized his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges. McAfee was 75.”

“According to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which cited a statement from the Catalan Departamento de Justicia confirming the death, attempts by jail staff to resuscitate McAfee were unsuccessful. Reuters confirmed the department’s statement, which said the death was most likely a suicide.”

But it’s not a certainty because of the complicated process. Sources say that the new ranked-order voting system will not permit an official result until mid-July.

Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and a conservative talk show host, won the GOP nomination in a landslide.

From Recapped:

“Ilana Glazer has her first nude scenes in False Positive. Ilana first shows her bouncing breasts during a very dark sex scene. Later you can somewhat see Ilana’s breasts through some bubbles while she is in the bath. Near the end of the film, Ilana is naked and covered in blood as she enters the bathroom. We see Ilana’s butt and breasts as she looks in the mirror.

False Positive is now playing at Tribeca and will be available to stream on Hulu on June 25.”

“They not only came back to the land of the living but were also able to reproduce asexually.” Previously this had only happened to Tony Randall.

“A multicellular organism can be frozen and stored as such for thousands of years and then return back to life – a dream of many fiction writers.”

Because he used press conferences and public appearances as part of his strategy, because he took on infamous and high profile clients in newsworthy trials, and because he developed some ethical issues of his own, Bailey was perhaps the most famous defense attorney since Clarence Darrow.

He was known as a master of cross-examination, and many think that his skillful cross-ex of Mark Fuhrman was the trigger for the jury to declare “not guilty” in the OJ trial. Bailey lured the officer into committing perjury very blatantly, thus placing the entire prosecution under a cloud.

Their methodology is quite complex, and takes into account the excess death rate and several modifying factors.

In terms of accurate reporting, the USA actually looks better than many other countries. While the analysts estimate that American deaths are probably about 1.5 times as many as the officially reported total, the excess death rates elsewhere during the COVID era indicate that many countries are underreported by vast multiples. For example, Russia has reported 109,000 fatalities, but the analysts estimate that the actual total is 591,000; Mexico has reported 217,000 fatalities, but the analysts estimate that the correct total is 653,000.