Category: News

It’s been so hot in St. Louis even the streets are buckling:

Temperatures over the past week have gotten so hot even the streets are buckling from the heat.

As a heat wave gripped the region, at least four streets across St. Louis, St. Charles and St. Louis counties curled, arched or cracked and created spots where roads jutted up into the air like ramps.

It has been hotter in the modern era–I remember in the middle 1980s when the temperature topped 100 degrees for, what, two weeks? We were visiting my aunt’s flat-top roofed brick house with no air conditioning at the time.

I don’t remember stories about streets buckling.

So is it the heat that has changed? Or the streets?

This is not as bad as Alpha-Gal syndrome.

Fitness influencer, 31, left paralyzed from tick bite: ‘My body completely gave up’:

According to the social media star, tiny organisms called Babesia had entered her bloodstream via a tick bite. Her red blood cells were targeted as a result.

“It completely shattered my immune system,” she said on social media. “It became so bad that something as simple as locking my phone or turning my car’s wheel became moments of agony.”

The condition affects fewer than 3,000 people per year in the US, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

It’s a bad year for ticks at Nogglestead. I’ve pulled a walking on me–bad ticks that they are, when you can feel them on you–and I’ve had a bite already. The other evening, I went to the garden and harvested 8 radishes and pulled two ticks off of myself in the house after. I do not like that ratio and hope it does not hold.

I’m not making light of Alpha-Gal syndrome. I have a real fear of it since I know two people who have it/have had it (apparently, treatment is improving).

But I’d rather be paralyzed than allergic to meat. Maybe.

I cannot read this article (Does science have a PR problem? The short answer: Yes.) because the Springfield News-Leader is a Gannett publication, and it thinks I want to pay for its glurge.

But of all the problems science has (direction set by government funding, so it finds what the ruling elite want; replicability crisis; soft “sciences” want to be treated like real sciences; etc.), marketing is not one.

So many “problems” in the modern world are “solved,” experts say (or at least pitch in pursuit of lucrative contracts) comes down to somehow involving people with marketing or communications degrees saying different words about the “problems.”

I think that time is almost over.

Booming demand for vinyl records could increase prices for music lovers

The story basically talks about how hard and expensive it is for a band to release a record which is, well, literally a record these days.

But any of us who have been pawing through crates of records for years know that the price of new albums in the stores is getting up to around $30, and used records by anyone you’ve heard of are $10-$20, and used records by anyone are $5.

But now that the news has discovered it, it has now become real.

Teachers’ union warns of violence from relocating St. Louis schools hit by tornado:

Violence could erupt this fall when students from tornado-damaged schools move into rival buildings, a union leader warned St. Louis Public Schools.

Students in middle and high schools can be territorial and “are willing to defend violently if necessary that claimed territory from students outside their respective neighborhoods,” said Ray Cummings, president of the American Federation of Teachers Local 420 in a letter Thursday to Superintendent Millicent Borishade and the St. Louis Board of Education.

I presume it’s a plea for funding and/or stay-at-home schooling.

But saying that the students are ungovernable delinquents, true or not, is a bad look.

Terry Bradshaw not happy with ‘ridiculous’ treatment at airport:

Terry Bradshaw’s travels are never boring.

Unfortunately, for the former Pittsburgh Steelers star and Fox broadcaster, he was the random traveler caught in the TSA’s crosshairs on Monday morning.

At Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri, as the 76-year-old Bradshaw was walking through security, he was selected for an extra diligent search.

He’s done one-night-only shows a couple of times a year down in Branson, and I’ve always learned about them after the fact.

And now he might never come back.

Inside the indoor athletic facility arms race that’s sweeping the Ozarks:

A day after Republic voted to pass a bond issue allowing it to build a multi-million dollar indoor athletics facility, the phones rang at the high school all day.

The calls weren’t from any angry residents who might have attempted to vote the issue down. Instead, they were from athletic directors and administrators all over the state. They wanted to know how the southwest Missouri school district got such a project off the ground, and if they could schedule times to visit.

Many of those same administrators called Nixa High School to see if they could tour its $18 million indoor facility, which is set to open this summer. Other possible tour sites include the facility at Logan-Rogersville High School, 20 miles down the road, or the one that opened at Ozark High a year ago.

A day after I voted against the bond issue, you mean.

Because building it is one thing, but after building it must be maintained. Every year something (and every year more) has to come from the budget which won’t pay teachers or support book, sorry, free laptops for students learning.

Meanwhile, private groups are building for-profit indoor and outdoor sports facilities; non-school are looking to build indoor facilities; and non-school governments are spending millions to acquire indoor sports facilities.

Basically, it’s the convention center arms race again, where “competing” cities overbuild capacity, find them to be financial sinkholes, and then have to upgrade them to remain competitive in chasing a limited market. All so that government officials can burnish their resumes for their next gigs and fail upward.

It looks like Associated Press is taking its cues from more modern “news” sites which are mostly opinion and reporting what people say on social media:

Sure are a lot of for-profits looking for donations these days.

Phone thief has balaclava whipped off face as group screaming ‘w***er’ surround him

I immediately thought wigger, but since it’s Britain, it’s probably wanker.

But it’s getting hard to read news these days with so many words blotted out.

Petition aims to close a portion of a Christian County road to through traffic:

Holder Road has become the center of controversy in the small community near Clever. Those calling for the Christian County road to be closed are speaking out.

I saw this story covered a couple of weeks ago, and I’d not heard of Holder Road. But once a month, I drive from Republic to Nixa and like to take a couple of different routes just to keep things fresh. One is to take Highway ZZ to Highway 14, and the earlier story actually alerted me to this shortcut.

I tried to take it last Friday, but the article did not mention it is impassable in high water–it has a low water bridge–so I had to turn around part of the way along.

It’s a narrow and curvy road, so I don’t expect travelers can get up to a great head of steam on it, but country boys, you know.

But it does get my dander up when residents want the government to take a public good and make it private to them.

Sam’s Club reveals plan to eliminate checkout lanes completely with major change:

Sam’s Club, the Walmart-owned membership warehouse, is rolling out a major change to its grocery payment system and embracing artificial intelligence (AI).

The retail giant plans to phase out traditional checkouts across its 600 stores and create a friction-free shopping experience which will include customers scanning goods on the go with an app and then having and AI scanner verify the goods as customers leave. The technology would eliminate the need for receipt checks at the door.

The system, known as “Scan & Go,” was initially launched in April 2024 and allows members to use the Sam’s Club mobile app to scan their products.

The latest announcement adds the AI check, known as “Just Walk”/”Just Go” exit, to the process and will see the option of traditional checkouts being eliminated.

The new plans were announced by Chris Nicholas, Sam’s Club president and CEO, who outlined the company’s growth ambitions at its 2025 Investment Community Meeting last week.

“This is one of the fastest, most scalable transformations happening in retail today,” Nicholas said. “We’re investing with intention — in our fleet, our associates and the member experience — to become the world’s best club retailer.”

Making me do more of the work is not improving the member experience.

You know, gentle reader, I go to the local Sam’s Club once or twice a week. I have almost since we moved to Springfield, and I’ve been a member for, what, 25 years? But I am not going to do this.

For one, I’m an old curmudgeon now For two, as a longtime remote worker, my interactions with the cashiers at Sam’s Club represent some of the only in-person contacts with people on a regular basis. So I am not going to load the corporate app onto my phone so that I can scan all the goods and to let it try to track me all day long. Just so that the corporation can get a couple extra nickels from me.

Why do I say that this rhymes? Remember when some gunslingin’ marketin’ genius decided to try to make Walmart more upscale, resulting in almost $2,000,000,000 in lost sales?

I imagine this will go that way, kind of like how Walmart went all-in on self-checkouts and then pulled back.

But it will be a year or two without Sam’s Club for us. And we’ll see if Costco captures us as it has so many of our friends.

CT scans could be a contributor to cancer, study finds:

CT scans could be an “important cause of cancer” in the United States, according to a new study.

According to the study by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, CT scans could account for 5% of cancer cases in the U.S., more than tripling previous estimates.

Since 2007, the number of CT scans performed in the U.S. has increased by 30%. The research also indicates that CT scans are being overused for instances of upper respiratory infections and common headaches.

Not depicted: Scanners that have become ubiquitous at the exits of major retailers. Old timey ones waited for an RFID to pass through them without deactivation (no (they have been around for, what, forty years now?) but are becoming even more elaborate as they scan items in your cart to make sure you paid for them.

Not as heavy of a dose of radiation as a CT scan, but you don’t get a CT scan several times a week.

Boy, oh boy, we are all guinea pigs, all the time. Presumably because they can no longer test with actual guinea pigs.

The front page of the New York Post has a video leading to a story about the San Diego earthquake. The video depicts a woman sitting on a couch who jumps up, grabs a baby, and runs for the front door.

What caught my eye is the Roku logo and date and timestamp at the bottom.

The Roku is watching you.

But only if you turn it and give it explicit permission to do so. Wink.

Missouri woman living with breast cancer asks lawmakers to pass Cancer Patients’ Bill of Rights:

She approached Democratic St. Louis Sen. Angela Mosley about writing a Cancer Patients’ Bill of Rights. This bill would ensure patients have the right to clear explanations in their language, shorter waits for test results and appointments with specialists, access to clinical trials at request, and much more. Insurance companies would be expected to bear any costs associated with this bill.

Our financially and probably otherwise illiterate legislators continue to layer up mandates on insurance companies and then slag on them when insurance prices go up. And then they mandate purchasing insurance coverage.

Republicans are not immune to these feel-good, hide-the-cost bills. One of my current senators made it mandatory that my health care coverage pay for autism treatments that I’ll never use.

It’s filtering to the masses: The economy is cratering! Recession! Depression! Doom!

My mother-in-law is no longer technically a shut-in, but she does watch a lot of cable news. My beautiful wife is steeped in the non-profit world and other feminine sources of information. And even the newspapers that are nominally Trump-supporting such as the New York Post have to fill column inches and screen pixels several times a day, so some doom-mongering is inevitable. They’re starting to fear in a herd-like fashion.

But.

In recent years, during what was presented as the best economic recovery ever, Jack, the price of gas and groceries effectively doubled? And that was fine?

But now the word tariffs gets screamed from the broadcast tours and the tubes and wires of the Internet, and now we’re supposed to panic?

Yeah, nobody’s hair is on fire, and day-to-day has not changed.

I guess a lot of government people are out of work and uncertain. Kind of like tech jobs have been shed over recent years by the tens of thousands and how manufacturing jobs have evaporated en masse in the last couple of decades.

Head down, everyone, and carry on. No one knows what lies ahead.

‘Born alive’ bill passes Missouri House. Critics say it threatens medication abortions

It’s in the Springfield News-Leader, but it is not by News-Leader staff or, heaven forfend, the “news” organization Associated Press. It’s by the Missouri Independent people, a left-wing editorial organization whom I remember from my old days blogging with the political blog 24th State.

I’ve seen a lot of Missouri Independent pieces infesting the small newspapers I get from around the state. I’m always disappointed to see it, as the news “article” trashes Republicans as news. But the small town papers are starting to trend leftward even though their readerships are not (and as their page counts diminish and they cannot afford actual people in their area to write articles). On the other hand, when they unexpectedly close shop, I’ll save money on annual non-local subscriptions, so that will be nice.

In the Friday mailbag today at Founding Questions, someone asked:

Re: The meme (for lack of a better term): “The world stopped in 1999, and this is a simulation (or whatever).” Question: In your opinion: How much of the slowdown in culture, etc, is due to the Boomers losing their juice? Be it personally, physically, socially, and so on? How much of the meme is simply trolling people wth fuzzy memories? And how much is Religion (big R) going away, and the search for meaning spilling over to any nook or cranny?

I have given this some thought, gentle reader, and I attribute it to the decline of the educational establishments in the country, whether it’s the consolidation of school districts to solve problems Horace Mann identified in 19th century (spoiler alert: they did not, in fact, solve the problems, but they sure made room for a lot of administrators) or the change in the nature of colleges (now universities). Heck, maybe it was the electrification of the country, where culture shifted to radio and later television (and, in some places, but not all, movies).

So the depth of the source material from which creators and writers decreased. Instead of imaginative books or even radio, writers and whatnot started taking their main inputs from visual media, and you can see it in their outputs.

Now, we’ve reached a point where young creators and writers have taken their inputs mostly from movies. For example, this PJ Media column alludes:

Enter the Donkey version of Loki, the deeply duplicitous trickster-villain from the Marvel Cinematic Universe….

Not the Norse god of lies. Not the comic book villain for almost 70 years now. No, the Loki from a contemporary series of movies (no, man, Thor was 2011, which is like fifteen years ago–it’s an old movie).

If you read widely, historically speaking, you’ll find that even pulp (the best of it) from the early 20th century has depth that a lot of contemporary mass culture (movies, mostly, but also television) lacks. Classical allusions, retelling of stories, maybe just hitting most of the Hero’s Journey, for crying out loud. But the new films are trying to retell the older (not necessarily old) films. Why do later Star Wars movies merely thinly retell the original Star Wars movies? Because the filmmakers’ inputs were not classical serials but the original Star Wars movies (a thinner source from which to draw). You can apply this to other “franchises” which just retread and message-swap the stories.

Now, this might apply less to writers, who tend to start out readers and who might have some depth in their inputs, but I assure you this does not necessarily apply to poets as some of my book reports suggest.

Where are we going to be in twenty years when the prime creators grew up on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok? Me, I’ll be reading old books, same as ever. As a culture: Can it really get any worse?

So what is to be done? I dunno. Read a book? Write something more than twee blog posts? Probably more advice to me than many of you.