{"id":31493,"date":"2018-02-19T13:19:27","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T21:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=31493"},"modified":"2018-02-19T13:19:27","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T21:19:27","slug":"open-thread-2-19-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/19\/open-thread-2-19-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 2\/19\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Outside the temperature has warmed up to a sunny 32\u00b0.&#160; I did close the window last night, but had no need to turn on the heat.&#160; Now the sun has been hitting my wall, warming the brickwork, and radiating heat into the room, where it is now 75\u00b0.&#160; I may have to open the window.&#160; Now, perhaps you understand how hot things get here in the summer.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:15 (average 6:13).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-02-19-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dzJc_TSEX8A\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/WashingtonPost\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Meet the business tycoon Trump nominated to be ambassador to The Bahamas<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/dzJc_TSEX8A?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Donating big bucks to the Fuhrer, abusing women, and lying during Senate confirmation is the Republican path to an Ambassadorial post. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/chicago.suntimes.com\/news\/facebook-to-verify-ads-with-postcards-after-russian-meddling\/\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago Sun Times<\/a>: <\/font>Facebook will soon rely on centuries-old technology to try to prevent foreign meddling in U.S. elections: the post office.<\/p>\n<p>Baffled in 2016 by Russian agents who bought ads to sway the U.S. presidential campaign, Facebook\u2019s global politics and government outreach director, Katie Harbath, told a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State in Washington on Saturday that the company would send postcards to potential buyers of political ads to confirm they reside in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>The recipient would then have to enter a code in Facebook to continue buying the ad. The method will first apply to ads that name candidates ahead of the midterm elections in November, said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">So what? It would be child&#8217;s play for Russian Republicans to maintain US mailboxes to receive the automated Facebook mailings. The Trump Reich would probably provide staff to monitor and reply, without colluding, of course. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/falcon-heavy-may-have-drastically-increased-the-number-1823116009\" target=\"_blank\">Gizmodo<\/a>: <\/font>Asteroid mining is about more than just heading up into space and bringing back a rock full of platinum\u2014you actually need to land something on just the right asteroid.<\/p>\n<p>Falcon Heavy, the world\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/spacex-s-falcon-heavy-rocket-takes-off-1822770189\" target=\"_blank\">most powerful rocket<\/a> launched by Elon Musk-led SpaceX two weeks ago, may have changed the game, says one astronomer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead of a few hundred we may have thousands of ore bearing asteroids available,\u201d Martin Elvis from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told an audience at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is what I meant when I said that transporting billionaires into space for the day will be just the means to pay for the project&#8217;s real work, obtaining natural resources. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/0219Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0219Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"0219Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/0219Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Outside the temperature has warmed up to a sunny 32\u00b0.&#160; I did close the window last night, but had no need to turn on the heat.&#160; Now the sun has been hitting my wall, warming the brickwork, and radiating heat into the room, where it is now 75\u00b0.&#160; I may have to open the window.&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/19\/open-thread-2-19-2018\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}