Month: June 2021

Australian-based startup CopterPack published a new video on YouTube of what appears to be an electric backpack helicopter flying for the first time. 

The lightweight airframe is constructed from a carbon fiber honeycomb, with two propellers on either side of the operator, lifting the person into the air. 

The video shows the flight and how remarkably stable the electric backpack helicopter is, all thanks to its self-leveling autopilot. 

Judging by the video, there is no tail rotor, as the two main propellers are adjusted by the operator with a joystick for control. 

The futuristic form of personal transportation is quite impressive, but there is very limited information on the specs of the electric backpack helicopter. For instance, flight time, maximum altitude height, and top speed are critical pieces of information the company has yet to release. Meanwhile, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been searching for an Iron Man-style jet suit per its solicitation on website Sam.Gov (System for Award Management). DARPA is calling on private industry to deliver jet suits or “Portable Personal Air Mobility System.” 

Perhaps we found the perfect fit? 

Authored by Julie Kelly via AmGreatness.com,

No one killed Brian Sicknick. But that isn’t stopping the Biden Justice Department, the media, every Democratic politician, and now Sicknick’s loved ones from perpetuating the lie.

On August 26, 2020, Kevin Phomma was arrested in Portland for assaulting several police officers with bear spray during that city’s nonstop siege by Antifa and Black Lives Matters protesters. Phomma and others surrounded the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, blocked traffic, and fought with law enforcement.

In a press release announcing his arrest, the Justice Department said, “Phomma doused several officers with pepper spray while they attempted to arrest him. Once in custody, officers discovered the pepper spray was in fact a powerful bear deterrent pepper spray.”

Phomma, 26, also had a three-inch dagger in a sheath strapped to his left hip.

He was charged with a dozen counts ranging from civil disorder—a felony—to unlawful use of mace. He appears to contribute little to society except for his skills as a professional protester.

A few days after his arrest, Phomma was released on bail.

His trial is still pending; his lawyers claim the civil disorder charge is “a vestige of opposition to civil rights for Black Americans.” (He does not appear to be black.)

While Phomma roams free, acting as the aggrieved party rather than the aggressor, the two men who allegedly sprayed officer Brian Sicknick with a chemical irritant on January 6 are not so lucky.

George Tanios and Julian Khater were arrested in March and accused of “attacking” Sicknick with a chemical spray; the indictment, not coincidentally, was filed just a few weeks after the initial account of Sicknick’s death—the murder-by-fire-extinguisher story—was exposed as a lie.

Desperate to sustain the lie that a police officer was killed by bloodthirsty Trump cultists on January 6, the media and Democrats quickly pivoted to the idea Sicknick died from an allergic reaction to the bear spray.

Tanios and Khater, who traveled together to hear Donald Trump’s speech that day, face four charges of using and carrying the “dangerous and deadly weapon” on January 6.

Unlike Kevin Phomma, one charge filed against Tanios and Khater is “assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.”

Unlike Phomma and his accomplices, Tanios and Khater also are charged with conspiracy for allegedly pre-planning the assault on a federal officer.

Also unlike Phomma, neither man has been able to post bail; a federal judge last month agreed with Joe Biden’s Justice Department to keep the pair behind bars awaiting trial. D.C. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, a Reagan appointee, even rejected a $15 million bond package backed by 16 relatives of Julian Khater—an amount three times higher than the court-ordered bail for Harvey Weinstein, as one reporter noted.

“They attacked uniformed police officers and I can’t get around that,” Hogan said in a May 11 hearing. Hogan, 83, repeatedly claimed Sicknick was “violently attacked.”

Even though Hogan acknowledged their “excellent backgrounds,” the men are a danger to their community, the judge argued, because they attempted to “halt democratic processes in their attack on Congress.”

Since they didn’t get the Kevin Phomma treatment, Tanios and Khater, like dozens of Capitol defendants, now languish under solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail specifically used to house January 6 detainees.

Neither man has a criminal record. Tanios, 39, is a business owner in Morgantown, West Virginia, and has three children under the age of five. Khater, 32, is a college graduate who worked for the family’s restaurant business until one was forced to shut down last year due to the pandemic.

But because of their involvement in the events of January 6, they are being treated as hardened criminals. “[W]ithout the violent efforts of these specific individuals to injure and/or incapacitate law enforcement officers who were executing their duties and protecting our democracy, the barrier lines would never have been breached, and rioters would likely not have gained entry into the Capitol Building,” prosecutors wrote to the court in April seeking pre-trial detention. “The defendants were spokes in the wheel that caused the historic events of January 6, 2021, and they are thus a danger to our society and a threat to the peaceful functioning of our community.”

Those accusations, on their face, are preposterous. Barrier lines, mostly made of bike racks, already had been crossed by the time Tanios and Khater arrived and neither man entered the Capitol building. If their intent was to help the mob siege the building, why didn’t they go in?

Further, the government’s evidence against the men is inconclusive if not nonexistent. The FBI investigator in charge of the case couldn’t give a clear depiction of how the spray was used or prove the chemical hit any of the officers, including Sicknick. Also, it wasn’t bear spray.

Videos purporting to show the assault do nothing of the sort, in fact, the cherry-picked clips should work in favor of the defense since there is no proof Khater used the can of spray or that its contents hit officer Sicknick. (Tanios is not accused of spraying the chemical but faces the same charges as Khater; the pair also have been charged with conspiracy.) Moreover, unless we accept the word of the government, it’s not even clear that the officer in the video actually is Brian Sicknick.

Again, not coincidentally, the government released its selective footage a week after the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office finally released a long-delayed autopsy report on Sicknick. The officer, age 42, died of natural causes, a stroke caused by blood clots near his brain.

No one killed Brian Sicknick. But that isn’t stopping Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the news media, every Democratic politician, and now Sicknick’s loved ones from perpetuating the lie that Trump supporters contributed to his untimely death.

Gladys Sicknick, the officer’s mother, appeared on Capitol Hill this week, demanding to meet with U.S. senators opposed to the 9/11-style commission on January 6. “Because of what [U.S. Capitol Police] did, the people in the building were able to go home that evening and be with their families,” she said in a statement. “Brian and many other officers ended up in the hospital. I suggest that all congressmen and senators who are against this bill visit my son’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery and, while there, think about what their hurtful decisions will do to those officers who will be there for them going forward.”

“Clearly they’re not backing the blue,” Sandra Garza, Sicknick’s longtime partner, told Jake Tapper in a CNN interview Friday afternoon after the Senate rejected legislation creating the commission. Garza also insisted, without evidence, that “people had handguns on them” during the protest.

This misleading rhetoric does more than help bolster Democrats’ false narrative about January 6; it has very dangerous consequences for two men, still presumed innocent until proven guilty, trapped in the hyperpartisan Beltway judicial system. They are accusing Julian Khater and George Tanios, essentially, of murder and using them as human props in a destructive crusade against the Right.

Both men have appealed Hogan’s ruling. Their appeal will make its way to the D.C. Circuit Court, which has a mixed record on authorizing the release of January 6 defendants.

If only George Tanios and Julian Khater could get the Kevin Phomma treatment.

In Northern California’s Butte County, at least 130 houseboats were evacuated from Lake Oroville as water levels fell to dangerously low levels.

The lake’s record low is 646 feet, and the state’s Department of Water Resources expects that level to be breached in August. If that happens, public boat ramps would be inaccessible for the first due to low water levels. According to Aaron Wright, public safety chief for the Northern Buttes District of California State Parks, who spoke with AP, the only boat access point to the lake would be an old dirt road constructed in the late 1960s. 

Eric Smith, an Oroville City Council member and president of its chamber of commerce, said the lake would not be usable this year. Over a million visitors visit the area each year. Without visitors, enjoying boat parties, wakeboarding, or relaxing in the sun, the local economy could take a hit as it attempts to recover from the virus pandemic. 

As of Wednesday, The Weather Channel states the lake was at 38% of capacity and 45% of the average early June water level. Low water levels forced park officials to order 130 houseboats to exit the lake in recent weeks. 

The mighty lake provides drinking water to 27 million people and water to 4-5 million acres of farmland. Severe drought conditions plague the area, and low snowpack levels from the Sierra Nevada have culminated into a perfect storm. 

According to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis, the state’s 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than average for this time of year. 

Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom spoke about the urgent action needed to address possible water shortages. 

“With the reality of climate change abundantly clear in California, we’re taking urgent action to address acute water supply shortfalls in northern and central California while also building our water resilience to safeguard communities in the decades ahead,” Newsom said on May 10. “We’re working with local officials and other partners to protect public health and safety and the environment, and call on all Californians to help meet this challenge by stepping up their efforts to save water.”

As a historic megadrought, likely produced by La Nina, decimates the western half of the US, the federal government could declare the first-ever water shortage in the coming months, which would prompt cutbacks in water usage for several western states. 

Authored by Ken Cuccinelli II and Dominic Rapini via RealClearPolitics.com,

For as long as politicians have been passing legislation, there have been measurable consequences to that legislation – both intentional and unintentional. Usually, the final impact is not known for years after a law is passed. We could write a book predicting problems with the proposed federal bill, H.R.1, the so-called For the People Act, but the state of Connecticut has given American taxpayers a timely preview of the burdens and waste we can expect from just one of the bill’s many government mandates. Specifically, the requirement that states must mail out ballot applications to all registered voters will unnecessarily spend, and ultimately waste, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

The 2020 elections in Connecticut provide a cautionary preview of this proposed requirement in H.R. 1 to send absentee ballot applications (ABR) to every registered voter. Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill (pictured) did exactly that, spending $7.1 million in federal taxpayer money sending out unsolicited ABRs for the primary and general elections. A total of 3.6 million applications were mailed, yet only 865,000 were converted to actual votes. That’s a cost of $8.20 per ballot returned – by any measure, a poor yield on that investment.

The sad irony about this waste of taxpayers’ money is that the applications were available to voters free of charge either at town halls or on the State of Connecticut website. One had only to pick up the form in person or download and print it in the comfort of his own home. Other states have similarly convenient options for obtaining ABRs and provide for ballot applications to be requested online, by email or by phone. Citizens in these states take responsibility for their right to vote, and the states facilitate their doing so, rather than mandate it.

Connecticut’s effort also came with a much greater and intangible cost. In 2020, election officials processed 10 times the normal amount of absentee-ballot applications. Experienced town clerks and registrars from 169 towns remarked that the 2020 election was like “drinking through a fire hose.” Municipal election officials were unprepared and understaffed to handle the heavy volume of unsolicited mail-in ballots. As a result, normal ballot-vetting practices were abandoned in the deluge, and clerk offices could not fulfill their normal duties for weeks before the election. How do you measure the impact of that kind of disruption? The simple process of voters requesting ballots indicates to election officials the workload that they are facing and allows for proper planning and staffing.

Aside from being another punch line to long-running jokes about government waste, Connecticut’s $8.20 ballots revealed another flaw: More than 8% were undeliverable. In the August primary alone, dated voter rolls accounted for 100,000 undeliverable applications. For the general election, an estimated 184,000 ballot applications could not be delivered. Add that number to the 197,000 inactive voters who failed to vote in the last two federal elections, and the total pool of voters on the rolls who might be dead, moved, or duplicate swells to 381,000. This amounts to a clear invitation for fraud.

At the national level, H.R. 1 would mandate the mailing of absentee-ballot applications to 168 million registered voters. The Brennan Center for Justice conservatively estimates that a mail-in option for all American voters would cost upward of $1.4 billion, including investments in postage, printing, ballot-tracking systems, and many other logistical and ballot-security technologies. If these ballots were returned at a similar rate as those in Connecticut, most of these tax dollars would simply be wasted.

While the financial costs of H.R. 1 are certainly concerning and undeniable, the dangers it poses to election integrity should be front and center. Incredibly, using Connecticut’s 2020 experience as a guide, under H.R. 1, the 8% of unsolicited ballots that revealed dead, duplicate, or moved voters would not be enough to clean the voter rolls. H.R. 1 makes that task much more difficult –presenting another tempting opportunity for fraud.

The 2020 elections were the most frenetic in recent American history. Election officials expanded convenience at the expense of election security and spent monies for short-term objectives like unsolicited mailings with poor cost-benefit results. We learned (again) from Connecticut’s experience that government doesn’t always get it right and that taxpayer money is often wasted. H.R. 1 would solidify these short-term mistakes into a law with broad long-term consequences that would increase threats to the integrity of American elections. States have run their own elections for over 230 years – never perfectly, but certainly better than an H.R. 1 federal takeover would achieve. The misnamed For the People Act should be rejected.

As fast-food restaurants and small businesses struggle to find low-skilled workers to staff their kitchens and cash registers, America’s biggest fast-food franchise is seizing the opportunity to field test a concept it has been working toward for some time: 10 McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago are testing automated drive-thru ordering using new artificial intelligence software that converts voice orders for the computer.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said Wednesday during an appearance at Alliance Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions conference that the new voice-order technology is about 85% accurate and can take 80% of drive-thru orders. The company obtained the technology during its 2019 acquisition of Apprente.

Over the last decade, restaurants have been leaning more into technology to improve the customer experience and help save on labor. In 2019, under former CEO Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s went on a spending spree, snapping up restaurant tech. Now, it’s commonplace to see order kiosks in most McDonald’s locations. The company has also embraced Uber Eats for delivery. Elsewhere, burger-flipping robots have been introduced that can be successfully operated for just $3/hour (though “Flippy” had a minor setback after its first day in use).

The concept of automation is currently being used, in some places, as a gimmick. And with the dangers that COVID-19 can pose to staff (who can then turn around and sue), we suspect more “fully automated” bars will pop up across the US.

One upscale bistro in Portland has even employed Robo-waiters to help with contactless ordering and food delivery.

The introduction of automation and artificial intelligence into the industry will eventually result in entire restaurants controlled without humans – that could happen as early as the end of this decade. As for McDonald’s, Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than one or two years to implement.

“Now there’s a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the US, with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather — and on and on and on,” he said.

McDonald’s is also exploring automation of its kitchens, but that technology likely won’t be ready for another five years or so – even though it’s capable of being introduced soooner.

McDonald’s has also been looking into automating more of the kitchen, such as its fryers and grills, Kempczinski said. He added, however, that that technology likely won’t roll out within the next five years, even though it’s possible now.

“The level of investment that would be required, the cost of investment, we’re nowhere near to what the breakeven would need to be from the labor cost standpoint to make that a good business decision for franchisees to do,” Kempczinski said.

And because restaurant technology is moving so fast, Kempczinski said, McDonald’s won’t always be able to drive innovation itself or even keep up. The company’s current strategy is to wait until there are opportunities that specifically work for it.

“If we do acquisitions, it will be for a short period of time, bring it in house, jumpstart it, turbo it and then spin it back out and find a partner that will work and scale it for us,” he said.

On Friday, Americans will receive their first broad-based update on non-farm employment in the US since last month’s report, which missed expectations by a wide margin, sparking discussion about whether all these “enhanced” monetary benefits from federal stimulus programs have kept workers from returning to the labor market.

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country.

Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are the videos of those who survived and returned home without arms or legs.

But the stories could not help but bring questions to mind.

While the service and sacrifice were always honorable and often heroic, never to be forgotten, were the wars these soldiers were sent to fight and die in wise? Were they necessary?

What became of the causes for which these Americans were sent to fight in the new century, with thousands to die and tens of thousands to come home with permanent wounds?

And what became of the causes for which they were sent to fight?

The longest war of this new century, the longest in our history, the defining “endless war” or “forever war” was Afghanistan.

In 2001, we sent an army halfway around the world to exact retribution on al-Qaida for 9/11, an attack that rivaled Pearl Harbor in the numbers of dead and wounded Americans.

Because al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden had been given sanctuary by the Taliban in Kabul, who refused to give him up, we invaded, overthrew that Islamist regime and cleansed Tora Bora of al-Qaida.

Mission accomplished. But then the mission changed.

In control of a land that had seen off British and Soviet imperialists, we hubristically set about establishing a democracy and sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to hold off the rebel resistance for two decades while we went about nation-building.

We did not succeed. All U.S. troops are to be gone by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And the Taliban we ousted has never been closer to recapturing power in Kabul.

Today’s issue: How do we save the Afghans who allied with us in this war, so that they do not face the terrible vengeance of a victorious Taliban.

The second American war of this century was the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to strip its dictator, Saddam Hussein, of weapons of mass destruction with which he intended to attack the United States.

Begun in 2003, the war has lasted 18 years. No WMD were ever found. Most U.S. troops have come and gone. And today, the Baghdad regime rules at the sufferance of Shiite militia who look to Tehran for guidance and support.

Afghanistan and Iraq cost us 7,000 dead and 40,000 wounded.

Were they necessary wars? Were they wise? Were they worth it?

In the second decade of this century, we intervened in Syria to back the “good rebels” seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad and became the indispensable ally in Saudi Arabia’s murderous air war to stop the Houthi rebels from consolidating power in Yemen.

In both Syria and Yemen, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been wounded, killed, uprooted or driven into exile. Both countries are listed among the humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century.

Having helped to inflict so much damage on those countries, did we succeed in our missions?

Today, after six years of fighting, the Houthi still control the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, and Assad just won a fourth term as president with 95% of the vote.

In 2011, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. air attacks on Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya, beginning a NATO intervention that would lead to his overthrow and lynching.

In 2020, however, the future of Libya was not being decided by the European Union or U.S. but fought over by proxy forces supported and supplied by Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia. And Barack Obama had conceded that the worst mistake of his presidency was not to plan for the aftermath of his 2011 decision to topple the Libyan dictator.

Again, the men and women sent to the Middle East to fight these wars did their duty and deserve the gratitude of their countrymen that they received this Memorial Day weekend.

But where is the accounting from those who sent them to fight, bleed and die in what turned out to be unwinnable wars — or, at the least, wars they were not given the requisite weapons or forces to win?

What makes these questions of importance, and not only to historians, is that the cry of the hawk may be heard again in the land.

We hear calls to confront Iran before the mullahs build an atom bomb, and to challenge Putin and arm Ukraine to retake Crimea and push Russia out of the Donbass. We hear talk of the American Navy contesting Beijing’s claims in the East and South China Seas, including to Taiwan.

The stories of Memorial Day should make us think long and hard before we launch any more unnecessary, unwise, or unwinnable wars.

Popular Instagram account “Diet Prada,” with close to 3 million followers, called out LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, commonly known as LVMH, for selling an overpriced headscarf inspired by the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh. 

“So LVMH’s stance on politics is “neutral,” but they’re still making a $705 logo-emblazoned keffiyeh, which is a traditional Arab headdress that’s become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Hmmmm…” Diet Prada said. The post includes multiple hashtags in support of “Free Palestine.” 

“A jacquard weave technique is used to create the intricate Monogram patterns on its base of blended cotton, wool and silk,” the description of LVMH’s $705 “monogram keffieh stole” read. “Soft and lightweight with fringed edges, this timeless accessory creates an easygoing mood.”

Diet Prada, with such a vast audience, sparked backlash for LVMH’s headscarf across social media. It appears, as of Thursday, the product listing on the company’s website doesn’t exist anymore. 

The timing of the product release comes after the Israeli–Palestinian conflict erupted last month. Louis Vuitton’s color choices appear similar to Israel’s flag and perhaps taking a political position. 

Over the years, the keffiyeh headscarf has come to symbolize Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation

Social media users were outraged by the brand’s insensitivity, calling it out for “cultural appropriation.” 

this is so wrong on so many levels. the palestinian genocide is not something for you to capitalise on?! @LouisVuitton pic.twitter.com/YiN5ba8bMP

— tazzy (@Tastastickk) June 1, 2021

So Google’s search engines associates the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh as a “symbol of terrorism”, yet @LouisVuitton has no shame to culturally appropriate it omg. Guess it’s a “cool accessory” if rich white people wear it, eh? pic.twitter.com/N3UlSX6RyA

— Anita Zsurzsan 🇵🇸 (@iamjourjean) June 2, 2021

Absolutely disgusting @LouisVuitton Cultural appropriation of a land under oppression and using the colours of the oppressors! No info about its history either! #PalestineWillBeFree pic.twitter.com/gR52yM6O9M

— Dr. Noshin ✨ (@Nosh09) June 2, 2021

Louis Vuitton is not the only fashion designer selling overpriced knockoffs of Palestinian keffiyehs. Fendi, an Italian luxury fashion brand, has released its own take on the headscarf, selling it for $835. This is capitalism at work. 

At least Louis Vuitton’s “monogram keffieh stole” had to word stole(n) in it…

Authored by Josh Hammer via The Epoch Times,

As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.

Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, “Trust the experts.” And over the century-plus since Wilson’s presidency, the “trust the experts” leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, “trust the experts” now reigns supreme for everything from the military (“Trust the generals!”) to public health (“Trust the epidemiologists!”).

And therein lies the rub.

The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America’s ruling class and the ruling class’s implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation’s leading immunologist and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, “Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History,” Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the “science” demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.

Recent Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post only underscore the point.

Perhaps most damningly, the FOIA requests revealed a February 2020 email to former Obama-era Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell explaining that store-bought face masks are “really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.”

He also added that the “typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”

Of course, barely over a month after Fauci’s unearthed email to Burwell, Americans were required to wear masks pretty much every time they left their house—and mask-skeptical posts were censored or deleted by the ruling class’s preferred private-sector enforcement arm, Big Tech. And none of this is to even broach the separate issue of the extensive COVID-19-era societal lockdowns, which were never justified on the scientific metrics despite being ubiquitously promoted by those excoriating lockdown-skeptical conservatives to just shut up and “trust the science.”

In addition to the Fauci FOIA cache, there is also the Democratic Party and the media’s inexplicable 180-degree turn on the plausibility of the Wuhan lab leak theory—that is, the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic has as its origins not a zoonotic transmission at a local “wet market” but an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting dangerous coronavirus research (partially subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer) and happens to be located within the immediate vicinity of the then-novel virus’s first confirmed cases. The lab leak theory was always plausible, if not probable, but those who promoted it as a possibility from the onset—such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and then-President Donald Trump—were routinely lambasted as Sinophobic conspiracy theorists.

There was never any compelling reason to dismiss the lab leak theory out of hand, and in retrospect, it seems that those who did so were likely motivated more by “orange man bad!”-style anti-Trump personal animus than anything else. The Biden administration has recently called for a 90-day intelligence community review into the origins of the pandemic, which is welcome news for those of us who have called COVID-19 a “Chinese Chernobyl” demanding serious geopolitical accountability since day one—but sad news for those who may have presumed a modicum of intellectual honesty from our political elites.

American politics is currently in the throes of a populist moment. That populist moment is characterized by widespread distrust of elites and a perceived ever-widening chasm between the ruling class’s prerogatives and the wishes of the American people at large. As we finally begin to emerge from COVID-19, that chasm will only grow wider. The ruling class has finally sullied itself one time too many.

Cows produce significant amounts of methane as part of their digestive processes. Cow belching, a source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, could be solved by a new methane-absorbing wearable device. 

According to Bloomberg, agriculture behemoth Cargill Inc. tapped UK-based startup Zelp Ltd., which is dedicated to significantly reducing the environmental impact of the livestock industry through smart cow masks that filter methane burps. 

Cargill said Tuesday the devices would be used for its European dairy farmers in 2022. The price of each mask has yet to be publicly discussed, but Zelp said each cow would cost $80 per year as part of an annual subscription fee. 

Detailed on Zelp’s website under the technology tab, the smart cow mask neutralizes methane, records valuable statical data, and is integrated with mobile communication gear. Besides neutralizing methane, the mask also gathers many data points about the cow, including geo-location, early disease functions, heat detection, emission quantity, and oxidized volume of methane. 

Cargill’s vast customer network could make smart masks for the livestock industry standard in the years ahead as the elites of the world attempt to transition the global economy to a much greener future (or at least that is what it appears). 

“Cargill has an impressive reach across dairy farms in Europe,” said Zelp Chief Executive Officer Francisco Norris. “They are uniquely positioned to distribute our technology to a large number of clients, both farmers and dairy companies, maximizing the roll-out from the very first year we hit the market.”

Bloomberg describes the smart mask almost like a “catalytic converter” on a car, filtering out the burps.

A set of fans powered by solar-charged batteries sucks up the burps and traps them in a chamber with a methane-absorbing filter. Once the filter is saturated, a chemical reaction turns the methane into CO₂, which is then released. – Bloomberg

Some 95% of methane released by cows comes out as burps and through the nose.

Enteric fermentation is the digestive process that results in cow belching. 

Global emissions from livestock account for about 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Cargill has joined the global push to cut carbon emissions across its supply chain by 30% by 2030. As we’ve previously discussed, many of these targets are “pie in the sky” figures. 

Though there’s a big push by corporations and governments to cut carbon emissions in the years ahead, elites and politicians have no visible interest in curbing emissions of their fuel-guzzling private jets, superyachts, and supercars. 

If we’re not careful, one day, we’ll all be wearing masks that monitor our methane output and will be taxed on that. 

By Construction Dive,

• Closures due to the Covid pandemic resulted in $9.8 billion in lost construction activity and 74,000 direct and indirect lost jobs in New York City, according to a report by the Building Trades Employers’ Association. The decline in jobs contributed to a $5.5 billion loss in total wages, the report said.

• The decline in activity also affected the city’s Minority and Women Business Enterprises, as more than 85% of MWBEs are expected to be out of businesses in the next six months, according to a New York City Comptroller’s Office survey cited in the report.

• “A decade of employment growth was wiped out in two months last year,” the report said, quoting the New York City Independent Budget Office, which noted that it will take at least five years to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

The report also points out the importance of construction unions in New York City, calling them a major driver of the city’s economy.

• Each $1 spent on construction yields $1.31 spent in the city.

• Each $1 million spent on construction creates a total of eight jobs in the city.

• Each job on a construction site results in a multiplier of 1.32 jobs.

• Construction and real estate comprise 20% of the city’s GDP, while providing 10% of jobs and 5% of wages.

BTEA put forth 14 public policy recommendations, 13 of which would cost no additional money, according to Louis J. Coletti, the organization’s president and CEO. Many of them suggest changes to the procurement process on the state and city level.

“The public procurement process in New York is freaking broken,” Coletti told Construction Dive. The process to procure jobs and get them started takes far too long, he said.

As a result, BTEA hopes to rebuild rapidly by encouraging legislation allowing every public authority in the state to use a design-build procurement process, establishing a public procurement reform task force and expediting the permitting process by the New York City Department of Buildings.

The DOB, which handles regulations, inspections, permitting and licensing for the city, declined to comment on the report.

BTEA also called attention to the general liability insurance cost under the city’s Scaffold Law, which imposes absolute liability on gravity-related injuries, even those to or caused by an impaired worker. Coletti described the Scaffold Law as “absurd.” He isn’t alone in that sentiment.

In late April, three New York contractor groups and the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to do away with the Scaffold Law for contractors working on the $11.6 billion Hudson River Tunnel project.