A comic about birds

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -- Some parents of CCSD students were worried when they heard that their child's 7th grade class was asked this week, "If you could choose how to die, how would you choose?" One parent contacted FOX5 saying that the question was posed as part of an "get to know you" exercise as her child participated in virtual distance learning at Lawrence and Heidi Canarelli Middle School.

The Museum of Modern Art reopens with an exemplary show devoted to an essential figure who multitasked his way through the aesthetic and political ferment of Belle Époque Paris. The suave and brilliant Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) is the ideal subject for a show of this kind, since he was one of the busiest, most fascinating players in Parisian cultural circles in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. A confirmed dandy, he worked as a critic, editor, translator, curator, journalist, publisher, gallerist, private dealer and prescient collector, not only of the French avant-garde but also of non-Western art, especially African sculpture whose aesthetic value he was early to recognize. And like many artists and writers of his generation, he was a self-identified anarchist, surveilled by the police and, once, arrested.

Protesters had asked officials to take down the statue, called The South’s Defenders Monument, but local officials voted 10-4 earlier this month to leave it where it stands outside the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles. Hurricane Laura apparently had other ideas. The Category 4 storm left carnage in its wake after making landfall early Thursday morning as one of the strongest storms ever to hit the state, with sustained winds of 150 mph. When the worst had passed, the monument lay toppled on the grass, surrounded by debris.

Sonic Youth continue to excavate their archives put rarities on their Bandcamp. Today they've added The Whitey Album from side project Ciccone Youth which featured contributions from Mike Watt and J Mascis. Ciccone Youth explored their fascination with pop culture -- and Madonna in particular -- while toying around with samplers and drum machines. They released a 12" in 1986 with covers of Madonna's "Into the Groove," retitled "Into the Groove(y)," on one side and "Burnin' Up" on the flip. The Whitey Album wasn't released in 1989 and in addition to those Madonna covers also had a cover of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love," plus a bunch of sound experiments that play around with drum machines, hip hop and dub production, and more.

As , is connected to approximately 100 new cases of Covid-19. The band recently played the Sturgis motorcycle festival with other bands including Night Ranger, the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, Buckcherry, Lit, .38 Special, Quiet Riot, Reverend Horton Heat and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. During the Smash mouth set (and the festival as a whole) attendees ignored social distancing guidelines, including getting close to each other and refusing to wear masks. During the Smash Mouth set, lead singer Steve Harwell said: "said: "“Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. Fuck that COVID shit.” Well, it appears that simply yelling "fuck that COVID shit" was not enough to ward off the virus. a representative of the South Dakota Health Department said they linked at least 40 Covid-19 cases directly to the rally. Meanwhile, The North Dakota Department of Health tracked 17 in-state cases related to the rally, and...

Amazon is getting into the health gadget market with a new fitness band and subscription service called Halo. Unlike the Apple Watch or even most basic Fitbits, the Amazon Halo Band doesn’t have a screen. The app that goes along with it comes with the usual set of fitness tracking features along with two innovative — and potentially troubling — ideas: using your camera to create 3D scans for body fat and listening for the emotion in your voice.

Jacob Blake’s father, also named Jacob Blake, speaks at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday, Blake’s father said his son has been handcuffed to his hospital bed.

A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states

Apparently the Banks estate pulled out. I am wondering if the Amazon adaptation avoided all mention of full luxury space communism.

Michigan state officials are investigating a voter-suppression robocall allegedly tied to blundering conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman. The robocall was aimed at scaring Detroit voters away from using mail-in ballots, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tweeted on Thursday. Benson announced that her office and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel would investigate the call’s origins and “seek justice” against the people behind it. 

So much for the moist eyes and feigned empathy some California Democrats showcased during the Black Lives Matter marches that followed the police killing of George Floyd. Despite performative emoting by powerful members of California’s ruling party, a slate of necessary police reforms may be headed for full or partial defeat in the California State Legislature. The bills, which met strong resistance from law enforcement groups and some weak-kneed legislators, teetered near the brink of failure on Wednesday.

On Monday afternoon I met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic began. I smiled up at him and he smiled out upon the world, as he has done for the best part of 3,500 years. “Good to see you Amenhotep,” I thought.

U.S. service members were injured after an altercation with Russian forces in northeast Syria on Tuesday, according to a draft military statement and a person familiar with the matter. Four U.S. troops have been diagnosed with mild concussion-like symptoms after the incident involving Russian and coalition armored vehicles, according to the statement reviewed by POLITICO. A second U.S. source briefed on the matter confirmed that multiple U.S. troops were injured.

Patricia McCloskey and Kimberly Guilfoyle are a new twist on a dangerous lineage of conservative women.

The federal government can be sued for negligence in the Flint water crisis, a judge said Wednesday.

The GOP-controlled Missouri House on Tuesday advanced a bill that would make it legal to give guns to children without their parents’ permission. The bill comes after Gov. Mike Parson (R) called lawmakers back for a special summer session on crime and asked the legislature to penalize criminals who unlawfully use firearms, then pass them off on children to avoid detection. The legislation is the exact opposite of what Parson called for, according to The Associated Press.

Dating has evolved at such an electric pace over the past few years it can be difficult to keep up. In fact the English language itself, for all its famed versatility, is struggling to maintain pace with all the strange ways people are finding to hook up with and dump one another. A new one I came across recently is “wokefishing”, which is when someone — usually but not necessarily a bloke — pretends to be more politically progressive than they are, to lure do-gooders under the sheets.

Popular narratives about Russia are infused with the idea that Putin sits atop a highly centralised system that he controls manually. While Putin is certainly Russia’s most important decision-maker, the political system is not his personal well-oiled machine. Instead, the system has a set of operating principles – chief among them a lack of the rule of law – and perverse accountability, which sometimes produce outcomes that are less than optimal for the Kremlin. We often see evidence of this during elections when some regions in Russia report official results that strain credulity as local poll workers strive to please superiors with a good showing for pro-regime candidates. The problem, of course, is that while these results get the job done, they cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election and provide ammunition for critics. We also sometimes see actors on the periphery of the system try to act independently on behalf of the Kremlin. Boris Nemtsov, a deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin and long-time Putin critic, was assassinated outside the Kremlin’s walls in early 2015. His murder, which deeply shocked many in Russia, was eventually attributed to a group of hired killers. However, his family and others are convinced that it was ordered by Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic who has a close relationship with Putin. Journalists and critics can also be caught up in disputes that have little to do with the Kremlin but illustrate how the corrupt machinery of the state can be used against almost anyone. Last summer, Ivan Golunov, a journalist in Moscow, was arrested for drug possession. Trumped-up charges with questionable evidence are not uncommon in Russia where the acquittal rate in criminal cases is just 0.25%. Golunov’s case, which sparked large protests and was eventually dismissed, was probably the result of a dispute between local actors, but it brought unwelcome critical attention to the system at a time when authorities were trying to conduct a tough electoral campaign in Moscow. These examples and many others complicate widely held ideas about how Russia is governed, and they also suggest that the country is more dangerous for opponents than we may assume. The same day that he was flown to Germany, an article appeared in a Russian newspaper detailing how closely Navalny was being surveilled on his trip to Siberia. The source for the article seems to be the security services and it describes how difficult it would have been to poison the activist: Navalny does not use his own credit cards, his staff reserve different hotel rooms, and he does not publicise his agenda. Read alongside unfounded rumours about Navalny’s alcoholism, drug use and blood sugar imbalances that began to circulate from regime-aligned sources late last week, the surveillance report suggests the Kremlin is working hard to signal that it had nothing to do with his illness. Although Navalny is a thorn in the side of the Kremlin, his death would certainly galvanise the opposition. This is probably the last thing that the regime would want at a time when Russia’s closest neighbour, Belarus, is engulfed in anti-regime protests and the far eastern region of Khabarovsk is also in its second month of mass protest. And yet, despite what the Kremlin would presumably want, Navalny is gravely ill.

A narcotics agent recently resigned from the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office after the GBI completed an investigation — but before the sheriff could determine if any disciplinary action was warranted. Within three days, he had landed a job with the Butts County Sheriff’s Office, which Sheriff Gary Long defended in an emailed statement.