Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

Male alligator snapping turtles can reach lengths of 29 inches (73.7 centimeters) and 249 pounds (112.9 kilograms), while females can reach lengths of 22 inches (55.9 centimeters) and 62 pounds

Let’s travel back to the summer of 1989. I’m 15 years old and have just put two large movie posters on my wall: One for Tim Burton’s game-changing take on “Batman,” starring Michael Keaton, and the other for “UHF,” the theatrical comedy debut for the one and only “Weird Al” Yankovic. It’s now 2023. Keaton is back as Batman in next month’s “The Flash.” And Weird Al (always Weird Al, not just Al Yankovic!) is the front-runner for this year’s TV movie Emmy, thanks to the Roku Channel parody biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”

A Panola County man was sentenced Monday to two years in prison following his conviction for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare and TRICARE by prescribing and dispensing medically unnecessary foot bath medications and ordering medically unnecessary testing of toenails in exchange for kickbacks and bribes. According to court documents, Marion Shaun Lund, D.P.M., 54, of Batesville, owned and operated a podiatry clinic, as well as an in-house pharmacy in Oxford. Lund routinely wrote prescriptions for and dispensed antibiotic and antifungal drugs to be mixed into a tub of warm water for patients to soak their feet. Rather than prescribing drugs based on the individualized needs of patients, Lund prescribed foot bath medications in order to maximize reimbursements from Medicare, TRICARE and other health care benefit programs, regardless of medical necessity.

A data scientist says she’s found evidence that Seattle police killings have worsened since the federal government began monitoring the department a decade ago, an analysis that was criticized by a federal monitor just before a critical decision on the future of that oversight... [The data]] said that fatal police shootings specifically have increased since the consent decree was established, and that racial disparities have gotten worse. She found that in the seven years before the 2012 settlement, Seattle police fatally shot 12 people, but between 2013 and 2019, officers killed 21 people. (The most recent year of SPD’s shootings-specific database available to the public is 2019.) Over the same time period, she also found that the percentage of fatal shootings of nonwhite people increased. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington filed a brief in the consent decree case making similar arguments about continued racial disparities in policing. The organization cited SPD’s 2019 use of force report that showed force was used on people of color more than 50% of the time, despite the city being 65% white.

Why is it that in this current year of 2023, no one seems to know who the cover artist is for this iconic Dell Laurel-Leaf A Wrinkle in Time cover art??

More Kansas and Missouri kids have trace or even elevated blood lead levels compared to the national average, according to a study.

Just a day after Elon Musk and David Sacks hosted Ron DeSantis on Twitter for an exclusive and disastrous presidential announcement, the Florida governor signed a bill shielding Musk’s SpaceX from liability when workers are killed after his rockets blow up (something that Musk apparently seems very adept at making happen, from Tesla cars, to rocketships, to presidential campaigns). The Spaceflight Entity Liability Bill expands legal immunities that will shield private space companies, like Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, from legal responsibility when workers suffer injuries or even die. At its core, the bill broadens when these companies are exempted “from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities.”

Indiana's medical licensing board reprimanded OB/GYN Caitlin Bernard and ordered her to pay a $3,000 fine for discussing a 10-year-old's abortion with a reporter.

The Court took a huge bite out of the Clean Water Act.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teetered on the brink of impeachment Thursday after years of scandal, criminal charges and corruption accusations that the state’s Republican majority had largely met with silence until now. In an unanimous decision, a Republican-led House investigative committee that spent months quietly looking into Paxton recommended impeaching the state’s top lawyer on 20 articles, including bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust. The House could vote on the recommendation as soon as Friday. If it impeaches Paxton, he would be forced to leave office immediately. The move sets up what could be a remarkably sudden downfall for one of the GOP’s most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Only two officials in Texas’ nearly 200-year history have been impeached. Paxton has been under FBI investigation for years over accusations that he used his office to help a donor. He was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, but has yet to stand trial... He opened a legal defense fund and accepted $100,000 from an executive whose company was under investigation by Paxton’s office for Medicaid fraud. An additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but was soon fired after trying to make a point by displaying child pornography in a meeting.

How to Stop Overthinking and Start Trusting Your Gut

Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink on Thursday said it had received a green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to kickstart its first-in-human clinical study, a critical milestone after earlier struggles to gain approval.

At least the Blue Dog Democrats are honest about who they are. Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Blue Dog coalition is Kyrsten Sinema and Henry Cuellar; a senator who spends more time with elite donors than her constituents and an A-rated NRA, anti-choice conservative. And in its nearly three-decade history, the caucus is at an all-time low. Nevertheless, two of its members are committed to bringing it back, by way of some of the worst, most characteristic P.R. possible: voting with Republicans to leave 43 million people under the weight of crippling student debt. On Wednesday, Maine’s Jared Golden and Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez joined House Republicans and voted to repeal President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program and to terminate the freeze on federal student loan payments and interests.

A landmark Chicago court ruling threatens a century of expert ballistics testimony

Customers at a Wisconsin corner store subdued 16-year-old Corey Stingley, who died after allegedly being placed in a chokehold. A decade later, the youth’s father still fights for justice and awaits the findings from an unusual new inquiry.

84 U.S. sailors were killed in the sinking, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Executives at the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) decided to replace hotline workers with an AI chatbot named Tessa four days after the workers unionized. NEDA, the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to eating disorders, has had a helpline for the last twenty years that provided support to hundreds of thousands of people via chat, phone call, and text. “NEDA claims this was a long-anticipated change and that AI can better serve those with eating disorders. But do not be fooled—this isn’t really about a chatbot. This is about union busting, plain and simple,” helpline associate and union member Abbie Harper wrote in a blog post.

The activist apologized to JTA and to “the Jewish community” for sharing the antisemitic forgery on her Facebook page.

Following her attendance at a chaotic Board of Supervisors meeting staged at United Nations Plaza, Breed urged supervisors to support more aggressive enforcement measures to crack down on open-air drug use and dealing in the city.