🌞 Heatwave – May 04 2022

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00am ET. 

The Lead: Redacted Again

credit: redacted.inc

Once again our YouTube show has been flagged and put on pause because of asking questions about the war in Ukraine. This means we cannot post new videos for two weeks on YouTube. Thankfully, we have been steadily building our audience on Rumble and we will continue to broadcast there. 

The video that YouTube takes issue with can be found on Rumble here. It had over 400,000 views which YouTube did not want to allow. In it, we showed reports from credible, award-winning journalists showing Ukrainian people reporting being terrorized by the Azov battalion, which is part of the Ukrainian military. We let Ukrainian victims speak for themselves. 

The video also shows Ukrainian citizens who support the Russian military as some do. This does not mean that they are right any more than those who oppose Russia are. This means that war is more nuanced than a 240-character Tweet or Ukrainian flag avatar. Is that hate speech? It is clearly speech that YouTube hates. 

We would like to draw your attention to this video in which we interview a Canadian journalist who has been put on a kill list for broadcasting these atrocities from Ukraine. 

We have been accused of being pro-Putin for asking these questions and pointing out inconsistencies in the Ukrainian government’s stories that accompany pleas for more money and weaponry. We are pro-Nobody Dying but that view gets deplatformed. 

Current reports show that hundreds of civilians were evacuated in a temporary ceasefire while Russian forces advanced on a steel factory in the city of Azovstal. Some were safely evacuated and, according to The Hindu, some “voluntarily” chose to stay.

As with a lot of the information, exact numbers and facts are hard to verify, which is why we should be allowed to “see” all angles to discern for ourselves. 

The marketplace of ideas continues to be perverted and thwarted but we make this pledge to you: We will continue to show up, ask uncomfortable questions, be open to all sides, be willing to admit when we are wrong and study everything we can in the quest for context and truth. 

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Asia's Heatwave

credit: reuters

South Asia is living the climate crisis, with a very early summer that has temperatures reaching 150 degrees in some parts.

People in the region are used to extreme heat in May, but a lot of India saw the hottest March and April in over a century this year too. Dozens have died of heatstroke because our bodies aren’t built for this. 

"[With] heat plus humidity, at some stage [it] becomes almost impossible for the human body's organs to function normally," Ulka Kelkar, a Bengaluru-based economist and climate change expert with the World Resources Institute, told NPR. "Basically the body just cannot cool itself, and a large fraction of our population in India still works outside in the fields, on building construction, in factories which are not cooled."

Air conditioning is not the norm in the region—it’s mostly limited to the rich—but those with A/C and electric fans are pushing India’s electricity supply to the limit. Shortages have led to rolling blackouts, which makes this all that much more dangerous.

On top of that, 70% of India’s electricity comes from coal. So the region is burning fossil fuels (when it can get them) to help people survive the effects of burning fossil fuels. There doesn’t seem to be another choice right now.

Active Labor Party Candidate

credit: twitter

A Minnesota State Senate candidate has brought new meaning to the term “heavy labor.”

Last Saturday, candidate Erin Maye Quade attended, gave a speech, and answered questions at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention in the hopes of nabbing the party’s endorsement. She did it all while in labor.

Maye Quade’s contractions started at 2 am the day of the convention, according to her campaign manager, who did get them to start the convention a few hours earlier than planned. But you can’t stop a baby who is ready to come out, even if you’re giving a speech. Maye Quade apparently asked her opponent to suspend endorsing and go to a primary. He said he’d get back to her.

The baby came before he got around to it and Maye Quade had to drop out. It is possible she will still run in the primary without the endorsement. 

There is no clear person to blame here, except for the expectation that nothing gets in the way of work. This goes double for women. ESPECIALLY pregnant women. Maye Quade’s situation crystallizes so much that’s wrong with the work-life balance in the U.S. and much of the world. 

News By The Numbers

credit: giphy

$1.5 trillion. That is how much shareholders of 22 of the largest companies in the U.S. made during the pandemic, according to data from the Brookings Institution. Workers at the same companies got less than 2% of that number over the same period.

€300 billion. That is the size of a flash crash in European markets Monday that was caused by a finger-slip. The Citigroup employee still has all his fingers. For now.

13. That is the number of U.S. states that have so-called “trigger laws” in place to ban nearly all abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which seems very likely.

6.1%. That is the interest rate my friend with impeccable credit will be paying for her new house in Florida. That’s higher than the average right now, but not by much.

Who Needs Sleep?

credit: giphy

This will keep you up at night.

Researchers from China and the U.K. recently found that middle-aged and older people should average about seven hours of sleep a night in order to avoid health issues. If you get less than seven hours: issues. And if you get more? Still issues.

"While we can't say conclusively that too little or too much sleep causes cognitive problems, our analysis looking at individuals over a longer period of time appears to support this idea," said Jianfeng Feng, a professor at China's Fudan University and an author of the study.

The study found that too little or too much sleep led to problems including:

• Short attention spans
• Memory problems
• Anxiety
• Depression

Critics of the study point to the fact that it only measured the total amount of sleep, not factoring in night-waking or how deeply each person was sleeping. That total amount also came from the participants themselves, so there were no controls in place.

But this is another good reminder that we probably all need more sleep. Just not too much!

What's Trending?

credit: the verge

Twitter Circle is trending because the social network is testing out a new feature that lets you tweet to a specific group of people. Nothing could go wrong there.

Daniel Radcliffe is trending. The British actor is playing ‘Weird Al’ Yankovik in the upcoming Roku film about the Grammy-winning U.S. satirist. The trailer and the accordion are out.

Brittney Griner is trending because the U.S. government has officially classified the basketball star who was arrested in Russia as “wrongfully detained.” That means the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs is now on the case.