HOW TO FACT CHECK NEWS AND STUFF PEOPLE SEND YOU

About that $1.9 trillion stimulus package:

The bill is popular.

76% of voters
60% of Republicans

The $15/hour minimum wage item will be removed.
It's possible that the cut-off household income level will be lowered.
Perhaps the final sum will not quite be up to $1.9 trillion.
Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. The legislation will become law by March 14.

From the New York Times this morning:

Here are the best and worst moments from the Golden Globes remote awards ceremony, and all the winners. “Drivers License” by 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo has been the top Billboard song for six weeks. Here’s how she made it. Kate McKinnon played Dr. Anthony Fauci on this week’s “Saturday Night Live.”

Yesterday I posted on a photo that went viral, but was actually fake news. Should you wish to check on some of them, here is a research guide on sites you can visit to verify information. Included are sources like:

Historically, I've gone to Snopes because they seem to get most things right. To summarize:

Once known as Urban Legends Reference Pages.

Began in 1994 by David and Barbara Mikkelson. David Mikkelson still runs the site out of Tacoma, Washington, but Vinny Green serves as Chief Operating Officer.
It has had internal relationship problems (bitter divorce, for one), but has continued this service reasonably effectively.

Various organizations have reviewed Snopes and found it to be free from bias.
While in 2016 Snopes said that the entirety of its revenue was derived from advertising, other sources have since been added, and it now has a working relationship with Facebook. Well, then again, not anymore.

Submit a topic for investigation. However, they have more than they can handle.
You can buy a t-shirt. Most of them cost $25.
They have a Top 50 list of newsworthy checks.

The last time I looked, #1 was : Did Biden Cancel Operating Talon (a Trump-era program aimed at deporting sexual offenders)? The answer was mixed, meaning the claim has significant elements of both truth and falsity to it such that it could not be fairly described by any other rating.
#50 was: Did Biden Sign an Executive Order Allowing the U.S. to Fund Abortions Abroad? The conclusion was False.

Let me close with some humor, I think. Two years ago a friend visited me and had Aibo, Sony's robot dog. Cute fellah if you have $2899 to spare. Well, the question that followed was:

DID PANASONIC CREATE A FARTING CAT ROBOT?

The answer by Snopes:

Mixture:

Panasonic is producing a limited number of companion robots called Nicobo. Among its attributes is that it does fart.
However, although it has a tail, it's a bit of a stretch to refer to it as a cat. See photo.

Nicobo (if you clicked, you can view how she interacts with you) is purposefully designed for owners who don't have the time to take care of her.

It is not known if she will be sold, but Panasonic, of all the entities, went to crowdfunding and earned $95,000 to develop Nicobo for delivery by March of 2022 for $360. Extras include $10/month for smartphone pairing.

Elephant Robotics (from China), using Kickstarter, has MarsCat, a fully autonomous bionic cat that purrs, meows and strolls about the house. It interacts with you. Supposedly you can purchase one next month for a special price of $649, and comes in four colors. You can also purchase toys for her/he. The cat can actually charge its own batteries when running low.

I'll end with more animals, starting with what a baby dinosaur might have looked like, and another fake news item we regularly get in our e-mail.

However, in that video is the following statement:

Why is change needed? Many times, in order to survive we have to start a change process. We sometimes need to get rid of old memories, habits and other past traditions. Only freed from past burdens, can we take advantage of the present.

While it's a shame people make things up, that final bit of wisdom actually does make a lot of sense.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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