My blog yesterday ended with some beautiful photos, indicating that these were sent to me by, for me, a relatively new informant, Gan Jing World.  Before I go into this mysterious organization, though, first, a question.  Do you want to be a billionaire? Turns out that the jackpot for the Powerball drawing tonight at 10:59 PM EDT is up to $1.8 billion. This is the second-highest grand prize in history, to the $2.04 billion jackpot won in November 2022. By the way, there is also Mega Millions, which had a $1.602 jackpot in August 2023.  Costs $5/ticket. But back to Powerball, say you match all five numbers.  Are you then a billionaire? Nope.  You have two options. Take a one-time cash payment, and while that is $1.8 billion, for the moment you are a billionaire.  However, the way this works, you only get $826.4 billion. Or, take 29 annual payments to get the full $1.8 billion.  But you still need to pay taxes and wait for 29 years to get it all. Either ...

Time  magazine this morning had this article:   What are the Five Strongest Earthquakes Ever Recorded? #6 was, of course, that massive Russian Kamchatka earthquake of 8.8 magnitude just experienced at 8:25AM local time on July 30.  Amazingly enough, there was only one death, but this was a woman in Japan while evacuating.  So there was none caused by the earthquake itself.   There was another 8.8 earthquake,  Chile in 2010 , which killed around 600, including 25 still missing.  So there is a tie for #6.  I happened to be in Amsterdam, Netherlands that day, but still wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled  Hawaii Tsunami?   You can click on that link to read the whole article, but I will provide a beginning here: I'm on an around the world odyssey, which you can follow through my   HuffPost postings . Well, my most exciting day is happening right in front of me watching the 8.8 Chile earthquake cataclysm on ...

  The top domestic earning film this weekend was  Superman . $196,616,498.  There have been dozens of  Superman films,  with 11 of them considered to be re-makes. #1 the weekend of July 4-6 was  Jurassic World:  Rebirth   $152,305,936. #1 the weekend of June 27-29 was  F1: The Movie   $124,133,275. The latest  Worldwide box office  ( in 100 million $, with Rotten Tomatoes rating in parentheses ): #1     Ne Zha 2   $1.90 or, $1.9 billion ( 96/99 ) #2      Lilo & Stitch   $0.99 ( 52/71 ) #3     A Minecraft Movie   $0.96 ( 47/85 ) #4     Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning   $0.58 ( 80/88 ) #5     How to Train Your Dragon   $0.56 ( 77/97 ) #6     Jurassic World: Rebirth   $0.53 ( 52/71 ). #7     Captain America: Brave New World   $0.42 ( 47/77 ) #8     F1: The Movie ...