Last week, a 25-minute video published by Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny alleging a new link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign made headlines around the world. Now the Russian government wants it scrubbed from the internet—so much so that it is taking steps that could block millions of its own citizens from using YouTube or Instagram.
The video was released last Thursday and accused Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko—a top foreign policy official—of having been a conduit between the Kremlin and Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch linked to the Trump campaign. In making his case, Navalny mined the autobiography and Instagram feeds of Nastya Rybka, a Russian model and escort who claims to be Deripaska’s mistress. Drawing on video and audio Rybka posted that captured her, Deripaska, and Prikhodko relaxing on a yacht while the two men discuss US-Russia relations, Navalny’s video alleges that Deripaska hosted Prikhodko for a secret meeting at sea in the company of several female escorts. Deripaska immediately denied the claim and threatened to sue media outlets reporting on it, assailing the video as a “planned campaign aiming to damage my reputation.”
The day after the video’s publication, Deripaska won a court injunction requiring it—along with six other videos and 14 Instagram posts—to be taken down. The court, in Deripaska’s native Krasnodar region, found that the posts violated his right to privacy and ordered that they must come down.
VIDEO HERE Mute audio
Dancing With Fools 
Off topic….so what else is new? 😉
Mystery wind downs 100 giant trees in Olympic National Park
BY CRAIG SAILOR The News Tribune
It came in the night, snapping trees like chopsticks.
During the early hours of Jan. 27 more than 100 gigantic old growth trees fell on the north shore of Lake Quinault.
The resulting thud about 1:30 a.m. was strong enough to register as a small earthquake, according to a seismic monitor at Quinault.
Fallen trees, their splintered trunks left pointing in the air, blocked North Shore Road and damaged utility lines along a 1,000-foot stretch. The sides of the blowdown area were about half a mile long.
Officials from Olympic National Park knew some sort of wind event was the culprit but nearby weather stations reported only light breezes that night. Radar didn’t show any storms.
University of Washington climatologist Cliff Mass investigated the mystery like, in his words, Sherlock Holmes.
The fallen trees in the affected area near July Creek were all facing south. The wind had to come from the north.
“The strong winds could not have been the result of microburst associated with a thunderstorm or strong convection,” Mass wrote on his weather blog. “Weather radar showed no such feature and the lightning detection network had no strikes in the region.”
Theories abounded on the park’s Facebook page: Experimental military equipment, tornado, Sasquatch.
“Our meteorological Sherlock is perplexed,” Mass wrote.
Mass checked for space objects reaching the ground but could find no evidence of one.
He did, however, find evidence for something called, “a rotor circulation associated with a strong mountain lee wave.”
It’s complicated.
Mass said he can’t be certain but he thinks an offshore front approached the blowdown site from the south. Lake Quinault sits in a valley between two ridges.
Warm air moved above cool surface air. Different wind directions, dropping pressure and other factors (you can read the science on Mass’s blog) led winds to reverse direction in a rotor wave between the two ridges.
“The strong winds were not from UFOs, an angry Sasquatch, a microburst from convection, or some errant meteor,” Mass wrote. “An approaching front produced just the right conditions to produce a high amplitude mountain wave on the upstream ridge, which resulted in a strong rotor that produced powerful reverse flow (northerlies).”
Mystery solved. Maybe.
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Wow!
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Boy am I pissed at that damn Facebook. My attempt to comment on Carols post came back immediately as a SPAM comment, assholes!
Post: @ The Mayo Clinic regarding gun violence of recent.
YOU CANNOT RETRIEVE ALL THE GODDAM GUNS, DUH! .Gun control is not the problem. But you can provide help to those most likely to use them out of anger, that was my point that apparently set off alarm bells at Assbook, fuckers.
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MSM harpies keep harping, and harping,
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Maybe someone reported you? Certainly, none of my friends would do that though.
Guns are the problem. This country simply must get rid of republicans so saner folks can get in and do something already. First off, assault rifles need to be banned again. Then a license must be acquired to buy a gun, and insurance paid for. Guns should be treated just like owning a car is treated.
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I used to watch MSNBC until this latest disaster. I became saturated with expert interviews, from people on the street, the same stock footage, same pictures, on and fucking on, so I turned it off and feel better already, XM channel 66 providing soothing relief, too early for beer tho. 😦
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The sun is over the yardarm. 😐
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Aye!
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The militaristic-capitalist powerhouse that the United States became by 1840 derived from real estate (which included enslaved Africans, as well as appropriated land). The United States was founded as a capitalist state and an empire on conquered land, with capital in the form of slaves, hence the term chattel slavery; this was exceptional in the world and has remained exceptional. The capitalist firearms industry was among the first successful modern corporations. Gun proliferation and gun violence today are among its legacies.
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Thought regarding Dr. B’s comment yesterday….
Who knows maybe one day we’ll find out that microplastics are not only a threat to the environment, but when ingested by humans cause mental disorders.
There’s already clear evidence that microplastics cause behavioral changes/problems in fish, why not in humans? If inhaled or ingested, microplastics could accumulate, cause toxicity…damage the brain…cause depression, schizophrenia, you name it…and turn a person into a mass shooter?
But…they wouldn’t become a mass shooter, unless they had easy access to guns, usually military-style, mass killing weaponry.
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Unless they rented a truck…
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Via the end of Grimes Way to the Hillside Cafe again took 106 minutes. I suppose the extra 5 minutes was due to the ice. Saw 2 ducks hurrying to catch up with 4 others flying into the distance near the airport. Then saw the Mallard drake and duck paddling in Airport Creek which has enough current to keep from even partial freezing. Later a pair of perched pigeons. Lots of jet contrails.
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Round trip was 120 minutes.
Day 5: 315+120=435 minutes.
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Snow was still melting today, but plenty still left, too. I went to the library around 2:00 and boy, was it foggy. On my way home, extreme fog had dissipated. Probably because it was drizzling.
Wrote a few checks today, filed the car/house insurance paperwork, fed the birds. Kind of a ho-hum day.
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Billions for bombs!
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