The primate uses its long middle finger to fish for grubs. But scientists just discovered its “pseudothumb,” meaning it's got six digits, not five.
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Monday, October 21, 2019
Michael Strahan’s ex seeking half a mil, citing back child support payments
Michael Strahan’s ex-wife says he’s more than half a million dollars in the hole with child support, and she wants her coins to care for their kids.
READ MORE: Michael Strahan announces new gig hosting third hour of GMA
Strahan has an ongoing court battle with Jean Muggli Strahan, the mother of his twin daughters Sophia and Isabella and as previously reported, last week their legal reps were set to appear in court to address Jean’s claims that Strahan’s being a financial deadbeat of sorts.
Muggli and Strahan divorced in 2006 and he reportedly shelled out $15.3 million.
Now Muggli says Strahan has been close-fisted in shelling out money toward their 14-year-old daughters riding lessons, and he “reneged” on a promise to pay half of what was owed. She is claiming that Strahan owes a whopping $547k, TMZ reports.
READ MORE: Michael Strahan battles ex-wife in court over child support issues
Jean wants $225k from him for half of the riding lessons, but Strahan is pushing back on that claim, saying he never promised to pay half of their costs.
Back in 2007, Strahan reported was ordered to pay $18,000 a month to Muggli who resides in North Carolina with their daughters, which was reduced to $13,000 in 2009, the outlet reports.
However, she’s looking for more dough saying that since the athlete-turned-tv host has gigs on FOX NFL Sunday and Good Morning America, he can afford to pay more because of his new jobs. She wants him to pay $18k again.
READ MORE: Joseline Hernandez battles Stevie J for more child support amid custody battle
“Michael has always honored his commitments regarding his children. These accusations are completely false,” a source close to Strahan previously told Page Six. “The reason they are in court is that Jean continuously asks for more money. Michael intends to do what is best for his children, as he always does. He is properly handling this in the court.”
The two will square off again in November when a judge will make a decision on the payments.
The post Michael Strahan’s ex seeking half a mil, citing back child support payments appeared first on theGrio.
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Sunday, October 20, 2019
Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to sea-level rise as much as predicted
Antarctica’s ice sheet spans close to twice the area of the contiguous United States, and its land boundary is buttressed by massive, floating ice shelves extending hundreds of miles out over the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. When these ice shelves collapse into the ocean, they expose towering cliffs of ice along Antarctica’s edge.
Scientists have assumed that ice cliffs taller than 90 meters (about the height of the Statue of Liberty) would rapidly collapse under their own weight, contributing to more than 6 feet of sea-level rise by the end of the century — enough to completely flood Boston and other coastal cities. But now MIT researchers have found that this particular prediction may be overestimated.
In a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, the team reports that in order for a 90-meter ice cliff to collapse entirely, the ice shelves supporting the cliff would have to break apart extremely quickly, within a matter of hours — a rate of ice loss that has not been observed in the modern record.
“Ice shelves are about a kilometer thick, and some are the size of Texas,” says MIT graduate student Fiona Clerc. “To get into catastrophic failures of really tall ice cliffs, you would have to remove these ice shelves within hours, which seems unlikely no matter what the climate-change scenario.”
If a supporting ice shelf were to melt away over a longer period of days or weeks, rather than hours, the researchers found that the remaining ice cliff wouldn’t suddenly crack and collapse under its own weight, but instead would slowly flow out, like a mountain of cold honey that’s been released from a dam.
“The current worst-case scenario of sea-level rise from Antarctica is based on the idea that cliffs higher than 90 meters would fail catastrophically,” Brent Minchew, assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “We’re saying that scenario, based on cliff failure, is probably not going to play out. That’s something of a silver lining. That said, we have to be careful about breathing a sigh of relief. There are plenty of other ways to get rapid sea-level rise.”
Clerc is the lead author of the new paper, along with Minchew, and Mark Behn of Boston College.
Silly putty-like behavior
In a warming climate, as Antarctica’s ice shelves collapse into the ocean, they expose towering cliffs of grounded ice, or ice over land. Without the buttressing support of ice shelves, scientists have assumed that the continent’s very tall ice cliffs would collapse, calving into the ocean, to expose even taller cliffs further inland, which would themselves fail and collapse, initiating a runaway ice-sheet retreat.
Today, there are no ice cliffs on Earth that are taller than 90 meters, and scientists assumed this is because cliffs any taller than that would be unable to support their own weight.
Clerc, Minchew, and Behn took on this assumption, wondering whether and under what conditions ice cliffs 90 meters and taller would physically collapse. To answer this, they developed a simple simulation of a rectangular block of ice to represent an idealized ice sheet (ice over land) supported initially by an equally tall ice shelf (ice over water). They ran the simulation forward by shrinking the ice shelf at different rates and seeing how the exposed ice cliff responds over time.
In their simulation, they set the mechanical properties, or behavior of ice, according to Maxwell’s model for viscoelasticity, which describes the way a material can transition from an elastic, rubbery response, to a viscous, honey-like behavior depending on whether it is quickly or slowly loaded. A classic example of viscoelasticity is silly putty: If you leave a ball of silly putty on a table, it slowly slumps into a puddle, like a viscous liquid; if you quickly pull it apart, it tears like an elastic solid.
As it turns out, ice is also a viscoelastic material, and the researchers incorporated Maxwell viscoelasticity into their simulation. They varied the rate at which the buttressing ice shelf was removed, and predicted whether the ice cliff would fracture and collapse like an elastic material or flow like a viscous liquid.
They model the effects of various starting heights, or thicknesses of ice, from 0 to 1,000 meters, along with various timescales of ice shelf collapse. In the end, they found that when a 90-meter cliff is exposed, it will quickly collapse in brittle chunks only if the supporting ice shelf has been removed quickly, over a period of hours. In fact, they found that this behavior holds true for cliffs as tall as 500 meters. If ice shelves are removed over longer periods of days or weeks, ice cliffs as tall as 500 meters will not collapse under their own weight, but instead will slowly slough away, like cold honey.
A realistic picture
The results suggest that the Earth’s tallest ice cliffs are unlikely to collapse catastrophically and trigger a runaway ice sheet retreat. That’s because the fastest rate at which ice shelves are disappearing, at least as documented in the modern record, is on the order of weeks, not hours, as scientists observed in 2002, when they captured satellite imagery of the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf — a chunk of ice as large as Rhode Island that broke away from Antarctica, shattering into thousands of icebergs over the span of two weeks.
“When Larsen B collapsed, that was quite an extreme event that occurred over two weeks, and that is a tiny ice shelf compared to the ones that we would be particularly worried about,” Clerc says. “So our work shows that cliff failure is probably not the mechanism by which we would get a lot of sea level rise in the near future.”
This research is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.
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Famed Emmett Till memorial in Mississippi is now bulletproof
After years of repeated vandalism the marker in Mississippi dedicated to civil rights icon Emmett Till, is now bulletproof.
The new sign is the fourth and was dedicated on Saturday by the The Emmett Till Memorial Commission, after being vandalized by gunfire earlier this year, according to Fox News. The first was thrown in the river. The second and third signs were shot at and became riddled with bullet holes.
READ MORE: School security guard called racial slur then fired for verbally reprimanding the student
Till was a 14-year-old Black teenager from Chicago visiting his family in Money, Mississippi in 1955 when he was kidnapped for allegedly whistling at and grabbing Carolyn Bryant, a white woman in a local market. Till was then beaten, shot, and lynched with a cotton gin fan and left in the Tallahatchie River.
The two suspects in Till’s murder were Bryant’s husband and her brother-in-law. Both men were acquitted by an all-white jury at the time.
The new marker is made of steel and is 10 times heavier than the previous ones. It can be found near the Tallahatchie River where Till’s body was found days after his gruesome death, according to the Huffington Post.
“This marker answers the question as to what we do with our history. Do we learn from it? Do we use it to help our society have greater respect for humanity? This answers that,” Rev. Willie Williams, co-director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, said about the memorial.
The last living witness to Till’s 1955 kidnapping is his cousin Rev. Wheeler Parker, who attended the ceremony with another cousin and her daughter, Fox News reported.
READ MORE: Lee Merritt critiques DA in charge of Atatiana Jefferson case
Till’s murder has served as a pivotal part of the civil rights movement not only in 1950s and ’60s but in today’s society as well.
The US Justice Department recently reopened the investigation into Till’s death citing new information.
The new sign was approved days after three University of Mississippi students were suspended from the Kappa Alpha Fraternity after posing in front of the bullet-riddled memorial with guns, according to TheGrio.
The post Famed Emmett Till memorial in Mississippi is now bulletproof appeared first on theGrio.
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DaBaby uses his influence to help homeless mother’s small business
A homeless mother received cash and an unexpected increase in her business sales this weekend after meeting rapper DaBaby, born Jonathan Kirk.
DaBaby hosted a pop-up shop at clothing store Pure Atlanta in Lenox mall Thursday where he was seen giving the mother $1,000 in cash for the sale of her knit hats, according to The New York Post.
Amanda Rose, who waited for three hours to see DaBaby, has been living out of her 1999 Nissan Maxima with her son. Rose is a struggling small business owner who sells knit hats. After she explained her struggles to DaBaby, he not only gives her cash but embraces her as well.
The entire exchange was captured on video and shared on social media. With over six million followers on Instagram Da Baby was able to make an even bigger impact on Rose’s life by bringing awareness to her business.
READ MORE: ‘Sunday Service’ goes irie as Kanye West takes event to Jamaica
Rose admitted to DaBaby she struggled to make a profit with only three to four orders a month. The rapper’s post about her encouraged 4,000 new orders to be placed for Rose’s woven hats, TMZ reported.
When approaching the artist she said, “It took a lot for me to come here,” as she shows him her line of bougee beanies, one with brown and orange stripes, that she carried with her in a plastic bag.
When receiving the cash the mother was visibly grateful for the gift.
“This is my son,” she told him, while wiping away tears from her eyes.
“We’re sleeping wild, bro. Thank you so much.”
READ MORE: Willow and Jaden Smith are gearing up to hit the road for concert tour
This type of exchange from DaBaby is one that some have never seen before. DaBaby, has be seen with his security in the past fighting fans or people that have taunted him, according TheGrio.
In his IG post featuring Rose, the chart-topping rapper stated “GOD’s WORK. No recognition needed.”
DaBaby’s most recent album “Kirk,” debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard 200.
The post DaBaby uses his influence to help homeless mother’s small business appeared first on theGrio.
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School security guard called racial slur then fired for verbally reprimanding the student
A student in Wisconsin is said to have repetitively used the n-word last week during a heated exchange with a high school security assistant, however in the end, the security guard lost his job.
When security assistant, Marlon Anderson, said he tried to explain what the word meant and how offensive it was, his use of the word ultimately cost him his job.
On Oct.9 Anderson said despite repeated requests to refrain from use of the slur, the student kept calling him a “nigger” during their exchange at West High School in Madison. Anderson and the student are both Black, The New York Times reported.
Less than a week after the conversation, Anderson was terminated from employment due to the school districts zero-tolerance policy on the use of derogatory language by staff members.
READ MORE: Atatiana Jefferson’s funeral cancelled at the last minute
The West High community is now uniting in the fight with Anderson to get his job back. He said the school system’s rule failed him in his use of the n-word.
“So if the class is reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and the teacher is reading the book out loud and it gets to the part where the N-word is, the teacher gets fired?” Mr. Anderson asked.
The Madison Metropolitan School District, school board president, Gloria Reyes said in a statement on Thursday, they hear the community and will reexamine the matter.
“We’ve taken a tough stance on racial slurs, and we believe that language has no place in schools,” Ms. Reyes said. “We have also heard from the community about the complexity involved — and our duty to examine it.”
“As a board, we plan to review our approach, the underlying policies, and examine them with a racial equity lens understanding that universal policies can often deepen inequities. We will ask the community for help in that process. I have requested that this item be placed on our board agenda as soon as possible,” she said.
READ MORE: Fetty Wap charged with battery after brawl with security guard in Las Vegas
Anderson, has worked at both West High School and East High School in Madison for over 10 years. He said the incident began when an assistant principal radioed for assistance with a disruptive student, according to The New York Times.
The student, a senior, finished classes for the day and took another student’s cell phone when the assistant principal stepped in, the student then pushed the assistant principal, according to Anderson.
Anderson then tried to escort the student out of the building and while doing so, he said the student called him “nigger” about 15 times. The security assistant then repeated the word when telling the student not to use it.
Assistant principal, Jennifer Talarczyk, turned on the microphone of her walkie-talkie, so that Anderson could be overheard by school officials in the building.
“I’m not going to be called that word. I have a right to not be called that word, I believe. I feel like she tolerated it for the entire ordeal,” Anderson said.
Two days after the incident Anderson was asked to leave by the school’s principal, Karen Boran.
On Friday, Many students participated in a walkout and marched to the district administration building in Madison. Also included with these students was Anderson’s son, Noah Anderson, a senior and president of the Black Student Union. Madison Teachers Inc., teacher union also filed a grievance on Anderson’s behalf.
The post School security guard called racial slur then fired for verbally reprimanding the student appeared first on theGrio.
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New video surfaces of high school gym coach disarming a student with a gun
A high school in Portland, Oregon was saved earlier this year from what may have turned into another fatal school shooting.
Surveillance footage from Parkrose High School in Portland, OR that was recently released shows a quick-thinking coach disarm a student carrying a large gun and then diffuse the confrontation with an embrace.
Angel Granados-Diaz, can be seen on video walking into the fine arts building of Parkrose High with a shotgun stashed away under is jacket on May 17, 2019, NBC News reported.
READ MORE: 8 injured in Colorado STEM school shooting, student gunmen in custody
But before anything could happen Keanon Lowe, Parkrose High’s security guard and track-and-field coach, said he saw a concerning expression on Granados-Diaz’ face, “The look in his eyes. I looked at the gun and I realized it was a real gun and then my instincts just took over.”
Other students can also be seen running away as Lowe, a former wide receiver for the University of Oregon Ducks, takes the gun from Granados-Diaz. Lowe then passes the gun to another teacher and goes in for a tight embrace with Granados-Diaz that turns into a hug, according to NBC News.
“I just wanted to let him know that I was there for him. I told him I was there to save him. I was there for a reason and that this is a life worth living.” Lowe said. “The universe works in amazing ways. I’m lucky and I’m happy that I was in that classroom for all those kids and I was able to prevent that tragedy,” he said.
Although no one was injured at the school, surveillance footage also shows police arriving later on to take Granados-Diaz into custody.
READ MORE: Superintendent say students will be armed with rocks in case of school shooting
A local judge sentenced the 19-year-old to 36 months of probation and an immediate check into mental health and substance abuse treatment center.
Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Parakram Singh, told NBC affiliate KGW, “Through the course of the investigation it became clear to law enforcement and our office that Mr. Granados-Diaz did not have the intent to hurt anyone other than himself while at Parkrose High School.”
The post New video surfaces of high school gym coach disarming a student with a gun appeared first on theGrio.
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Atatiana Jefferson’s funeral cancelled at the last minute
Atatiana Jefferson, who was fatally shot in her home by a Fort Worth, Texas police officer over a week ago, while playing a video game with her 8-year-old nephew, has yet to be laid to rest.
The original funeral was scheduled to happen on Saturday, October 19th but was cancelled due to a family dispute.
Jefferson’s father, Marquis A. Jefferson, was granted a temporary restraining order by a local court halting the funeral services from happening. Her father argued that he was not a part of the planning process for his daughter’s funeral and wanted to be included, according to NBC News.
READ MORE: Funeral plans announced for Atatiana Jefferson and will be open to the public
The funeral was set to take place at Bishop TD Jakes’ church, The Potter’s House of Dallas, where Jakes was going to officiate the service. News of the cancellation came from the Potters House on Saturday morning.
In addition to allegedly being left out of the funeral arrangements, Marquis Jefferson also said he can afford the funeral costs to pay for his daughter’s funeral, but supported jumped at the chance to set up a GoFundMe account seeking monetary donations for Atatiana’s funeral expenses.
After Atatiana’s death, her mother, Yolanda Carr, hired lawyer S. Lee Merritt, to fight in a legal battle for what happened to her daughter.
READ MORE: Lee Merritt critiques DA in charge of Atatiana Jefferson case
According to NBC News, Merritt tweeted Saturday that Carr had “hired me to seek justice for her daughter.”
Merritt also spoke with The Dallas Morning News and stated former Dallas Mavericks player Harrison Barnes, his wife, Brittany Barnes, and Philadelphia Eagles player Malik Jackson would cover the costs for the funeral.
Jefferson’s family is due back in court on Monday and the funeral should be held shortly after that Merritt said.
“She has been very ill & unable to make media appearances. We worked hard all week to get her prepared to attend her daughter’s funeral. This has been extremely hard on her.”
The post Atatiana Jefferson’s funeral cancelled at the last minute appeared first on theGrio.
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Being a swing in The Lion King
Black NBA Players Don’t Have To Save The World
Don’t ask any of the black players in the NBA to clean up the league’s mess with China.
Despite having talents that seem superhuman at times, it’s not the responsibility of black players to fix the NBA’s business relationship with one of their biggest partners, which was strained due to a now-deleted tweet from Houston Rockets General Manager, Daryl Morey.
It’s bad enough that James Harden had to offer an apology last week for Morey’s controversial tweet in support of protesters in Hong Kong. But since then, he’s realized that this isn’t his cause.
“I’m staying out of it,” said Harden. “I’m focusing on what we have and trying to get better. We’re a week and a half away from the regular season.”
I’ve heard some ask where LeBron James has been in all this, given that he’s used his platform to be a change agent. And although James was helpful in getting California Senate Bill 206 passed, so that student-athletes could make money off their likeness, this one isn’t his fight.
As a player, James is focused on leading the Los Angeles Lakers back to glory this upcoming season. As a black man, James is more than likely reeling, like most of Black America, from the death of Atatiana Jefferson.
Jefferson is the latest innocent black person to become a hashtag, given that the 28-year-old was killed by a Texas police officer while babysitting her nephew. These are the kinds of things African Americans deal with in 2019, so excuse players like James and Harden for not having any desire to throw on their capes to help save an American professional sports league from something that has nothing to do with them.
However, James broke his silence on Monday night.
“We all talk about this freedom of speech,” he said. “Yes, we all do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others, and you’re only thinking about yourself. I don’t want to get into a… feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand and he spoke.”
It’s been interesting to watch how things have played out. Morey has slid into the background as the attention has unfairly shifted towards the players. It’s amazing when you think about it, given just how much damage was done by a single tweet, as Morey has somehow been absolved of fixing the problem he started.
Which is why it’s problematic to expect black players to be diplomatic in this moment.
Black people don’t owe the world their time, especially since no one is making the same demands of white athletes.
Read the full story at The Shadow League…
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