Letting nature take its course.

First time getting Gold-level season rewards: 41 chests, 1GF (Bloodmaker), 1 Legendary (Djinn Oshannus), 0 Epic, 3 Rare, 10 Common, 2140 DEC, 25 Alchemy potions, 15 Legendary Potions, 1080 Merits (I’m not in a guild, so rather pointless). Since it’s my first time getting Gold chests, I have no idea if that’s a good, bad, or middling haul.

Yeah, I’ve got a few pet peeves here and there with Splinterlands. Here’s an annoying one: 99 mana battles that have the Little League rule set. WTF?

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Google invested a whopping $1.5B into blockchain companies since September

Seems like an odd headline to me. Isn’t a billion and a half just pocket change to Google? Alphabet/Google has something like 100x that in cash on hand.

‘Down Infinite’: A Ham-Fisted Attempt to Rehabilitate Do Kwon’s Image

Why does crypto welcome back fraudsters, and other questions raised by a softball interview with Terra's founder.

I’ll believe it when I see it: American Airlines places deposit on 20 supersonic planes

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Biden administration will stop buying Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests as early as this fall

‘COVID? What COVID?’ More people say they’ve returned to normal

SCOTUS Knew This Would Happen:

Girl Denied Abortion Because She’s Not ‘Mature’ Enough

Louisiana Woman Forced To Carry Headless Fetus to Term

Politics:

A must-read: Road to war: U.S. struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion

The U.S. intelligence community had penetrated multiple points of Russia’s political leadership, spying apparatus and military, from senior levels to the front lines, according to U.S. officials.
Much more radical than Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and instigation of a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s war plans envisioned a takeover of most of the country.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks: Giuliani on being told he’s target of election probe: ‘We’re starting to live in a fascist state’

Nothing to see here folks, move along: Homeland Security Watchdog Not Cooperating

The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog, who is under criticism for his handling of an investigation into missing Secret Service text messages around the time of the Capitol attack, is refusing to cooperate with congressional demands, even blocking his employees from testifying before Congress.

Trump Steamrolls His Way Past Accountability. The Mar-a-Lago Search Might Be Different.

Trump’s Own Actions Set Up Case Against Him

That’s because of the way Trump while president tweeted many promises to declassify documents, then retreated and used the Department of Justice to vigorously defend the sanctity of the way the government classifies documents. He has essentially trapped himself, as he now faces an FBI investigation into whether he put the American people’s security at risk by mishandling government secrets and potentially violating the Espionage Act.
Essentially, Trump’s freewheeling style on Twitter forced the administration to take a harder stance on just what it means to declassify a document—forcing the government to emphasize the rigorous, multi-step nature of the bureaucratic process. He can’t now say it merely takes a wave of his hand.

New Hampshire Sen Candidate Who Vowed To Defy Election Results Leads In New Poll

Republicans: "Lock her up!"

Also Republicans: "No matter what Donald Trump did, if you lock him up, there will be civil war."

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot) August 15, 2022

Trump Is Already Making Promises for a Second Term

For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump has started getting specific about what he would do if he wins a second term in the White House.
The pitches he’s made onstage over the past month in speeches from D.C. to Dallas to Las Vegas are a stark contrast from ordinary stump speeches. He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.
There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.

‘Viper’ Merrick Garland’s Trump FBI Raid Is Only the ‘First Inning’

Democratic strategist James Carville has a message for people who are doubting Merrick Garland: Just wait.
“People are like, well, but let’s wait and see a little bit. And this is like the top of the first inning. I mean, remember Merrick Garland is like a pit viper. He prosecuted the Oklahoma City bomber case, the Unabomber case, the Olympic bomber case. And I think these guys are really methodical.”

Every New Trump Crime Just Makes Republicans Angrier at the FBI

Obviously, the weirdest thing about this trust heuristic is that it assumes the more credible party to this dispute is serial lawbreaker and pathological liar Donald Trump rather than the lifelong Republican he appointed to lead the agency. But the deeper and more twisted belief system being expressed by Trump’s allies is the premise that the FBI has engaged in a pattern of political bias against their party since the Clinton saga.
The truth is just the opposite: The FBI has often bent over backward to placate Republicans only to be met with distrust when its results fail to conform to their most paranoid fantasies.

Nevada official: Colorado River water-sharing talks have accomplished ‘exactly nothing’

But the other shoe will drop:

U.S. spares Western states from Colorado River water cuts - for now

Xi Jinping’s Saudi Trip Seeks to Exploit Tensions with U.S.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will soon end more than two years of self-imposed in-person diplomatic isolation as he travels to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — a month after President Joe Biden’s strained visit to Jeddah.
The Xi trip has not been confirmed, but an unnamed Saudi source said it may occur as early as this week.

‘More Important Than the Law’

I spoke with one of the original Never Trumpers over the weekend, a man who has lost friends and family because of his opposition to Trump, and he told me that one of the most unsettling things to him is that these same pro-Trump family and friends now say that they believe that Trump broke the law—but that they don’t care.
They see Trump and his crusade—their crusade against evil, the drama that gives their lives meaning—as more important than the law.

F.B.I. Interviewed Top White House Lawyers About Missing Trump Documents

Mr. Philbin tried to help the National Archives retrieve the material, two of the people familiar with the discussions said. But the former president repeatedly resisted entreaties from his advisers.
“It’s not theirs, it’s mine,” several advisers say Mr. Trump told them…
On June 3, counterintelligence officials with the Justice Department’s national security division went to Mar-a-Lago to collect remaining documents with classified markings. At that point, at least one Trump lawyer signed a statement saying material with the classified markings had been returned… But officials then used a subpoena to obtain surveillance footage of the hallway outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago and saw something that alarmed them.

It’s not theirs, it’s mine.

Hubris like that will be Trump’s undoing.

Russia’s Panicked Confession: This Is What Scares Us Most

Trumpworld Criminality Continues to Expand

This expansion of the Trumpworld legal universe pales in comparison to last week’s dramatic development, of course: the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. But it’s a reminder of the scale of alleged and proven criminal conduct that has surrounded Trump since he first announced his candidacy in June 2015…
That leaves us with 14 figures from Trumpworld — including the president — who have been charged with crimes, are the subjects of investigation, have been convicted or pleaded guilty and/or have been pardoned by the former president.

Trump Finding It Hard to Hire Good Criminal Lawyers

Former president Donald Trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the FBI searched his Florida home rushing to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers. But the answer they keep hearing is “no.”
The struggle to find expert legal advice puts Trump in a bind as he faces potential criminal exposure from a records dispute with the National Archives that escalated into a federal investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other statutes.
“Everyone is saying no,” said a prominent Republican lawyer, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

Serendipity:

The Academy apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for her treatment at the 1973 Oscars

This group wiped out $6.7 billion in medical debt, and it’s just getting started

Not exactly uplifting reading: Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection

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