Extra, Extra
Under the Radar: “What made Otis so dangerous was not just the fact of its strength but the surprise of it. As recently as Monday evening, it was classified as a tropical storm, and forecasts had it strengthening only slightly before hitting the coast. It wasn’t until after midnight on Tuesday that the first hurricane warning for the region was issued; at that point, Otis was expected to make landfall as a Category 1 storm. Then Otis really got busy.” (As you know, I visit a lot of news sites every day. I didn’t notice any headlines about Otis in the days before it hit. That’s a first.) Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker: Hurricane Otis and the World We Live in Now.
+ The Melting Pot: “It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too. So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.” (Better melt the statue than the constitution.) WaPo (Gift Article): Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace.
+ Unfriendly Fire: A reminder that the victims of murderous authoritarians often include their own people. “The White House on Thursday said Russia is executing soldiers who have failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.”
+ Driving Towards the Finish Line? “Forty days after the United Auto Workers went on strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, the union has reached a tentative agreement with one of the companies in question: Ford. It means deals with General Motors and Stellantis may soon be on the horizon, too.”
+ Clear Eyes, Full Coffers: “Spectators gather at a stadium with 12,000 seats, a two-story press box, fancy digs for college scouts and a 60-foot-wide video scoreboard — a venue that cost about $50 million. These high school football games don’t always fill the seats, but a local hospital chain paid $2.5 million for the stadium’s naming rights anyway.” And it’s about to be the second most palatial high school football stadium in its school district. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts and a $94 Million Texas High School Stadium.
+ Mama M.I.A. “There is no provision in the legislation which attributes to the adult child the unconditional right to remain in the home exclusively owned by the parents, against their will and by virtue of the family bond alone.” So said an Italian judge as a mother won a court case to evict two sons in their 40s. (Does it seem weird that my mom forwarded this article to me?)
