Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour inspires hospital’s ‘gorgeous’ baby outfits
“The nurses immediately started envisioning what every Era’s costume would look like and which baby’s personality would best match each one,” the hospital said in a statement.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/taylor-swifts-eras-tour-inspires-hospitals-gorgeous-baby-outfits/
Tornado hits Carson and Compton area with 75-mph winds, causes damage
A tornado touched down Thursday in the Carson and Compton area, causing minor damage with winds reaching 75 mph, the National Weather Service said.
Jessica Alba razzes Sauce Gardner, Aaron Rodgers after surprise admission at Knicks game
One thing this week has proven is that Jessica Alba remains a pop culture force.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/jessica-alba-razzes-sauce-gardner-aaron-rodgers-over-knicks-meeting/
Persona and Index Ventures talk identity, and identifying a good deal
Identity management used to mean making sure you had your driver’s license when you left the house, but these days it’s not so easy: Identity fundamentally underpins how we engage with the digital world, and identity services can take on many forms (and, unfortunately, abuses). I’m excited to host a TechCrunch Live event with Persona co-founder and CEO Rick Song, one of the early movers in the space, about how his company identified ID management as an opportunity.
This TechCrunch Live event takes place on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. PDT. Register here for Hopin access, where viewers can ask questions and network with other attendees.
Along with Rick, Index Venture’s Mark Goldberg is speaking at the event, too. Mark made a prescient move to spot and back Persona during its Series B fundraise and backed the company again for its $150 million Series C.
Rick Song co-founded Persona with Charles Yeh in 2018, and according to PitchBook, the company’s valuation is $1.5 billion as of Persona’s Series C in 2021. Since its founding, the company’s goal has remained the same: provide users with a verification system to protect and secure identity from theft and fraud. The company raised a Series B in 2021 after seeing revenues jump 20x while users increased 5x. In late 2022, Persona introduced new services, expanding beyond identify verification with the launch of à la carte tools, including a risk assessment engine, an identity workflow tool, a graph database aimed at link analysis and fraud detection, and a marketplace for external developers to help connect their business tools to Persona’s identity tools.
I hope you can join this TechCrunch Live event. Rick and Mark are set to provide actionable insights on how companies can better protect users, and how founders, building such services, can stand out among their competitors.
Persona and Index Ventures talk identity, and identifying a good deal by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch
NYC Mayor Adams insists DA probe into subway chokehold death needs to ‘follow its course’ after ripping AOC for ‘murder’ claim
Authorities are investigating Joran Neely’s death onboard an F train in lower Manhattan on Monday as a homicide after a Marine straphanger was filmed putting the disturbed 30-year-old man in a chokehold.
I spent life savings on my kid’s cancer treatment — then won $2M lottery
The 74-year-old played a scratch-off ticket — costing $10 — and was shocked to find that she had won the top prize.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/i-spent-life-savings-on-my-kids-cancer-treatment-then-won-2m-lottery/
Mets’ Jeff McNeil lashes out at umpire: ‘Are you sh–ting me’
The fiery Jeff McNeil was not happy with this punchout by umpire Adam Beck.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/mets-jeff-mcneil-lashes-out-at-umpire-are-you-sh-ting-me/
Debunking Kiev & Blinken’s Latest Lie
Debunking Kiev & Blinken’s Latest Lie
Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,
Russia blamed Ukraine for Tuesday night’s attempted assassination of President Putin after two drones attacked the Kremlin but were disabled by the security services before they harmed anyone.
Kiev rejected the accusation and lied that the incident was a false flag per the innuendo pushed by Zelensky’s spokesman Nikiforov and senior advisor Podolyak. US Secretary of State Blinken echoed their claims by advising to “take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt.”
The Kremlin’s predictably declared right to retaliate “anywhere and anytime it deems necessary” guaranteed that neither of those two would admit to any knowledge of the attack, but it wasn’t foreseen that they’d both collude in concocting a false flag conspiracy theory. Their credibility was already shattered after Russia failed to go bankrupt and subsequently collapse over the past year like they predicted, so it takes a lot of chutzpah to still lie about this attack in spite of their track record.
It’s unclear who their targeted audience even is anyhow since few are expected to fall for this fake news, though there’ll of course be some who play along since they’re reacting to those officials’ dog whistles and think they need to do their part in laundering this disinformation narrative. Nikiforov said that “What happened in Moscow is obviously about escalating the mood on the eve of May 9. It’s a trick to be expected from our opponents”, but that actually doesn’t make much sense if one thinks about it.
Russians are already very patriotic ahead of this practically sacred commemoration of their people’s victory over Nazi Germany so there’s no reason for the government to stage a false flag attack against President Putin for that purpose. As for Podolyak’s claim that “This would allow Russia to justify mass strikes on Ukrainian cities, civilians and infrastructure facilities”, that also doesn’t equate with objectively existing reality either.
Leaving aside his description of these strikes as “large-scale terrorist attack[s]” that he added at the end of his relevant statement, Moscow has already been striking military-relevant infrastructure for months without having to fake an attempted assassination of the country’s leader to justify this. Moreover, these precision strikes have been applauded by the population, many of whom believe that they’re still too low-scale for their liking.
Honestly speaking, a significant share of the population can be described as members of the “patriotic opposition” in the sense that they’re displeased with the scope of the special operation and sincerely believe that it should have been expanded long ago, especially after the Crimean Bridge bombing. That’s not even to mention the pullbacks from Kharkov and Kherson Regions, let alone Kiev’s drone strikes deep inside Russia late last year, all of which they felt should have been much more fiercely responded to.
The way that they see it, Russia’s so-called “red lines” keep getting crossed without Kiev being taught the relevant lessons to deter it from ever doing so again. Something worse seems to happen every time, but the cycle of bombastic rhetoric from the Kremlin, resultantly high hopes among Russian patriots, and their inevitable disappointment continues indefinitely and appears impossible to break. It’s little wonder then that some are cynical after the latest incident and worry that there won’t be a befitting response.
These sensitive observations about the true state of socio-political affairs in Russia nowadays are being shared not for the purpose of saber-rattling, but simply to point out that there’s literally no reason for the authorities to stage a false flag incident like Kiev and Blinken ridiculously implied. Many folks have wanted the scope of the special operation to expand for a while already and some have even gone as far as lobbying for their country to enter a formal state of war in order to fully mobilize all aspects of society.
These people had been warning for months that the authorities’ prioritization of political goals over military ones, which they believe is responsible for Russia not overwhelmingly responding every time its red lines were crossed, would inevitably embolden Kiev to go even further. No patriot is happy about what just happened, but quite a few are convinced that it might have been avoided had the Kremlin reacted much more muscularly to its opponent’s prior spree of provocations up until this one.
Returning to the false flag conspiracy theory that Kiev and Blinken are propagating by innuendo, there’s no credible reason to believe this blatant lie. Considering that few are expected to fall for this fake news, it can therefore be interpreted as them provoking the Kremlin by way of mockery since nobody in their right mind would ever believe this. They both seem convinced that Russia won’t overwhelmingly or at least reciprocally respond to this assassination attempt, but patriots hope that it’ll finally surprise them.
* * *
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/04/2023 – 17:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/debunking-kiev-blinkens-latest-lie
Biden is expected to tap Air Force chief to be nation’s next top military officer
President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force’s top officer and the first Black person to lead any branch of the military, to succeed Gen. Mark Milley as the next Joint Chiefs chair, three people familiar with the discussion said on Thursday.
If confirmed, Brown would become the second Black Joint Chiefs chair in the nation’s history, after the late Colin Powell.
Biden hasn’t given Brown the official stamp, and it’s unclear when he plans to make an announcement, said the people, a Democratic lawmaker, a congressional aide and a former Defense Department official familiar with the White House’s planning, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“When President Biden makes a final decision, he will inform the person selected and then announce it publicly,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said when asked for comment. “That hasn’t happened yet.”
The former DoD official said Biden is waiting for the right time to announce a decision. After former President Donald Trump announced his plan to nominate Milley months earlier than expected, the current president wanted to get back on a more normal timeline, the former official said. The former official pointed out that then-Gen. Joseph Dunford, Milley’s predecessor, was nominated May 21, 2015.
Brown’s reputation and command experience in both the Pacific and the Middle East made him the odds-on favorite to be Milley’s heir apparent dating back to the Trump administration. But his appointment seemed less of a sure thing in recent months, as the White House seriously considered Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps commandant, for the top job.
He rose through the ranks as the sole Black pilot in classrooms filled with white men, an experience he spoke about in an emotional video after George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020.
Those who know Brown say he has the right experience to keep the military focused on its top priority: China. Brown’s most recent command experience was in the Pacific, as chief of Pacific Air Forces.
Brown also commanded troops in the Middle East, as head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, and was serving in Europe when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, as a director of operations for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at U.S. Air Forces in Europe. He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate for his current role as Air Force chief of staff in August, 2020.
Brown would be the first Air Force officer to become Joint Chiefs chair since retired Gen. Richard Myers, who held the position until 2005, an almost 20-year drought.
If confirmed to the chairmanship, Brown would become the top military adviser to a commander in chief who’s balancing the China threat with the need to equip the Ukrainian military with munitions, drones, missiles and other high-end equipment. That mission is in a state of flux, as the U.S. and other Western allies pivot from sending their own stocks of weapons to replenishing their armaments back home — all while making sure Kyiv has enough weaponry to fight off Russia in the months ahead.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/04/biden-cq-brown-air-force-00095387
Latin Grammys CEO defends moving 2023 show to Spain: ‘Latin music is global’
For only the second time in the show’s history, this year’s Latin Grammy Awards will be held outside the U.S. — in Sevilla, Spain, on Nov. 16.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-05-04/latin-grammys-in-spain