A monkey in a pink tutu that slipped out of a Missouri home was captured just before a winter storm slammed the state.

The Jefferson county sheriff’s office described the apprehension of the primate in a Facebook post as “Bananas”.

The spider monkey was spotted on Friday afternoon at the intersection of two highways near the town of Otto, just to the south of the St Louis area. The monkey had been staying at a nearby home when it managed to open a door and get outside.

The sheriff’s office said the small monkey was returned to its caretaker after “careful negotiations and some coaxing”. Photos posted on the sheriff’s department Facebook page show a deputy kneeling on the ground before the tutu-clad monkey approached and grabbed his hands.

The sheriff’s office said it was a great example of how officers “having to be prepared to handle whatever the job throws at them”.

The timing was fortuitous. A winter storm packing snow and ice hit the region on Saturday, closing roads and sending temperatures plunging.

Four years ago


You didn’t imagine it, the images and videos, the injuries and deaths. They were not “deep state” fakes. Those people weren’t tourists. They weren’t patriots. The violent Trump mob consisted of MAGA rioters and insurrectionists. After four years of a Democratic administration left with cleaning up, Americans inexplicably elected Donald Trump, now a convicted felon, to another term. It’s almost as if they mean to prove the Constitution a suicide pact.

Trump is preparing to pardon a large chunk of the Jan. 6 convicted as victims of political persecution, just as woe-is-ME is as innocent as a babe.

The Washington Post:

Trump said he would issue pardons to rioters on “Day 1” of his presidency, which begins Jan. 20. “Most likely, I’ll do it very quickly,” he said recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added that “those people have suffered long and hard. And there may be some exceptions to it. I have to look. But, you know, if somebody was radical, crazy.”

His promise, made throughout his campaign for the White House, is shadowing events Monday as lawmakers gather to certify a presidential election for the first time since 2021, when Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol and temporarily halted the certification of an election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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How can people deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, the documentary evidence of trials and investigations, and the testimony of the survivors?

How indeed?

A new study used acoustic sensors that detect the sound of gunfire to show how often children in one Chicago neighborhood are exposed to gunshots while walking to and from school.

Results showed that nearly two-thirds of schools in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago had at least one gun incident within 400 meters (about one-quarter mile) of where children were walking home during the 2021–22 school year.

These findings suggest a need to redefine federal definitions of school gun violence to include indirect forms of violence that take place near schools, not only on school grounds, in order to more appropriately capture the burden on communities of color, said Gia Barboza-Salerno, lead author of the study and assistant professor of public health and social work at The Ohio State University.

"Not all the violence children are exposed to is direct violence or happens on school grounds," Barboza-Salerno said.

"But that doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact. Hearing gunshots on the way to and from school is terrifying and will affect how kids perform in school."

On the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, the Justice Department has released what may represent the high-water-mark figures for the arrests and convictions it has amassed stemming from that event—its largest investigation in history.

At least 1,583 have been arrested and 1,270 of those individuals—80 percent—have already been convicted. Of the 1,270 convicted, 1,009 pleaded guilty—64 percent of all arrested, and 79 percent of all convictions. Another 221 were found guilty at trial by juries or judges, and the remaining 40 were convicted after a hybrid procedure known as a “stipulated trial,” at which the defendant made factual concessions without admitting to their legal significance.

Of the total 1,583 arrested, according to the department’s figures, 608—or 38 percent—were charged with either assaulting or impeding federal police officers. Of those that assaulted officers, 174 were charged with an enhanced version of the crime for using deadly or dangerous weapons or for inflicting bodily harm on the officer.

The Justice Department has been releasing statistics on the Capitol siege investigation on a monthly basis since shortly after the investigation began. Its most recent release, however, also provided some additional, forward-looking information, apparently reflecting on the turning point the United States will likely be reaching on Jan. 20. On that date, the man whose election lies led to the Capitol siege, Donald Trump, will be sworn in as the 47th president. Trump is the man who summoned all of the arrested individuals to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, and many defendants have said they believed they were serving Trump when they committed their crimes. Trump was himself charged with four felonies in connection with his role in the events that led to and took place on Jan. 6, but Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped those charges without prejudice after Trump’s election, in deference to longstanding policy—rooted in the executive branch’s interpretation of the Constitution—barring prosecution of sitting presidents. Trump, who denies wrongdoing, has pledged to pardon a large, unspecified number of the Jan. 6 rioters, possibly as soon as the first hour of his new term.

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The man in control of the Utah-based rightwing militia Oath Keepers USA, a recent spinoff of the national organization first established by Stewart Rhodes in 2009, is a former Las Vegas metropolitan police department (LVMPD) homicide detective who left the force in acrimony after advocating “race war”.

The revelations about Robert “Bobby” Kinch, now of Duck Creek, Utah, come from public records, online materials and the work of a longtime infiltrator of the patriot movement in the Pacific north-west, who provided vital evidence to the Guardian captured inside Kinch’s home.

The findings show that four years on from January 6, the Oath Keepers, who played a central role in fomenting that day’s insurrection in Washington, have not disappeared but have continued quietly adding law-enforcement officers to their ranks.

The return of Donald Trump to the presidency may encourage the likes of Kinch to bring their movement back into the spotlight, as the incoming administration promises to carry out unprecedented mass deportation of immigrants and to take on Trump’s perceived opponents, whom he has described as “the enemy within”.

Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said: “These disclosures show once again how police departments aren’t taking the threat of extremists in the ranks seriously.”

The property management software used by many corporate landlords, RealPage, is deploying AI to artificially inflate rental prices in the United States by more than $3.6 billion annually, according to a new report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

RealPage, owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, includes a tool called "AI Revenue Management" that provides recommendations for rental prices based on data from competitors. The feature, according to the CEA, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and class action lawsuits, facilitates "price coordination." It allows individual landlords to "act as if they are a single dominant landlord, and use their collective market power to increase profits by setting higher prices."

According to the CEA, "nearly 1 in every 4 rental" in the multi-family housing sector "uses a RealPage pricing algorithm." In some metropolitan areas, including Atlanta and Dallas, more than 50% of multi-family units use RealPage to set prices.

The CEA report is the first effort to quantify the difference between prices set by landlords using RealPage and prices in a truly competitive market. Looking at data from 2023, the CEA found that "algorithmic pricing cost renters in algorithm-utilizing units $70 a month, or 4% of rent, on average nationally." In six metro areas — Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, DC, Riverside, and Tampa — the price increase attributable to RealPage exceeds $100 a month.

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Scientists at Cambridge have unveiled a fascinating mechanism where fetuses use a paternal gene to control the mother’s nutrient release during pregnancy.

This “remote control” system involves hormonal signals from the placenta, which ensure the fetus grows optimally by altering the mother’s metabolic processes. Remarkably, this battle for nutrients is a delicate balance, crucial not just for fetal growth but also for the mother’s health and her future reproductive potential.

Nutritional Control in Pregnancy

Cambridge scientists have discovered that fetuses use a gene inherited from their father to influence their mother’s body into providing more nutrients during pregnancy.

This creates a kind of “nutritional tug of war,” where the unborn baby ‘remote controls’ its mother’s metabolism to maximize its growth, while the mother’s body balances her own need to maintain health. The mother must ensure enough glucose and fats remain available for her energy needs, to sustain the pregnancy, support breastfeeding, and allow for future pregnancies.

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Wonkette took a look at Gabbard’s cult in its inimitable fashion:

The group is called Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), founded by an acid-dropping white surfer guy named Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, AKA Jagad Guru, AKA Sai Young, in the 1970s, as an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas, AKA the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Butler got his start as a guru teaching mediation and yoga, and was drawn to the Krishnas, but he didn’t want to shave his head or wear robes or do other Hare Krishna stuff. So he founded his own thing, which involved him living with two dozen 18-to-22-year-olds in a Quonset hut under a freeway, beating bongos and arranging his followers’ marriages.

Two of his hut-dwellers were Tulsi Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, who joined the group in 1983. After they got married they built an altar to him in their house. According to Mike’s sister, they were “bowing and prostrating to this white surfer guy — it was bizarre.” Butler taught the group that outsiders were not to be trusted, and was paranoid that the mainstream Hare Krishnas were trying to kill him. Like Chuck McGill in “Better Call Saul” he had a fear of electromagnetic radiation, and places he stayed when he traveled were lined with tinfoil. He was a hypochondriac, and at one point he accused disciples of poisoning him through light bulb fumes.

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Read the whole Wonkette story for the full rundown. Gabbard is a true weirdo, and not just because she belongs to a fringe cult, although that’s plenty weird. (It’s not a real Hindu sect, it’s a cult run by an American con man who is grooming people for political power.)

I just can’t get past the fact that a totally unqualified gadfly who also happens to be a serious member of a cult has been nominated to a job that oversees all of America’s intelligence agencies. It’s mind boggling.

Improvements in education, nutrition, and sanitation throughout the 20th century have likely been crucial in enhancing cognitive, motor, psychological, and sensory abilities.

A recent study from the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health highlights notable improvements in the overall health of older adults in England compared to previous generations. Instead of focusing solely on the presence or absence of disease, the research—published in Nature Aging—adopted a novel approach to assess trends in individuals’ functional abilities, including cognitive, locomotor, psychological, and sensory capacities.

Drawing on data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the findings reveal that today’s older adults demonstrate better physical and mental functioning than their counterparts of earlier generations at the same age.

“These improvements were large,” said John Beard, MBBS, PhD, Irene Diamond Professor of Aging in Health Policy and Management in the Butler Columbia Aging Center of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and author of the study. For example, a 68-year-old born in 1950 had a similar capacity to a 62-year-old born a decade earlier, and those born in 1940 had better functioning than those born in 1930 or 1920. Beard noted, “If we had compared someone born in 1950 with someone born in 1920, we would have likely observed even greater improvements.”

interview In the wake of the Salt Typhoon hacks, which lawmakers and privacy advocates alike have called the worst telecoms breach in America's history, the US government agencies have reversed course on encryption.

After decades of advocating against using this type of secure messaging, "encryption is your friend," Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told journalists last month at a press briefing with a senior FBI official, who also advised us to use "responsibly managed encryption" for phone calls and text messages.

Just this week, CISA published formal guidance [PDF] on how to keep Chinese government spies off mobile devices, and "strongly urged" politicians and senior government officials — these are "highly targeted" individuals that are "likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors" — to ditch regular phone calls and messaging apps and instead use only end-to-end encrypted communications.

It's a major about-face from the feds, which have historically demanded law enforcement needs a backdoor to access people's communications — but only for crime-fighting and terrorism-preventing purposes.

"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys," Virtru CEO and co-founder John Ackerly told The Register. "It's one thing to tap hardline wires or voice communication. It's yet another to open up the spigot to all digital communication."

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