TTL News

A new trailer was released this week. ( NSFW - Language )

Seriously, you've been warned. 

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The Marvel multiverse has gotten a bit overwhelming in recent years for the more casual fans who may have seen most of the films but only dabbled in the Disney+ offerings that regularly introduce new concepts and characters that eventually find their way into the films. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” for instance, uses the Time Variance Authority (TVA) — a major part of “Loki” but new to the movies — to help get Deadpool to the MCU. But Levy promises that enjoyment of “Deadpool & Wolverine” requires no bingeing or studying beforehand.

“I was a good student in school. I’ll do my homework as an adult. But I am definitely not looking to do homework when I go to the movies,” Levy said. 

“I very much made this film with certainly a healthy respect and gratitude towards the rabid fan base that has peak fluency in the mythology and lore of these characters and this world. But I didn’t want to presume that. This movie is built for entertainment, with no obligation to come prepared with prior research.”

 

Read the rest of the article here.

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Gardeners are often given the advice to sprinkle diatomaceous earth (DE) around plants to deter pests. Unsurprisingly, we’re often asked, “What is diatomaceous earth, exactly?” Well, here’s your answer…

What Is Diatomaceous Earth? 

Diatomaceous earth (DE) is the fossilized skeletons of microscopic single-celled aquatic organisms called diatoms. Their skeletons are made of a natural substance called silica—which makes up 26% of the Earth’s crust by weight. 

Deep deposits of diatomaceous earth are mined in the western United States in places where lakes once covered the area millions of years ago.

How Does Diatomaceous Earth Deter Garden Pests?

Slugs and snails do not like to crawl over DE because the silica skeletons are very sharp—like tiny pieces of broken glass. (Slugs and snails don’t like eggshells, either!) If their soft bodies do get cut, they eventually dehydrate and die. This process works on other soft-bodied insects, too, including caterpillars and aphids, as well as on those with hard shells, such as beetles, fleas, cockroaches, and even bed bugs. The tiny particles of DE get into the insects’ joints, causing irritation and dehydration.

Caution: The downside to DE is that it does not discriminate between pests and beneficial insects. Ladybugs, green lacewings, butterflies, bees, and other “good guys” can also be killed by DE if they come into contact with it. For this reason, we recommend using DE with discretion on and around plants that beneficial insects may frequently visit. Avoid using it around flowers as well.

 

Read the rest here.

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We don’t know how far back the domestication of animals goes. But we do know it is a process, rather than a single event. The domestication of the dog from its ancestor, the grey wolf, for example, may have begun some 17,000 years ago, but it also may have begun as many as 60,000 to 100,000 years ago. The reason scientists and others disagree on this is because, for tens of thousands of years, those first domesticated dogs too closely resembled wolves for us to recognize the difference when we found them in the fossil record.

What is domestication?

When we “tame” an animal we take a wild animal and make it not fear us. But we don’t change the makeup of the animal itself. But with the process of domestication, we change animals to make them more useful or desirable to ourselves. We breed them to enhance certain characteristics and actually alter their basic genetic makeup. Circus lions and tigers, for example, have been tamed, but not domesticated. However, the dog is arguably a domesticated wolf that has been considerably altered.

Most domesticated animals, such as dogs, cattle, horses, sheep, etc., are quite unlike their wild forebears. But in the last few centuries, there are notable exceptions that include animals recently “farmed,” such as catfish and even alligators which are now raised for their leather with little or no thought to directing their breeding to make them more docile.

We also breed some animals, such as the California condor, expressly to return them to the wild. And as long as 400 years ago, there were attempts to preserve, in their native states, species of wild cattle and horses from which today’s domesticated stocks are descended. Unfortunately, these attempts failed.

Otherwise, consciously or unconsciously, humans have directed the evolution of animals and plants they have domesticated in ways that have made them considerably different from their wild kin.

Animals were probably first bred to ensure their future offspring were more docile, less apt to roam off, and more productive. For example, sheep with the most desirable wool or the meatier bodies were bred to ensure future generations would be similar.

Sources of early domesticates

As with plants (See, Where our garden crops come from, Issue #104, March/April 2007), what animals ancient men captured and domesticated had to be the ones that were local to them. Later, animals may have been traded, stolen, or otherwise taken to new regions where they were raised and bred. For example, dogs, chickens, goats, and sheep have spread all around the world, far from the areas where they lived in the wild and where they were first domesticated. Explorers and colonists to the New World and Australia brought with them the animals they’d found useful in the Old World, sometimes with unintended consequences, as in the introduction of rabbits and other animals to Australia which are now considered pests.

But even if animals were traded or brought home as plunder from wars, it wasn’t enough to simply have the animal in hand. What a culture can raise also depends on the climate and geography of the area. You’re not likely to productively raise sheep in Point Barrow, Alaska, or find it easy to maintain a catfish farm in Death Valley, California.

Feral animals

It’s useful to understand what is meant when we use the word “feral.” Though sometimes used to denote any wild animal, the term is generally associated with domesticated animals that have escaped back into the wild. The American West now has many feral horses and burros that are either recent escapees or the descendants of escaped domesticates, and there are “wild” boar from coast to coast that are actually feral pigs.

But there remains the question of how well today’s domesticated animals would fare if they really had to go back to the wild. The answer depends on what type of country they’d have to survive in. There are feral cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses in New Zealand where they can thrive in the absence of predators. But the great repository of feral animals is Australia. Cattle, camels, pigs, water buffalo, goats, horses, cats, and dogs run loose there. They’re changing the landscape, interfering with farming, and, at times, are a danger to campers, hikers, and others.

 

Read the rest of this interesting article here.

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ELMIRA, N.Y. (WETM) – A new resolution by the Elmira City Council to publish a monthly list of “worst” landlords is being met with some concerns from landlords. Some say the resolution is unnecessary and sends the wrong message.

“First of all, I want to make sure everybody knows that I’m not against tenants, I actually like to work with tenants,” said Rickey Paul, President of the Chemung County Landlord Association. Paul is also a Licensed New York State Broker & Property Manager for his company “REP Home Sales & Services” located in Downtown Elmira.

Paul says the Chemung County Landlord Association holds monthly meetings to educate landlords on the right way to manage properties and keep landlords up to speed on current codes and laws. 

“We are not for landlords that are not doing the right thing. This is why we try to bring education.

Paul says the association also connects tenants with resources if they fall behind on rent.

“The last thing we would like to do is go to court and evict people. I want that to be put on record,” said Paul.

 

See the rest here.

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L’Jarius Sneed’s jam heard ’round the NFL of Tyreek Hill didn’t escape the attention of Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel. As the dust was still settling after the Dolphins’ 26-7 Wild Card round loss to the Chiefs in frozen Kansas City, McDaniel called out Hill during a team meeting. He cued up now-famous footage of Sneed pile-driving Hill to the ground before he could even begin his route on one of many failed Dolphins plays in that game.

What Miami Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel Said About Tyreek Hill

“Everybody see the play against the Chiefs that the [explicit] jammed me to the floor?” Hill said recently on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast, “He called me out. He was like, ‘Reek, bro, you’re supposed to be [explicit] best player in the [explicit] league, and you got this guy putting hands all over you like that. We pay you all this money, for what?'”

Kudos to McDaniel for speaking an uncomfortable truth. Hill, aside from his 53-yard touchdown catch, was invisible against his old team on that frozen January evening.

 

See more here.

At a press conference held earlier today, Chemung County Sheriff William A. Schrom announced the release of a custom smartphone application for the Sheriff's Office.

The app will serve as an innovative way for the Sheriff’s Office to connect with Chemung County residents and visitors, providing information quickly and efficiently to anyone with a smartphone.

The Chemung County Sheriff’s Office app was developed by TheSheriffApp.com, a brand of OCV, LLC., which specializes in mobile app development for sheriffs’ offices and public safety organizations across the country. The app offers quick access to items of public interest and is
easy to use. In just a few clicks, users can access features such as:

• Meet The Sheriff - Most Wanted
•  News & Alerts - Submit a Tip
• Programs & Services - Contact Us
•  Inmate Information - More!
•  Warrants List

“Over 80 percent of people in the United States own and use smartphones as their primary means of communication,” OCV Partner and CRO Kevin Cummings said. “Mobile apps offer agencies a better way to alert, inform and prepare the public. Apps allow public safety agencies
the ability to reach and serve their citizens where they are: their smartphones.”

The app is now available to download for free in the App Store and Google Play by searching “Chemung County Sheriff, NY” or by clicking here.

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The FTC estimates about 30 million people, or one in five American workers, from minimum wage earners to CEOs, are bound by noncompetes. It says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.

The ban, which will take effect later this year, carves out an exception for existing noncompetes that companies have given their senior executives, on the grounds that these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated. The FTC says employers should not enforce other existing noncompete agreements. 

The vote was 3 to 2 along party lines. The dissenting commissioners, Melissa Holyoke and Andrew Ferguson, argued that the FTC was overstepping the boundaries of its power. Holyoke predicted the ban would be challenged in court and eventually struck down.

 

Read more here.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76.

Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir “Den of Lions,” died on Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson. 

Anderson died of complications from recent heart surgery, his daughter said.

 

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The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data. 

It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.

 

Read the rest here.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.

The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army’s bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.

“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”

 

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LONDON (AP) — The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report. 

The human rights organization said the most powerful governments, including the United States, Russia and China, have led a global disregard for international rules and values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with civilians in conflicts paying the highest price. 

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said the level of violation of international order witnessed in the past year was “unprecedented.”

 

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Here you can post anything book related. Maybe you have a link to a ( legal ) source for cheap or free books? Maybe there's a book sale coming up you want to tell folks about? Anything book or reading related can go here!

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PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — When Jon Bon Jovi agreed to let director Gotham Chopra follow him with a documentary camera to delve into the history of his band, Bon Jovi, he didn’t anticipate it would catch him at a major low point in his career.

The band was launching a tour, and despite doing all he could do to be vocally ready, the “Livin’ on a Prayer” singer struggled through songs and couldn’t hit the notes the way he used to.

Critics noticed and wrote about it. A review from Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, said: “It felt like he had forgotten how to sing.”

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Bon Jovi said the reaction at the time was “heartbreaking.” After exhausting holistic options, he saw a doctor who said one of his vocal cords was atrophying.

“This was unique. It wasn’t a nodule. The strong (vocal cord) was pushing the weak one around, and suddenly, my inabilities were just exacerbated,” said Bon Jovi. He underwent major surgery and is still recovering.

 

Read the rest, as well as a short interview, here.

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Just as Gov. Kathy Hochul is declaring victory in getting her agenda approved in the state budget, a new Siena College poll finds that she’s experiencing her worst-ever favorability and job approval ratings.

Hochul, who has never scored above a 50% approval rating since she’s been governor, now has scored her lowest favorability rating since Siena College began tracking her in 2021. Only 40% of respondents view her positively, and 49% view her negatively.

Siena pollster Steve Greenberg said the governor’s job approval ratings, which were always higher than her individual popularity, are also declining.

“Right now, only 45% of New Yorkers approve of the job Hochul is doing as governor, (while) 49% disapprove,” Greenberg said. “It's the first time more voters have disapproved of the job that she's doing than approve since she's been governor.”

 

Read more here

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SOUTH WAVERLY, Pa. (WETM) — An Elmira man was arrested on Sunday in Bradford County after police say he broke into a woman’s apartment and assaulted her before attempting to take her and her son to Philadelphia by force. 

According to the Athens Township Police Department, 47-year-old Damion Lamar Gooden was arrested on several felony charges on Sunday after police arrested him when they pulled over the vehicle he was driving Sunday morning.

The document states that around 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 21, Gooden broke into the apartment of the victims, a woman, and her 13-year-old son, and assaulted her by punching her in the face and kicking her in the chest.

The victim told police that she was dragged into the living room by her hair and was tied up in a kitchen chair with a shoelace and a phone charger. She added that Gooden had a large kitchen knife in his hand and repeatedly told her, “this is faster than my fist” several times.

 

Read the rest here. 

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NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale, and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public Monday as some of the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.

More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green were arrested last week, and similar encampments have sprouted up at universities around the country as schools struggle with where to draw the linebetween allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

At New York University, an encampment set up by students swelled to hundreds of protesters throughout the day Monday. The school said it warned the crowd to leave, then called in the police after the scene became disorderly and the university said it learned of reports of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.” Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers began making arrests.

 

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DALLAS (AP) — The first model of the USS Enterprise — used in the opening credits of the original “Star Trek” television series — has boldly gone back home, returning to creator Gene Roddenberry’s son decades after it went missing.

The model’s disappearance sometime in the 1970s had become the subject of lore, so it caused a stir when it popped up on eBay last fall. The sellers quickly took it down, and then contacted Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to authenticate it. Last weekend, the auction house facilitated the model’s return.

Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment, said he’s thrilled to have the model that had graced the desk of his father, who died in 1991 at age 70.

 

Read more here.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare weekend session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.

With an overwhelming vote Saturday, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the separate bills forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

 

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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars of additional military aid to Israel, its close ally.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the U.S.

“In the coming days, we will increase the political and military pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to bring back our hostages and achieve victory. We will land more and painful blows on Hamas – soon,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. He didn’t give details.

 

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New York State Police are investigating a car crash that sent two children to the hospital. 

State Police say on Saturday at approximately 2:53 p.m., troopers from State Police barracks in Horseheads responded to a three-car collision at the intersection of Wygant Road and Ridge Road in the town of Horseheads.

A preliminary investigation revealed a 2012 Toyota Highlander, operated by 73 year old Debra L. Kenyon of Horseheads struck a 2010 BMW, operated by 33 year old Lindsey M. Runkel of Connecticut. The Highlander then accelerated through the intersection, causing a secondary collision with a parked 2010 Toyota Rav4 in the Last Stand parking lot. This resulted in an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old being pinned next to the building.

Kenyon was uninjured and was issued traffic infractions at the scene. Runkel was also uninjured. The 11-year-old was airlifted to Upstate Community Hospital and is stable. The 13-year-old was taken by ambulance to Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital and is also stable.

The New York State Police were assisted by the Horseheads Fire Department, Town and Country Fire Department, and Guthrie Air.

Police say this is still an active investigation.