How Do You Replant A Billion Trees? With Drones:
While many think of drones as a toy or, in battle, a lethally precise military tool, Flash Forest has gone a new route: It’s deploying drones to nourish life. The 20-person Toronto company is using a fleet of unmanned vehicles to seed the ground with trees and replenish those majestic carbon guzzlers. The battle against climate change can be waged with sober policymaking, an engaged citizenry and corporate responsibility. It can also be fought, it turns out, by a few hipster millennials with flying machines.
BTW, here’s something I didn’t know:
Still, with new regulations, heightened responsibility and reforestation, the losses have slowed. Last year, the United States was one of a handful of countries to show a net addition of forest cover — about 417 square miles, according to a U.N. report.
Which led me to ask the question: How are drones powered? Here’s how, courtesy of the intertubes.
‘Say Goodbye To Hollywood’. Film Union grip unmasked as Jan. 6 insurrectionist. Undone by his own camera feeds, which he tried to get rid of.
Alec Baldwin Kills Cinematographer With Prop Gun. Perry Mason had an episode with a plot like this. The killer turned out to be (I’m not making this up) Dick Clark. Man, how long before Trump tweets about this? Especially since the cinematographer is from–The Ukraine? Where was Hunter Biden when this all went down?
Schumer Does Something UnSchumerlike. Endorses the progressive who won the D mayoral nomination in Buffalo. Good. Could help.
NYPD Cops Jeopardize Cases Despite Being On Prosecutors’ ‘No-Fly List’. You see, they’ve been caught fixing tickets for relatives, but still remain on the force.
The list was created a decade ago amid a sprawling investigation into the city’s biggest police union and its role in helping officers “fix” tickets issued to family and friends for speeding, illegal parking and other traffic offenses. It grew to 664 names and was intended to help prosecutors vet cases that might rest too heavily on officers whose ties to the scandal could raise questions about their conduct and credibility.
Ten years after it was first created, the No Fly List itself remains secret by judicial seal.
But ProPublica has obtained a version of the list. And a review of court records involving 164 No Fly officers still currently on the force shows how one of the most sweeping efforts by prosecutors to flag cops with credibility concerns hasn’t prevented them from jeopardizing cases.
I could ask the rhetorical question: Why are these officers still on the job? But we know the answer: The police union. Great reporting by Pro Publica. As to the police union…well, read for yourselves:
When the indicted ticket-fixing officers were arraigned at a Bronx courthouse in October 2011, hundreds of off-duty officers summoned by the city’s largest police union showed up, heckling prosecutors and investigators while holding signs that read “It’s A Courtesy, Not A Crime.” (No, it’s selective justice, apparently the only kind of justice meted out by NYC cops.)
Patrick Lynch, the longtime head of the 24,000-member New York City Police Benevolent Association, argued that ticket-fixing wasn’t a criminal act but a “long standing practice at all levels of the department” that was ingrained in NYPD culture. (A spokesperson for the union hasn’t responded to phone and email messages seeking comment for this story.)
When you read a headline like this, you know that the story is a non-story: “Timeline for Delaware auditor case unknown.” One could say the same about Darius Brown’s travails. Seriously, what’s going on there?
What do you want to talk about?