The last two sentences in my post were slightly facetious, mainly to minimize the justified alarm that Covid might be responsible for a degenerative (and sometimes transmissible) brain disease in the long term. If a large proportion of those who get long Covid are going to get dementia and die after decades with something like Alzheimer's, the situation would certainly be serious and alarming. Hence, I sought to downplay the finding. It's serious, but there are probably a lot of other things that one will die off before Covid-induced degenerative brain disease, hopefully.

There's recent evidence that two peptides expressed by SARS-CoV-2 can self-assemble into Amyloid plaque tissue similar to the Prion protein that is implicated in the TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy) diseases like Scrapie, Kuru, BSE (Mad Cow disease), and so on. These are very long-term neural degenerative diseases, leading to death over time-frames of decades - the last documented Kuru death was recorded in 2009, though the causal agent was identified in the '60s. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35697699/ Summary: Two peptides expressed by SARS-CoV-2 (but not SARS-CoV-1) self-assemble to amyloid tissue (aka Prions) and are very significantly neurotoxic. Explains Long Covid directly as a prion-induced degenerative neural condition. Also notes that SARS2 is different from SARS1, due to the lack of documented long-term neurological effects from SARS1. Quote: "It is also interesting that ORF10 and ORF8 are the only two coded proteins present in SARS-CoV-2 which do not have a homologue in SARS-CoV-1, perhaps suggesting a unique amyloid etiology for COVID-19. While long-term consequences from SARS-CoV-1 infection were severe, including tiredness, depression, and impaired respiration, few or zero unequivocally neurological post-viral symptoms were recorded from the (admittedly quite small) set of documented cases." So, yes, Long Covid seems to be a death sentence in the long term. But so is birth, if timescales equal to a century or so are considered.

I saw the Faux News video on Youtube - in slow motion, it appears that one jet engine flamed out (maybe due to ingesting a bird or debris), threw out metal parts that shredded several rear tyres, and the driver lost control of the truck and it rolled over. Jet fuel and nitro fuel for the pyrotechnics probably contributed to the fireball - he had no chance. He did deploy the brake chutes the moment the jet flamed out, but there was no way it could have stopped that truck barreling at 200-300 mph. Not being judgemental, but it goes without saying that it was a high-risk stunt, and the stunt-driver had to have been aware of the risks.

@She sat there and she said... Yup, I heard that audio of the 911 dispatchers radioing the cops on the scene about the kids. There's still no clear answer as to why the Uvalde PD SWAT team wasn't deployed, and if they were even at the scene.

I'm guessing it was a turf/jurisdiction tussle between the UPD ( which had a 9-man SWAT team) and the CISD (which had 6 SROs with some tactical training, but no SWAT team). It looks like they're going to throw the Chief of the Uvalde CISD, Pedro Arredondo, under the truck for the screw-up: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/29/us/uvalde-texas-elementary-school-shooting-sunday/index.html (IMHO, the blame has to be shared by the CISD chief, the UPD chief as well as State agencies, but it was the CISD chief who was the commander on the scene, so he'll have to take the blame.)

@She sat there and she said... None that I have read in the news, but I'd suspect a jurisdictional turf war between the school district police and the regular Uvalde PD. Add Texas Rangers and Border Patrol Federal agents to the mix, and it's a recipe for confusion and undefined chains of command.

@txdavid7579 There's more - The Uvalde Police Department has a 9-member SWAT team, but they called in a Federal BORTAC tactical unit from ~70 miles away. That team arrived between 12:00 and 12:10 and were then ordered to hold off. https://www.yahoo.com/now/border-patrol-tactical-team-ordered-170904118.html The BORTAC unit didn't understand why: a) they were called from the Mexican border some ~70 miles away and then told to stand by; b) the local Uvalde SWAT team hadn't already engaged the shooter. (Those are pretty much the same questions I had earlier). In the event, it was the BORTAC unit which engaged and killed the perp between 12:44 and 12:58.

Yup, I went to Red Hat c.1998 almost entirely due to one thing: RPM (and RPMbuild from SRPMs). I tried Mandrake for a short while and then went to Fedora from FC3 to F30 or so. I still have a customized FC4 distro (with some pieces written by me decades ago during the heydays of Sourceforge) which run on several Centrino-era laptops running some legacy Windows apps on Wine.

@She sat there and she said... The latest reports are that the classroom door was locked automatically by remote control, and the shooter did nothing to lock it. He was locked in there with the kids and 2 adults.

There was a 911 call from a resident near the school at 11:32 reporting the crashed pickup (and maybe some gunshots). Whether the first responders were adequately prepared for an active shooter remains a matter of conjecture - they apparently entered the school at 11:44, were fired at, and retreated to safety.

Here are some more details: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10860747/Texas-cop-says-Uvalde-officers-retreated-gunman-shot.html Pictorial timeline: This is how the shooting played out over the course of nearly two hours from when Ramos killed his grandmother at home. He arrived at the school at 11.28am and the first 911 calls were made. He then walked unobstructed into the building with his AR-15 and headed towards the classroom. He fought off cops at 11.44am, then was left alone in the room with the victims until around 12.44pm - when SWAT arrived. The incident was declared over at 1.06pm.

I've been on Lubuntu 18.04 for a few years, and before that on Fedora (until F30 or so). I started on SLS (Soft Landing System), then went to Slackware 3.x, then Red Hat 5 or so, and stayed with it for ~2 decades before switching to Lubuntu. For fixing grub/bootsector problems, keep an install CD or DVD handy, and boot with it to go into rescue mode, then re-install grub and reboot - that should fix grub problems most of the time.

The rough timeline that I'm reading is that the perp crashed his vehicle outside at ~11:30, the first 911 call was at ~11:32, and the perp was shooting at various targets from the parking lot of the school until ~11:40. He didn't barricade himself inside the classroom until 11:44. Two first responders tried to engage him inside the school around that time, but were outgunned and/or couldn't get past the barricade. They waited between 40 to 60 mins from 11:44 for a tactical team to arrive, and the local police and other LEOs outside just sat around managing the yellow-tape cordon and keeping the parents from going in. Finally, a border-patrol team or just one border patrol dude trying to save his kid went in after 12:44 and engaged the perp after getting the key to the classroom from building maintenance. The perp was neutralized at about 1 PM - making it almost 90 minutes from the first 911 call, until he was taken out.

Ponkan seems to be similar to the Kamala Orange of Central India - a variety of the Mandarin orange that is edible even when the outer skin is green. It's very sweet with minimal tartness. Today, I got some organic Himayat & Alphonso Mangoes from a Women's self-help cooperative at a vend in a quiet residential neighbourhood (similar to stands in farmer's markets). They had apparently hooked up with an organic farm somewhere in the boonies, bought the mangoes wholesale, sorted and ripened them and sold them at retail at the stand. I can't complain - the Himayat was 98 on a scale of 100, and the Alphonso about 94/100. Neither was excessively sweet, but the texture and flavour of the Himayat was outstanding - buttery, earthy and with a lingering extended finish. As mangoes go, it is the most expensive peninsular mango at retail here - the equivalent of about $1 to $1.5/lb. Each mango weighs about 1 lb. A variety of Irwin is grown in Central India, but it rarely makes it to retail here - almost all are exported to Japan, which pays a premium for purple-coloured Irwins.

Staci Ograyensek, Renee Borgelt, Shelley Boshears (mother of Jesse), Melinda Gollaher, Shari Snyder - to name a few. Shari may not have been an arch villain, but her Voodoo dances and tit-flashing provided much entertainment here in the glory days. Edit: I forgot about Aryan Warrior Princess Angie Reynolds - she must be near the top of my hate list.