We present you funny dog posts from Jun 16 to Jun 22 that will paws-itively make you through the rest of the week!

Finding Food, and Hope, During Difficult Times

They're Making a List and Checking it Twice

Trump Isn't Just Beating Biden in the Polls; He's Outraising Him Too

In the midst of all of the record-breaking heatwaves the world is seeing at the moment, people’s sleep can be one of the first things to suffer. Not only is that straight up unenjoyable when it’s happening, but a lack of sleep can make us feel pretty awful in the days after too. So how can we beat the heat when we want to sleep?Don’t napAs tempting as it is when it feels like holiday weather, taking a nap when there’s a heatwave isn’t such a great idea if you want to sleep later on. While short naps can make us feel a bit better, if the naps stray into full on deep sleep territory, or you’re simply not a napper under normal circumstances, it can a) make you feel super groggy, which isn’t fun in the heat, and b) make it even more difficult to sleep at night.It’s easier said than done, of course, as heat can make us feel lethargic; that’s because of the extra energy that the body uses up to try and keep your core temperature normal. The visible sign of this is sweating more (which can also happen during a heatwave nap) but underlying this is an energy-expensive increase in heart and metabolic rate.Keeping the bedroom freshThe bedroom might otherwise be a place for spicing things up, but if you want a chance of a decent night’s sleep during a heatwave, one of the best things to do is try and keep things cool in there.Air conditioning might seem like the obvious way to do this, but for one, not everyone has it (fellow Brits will be all too familiar with this) and second, AC can be pretty expensive to run. Thankfully, there’s another simpler – and free – option.Keep your curtains closed during the day – this keeps the sunlight out, stopping it from beaming in and warming up the room. Similarly, it can help to keep windows closed; the air outside is likely to be hotter than that inside, so keeping them shut stops the hot air from moving in.In places where the nights tend to be cooler than the days, as long as it’s safe to do so, opening up the windows for a bit later at night and early in the morning can let hotter air out, and bring some much-needed coolness.This helps us sleep better because lowering its temperature is part of the way that the body prepares to settle down for the night. If the air around is too hot, then it’s a lot harder for the body to cool down, making it difficult to get to sleep.Cool threadsThose cozy teddy fleece bed sheets your grandma got you for Christmas are an absolute no-go in the hot weather. Instead, it’s recommended to switch to bedding made out of more breathable, natural fibers like cotton and linen to stay cool. Bunging them in the freezer wrapped up in a plastic bag can also help.Though it might be tempting to ditch everything when you’re tossing and turning, the body can eventually cool down once you’re asleep – so don’t go throwing away your sheets in a heat-fueled rage, you might be cold later on.No freezing showersThis might go against your every instinct when it’s hot and sticky, but taking a freezing cold shower before bed might actually end up making you even warmer. That’s because it can cause blood vessels to tighten up – known as vasoconstriction, this is a response from the body that conserves heat, which is probably the last thing you want to do.Instead, showering in cool-to-tepid water can help trigger the lowering of body temperature required to get sleepy.

With summer temperatures baking much of the US, Texas's notoriously ailing power grid is set to be put under intense strain once again. Blackouts and power failures are on the cards for many – but previous years have shown some cashing in on the sweltering weather.Faced with sky-high demand last summer, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) took extreme measures to curtail the state’s power usage. Along with issuing eight calls for voluntary energy conservation, the company looked towards Bitcoin mining, the energy-hungry process of using computational power to solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions on the Bitcoin network and earn newly created bitcoins.In August 2023, ERCOT reportedly paid a single company $31.7 million in energy credits to reduce its Bitcoin mining operations. The company in question is Riot Platforms, owners of North America’s largest Bitcoin mine in Rockdale with a total power capacity of 700 MW.“August [2023] was a landmark month for Riot in showcasing the benefits of our unique power strategy,” Jason Les, CEO of Riot, said in a statement (that’s since been removed from their website).“Riot achieved a new monthly record for Power and Demand Response Credits, totaling $31.7 million in August, which surpassed the total amount of all Credits received in 2022. Based on the average Bitcoin price in August, Power and Demand Response credits received equated to approximately 1,136 Bitcoin,” Les explained.Later that year, a bill was introduced to restrict the amount of compensation cryptocurrency miners could receive in the form of credits, but it ultimately failed to advance past committees in the House.It’s unclear whether Texas will dish out similar credits to Bitcoin miners this summer, although the state’s power grid is in store for further trouble. The latest report from ERCOT predicts a 16 percent chance of an electric grid emergency and a 12 percent chance of rolling blackouts in August 2024 between 8 and 9 pm. Texas is the only state in the continental US with its own electric grid. This has certain advantages, such as dodging federal regulations, but it limits Texas's ability to import electricity from other states during times of need and emergency.In recent years, the situation has become even more severe for the Lone Star State due to the boom in computer data centers and artificial intelligence (AI), which sap a gigantic amount of energy. Studies suggest that AI could account for 0.5 percent of global energy consumption by 2027, about the same amount as the Netherlands. Surging energy demand for AI and crypto will be a problem for many parts of the world, not least Texas, which hopes to pose itself as a hub of tech infrastructure. Whether their electricity grid can keep up remains to be seen. “ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas and others gave shocking testimony today in the Senate Committee on Business & Commerce that within only six years (that’s only three legislative sessions), our power grid needs will grow from about 85,000 to 150,000 megawatts,” Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, posted on X earlier this month.“Later testimony said the growth is due to the increases in population, normal business growth, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, crypto miners and data centers will be responsible for over 50 percent of the added growth. We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid. Crypto mining may actually make more money selling electricity back to the grid than from their crypto mining operations,” he added.“Texans will ultimately pay the price.”

A family in Florida has launched a lawsuit against NASA, seeking compensation after a piece of space junk fell from the sky and crashed through the roof of their house. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, although the family’s lawyer says the ramifications of this case go far beyond mere damage reparation and could set a precedent for how future claims of this sort are resolved.A significant increase in rocket launches and space operations in the last few years has seen a massive rise in debris floating around in Low Earth Orbit, heightening the risk of collisions in space and potentially posing a danger to those on the ground. And while most of this heavenly waste is likely to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, the incident in question serves as an ominous reminder of what can happen when bits of refuse survive their descent.    In this case, the offending object was identified by NASA as part of a stanchion that was used to load a bunch of spent batteries onto a cargo pallet onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Originally discarded from the ISS in 2021, the item was supposed to harmlessly degrade upon re-entry, but a fragment remained intact and eventually fell straight through the roof of the Otero family’s home in Naples, Florida, on March 8 of this year.“My clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives,” said the family’s lawyer Mica Nguyen Worthy in a statement. “They are grateful that no one sustained physical injuries from this incident, but a ‘near miss’ situation such as this could have been catastrophic,” she added. According to the statement from law firm Cranfill Sumner, at least one young member of the Otero family was at home at the moment of impact. “If the debris had hit a few feet in another direction, there could have been serious injury or a fatality,” says Worthy.AFP reports that the family are seeking more than $80,000 in damages, although Worthy insists that the outcome of this case could help to establish a protocol for handling space junk-related incidents in the future. “Here, the U.S. government, through NASA, has an opportunity to set the standard or ‘set a precedent’ as to what responsible, safe, and sustainable space operations ought to look like,” she said.According to a study published in 2022, the space junk issue is now so severe that there’s a 10 percent chance of someone on Earth being killed by falling debris within the next decade. Whatever happens in the Otero family’s case could help to provide a legal framework for dealing with such an eventuality.

[LANGUAGE WARNING] Watch out for shenanigans on Thursday night from CNN’s debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash! Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden — by rule — can have their microphones muted if they go over time. But who can mute Tapper and Bash when they talk over Trump and hit him with unfair and slanted questions?  Based on their reporting and analysis over the years at CNN, Republican supporters of Trump should expect Tapper and Bash to question not just his policy positions, but his judgment and even behavior.  Both had harsh reviews for Trump’s performance after the first presidential debate in 2020.  Tapper blasted Trump: “That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck….worst debate I have ever seen….it’s primarily because of President Trump.” Bash agreed: “You just took the words out of my mouth. You used some high-minded language. I’m just going to say it like it is: that was a shitshow!” On Election Night 2020, Tapper provided a nasty epitaph to Trump’s presidency: “For tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over.” On the other hand, both have profusely praised Biden.  After Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Address, Tapper prompted his colleague: “Dana Bash, what did you think? You’ve been to a lot of State of the Union addresses. Do you think that President Biden met the moment?” Bash giddily affirmed: “He certainly met the moment….[Democrats] wanted him to be a fighter and….did he deliver.” Bash can’t believe Biden isn’t trouncing Trump, even bringing Rep. Nancy Pelosi on her show to incredulously ask: “Inflation, it looks good when you look at the numbers….Wages are up….There’s a lot for President Biden to tout. So the question is about why Americans don’t seem to be giving him the credit?” Here’s a brief montage by NewsBusters Media Editor Bill D’Agostino of Tapper and Bash at their worst:      The following is a small sampling of the most liberal moments of Tapper and Bash’s time at CNN, via the MRC archives:  DANA BASH   “Dumpster Fire” “Shitshow” Debate Was Trump’s Fault     CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper: “That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck. That was the worst debate I have ever seen. In fact, it wasn’t even a debate. It was a disgrace. And it’s primarily because of President Trump, who spent the entire time interrupting not abiding by the rules he agreed to, lying, maliciously attacking the son of the Vice President.”…Correspondent Dana Bash: “You just took the words out of my mouth. You used some high-minded language. I’m just going to say it like it is: that was a shitshow!”...Tapper: “The President does not think he’s going to win this election. And he wants to bring the rest of us down with him.”— CNN’s Debate Night in America, September 29, 2020.   Biden “Met the Moment”     CNN anchor Jake Tapper: “Dana Bash, what did you think? You’ve been to a lot of State of the Union addresses. Do you think that President Biden met the moment?”CNN anchor Dana Bash: “He certainly met the moment that his members of his party, those who are really upset and worried about this coming election year and frankly, what would happen if he didn’t win another time because of their concerns about who’s on the other side of the ticket. They wanted him to be a fighter and — boy — fight, did he deliver.”— CNN’s live coverage of the State of the Union address, March 7, 2024.   Bash Takes Advice From Barbara Streisand On Not Running Anti-Biden “Cheap Fakes”      “When I say ‘it,’ it is a lot of memes and what the White House is calling ‘cheap fakes,’ which means that these — there are videos that are being put out on social media and then amplified on conservative media that in some cases are just not right and in other cases are highly, highly misleading of President Biden and….I don’t want to let a moment go by where I can read a tweet from Barbara Streisand on the show. So, I’m going to do it, she said, ‘We must stay vigilant to the ongoing and pervasive spread of misinformation. Maybe now more than usual, in the lead up to the presidential election.’ And her argument was don’t amplify it. It is interesting given the fact that there was a famous case where somebody took a picture of her house in Malibu and she sued to not have that shown and then it turned out that people started looking at the picture more than before. So, it’s the question that I started this conversation with is how much to talk about it versus how much to just kind of ignore it and we’re trying to do both here.”— Dana Bash on CNN’s Inside Politics, June 19.    Blaming Trump Rhetoric for New Zealand Shooting     “The question is can he [President Trump] and will he do more to bring together – try to bring together people. That’s the opposite of what we saw in Charlottesville and it is the opposite of what we see when the political calendar gets close to election day. When he knows what riles up his base and the problem is riling up the base using terms like ‘invaders’ in ads that he tweets out also reaches people who are nut jobs.”— Chief political correspondent Dana Bash discussing New Zealand shooting as aired on CNN New Day, March 15, 2019.   Taken Aback by Trump’s “Flip Comment” at Debate “Not to sound too corny, but what makes this country different from countries with dictators in Africa or Stalin or Hitler or any of those countries with dictators and totalitarian leaders, is that when they took over, they put their opponents in jail. To hear one presidential candidate, say — even if it was a flip comment, which it was — ‘you’re going to be in jail’ to another presidential candidate on the debate stage in the United States of America, stunning, just stunning.”— Correspondent Dana Bash during post-presidential debate coverage on CNN, October 9, 2016.   Should Trump Receive Intelligence Briefings?  “I want to ask about the idea that Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president. U.S. intelligence agencies are reportedly preparing to share classified briefings with him. You’re, of course, a former ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, Speaker of the House. Should Donald Trump receive intelligence briefings?”— Host Dana Bash to Rep. Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union, March 17, 2024.   Not Even D-Day Ceremony Is Safe From Superfluous Attacks on Trump     “What you have described and what we saw from President Biden on this [D-Day] trip clearly intentionally, not just sending a message to the world that is first and foremost, his goal, but also back here in the U.S., cautioning about the fragility of democracy and it was quite a contrast from what we heard from the former President, his rival, to take the White House again, Donald Trump.”— Host Dana Bash to Rep. Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s Inside Politics, June 7, 2024.   Inflation “Looks Good,” Why Isn’t the Public Giving Biden Credit?      “I want to ask about the economy. Inflation, it looks good when you look at the numbers. Inflation is down to just 3 percent. The labor market is steadily adding jobs. Wages are up. Consumer sentiment is the highest since September of 2021. So there’s, a lot for President Biden to tout. So the question is about why Americans don’t seem to be giving him the credit. A Quinnipiac poll this week found nearly six in 10 Americans still disapprove of his handling of the economy. Why is that? And what does he have to do to turn that around?”— Host Dana Bash to Rep. Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union, July 23, 2023.    Bash Worries that Democrats May Suffer From GOP’s  “Baseless” Attacks On DOJ     “Leigh Ann, is it your sense that Democrats who are on the front line, which is when it comes to getting majority back, whether they believe that these attacks on DOJ, these claims, baseless claims that the DOJ is behind, for example, what happened in New York is potent enough to hurt not just President Biden, but down-ballot.”— Host Dana Bash to Washington Post Live’s Leigh Ann Caldwell as aired on CNN Inside Politics with Dana Bash, June 5, 2024.    Trying to Provoke a GOP Food Fight: Did Trump “Go Too Far?” “Governor Bush, Mr. Trump has suggested that your views on immigration are influenced by your Mexican born wife. He said that, quote, ‘If my wife were from Mexico, I think I would have a soft spot for people from Mexico.’ Did Mr. Trump go too far in invoking your wife?”— CNN debate moderator Dana Bash to Gov. Jeb Bush at GOP Primary Debate, September 16, 2015   Bash to Ramaswamy: How Dare You Point Out Democratic Racism?     “You took issue with comments from Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. She reportedly said, quote, ‘We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.’ About that, you said, ‘These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.’ You know, I’m sure, the KKK was responsible for more than a century’s worth of horrific lynchings, rapes, murders of black people. How in any way are the views you’re talking about comparable to the views and atrocities committed by the KKK?”— Host Dana Bash to GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on CNN’s State of the Union, September 10, 2023.   Praising “Badass” Pelosi “In many ways, Nancy Pelosi is the original Badass Woman of Washington.” — November 13, 2018 tweet (from CNN’s official Twitter account) promoting correspondent Dana Bash interview with Rep. Nancy Pelosi.   Adoring AOC     “Being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez means being a celebrity and looking like one, red lips and all. She was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2020 and even shot this tutorial for Vogue on her beauty routine....You sometimes take heat for your celebrity status, for being glamorous....You embrace the power?...How do you use that power, the power of femininity, as you describe it?”— Host Dana Bash on CNN’s Being...AOC, August 9, 2021.   JAKE TAPPER   Trump Era of  “Cruelty” and “Meanness” Is “Coming to an End”      “It has also been a time of extreme divisions. Many of the divisions caused and exacerbated by President Trump himself....It has been a time where truth and fact were treated with disdain. It is a time of cruelty where official inhumanities such as child separation became the official shameful policy of the United States. But now the Trump presidency is coming to an end, to an end, with so many squandered opportunities and ruined potential, but also an era of just plain meanness. It must be said to paraphrase President Ford, for tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over.”— Host Jake Tapper on CNN election coverage, November 7, 2020.   When Did Airing “Untrue Things” Stop CNN Before? “We’re not carrying his [Donald Trump] remarks live because frankly he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous.”— Host Jake Tapper on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, June 13, 2023.   If He’s “Fighting for Facts and Truth Everyday” at CNN, Then He’s Been Losing “One of the important things in journalism that we can do is remember that we are fighting for the legitimacy of journalism and fighting for facts and truth everyday, everytime we step up to the bat — step up to the plate and it is important that we get it right. Because we are, I think, in a way that I haven’t been in my 55 years, really fighting for the soul of journalism and fighting for trust.”— CNN anchor Jake Tapper at “The Vocation of Journalists in a Time of Testing: Lessons from David Carr. Jake Tapper, Erik Wemple, Claire Giangrave, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Amanda Ripley, John Carr” live stream event at Georgetown University, June 18, 2024.   Boffo Review for Biden Convention Speech     “I’ve heard Joe Biden give, I don’t know, dozens, hundreds of speeches over the years. I have to say this was one of the best, if not the best performance I’ve ever seen.”— Host Jake Tapper on CNN’s live coverage of the Democratic National Convention, August 20, 2020.   Hailing a Republican (Jeff Flake) For Standing Up to Trump “You know Joe McCarthy started in the late forties his crusade of indecency and smears and lies. And you know President Trump and Joe McCarthy are very different historical figures, but there is something similar....People are gonna look back at this era and say what were you doing with all – it’s not McCarthyism but it’s something else – all this indecency and all these lies, what did you do during that time?” — CNN host Jake Tapper discussing former Sen. Jeff Flake’s denunciations of Trump as aired on CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, October 24, 2017.   Tapper Questions Disabled Vet’s “Commitment” After No Impeachment Vote     “Congressman Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, who lost his legs, by the way, fighting for democracy abroad, although I don’t know what his — I don’t know about his commitment to it here in the United States.”— CNN anchor Jake Tapper during live impeachment coverage, January 13, 2021.

The Senate adjourned Thursday and won’t be back in the office for another two weeks, leaving the issue of drafting women unresolved over the July 4 break. That’s a pretty big deal, at least in broader America. In D.C., it’s just business as usual and is explained matter-of-factly. The House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act on Friday, June 14, with no requirement to enroll women in the Selective Service System (the system used in a draft). The next week, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill but slipped the infrastructure for drafting women into the mix. Now, the bills go “to conference,” where the committees and staff from the House and Senate will work out their differences. ‘This is an issue where voters — regardless of what part of the country they come from or what party they belong to — are not OK with this.’ The move “has raised some hackles among members of the far-right,” a particularly inept New York Post reporter claimed Thursday, but it appears the Democrats’ strange compulsion to draft women is creating discomfort more broadly than that. And it is a Democratic project. While the committee process is classified, Blaze News has learned multiple Senate Democrats have introduced the idea in committee before along partisan lines without GOP support. Their Democratic colleagues outside the committee who are up for re-election sang a less enthusiastic tune when reporters caught up with them. Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Penn.) claimed to be unfamiliar with the proposal. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in a particularly close race against Republican Tim Sheehy, told the Washington Examiner he would “have to take a look at it.” “It’s basic human instinct,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told Blaze News. “You don’t send women to fight so long as able-bodied men exist to fight. It's a fundamental notion. You don’t even have to get to a moral question on this; it's a survival question. This isn't what human beings want to do when you want to survive.” And while no Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Commitee were reportedly “in favor,” it passed out of committee 22-3, with one of the nays from the Democratic chairman, who said he opposed breaking budget-cap limits. The markup is classified, but members can say how they voted and will when they want to score political points. “You’ve got a number of Republicans who are opposed to this,” Lee told Blaze News, “but some of those Republicans who have expressed opposition to it also voted to advance it out of committee, so the question is how much fight will you see out of them between now and when it hits the floor?" And not all Republicans are even opposed to the idea. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) said drafting women is about “opportunity.” "This is not about combat,” she told reporters. "It is about their opportunity to serve.” Defenders of the system say it isn’t technically a draft, and that’s true — the United States hasn’t had a draft since the Vietnam War, and reinstating it would require an additional act of Congress. But it’s only true until the United States decides it’s time to draft people again. Then the promises of not drafting women become a promise not to draft women into combat roles, which becomes simply drafting women into combat roles. It’s creating the infrastructure for doing exactly what politicians claim they won’t do. Unlikely, to say the least. When “it’s the law,” Lee said, “we create the expectation that women will be drafted. It will lead to a draft of women next time we have a draft.” After July 4, Republicans are going to have to figure out how hard they’re willing to fight a whole lot of modern feminist tropes too many politicians accept unthinkingly. On the other side, Democrats are going to have to decide just how important it is to them to draft women and whether it’s worth putting vulnerable colleagues like Brown and Tester in the hot seat. And even once vacation is over, the summer timeline isn’t long. While committee staffers will be hard at work throughout, the actual House and Senate committees are only scheduled to be in session a combined 11 days before breaking for the long August recess. That leaves time for those against drafting women to get their message out there. "Once public attention gets put on it, things change,” Lee told Blaze News, “because people realize the juice isn't worth the squeeze when people are upset. ... This is an issue where voters — regardless of what part of the country they come from or what party they belong to — are not OK with this.” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who led the resistance three years ago when Congress last proposed drafting women, was a little blunter. “If Republicans even think about drafting women,” he told Blaze News, “every ounce of my being will be directed at destroying what’s left of the party." Washington Examiner: Senate Democrats dodge whether to expand draft to women Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. The fire rises: The Weekly Dish: My problem with IVF — and ours Blogger Andrew Sullivan was arguably the most influential journalist in America’s long slide toward gay marriage. That makes it all the more interesting when he comes out against IVF: And that’s the rub for me. In many cases, you’re creating new lives only to destroy them as waste. In many others, you don’t destroy them; you merely use them to beat the odds. They are quite simply a means to an end, violating a basic norm of inviolable human dignity. And these “means” are your own offspring. IVF literally requires a mother to play Sophie’s Choice several times over. And it’s harder to put these discarded humans out of your mind the way you can recover from an abortion, once the fetus has been dispensed with. Because they are still alive! By freezing them, you are conceding that they can one day change from a human being to a human person, with all the profound ramifications of that. And you may already have in front of you a growing IVF-created child who now has several siblings alive, just frozen in perpetual darkness. That’s what brings it home to me. There are now more than 600,000 future human beings sitting in “cryogenic nurseries” waiting for the light to come on — millions of brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, consigned indefinitely to living in vitro. Yes, the embryo has no memory, no sentience when frozen, no mind or will yet. There is no suffering. But the lack of suffering does not mean there is no sadness. Or no humanity.

If you’re tired of WoW, FF14, or Guild Wars 2 and are looking for another longstanding MMO to try, Aion Classic is for you. A relaunch of the original 2009 version, in a similar vein to World of Warcraft Classic and Old School Runescape, Aion's new 2.8 update ‘Conquest’ has just been revealed. With a higher level cap, more skills for all classes, and new activities like a dungeon to sink your teeth into, Aion Classic is about to get way better. Continue reading Overlooked MMORPG Aion Classic gets way better with big new update MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best old games, New MMOs, Best MMORPGs