Numlock News: May 21, 2024 • Chili's, Hostages, Space Junk

May 21, 2024

By Dave Levinthal

Today’s guest writer is my friend Dave Levinthal. He is the editor-in-chief of Raw Story, an excellent publication you should check in on and one of Editor & Publisher’s “10 to Watch” news organizations in 2024!

Lawmaker Lodging

Members of Congress haven’t received a raise since 2009, when their annual pay jumped a few thousand bucks to $174,000. Since then, it hasn’t budged, even as time and inflation have both marched forward. But a little-known rule change has allowed federal lawmakers to score up to $34,000 a year in living expense reimbursements for life in Washington, D.C. — money to which they weren’t entitled until last year. The downside? The Benjamins would come from a pot o’ cash that lawmakers use for official duties, such as rent, travel and the salaries of their own staffers. In Colorado, some delegation members, such as Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, got aggressive last year, claiming a reimbursement north of $21,500. Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse, in contrast, claimed less than $5,000.

Caitlyn Kim, Colorado Public Radio

Lawmaker Lawbreaking

Here’s one way federal lawmakers can get rich: playing the stock market. And many do, buying and selling shares of individual stock in oil, telecom, health and defense companies that may or may not have a gazillion dollars’ worth of potential profit hanging on this congressional decision or that. Yes, it’s legal for members of Congress to engage in such financial activity so long as no one can prove they’re using privileged or otherwise insider information to execute curiously well-timed trades. What’s not legal is failing to publicly disclose those trades. Nevertheless, 43 members of the current Congress have so far violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’s disclosure provision. In some cases they’ve missed a 45-day federal disclosure deadline by hundreds of days. Lucky for them, this conflicts-of-interest law, passed by Congress itself in 2012, only hits first-time violators with a $200 fine — providing congressional ethics officials don’t just simply waive the paltry penalty, which they often do.

Alexandria Jacobson, Raw Story

Space Junk

There’s so much crap orbiting planet Earth. How many pieces of “orbital debris” are larger than 1 millimeter? Try 100 million, according to NASA — or one speck of space junk for every resident of Canada, Australia, Sweden and Kazakhstan combined. (And that’s even before we tally a few dozen janky Starlink satellites SpaceX will “deorbit” this year.) Given the untidy state of our thermosphere and exosphere, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force want to mount as many as seven new telescopes atop the Haleakala volcano in Maui, Hawaii, to help track it all. But many Native Hawaiians are livid at the government, which they already say has desecrated the mountain with research installations. Pele, the Hawaiian volcano deity, could not be reached for comment.

Paula Dobbyn, Honolulu Civil Beat

Hostages

You’re on a work trip in a faraway country when men with guns suddenly appear and spirit you into a windowless black van. They blindfold you. They tell you to keep quiet. Your mind races as you attempt to make sense of a situation that defies logic. Where am I going? Why is this happening? What do they want? Will I ever see my family again? Between 2012 and 2022, an average of 34 U.S. hostages were being held somewhere overseas. Often, the perpetrators are terrorist organizations; for example, Hamas is presently holding five U.S. nationals somewhere in Gaza. But foreign governments are increasingly the bad actors, targeting businesspeople, aid workers and journalists.

Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton, Atavist

Chili’s

There’s no such thing as bad publicity — unless, perhaps, you’re a PR rep for Chili’s Grill & Bar, the sorta kinda Tex-Mex-ish restaurant chain that half the internet wants to believe is a pepper’s width away from serving its final chicken bacon ranch quesadilla. But lo, Chili’s is not about to go belly-up à la Red Lobster, the similarly ubiquitous eatery that filed for bankruptcy this week. The confusion stems from a handful of recent articles, shared widely on the socials, noting that Chili’s closed a few underperforming restaurants. But overall, Chili’s is doing solid, if not red-hot, business, reporting a 3.5 percent increase in comparable restaurant sales from the third quarter of fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024.

Sarah Blaskovich, Dallas Morning News

Horseplay

Fresh off his Preakness victory, Seize the Grey isn’t the odds-on favorite to win the Belmont Stakes, the final jewel in the Triple Crown of horse racing. The horse is a 15-1 long(ish) shot by one early estimate. Matters are only marginally better at 9-1 for Mystik Dan, winner of the Kentucky Derby. If that has you down, head over to Alta Vista, Lycos or your other favorite search engine and type in “Mywifenosevrything,” then “Arrrrr Arrrrr Arrrrr.” You’ll soon feel ready to race a country mile.

Ed DeRosa, Horse Racing Nation

Litigious Babies

By 2030, South Korea projects it’ll cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2018 levels. But that’s not nearly good enough, according to some infants. In a case “unheard of in East Asia,” children, babies and even an unborn baby have filed legal petitions against the South Korean government — via their adults — for failing to adequately address climate change. Given the maneuver’s novel nature, there’s no telling the outcome, but the petitioners are all but guaranteed to scream, cry and wet themselves, win or lose.

Carissa Wong, Nature

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