Random News and Notes 15 July

A reporter, Link Lauren, teed one up for President Trump.

The question came after O’Donnell appeared on Chris Cuomo’s show and said this: “”I got myself into some bad places, you know? I was very, very depressed. I was overeating. I was over-drinking…You know, it was very heavy, to tell you the truth.”

That’s what TDS will do to you. . .

The Aspen Security forum is an annual meeting/confab for global security issues. This year, for the first time since it started there will be no official US government presence. SecDef Hegseth pulled all the DOD participants yesterday, the day before the conference opened.

. . . because their values do not align with the values of the DoD,” @SeanParnellATSD said

Power move right there.

It is looking like California Senator Adam Schiff committed mortgage fraud. Schiff had been censured for similar accusations while he was still in the House of Representatives.

If you or I had done this, we’d feel the full weight of the government prosecution. Schifty? We’ll see. . .

I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here, so skip ahead if you want. I saw this post on the Twitter and frankly – well, I’ll share it before I start ranting.

Let’s start with what is objectively wrong with that post. We’ll start with what the poster calls ‘tarnish’. That is not tarnish, it is verdigris – a layer of copper carbonate – and it protects the copper from the elements. If you removed the verdigris, the copper underneath would be attacked by the salt air, rain and wind, causing it to ablate. Any additional thinning of the copper skin could be catastrophic. During the last major restoration work, started in 1984 and completed in 1986, the skin thickness was measured in multiple places. It was dangerously thin in several spots.

Now for the subjective. The designer, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, intended for the statue to develop its green patina over time, not just for the protective element, though that was part of his reasoning. He wanted the statue to be the color that it is. It has been that color, or close, ever since it was installed on Bedloes – now Liberty – Island in New York Harbor.

Unless a cleaned copper surface is somehow coated with a protective film or paint, it turns brown – a nasty poo brown – before the layer of verdigris returns. And that brown lasts for years.

I expect this nonsense is showing up again – yeah, it’s been bandied about before – because of the Semiquincentennial next year. Regardless, the idea is a crappy one for multiple reasons.

The MLB Home Run Derby was last night. Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh hit 54 total bombs to win. His 18 dingers in the final round powered him to the win over Junior Caminero and his 15.

Funny thing, Cal predicted his win when he was just 8 years old:

He leads all of baseball with 38 homers and 82 RBI on the season.