Australia On F*ckfire
Australia, as we mentioned New Year's Eve, is on fire. Wildfires have burned roughly 12 million acres in the country since September and killed at least 15 people; by comparison, the 2018 wildfires in California, which killed about 100, burned 1.9 million acres. Here's a map of current fires (within 72 hours) on the continent, via researchers at Western Australian universities:
New South Wales has declared a week-long state of emergency, giving authorities greater powers to coordinate disaster and evacuation response, like closing roads and utilities.
Some of the numbers from Australia's bush fires are simply terrifying:
The blazes made breathing the air in Sydney as bad as smoking 37 cigarettes and have killed 480 million animals, environmental officials told the Times in the United Kingdom, including nearly one-third of the koalas in one of Australia's most populated koala habitats in an area 240 miles north of Sydney.
Half a billion animals. Sure, a lot of Australian wildlife wants to kill you, but that's still horrible. On Monday, a volunteer firefighter in New South Wales died when a 10-ton fire truck was knocked on its side by a fire tornado, a term we've learned here in the USA too.
New York Times Now 'Both Sides'-ing Measles, Whooping Cough, The Plague...
The New York Times, the paper of Robin Thicke records, won't stop with the "both sides" nonsense, even when one of the "sides" has measles. The New Jersey legislature tried to pass a law ending religious exemptions to vaccine requirements for students attending any public or private school and college. This seemed a good idea because schools are often buildings containing other people, many of whom don't want to catch infectious diseases. The bill was postponed, however, because legislators faced angry protestors shouting, "Don't touch my child!" To clarify, no one was going to touch anyone's child. That's creepy. The law would merely have prevented parents from unleashing an army of Typhoid Marys on New Jersey schools.
Here's how the Times summed up the debate in a tweet yesterday. It's screen-captured in case it's removed after Dean Baquet accidentally wanders into the Times offices.
The New York Times
Venice-Area Council Votes Down Climate Action, Gets Flooded. Not With Angry Calls, Just Flooded
The Veneto regional council, the parliament for the region of Italy where Venice is located, voted against a number of measures intended to take action against climate change Tuesday evening. Literally within minutes, the council's offices, right on the Grand Canal, were partly submerged by the worst flooding to hit the city in 50 years. Around 10 p.m. local time, the council chamber in the Ferro Fini Palace started looking like a set from Titanic, but to the relief of all, without that damn song. Council member Andrea Zanoni documented the flooded chamber and meeting rooms on the Facebook:
