Caturday

Speck is chilling.

Guy Who Advocated For Deporting People is Getting Deported

Far-right political commentator and deportation advocate Milo Yiannopoulos is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody facing a final order of removal, according to U.S. officials and agency records.

So the guy who supported the party of face-eating leopards has had his face eaten.

Trump’s “Freedom Fuel”

Well, it turns out that the stations selling TrumpGas were, allegedly, selling stolen fuel.

Which tracks, no. It wasn't "Freedom Fuel", it was "Felon Fuel".

Scaling These Down, Here

Because It's Friday

A copy of the first locomotive in France with a firetube boiler, designed by Marc Seguin.

Scaling These Down, Here

Dear Navy: Fuck Off

A judge dismissed a lawsuit from a civilian engineer in the Military Sealift Command after it was determined that her report of being raped in her own bed aboard a Navy transport ship was within her duties and must be treated as a worker’s comp claim.

So, for the Navy, being raped is a work hazard. The Navy's Coverup Integrity Service also helped sweep the matter under the rug. The ship's captain, a civilian mariner, was "disciplined" by having to surrender his mariner's ticket.

I wish that I could say that I was shocked and surprised. But I'm not. It's never about justice with those clowns, it's all about protecting the institution.

In other news, several states are doing what they can to ensure that their children grow up illiterate and stupid.

Enlightening These Down, Here

Gaveling These Down, Here

Play Football, Scramble Your Brain

That's the upshot of a new study:

Since the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered:

Just how many N.F.L. players will end up with C.T.E.?

New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.

The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.

The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too.

That doesn't take into consideration those who played college ball and didn't go on to the pros. When I watched World Cup games and saw some dude taking a header on the ball, my thought was that guy's setting himself up for CTE down the road.

A dozen years ago, I went to a hairdresser whose grade-school son played tackle football. I wondered if they were setting their son up for future brain damage with repeated head impacts on a developing brain. But I kept my wonderings to myself.