A vice mayor for a small town in Virginia is receiving attention from across the nation after calling U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg a derogatory term based on his sexuality during his weekly Facebook Live show on Feb. 15.
Jim Wood, the Vice Mayor of Waynesboro, Virginia, hosts the Facebook Live show from his own page every Wednesday, and the show is not connected to his political position or the City of Waynesboro. Waynesboro has a population of 22,550 people.
Wood's show, "Conservative Conversations with Friends Around the World" was covering the topic of the recent train derailment in Ohio, when Wood used it as an opportunity to use word play on Buttigieg's name and his sexuality, as the first openly gay individual to serve on a presidential cabinet position.
"Look at Ohio right now at this train derailment," Wood said during the live video post. "You know the staff that ol' Pete Buttplug or whatever his name is, is telling everybody, you know, don't pay attention to that over there, that's no big deal, oh wait a minute, that's Trump's fault."
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In a text message response in an interview with the News-Leader, Wood said the derogatory term he used in place of Buttigieg's last name had nothing to do with his sexuality.
"It was a play on his name only," Wood said. "His lack of action in helping people affected by the train derailment in Ohio was the topic of conversation. Nothing was said about his personal life."
Wood won his Ward D seat in Waynesboro by only 17 votes in November.
One of the largest black holes ever recorded has been discovered using a new technique that could spot thousands more of the insatiable celestial monsters in the coming years, according to astronomers.
The ultramassive black hole, one of just four ever observed, is more than 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, a new study said.
It is the first black hole ever observed using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, in which light traveling towards us from a distant galaxy appears to magnify and bend inwards, giving away the presence of a dark giant.
James Nightingale, an astronomer at the UK's Durham University and the study's lead author, told AFP the process was "similar to shining light through the base of a wine glass".
He said it was "very fortuitous" that the light of a galaxy in the distant universe travelled extremely close to this black hole, which is roughly two billion light years from Earth.
It could even be the biggest black hole ever recorded, but it was difficult to say for sure given the varying techniques and uncertainties involved, he added.
Supermassive black holes sit at the centre of galaxies using their vast gravitational pull to gobble up stars like specks of dust, not even allowing light to escape.
Previous black holes of this size have been observed when their voracious devouring gives off huge amounts light at the margins -- or by measuring the orbit of stars that speed up as they pass by.
But these techniques only work for galaxies relatively close to Earth.
Gravitational lensing allows astronomers to "discover black holes in the other 99 percent of galaxies that are currently inaccessible," Nightingale said.
There are currently around 500 known gravitational lenses -- at least one of which we now know is a supermassive black hole.
But "the landscape is about to dramatically change," Nightingale said.
The European Space Agency's Euclid mission, planned to launch into space in July, will open a "big data era" for black hole hunters by creating a huge high resolution map of the universe, he said.
In the next six years Euclid could find 100,000 new gravitational lenses, which would potentially point towards thousands of previously hidden black holes, Nightingale added.
For the latest discovery, the researchers used computer simulations and images from the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm their findings, as well as eliminating other possibilities such as an overconcentration of dark matter.
The huge size is also consistent with what would be expected for a black hole at the centre of its giant host galaxy, Nightingale said.
The mass of all the stars in the galaxy, dubbed Abell 1201, is more than a trillion times that of our Sun, meaning it would be expected to have a particularly large black hole at its centre.
The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Tuesday.
© 2023 AFP
A racist man from Independence, Kansas was arrested this week after leaving a seemingly endless stream of racist voicemails for a local judge in which he also hinted at having plans for violent actions.
The Kansas City Star reports that 42-year-old Michael Deblois left more than a dozen voicemails over the span of two days for a Jackson County judge in which he repeatedly said the N-word in what prosecutors describe as "hateful, angry" messages that included rants about “reverse discrimination,” “government corruption” and a “fraudulent homeowners association.”
In one message, Deblois made a thinly veiled threat of retribution against the judge.
"I’m not doing anything to a single member of your... staff that you didn’t do to me first," Deblois allegedly said. "Eye for an eye, makes you wonder what I do have planned."
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Identifying Deblois as the man behind the voicemails was not difficult, as he helpfully left his name and phone number in the messages.
Police made the move to arrest Deblois shortly after the judge, who is not being publicly identified, filed for a protective order after becoming concerned that Deblois meant to commit acts of violence.
Deblois has since been charged with tampering with a judicial officer and harassment, reports the Kansas City Star.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough profanely bashed Donald Trump and his Republican defenders for celebrating Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes.
The former president showed a video of jailed rioters singing a song, "Justice for All," and the national anthem during a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, and Trump defended them and raged against "thug" prosecutors -- and the "Morning Joe" host tried to imagine if anyone else had done something similar.
"Can you imagine if the left did this?" Scarborough said. "They have the leading candidate for president, for the nomination for the presidency praising -- they have put together a choir of convicts who beat the sh*t out of cops with an American flag. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, would you like me to say it in a nicer way? They beat the crap out of cops with an American flag, and four died, and their families directly blame the assault [on] the rioters. They defecated in the Capitol."
"Can you imagine if left-wingers did all of that, and then Bernie Sanders says, 'I have a good idea, let's make a choir, we can celebrate the fact that they defecated on the cops, we can do that -- why, that will help us?'" Scarborough continued. "I mean, think about that, what would Newsmax say, what would Fox say, what would all of these right wing -- they are openly praising rioters and convicts."
READ MORE: GOP probes 'seem to be flopping' as voters see them as 'revenge': analysis
"This is the hero of the Republican Party, these are the heroes of Donald Trump, these are the heroes of [Marjorie Taylor Greene]," he added. "This is who they love."
Watch the video below or at this link.
03 29 2023 06 38 17 youtu.be
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