Today I learned that there's a world where types of houseplants go in and out of style.

That is not a world I have time for.

The vivid red-purple of fuchsia, the color, comes from fuchsia, the flower, which is in turn named for 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs. (His last name, by the way, comes from the German word for "fox.") And if you think fuchsia and magenta are the same color, you're closer than you might think: Magenta was originally an aniline dye named fuchsine, named after the fuchsia flower. The name was changed in 1859, the year it was patented, in honor of the French victory at the Battle of Magenta. That apparently helped the dye become a stunning success.

The sheriff’s office declined to provide additional information on the alleged assault, including motive. But Taylor Hennick, who attended the event, told local news outlets that she overheard the attack near the Mineral County Fair and Rodeo’s entrance, just as the national anthem began to play.

The woman said she heard a “pop,” and turned to see the boy writhing on the ground.

“He was bleeding out of his ears, seizing on the ground, just not coherent,” Hennick told the Missoulian. As startled spectators closed in on Brockway, Hennick said he offered a simple defense for his actions.

“He said [the boy] was disrespecting the national anthem, so he had every right to do that,” she added.

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Oh, look:

The attorney for a 39-year-old man charged with assaulting a child who didn't take his hat off for the national anthem says his client, compromised by a traumatic brain injury, believes he was acting on an order from President Donald Trump.

Stock markets in the U.S. will face major pains if President Donald Trump fails to win a second term in the White House, widely followed investor Mark Mobius predicts.

Holy crap! Eek!

Surely this prediction is supported by data? Surely you can just tell by looking at a chart of daily Dow Jones closing values and see a clear difference between the Trump era of awesomeness and the Obama era of failure?

Not seeing it.

Guess that's why I'm not a money manager.

Google has a new programming language called "go".

You'd think Google would know better than to name something with an essentially unsearchable name.

This Black-and-White photo uses color grid lines to trick your brain:

Quote:

About 72% of traumatic brain injury-related emergency department visits among children are attributable to consumer products, found the study published in the journal Brain Injury on Monday.
The study found that the top 10 leading products contributing to non-fatal traumatic brain injuries in children younger than a year to 19 years old are:

• floors
• ...

I think I've read enough.

Have you ever craved the full reefer aroma without any of the guilt?

Raleigh, N.C. — A key House committee voted Wednesday to differentiate smokable hemp from marijuana, just one week after a different committee voted to define them as the same drug.

The abrupt shift in position was led by the same lawmaker who led the charge to criminalize smokable hemp last week: House Agriculture Chairman Rep. Jimmy Dixon
.

The debate over hemp has been the main issue dogging this year's Farm Act, which appeared to be in danger of failing after Dixon, R-Duplin, sought to ban smokable hemp as of December and amended a second bill to define the product as marijuana under the state's controlled substances laws. Both those changes were approved by House committee votes after Dixon insisted that allowing hemp cigarettes would amount to legalizing marijuana.

Everything I've read or heard about Mueller's hearing yesterday tells me that because, unlike the GOP questioners, Mueller wasn't a dervish of misinformation and slander, the GOP 'won'.

Our media is worthless.

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Looks like Jennifer Rubin feels similarly:

I worry that we — the media, voters, Congress — are dangerously unserious when it comes to preservation of our democracy. To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when he confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy.

The “failure” is not of a prosecutor who found the facts but might be ill equipped to make the political case, but instead, of a country that won’t read his report and a media obsessed with scoring contests rather than focusing on the damning facts at issue.

Many well-meaning figures continue to beat the drums of impeachment rather than demand that Trump be voted out of office for betraying his country and lying to voters to conceal his crew’s unpatriotic sellout to Russian actors.

Trump reads from the same hymnal of disinformation and recites the same slander of democratic institutions that 20th-century totalitarians deployed, yet too many in the media call him the “winner” because Mueller did not pass their ridiculous tests (e.g. add new information, persuade Republicans).

The comments in response to two sponsored posts on Facebook promoting an upcoming Winston-Salem concert by the Grammy-winning and internationally-acclaimed group Tinariwen came in a steady drip of loathing, vitriol and menace.

One commenter from Smithfield wrote on July 13: “Gotta bring my AR, too….”

Another commenter chimed in: “So ISIS is playing the Ramcat? LOL.” And another: “Take the fucking towels off your god damn heads.”

Responding to the Ramkat’s invitation to “join us for Tinariwen, with special guest Lonnie Holley,” one commenter wrote, “Or bomb us, your choice.” A commenter from Randolph County wrote, “Any true American will not support this bunch of trash. Let them perform in their own country. They need to get out of the USA.”

Reacting to a photo of the band wearing traditional north African robes and turbans, a commenter from Archdale, wrote, “Ain’t looking at nothing Muslim. The wanna-be religion that’s the plague of the world.” Another wrote, “Look like terrorists to me. Um no way.”

You'll be shocked to learn that, instead of being ISIS members or promoters of hatred, the band was actually chased out of their home country of Mali by Islamic extremists for being musicians.

None of the FB clowns bothered to do any research, of course. They saw people in different clothes and shit themselves.