Highest Earning Female Contestant on Jeopardy

Amy Schneider is the current Jeopardy! champ. She is a transgender engineering manager, and has shattered yet another record as she continues to dominate the long-running game show.

Schneider is now the highest-earning female contestant in Jeopardy’s 57-year history, after 18 consecutive victories as of Friday, Dec. 24.

Her total winnings stood at $706,800, beating previous record-holder Larissa Kelly, who earned $655,930 in regular season play and tournament competitions.

Schneider  first appeared on the show in November during Transgender Awareness Week., becoming one of Jeopardy!‘s all-time great players.

https://www.metroweekly.com/2021/12/jeopardy-champ-amy-schneider-becomes-highest-earning-woman-of-all-time/?fbclid=IwAR0qIQ7J_C6oAQXzCvqVr5XNeuMYYKfpJIZmKkl-O5D4J8LM8fJxQG1WgrY

Robert Steadward - Gamechanger in Sports

Robert Steadward has long been a key advocate of the disability sport movement. He helped found the International Paralympic Committee and served as its first president. In an agreement with the International Olympic Committee in 2000, he helped ensure the same city would host the Olympics and Paralympics moving forward. 

At an international meeting in the Netherlands in 1987, he unveiled a proposal for global governance of Paralympic sports. Major changes were adopted and a few years later Steadward became founding president of the International Paralympic Committee, serving from 1989 to 2001.

The high point of his career came on October 20, 2000, when, during the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, Steadward and Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, signed a historic memorandum of understanding.

The document solidified the relationship between the two organizations. It created the requirement that the host city for the Olympic games would also host the Paralympic games and strengthened funding and administrative support for the Paralympics.

https://around.uoregon.edu/content/game-changer-steadward-supports-paralympic-athletes

Problem with Republicans? Read this.

"I’ve spent much of my life pastoring in predominately white churches in the South.  Before that, I was raised in a family with many Conservatives. I’ve always been surrounded by Republican voters, and until very recently I could respect their positions, even when I disagreed with them. Despite our differences, I still saw them as inherently well-intentioned people.

"That is becoming nearly impossible, because I now realize something about them that grieves me.

"I used to think this was all about education. I’ve spent the last few years trying to make them aware of the ugliness they are tethered to, the criminality of the politicians they support, the irreparable damage they are doing to our nation’s sacred systems. I operated under the false assumption that if I could only make them aware of the malevolence of their party, that their better angels would certainly move them to fully reject it."

Hierarchy above all is the name of their game. And people who can feel superior to others follow along. 

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/12/11/why-ive-lost-respect-for-my-republican-friends/

California Governor Plans to Expand Texas Abortion Law to Gun Owners

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday he will push for a new law modeled on Texas’ abortion ban that would let private citizens sue anyone who makes or sells assault weapons or ghost guns.

“I am outraged by yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place,” Newsom said. “But if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”

In hierarchies, people on top who keep lower groups down are not used to being served up the same restrictions. This will be interesting to see how these accountability attempts fly.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article256524466.html

Concrete for Office Building Grows Moss with Huge Environmental Impact Possibilities

Researchers in Spain have developed a “living concrete” that grows moss, lichens and fungi that could turn city buildings into giant air purifiers The concrete is porous and acidic and acts almost like soil for moss, lichen, fungi and other drought-tolerant vegetation. They are using the material to construct prototypes of office building that is capable of sucking in more CO2 and pollution out of the air than thousands of trees, while providing breathable oxygen.

https://returntonow.net/2020/02/03/new-living-concrete-allows-plants-to-grow-right-out-of-the-wall/

Canadian Parliament Outlaws Conversion Therapy

The Canadian federal government's updated bill to ban the practice of conversion therapy has been adopted unanimously by the House of Commons.

Members of Parliament voted to fast track Bill C-4 on Wednesday afternoon. The Commons erupted in applause after the vote and several Liberal cabinet ministers walked across the floor to shake hands with and — in some cases — hug their Conservative counterparts.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conversion-therapy-conservatives-1.6269147?fbclid=IwAR1HXImQOSN7pTgpzDUfc7gWW7Zpv8YEZn581SekkOErXfdvABHoCMJI6is