"Gray whales are dying in large numbers. Since January, at least 167 North Pacific gray whales have washed ashore dead from Mexico to Alaska. That's probably just a fraction of the number that have actually died. Most will have sunk to the sea floor; scientists call these carcasses "whale falls." But the number of known deaths is high enough that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared an "unusual mortality event" -- a pronouncement that has sent scientists scrambling to figure out what's going on."

The statutory system of trademarks, the Lantham Act(Trademark Act of 1946), was previously considered by a divided Court, to offend the Constitution if the bar is viewpoint-based and/or if disparagement of a person (living or dead) is viewpoint-based.

The challenge was brought by the designer Brunetti who wanted to register the trademark, FUCT, pronounced as four letters, one after the other--F-U-C-T, for his clothing line (e.g, hoodies, T-shirts).  However, a reading of the proposed trademark may be construed as the equivalent of the past participle form of a well-known word of profanity.

Justice Kagan was joined by Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Roberts and Breyer filed opinions concurring in part and dissenting in part.  Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in which Breyer concurred.  The core of the 9-0 ruling was, essentially, that the trademark proposal was viewpoint-based, not viewpoint-neutral, and, hence, its ban is not tolerated by the First Amendment.

Overall, the decision seems a win for the First Amendment.  Although, the separate opinions of Roberts, Breyer and Sotomayor are interesting.

Roberts reminds that trademarks are not required for using, owning or suing for infringement. The First Amendment, he continues, does not require the government to give aid and comfort to those using obscene, vulgar and profane modes of expression. Free speech rights were not threatened because no one was proposing Brunetti be prevented from using FUCT, just denying its tradmark status.  But, this appears uncandid--understating the importance of trademarks in commerce.

They are talking about feet of rain.  And even as far north as me 4-6 inches.  

Legion Season 3 Premiere Review: A Delightfully Surreal Debut

Now that the state of Missouri has insured that poor women do not have access to abortion services, how will the state prevent rich women from seeing private doctors and traveling to another location for an abortion?

Rolling Stone

High Life raises questions that Denis perversely, and with sustained provocation, rarely bothers to answer. Take the crew members and the circumstances under which they died. There are flashbacks, but the movie is less interested in explanations than in elliptical clues. We know the ship is meant to extract energy from a black hole. That's the suicide mission that drives the plot. The support systems on the ship must be renewed every 24 hours, and if eventually there's no one alive it to do the job, the word is kaput.
For a science fiction film, High Life keeps its distance from the usual bells and whistles of the genre, preferring the minimalism of Yorick Le Saux's spare cinematography and the near-subliminal hum of Stuart Staples' score. It's left to the actors to provide whatever vestiges of humanity remain in these travelers who quickly realize that space is the ultimate prison. Andre Benjamin excels as Tcherny, the one who obsesses over the ship's greenhouse as if the dirt beneath his feet can somehow ground him in reality. And Mia Goth brings a striving urgency to Boyse, a woman whose natural desires are subverted by a system that sees her only a guinea pig for reproductive experiments.

Today in In Space, No One Can Hear Your Gentle, Ambient Airport Music News: Brian Eno has an asteroid now. Per Rolling Stone, the Roxy Music member and David Bowie/David Byrne/other famous musicians not named David collaborator has just joined the ranks of J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, and mutant supervillain Magneto by getting an asteroid named after himself.

Specifically, Eno is now the proud namesake of 81948 (2000 OM69), which now goes by the somehow-even-more-of-a-mouthful name "Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno." (Here's hoping this never turns out to be one of those asteroids we have to blow up to save the planet, because time will probably turn into a factor--although the soundtrack for that particular movie would probably be amazing.) Eno--whose Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks  remains one of the most celebrated pieces of space-based ambient music ever--received a certificate acknowledging the name change at science-themed convention Starmus V this week; he also received a Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication at the same event, presumably in recognition of his long-standing, time-tested ability to modulate, control, and just generally work with the various flare-ups and burnouts of a variety of music's most highly-powered stars.

Peter G, your old public defender friend Alexander Silvert did the people of Honolulu a real solid when he went to the U.S. Dept. of Justice with his suspicions that his client was being framed, which it turns out is exactly what had happened. Such is his reputation and integrity that the feds sat up and took notice, because he's not the type who levels such charges frivolously. And there are a lot more shoes ready to fall before this storyline plays out.

Over halfway into its first episode, Showtime's The Loudest Voice, a seven-part mini-series about the repugnant life and sinister influence of Fox News behind-the-scenes maestro Roger Ailes, runs into a tricky dilemma: It's incredibly difficult to dramatize the distinct set of "skills," or some might say "dark genius," of an abusive, bull-headed media executive like Roger Ailes. He's not a political leader, a military commander, a criminal mastermind, or an artist; he's a crappy boss at a dumb company. Played by a heavily made-up Russell Crowe, looking remarkably different from his trim Gladiator days, the former Republican operative barks out instructions and orders to his scrambling employees in the control room during a test rehearsal before the debut of Fox News in 1997. The stakes, the show desperately wants to convince you, are high.

Frustrated and sweaty, Ailes screams because a female co-host wears pants instead of a more leg-revealing skirt, yells because a Halloween graphic onscreen is green instead of the more traditionally spooky orange, and goes ballistic because a dog, brought on the set for a low-stakes human interest segment, has shit all over the floor. The whole situation is ridiculous, ripe for comedy and satire, but Ailes's fixes are mostly superficial, deranged attempts to make a trashy product (a 24-hour news channel) more addictive, and The Loudest Voice mostly plays the sequence for tick-tock, procedural melodrama. It's like watching an episode of Aaron Sorkin's tiresome The Newsroom if the characters were even more craven, less witty, and unrepentantly evil. Who would want to watch that?

See Walton Goggins Dance In The New RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES Trailer