5 Thoughts for September 8, 2015

1. Kim Davis is appealing her contempt jailing. This is how easy the ruling will be: DENIED. She willingly signaled her contempt for the court, then said that she would not let her subordinates sign off on same-sex marriage licenses. There is only one means to force her to stop blocking same-sex marriages: Jail. Her lawyers claim there was a lack of due process, which is rich, considering that her case went up the ladder to SCOTUS and was rejected. She's also asking the governor to release her from jail, which seems improbable as most jails are usually controlled by courts not by the executive branch -- doing so would trigger a constitutional crisis. If that wasn't enough, Mike Huckabee -- or as I like to call him, The Huckster -- has decided to go all in with his Evangelical Populism and visit Davis. All of this of course shows just how dangerous The Huckster would be, if President: The Executive Branch could ignore SCOTUS.
2. The two opposite means of resolving the refugee crisis in Europe: Put boots on the ground in Syria and crush both ISIS and Assad, or take in the refugees, allocated to each country by wealth. Building a wall is stupid, as in Republicans-gone-mad stupid. While we live in the 21st century, the thinking of men in charge remains deeply rooted in the 19th.
3. Is Google Fiber coming to Portland soon? This ad for a Network Deployment and Operations Lead for Google Fiber seems like the brightest signal yet that Google is getting ready to deploy in Portland! :D
4. An interesting thing happened yesterday: There was a moderate geomagnetic storm that hit Earth, but rather than triggered by a coronal mass ejection, it was a coronal hole with a fast solar wind. I'd noticed that the Kp Index was at 6 for half the day yesterday, but there was no recent CME.
5. IKEA Portland's got the Bekant sit-stand computer desks widely in stock now, a year after they were introduced. I've tried it at the store, and it works well. But the high cost of a motorized desk would probably turn off a lot of people, so IKEA recently released the Skarsta manual-crank sit-stand computer desk. The problem is, being brand new, it's not in stock. Sigh.

+5 Quick Links

1. Dion Bailey high school highlights and college highlights -- for those who doubt.
2. A&M's excuse, from two years ago, on canceling series with USC -- just saying.
3. Long read: The full history of Patriots cheating -- for you, Beth.
4. The only thing to stop fighting in Syria: Dust storm -- someone's angry.
5. Ron Wyden did the right thing and backed the US-Iran Nuclear Deal -- filibuster now available.