Just because this is going to be nothing but starting articles, I thought we should still
get an intro article to kind of talk about this one that just came out of San Francisco
from the Associated Press AP News November 29 2022 article title San Francisco will allow
police to deploy robots that can kill. Oh no you stole one of my intros. Oh no.
Well I can give you another one. Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give police
the ability to use potentially lethal remote controlled robots in emergency situations
following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal
board over support for law enforcement. The vote of eight to three with the majority agreeing to
grant the police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other
police oversight groups opponents said the authority would lead to further militarization
of a police force already too aggressive with poor minority. I think that's good enough for
right now. I don't think we ought to talk much more about it. Chelsea do you have anything to
say about it? Oh not other than robots are the future I guess. My one issue is that this was
supposed to happen in Detroit first and it was also supposed to be a cyborg that was of course
a police officer that was killed on the job and then reissued as a robot later on. What?
It's Robocop come to life. Yeah but in San Francisco and not a cyborg just a robo.
Oh eventually we'll all be robots. Yeah being killed by the Robo police.
Yep. Anyhow let's get to this episode.
From the unexplained to the mundane come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to journey to the fringe a podcast more popular than Kanye West
although that has nothing of course to do with what we're doing. More so how shitty of a person
he turns out to be. We are your less shitty host because you know less about us Taylor and Chelsea
here today to review the year that was 2022. A lot of things happened this year some of them on this
podcast and of course those things that happened on this podcast continue to happen after we talked
about them and this is the time of the year we like to sit back and reflect on what was the year
of 2022 and we are of course going to take turns going through our episodes. I think it'll be good
fun. Chelsea what do you think? Well I hope so that's why I'm here for fun. That's why we do these episodes.
Exactly. It's not because we hate them but I think we got a lot to get through so I think we're just
gonna kind of start. Easiest way to do it is going to be a rotation system where I do one you do one
and we'll just go from there. To start off I'm gonna give you an update on Steven Donsiger.
Earliest time we talked about him is in the episode called the Ecuador case that was back in 2021.
That was a long time ago. It really was. Season one. Last time we heard he was sent to jail as far as I
can remember. He might have come up after but that's the last I kind of remember. Here's an
article titled Chevron adversary Steven Donsiger appeals conviction to US Supreme Court by Clark
Mindoch and it is on Reuters. It was published September 20th 2022. Donsiger told the US Supreme
Court that the court appointed lawyer who prosecuted him were acting without supervision from the
Department of Justice or other executive branch officers which violates principles of separation
of power. The Harvard law graduate who received six month jail sentence for misdemeanor contempt
in addition to over 900 days of house arrest said the case has broader implications beyond his
conviction. If left standing the rationale of the two lower courts would sow confusion about the
authority of judicially appointed prosecutors and create a constitutional moment land between
the branches. Kaplan said in his decision that Donsiger had secured that judgment after bribing
the judge ghostwriting a court opinion and environmental report tampering with witnesses
and extortion. That's of course his case in Ecuador against Chevron that they're talking about.
Chevron then sought to recoup the money from the attorney and Kaplan charged him with contempt in
2019 after he refused to turn over his electronic devices to the California based company Forensic
Experts Review. The US attorney in Manhattan declined to prosecute those charges setting a lack
of resources which prompted Kaplan to appoint a private lawyer. US district judge Loretta Preska
found Donsiger guilty in six misdemeanor contempt charges in July 2021 and sentenced the attorney
to six months in prison. Donsiger was released in April after a combined 993 days of house arrest
and 45 days in prison. A detainment that was decreed by human rights campaigners,
congressional progressive caucus and the united nations high commission on human rights.
993 that's like three years. Yeah that's three years in house arrest. Holy crap. Yeah he was
in there a long time and he's out of jail at this point but that was ridiculous. Yeah. And he just
kind of wants it expunged. A federal appeals court upheld the conviction in June and a split decision
with circuit judge Michael Park writing for the majority that the lower court had the authority
to appoint a prosecutor who are then subject to supervision by the US attorney general.
And then I do have one other article I just wanted to put to see what else he's doing right now.
Steven Donsiger says criminalize ecocide to help save the planet. An article from common dreams
it was published October 1st, November 22nd 2022 and it is written by Jessica Corbett.
Steven Donsiger the American human rights attorney targeted by big oil for his work in
support of indigenous people impacted by fossil fuel pollution on Tuesday presented five legal
solutions for the worsening climate emergency. The right combination of legal changes happening
quickly can catalyze progress. He stated it's all too easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the
face of such widespread catastrophe but we as citizens can do something right now. Donsiger
wrote in a Tuesday column for the Guardian on the heels of COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh,
Egypt. Together alongside increased citizen activism those ideas can begin to provide a
coherent and comprehensive legal framework for all of us to help save the planet. Donsiger argued.
His first proposal make ecocide an international crime. There has been growing global support for
doing just that. In July international lawyers published a legal definition of the term declaring
that ecocide means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a
substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment
being caused by those acts. The attorney's second solution is to enact a fossil fuels non-proliferation
treaty. International support for this idea has also grown in recent months. The lawyer further
argued that humanity must protect the Amazon headwaters noting that a quiet legal revolution
is being led by indigenous peoples in the Amazon countries of Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru.
And his final legal solution is a binding climate reparation. Specifically he proposed a treaty
requiring each wealthy country to pay a fixed amount proportionate to its gross domestic product
into a fund administered by a neutral party with actual representation from the small countries
most affected by warming temperatures and the negative impacts resulting from the climate crisis.
So he's been up to a lot that I think is a good enough update for right now. I'm sure this is not
the last we'll hear of Stephen Donsinger. I just have a quick question and maybe this is answered
on the other question. So he was found in contempt of the court so this was something completely
different from the actual trial he was on. Is that trial gonna continue? I believe that trial is
done but I didn't actually look at that for this. I'm pretty sure it finished up though and he was
found guilty and that's part of this. The fact that the contempt was he was in house arrest for it
was outside of the fact that he was found guilty of basically masterminding the case in Ecuador.
What that's crazy. And it's more so the case in Ecuador that's actually being brought to the
higher courts right now. Okay. Like it was just a mess. That's what I was asking. If you want to
learn more about it please go listen to the Ecuador case. It explains a lot of what we're talking
about right now. Otherwise it wouldn't be an update. We'd be doing a whole new episode. Well we already did
that episode so yeah no episode to do. Here we are. Hey look at us. Okay that's me now right? Yes.
Okay you know what would have been helpful if I wrote down the episodes that were updating but
I'll leave that up to the listener to go find what one we did this on. Hopefully you remember so then
you don't have to do all that work. Maybe you just remember what episode it is. I have an update on
JFK. The JFK what were they doing like trying to get the records released or something like that?
Biden was hiding that shit in his attic. Yeah do I have any updates on that? No not really. November
2022 I found an article on politico.com says newly released internal correspondence from the national
archives and records administration reveals that behind the scenes there has been a fierce bureaucratic
war over the documents in recent years. These are the JFK documents just in case I lost you.
Hitting the archives against the CIA, FBI, and other agencies that want to keep them secret.
Correspondence obtained under the freedom of information act shows that the archives have
tried and often failed to insist that other agencies comply with the 1992 law by declassifying
more documents. Struggle was especially fierce in 2017 when then presidential Donald Trump sided with
the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a supposedly concrete legal deadline that year to release all
classified documents related to the JFK assassination. Last year president Joe Biden ordered another
review on the documents to allow more to be made public this December. Officials involved in the
declassification process say they are optimistic that a large batch of documents will be made
public next month. Internal correspondence from the archives helps resolve one lingering mystery
about the documents. In their negotiations with the White House and the archives in recent years,
how have the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon and other agencies justified keeping any secrets about a
turning point in American history that occurred decades ago? An event that has always inspired
corrosive conspiracy theories about government complicity. And so with that, that's no updates
really. That's the same information you already had. And that's it. Hey, look at that.
That update was there is no update. That was a long no update. Hey, you guys all remember this
guy named Julian Assange. I can't remember the episode we talked about him in, but the last time
we left off this fellow who was being extradited from Great Britain to the US for charges under
the espionage. Didn't he have a stroke or something? Was that the update? He had many medical issues
that were brought about basically for being over a decade in isolation. I think that would catch
up with you. This article isn't necessarily an update on him specifically, but it is an update
on the situation. Is that the theme of this episode? We're giving no updates. Of course.
This article came out of the newspaper Le Monde that is a fairly famous French newspaper. It means
the world. I know that because I am fancy like that. That is how you like to say the world.
Yes, Le Monde. I shall take over Le Monde. You say that so much. I do. Picking the brain was all wrong.
Article title, media outlets call to end Julian Assange persecution for disclosing secrets. You
could have found this on many different websites. I chose Le Monde because it's one of the ones I
wouldn't usually use. This also includes New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais and Der Spiegel are
the five websites. This published on November 29th, 2022 with no specific author just because it's
all these websites. Cablegate, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US government
disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals, spy affairs on international scale. In the words of
the New York Times, the documents told the unvarnished story of how the government makes
its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country the most heavily in lives and money.
Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations using the
unique trove of documents. For Julian Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks, the publication of
Cablegate and several other related leaks had the most severe consequence. On April 20th, 2022,
Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant and has now been held for three and a half
years in a high security British prison, usually used for terrorists and members of organized crime
groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American
maximum security prison. This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange,
felt the need to publicly criticize his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cablegate
were released. And some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted
to aid in the computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our
grave concern about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing
classified materials. The Obama-Biden administration in office during the WikiLeaks publication in
2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists
from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom despite its
uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump, however, the position changed. The DOJ relied on
an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917, which hilariously is what Donald Trump is now being
charged under because he gave it much more authority than it used to have, which has never
been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster. This indictment said that the DOJ would have to
be prosecuted for the use of the law. The indictment sets a dangerous precedent and threatens to
underline America's first amendment in the freedom of press, holding governments accountable as part
of the core mission of a free press inner democracy. Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information
when necessary and the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that
work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
That is where that one ends. So there has been multiple newspapers have kind of reached out and
said, he should not be prosecuted for it because we all technically would then be prosecuted for it.
So we'll see what happens. Well, that's doing him a solid. Yeah. And the fact that they're talking
about this, the fact that Trump is the one who pushed this forward, not Biden, and the fact that
Obama said we're not going to prosecute under this, it gives a good hope that Biden will actually come
to a good idea and say, no, we're not going to prosecute him any further. Well, that would make
sense. So fingers crossed this one gets sorted out, but that's where we are right now. That was a
good update. It might need further updated. It will need further update. It is for 20,
it just somehow end here. Okay. My update, suffice to say, you might already be updated on this one
and I probably don't have to tell you, but I'm just going to give you a little update on this
one anyway, because it was a big one from our update last year. And we had a few updates
throughout the year on this. Probably the last update we're going to be doing on this one,
the Queen. Ed, what? Sorry if I'm the one to break that news to you. Spoiler alert. Yeah.
I mean, I could keep going unless we want to move on to the next one and keep the next update,
but I could keep going with Royal News. I feel like we did say this at one point on the podcast,
so that's not really an update per se at this point. I don't know if we actually said it,
said it. We alluded to it. He's dead. Okay. Next update we're looking for, British Andy,
alive. Much to the dismay of probably everyone. Except the Queen's Corgis. They seem to like the
guy. It's true. It's true. We all know it's true. The royalty wants him dead. Like they'd be much
better off if he was alive. No living human wants this guy around. No, nobody does. So I do have an
update on him from an article labeled or named, critical headline. Titled. Titled. Prince Andrew
furious as 3 million armed police protection to be scrapped in weeks. First of all, why is this guy
worth 3 million in armed police protection? First of all. Honestly, that's in his entire net worth
is just going into police protection during this time. Yeah. Why they would still pay for that. I
mean, they could get rid of them easily. Easily if they don't want him alive. Anyhow, that's a
different update. You gotta assume he knows some sort of secret. Oh yeah. Guess so. I mean, if he
even knows this. Oh yeah. And they think he would. Why not just off them? They've offed other people.
That's another update. Anyhow, I'm going to go on to the end. Who would take care of the Corgis?
That's true. That's true. Maybe nobody wants to take care of it. It's a really intricate.
That's the cards they got going. Okay. Viewing Prince Andrew is seething with officials after
he was told they would no longer pay millions of pounds each year to fund his armed police
protection. It has been claimed. I don't know why the public isn't fuming that these are tax dollars
being paid for his protection. So are now all of his protective police officers armless? Yes. They
took their arms. Yes. It's so much cheaper. The Duke of York who stepped away from his royal duties
stepped away as if he was taking a break. It was. I thought I proofread this, but okay. So he stepped
away from his royal duties. I know he's taking a break. Amidst the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal,
enjoys taxpayer funded guards whenever he leaves the grounds of Windsor. Okay. That is a great
sentence right there. That's been slashed together. Did they also say that he told his mother he no longer needs a birthday party because he's a big boy?
But this is expected to be removed by mid-December with ministers looking to
save the estimated three million pounds a year that goes towards his protection. Wait, what's
being removed? His protection or just British Yandy in general? We would hope it's British Yandy, but
much to the dismay of probably everyone in royalty right now, he's staying. They're removing his
protection. Okay. We'll see what happens to British Yandy. Sources said Andrew 62 demanded that he keep
his three million per year private security. However, his older brother, King Charles III, did not oblige.
I'd be interested to see what the taxpayers have to say. His older brother Chuck, who happens to be king, said no, you do not get that.
I'd be interested to hear what the taxpayers have to say. Who else will hang out with him other than
the armed guards who are required? God, what a guy. The seething royal is reportedly set to register an
official complaint in a bid to get the security back, as source told the paper. He is going to
write to the home office and the Met Police to complain about losing his taxpayer-funded security,
they said. Yeah, in lieu of his mom not being one he can complain to at this point. He went with more official routes.
She gave him everything. She was an enabler, if you remember. Prince Andrew, who saw his royal
reputation badly tarnished following a bombshell BBC interview that infamously saw him claim he
didn't sweat, was stripped of the title, his royal highness, and all his military honours. I thought he
stepped away. This is news to me. He is reported to have paid a whopping seven million to sex accuser
Virginia Dreyfri and an out-of-court settlement that saw her drop the case. I really think she
should have kept going. I would have been interested to see what happened there. Duke of York has always
strongly denied any allegation of wrongdoing that has been made against him. If we recall, in January
2022, Queen Elizabeth II made the decision to strip her son of his official duties after details of
his friendship with Epstein and Merge, etc. etc. Yeah, she always liked to downplay everything. It
was only a small relationship. It was only little girls that he was meeting. Yep, removing Prince
Andrew's royal duties meant the prince would not ascend to senior royal status. The king, that still
feels wrong to say. King Chuck, just call him King Chuck. Yeah. Has also made a new change to the pool
of councillors with whom the king can rely. Changing up the royal family roles, naming extra
councillors with Princess Anne and Prince Edward added to the pool, as the king himself noted,
would ensure continued efficiency of public business when I'm unavailable. This has effectively
removed Prince Andrew and Prince Harry from the role. I just have to make a side note. All these
articles that I read, they're comparing British Andy and Prince Harry. I just don't think that
they should be held to the same level, just because both that like they both compared them to the same.
Like they both had their protection removed and they've both been taken down from the royal family
rules. Yeah, I feel like I don't think it's the same. I feel like they were for distinctly
different reasons that they had their protection removed. One's a not proven sex offender. Yeah.
And the other one moved to Canada because the family was very racist against his spouse.
Basically the same thing. Yeah, I feel they're a little bit different. Yeah. There was another
article I didn't include in here, but I'm just going to give it a little shout out that his
daughter's Princess Beatrice, I believe. And she's left the country with her new husband,
just because there's a lot of shit happening with British Andy and her mom, which is his ex-wife,
who's divorced. Yeah. Don't they have to take care of the courties together? Yeah. But there's a lot
of weird things with her too. She was kind of outcast from the royal family when she was
photographed having her toes sucked by her financial advisor or something like that. Okay.
Yeah. It's super strange. So I mean, it kind of makes you be like, oh, that's why they were
married. Not sure why they're divorced now, British Andy and her. Because she has old toes.
But yeah, so Princess Beatrice kind of left because she was like, my parents are real
fucked up right now. And the new guy that the mom is seeing went to the media recently about
something. I didn't get into it, but I thought it was funny that she left the country because of all
this going on with her messed up family. And that's my update on that. I can also add to this point,
although kind of a totally useless human being, King Chuck, who cannot clear a desk to save his
life, did outlaw frogwa from being served at Buckingham Palace because it's cool down. I did
read that as well. I did. I was pleasantly surprised with that. But totally useless human being. I just
need to add that. Like he cannot do human things. You watch him not giving proclamations. Like if
there's a pen on his desk that's not supposed to be there, he doesn't know what to do. He has to
get his assistant. It's bizarre. But as a royal, how would you know how to do that? That is true.
And to be perfectly honest, some of the decrees that he has made as a royal have been fairly good
because he does believe in climate change and he does believe in the ethical treatment of animals.
Overall, not terrible. Not my king, but I'm not in government so I don't have to give a oath to him.
So there we are. It's true. It's still a weird thing to say king. Yeah. King Chuck. That's the
royal update. Okay. Now we've all been talking about Gabriel Wortmann for a while, dating back
all the way to our first season with the episode titled, What are those horse boys up to? The
Gabriel Wortmann story. That means RCMP. What has been going on with this? Yes, the horse boys are
the RCMP and the Gabriel Wortmann story is super bizarre. It is the largest mass shooting in Canadian
history. There has been a commission going on for a long time. We gave an update on it as it was
going during this year. The commission has finally ended. The final written submissions for the mass
casualty commission are replete with suggestions, demands, and recriminations over how the events
of April 18th and April 19th, 2020 and their aftermath could have been handled differently.
The shooting rampage in rural Nova Scotia left 22 people dead as well as the gunman who was
eventually killed by police. The public hearings into the mass shooting, which began in February
and ran until September, have already heard many of the assertions raised in the written submissions.
Lawyers representing families of 21 of the victims used their final words to the commission to repeat
their concerns about issues like communication regarding the police response. There are two
recurring themes on that topic that the RCMP did a poor job of warning the public of the gunman,
Gabriel Wortmann, and that there wasn't enough information provided to the victim's families or
other members of the public in the immediate aftermath about whether their loved ones had
survived. Lawyers for the family of Gina Goulet, the gunman's last victim, went so far as to say
that had police done a better job of warning the public, she would have survived. The families
through their lawyer also voiced skepticism about whether any recommendations the commissions make
we implemented. They cite the failure to act on recommendations stemming from past mass casualty
events in Merithorpe, Alberta and Moncton, New Brunswick. In both of those cases, all the victims
were Mounties. Lawyers from Patterson Law, the firm that represent most of the families, were critical
of the commission itself. They said it sometimes appeared rudderless, delving into subjects that
were not directly related to the April 2020 rampage. They pointed out that the commission came about in
large part because of intense lobbying by the families, who later felt marginalized by some of
the proceedings. It is important to note that the victims and survivors of the crime must not be
infantilized by the police or protected from information in the guise of being trauma-informed,
Patterson Law wrote. Their submission says that the families questioned why some witnesses,
particularly Wortmann's spouse Lisa Bamfield and senior Mounties, including Staff Sergeant Brian
Rehale and Staff Sergeant Al Carroll, were accorded special treatment when they testified, which the
lawyers say precluded more effective questioning. By denying them the opportunity to question
Bamfield directly, some of the conspiracy theories surrounding her role that weekend got more traction,
the lawyers say. Our CMP Staff Sergeant, the families also feel trauma-informed lens was not
applied equally, the submission says, and in dissecting the Mounties' perceived shortcomings
that weekend, Patterson Law noted it cannot be forgotten that the perpetrator was ultimately
thwarted by an empty gas tank and coincidence, not by master strategy. The final report of the
commission will be out in March of 2023, so we'll have an update in early 2023, hopefully.
Well, probably at the year end update in 2023. Yeah, yeah, more likely than that,
depending on how interesting everything has been up until then. That's true, that's true. Okay,
is it already time for the next update? Yes. Okay, this one's on, I know this one's fresh in
everybody's mind, well, kind of, because by the time we get to this one, you know, it's not going
to be so fresh. This one's the Mothman, turneth againeth, Chicago O'Hare's airport as its very
own Mothman, if you recall. So here's an update on the most recent sighting of Chicago O'Hare Mothman.
Manuel Nevarate, a UFO clearinghouse recently received the following report from a woman who
claimed that she and her friend encountered a creature with bright red eyes and a big black
body while parked at a construction site near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport around 10
PM, March 2022. Well, that's kind of racist. This is the most recent I could find. Yeah.
I was out driving around with a guy I had just started talking to, so already we're,
we're at it, we're starting the article, just go. Yeah, we're reading the article. We were out by
the airport, just cruising around, listening to music and getting to know one another. Decided
to park to smoke some bud and one thing led to another. These stories, these kids, we were in
the back seat when he looked up and started screaming. What the fuck? Over and over again.
Over the window, we got to talk to this guy. Yeah. It was then that we felt like something bumped into
the side of the car, like when someone slammed up against the side of your ride. This report,
I wish I could have find a more recent report. I sat up and saw a pair of bright red eyes and
a big black body looking into the driver's side window into the back seat. I also like how she was
so honest about how this was a guy she had just started talking to and then they're in the back.
They got really high and they went to the back seat. Yeah.
It scared the hell out of both of us and we both started screaming out loud. This thing kept looking
into the car and then it just disappeared. A security guard shows up, then two more show up.
They made us get out of the car and started asking us why we were there. After looking at us,
they start asking about what we had seen. Told them and they screamed at us to get dressed and
leave. Navarrette said after some convincing, he was able to speak with the witness over the phone.
Quote, I contacted the witness via email and after much assurance, she agreed to an interview over
the phone, he said. Investigator called and spoke with the woman. He described as a 20-year-old
Hispanic woman. Her companion that evening, he said, was a 26-year-old man and also Hispanic.
No one was around at the site giving the late hour and the couple decided to park near the
entrance but still out of the way to avoid law enforcement. That's the update. And you know,
the other thing that I came across when I was reading these articles, I don't know that I
actually included in the Chicago O'Hare sightings all the reports of pilots seeing Mothman, but those
were too old. So I was giving an update. This is the most recent and the pilot eyewitness accounts
are from a couple years ago. So I wasn't about to put those in the update episode. No, that might
actually be its own episode in 2023. Yeah, there you have it. There's my update on the Mothman and
it's just another one. We had one of those in the most recent Mothman episode. The Mothman may also
be a sexual predator who knows Jeffrey Epstein. More likely than not. It may in fact be a British
Andy that the jury is still out on that. We can't rule that out. We cannot confirm nor deny that one.
We cannot. No. And if we brought it up, we might get beat up. Or nobody has seen the Mothman sweats.
That would settle it. Okay, moving on. You guys all remember the James Webb Space Telescope, right?
We talked about it in the second of the What Are Those Horseboys Up To? The Mr. Big Saga. It is
to replace the Hubble Space Telescope. I found an interesting article I thought would give us a good
update on it. This one came from space.com. Artemis One moon mission squeezing communications with
James Webb Space Telescope. Two major NASA missions that have launched in the past year are revealing
a communication weakness in space. NASA communicates with all of its distant spacecrafts from the
Orion capsule to the James Webb Space Telescope to Voyager 1 through the Deep Space Network,
a collection of 14 antennas located at three sites in California, Spain, and Australia. But the network
is busy and ensuring that every mission beyond Earth orbit has the communication time it needs
can be tricky. An issue with Artemis One mission has exacerbated. And I don't know, have you been
following Artemis One, Chelsea? No. Basically, they're thinking they're going to go back to the
moon in a couple of years. So this was a rocket they launched to kind of test the capsule and
everything else with the parts of that. It went successful. It's coming back right now. But this
is something that's come from it. We were told over the summer that when the Artemis Space Mission
launched, the Deep Space Network was going to be basically fully taken by Artemis because they
needed to keep track of the spaceship. Mercedes Lopez Morales, an astrophysicist at the Harvard
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the chair of the James Webb Space Telescope Users Committee,
told a meeting of the US National Academies of Sciences Board of Physics and Astronomy on
Wednesday, November 30th. Wow, that was a lot of words to not really explain a lot. So many titles.
The time came on November 16th when NASA launched Artemis One, a test flight to kick off the agency's
return to the moon. 25 day mission sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and is scheduled to
splash down on Earth on December 11th. While Orion is in flight and beyond low Earth orbit,
it's in near constant contact with Deep Space Network, a major drain that has put the James
Webb Space Telescope and other missions in the back seat. NASA has known Artemis would strain
the Deep Space Network. The agency arranged upgrades to some antennas and added new ones
in January 2021 and March 2022 in preparation. But communications time is still scarce. It could
be up to 80 hours. That's about three and a half days of no contact with James Webb Space Telescope
at all. James Webb Space Telescope scientists usually send commands to the $10 billion observatory
about once a week, she told the board. So infrequent communications doesn't affect the observatory
getting its instructions. But for astronomers to actually enjoy Webb's power, the telescope needs
to be able to beam home its data and do so before its computer fills up. The big issue is that you
cannot download data for that long. For Artemis One, she said the Space Telescope Science Institute
in Maryland, which operates both James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, rejiggered
James Webb observing schedule and scientists prioritize shorter observations, which creates
smaller batches of data to reduce the chances of the telescope computer filling up before the Deep
Space Network can accept the next batch of data. But because NASA plans additional Artemis launches,
and these with humans aboard in 2024 and beyond, scientists want a different solution to the
communications logjam. Final quote and end of the article, we are desperately asking NASA to come
up with a plan to somehow have more access to antennas, Lopez Morales said. So there may be an
issue actually getting use of the space telescopes just because of the other priorities NASA has going
forward. But this is something that they spent billions of dollars on, they really need to make
sure it can actually be used for what it needs to be for. Yeah, I was just thinking it seems like both
should be prioritized in their own right and not one over the other. NASA falls victim to
budgetary issues specifically with whoever's president at the time. So whoever's president
at the time wants to make sure that their use of money actually makes sure it's being used,
which is unfortunate. So whoever's president at the time, they'll want to make sure like they
prioritize whatever thing they're trying to put forward, say somebody going to the moon. Super
bizarre. Yeah, I just want to get this out of the way. I found a couple articles on this, but most
of them said that they're technically copyrighted. So I shouldn't just read them word for word. Those
assholes who does that. We talked about the collapsing of the apartment building in Miami,
and I believe it was November of 2021, might have been October of 2021. No, that one would have been
in the summer because we talked about that when I was on vacation. Oh, okay. Yeah, I did find a few
articles on this. It's not necessarily update on that, but it's an update on the insurance issues
in Florida in general. And that is, is that people are seeing significant hikes in their insurance
premiums up to tens of thousands of dollars per year, because basically they're finding that
climate change is leading to more climate issues that are affecting Florida, which is only about
three inches above the ocean on average. So that's a joke, but only slightly. Basically they're
realizing that the entire state is going to sink into the ocean. They don't want to pay for it. So
they're making it almost impossible to actually get insurance in the state. That is not the only
reason that insurance getting untenable in the state. It's also insurance fraud and lawsuits.
If you want to learn more about it, there are some interesting articles on it. I couldn't find one.
I could actually read to you. That's where that one is. Chelsea, it is your turn. Damn it. They're
all copyrighted. Yeah, I know it was ridiculous. Okay. Next up, I'm about to depress everyone. So
I'm hoping that Taylor and my timing also makes for a nice and cheerful update on the next one
on his turn. I have the never satisfying update on climate change headlines, and these are all
very recent articles. We'll read half of them right now. Then we'll take a break from the
depressiveness, because let me tell you, putting these all together, not fun. And then we'll come
back after a brief break and then I'll read you the rest just so that you don't forget the
depressiveness of what's going on. And no, I didn't put anything nice happening to offset this.
And these are all from like the last couple of weeks. FYI. So let's begin. This one, officials
fear complete doomsday scenario for drought stricken Colorado River. Next one, global news
says 20% of species in Canada are at risk of extinction. XC levels are expected to rise
around the contiguous us faster than previously thought a new NASA study finds by 2050 sea levels
along the coastlines of the contiguous us could rise as much as 12 inches to just as right, right?
Contiguous. Same thing. Tiguous. Okay. contiguous. It's the same thing. You can say it either way.
Next one, global floods and droughts will intensify sooner than expected studies show
this one synthetic fibers discovered in Antarctica samples show the pristine continent is now a sink
for plastic pollution. Next regime shift in the Arctic marine ecosystem that's likely to
become permanent. Next one, Sudan experiences worse dengue fever outbreak for more than a decade.
It's one world still on the brink of climate catastrophe after the COP 27 deal. And I think
still is the key word there. And this article is quickly followed by another article blind.
DOP 27 continues the climate summit ritual of words without action. With that,
let's take a little break for another update. And then we'll be back to finish this depressing
headlines off. I just want to add one thing and it's something I heard that I don't think most
people know. I think most people heard about COP 27 happening, but COP 27 had the most oil and gas
lobbyists of any of the COP meetings to date. It in fact outnumbered almost every national delegation.
What? It's crazy. So more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed COP 27, more delegates than
the combined total of 10 countries most impacted by climate change. 636 oil and gas lobbyists is
registered to attend COP 27 event in Egypt, a 25% jump on the number of last year's conference.
What? Why? So that was the highest because they want to make sure that whatever's negotiated,
they're involved in and they got everybody there to make sure that their
prioritizations are taken into account. Yeah. Also an important update. Okay. Do you remember
that time that India accidentally bombed Pakistan? Yeah. Remember from that one episode.
Yeah, that one episode. I can't remember what it was. I meant to write it down, but Bernie ate the
paper I put it on. So here we are. But damn it. I hate it when dogs do that, especially the one
I don't have. This actually only came a couple of days after the bombing happened and we reported
on it, but I wanted to make sure it was included. The India defense, because we said Pakistan said
their response to it, but India was still waiting for that. We were still waiting for India's
response. Here it is. The Indian defense minister told parliament that a review of India's maintenance
and safety procedures was underway along with an inquiry into the causes of the launch. Luckily,
the apparently accidental launch occurred during a boring Wednesday evening. Sometimes accidents
happen despite the best protocol and training. Gus Sagan has argued famously that there are
limits of safety, both because of the sheer randomness of existence and because of organizational
pathologies that manifest even in military units that prize safety as a mission. The new
US nuclear weapons and missile safety track record is hardly inspiring. Yet even grading on a curve,
India's inadvertent launch stands out. While deadly military accidents were disturbingly
common during the Cold War, last week's episode may be the first inadvertent launch of a cruise
or ballistic missile by one nuclear power unto the territory of another nuclear power. Additionally,
while accidental launches often occurred during exercises, their occurrence during routine
maintenance is less common. If for no other reason than typically there are numerous physical
safeguards to prevent a missile flight in such circumstances. Thus, when a Pershing II misfire
during maintenance in Germany in 1985, the missile remained stationary and clamped to its launcher
because it was not in a firing configuration. The other disturbing characteristic of this episode is
India's apparent lack of haste in communicating with Pakistan about the accident. No state would
like for its advanced technology to land in the territory of an opponent, in part because of the
potential compromise of technology that exploitation of the crash site would offer. Perhaps India hoped
Pakistan would simply not notice, or that it wouldn't find it a pre-alternative leak. Perhaps
India was uncertain as to the missile's trajectory. That is not an update at all. You know what,
let's pretend it's never happened. Continue with your update. Okay. Because there is no update in
there at all. I thought there was. I highlighted that because I thought there was something in
there and I skimmed it, but I was clearly wrong. Skimming never goes well. We should know that by
now. Okay, here we go. Measles is now an imminent global threat, who would CDC say in a new report.
Flip point. Here's the Sydney water restrictions as only 25% of Warragamba Dam catchment deemed
safe to drink from the Australian news and the Guardian. Extensive inland thinning and speed up
of Northeast Greenland ice stream from nature. Buffalo snow. Western New York digs out from up
to six feet of accumulation of snow from CNN. Next bullet point. Over 20,000 died in Western
Europe summer heat waves figure show. The climate crisis, the Guardian. Next one. Still from the EU.
238,000 early deaths due to air pollution in 2020 in a study from GW. I don't know what that is.
Next one. Coal emissions on pace for record setting in 2022 from E&D news. Oh, that's fine.
Yeah, I'll actually have an opener that has to do with coal, which I stumbled upon. I got a lot of
good openers. It's not Nat King Coal, right? No, no, that would be, yeah, that would be a good
update, but this is depressing update. Next one. Record heat over Great Barrier Reef raises fears
of second summer of coral bleaching. So those are my most recent climate change
headlines for you to think about. Okay. In our episode below deck on the cruise industry,
in the intro, we talked about the coming protests in Kazakhstan about clear protests about the
government in place due to gas prices that had exceeded 40 cents per liter. Oh, right. American.
At that point, you just have to protest and try to get changes in the government. And there have
been government reforms since then. I found the most recent thing I could talk about was a
statement from the current president of Kazakhstan that came out, I believe it was in November of
2022. So this is directly from the mouth of Kassim Jumart Tarkayev, who is president of Kazakhstan.
In a state of the nation address earlier this month, I announced I would seek a democratic
mandate to implement a vision of a fairer, more open Kazakhstan. And as my country heads to the
polls in the coming months, I believe we must resist the instinct towards inwards amid these
turbulent global times. There are simply no viable alternative to globalization, interdependence,
and the international rules based order. And while efforts to reduce dependence and approve
resilience are wholly understandable, and in many cases sensible, there's a delicate line to tread
as this mustn't lead to a broader reversal of all that has enabled global prosperity in past
decades. We have a duty to mitigate risk and reduce fragility in the global system, and we
must seek to achieve this by strengthening cooperation, not rejecting it. I say this as
a leader of a country that finds itself on the front lines of the threats posed by global
fragmentation. Kazakhstan has always been a bridge between East and West, lying at the heart of the
Silk Road. We have a 7,600 kilometer border with Russia, an 1800 kilometer border with China,
an extensive trade link with Europe and the rest of the world. Throughout our history,
and particularly since our independence, we've always taken the view that disagreements with
neighbors must be approached constructively, and they need not lead to a breakdown in communication,
cooperation, or trust. As a result, Kazakhstan and Central Asia more widely provide a strong case
study of major powers' ability to work in alignment in pursuit of their interests that are to the
benefit of their region's people. Moreover, we believe that such principles of openness and
cooperation are just as valuable as the international sphere as they are domestically. Indeed,
their sphere has defined the path of internal reform that my administration has set out.
I'm skipping ahead a little bit just because this is all flowery words. Two weeks ago, I put forward
a plan to parliament for a just and fair Kazakhstan. The plan aims to decentralize decision making,
strengthen rule of law, increase international competitiveness, and ensure equal opportunities
for every citizen. It aims to fundamentally reshape our political order and leave behind the
super presidential system, which is no longer the most effective governance model for our nation's
ambitions. Instead, we are decentralizing and distributing power throughout the nation,
strengthening the rule of parliament and local authorities. We are ushering in a new era of
pluralism by abolishing constraints on the registration and formulation of political
parties. And I have also initiated a single seven-year presidential term, as I believe this is a real
breakthrough in developing democracy in Kazakhstan and modernizing it as an advanced country. To date,
no state in our part of the world has taken this bold step. All of these changes are helping us
move forward toward a new model, a model of a presidential republic with a stronger parliament
and more accountable government. This is nothing less than a full transformation of our national
politics. Therefore, to move forward with this reform, a strong mandate is needed. That is why
I've decided to call a presidential election this autumn and to introduce legislation preventing all
future presidents from serving more than one term. There is more to it than that, but I feel like
that actually explains most of what they're doing. It actually seems like these protests have been
successful. This guy has changed it so that it is not president heavy, what the government does,
and that the president can only serve one term. Cool. Yeah, it actually seems like- Protests on
rape. Yeah, these protests have actually done what they want to. Good on them. We'll see what's going
on in Kazakhstan in the coming years, but yeah, it actually seems like this was successful and what
it needed to do. That's awesome. Yeah, go ahead, Chels. My update is on the gavel goat, which is,
I don't know how to fucking say anything but anything in English. Let's be honest, but this
is the Swedish resistibly flammable goat, Christmas goat. That's tradition by this point. It just has
to get set on fire. Even if it's illegal. Yeah, they don't like it. Like, who can resist it?
They're putting it there to be set on fire, let's be honest. So first update, he's getting a new
location and you know what? Maybe this will help him not get burned this year. Maybe with a new
temporary location, it won't get burned this year. I don't know why they don't just put a live camera
on it so we can always check on it and then we can see who burned it down. They did, did they not?
There's no live camera. All I can find is the inauguration when he got to the new square. So
the giant straw goat erected every year in the Swedish city of gavel is moving away from the
city's slots, Torget square to a new temporary location for the next three years to allow a new
cultural center to be built. So that's his first adventure of the year and he is still standing.
Okay. That's my update. But he does still technically have like a whole month for us.
He does. He still has a lot. So it's not a great update. And if anything changes between now and
when we post this episode, we will make a change. Oh, that's true. We can just record over this.
And that's the end of my update. This next update, there's a lot to this update and it's not
necessarily just one article. So I'm just going to get to it. We did an episode called the power
grid and the power plants are fucked. They were two separate episodes and we specifically talked
about one thing in specific. And that is that the U S military will target power plants and power
grids when they are in war with other cities, countries, militaries. Chelsea, do you remember
that? Yes. Yeah. It is in fact, one thing the U S military specifically says they will target
power plants if they are at war with some of them. I just wanted to bring up, I didn't put a specific
article for this. The Russian military has specifically targeted power plants and the power
grid in Ukraine. It is a very cold winter in Ukraine because there is no heat and there's no
electricity in most of the country. So they're trying to put up with it. Just so you know,
this is not something that would be out of the ordinary for any country being at war with another
country. That's just something that will happen. Even if it was the U S invading somebody else,
say Canada or Mexico, they would have targeted the power plants so that energy could not have
gotten out. Yeah, we talked about that on that episode. I feel like it's something that we
should explain at least with what's going on in those countries right now. Now the article I did
find that definitely has to do with that episode. North Carolina County announces curfews as nearly
40,000 customers remain without power after two substantial transformers are damaged by gunfire.
This is an article by Tina Burnside posted on December 4th, 2022. Authorities have announced
a mandatory curfew in North Carolina and North Carolina County where around 40,000 customers
lost power after two power substations were damaged by gunfire Saturday night. The county
will implement a mandatory curfew after 5 p.m. until 5 a.m. starting Sunday night. More County
Sheriff Ronnie Field said at a news conference on Sunday, municipalities and county officials
have formed a plan for the night and the next few nights that we may be out of power. It's a very
serious situation, Field said. So we've come to an agreement to best protect our citizens and to
protect the businesses of our county. We're going to implement a curfew tonight. A state of emergency
went into effect at 4 p.m. Sunday as law enforcement, city and energy officials were
investigating the incident and working to restore the two substations, authorities said. Law
enforcement has also been providing security for the stations, according to the sheriff's.
The power outage is being investigated as a criminal occurrence after crews found signs of
potential vandalism at several locations, CNN previously reported. Field said multiple rounds
were fired at the two substations. It was targeted. It wasn't random, he said. No suspects have been
identified in connection with the incident and Fields would not say if the criminal activity was
domestic terrorism. The person or persons who did this knew exactly what they were doing, Field said.
We do not have a clue why More County. Fields acknowledged a woman who posted on Facebook Sunday
morning indicated she had been questioned by law enforcement in connection with the incident and
Fields did not name the woman, but said she posted false information on social media claiming to have
information about the incident. We don't have anything, Fields said. When asked about a possible
motive, no motivation nor group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they're the ones who did it.
A gate at one of the locations also appears to have been taken off its hinges. What happened,
as far as I can tell, it was not in this article, but I just want to put it forward. If it's not true,
I will take it back later on. There were drag brunches happening in the area. So it was domestic
terrorism who was taking the energy grid off so that these could not take place. Yeah. So these
domestic terrorists have now identified that they can just simply take the power grid off to stop
these things from happening. So that's fun. If that is not true, I will definitely redact it later on,
but that is how I understand it at this point. Again, super easy to take the power grid out of
commission. Do not fucking do it though. I am not telling you to do it at all. Yeah, it shouldn't be
that easy. It really shouldn't be, but here we are. Oh, you're going to read stories to my kid in
a dress here. I'm going to just shoot this power station and it'll die and 40,000 people will be
without power for days. So here we are. Editors note between the recording and the release of
this episode, there were four substation attacks in the Tacoma, Washington area on Christmas day
that left thousands without power. Yeah. Chelsea, do you have one more article then to finish off
this year? One more to finish off the year. And then I think that'll do it. The American Airlines
Phantom Voice. Oh, sorry. I mean, Ooh. Yeah. That one. We all remember it then. No update. Not a
single thing has changed since we covered the story. Okay. Good update. And that's it. That's
the last update for the year. And with that, we have been Journey to the Fringe. Taylor and Chelsea
here, not making antisemitic views very clearly known to the world and therefore still ahead of
Kanye West. This might be less relevant when this is actually posted, but it's hilarious at this
point. Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week. Thank you for listening to
Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe,
or follow depending on what venue you are listening to us through. Also, please, if possible,
leave a five star review as that really helps us in the algorithms. Should you wish to interact
with us, please check us out on your social media of choice. I bet you we are there. And if you
really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell us that we're wrong
and terrible either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe at gmail.com. For now,
I'll see you in the next episode.