Good Tuesday morning.
I have to preface today’s post by saying that I am most definitely NOT a math person. I am a words person. Full stop.
I did really well in school when it came to all things word-related – foreign languages, literature, history…basically anything that had nothing to do with numbers, I excelled in.
But when it comes to math that is more advanced than, say, basic addition and subtraction, I’m lost. Thankfully, one is not expected to balance one’s checkbook in order to qualify for adulthood anymore. Because if that was the case, I would be truly out of luck.
Anyway, today is National Exascale Day, which celebrates the scientists and researchers who make breakthrough discoveries in medicine, materials sciences, energy and more with the help of some of the fastest supercomputers in the world.
“Exascale” is defined as a quintillion computations per second. For perspective, if all 7.7 billion people on earth each completed one calculation per second, it would take over 4 years. An exascale computer can complete a quintillion computations in 1 second.
ONE SECOND. Mind. Blown.
So, why does this matter? The more calculations that can be done in a shorter period of time, the quicker an outcome can be realized. That outcome could be related to cancer research, or maximizing crop yields, or finding the latest Covid vaccine.
You get the picture.
Exascale systems can achieve over 1 quintillion operations per second, which is 10 to the 18th power, or a one followed by 18 zeroes. That’s why the 18th of October was chosen for this particular day.
This is kind of amazing: What does a quintillion calculations per second look like?
- It would take 40,000 years for one quintillion gallons of water to spill over Niagara Falls.
- The Milky Way galaxy is one quintillion kilometers wide.
- If all 7.7 billion people on Earth each did one calculation per second, it would take over 4 years to complete a quintillion calculations. An exascale computer can do it in one second.
- Exascale supercomputers will be roughly a million times more powerful than the average laptop we use every day.
If none of this impresses you, I don’t know what will. But again, because I am not a math person, I’m having a very hard time wrapping my head around all this. So, for those of you who, like me, might be feeling a bit out of their league…here’s something that we can all get behind:
International Gin & Tonic Day. You’re welcome. Though, honestly? I consider G&T the ultimate summer drink. October is really more of a mulled wine, or spiked hot cider sort of season, no? (Oh, and BTW, if you think G&T tastes sort of medicinal? You’re not too far off).
It looks ALMOST like G&T weather today…maybe a little on the cool side, in the low 60s, but with mainly sunny skies all day long.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden mourned the loss of Colin Powell, describing him as a “dear friend” and a dedicated public servant who broke barriers as the first Black U.S. secretary of state.
“Colin Powell was a good man,” Biden said in a statement. “He will be remembered as one of our great Americans.”
In four decades of public life, Powell served as the nation’s top soldier, diplomat and national security adviser, and delivered a speech at the United Nations in 2003 that helped pave the way for the United States to go to war in Iraq.
Powell advocated against precipitous war but urged the use of overwhelming force when conflict was unavoidable, views popularized in the media as the Powell Doctrine.
Biden often found himself on Powell’s side. Stalking the hallways of power together for decades, the two men represented an era of bipartisan policy agreement that now seems antiquated and even, in the case of the Iraq War, ill-advised.
Powell, 84, who was fully vaccinated, died from complications from Covid-19 while battling multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that suppresses the body’s immune response, as well as Parkinson’s.
Powell received his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in February. He was scheduled for a booster last week but fell ill before he received it.
Powell’s death should not lead to any concerns about the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines, according to experts and government officials.
Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer that hurts the body’s ability to fight infections. Fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems make up a large proportion of hospitalized breakthrough cases, according to the CDC.
Powell opened up to journalist Bob Woodward about his life, legacy and recent health problems in one of his last ever interviews.
Before Powell rose to the highest reaches of the U.S. military, becoming a four-star general and later the country’s first Black secretary of state, he was a New Yorker.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said the Harlem-born first black secretary of state exemplified the best of the Big Apple and made New Yorkers “very proud.”
Paid leave, a cornerstone of Biden’s economic agenda, is one of the many proposals at risk of being scaled back or left out of an expansive social safety net bill that Democrats are trying to push through Congress.
While President Biden’s economic agenda is mired in Democratic infighting, the Senate is quietly making history with his judicial nominees.
Planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into Westchester County in an effort by the Biden administration to quietly resettle them across the region.
Former President Donald Trump filed suit to block records from his time in the White House from being turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The former president’s lawyers filed the 26-page suit in D.C. district court, declaring the committee’s investigation “a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition.”
The lawsuit marks Trump’s latest effort in a long and thorny fight against subpoenas from the Democratic-controlled U.S. House.
For the past few months, some analysts have speculated that if Republicans win control of the House in 2022, they could elect Trump as House speaker — something that would be perfectly allowed by the Constitution.
Two senior Democratic congressman announced that they won’t seek reelection, adding to growing worries about the party’s chances of holding on to its slim majority in the House.
A hacker appears to have compromised a section of Trump’s website and replaced it with a slogan and a speech from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so Ally made them forget themselves. Here they really went astray,” the site read.
Trump testified under oath for a 2015 lawsuit filed by protesters who accused the then-presidential candidate’s security guards of assault, marking the first time the former president is known to have been deposed since leaving the White House.
Trump was grilled for over four hours in a video deposition.
A criminal contempt report released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack largely pushes back on former Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon’s claim that he can’t respond to a subpoena by the panel due to executive privilege.
The Food and Drug Administration is moving to soon allow people to receive booster shots that are different from their first Covid-19 vaccine doses, people familiar with the matter said.
The government would not recommend one shot over another, and it might note that using the same vaccine as a booster when possible is preferable.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki excused Biden’s decision to not wear a mask inside a D.C. restaurant as “moments in time that don’t reflect overarching policy.”
Washington State University confirmed that it had fired football coach Nick Rolovich for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine in violation of a state mandate.
San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane has been suspended for 21 games for violating the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.
Country music singer Travis Tritt has cancelled four concerts at venues that required proof of COVID-19 vaccinations.
One of New Jersey’s largest health systems has fired over 100 of its employees who refused to comply with its vaccination policy, the hospital network announced.
Southern states, many of which have been hotspots, are now starting to see a decrease in Covid-19 cases while many states that have started experiencing cold weather – mostly in the North and Midwest – are seeing an uptick.
De Blasio and top city health officials unveiled tentative plans to roll out booster shots for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines, but said they are still waiting on formal approvals from the federal government before moving forward.
New cases of COVID-19 flattened statewide over the past week, but they were persistently high in some regions of New York.
New York’s NAACP president Hazel Dukes will support Gov. Kathy Hochul’s election campaign next year.
“Throughout her life and career, (Hochul) has consistently stood up for the voiceless and marginalized in our communities,” Dukes said in a statement. “As an elected official, she has shown an unparalleled ability to listen and govern with compassion.”
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to redevelop Pennsylvania Station and the surrounding neighborhood was his most ambitious infrastructure project. Hochul is committed to the project, but hasn’t said specifically how she’ll change or advance it.
Hochul has made her final appointment to the state’s under-fire ethics commission, which she has publicly and privately vowed to overhaul and replace.
New York Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs is taking heat and facing calls for his resignation after invoking former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke while defending his lack of an endorsement in the Buffalo mayoral race.
“Let’s take a scenario, very different, where David Duke…he moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which is a low primary turnout and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs’ comments were the latest from the Democratic establishment, who have all avoided an endorsement in the race.
As criticism mounted, the New York State Democratic Party sent a tweet in which Jacobs defended his remarks and blamed those who found them offensive.
Jacobs later issued a lengthy new statement in which he apologized but stood by his argument that “not every candidate who wins a primary is entitled, unquestionably, to the endorsement of all Party leaders or elected officials.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Jacobs’ analogy was “outrageous and beyond absurd.”
Hochul called Jacobs’ statements “very disturbing” and said she was glad he had apologized.
According to a state Board of Elections filing, Joseph Holland, a former aide to Gov. George Pataki recently formed a campaign committee to raise money for a possible attorney general run.
Huma Abedin reveals in her new memoir how she lovingly consoled her husband, now ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner, after he claimed hackers posted a crotch shot on his Twitter account — and her disgust when he finally came clean to her.
When mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa face off in their first debate tomorrow, the pair will confront issues ranging from soaring subway crime to the fate of the schools’ gifted-and-talented program.
Adams plans to make leaving the Big Apple his first order of business if he’s elected mayor next month. He’s going to visit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic “immediately after” the Nov. 2 election.
Adams held an Ethnic and Community Media Town Hall yesterday for the last leg of his campaign ahead of the Nov. 2 general election, which is in two weeks.
Sliwa has unveiled his animal welfare platform that will ban backyard breeders, create “no-kill” shelters and put feral cats to work should he get elected, garnering endorsements from Sopranos bigwigs Dan Grimaldi, Joe Gannascoli and Robert Funaro.
De Blasio has lamented the erosion in people’s trust of government when it comes to COVID vaccinations, but as far as his controversial use of his NYPD security detail is concerned, he suggested that trust is a not an issue.
The mayor claimed that directing his NYPD security detail to shuttle someone from a job interview at his official residence to “where they were staying” was “in the public’s interest.”
The New York City Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis, citing America’s history of slavery and the devastating outcomes for minorities during the coronavirus pandemic.
The 7-foot-tall statue of Thomas Jefferson that has towered over members of the New York City Council in their chamber at City Hall for more than 100 years will be removed by the end of the year.
The Public Design Commission voted unanimously to delay the decision on where the statue should be relocated, but stipulated that no matter where it goes, it should not be in City Hall after the New Year.
A Harlem man who was left critically injured last week after trying to hang himself in the custody of the New York City Department of Correction was taken off life support, becoming the 14th person to die this year amid a deepening crisis in the city’s jail system.
A Rikers Island inmate says in a new lawsuit that he was sick with COVID-19 when a creepy correction officer sexually assaulted him in his cell.
The number of cops facing discipline over the NYPD’s response to protests prompted by George Floyd’s death has nearly doubled — but dozens more will never be reprimanded due to the department’s flouting of “proper protocols” and shoddy record keeping.
The New York Attorney General has filed murder charges against NYPD Officer Yvonne Wu over the shooting death of her ex-girlfriend’s new lover, officials said.
Secured bicycle parking is coming to Grand Central Terminal for the first time in the bustling train hall’s 108-year history, MTA officials announced.
For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the New York City subway saw over 3.2 million riders in one day.
In a corner of Long Island City, Queens, a fivefold increase in Asian residents since 2010 is transforming the area’s restaurants, housing and politics.
A New Jersey nurse who died after she was knocked to the ground by a fleeing mugger in Times Square was mourned a mere block from Bayonne Medical Center, where she spent more than two decades of her life caring for cancer patients.
An upcoming pilot program at New York schools will enable districts to experiment with performance-based assessments as an alternative to high school Regents exams.
A day after a panel fell from the ninth floor of the New York State Museum onto a Madison Avenue sidewalk, barricades remained in place as state officials sought to determine the cause.
A GOP/Conservative Rotterdam town board candidate has posted 9/11 and COVID conspiracy theories on his Facebook page.
The City of Troy is conducting a federally-funded citywide composting pilot program that will start this fall and run for two years.
A new bus service connecting New York City to Albany and key points in the Hudson Valley, including New Paltz and Woodbury Commons Premium Outlets, launched late last month.
A push in the Buffalo area could produce the first union at company-owned Starbucks stores in the U.S. But backers say moves by management are having a chilling effect.
A baby rhino was born at the Buffalo Zoo.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may continue using race as a factor in its admissions process, a federal judge ruled, rejecting a conservative nonprofit legal group’s argument that wants to dismantle college affirmative action policies nationwide.
The Haitian gang that abducted a group of American and Canadian missionaries is asking for $1 million each for their release, a total of $17 million, a top Haitian official said.
The 2019 letter from a Microsoft engineer reporting an affair with Bill Gates that preceded his exit from the board wasn’t the first time some Microsoft directors encountered the billionaire’s inappropriate behavior with female employees.
Germany’s most powerful newspaper removed its top editor after months of defending his sexual relationships with women in the workplace as the scandal began to envelop the paper’s globally ambitious parent company, Axel Springer.
The rapper formerly known as Kanye West has legally changed his name to Ye (a mononym) after a Los Angles judge approved his petition.
