Venera 14 was the last of the four Soviet landers, which are the only crafts to land on Venus and survive long enough to send images back to Earth.
Venera 14 survived for 57 minutes in 1982 before succumbing to the immense pressure from the Venusian climate, which was measured at ninety-four Earth atmospheres.
I've always wondered why more landers haven't been sent to Venus (other than the bang for the buck factor) because the planet is similar to the size of Earth and is a virtual petri dish for what Earth could eventually have to deal with as the planet warms.
The Athletic writes about football, but not football as this article looks at the small town of Ada, Ohio where all the NFL footballs are created for the league by Wilson.
The content is based on the company and the process of making the football itself rather than the game, but I found the process and the business interesting to learn about.
I planned on touring the facility on a visit this year, but with the pandemic who really knows when I'll be in the area to take that tour.
ProPublica with the New Yorker writes of "how Dollar Stores became magnets for crime and killing".
The lower cost department stores such as Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree are often placed in urban and rural areas that larger stores with more expensive inventories often avoid for various reasons.
The article focuses on communities in St.Louis and Dayton with the crime increases with those stories, why so many have proliferated in the poorer communities, and how these businesses engage with some very questionable practices with their personnel.
Hopefully, a future article by someone will focus on the effects that these stores have on the rural communities as well.
The home that I grew up in is located on the Sharpsburg Pike and these stores are finally beginning to creep into a deeply rural area and I'm not sure how I feel about the sprawl continuing.
I certainly understand (Because I've been there) these areas being serviced by a store that would enable needed items to be bought quickly rather than driving ten miles away to buy a container of garlic powder.
At the same time, you are adding to the expanse of larger towns, putting the small convenience store that has served the area for years (although many items that a Dollar General carries will not be stocked by the other stores), and could make these stores a target for robberies as the main focus of money in an area without very much of it.
It's an interesting topic and one that won't be going away anytime soon as the economy appears to be in a long-term decline.
We finish up with three notes from the Bulwark with each making me think of something personal, albeit not always a recollection with anything to do with the topic.
Jim Swift writes about the late Betsy Rothstein and laments that he didn't know her better.
I had never heard of Rothstein before this article, but I thought of two things after concluding his tribute.
The first is Rothstein's "Mirror Questionnaire", which seems interesting to me because I wonder if I created a similar work, how many friends would answer?
It would take a great deal to open up in such a manner and this comes from a person that doesn't mind answering questions normally but despises answering surveys from the employer.
The other makes me think of how many interesting people that I haven't gotten to know that I could have known.
I wonder what I've missed out on and what I could have learned, had I been a little more gregarious and reached out more.
At the same time, we all have our personal quirkiness, and even thinking about this I still doubt that I would do more of this, but that doesn't mean that I haven't missed out or will be missing out in the future.
Ron Radosh makes one ponder about the power of Presidential clemency.
People will understandably rank Presidents according to personal preference.
However, historians tend to shuffle the same few Presidents around at the bottom of the pile with one name always part of that discussion is that of Warren G. Harding.
Harding, he of several scandals that hit the public after his death, has been rated as the worst of all time by the occasional historian and is often mocked by political talking heads as the mile marker of any discussion on the topic.
However, Harding deserves credit for how he treated Eugene V. Debs with the power of clemency.
Debs, a former Socialist Party Presidental candidate both in and out of prison, was imprisoned for his violation of the Espionage and Sedition act during the administration of Woodrow Wilson.
The act was enacted to smother speeches and discussions that were anti-World War I, America's participation, and it could be said that few laws have taken away as many liberties (to use a buzzword of late) as that law.
Debs was arrested and sentenced to ten years in federal prison in 1919, where he served his time and ran for President in 1920 (finishing with 3.4 % of the vote) as an opponent to Warren Harding.
The conservative Harding would seem to be unlikely to pardon Debs, a polar opposite politically, yet Harding did so because the law had been repealed (in 1920), Harding found Debs to be non-threatening, and he thought it would be the right thing to attempt to bring together a fractured nation.
Compare that to the current President giving free passes to his pals and protectors and the final paragraph by Radosh rings home as a comparison to the present day.
No matter the politics and Harding's other Presidential decisions, we could look at things as Harding did on this issue and be better for it.
Sidebar: Before the blog started, I took Cherie and Rachel to the Harding Home in Marion, Ohio for a private tour and I highly recommend it for a look at early 20th-century living and Harding.
The house will be re-opening in the fall with a new Harding Presidental Museum on the premises.
We wrap with Amanda Carpenter's article on yet another, ahem, gaslighting statement by the current holder of the Presidency, his tweet yesterday hinting about, eye roll, the safety of voting by mail, and a postponement of the November election.
While I have zero concern about this happening (he legally lacks any power to do so), it's another example of traps that are set to get people talking about the wrong things rather than the right ones.
It's easy to take that bait and I've done that myself!
Carpenter writes of the importance of ignoring the wild three-pointer, keeping your offense running as it should (I'm using basketball-speak, not Carpenter), and don't take your eye off the most important thing to watch.
Carpenter's 2018 book on the subject has been on my watch list to rea and I'd really like to read that one before the election.
There are still sports items to be cleaned from the inbox and I'll be back with the weekend in boxing as the biggest dog day month of them all starts tomorrow.
