Proof That Humans Can Still Be Awesome; NASA’s Missing Tomato Mystery Solved–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Dec. 18, 2023

Indy Digest: Dec. 18, 2023

We now interrupt this Indy Digest to bring you a relatively rare news story that shows humans, in fact, can still be awesome.

The story, about a church in Pomona (80 miles west of the Coachella Valley), starts off terribly. The San Bernardino Sun explains:

Just hours before a big Christmas toy giveaway and a play was to be performed on Sunday, a decades-old church in Pomona was consumed by a raging fire.

Victory Outreach Pomona, which prides itself on helping those in need, was a total loss.

“We rushed over there and watched it go down right in front of our eyes,” said Victory Outreach Pastor Jerry Orozco, who was awakened by a call about the blaze around 2:40 a.m.

The story later says that about 100 firefighters responded to the blaze.

It’s terrible that this would happen to a church a week before Christmas. It’s REALLY terrible this would happen just before a toy-drive giveaway, for which 500 people had registered.

However, that toy giveaway would not be cancelled. Back to The San Bernardino Sun:

By midday Sunday, folks came out in force from around the region to help the 40-year-old church.

Toys poured in from neighboring churches, including Abundant Living, The Way, and Calvary Chapel of Upland. The California Highway Patrol donated around 100 toys. A local low-rider car club, Southern Life, got involved. The Los Angeles County Fire Department teamed up with ABC7 and delivered another 500 toys.

“No child should have to go through the holidays without,” said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone. “So we called ABC7 and we got the group together to deliver 500 toys not only to the kids in Victory Outreach, but to the kids in the community.”

Instead of taking place at the church, the toy giveaway happened in a parking lot across the street—but it happened, because humans still have some good left in ’em..

—Jimmy Boegle

Best of Coachella Valley Winners’ Advertising Spotlight!

More News

• The Wrap, via Yahoo! News, examines the worrying state of the news media: “The media industry has been rocked this holiday season by news of newsroom layoffs as outlets downsize to combat volatility in advertising, after an already-brutal year of job cuts. In the last month alone, Condé Nast, G/O Media, Vice Media and Vox Media have all cut staff, most of whom already had layoffs earlier this year. (Vice filed for bankruptcy in June.) Broadcast, print and digital outlets collectively saw 2,681 journalism job cuts in 2023, up 48% from 1,808 in 2022 and 77% from 1,511 in 2021, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. With a collapsing advertising-revenue model and more media companies experimenting with artificial intelligence to create content, the outlook for journalism is dimming, media analysts told TheWrap. The decline underscores the need for the public and even governments to fund news gathering if it is to survive in its current form and avoid widespread ‘news deserts,’ they said.”

• ProPublica continues to look into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Here’s the nonprofit news org’s latest findings: “In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. … At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, ‘one or more justices will leave soon’—maybe in the next year. At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. … In the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court.”

• Quaker Oats has issued a nationwide recall of some cereals and granola bars over concerns about salmonella. Time magazine says: “As of Dec. 15, Quaker had received no confirmed reports of illnesses related to the recalled products, the FDA reported. The recalled products include dozens of kinds of ‘Chewy Bars,’ puffed granola and granola oats cereals and granola bars included in snack boxes. Popular flavors including Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Raisin are among the recalled items. The recall list does not include the company’s Cap’n Crunch cereal. The nationwide recall has taken effect immediately.” Get details at www.quakergranolarecall.com.

• Here’s a disturbing headline via CNBC: “Only 60% of student loan borrowers made payments when bills restarted.” More details: “In October, the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments expired, and the bills resumed for some 22 million people. Just 60% of those borrowers had made a payment by mid-November, new U.S. Department of Education data shows. In a recent blog post on the findings, U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal suggested that the repayment troubles predated the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions ‘were not making payments prior to the payment pause because they were delinquent or obtained a deferment or forbearance,’ Kvaal wrote. Meanwhile, he said, ‘some are confused or overwhelmed about their options.’”

• The feds have closed a loophole that could, maybe, possibly cut down on all those annoying robocalls … maybe, we’ll see. Time magazine says: “The reason (companies are) getting away with continuing to make these calls is that the sellers, often big well-known companies, hire telemarketing firms to make the calls on their behalf. Often, these telemarketing firms buy consumer information—and, they argue, consent—from other companies, in a billion-dollar business called lead generation. … A consumer might have signed up to receive a call from one seller—say a car insurance quote—and then unwittingly clicked a box agreeing to be contacted by hundreds or thousands of companies loosely affiliated with the car insurance company. On Wednesday, Dec. 13, the government made it much harder for sellers to make calls to numbers obtained from the lead generation industry. In a 4-to-1 vote, the Federal Communications Commission approved regulations that explicitly say that telemarketing robocalls are allowed only if the actual seller, not just the telemarketing company, has gotten written consent from the specific consumer.” 

• And finally … the mystery of the lost tomato on the space station has been solved. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’ll share two pieces to explain. First, The New York Times reported on Dec. 11 on NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who “returned to Earth in September after completing the longest single spaceflight for an American astronaut and had to confront one small, red mark on his legacy: He had lost a tomato somewhere in the International Space Station. The tomato’s disappearance, he explained, had led to speculation that he had eaten it in secret, thus consuming important scientific research in a fit of desire for fresh produce while he was orbiting Earth. ‘A proud moment of harvesting the first tomato in space became a self-inflicted wound of losing the first tomato in space,’ Mr. Rubio said in an interview with NASA in October in which he discussed his record-setting 371 days in space. The mystery of the tomato was resolved, and Mr. Rubio’s name cleared, on Wednesday during a separate interview from the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston with the crew currently aboard the space station.” The story said no details were shared on the missing tomato.

• But Space.com, on Dec. 15, offered an update … and it was actually about TWO tomatoes: “NASA released footage of two tiny tomatoes that were lost in 2022 after astronaut Frank Rubio harvested them on the International Space Station. The chance discovery in the six-bedroom complex showed us how the 17% humidity onboard affects food in a Ziploc bag; Rubio had temporarily stowed the food inside and found it floated away in the meantime. ‘Despite being nearly a year after the initial disappearance of the tomatoes, the fruit was found in a plastic bag dehydrated and slightly squished,’ NASA officials wrote in an update Thursday (Dec. 14), without disclosing the exact find location. ‘Other than some discoloration, it had no visible microbial or fungal growth.'” So, there ya go!

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