The controversy over a massive American flag is now reaching a new level as the company responsible for flying the flag is rallying community support to fight the City of Statesville, which has reportedly filed a lawsuit to have the flag removed. Camping World posted a message to its Facebook page on Saturday saying the city has filed an injunction against Camping World, fining the company $50 per day going back to Oct. 15, 2018. That totals nearly $11,000. An online petition has also been started at Change.org in support of the company keeping the flag flying. As of Monday morning, more than 7,900 people had signed the petition. Channel 9 has covered the debate for years. In 2015, the state said the store couldn’t fly the flag because of a city ordinance. The city’s lawsuit claims a flag within 100 feet of a highway cannot be larger than 25 by 40 feet. The company’s CEO told Channel 9 similar flags are up at more than 200 stores across the country, including several cities in North Carolina, none of which have had any problems with them. “I don’t care if it goes to $500 a day. It’s not coming down,” Marcus Lemonis, CEO and chairman of Camping World and Gander RV, said. Lemonis said it’s personal to him. “My family has been car dealers, had been car dealers since the 1960s, and our key trademark was always flying our flag in our dealership in south Florida,” he said. “My family is largely immigrants of the country.” Council minutes from October show leaders tried to amend the ordinance to allow a flag of this size, but the motion failed 3 to 5. The City of Statesville sent Channel 9 a statement saying Gander RV applied to fly a flag far smaller than the one the company put up. A spokesperson said the city only started fining the company after asking it to replace the flag several times.
Author: Truth & Hammer
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Nepalese Sherpa Sets Mount Everest Record (Again), Climbing Mountain Twice In A Week
A Nepalese mountain
climber has now climbed Mount Everest a record 24 times — and he’s hoping to do it one more time before he retires. Kami Rita Sherpa, 49, has been climbing Everest since 1994. “It’s also the second time in a week that he’s made the arduous trek,” NPR’s Sushmita Pathak reports from Mumbai. “The 49-year-old Sherpa guide had already broken his own record on May 15, when he scaled the summit for the 23rd time.” Rita started his most recent climb just three days after his 23rd summit of Everest. Early Tuesday morning, he stepped on the tallest peak in an area known as the roof of the world, leading a team of Indian police officers on the climb, according to The Kathmandu Post. The highest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest’s summit is more than 29,000 feet above sea level. The first time it was successfully scaled was in 1953 — and the southeast route that was taken by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay is the same one Rita and many other climbers still use today.. In addition to Everest, Rita has climbed a number of other imposing mountains, including K2 and Cho-Oyu. Mountaineers who hope to climb Everest have a brief window each May in which weather conditions are most favorable. In the current season, 381 people have received permits to carry out expeditions on the mountain, as part of 44 teams, according to Nepal’s Department of Tourism. Of those climbers, 14 are natives of Nepal. As of Monday, at least 75 climbers had reached the top of Everest in the current season, according to The Rising Nepal.
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Build your own best friend! Students design $3,000 kit robo-dog that can jump, flip and dance and can be reproduced at home
A robotic dog that can dance, do flips and jump has been created by a team of students – and they are encouraging people to build their own. The robo-dog senses when it is out of position and uses ‘virtual springs’ to pop upright with precision. It has been created with the goal of being reproduced by anyone and the team has published their designs and blueprints online to encourage people to make their own robots. Doggo’s creators wanted to share their joy so much they have made the plans, code and a supply list all freely available on GitHub, a specialist platform for developers to share computer code. On the Stanford Doggo Project Github blog, the students describe themselves as undergraduate and graduate students in the Stanford Student Robotics club and part of the club’s ‘Extreme Mobility team’. The students wrote: ‘We have been working on legged robots for the last year and a half. ‘Our latest robot, Stanford Doggo, is a shoebox-sized quadruped robot that can walk, trot, pronk, and jump around.’ Nathan Kau, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering major and lead for Extreme Mobility, said: ‘We had seen these other quadruped robots used in research, but they weren’t something that you could bring into your own lab and use for your own projects. ‘We wanted Stanford Doggo to be this open source robot that you could build yourself on a relatively small budget.’ Club members estimate the cost of Stanford Doggo at less than $3,000 (£2,364), a figure they say includes manufacturing and shipping costs and that and nearly all the components can be bought directly online. The four legged robot has been designed to navigate different terrains with the help of motors that sense external forces and determine how much force and torque each leg should apply in response.
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Rotting Trash Piles Sky-High in LA, Attracting Rats and Raising Concerns of a New Epidemic
After reporting LA’s most notorious trash pile to the city’s 311 services hotline, the I-Team was told it could take up to 90 days before it’s cleaned up. An expert says there’s no time to waste
Rat-infested piles of rotting garbage left uncollected by the city of Los Angeles, even after promises to clean it up, are fueling concerns about a new epidemic after last year’s record number of flea-borne typhus cases.
Even the city’s most notorious trash pile, located between downtown LA’s busy Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up months ago. The rodents can carry typhus-infected fleas, which can spread the disease to humans through bacteria rubbed into the eyes or cuts and scrapes on the skin, resulting in severe flu-like symptoms.
The NBC4 I-Team first told Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office about the piles of filth in the 700 block of Ceres Avenue in October. At the time, he promised to make sure trash doesn’t pile up like that.
The garbage was cleaned after the interview, but conditions have worsened over the next seven months.
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With tornadoes bearing down, an aquarium encouraged guests to take shelter with its sharks
Tuesday morning in Tulsa began with a confirmed tornado and a blaring warning from the National Weather Service: “Take shelter now!” One offer of shelter came from an unexpected and oddly entertaining source: the Oklahoma Aquarium, which says it has a secure storm shelter under its shark tank. The shark tunnel and dome — home to an exhibit of bull and nurse sharks — is constructed from concrete “over a foot thick” and “designed to handle extreme force due to the weight of the water in the exhibit,” according to a social media post from the aquarium’s verified account. More importantly, though, the Oklahoma Aquarium
wants you to know that its storm shelter has “the best view in Oklahoma.” Tuesday morning’s powerful twister was located before 7 a.m. over the Tulsa International Airport; the aquarium is 19 miles south of the airport. The storm was moving northeast at around 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Storms continued in northeast Oklahoma on Tuesday. Several flash flood, thunderstorm and tornado warnings had already been issued before noon. Streets in Tulsa have been barricaded by Tulsa officials since 4 a.m. because of flooding. “Do NOT drive around the barricades. Doing so puts not only your life at risk, but also rescue crews,” the National Weather Service cautioned. The Oklahoma Aquarium had a different message: “Stop by today during normal business hours,” it wrote, for “storm-free fun.” Because yes, just in case you were wondering, it will be open.
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75 American Colleges Offer Black-Only Graduation Ceremonies
A study by the National Association of Scholars revealed that at least 75 American colleges have black-only graduation ceremonies and 43 percent of surveyed colleges offer segregated residential halls. The organization refers to this as “neo-segregation.”
According to a study by the National Association of Scholars, graduation ceremonies at American universities are becoming increasingly segregated. The study revealed that as many as 75 total colleges segregated graduation ceremonies. And that’s not all. 43 percent of the colleges included in the study offer segregated residential halls. In 2017, Breitbart News reported that Harvard would host a separate graduation ceremony for its black students for the first time. “We really wanted an opportunity to give voice to the voiceless at Harvard,” an organizer of that ceremony told the Associated Press. “So many students identify with the African diaspora but don’t necessarily feel welcome as part of the larger community, and they don’t feel like their stories are being shared.” That same year, the University of Delaware hosted a separate graduation ceremony for LGBTQ students. Proponents of these separate ceremonies argue that they allow guests to learn about the unique experiences of the featured group. Others argue that the ceremonies are segregationist and discriminatory.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this trend.
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Gene Therapy Gives Colorado Dogs Longer Lives
It’s a stress no Colorado pet owner ever wants to face — the idea of having to put a pet down. However, Joy Hughes found herself in this position when her dog’s pain was preventing him from being able to stand or get up on his own.
Hughes wondered how much longer she could allow her Labrador retriever, Tucker, to suffer. He has severe hip dysplasia.
For years, veterinarians have had to put down animals with chronic pain, especially when they are too uncomfortable to move on their own. Now Colorado dog owners are getting the gift of time thanks to a local study that seems to be doing wonders for pets with arthritis pain.
Hughes signed Tucker up for the study after seeing CBS4’s story “New Gene Therapy For Dogs Developed In Boulder Could Help Humans” in November. Veterinarians are conducting the gene study only on Colorado dogs and so far they are finding a 100% success rate. Dogs are getting a new lease on life after just one injection. The shot is made up of the Interleukin 10 gene, which the body naturally produces.
Dr. Rob Landry gave Tucker that shot and now he can run, hike and is pain free.
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NFL Star Benjamin Watson Blasts Alyssa Milano Over Abortion, Milano Responds With ‘Open’ Heart
NFL star, father of seven, and vocal pro-life activist Benjamin Watson called out actress Alyssa Milano for suggesting that Georgia’s new heartbeat abortion ban will hurt black women in America.
Milano, who is urging celebrities to boycott Georgia over the pro-life law, appeared on CNN last week to explain why she believes the law “will affect the communities of color more than anything.”
“I feel like any woman of privilege that lives in one of these states — if this goes through — they’re gonna be able to travel to a state to get a safe reproductive health care,” she told Chris Cuomo. “But for the women of color, for the women that are marginalized, for the women that are low-income communities, for the women that are most at-risk, this bill will be catastrophic.”
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McDonald’s Workers Want OSHA to Investigate Pattern of Violence
Every 36 hours on average, American local news outlets deliver a new report on violence at a McDonald’s. A group of employees in Chicago say workers bear the brunt of such incidents — enough to constitute a pattern of regular on-the-job violence they want the company to address across the U.S. In a complaint filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationon Monday, the workers at one location described being threatened with guns, attacked with hot coffee and having to dodge food thrown by a disturbed customer. “Despite the frequent incidence of workplace violence, our employer has done nothing to implement safety measures to protect us,” the workers allege in the complaint, which names McDonald’s Corp. and franchisee Oscar Perretta. The employees and other Chicago-area workers, who are working with the union-backed Fight for $15 campaign, are also sending a letter asking OSHA to open a “systemic” investigation into the corporation’s handling of workplace violence in its thousands of U.S. locations. Their letter cites data from the National Employment Law Project, which counted 721 local media reports of violence at U.S. McDonald’s stores over the past three years, most of them involving guns.
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How to Choose the Right Decking Materials
When you know you have to replace your deck, you typically just know. The finishing on the surface of the decking materials starts to look worn. In more extreme cases, portions of the boards can be completely rotted through or broken. In the most extreme cases, the frame could start to deteriorate, leading to hazardous deck collapses.
If you’re in a position where your current deck could use some TLC, average repair costs can be in the low thousands of dollars. A whole new deck can cost anywhere from thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the decking materials you use, the size of the deck and local labor costs.
Average estimates for how long it takes to complete a deck are around a week or less, whether you use a contractor or build the deck yourself. Deck repair can take as little as a day if repairs are minor. However, contractor schedules can vary.
Below, we’ll take a look at the types of decking materials, covering some basic pros and cons of each. But first, you should assess whether to repair or replace that deck.
Sometimes individual boards on the deck might need to be replaced. Image: WKanadpon/Shutterstock
Should you Repair your Deck?
The first question you should be asking is whether the frame itself is showing signs of corrosion. Damage to the structural support can lead to deck collapse. Sometimes corrosion will be obvious, like in cases where you can see rot on the edge of the deck frame itself. But you may have to get a professional to perform an inspection if you’re not an expert on woodwork. They’ll look at more technical things, like guardrail and stair connections.
Luckily, decks with structural support intact, but worn boards and railings, can get away with a simple repair to the decking materials. You simply need to replace the individual boards and railings that need repair. Some decks may need only a simple refinishing.
However, if you want newer materials, know that they could be heavier. In cases like these, the deck will need additional supports. The cost of additional supports could approach just putting in a new deck.
As another note, older decks from before 2004 often contained the toxic chemical chromated copper arsenate, a type of lumber preservative that has been labeled a carcinogen due to the arsenic it contains. Fortunately, you can have these types of decks refinished by a professional, which can seal away the chemical.
Natural wood can give a deep color and attractive texture to a deck. Image: Lauren Blackwell/Shutterstock
Types of Decking Materials
The market offers a wide array of options for decking materials, each of which has its own pros and cons. Below is a handy outline of the most common types of decking materials to help you decide which is right for you.
Pressure-treated lumber
This is made of natural wood, but it’s chemically treated to resist bugs, fungus and rot. It’s affordable and easy to source. However, it can crack, warp and split with time. It also requires maintenance, like yearly power washing and restaining every couple of years or so. And people with natural living and sustainability concerns may want to avoid decking materials with chemical treatments. However, it’s also the least expensive type of decking material.
Natural woods
Natural woods are a great investment for people who want to avoid the chemicals of pressure-treated lumber. Some types of woods have oils and tannins that make them naturally resistant to rot and bugs, like redwood and red cedar. Tropical hardwoods can also have similar resistant qualities, like tigerwood and ipe.
Shop carefully for these types of decking materials, as different types of woods are more hearty than others. And, like pressure treated lumber, natural woods like redwood require annual power washing and a new stain every few years. Different woods will have their own maintenance needs, so do your homework. Prices can be all over the place based on wood quality and type.
Composites
Wood fiber and plastic make up this decking material. It’s a highly durable option that doesn’t warp, rot or split as easily as natural wood can. You don’t need to refinish it, but optional paint or stain can give it a fresh look. However, it looks more artificial, so some people might not like the loss of natural texture and color that can come with moving away from natural woods. And it can grow mold and break down over time. You’ll be looking at mid-range pricing, compared to other decking materials.
Plastic
This type of deck is usually made from PVC and polyethylene, a couple of popular options. There is also plastic lumber, which is made entirely of 100 percent recyclable plastic. Plastic is more durable, especially in that it doesn’t rot or decay. Plus, it’s very light. However, this style is getting even further away from the natural beauty of hardwood, which can be a con for people who like that aesthetic. It can also be slippery and might sag. Like composites, prices tend to be mid-range.
Aluminum
Aluminum is one of those ultimate decking materials in terms of durability. It doesn’t rot, bugs can’t eat it, it’s mold resistant, it won’t crack or warp and its finishes last and last. For a con, however, it’s the most expensive type of decking. And some people may not like the sterile aesthetic of a metal deck.
As you can see, each decking type has its distinct pluses and minuses. So the right decking for you will depend on your budget, tolerance for deck maintenance, backyard entertainment needs and aesthetic preference.
And remember, if the cost of repairing or upgrading a deck is close to putting in a new one, you might just be better off getting a brand new deck that may last longer.
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