Oklahoma Lawmaker Puts Out a Bounty for Bigfoot, Who Lives in Oklahoma
Some states get to be popular states because of their big reputations, which attract visitors to make them backdrops for Instagram content. New York is where artists create ostensibly intellectual theme parks. California is where every teen gets a mansion. Florida is where a man throws an alligator into a Wendy’s. Oklahoma is pretty sure … Continued
U.S. States Ramp Up Contact Tracing for Covid-19, About Five Months Too Late
Public health officials in Oklahoma announced on Friday the state will begin using text messages to help contact people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus by patients who have tested positive. It’s a wise decision for contact tracers in the state, given the reluctance of many people to answer phones from unknown numbers, … Continued
Trump’s Plague Rally ‘More Than Likely’ Boosted Coronavirus Surge, Top Tulsa Health Official Says
That Donald Trump rally inside Tulsa’s BOK Center on June 20 has now resulted in precisely what the president and his re-election campaign were repeatedly warned about, according to Tulsa County’s top health official: a coronavirus spike in the city. Per the Associated Press, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said on Wednesday … Continued
Watchmen‘s Latest Twist Shouldn’t Be a Surprise to Anyone
The story taking place in Watchmen’s present is informed by that world’s past—one similar to ours where groups of white supremacists have terrorized black people across the world for centuries. At times, the show assumes you know this fact to be true but in others, like the opening moments of this week’s episode, Watchmen slows … Continued
Dave Gibbons Understands Why HBO’s Watchmen Turned Rorschach Into a White Supremacy Symbol
HBO’s Watchmen is set 30 years after the events of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s original comics series, meaning that most of the story’s original heroes and villains are long since dead, inactive, or in Doctor Manhattan’s case, hanging out off-planet away from humanity. But Watchmen’s world is one that’s been fundamentally changed by the … Continued
Who Gets the Money From the Big Pharma Opioid Lawsuits?
On Monday, an Oklahoma judge found Johnson & Johnson culpable for having sparked growing rates of opioid misuse and overdose deaths in the state, ordering the company to pay out $572.1 million in damages. The verdict will likely be appealed by the pharmaceutical giant, but it nonetheless represents the first major state case won against … Continued
Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million for Role in Opiate Crisis
In a landmark ruling, Oklahoma judge Thad Balkman ruled against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson today in the first trial meant to extract retribution from drugmakers for fueling the unprecedented wave of opiate-related overdoses and deaths in the U.S. The case, opened by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, originally targeted Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals … Continued
Tornado Kills 3 on Eighth Anniversary of America’s Deadliest Twister
Eight years ago, the deadliest tornado in U.S. history wreaked havoc on the 50,000-person city of Joplin, Missouri, killing 161 people. On Wednesday night, city residents had to relive the fear of that day as more than two dozen tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma and Missouri, one touching down near Joplin. Three deaths have been confirmed … Continued
Scott Pruitt’s Home State Now Gets to Regulate Its Coal Ash
Coal ash is nasty stuff. Full of dangerous metals like lead and mercury, the ash left over after the combustion of coal can increase a person’s risk for cancer and mess with their brain health. That however, isn’t stopped President Donald Trump and his boy Scott Pruitt over at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from … Continued
Nitrogen Gas Is Now the Execution Method of Choice in Oklahoma
The United States is dealing with a drug shortage—a legal injection drug shortage, that is. In response, states where capital punishment is still practiced are having to come up with new ways of killing people. Earlier this week, Oklahoma announced that it will start using nitrogen gas for all its executions moving forward, making it … Continued
How Oklahoma Spent Years Muddying the Connection Between Industry and Earthquakes
OKLAHOMA CITY-In the rotunda that towers above lawmakers at the Oklahoma State Capitol, the names of oil and gas companies past and present are inscribed. Conoco. Halliburton. Phillips. The oil and gas industry is the foundation upon which Oklahoma was built. Drilling started here in the 1800s, well before statehood. In peak years, the industry … Continued
New Model Could Solve a Huge Problem With Tornado Forecasting
Tornadoes aren’t hurricanes. Hurricanes are long-lasting, low-pressure swirls that follow somewhat predictable paths. But tornadoes can pop up and disappear in just a few minutes. It hasn’t been easy to give people fair warning about tornadoes, especially those folks caught in the crosshairs of violently-rotating columns of damaging, high-speed winds. But that could change one … Continued
Oklahoma Shuts Down Wells In the Wake of the Quake
Oklahoma was hit with an earthquake yesterday, its second 5.0+ quake this year. The increased number of earthquakes have been linked to the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—specifically the underground disposal wells where the run off from fracking is stored. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has taken note of the relationship between the quakes and … Continued
Induced Earthquakes Could Get Pretty Nasty, Thanks to Fracking
Thanks to fracking and other injection processes, small earthquakes are the new normal in the American interior. That poses another, more ominous question. What does the Big One look like in Oklahoma? Canada recently earned the dubious honor of the World’s Largest Fracking-Triggered Earthquake, while Oklahoma continued to deny its even-bigger quakes had anything to … Continued
The Strange Odyssey of an Oklahoma Outlaw’s Long-Lost, Long-Dead Mummy
Elmer McCurdy lived his life with one foot in the grave. A schemer and heavy drinker, he saw himself as an outlaw. Problem was, he kept botching the job. A train robbery in 1911 went up in smoke after Elmer applied too much nitro to the safe—destroying the strongbox and the loot. After lifting a … Continued
How Oklahoma Declared War on Obesity—and What’s Happened Since
When Oklahoma declared a “war on obesity,” it planned to change the city’s infrastructure and encourage healthy living at a huge scale. So far its population has lost a million pounds of fat—but is that enough to defeat obesity? When Velveth Monterroso arrived in the USA from her hometown in Guatemala, she weighed exactly 140 … Continued
Expert in Supreme Court Lethal Injection Case Did Research on Drugs.com
Tomorrow, when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the highest-profile death penalty challenge in seven years, the justices will begin ruling on this question: Does Oklahoma’s use of the common surgical sedative midazolam fail to make prisoners unconscious during lethal injections, thus violating the Eighth Amendment’s protection against “cruel and unusual punishment”? For many … Continued