The Daily Valet. - 2/17/21, Wednesday

✔️ Winter Wreaks Havoc

Wednesday, February 17th Edition

Cory Ohlendorf, Editor in Chief of Valet.

I haven’t watched ‘Barb & Star,’ but I’m told I need to see it for the clothes alone.

Cory Ohlendorf , Editor ⋯ @coryohlendorf

Today's edition is presented by

Today’s Big Story

Winter Wreaks Havoc

Extreme weather across the U.S. has left at least 23 dead and millions without power

I think when we all heard the warnings about the Polar Vortex's return, no one anticipated what we're seeing right now. Brutal cold hung over the central United States on Tuesday, after extreme winter weather swept the region. And another widespread storm is moving through the South and up the East Coast right now.

The storm brought chaos to parts of the country not used to severe winter weather. According to the New York Times, at least 23 people died across four states, with icy roads creating treacherous conditions.

In Texas, the hardest-hit state, more than three million homes and businesses remained without electricity on Tuesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us, down from four and half million earlier in the day. The Texas power grid—powered largely by wind and natural gas—is equipped to handle the state’s hot and humid summers when demand for power soars. But the severe winter weather crippled power production, which according to the Houston Chronicle is what regulators are looking into right now.

Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers in other states were also without power. What's more, the weather is putting a freeze on COVID-19 vaccine distribution throughout several states and cities. The White House confirmed Tuesday that delays in shipments and deliveries of doses were likely.

According to the Associated Press, the National Weather Service was “very surprised how rapidly this storm intensified ... and at the time of night when most people are at home and in bed, it creates a very dangerous situation.”

Climate journalist Emily Atkin made a similar point in her HEATED newsletter, “This extreme polar vortex event epitomizes everything climate change is: unprecedented, unrelenting, affecting a population unaccustomed and unprepared. Yes, we’ve always had winter—but not here, and not like this. Now take out the word winter, and replace it with every other extreme weather event. That’s climate change...”

↦ In Pictures: Here are the good and bad ways Texans are handling all that snow and ice.

The Takeaways From Biden’s Town Hall

With Trump’s impeachment trial over, the new president pushes his agenda

Less than five minutes into last night's televised town hall, President Joe Biden made a promise that will be the big news not just today but for months to come: He said that “by the end of July, we'll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American.”

The CNN event in Milwaukee focused heavily on the pandemic and a $1.9 trillion relief bill the president is pushing Congress to pass. He offered the type of pledges that could come back to haunt a politician. But Biden is clearly trying to raise the stakes. “Now's the time to go big,” he said. “If we pass this bill alone, we'll create seven million jobs this year.”

After a parent and a teacher asked how he planned to ensure that schools could open safely amid the pandemic, Biden said most elementary and middle schools would have in-person classes five days a week by the end of his first 100 days—restating his goal after his administration came under fire when aides said schools would be considered open if they held in-person learning just one day a week.

Biden was careful to pick the spots where he tacked left, reports Politico. He defended a $15 minimum wage hike, but not executive action to wipe away $50,000 in student debt relief. He insisted that people shouldn't be locked up for drug use offenses, but took great pains to emphasize that he had no plans to defund the police. Ultimately, he ended on a positive reminder: “The nation is not divided. You go out there and take a look ... you talk to people,” he said. “You have fringes at both ends, but it's not nearly as divided as we make it out to be.”

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Apple Introduces a Slate of New Emojis

Here’s all you need to know about the iOS 14.5 updates.

As part of iOS 14.5, Apple is adding new emoji from the Unicode Consortium’s Emoji 13.1 release, including skin tone options for some popular emoji and several new smiley faces and hearts. The company is also making some changes to other emoji that are already available, reports The Verge.

Newbies include a red heart on the mend, a face with spirals for eyes, a heart on fire and a face exhaling (though whether it's from smoking or a cough, you can be the judge). Apple will also introduce both a person with a beard and a woman with a beard.

The iPhone maker also tweaked the headphones emoji, making it resemble its new AirPods Max, and added helmets to emoji depicting people climbing.

While Unicode governs emojis, Apple is always passing on suggestions to make the emoji experience more inclusive and representative of all phone users. Unicode recently added accessibility-themed emojis like the ear with a hearing aid, a guide dog, and a prosthetic leg and arm, per Apple's suggestions.

NASA’s New Rover Is Ready to Land on Mars

Scheduled for tomorrow, it’s primed to be the most precise landing yet

When it comes to space happenings, there are few as tense, exciting and high stakes as landing a vehicle on another planet. Tomorrow, NASA's Perseverance rover will endeavor to stick the landing on Mars, kicking off a new era in red planet exploration.

The rover, which launched this summer as the star of the agency's Mars 2020 mission, will touch down in Jezero Crater, an ancient delta on the Martian surface. According to Space.com, the rover (nicknamed Percy) will explore the Martian terrain and conduct a number of experiments. Among its objectives, Percy will deploy the first helicopter beyond Earth, and search for signs of ancient life on the fourth planet from the sun.

While NASA has a lot of experience with delivering machines to Mars (here's looking at you, Curiosity and InSight), that doesn't make it any easier this time. “Landing on Mars is hard,” NASA said. “Only about 40% of the missions ever sent to Mars—by any space agency—have been successful.”

You can watch the drama of Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing—the riskiest portion of the rover's mission that some engineers call the “seven minutes of terror”—live on NASA TV. Commentary starts at 2:15 p.m. EST on Feb. 18.

↦ FYI: Krispy Kreme is offering a limited-edition caramel-dipped and chocolate cream-filled Mars doughnut to celebrate.

In Other News

Other Things We’re Talking About Today

The cool stuff on our radar

This 8-year-old Ferris Bueller

Bathrobe coats

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Break Out of the Winter Blues

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What We’re Buying

We've talked about this before, but your hands take a beating when it gets bone-chillingly cold outside. Obviously, wearing gloves helps, but having a hand lotion is clutch. L'Occitane is a premier brand in the lotion space, and we don't think you should be using any drug store knock-off hand cream. This shea butter lotion has a light texture that's rapidly absorbed to leave the skin feeling healthy, not sticky. Is it a deal because it's cheap? No. It's a deal because it provides so much value for the cost.

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