Not In Kansas Anymore
06:36 Sunday, 30 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.19°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 248
Too much media. Everyone knows more than anyone else. Pay little attention to it. Focus on essentials. Breathe.
Focus on this moment. What's "your best," in this moment?
Spent yesterday with Mom. Spoke to all of my siblings. All the local ones came by. Had pizza and strawberry-rhubarb pie. Spoke to my son and my youngest daughter. Did more genealogy with Mom with the screen from the computer projected on the TV.
Mom needed a new Apple Watch. In case she falls. Got her a refurb from the veterans' store. Still pricey. Forgot to do the trade-in application. My brother can do that and use the credit.
Too much media. Breathe. Focus.
Too many pundits.
Focus.
Breathe.
One day at a time. One moment at a time.
Packing up the hotel room. Mitzi's in the pool. Say goodbye to Mom around 9:00. Three hours in the car to Trumansburg.
Fifty straight days of Expert in Quartiles. Never get all the words, but all the "quartiles," every time. It's the little things.
Seem to be missing my St Johns Riverkeeper ball cap. I liked that hat. Maybe in the car?
Read the Washington Post. Too much media.
All our infrastructure was built for a climate that does not exist anymore. This will gradually become brutally clear. A price will be paid for decades of denial and delay.
No one is saying Trump should drop out of the race. Why?
Too much media.
Focus.
Breathe.
Finish packing.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Train
10:21 Saturday, 29 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 81.37°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 477
I brought along the little Olympus Stylus 1s to Port Ewen. This is shot from my sister-in-law's condo across the Hudson to the eastern bank of the Hudson. The train is headed up from Poughkeepsie to Rhinebeck. My daughter Caitie took that train a couple of years ago when we were staying in Kingston for a week.
Mitzi's key fob has gone dead. I did a little homework while she was calling a Toyota dealer. I have the manuals on my computer. While she was talking I popped my fob open with my Swiss Army knife and showed her I could replace the battery with no trouble. It's a CR-2450, so we'll stop at Walmart before we get to Mom's and pick up a two-pack, and I'll replace both of them.
My brother has asked me to not install the bidet. He wants to make sure they're permitted, and if they are, he says the maintenance staff will install it. That way if there are any issues, they'll resolve them.
Sounds good to me!
The news is not great on the climate front with the reversal of the Chevron decision. So much for "precedent," and "settled law." This is just a part of the right-wing conservative agenda, much of which is outlined in chilling detail in Project 2025.
I don't wish to be apocalyptic, but we're in a lot of trouble. This isn't a singular struggle, but part of a continuum of conflict that waxes and wanes through history. We're confronting very serious threats on multiple fronts, and the political is perhaps the most consequential, because that affects what resources we can bring to bear on the others.
People tire of politics, and I think that's intentional by politicians. But we have to find the wherewithal to engage in the process, to talk to one another about it, to work hard and participate. To do otherwise is to surrender our agency in affecting the course of history, determining our future. It does matter. Saying your vote doesn't count is an expression of fear, originates in fear. It's not reality.
We must believe in democracy, have faith in our ability to shape our destiny.
It's not time to give up, it's time to get up. The hour is late, but it's not too late. Talk to your friends, post on your blog, if you're on social media, well, you shouldn't be. But if you are, don't post from fear. Summon courage, channel it. We're all in this together, even the folks we oppose; but none of the things we value will endure if we surrender to fear.
You're in this fight whether you want to be or not. So stand up and fight, or you'll be letting fear win.
✍️ Reply by emailFaith
07:25 Saturday, 29 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 82.65°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 628
"Faith" is kind of a loaded word. I find it's too often conflated with "religion." While faith is a necessary part of any religious practice, it's not strictly a religious concept, or irrevocably bound with any concept of a higher deity.
To me, faith is a radical acceptance of reality as it exists, or as we perceive it. Perception can change, hopefully, reality is fixed. Fear is a radical rejection of reality, or our perception of it.
I don't know if it's true, but I've read that, "The way of the warrior is to say, 'Yes!' to it all!" is a Bushido saying. And I believe that love is "faith in action," (the first derivative of faith) and courage is "love in action" (the second derivative).
If we take "nothingness" as the ultimate ground of being, existence is the negation of nothingness. An affirmative act. An act of faith. But it exists in tension with nothingness, and that tension is experienced as fear. Faith exists in tension with fear, it's the yin and yang of existence. This is the "x"-plane, a one-dimensional plane where time and action create love and courage, anger and hate. (First and second derivatives of fear.)
Consciousness apprehends existence with some mix of faith and fear. It's possible to embrace faith while still experiencing fear. It's almost impossible not to. It's in the choice of action that the difference is revealed.
We are in a world of shit.
There are a lot of people who are afraid right now, with good reason to be.
People calling for Joe Biden to step aside are acting out of fear, and likely many other emotions and motivations. Others are simply taking this opportunity to criticize any or all aspects of our political system, as if that expenditure of time, thought and energy will make any positive difference.
I've been reading many things after the debate. One thing I thought was clear, to anyone who isn't mired in anger and hatred, is that Donald Trump is the personification of anger and hatred. HIs appeal is to those who live in that part of the plane. This is the region that causes "good" people to do horrible things.
David Frum wrote something I found compelling:
Ferocious controversy will probably now erupt over Biden’s leadership of the Democratic Party. We’ll hear all kinds of plans to swap him out somehow. Maybe those plans will be workable, but probably not. Through the uproar, it will be important to keep in mind that this election is not about Biden. It’s about you and your commitments and your values. Biden is just the instrument. Like any instrument, he’s imperfect. But better an imperfect instrument than a would-be autocrat who demands a cult of personality.
We wish to believe, with some justification I think, that most people are fundamentally good. "Fundamentally" being the operative word. That their apprehension of existence isn't formed out of fear. They believe in a better future, in compassion, they experience empathy. I think the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is clear to those people. We must get them to the polls.
What happens in the next days and weeks will be decided by faith and fear, love and anger, courage and hate. How that plays out cannot be predicted, except to say that it seldom works out well when we act out of fear. That's Trump's home turf, his game.
Keep the faith. Work hard. Believe in one another. This is a fight we can win. That we must win. And it won't end after Election Day. The battles ahead are important ones and courage will be required. We must call upon it within ourselves.
It's all up to us, not Joe Biden.
Us.
✍️ Reply by emailProgress
07:14 Saturday, 29 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 82.65°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 255
Every place we've slept since we left has had a loud AC system. They've either woken me throughout the night, or made it harder to fall asleep. Mitzi insisted I get earplugs yesterday. I didn't think they'd stay in my ears, let alone do anything.
Well, I was wrong. She had to shake me this morning to turn off the alarm on my iPhone!
I feel much better.
We went down to Port Ewen yesterday, near Kingston and not far from Woodstock, where Dave Winer lives. We had lunch and visited with Mitzi's sister, who'd stayed with us for two months back in February and March while her pelvis healed. She's doing well and making plans to relocate eventually to California to be near her brother.
Today it's raining, the first day it hasn't been beautiful since we crossed over from Pennsylvania. We're going to head over to Mom's later and I'm going to be doing some light plumbing, installing a bidet my sister bought to help make life easier for Mom with her Parkinson's. Wish me luck. (I'll need it.)
Tomorrow we'll swing by Mom's to say goodbye and then head on to Trumansburg where we'll have a couple of weeks in the woods beside a creek. I'm looking forward to it. In Florida, I seldom have occasion to have this much social interaction and it's been a bit fatiguing, and I'm looking forward to just doing nothing for a day or so. Then a lot of hiking and sightseeing.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailMessage
08:57 Friday, 28 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 81.34°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 14
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Breathe
08:47 Friday, 28 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 81.34°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 120
Things looked pretty grim in December, 1941. They looked pretty grim in July, 1861.
They looked pretty grim last night.
But in both of the preceding cases, the fundamentals were strong and they ultimately decided the contest. The fundamentals are still strong.
Alexandra Petri captured much of my emotional reaction to the shit-show we witnessed last night. But Heather Cox walked me back from the ledge.
The stakes are as high as they were in 1861 and 1941. My Dad passed away 10 years ago tomorrow, though he passed in his sleep so it might have been 10 years ago tonight. For most of his later life his personal motto was "Keep the faith."
I hear his voice today.
✍️ Reply by emailCorrection
08:46 Thursday, 27 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 81.1°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 78
At dinner last night, I asked my brother about the chicken house. He said I was confusing that with the milk shed. We had the chicken house constructed. We had the milk shed moved from the natural spring where it formerly held the milk cans going to the dairy and kept them out of the sun. We used it as a wood shed.
Nobody is quite clear on when the garage, mud room and front porch were constructed.
✍️ Reply by emailCountry Roads
08:25 Thursday, 27 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.02°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 532
Last night was our third night in a hotel and we have three more to go. I'm ready for it to be over now. Both places we've stayed at have very loud ac units, that rumble. The beds are on enclosed platforms that seem to form a resonance chamber, and so the low frequency rumble is amplified as you're lying in bed. And for some reason, my tinnitus has decided to amp up the volume. Not sleeping well and feeling cranky.
Tonight is the shit-show everyone's been (not) waiting for. Yes, Biden's old, and in an ideal world he wouldn't be the candidate. But we live in an absurd world, so absurdities are the rule of the day.
In the blogosphere, there's angst about AI being trained on the "open web." It's only "open" if you have permission I guess. And, I must say, like Captain Louis Renault, "I'm shocked" that tech companies were behaving "badly." I mean, really? All these visionary, well-informed, tuned-in, savvy web "influencers" didn't see this coming? El-oh-el!
We were able to charge the RAV4 at both of the hotels we've stayed at, though we missed seeing the chargers the first night at the first hotel. When we did notice them, they were inoperative. The first person we spoke to at the desk appeared clueless, but we got someone who knew what the story was and it turns out that the chargers trip a breaker in the hotel. They reset the breaker and we were able to charge the car. For free.
This Hilton Garden Inn we're at now has chargers, but they're on a different network, so another app and more surveillance. Also, not free. But we charged anyway, because it's better for the world.
Mom continues her slow decline, but her spirits are good. She's growing more hard of hearing too. We went out with my brother to an outdoor hamburger stand last night for dinner. They go there once a week. It was a real piece of Americana. I managed to avoid ordering any ice cream.
Today we'll spend with Mom, and tomorrow we'll head down the Hudson to Port Ewen to visit Mitzi's sister for lunch. She's the one who spent a couple of months with us while her broken pelvis healed. Saturday will be the 10th anniversary of Dad's death, so we'll spend that here with family.
Sunday we're on the road for Trumansburg and hopefully, better accommodations.
The shot above is from the side of the road in the area where I grew up. It's the kind of thing you can take for granted as an adolescent when you're looking at it every day. As an old man, it's one of the most beautiful sights in the world. I keep telling Mitzi we have to come up here in the winter so I can get over my infatuation with the place. I do recall that it can get cloudy in October and remain overcast through April, or seem like it anyway. We're always up here in the summer.
Anyway, the beat goes on.
✍️ Reply by emailHomestead
07:49 Wednesday, 26 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.86°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 457
This is where I "grew up," or, at least the years between 6th and 12th grade. My parents built this place on two acres of land they bought from my grandfather in 1968, so it'll be 60 years old in four years. That sounds like a long time.
The front porch, mud room on the side and garage were all added later. We had wooden 2x10 steps up to the front door and back door for much of my time there.
It's odd, but I can't recall if any of the additions took place while I lived there. They were all added by my parents, because I recall going through the garage attic where much of my "stuff" was moved at some point, either by my parents or my brothers.
The place has a full basement where I used to pound out CQ on 80 meters CW as WN2FEB, I can still recall the smell of mildew and ozone, and the chill on my shoulders.
Not long after we moved in, we discovered the basement flooded. They installed a sump pump to manage that. Drinking water comes from a well, and it was very hard and had a distinct odor. I recall when we vacationed at Gramma's from Michigan, I didn't like the water because it "smelled." Turns out, you get used to it, but everything white eventually turns orange.
The trees in the left side of the frame were planted as saplings. They originally outlined our "picnic" area where we had our picnic table. Nearly everyone had a picnic table outside in those days. We'd often eat outside, bugs be damned.
Later it became the location of a used above-ground pool my dad bought and had set up. Back behind the garage was the chicken house, which we bought and had moved from wherever they bought it from. We had a few dozen chickens and sold eggs for a while. One of my chores in the winter was to trudge out through the snow to the chicken house to collect the eggs. As cold as it might be outside, the chickens kept the chicken house pretty warm.
One of my other chores was to also shovel all the chicken shit out into a wheelbarrow, and then spread it on the garden.
Speaking of shoveling, I also had to shovel snow out of the driveway so Dad could go to work. We used what was called a "grain shovel." It had a huge blade with a flat front edge and scooped sides. Mom would melt paraffin on it so the wet snow wouldn't stick as much.
Anyway, "Good times," as they say.
✍️ Reply by emailChittenango Falls 2024
13:20 Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 91.78°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 68% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 64
Had a nice morning hike to the base of the falls. It's not a long hike, but it's pretty steep. Had the place all to ourselves for a little while.
Seems like they've recently made some improvements at the park, the restrooms were among the best I've ever seen anywhere.
✍️ Reply by emailI Heart NY
07:15 Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.35°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 1.01mph
Words: 322
Made it to New York safely yesterday. Pretty for much of the drive, it was cloudy over northern Pennsylvania and the early part of southern New York, with strong, gusty winds.
It cleared up quickly as we headed north. We took State Road 26 from Whitney Point north to 46 then on to Verona. It was a very lovely drive, with very little traffic.
It's a welcome part of each of these trips, seeing the green hills, the farms, rivers and lakes and the old houses. We even saw a doe standing in a field. It's remarkable what a little elevation will do to lift your spirits.
Six hours in the car, with moderate traffic and little construction. I-83 and 81 are both in relatively decent shape. Encountered only one case of insanity, where an individual was weaving in and out of traffic and cut us off and had to brake because he couldn't get around the car in front of him, which made me brake hard to avoid rear-ending him. Happened right in front of a trooper parked in the median, but he didn't pursue.
Had dinner with my brother last night at a restaurant at Turning Stone Casino. Food was unremarkable, but we came for the company. Today we're going to visit my father's grave, hike a bit around Chittenango Falls, visit the Canal Town Museum in Canastota, NY which is where I lived for grades 6-12. Tonight we'll get together with one of my old high school classmates, and back on the road tomorrow out to Clifton Park near Albany to see Mom and a few of my siblings.
We're there through Sunday, when we'll head to Trumansburg for a two-week stay in a small place by creek.
It's wonderful to get away from the heat and the insanity of Florida.
✍️ Reply by emailSilent Sunday
13:14 Sunday, 23 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 94.21°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 58% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 14
✍️ Reply by email
FDR Memorial
10:44 Saturday, 22 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 80.29°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 416
Spent time yesterday as tourists before it got super-hot today. Mitzi's daughter took some time off and accompanied us as we visited some of the memorials we didn't visit last time. We were fortunate that the crowds that were present when we were here two weeks ago were absent yesterday.
I wanted to be sure to visit the Lincoln Memorial, having just finished The Demon of Unrest and Union. I'm glad we did. The memorial is undergoing a great deal of renovation, presumably in preparation for the nation's sesquicentennial in 2026. But it's still open, just not as picturesque. I'll post some pics at Flickr later.
Probably because I'm an old man now, I felt very moved as I read the words of Lincoln's second inaugural address. The last time I visited this monument was more than 20 years ago, and I've learned so much since then. I was also affected by watching the other tourists lining up to have their pictures taken in front of Lincoln's statue.
From there, we visited the Martin Luther King Memorial. Also a remarkable experience. It's interesting that King's body is facing the Jefferson Memorial, though his gaze does not. King's memorial falls between Jefferson's and Lincoln's and has something to say about the promise of freedom and equality, and the unfinished work of realizing that promise.
Walking up the tidal basin, past the cherry trees, we went to the FDR memorial and lingered there for a while. I took the opportunity to try some long-exposure shots with the Oly XZ-2, which has a built-in 3-stop ND filter. There's some motion blur as the camera's IBIS isn't quite able to compensate for a hot, tired old man's unsteady grip.
Sherri, Mitzi's daughter, and I talked a bit about how remarkable it was that at two crucial moments for our nation, leaders emerged who seemed uniquely fit to meet that moment, and we wondered where that leader was today. I also wondered how it happened that each was succeeded by a man who was chose on the basis of a political calculation of compromise.
I have to say that as cynical as I can be about partisan politics, I am profoundly affected by the ideals and sacrifices memorialized in our capital city.
(And may I just say that the words "capital" and "capitol" are utterly confusing in usage.)
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailIt Ain't The Humidity
11:01 Friday, 21 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 84.42°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 17.27mph
Words: 471
We made it to DC safely. A couple of interesting/scary moments. People are insane. Though for the most part, traffic was rather light and we encountered only a small amount of construction. Right at twelve hours door to door.
Apple Maps let me down on finding a rest area in North Carolina just over the border from South Carolina. There were two entries indicated on the map when I searched for rest stops, one indicated being closed, the other was a bit north on the map and indicated it was on I-95 North. Well, suffice to say, there is only one and it is closed.
Mitzi had been driving for a while and it's our custom to pull over at a rest area, stretch our legs and eat lunch before switching drivers. I relied on Apple Maps and was disappointed. We ended up eating standing up next to the car in the shade of a tree by the side of a road off one of the other exits.
It's hot here. Unsurprising.
Supposedly, one of the best things we can do about climate change is "talk about it." I do that a fair amount here, perhaps too much.
I get frustrated by "attribution" reports. That climate change has made a certain weather event X-percent "more likely."
It's not "more likely," because there is no "likely" climate that exists anymore, and hasn't for some time. But the cumulative effects are now being felt with regularity.
The climate system that produces the weather we experience today is unprecedented in earth's history. Not just human history, the history of the planet.
All of the weather we are experiencing is due to this new reality. It's not "more likely," it just is. It's not going to revert to some "normal" state.
Attribution analyses were kind of a response to denialism, but I think reality is a sufficient response to denialism and these attribution analyses seem misleading to me with these weasel words, "more likely." Likely compared to what? A climate that doesn't exist anymore?
The reality is that there is more energy in the climate system. Energy is the capacity to do work. Weather events will do "more work," be "more extreme" (Although even that's misleading because they're by no means "extreme" in the context of our present climate system.)
We have a civilization with a physical and economic infrastructure built for a climate that no longer exists and that we cannot return to. We can stop making it worse, and we must. But the sooner we wake up and accept the new reality and what brought it about, the sooner we can begin making the kinds of changes that will reduce suffering.
Anyway...
The beat goes on.
✍️ Reply by emailTake In All Lines
05:03 Thursday, 20 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 77.83°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 649
We'll be underway in just over an hour. I'll shut down the iMac and be posting from the 14" MBP for the next month or so.
Packing for a trip like this remains a challenge, mostly with regard to camera gear because I have so much to choose from, and inevitably I'll wish I had something at some point while we're away.
I'm bringing the OM-1 and the E-M1X as the only two interchangeable lens cameras. For lenses, the 12-45mm/f4 as a small walkabout and the 12-100/f4 as a large walkabout. The 40-150/f2.8 for possible birds, bugs and astro, and the 100-400mm for birds (and the moon). Primes include the 8mm/f1.8 fisheye for star trails, Milky Way and wide-angle interior shots using in-camera de-fishing; and the 17mm/f1.2 for possible aurora. I'll also have the MC14 teleconverter, though I'm just now thinking I should add the MC20. Hmmmm...
I have the Cotton Carrier G3 for the big zooms, and I'll use a sling with the 12-45 and the FE.
I went a little nuts on compact cameras. Into a small bag I have stuffed an XZ-1, XZ-2, Stylus 1s, TG6 and LX7. Three of those will charge in-camera, the other two (LX7 and Stylus 1s) required bringing along a charger, alas. It was mostly a case of I couldn't make up my mind, so I brought all of them. Left behind are the XZ-10, Fujufilm XQ1 and Pentax MX1.
A few filters, a flash, a couple of tripods, well, four tripods including the little ones, and an assortment of USB-C, micro USB and Oly proprietary USB cords.
I remembered this morning that I'm going to want to wear a light, long-sleeved shirt today. Driving north in the afternoon will have the sun beating on my left arm and it gets quite uncomfortable. I'm happy I remembered that.
The car is nearly all packed, just the perishables we're taking along and a few items I've just recalled.
I wish I enjoyed travel more. That is, I wish I enjoyed getting ready to travel more. In the days leading up to a trip, I'm just a mess. I feel like I can't start anything because there's no time to finish it before I have to leave, whether that's for a weekend or a month. There's just this overall feeling of dread. Once I'm on the road or at our destination, I'm fine. But I really struggle in the days before departure.
We're visiting friends and family for the first week before we arrive at the Finger Lakes. Because the prices have spiked so much for rentals, we're not spending the whole time with a view of the lake. The first two weeks are at a rural home with a creek running alongside it. I'd hoped for clear horizons, but it looks surrounded with trees. The last week is in a small cottage on Seneca Lake, which should be charming but I'm definitely going to miss the views we had from the places with more elevation. Florida is claustrophobic, and elevation is a cure for that. I'll have views driving around and hiking, but it was always just so refreshing to wake up in the morning overlooking a lake. Expansive. Like the world isn't closing in.
But, despite our relative wealth and privilege, those sorts of things are increasingly exclusively available to the more wealthy and more privileged. I suppose we could have rented a place with a view for a shorter period. Maybe that's the answer if we ever do something like this again.
And, of course, we're heading up north to escape the Florida heat (and insanity).
It's cooler in Florida as I write than it is in New York.
So it goes. Next stop, DC. Wish us safe travels.
✍️ Reply by emailDeparture Preps
07:07 Wednesday, 19 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 78.82°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 12.66mph
Words: 966
We're headed up to New York beginning tomorrow, with a weekend stop in DC. I should have been making preps yesterday, but I fell down a rabbit-hole at the National Archives, reading the deck logs of ships in the Pacific near the surrender of Japan. It was fascinating and disappointing and a story for another time.
I saved a story in Apple News, my apologies if you can't follow the link. It resonates with my own struggle with anxiety bordering on depression. But...
There is never going to be a point when it’s too late to be a good planetary roommate, he insists. “It’s late. It’s very late, and it’s very tragic that it’s gotten to this point, but it’s not too late because it’s not a binary on or off thing. It’s like every gallon, every litre of petrol that gets burned, every aeroplane that flies, every cow that is raised and slaughtered for meat makes it a little bit worse.”
I welcome the possibility of being surprised, too. Tom Murphy has been playing with some numbers (He "does the math."), and they reveal some interesting things.
I would like to read or hear more from demographers about the UN's projections and what seems to be happening with fertility rates around the world.
What Tom writes seems to at least suggest the possibility of a controlled descent. I've read various opinions on what earth's "carrying capacity" is, and the numbers I've seen range between 1 and 3 billion. I have no idea how accurate those may be, and I suppose they depend on what level "degradation" of the "natural" environment is desirable. For what it's worth, there is no "natural environment" left on earth, in the strictest sense. I think we're looking for a sustainable level of species diversity versus an ongoing mass extinction event, as a minimum.
The decrease in fertility rates allows for a significant decline in the world's population that doesn't require famine, disease and war to achieve it. Those things will still occur, of course, but perhaps not on a scale that might include a nuclear exchange and wholesale slaughter on global scale.
Inequity will still be the defining characteristic, with those of us in the global north likely suffering the least. It may prompt a serious reexamination of our way of life, though.
May.
It should certainly illustrate the genuine "limits to growth," that should inform how we choose to organize our economic activity and what a sustainable, reasonable quality of life might be. Consumption shouldn't be the primary goal of living a "good life."
There's still plenty to despair though. I just finished Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, by Colin Woodard. It's a fascinating book, and a good companion volume to The Demon of Unrest, by Erik Larson, or Robert E. Lee and Me, by Ty Seidule.
The Civil War was fought to end slavery and preserve the union. It was not fought to end white supremacy. If slavery is America's "original sin," the fruit we were deceived into biting was the myth of white supremacy. I've had to think about this a bit, and I'm not certain I've got it right, but in the "chicken or the egg" matter of racism and white supremacy, I think white supremacy came first.
And white supremacy is still with us, though I don't understand why.
When I was on Twitter and Ta-Nehisi Coats was as well, I recall reading tweets from him that suggested the role of white supremacy/racism was to serve the psychological needs of poor white men. That, while they were still poor, they weren't at the bottom of the social hierarchy because they were still superior to other "races" and people. And I guess I still don't understand how someone grows up to need that. I'm certain it's passed along from parent to child, chiefly fathers to sons, but how much psychological or emotional utility does it actually have?
I know we're born with some sort of intrinsic sense of fairness and that we can experience unfairness with a negative emotional response. Poverty, being poor, is inherently unfair, though I suppose it can also be a learned experience as many people can truthfully say, "We didn't know we were poor," because there was no other or larger experience to compare it too.
And ambitious people, again, mostly men, can exploit this characteristic to serve their own ambition or agenda. But only in an environment of ignorance. White supremacy, or any form of bigotry, requires othering some group. Making them seem undesirable in some fashion, and that only works if the people they're making this appeal for bigotry to, don't know the "other." Because none of the undesirable characteristics are especially unique to any group being "othered." Because we're all people. So bigotry relies on ignorance and deception.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I just meant to say that Woodrow Wilson was a real racist and a genuinely weird dude too. I knew he segregated federal civil service because I visited his presidential library (unofficial, because it was before "official" presidential libraries) in Staunton, Virginia. The only thing I knew about Josephus Daniels, Wilson's Secretary of the Navy, and just one of the racists he surrounded himself with, was that he banned alcohol aboard navy ships. They never told us he was also a vehement racist and white supremacist (if that's not too redundant). Let's not name another ship after him.
In any event, white supremacy, and the ignorance it requires, is behind so much of the unfairness and inequity in the world, and will play a shameful role in how the great simplification plays out.
And we should be ashamed.
Now I've got to start packing.
✍️ Reply by emailMoon 6-16-24
08:05 Monday, 17 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 80.74°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 327
I hope all the dads and granddads out there had a pleasant day yesterday. My son and his wife and their three boys joined us at the water park here in our neighborhood. Their youngest, Jackson, is four now and is less shy around me and far more eager to play in the various water features than last year. The older boys did an excellent job looking after their little brother. Weather cooperated with broken clouds keeping the sun's intensity in check.
Out of fatigue more than interest, we watched Armageddon last night on (shudder) cable television. I'm pretty good at finding the mute button on the remote by feel, but the number of commercials was simply incomprehensible. By the end of the movie I realized why CW selected that title for its Father's Day offering. A horrible movie, but in an almost camp, so-bad-it's-good sort of way, it was worth watching yesterday.
We're making preps for heading north, just in time for the heat wave. We just may have the timing right, where the worst of it will be moving south toward the mid-Atlantic as we're moving north. In the past, one of the most refreshing things about visiting upstate New York in June was that it was a good ten or fifteen degrees cooler than Florida. July could get hot, but it still tended to cool more in the evenings. But that was in the "old" climate. Who knows what to expect these days?
Was chatting with a friend last week about Governor DeSantis and I referred to him as being stupid. My friend insisted he isn't stupid. I suppose he's correct. He clearly possesses some measure of intelligence. So perhaps I should use the term "fool," instead; because even people who aren't stupid can be fools, and DeSantis is a fool.
An ambitious, reckless, irresponsible fool.
✍️ Reply by emailFurther to the Foregoing
09:06 Sunday, 16 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 82.94°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 68
Those "recurrence intervals" for extreme rainfall events?
The data set that established those intervals was a assembled from weather records in a climate that no longer exists.
I don't know how those can be "adjusted," "corrected" or "modified" to provide meaningful guidance in a climate that has changed, is changing and will continue to change for centuries.
"Buckle up, Dorothy, because Kansas is about to go bye-bye."
✍️ Reply by emailCommunication Breakdown
08:10 Sunday, 16 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.9°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4mph
Words: 692
Since I don't engage in "social media" anymore, apart from blogging, I'm not terribly up to date on what climate experts are thinking and writing about. I get some email newsletters, and follow the news, but I do feel a little out of touch.
Nevertheless, I'm frustrated by things like this piece in the Miami Herald, that contains utterances like this:
“What we are seeing lately is very consistent with what we would expect to see in a warmer world,” said Jayantha Obeysekera, head of Florida International University’s Sea Level Solutions Center. “This is a sign of things to come.”
And...
“Climate change did not cause this event,” he said. “Let’s be clear, it did not trigger what happened yesterday, however, the severity of the event got enhanced by climate change.”
No, "let's be clear," the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change until such time as we stop altering the earth's atmospheric composition and the system approaches a new equilibrium state, which may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years.
Climate is:
The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
The key words there are "characteristically prevail."
As of some time ago, those words became meaningless because the climate system, which establishes those prevailing characteristics, departed from its own "prevailing characteristics," chiefly the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The climate we are currently experiencing has never existed before in this planet's history.
Yes, there have been periods with similar amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. But not with the present and recent past polar ice sheets, the locations of the tropical rain forests, the ocean current systems, and certainly not with the human generated land characteristics.
What happened in south Florida last week is not a "sign of things to come," it is a "prevailing characteristic" of the present, which is one of period of transience. We do not currently have the luxury or advantage of a stable climate system. We have destroyed that for ourselves and we're not getting it back in the lifetime of anyone living today.
It is undergoing a transient, driven chiefly by CO2, but also by the heat that has already been absorbed by the oceans, the changing polar ice coverage in the arctic, and other changes that are ongoing, which include the slowing and possible collapse of the AMOC.
It's meaningless to say, "Climate change did not cause this event."
"This event" occurred in a changed climate. There is no other context to consider.
Climate does not "cause" the weather. "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." But weather is caused by the conditions that establish what the climate is, and those conditions have changed, are changing, and have caused the weather we experience to change.
This is not a "sign of things to come," this is our present reality and it is only going to get worse from now on. It is not going to stop changing, until we stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and then we have to wait centuries until it achieves a new equilibrium state.
Maybe less time if we can actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate that makes a difference.
Yes, as the article mentions, it's possible that Florida may actually become drier in our changing climate, while also still experiencing rainfall events that exceed all of our present stormwater infrastructure capacities.
"Climate change" is what is happening right now. It's a reality. All of our weather is occurring in a climate system that is undergoing a rapid, dynamic and possibly non-linear transition, a dramatic change.
Everything we have built, all of our infrastructure, our economies, our transportation systems, our agriculture was constructed in and for a climate that no longer exists.
It is useless, stupid and futile to think about whether or not a particular extreme weather event was "caused" by climate change. It's a distraction. We no longer have a stable climate, the "prevailing characteristics" no longer prevail, and we are in a world of hurt and the sooner we figure that out, the better.
I'm not optimistic.
✍️ Reply by emailMaybe Some Good News?
11:02 Friday, 14 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 84.94°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 67
This is a video of the blog post I mentioned last week.
Stick around to about the 12:40 mark for maybe some good news?
✍️ Reply by emailHell And High Water
09:34 Friday, 14 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 83.28°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 492
I hope you can read this article in the Miami Herald. Might be behind a paywall. It's a good look at what reality is like today in Florida.
One homeowner who has now been flooded three times said he is selling his home and moving. Another guy who's been flooded twice declared that he wasn't going to "give up paradise for a little bad weather."
It's insanity.
Part of my struggle with the cognitive dissonance that is the normal state of mind in Florida is due to my career in the navy.
When you're out at sea and there's a catastrophic event, there's no place to run. You fight to save the ship. The navy learned a lot from accidental fires and disasters, as well as combat or near-combat actions (STARK) and made sure it trained and equipped sailors to save the ship.
We would hold "mass conflagration" drills. These were all hands efforts. The entire ship would go to general quarters to maximize the watertight integrity of the ship, bring all of its firefighting capabilities to their maximum state of readiness. Fully man all the repair lockers, get people out of their racks and into their spaces where they were alert and informed and ready to take action when directed to.
There is a fire aboard spaceship earth and it has reached the life support system, and the officers on the bridge are debating what the best liberty port will be.
You can't blame Republicans for the catastrophe we're facing. It's been a couple of centuries in the making and we've all played a role in causing it.
But you can blame Republicans for our failure to do ANYTHING about it.
We just passed a law to delete the words "climate change" from the state's statutes.
It's madness. MADNESS!
This wasn't a named storm. This was just weather. Ordinary weather. You can't call it a "1000 year event," when it happens two years in a row! (And please, no lectures about "that's not how statistics work." Go learn physics and meteorology and then come talk to me.)
If we have one major hurricane strike Florida this year, we will have an unprecedented, catastrophic insurance crisis in this state.
The "reforms" the legislature enacted chiefly made it harder to sue insurance companies, and made it easier for them to deny claims. And they will still lose money and leave the state, and their clients and customers will not be made whole and will not be able to sue to be made whole. Blue tarps and property values in the toilet. Tax base collapsing. Let's see DeSantis reject federal money then.
He'll be begging for it.
This issue has been well known and well understood for decades. Florida has been exclusively governed by the Republican party for more than a generation, and they have done nothing to prepare this state for what has been foreseeable, predicted and now experienced.
It's insanity. Stupidity.
✍️ Reply by emailRon DeSantis, Please Take Note
10:07 Thursday, 13 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 85.39°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 109
This is alarming, but then everything is alarming these days so...
Toward the end, he notes that we may have already passed the tipping point. We won't know until we have a few more decades of observations showing consistent slowing. Here's the PDF.
Florida Republicans don't care. Depending on the speed of the effects, they may not live long enough to regret it. Their grandchildren will, though.
✍️ Reply by emailGood Morning
07:39 Thursday, 13 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.12°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 342
Sunrise looked promising but I wanted to get my bike ride in before I put the drone up. The best clouds had drifted away by the time I got home and got it launched, but it still wasn't bad.
I took a look down into the swamp and it's pretty dry, maybe drier than I've ever seen it. Net, we're above average in total rainfall in the preceding 12 months, but May was about 30% below average. (We're in St Johns County.)
Meanwhile, south Florida is flooding.
I've been watching Dark Matter on Apple TV+ and I'm ambivalent about it. It's like Quantum Leap in some ways, but the latest episode makes me think it's a remake of The Wizard of Oz, with Amanda as Gwendolyn and the tip that, "There's no place like home." The only thing missing was a pair of ruby slippers (which I saw at the Smithsonian a couple of weeks ago).
I've been playing Quartiles in Apple News+ Puzzles. I guess it's Apple's version of Wordle. I find it pretty entertaining. I seldom get all the words, but I get all the "quartiles" and made "expert" on every game I've played since late last May. I don't understand the "streak" thing on the Scoreboard. My "Current Streak" is 1 day, but my "Expert Rate" is 100% and my "Longest Streak" is 7 days, and I've played every day since I started. Makes no sense to me.
The chainsaw arrived yesterday, and it was really used. They stuck a new chain in the box, but I'm sending it back. I'd rather buy a new one than a scratched=up, oil-soaked used one with a well-thumbed, oily user manual for only a 12% discount. If it'd been discounted 35%, I'd say it was a fair deal. But the previous owner did some serious wood cutting and then returned it. Cheapskate. I didn't even stick a battery in it.
Anyway, the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailFlorida
16:04 Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 86.72°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 19.57mph
Words: 84
It's a good thing that the generation-long (mis)governing Republican legislature and Ron DeSantis have scrubbed the words "climate change" from the state's statutes! Otherwise, we'd be totally unprepared for stuff like this... (Turn down the volume, don't need the "dramatic" soundtrack.)
✍️ Reply by emailMaterial World
13:54 Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 87.57°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 101
I've just bought the Kindle version of the book. This is a lengthy conversation, but it's fascinating and you can watch it at 1.25x speed (I did 1.5x, but it's a bit uncomfortable at that speed). This conversation is very much of a piece with "the limits to growth," without ever mentioning "the limits to growth."
Worth a watch.
✍️ Reply by emailMovies: Wicked Little Letters
07:01 Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.46°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 23
Rented this last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Very funny story layered over tragedy and injustice.
A tonic for what ails ya.
Recommended.
✍️ Reply by emailNo Hurry On Sequoia
06:34 Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 76.24°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 382
I installed the beta yesterday on my 13" M1 MacBook Pro. Rather unremarkable, for the most part. Apparently, all the whizzy stuff isn't ready yet. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with "unremarkable," as long as they're fixing things rather than adding new, broken things and breaking things that used to work in the process.
Maybe it's old age, but a new version of MacOS isn't the exciting thing it once was.
I also installed iOS 18 on my 6" iPad (6th gen). Changes are more evident there, mainly in Photos where the new "organization" mode is present. Meh. I don't perceive any value added. Maybe I'm missing something.
It re-indexed the Photos library. At first I couldn't search for something like "20mm" (as a focal length). This morning I can.
Didn't notice anything different in the editing tools.
The handwriting adjustment feature seems present in Notes, but I haven't tried it yet.
Calculator has the notebook feature in both OSes. I hadn't noticed the RPN feature before, so I don't know how long it's been present. Kinda cool if you like RPN.
I was planning to get a new phone this year, undecided on a 15 or a 16, but I guess it'll be a 16. I think the 14" M3 MBP is relatively safe for the foreseeable future. I'm glad I got the 24GB model if all this AI stuff takes a lot of RAM. Even then, it's probably not enough. I'll have to play with it and see how relevant it is to what I do these days, which isn't much, before I decide if the 27" 2019 iMac is no longer relevant. It'll be five years old next month. I'd gotten 7 years out of my 2012 13" MBP Retina, which was my main machine for all that time. At the time, it was the lack of RAM that made it obsolete. 8GB just wasn't enough anymore. The iMac was an enormous improvement, but two years later they came out with the M1 processor.
World's on fire. People are dying from the heat in India. Windshields and radomes of passenger jets are getting smashed by extreme hail. Steve Bannon is threatening former FBI directors.
And I'm worried about buying a new computer so soon.
The cognitive dissonance! It burns!
✍️ Reply by emailI Feel Seen
08:07 Tuesday, 11 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.12°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 976
One of the things I enjoy about personal blogs are the stories of people wrestling with various aspects of our technologically mediated existence. And one that resonates most frequently of late is Jack Baty's.
I starred this post in NetNewsWire so I could come back to it and blog about it one day. I have the exact same problem when it comes to handwriting. I'm accustomed to "thinking" at the speed that I can type, and when I try to write in longhand, I find myself starting words without finishing the intervening ones. This was brought home to me when I was sending photo cards to my mom every day, and writing little notes in them. I had to force myself to try and slow down. My handwriting improved, but there was still this angst that the whole process was taking too long.
And I make similar mistakes when doing other things. I'll decide I want to ride my bike, but discover I need to put air in the tires. I want to get out on the road now before the sun gets too high, or traffic gets worse, but now I have to put air in the tires! Rather than focusing on the small, simple steps to get the pump out and connected to the valve stem, I'm thinking about why air constantly leaks out of tires, why the valve stem is never at the bottom of the wheel, hurrying, fumbling and tipping the bike over.
And the "still small voice" nags at me to slow down! "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."
So I bought a Makita inflator. Why meditate when you can spend money?
I'm a failure.
The notes thing kind of prompted this post. I've pretty much abandoned the idea of "taking notes." I mean, I write stuff down that I don't want to forget, or I write blog posts, but I'm frustrated by the whole concept of PKM now.
I suspect that this AI facility may be somewhat useful, or helpful in surfacing information I've saved. But I'm unpersuaded or uninspired by the concept of "information gardening."
"Garden" gardening makes sense. You're outside, in some vestige of "nature," nurturing something, a living thing that will grow and serve some purpose, be it ornamentation, or providing food for pollinators, or food for people. You're working with the plant.
I used to be enamored with the idea of PKM, or "information gardening." Not so much anymore. Basically, I want to be able to recall how to do something, like call up the maintenance menu on Olympus cameras to check shutter counts or error codes. Stuff that I've saved in hundreds of Apple Notes or downloaded PDFs that I have to fumble around to find.
Yesterday, we noticed that the golf cart charger was still running, hours after Mitzi got back from her stretch class. And the LED was blinking in a way that suggested something was wrong. I wondered if the batteries were low on water. Sure enough, they were! Added water to all of them.
Still the charger blinked. Now I need to find the manual. I know I have a PDF copy, and in a transient frenzy of "organizing," I recalled I placed the PDFs of many of the household appliances in the Home folder (which is literally about our home, not the main folder of some user account). Of course, the first several PDFs all have names like ax17000c2388ssz.pdf. I space-bar down through the list using Quicklook to id them and there it is, the third file in the listing. Remaining in Quicklook, because who has time to actually open the file in Preview? I scroll through the pages and read the LED error codes. Discover I have to reset the thing by unplugging it and waiting 10 seconds.
Suitably equipped with "knowledge," I go back to the garage and unplug the charger and wait the requisite 10 seconds, adding a few for good measure, plug it back in and the LED indicates it's charging.
This morning, the golf cart is charged and the file is still open in Quicklook in Finder. I figure I'll rename the file to Golf Cart Charger, and Finder complains that the name is already taken by another file. I look down the list and sure enough there it is, down the list, which is sorted alphabetically. Delete file ax17000c2388ssz.pdf.
Presumably, I'll soon be able to say, "Show me the golf cart charger manual," and the right pdf will appear. But who knows? Maybe it'll reply "Which one?" or "What's the magic word?"
"Please?"
These things never work the way you expect them to.
Anyway, these days I worry more about "wisdom" than "knowledge." I worry more about "knowing myself," than knowing how to craft the right prompt to get Chat GPT to tell me how to write the regex to do something I don't really need to do at all.
Does any of this matter? Is it all just an effort to flatter ourselves? I mean, the world is on fire. Democracy is on life support and we're seemingly helpless to do anything about it, or a significant proportion of our friends and neighbors think it's just fine with them!
But yeah, check out my cool graph!
This post is from a month ago, but I'm pretty sure I just saw it today. Having just returned from DC where I brought two cameras (plus my phone), I can relate.
In the shower yesterday, I thought about how "lucky" I was. My "quality of life" is better than nearly anyone's. Apart from having a court of bowers and scrapers, it's certainly better than that of medieval kings. It's ridiculous how good it is, and how little I "deserve" it.
And how soon it may all be gone.
Maybe I'll deserve that.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Morning's Pond
07:18 Monday, 10 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 75.25°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 762
Had dinner last night with my daughters, my son-in-law, one of my granddaughters and Mitzi. The restaurant was right next door to a Whit's custard, so dessert was on the menu as well. Enjoyed seeing them all together. We ate at a restaurant in Atlantic Beach in an area of town known as "the corner." It was formerly Ocean 60, but it's an Italian restaurant now. In any event, I dread going down there because parking is nigh-on impossible. They implemented paid parking to try and alleviate the situation by keeping people from going to the beach and taking a parking place all day.
We began our second orbit when we noticed a car backing out on the left side of the street. I turned on my left blinker but there was a pickup truck headed the other way and I thought he would snag the spot first. He slowed, but he didn't pull in.
We were puzzled, but as we approached we saw that it was an "EV Charging Only" space, and guess who drives a plug-in hybrid? Woo-hoo!
Not only was the parking essentially "free." (I got a text from ChargePoint that the city begins charging $2.00/hour for the space after the first three hours.) When we left, the RAV4 was fully charged, and it only cost $1.65!
Normally, that round-trip would have been all electric, but we had to pick up and drop off my youngest daughter, so the extra mileage made it right at the ragged edge of our battery-only range. With the charge, we did the whole thing in EV mode with battery to spare when we got home.
After last night's large dinner and ice cream dessert, I didn't exactly feel like getting up at 0500 and walking. But I did and I'm glad.
While I was sleeping, Amazon delivered my "new to me" Makita DMP181ZX high-pressure inflator. I usually have to pump up the bicycle tires every couple of days and I have a compressor, but it makes an awful racket. The bicycle pumps work fine, and I know I need the exercise. But when we were on the road to New York a few years ago, we had a leaking tire. We'd stop every couple of hours to change drivers and stretch our legs, part of Mitzi's pain management, and have to add some air to the tire. We got it fixed when we got to our destination, but it made me anxious having to always look for a gas station to pull into and hope that they had a working compressor.
I'll be bringing this thing along with us this trip. If we have to top off a tire, we can do it anywhere.
Anyway, got back from the walk, opened the box and stuck in a battery. Pumped up both my bike tires in no time and it's much quieter than the compressor, and much easier than futzing with the bicycle pump. I was playing with the info screen on the RAV4 yesterday, and noticed that it reported one of the tires down about three pounds. So I'll top that off this morning before I head out to my dentist appointment.
If I'm looking at a Makita tool, I'll watch for an Amazon Warehouse sale. It only saves about 10%, which is what I could save at Home Depot, but Home Depot has it listed for $10 more than the Amazon retail price, so I still saved $10. I can't imagine why anyone would have returned it, it looks band new and all the little accessory fittings were present. Maybe they didn't like that you have to screw on the valve connector.
Later this week I should receive a 10" Makita 18v chainsaw. Also a Warehouse buy. It's not something I'm likely to use very often (if ever), but it's the kind of thing that when you need one, you probably really need one. And it's hurricane season. I don't think I'd need anything larger than 10". And if I did, we're probably in more trouble than some downed limbs. I have a bow saw and used it a couple of months ago when Mitzi wanted to remove a couple of cypress trees she'd mistakenly planted too close to the house. Between my little Fiskars hatchet and the bow saw, we got them down, but it was a lot of work.
Anyway, fools and their money and all that.
✍️ Reply by emailDawn Patrol
06:56 Friday, 7 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 77.07°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 410
I've been walking at 0500 every morning for the past week, and biking right after that. I get 5K in on the walk, and 10K on the bike and I'm home by about 0630, and I'm pretty much assured of closing my Move ring without doing another "workout." That's important because we're entering the hot part of the year with the heat index often exceeding 100°F.
Shot the image above with the iPhone this morning. It was 76° and humid this morning, so I'm disinclined to press just for a better time. So pausing for a moment to see if the phone could render a nice image was fine.
Turned out pretty well, I think. This is SOOC, other than being converted to jpeg.
I'm reading Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, by Vulker Ulrich, translated by Jefferson Chase. This is a close look at the days between Hitler's suicide and the final surrender agreement. It moves quickly. If you haven't read anything about Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, it may be troubling.
One thing I found interesting was the fear the German people had of the millions of "foreign workers" (slave laborers) living in Germany. It was resonant with the fear the Confederate states had of enslaved people, mentioned often in Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest.
You'd think that fear or anxiety might have been a clue.
Netflix has a new series on Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. I've watched the first two episodes. It's pretty well done, with some actual audio from the Nuremberg trials. It's also written pretty on the nose with regard to current events. There's historical footage mixed with reenactments. Six episodes. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
I'm afraid of what might happen in November. My "best case scenario" is a resounding electoral defeat of Trump, and the repudiation of Trumpism. Ideally, Republicans would then clean house and we'd see the last of the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott and all the other sycophantic toadies who groveled and licked the boots the failed gameshow host who somehow managed to hoodwink his way into the presidency.
But that's the "best case," and I'm not very optimistic we'll see it. I'm afraid of a low turnout election.
History doesn't repeat, "but it often rhymes."
✍️ Reply by emailTom Hanks
17:38 Thursday, 6 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 88.77°F Pressure: 1005hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 49
Great interview with Tom Hanks by Christian Amanpour.
✍️ Reply by emailShoveling Taxpayer Money Into the Sea
10:08 Thursday, 6 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 85.41°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 136
Florida is a joke, and it's on Floridians. They keep electing "leaders" who view reality through an ideological lens that focuses exclusively on zero-sum, partisan politics.
Meanwhile, sea level rises, hurricanes get stronger, and Florida passes legislation that removes the words "climate change" from the state's vocabulary.
This report is hysterical. I actually love it. Rich people with private property built too close to the ocean are refusing to sign easements that the Army Corps of Engineers requires in order to shovel taxpayer money into the sea to temporarily protect their expensive homes.
Hey, more power to 'em! I love it. It's a waste of money that creates a moral hazard, forestalling the actual action necessary to deal with the reality that is before us. I'll shed no tears if their houses get washed away.
✍️ Reply by emailCloser Than You Think
10:26 Wednesday, 5 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 84.29°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 68% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 81
Although it can be a bit of a downer, Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog is thoughtful and interesting. I'm going to link to his most recent post as it appears in resilience, because it's easier for old guys like me to read; and I suspect that most of my readers are old guys like me.
Tom has taken a critical look at UN population models and has some thoughts. I find his analysis credible, acknowledging all the caveats he includes.
✍️ Reply by emailRising Tides
08:42 Wednesday, 5 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.02°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 48
I don't know if we're all just boiled frogs or what, but I feel like we all ought to be running around with our hair on fire. But, no. It's just business as usual.
Is anyone paying attention?
Not Florida's Republican government. They'd rather play games about China.
✍️ Reply by emailTransition
09:47 Monday, 3 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 80.65°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 8
Another piece worth reading about the likely future.
✍️ Reply by emailShade
08:11 Monday, 3 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 74.93°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 33
Heather Cox Richardson seems to have some thoughts for Susan Collins.
I'm sure this made the rounds in "social media," but I'm a blogger, which may be thought of as "slow social media."
✍️ Reply by emailZeitgeist
07:24 Monday, 3 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 69.55°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 229
It's in the air. Or at least it's on the web. This morning I read Are We Doomed? in The New Yorker.
It's an interesting read about a college course that examines the question, and the response of the students taking the course.
I'm encouraged by the response of the students. It's not denial, but it's not defeatism either. It's not cynical, but it's not rose-colored glasses either. So you can read it and not want to open a vein.
I know there are pathways where the human species can go extinct, but I think those are less likely than a general collapse of this global, advanced technological civilization, accompanied by the deaths of billions of people. One key will be avoiding a global nuclear exchange. I can't speak to the risk of bio-weapons as an extinction threat. Possibly, I guess.
I think the more likely path is the one we're on now, a "decline and fall" scenario.
But I also think the most responsible, the most meaningful thing to do in the face of this is to try to avoid it. There is always a tension in life, in existence, between attachment and letting go. To act with intention, but without attachment to the results.
The cathedral metaphor at the end of the piece is perhaps helpful.
Do your best. The rest isn't up to you.
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08:33 Sunday, 2 June 2024
Words: 370
And it "ain't what it used to be."
This came up in my feed from Beardy Guy, and it's a good read, albeit a bit long.
Put it this way: If you take a couple of typical undergraduates from the University of Toronto and you drop them in the middle of Beijing with their cell phones, they’re going to be fine. You take them up to Algonquin Park, a few hours’ drive north of Toronto, and you drop them in the park, and they’re dead within 48 hours.
Yes, we live in an advanced technological civilization. All of the eight billion people on this planet depend on it to one degree or another for their survival. That civilization is in overshoot, and it is going to collapse sometime in this century. Indeed, it has already begun.
The linked piece talks about how we might go about preserving some parts of it so that humanity isn't completely reduced to a feudal agrarian existence.
Among the people who see what's coming, there are some who see a "feudal agrarian existence," as the desired end-state, maybe with less emphasis on on the "feudal" and some hope for "communal." I'm pretty sure we won't be that lucky.
But there are some interesting ideas in the linked piece about what people could be doing now. Will they work? Who knows? The more relevant question is "Will people try."
I think they will. I'm somewhat surprised, but even in my brief couple of days up here, there is some acknowledgment, more than I'd expected, from educated people with children that we're in for rough times ahead.
And they're considering plans. Not "prepper" style, AR-15 heavy "survival porn," but relocating to different communities with more advantages and fewer vulnerabilities. Naturally, they are among the privileged class, with the means to contemplate and achieve these things. They may have to pool resources in many cases, but they're beginning to do that work.
The folks who aren't so fortunate are going to have to figure out how to adapt in place. Try to maximize their advantages and reduce their vulnerabilities right where they are. And that work should begin now.
This must be part of that work.
✍️ Reply by emailTouch Trucks
07:59 Sunday, 2 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 74.84°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 68% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 582
For Mitzi's grandson's birthday, we went to a local DC event that was taking place at the former RFK stadium, in the parking lot. A "touch trucks" event for kids.
It was pretty cool, if a sonic assault. The city departments, some federal agencies and a few private companies had vehicles of all kinds on display for kids to get close to, climb on, sit in or observe. The garbage truck was very popular.
The Secret Service was there with a couple of the black SUVs and we spoke with one of the uniformed agents. Earlier, I'd seen a helicopter fly over in Marine One livery that wasn't an SH-3. I asked the agent about it and he confirmed it was one of the new ones. They haven't been accepted for service yet thought.
The National Park Service had a helicopter on display, but as we were heading for it, they started moving people away from it as it had to leave. So we retreated back to a point where a motorcycle police officer indicated was far enough.
I wasn't sure, but the decks of ships are much smaller. I told Mitzi's son-in-law to make sure his son had his sunglasses on, since we weren't carrying goggles.
The rotors were spinning and a DC PR guy on a Segway came rolling up pushing everyone farther back. So we backed up another 10 feet or so.
Then the pilots increased the rotor pitch and the fun began. Strollers went flying, all the dust and debris on the asphalt went airborne, the cop's motorcycle tipped over. I was filming, but had to turn away. I saw all the other parents had as well. Mitzi was holding on to two or three strollers. I had to brace my legs against the rotor wash, it was pretty impressive.
The helicopter went airborne and the Segway guy came back to see if everyone was all right. Many of the parents were a little distressed, including Mitzi's daughter and son-in-law.
We collected ourselves, and started out to look at some more trucks. Some yards away I spotted a white ball cap on the ground. I pointed it out and said, "Looks like the helicopter blew somebody's hat off!"
Mitzi said, "That's my hat!" She hadn't even realized it had blown off her head, preoccupied, I imagine, by holding onto flying strollers.
We had a good laugh.
The noise, though, was something else. They let the kids blow the horns, turn on the sirens and the lights. It was getting to be a bit stressful as it happened without warning, often when you were right next to a vehicle.
The music from the dj was loud as well, as it had to be, I'm sure.
The funniest thing though was one of the announcements from the dj. Among the "Your car is about to be towed," and "We have another lost child here," was one that made me laugh.
"The Secret Service has two flashlights missing. If everyone could check and see if one of their little ones picked one up and please return it, they'd appreciate it."
I can't imagine those Secret Service agents got their flashlights back, and a couple of kids got a cool story for school, if one of uncertain ethical virtue.
We headed back to the kids' place to recover with a couple of cold beers. The weather remained outstanding.
And I've finished my 67th circuit around the sun.
✍️ Reply by emailIn DC
08:14 Saturday, 1 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 74.71°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 3mph
Words: 77
Arrived in DC yesterday, very early after a 0300 reveille. The weather here is beautiful! We spent most of the afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery. Fascinating. Unsurprisingly, Trump doesn't have a painting in the gallery, he has a photograph. It's directly across from a portrait of John Lewis in a "justice" gallery, and I have to believe that was intentional (and delightful).
Wanted to get June launched in the marmot and Captain's Log. Mission(s) accomplished.
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