By Lambert Strehter of Corrente
Good heavens! Patient readers, I got so absorbed writing a post that begins to disentangles Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case that I lost track of time, and forgot to put up an open thread. Here it is! –lambert
Northern Scrub-Robin, Kutini Payamu (Iron Range) National Park–Cooks Hut to Rainforest Camping area, Cook, Queensland, Australia. “Calling from just off trail. Hopping between the ground and about 1 m up. Heavy canopy drip.” And the birder stomping about in the background.
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Frank Little:
Frank Little writes: “First alpine wildflower of the year, Mountain douglasia (Primrose family), coming to life shortly after the snow retreats. Found while ridge walking in southwest Montana.”
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Climate alert, early May edition. Those very frequent, and also loud, TV announcements from the EAS are becoming prevalent. South Carolina where it feels like a yucky muggy August day…temps into the high 80s.
Alarm Alarm! Wicked and windy weather is warranting your wanton attention, comrades! Okay severe weather it is forecast and now forewarned.
It is fiercely hot here just south of Richmond. It felt like a solid late June afternoon when I steped out at lunch to run errands. Exactly the kind of heat that heralds hail and 1-2″ per hour downpours around the time we drive home. My computer tells me it’s 89* right now and I am not in the downtown Asphalt Island of RVA, but basically on the river’s edge between Richmond and Petersburg.
If this is not just a blip, it is going to be a truly awful summer.
It is hot here in the Atlanta exurbs also. Feels like one is wading through warm soup when you go outside, and then you get outside the hedges and it is like to burn your skin. For the life of me I cannot understand why everyone is in such a hurry to cut down all of their tree cover; it is consistently ten degrees cooler here under the trees, but the view of a perfect lawn through the windows apparently trumps actually being able to go outside and enjoy it.
If the trees are dying from lack of water, they’re being cut to keep them from falling. Which leads to dryer ground, which leads to trees dying, which leads to ….
Unless these folks are cutting down trees and leaving the limbs piled around to rot which I doubt.
The ones that I have seen cut down recently appeared to be pretty healthy. The wild thing is that, for a couple of these houses anyway, a year after the big tree is cut down the awnings start to go up. They figured it out just a little too late.
But their lawns look great!
i never turn on the ac(minisplit system i installed myself, and paid 500 bucks for a pro to come check my work/fix my muckery) til june…but its 95 here in northern mason county texas…so i’m testing the system, today.
i was bunged up yesterday, and tried to test while i was laying in my nest of pillows…but filters were clogged…and finally gave up, for lack of gumption, and opened the winders and turned on the fans.
today, house(the 2 bedroom wings, at least—factory defect in middle room registers that i didnt catch until after warranty expired) are almost too cold.
but i’m out at the bar….in and out of the cowboy pool…so my expectations werent dashed if the sh*t didnt work.
i’m comfortable….being, in reality, a large lizard on a rock…
nd i worked real hard from 5am til after 1pm,lima.
several cool days ahead…so ill shut it off…and tell the tale that i’m working on it til the traditional june 1st launch of actual a/c.
I kind of miss the time BA (before air conditioning) when we spent a lot of time on screen/sleeping porches. In April the windows went up, in October they came down again. There were a few days in July and August when it became pretty bad at night, but not all that many of them. Of course, you had to walk a mile to see the sky back then.
The main thing is the humidity; it will strip the veneer from your furniture in an afternoon if you let it. That is mainly why we use it now. But, I remember about twenty years ago going into a childhood friends’ house that was up for sale. The realtor was from New York, or somewhere, and he just could not get over the green fuzz of pollen and mildew on everything. That musty smell of mildew was something he felt he had to apologize for. Not realizing that was a thing, he was kind of fun to watch. He couldn’t figure out how someone could live that way, but that is the way we used to live. There just weren’t any alternatives.
Air conditioning is a wonderful thing, but there are definitely trade-offs to it.
i really am a big lizard,lol…i love the hot and dry.
no fronts, no low pressure= i dont hurt except for whatever work i do.
and im suited for it, apparently…all those years in kitchens, poorly ventilated, standing over a grill.
hour or so after i’d get home, i’d start shivering.
We had our first 90 F degree day last week. Several more coming along right now. We have the high humidity which magnifies the effect. Being the descendent of mammoth hunters, I sweat at the mention of a hot day.
Locals mention that it is early for 90F plus days, and we too worry about how hot this ‘true’ Summer will be. We have decided that, when we have to replace our roof, it’s either a sheet metal roof with reflective paint or white asphalt shingles.
One big drawback to the advent of air-conditioning here in the North American Deep South is that the pace of living has picked up a bit too much. Gone, seemingly, are the days of slow, contemplative living. In the Summer, the heat would force you to slow down.
One “bright” spot looming on the horizon is the time when higher energy costs will force many to re-discover the old passive cooling methods of the past.
Stay safe.
You’ve seen it at houses? hmmmmmm …
I think I have noticed, since the pandemic, parks, cemeteries, and other green places, removing ungodly amounts of bushes and trees, not even for “development”, but leaving the grass.
There are reasons, like Dutch Elm Disease, for getting rid of a plant, but I swear it looks like some kind of conspiracy, or at least mass insanity.
“Hey wasn’t there a tree here???” is a not rare question on my walks/travels these days. … I thought it was just a NYC thing, but here in Florida I see it (Florida is paving paradise to put up toll roads and condos, but I’m talking about urban/sub-urban green space).
Here in Montevideo it is late fall. Today the weather finally transitioned into colder weather. Low sixties in the day and high fifties at night. It has been raining on and off for the last 10 days or so, so even though it’s getting cold, I’m glad to say that we’re going to have some sunny weather and no rain forecast for the next week. But the forecast here are not very good at predicting the actual weather. I think it’s because the weather comes at us from across the South Pacific and there’s just not a lot of weather stations out there to coordinate a decent forecast. But that’s just my theory.
As two trees, we’re doing really well here in that respect. There isn’t a plague on trees and because Montevideo is a coastal city on a very large river the street trees have continual access to water. Even during the drought that we had about a year ago where we had to drink bottled water for a couple of months, I noticed that the street trees never looked stressed!! That’s not to say that other parts of the country were not in a serious drought though! Anyway, I was so impressed when last spring the city came through and trim the trees on my street. It really looks great and it made her for a better Street scape, especially at night, because the trees weren’t blocking the street lights. A month or two later they came through and put in new trees where some old trees had been removed. So it’s great to see the society that’s investing in the neighborhoods. This is also true with parks and public spaces. In fact Montevideo has a participatory budget process where the residents can nominate and vote for public improvement projects. It really is different here from experiences I had in Sacramento California!! Gracias a diosas!!!
Yep. It is supposed to cool off in a few days
Nuclear Winter will do that for you.
https://twitter.com/mdc_martinus/status/1787927729557406006
Source:
Returning
to the
WHO Geneva
Campus
https://ficsa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/WHO_HQ_Geneva_-_Returning_to_the_WHO_Geneva_campus.pdf
page 9:
I guess some Congresscritters are worried that our best and brightest might actually take advantage of those Iranian scholarships. Considering how no fly lists have zero accountability or appeal ability, they’re basically ‘Gaza’ing anyone who dares to protest.
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1788247802931237072
AIPACraticans that constitute 90 percent of Congress are unspeakably vile and seditious deserving of eternity in the deepest dungeons, so that they can’t afflict humanity again.
as with Lil George and Darth Cheney, making mudbricks in Iraq for the reconstruction would be a suitable punishment…so long as their every move was circumscribed and monitored.
i was advocating for that by 2004, to my great misfortune(“Traitor!!!”, etc)
What a gorgeous picture!
I wish I was there.
(Rather than the Miami like Manhattan where I find myself today taking solace in the prospect of Miami itself becoming Atlantis)
Yes, thanks to Frank Little for that beautiful image. Reminds me how much I’m looking forward to this year’s Spring melt in the Cascades.
Democracy Now, reporting that sixty journalism professors want the NYTimes mess of a story about 7 October with its allegations against Hamas soldiers retracted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6G9PQXXUr0&t=421s
First, Macklemore. Now a major crack in “control of the narration.”
Next: Doing the same for the proxy war that the U.S. is trying to carry on in Ukraine / Donbass.
Maybe “Toria” Nuland will want to take to rapping, and retracting, now that she seems to be lying low during the protests at Columbia U.
Drove around the Lake Kaweah reservoir yesterday and hillsides are loaded with Farewell-to-Spring flowers, a world of pink!
A visual:
https://www.tarol.com/farewelltospring.html
I have a Serious Question, please help me. I keep reading (most recently from Chris Hedges) that big Orange is going to “dismantle democracy” if elected. I hear this from all my liberal friends constantly as well.
Why does everyone think Orange man is going to burn the reichstag or outlaw voting?
Prolly because that way they don’t have to explain how he became the president in the first place, or how he will likely be elected again. The total lack of accountability leaves a lot of room for changing the subject and table pounding.
Worry about retribution/revenge I figure.
Unlike PMCs (and Hedges now too, weird) I think a majority of people just want him to go away, but I also think most people will just shrug their shoulders and say “whatever” if he does win. We went through 4 years of this before, we can do it again, and then he’s done after that.**
** Exactly the same for Biden as well, I think. Few people like the choices, few will freak out about the results in November. Unless EVENTS!! as Lambert always reminds us.
“Why does everyone think Orange man is going to burn the reichstag or outlaw voting?”
Because they need to rationalize voting for Biden.
For some reason, The West Wing set have a raging [FAMILYBLOG] for this sort of thing, for saying that the held their proverbial nose as they voted Team D or for making excuses for their heroes because they acted as a result of some supposed internal conflict.
The interpersonal drama doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether Biden is annoyed with Israel, as long as the latest shipment of weapons goes through. Those weapons work just the same.
It doesn’t matter whether Obama had a sad when he ordered a drone strike on a wedding party. Those innocents are just as dead.
It doesn’t matter whether they voted for Biden, but with serious misgivings and a look of sadness. Their vote counts exactly the same as any other vote.
Own it.
And the big deal about “voting” is what, again?
Pure performative bullshit.
“Voters” have no “choice” or “agency” in even the slightest way. Just the “option” of “ratifying and legitimizing” the choice, such as it is, of the people who actually count…
I kind of hate myself for abandoning my youthful (should say juvenile) affection and respect for all things American —flag, country, God, duty, and jeebus, have got to the point that it looks like the new multipolar poles have come in some degree or another to embody many of the virtues I was taught to believe manifested in “our” nation’s destiny.
Whereas the aristocracy of great wealth and woke-sickness has opened the veins and bled “us” almost completely out, along with every other bleedable resource they can reach.
And to think that some still believe in a duality of Orange versus Blue, willfully blind to the duopoly of corporatized cakiskleptocracy that really runs stuff and owns it all.
Point, but I rather get angry at those people who have changed the meaning of the words “our democracy” into a statement of personal ownership. These people have done the same all the other things American. Performative acts done to hide their crimes, which often have been done on their fellow Americans. All those Americanism, may or may not have truthfulness or value of their own, but do not use the misuse of them to determine the truth of this. To do otherwise is to further the aims of the grifters because hollowing out American society and all its parts, leaving only neoliberalism and the culture it has created left, makes it easier to plunder.
@Jbird
Truth!!
I hear it and I tell them they are insulting the founding fathers, and me, with such drivel. I do know actual otherwise smart folks who say it.
Because they don’t want to admit those they voted for were party to ending “democracy” in 2000 when the War and Petroleum branch of the Uniparty had their Supreme Court declare the winner.
Since then, the War and Petroleum branch has kept us in serial crisis adequate to allow the stage management of performative democracy that consistently produces results diametrically opposed to the stated preferences of the (stil) voting (for some reason) public. Eight years pseudo governance by the Corporations/Banks are People Too branch retooled citizens as profit feedstocks for all manner of corporations from the MIC to the MedIC to Silicon Surveillance algorithmic intelligence (or its substitute). The whole point has been to maximize wealth accrual and concentration while burning the world down within the life time of those harvesting the wealth with results increasingly obvious across all the atmospheric and ocean testing stations of the world, but not in the news due to Petroleum Wars brought to you by the Uniparty.
If 2.0rump wants to end voting to economize on the whole charade, I think it’ll be as clarifying as performative brutality of our DEI University Administrators against recalcitrant students who still insist on thinking despite all the incentives and enticement not to.
“If 2.0rump wants to end voting to economize on the whole charade, I think it’ll be as clarifying as performative brutality of our DEI University Administrators against recalcitrant students who still insist on thinking despite all the incentives and enticement not to.”
If 2.0rump ends the voting charade, at least it will finally me made clear that The Buck Stops Here. Trump would have to own every one of his decisions from that point forward. No more excuses, no more circular firing squad.
Frankly, Trump would have to be crazy to want a thing like that. Every disgruntled soul int he land would have the knives out and would know whom to blame.
um, because your liberal Dem friends are very good at projecting onto ‘the other guy’ their own intentions, or of deflecting from their pol’s failures? / ;) Not that that’s much different from the GOP base. / heh
I like Chris but his determination to see everything through a partisan lens doesn’t help his current arguments, imo. This ain’t 1960, not even 1968.
It wasn’t Orange Man Bad that caused his loss and shuttered his voice. 2 years ago, utube, ~10+ minutes. Maybe the US had a good reason, but why deny him his access to his own reporting, his own work, for his own records?
“Disappeared”: Chris Hedges Responds to YouTube Deleting His 6-Year Archive of RT America Shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1LU-nV11dg
It wasn’t the Orange Man that did this. It was Chris’s own preferred party.
Poor Chris Hedges, perhaps he cannot yet knowledge the depth and brutality of this act of TPTB🤢
Not that I’m worried about a farewell to democracy, but I do think that if Trump is elected there is a 90%+ chance he will start to talk about a “third term” and amending the Constitution or something like that.
Why do you think that? I’m interested to know.
Trump and his supporters have floated the idea of a third term.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-third-term-because-they-spied-on-him-1045743/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-2028/
What’s the big deal? It’s ObamaInc.‘s third term, no? And there’s some betting that “Michelle” will get Chicago’d in to Biden’s slot, so yet another dynasty is in the offing.
I just added some data points to the question of whether Trump would or wouldn’t talk about a third term. In general, I don’t think the answer to whether something on one supposed “side” is a big deal is dependent only on whether something else on the supposed “other side” is a comparably big deal.
I haven’t heard the “dismantling democracy” formulation myself, but I have heard “insurrectionist”. However, that line was the other person’s parting shot before heading into a meeting, and there was no opportunity for me to point out that, if evicerating the presumption of innocence in English and American juris prudence is not “dismantling democracy”, then nothing is.
I think such minds are working under the Sinclair Lewis handicap — their blindness is willful here.
Because that’s what the media they consume told them to think.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!
At this point I just justify all things with: This is the stupidest timeline.
I mean, remember when Duterte was president in the Philippines while liberal Democrats were crying about fascism and Trump ending democracy in his first term, and Duterte had an actual hit squad going around murdering suspected drug users? Like, a large number of people, not a couple! Liberal Democrats surely don’t. These people are so farcical this cannot be but the stupidest timeline. Full stop.
Another oopsie for Boeing: video.
A Boeing cargo plane has been forced to land at Istanbul airport without its front landing gear, in the latest setback for the embattled plane-maker. No one was hurt in the incident, in a flight operated by the delivery company FedEx, Turkey’s transport ministry said. The Boeing 767 aircraft, flying from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Wednesday, informed the traffic control tower at Istanbul airport that its landing gear had failed to open and it landed with guidance from the tower, with emergency services standing by, the ministry said. The ministry did not say why the landing gear had failed but said it was examining the scene as part of an investigation.
More than happy to flame Boeing when appropriate, but seems like more of a deferred maintenance issue than a design defect from my house. That unit was delivered in 2014. Doing the math, 10 years at 3 landings a day conservatively amounts to over 10,000 smashes into the ground.
I honestly wonder why it doesn’t happen more often given the abusive use-cases of these appliances.
Welles: Whistle Boeing, musical interlude:
Don’t think this has been linked here yet – a pretty good song about Boeing.
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1788031474576347136/vid/avc1/576×1024/Mok_trJjByJq1Gdk.mp4?tag=14
I think mine is the same thing Barncat was trying to link.
Happy VD* Day!
*Victory over Deutschland
VE Day. In August comes VJ Day.
This is nice: Nearly seven hundred Jewish professors call on Biden not to sign controversial antisemitism legislation
In the article, though, they cite Biden’s speech at the Holocaust museum that specifically references specious arguments that have been debunked for months now. They just cannot let it go or correct the record…..
https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4651826-jewish-professors-biden-antisemitism-legislation/
Which brings us to this one, where over sixty journalism professionals are calling for the NYT to retract the very stories that Biden was relying upon to make his points.
US media experts demand review of New York Times story on sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2503676/media
The walls are closing in, and maybe that is ultimately why Biden is not sending those bombs to Israel.
I hope someone investigates the likely questionable report that “Biden” has “paused” the delivery of still more munitions to the Zionists. And gee, how many bombs and Hellfires and other death dealing devices are already in the bunkers of that misbegotten place. Waiting to be loaded on US-built planes and into US-made artillery tubes and dumped into Palestinian territory to exterminate the Arab claimants to the oil and gas resources that belong to the Palestinians under that international-law thing that only applies to the Zionists when they find it advantageous.
Is it just me, or has there been a big falloff in “has bara” output lately? Maybe the Zionists, owning all the “legitimate institutions,” don’t even feel the need to generate a blizzard of obfuscating fig leaves to cover their naked Eretz Putzes any more…
Yet another totally out of season Influenza A spike in Gilroy, CA, a farming area: https://publichealthproviders.sccgov.org/diseases/influenza/influenza-and-rsv-report.
I guess garlic doesn’t help.
> Yet another totally out of season Influenza A spike
Random layperson’s remark–
If indeed immune dysregulation is massive and population-wide, I would expect seasonality to decrease as a barrier/inducement to transmission.
They are really digging into Kennedy’s past, and they have found a new and exciting excuse for not paying your alimony:
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said doctors told him a parasite ate part of his brain, after experiencing memory loss and brain fog in 2010……..Kennedy gave the 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Kennedy discussed his symptoms in the deposition because he argued his cognitive struggles in relation to the situation had diminished his earning power, according to The Times report.”
Looks like they are in the pulling wings off of flies mode.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4651051-rfk-jr-says-parasite-ate-part-of-his-brain/
My brother sent me that one so it must be top of the hour at MSNBC. If it’s brainworms it leads.
Biden, himself, can’t touch that, but I will be interested to see how Trump weaponizes it. Has he given Kennedy a nickname yet?
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/gen-z-credit-card-debt-inflation-2f2f927e/
Gen Z Sinks Deeper Into Debt
Inflation drives many to credit cards to cover costs, leaving them with bigger balances
Credit Cards? Talk about a young Gen X just out of college and their credit card debt back in the day.
College students were running 5 figure CREDIT CARD debts.
Nothing changing but the weather…
Xmas songs in May, why not!
Loathe incarnate, loathe divine
Star of South Dakota gave the sign
Bow with shotgun on bended knee
In the gravel pit, last rites you see
Unto us a political career is stillborn lore
She shall become a lesson forevermore
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem
NRA clod and no Veep of the man
There was no chance before the election began
Borne to suffer, borne to not save
Not gonna raise from her political grave
Cricket, the everlasting gore
She shall become a lesson forevermore
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem, Noem
Genocide Ranch
There she sits buddy just a-gleamin’ in the sun
There to greet a killin’ man when his day is done
A reprise of Dachau and the concentration camps
Gonna take you down to the Genocide ranch
Stabilizing fins, baby, better hit the dirt!
“Fire and forget” weapons raising Hell right here on earth
So buddy when they die throw the bodies in the back
Gonna take ’em down to the Genocide ranch!
Genocide, now it’s back
Famine, y’all
Nouveau death camps
Open up jet engines let her roar
Tearing up a village like a big old dinosaur!
Jim Jones spiking Kool-aid with strychnine
Menachem Begin rolling thru the woods of Palestine
Even Adolf Haas at the Bergen-Belsen camp
All gonna meet down at the Genocide ranch!
Chorus:
Genocide, now it’s back
Famine, y’all
Nouveau death camps
Open up jet engines let her roar
Doling out the killings like the Genocide of yore!
Little girlie in my history class, so tight!
Teacher said, mass killing was a 20th century sight
Yer my last hope, baby, you’re my last chance
Don’t let ’em take me to the Genocide Ranch!
Chorus
(Sung to the tune of, “Cadillac Ranch” by Bruce Springsteen)