Agent Krasnov is Going to Russia?

 

Please don't embarrass him in front of his BOSS. He gets nervous and his tummy hurts. https://t.co/33XOFfMWb5

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) August 11, 2025

Trump was a little late to his big press conference announcing he was going to use the military to occupy Washington, DC in order to liberate it, but that's OK--he all know the occupation is about his preoccupation with the idea of big city crime (homeless, people, ethnic people, fascist stuff) and to divert attention from his connections to Jeffrey Epstein (which is NOT going away). What fascinated me, of course, was that Krasnov seemed to think that Alaska was Russia. 

It's the kind of mistake any senile reprobate with no basic idea of geography could make quite accidentally twice, I guess. After all, Trump s still patting himself on the back for putting out the LA fires (which were already contained by the time he took office) by turning a big beautiful spigot nowhere near them, wasting a lot of water and doing nothing, on the general principle that water flows downhill. Because north is at the top of the map, you see. South would be downhill--that just science!

What I'm getting at is, he's just really dumb, but also? He may very well think Alaska is part of Russia if Putin says so. After all, it's just like Crimea. Putin called "dibs."  That counts for something, right? 

Climate Sunday: Amateur Meteorology for Dummies

 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously commented on Jewish Space Lasers and may believe in the Deep State Weather Machine, has suggested a rare and curious cure for the wildfires in California--just seed the clouds! It's an existing technology! We have the tools!

Problem is: we don't have the clouds. There is no moisture. The only moisture is what is being scooped up and thrown at the fires by brave airborne firefighters--like these Canadian and Mexican firefighters are doing:

We can't count on some god-like intervention--it's all sweat and tears from here. 

Literal Pants on Fire

 

In the midst of the devastation and tragedy in southern California, there are some political animals who adhere to the maxim to let no good crisis go to waste. They're bringing DEI into it (I promise you, the Black person's water is just as wet as the White man's). They are lying about budgets, resources, pointing the finger of blame. Launching conspiracy theories. 

That many people cope with horrific events by just pulling narratives together to make sense of the seemingly senseless is a part of human nature, I guess--but that doesn't make it right. And when people appear to be deliberately lying because of a political agenda trying to capitalize on a tragedy for point-scoring purposes, that's something a bit harsher than opportunistic--it's predatory. It's precisely at times like these when people are least likely to engage their critical thinking mode and instead opt for the torches and pitchforks. 

Kamala Harris, For the People

 

As she began her speech to accept the nomination of the Democratic party, Kamla Harris thanked the audience--a lot. One social media commenter, perhaps a bit confused by the concepts of both gratitude and subtlety, wondered why she was saying "Thank you" quite so much, but most people understood why--

She was grateful for the applause of course, but she wanted to get down to business. The "thank yous" were a signal to the audience to stop clapping because she had a speech to do. And I loved that. Oh, I have seen people bask in well-deserved applause--it's fine. But being ready t get started and move forward was so on point for Kamala Harris.

This truly was the speech of a public servant who cares about what she does and who she does it for. Her biography let us know her dedication to getting things done, to doing them well--and not "half-assed". We learned what motivates her, what she has done, and what she will do for the people--the only client she has ever served. And she drew a contrast between herself and a certain someone who only serves himself. 

Climate Sunday: Water Everywhere, Except Where We Want it

 

The UN convened a global conference on water--which is something absolutely basic to life on earth. I shouldn't actually have to say something as dull as "Water is important to life" but apparently, this kind of true thing isn't obvious to everyone. I have it top of mind at the moment because thousands of gallons of latex-related chemicals just got dumped into the Delaware Rive late Friday and we are finding out now that we probably want to drink bottled water here in Philadelphia. 

Water is necessary to the entire food chain, and we threaten to tip weird chemicals into it all the time. Even from fracking and oil spills and whatnot. And that's a real problem, Because we're already overtaxing our aquifers, and have been for a while. And we really can't afford to fuck up our drinking water.

So says the CSO of PepsiCo. They bottle a lot of water and soft drinks and looking at a timeline of TWO THE FUCK YEARS! for half the world to be in scarcity for drinking water is very uncomfortable. It's their business, and they are looking at the logistics of transporting water to where it isn't. 

This isn't just about thirst-quenching, though--it's about agriculture. Right now, Argentina is having an insane drought. Just a total loss on all major crops, with devastating effects for feeding livestock (this is a glimpse from last year). Some can say there's no obvious relationship to global climate change, but some areas have gotten wetter--like the floods of Pakistan, and the barrage of atmospheric rivers that have buffeted California. And it is devastating. In California, crops are wiped out by flooding and a whole lake appears where once was farmland.  So while we lose a Lake Mead in one place, and a Lake Tulare comes back--but no one can plan for that happening in a whole minute!

It's really no joke--the Great Salt Lake is not so much, and the Great Lakes themselves are becoming Meh Lakes. And the solutions to this problem aren't going to be easy at all.

Combine this with the realization that increased CO2 isn't actually going to be the monster bonus to global greening, and you have a potential agricultural nightmare. Some crops never start, some drown. And don't get me started on what is happening to our pollinators, because if I start thinking about the problems of the birds and the bees, I won't sleep tonight. 

Anyway--we should probably ship chemicals very carefully, use fossil fuels less, conserve water religiously and not be greedy arseholes as a society. It's literally life and death. Like, literally.  Because you can't drink oil and you can't eat coal. 

Climate Sunday: Rough Winds do Shake the Early Buds of...February?

 

At some point this past week, I exited my car for the half-block walk from the parking lot to my office building without a jacket at all, because it was well and truly warm enough. I even ran the fan in my car on my commute home because it got warm in the parking lot sun. And there have been a few days like this--in February. This isn't usual--my early remembrances of February here in the upper Mid-Atlantic is it snows and gets really freaking cold.

It did not do that here. Well, not yet, but as we mosey into March and advance into April, while I know we've had bad storms in these months, I feel like the ghost of winter starts to vanish--and maybe it isn't a good augur for those of us aware of climate change. Spring has been springing early for a while--as if some areas aren't getting the winter we've been used to. 

Now, California--they are having a winter! That's also not a great sign.

Both of these scenarios feed into the denialist vortex in that they create possible "debunking" narratives: either mild winters in the NE aren't so bad, or blizzards in California prove there's no climate change at all. I guess the question is: when does weird weather get weird enough for the jaded and denialist mind to see it? 

And how do changing weather patterns affect wildlife? When crops and flowers start to habitually bloom too early, and the actual wild of winter bullshit starts a bit too late? 

The rhythm we expected from nature is thrown off, and the dancers can't pick up the pace when it too rapidly changes. This will affect crops we eat and animals like wild fish we rely upon for food. We will notice higher prices for foods--at first, because most people don't understand the relationship between nature and what's at the end of their fork. Then we will be scared. 

I don't want to wait until we are scared about where our food is coming from to get concerned about climate change. It's bad enough we tolerate the growing threat of disease and violence. We should not be so stupid we forget that we need to eat. 

They Can't Recall

PRICEY ELECTION: More than 8.5 million Californians cast ballots, many standing in line into the night. But it all comes with a huge price tag, with the recall election costing taxpayers more than a quarter of a BILLION dollars. https://t.co/I99K2619Ca

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) September 15, 2021

So all this to-do established that the very Democratic state of California wanted to keep their governor, and that they did not want a Republican. Oh. Good. Glad that's settled (she snarked, cynically).

Of course bad actors and hard-core Republican partisans will still have some silliness to say about it. Silliness about voter fraud is frankly what they've got. (And the caviling started a little prematurely, didn't it?) But it wasn't even close. That's not a plausible steal, that's a beating. And I just have a funny old opinion about unsupported claims: if they're questionable, question them, and if they're ridiculous--ridicule them. 

The GOP could use this expensive exercise as a learning opportunity, but I'm afraid the takeaway is nothing they'll recall later.

The Fall of Icarus

 

I've been thinking about one of my favorite poems, lately:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree....

 because suffering in the sense of grave and unmistakable tragedy has struck with alarming regularity. Of course, there's COVID-19, which has become the fatal backdrop, our mise en scene. But recently, a small town in Canada suffered a heat dome for several days, enduring temperatures wildly uncommon to that area, and basically spontaneously combusted. In Europe, massive flooding events have occurred, causing the loss of lives and previously unimaginable damage. In Florida, we have witnessed a residential building fall in the night, where residents went to sleep never suspecting the terrible changes to come.  (Sinkholes are so common to this area that I tend to assume either dramatic subsidence or building that didn't meet the requirements of the environment the building was sitting in.)

Our world is changing, and tragedy related to climate is becoming a norm,  And yet it stays, in some peculiar sense, a tragedy taking place as if always elsewhere and elsewhen. Faith might be part of the reason why--whether to laugh or cry about that, I can not say.  

I think the ancients knew the better part of the cause--hubris. Like the fall of  Icarus, tragedy befalls people when the protagonist (all of us) can not take the good advice of others and do sensible things, can not hear the warnings and portents of our Daedalus, but fall prey to a fatal flaw. We soar on technological wings, but can't moderate and bristle at the idea of accepting nature's limits. We are fucked and fall, hard, limbs thrashing into the drink. 

But it needn't be that way. Daedalus understood the dangers and as he flew, he did not fall. Also, I think of another case so similar--that of Phaethon driving the fiery chariot of Helios across the sky, and losing control (a metaphor for climate change if I ever heard one). His father had warned him, but this was because he was all too familiar with the rigors of the diurnal journey.

It's not that living with technology and doing it well and without further harm to environment can't be done, it's just that it has to be done skillfully and mindfully. We can survive as a species, but only if we pull our heads out of our asses. We need to grow up and be responsible and ever so careful. In the Anthropocene, we need to become the fathers and mothers, the good stewards, of the planet. 

Otherwise, we fail.

California is Burning

(Via ABC7.)

Perhaps because of all the hurricane activity this season, the story of 2017 as one of the worst wildfire seasons has not really received as much coverage as it really should. And as you might expect to hear from me--this is climate change at work. Despite heavy rains in California and snows in the Rockies, a brutally hot summer dried out vegetation, making these fires more likely to start and more likely to spread.

There's the toll to human life--like the 10 souls dead in the wildfire spreading through the Napa and Sonoma region. And there's substantial damage to homes, businesses, crops and livestock.  Maybe I'm just peculiarly sentimental about America's wine barrel, but there's a lot of labor, sweat and tears put into those grapes.

Thankfully, FEMA is coming through with some aid for these fire-ravaged regions. But the potential for further devastation and loss of life from the unfolding fire events as they encroach on residential/farm areas can't be underestimated. My thoughts are with Californians and other fire-affected areas.

Darrell Issa Gets High

With a little help from his friends? No!

Do you need anybody?

Heh--enough voters in 2018? Maybe not, friend.

Something Rotten Leaking in California

The above video is an infrared image of the plume of methane leaking from the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, which was discovered in late October and has been spewing 110K lbs of methane per hour, making the worst environmental disaster in the US since 2010's BP oil spill.  The leak smells because of mercaptan, which has a rotten-egg odor and can cause nausea and dizziness, causing thousands of people to evacuate the area.  There are apparently several difficulties in capping the leak, which can make it take at least three more months to be resolved.

Methane is a particularly active greenhouse gas, which makes this mess pretty troubling--but you know me, I can always envision something worse. As you all know, California has been having a serious drought, causing aquifers of groundwater to be pumped like mad. What's less discussed is the way this is causing ground subsidence--in other words, California is sinking. This is causing some infrastructure to break down--which can include pipelines.

It's the same kind of infrastructure damage that I wonder about regarding the connection between fracking and earthquakes.  It's not reassuring, the things I think about.