I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Thursday, September 1, 2022

Linkee-poo Thursday Sept 1

I've entered t-shirt design contests that you can vote on. You can find my submissions here… or if you want to see all the designs (for the STEM contest), here. If I could ask for your votes, please.

Mikhail Gorbachev, and so it goes.

"One-third of Pakistan is inundated, as floods sweep through the country this summer. The catastrophic floods, resulting from monsoon rains that began in June, are unprecedented in scale and scope. So far, they have affected some 33 million people — about 14% of Pakistan's population — causing death, damage, displacement and loss whose effects will be felt for months and years to come."

"The worst heat wave of the year is presenting a critical test for California’s overtaxed power grid, with officials warning rolling blackouts are possible without major conservation efforts during a week of scorching temperatures… Extreme heat is expected to grip the vast majority of California for at least six days, perhaps even longer."

"City parks are crucial precisely because they are mundane. Their accessibility is what gives them their power. There are about 2 million acres of public parkland in the 100 largest cities in the United States, according to the Trust for Public Land."

In case you're wondering what I mean when I say, "We're boned", it's this… "In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen style themselves as heralds of some very bad news: societal collapse on a global scale is inevitable, and those who manage to survive the mass death and crumbling of the world as we know it will have to live in drastically transformed circumstances. According to Jackson and Jensen, there’s no averting this collapse – electric cars aren’t going to save us, and neither are global climate accords. The current way of things is doomed, and it’s up to us to prepare as best we can to ensure as soft a landing as possible when the inevitable apocalypse arrives." Also note, this is the counter balance to "it's all going to be okay" side if climate change. Unfortunately, at least for climate change, we're trending toward the worse case scenarios. But this is also about selling books.

"Advocates who think so say a recent DNA analysis shows a strapping canine shot by a coyote hunter in upstate New York last winter was actually a wolf. They believe there are other wolves in New York and New England, saying they could be crossing the frozen St. Lawrence River while heading south from Canada. And they want the government to protect them." More than likely a coyote-wolf hybrid.

"California is about to launch an experiment to cover aqueducts with solar panels, a plan that if scaled up might save billions of gallons of otherwise evaporated water while powering millions of homes." I'm old enough to remember the 90s chemistry council ads about how some smart chemist realized that the waste product of the process they were using to create some chemical was actually a profit center as other factories had been producing that byproduct as their actual product and all they had to do was capture it instead of venting it. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

"The city of Jackson was already struggling with a deteriorating water system long before the latest rains cut off access to safe drinking water for more than 150,000 people in Mississippi's capital… For years, residents of the majority-Black city have endured everything from service disruptions and recurring boil-water advisories to concerns over contaminants like lead and E. coli bacteria, thanks to failures to upgrade Jackson's aging infrastructure."

"The culture war inside America's libraries is playing out in the monthly meetings of the Lafayette Library Board of Control. Conservative activists are demanding the removal of controversial books, librarians are being falsely accused of pushing porn, and free speech defenders are crying censorship."

"The Food and Drug Administation authorized reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that aim to protect against the omicron variant."

"Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. It was the biggest drop in almost 100 years."

"More people in the U.S. are now smoking marijuana than cigarettes, according to a Gallup poll… Cigarette use has been trending downward during the past decades, with only 11% of Americans saying they smoke them in a poll conducted July 5 to 26, compared to 45% in the mid-1950s." It's only slightly better cigarets because, at least so far, the marijuana producers aren't spiking their product with other carcinogens. But inhaling any smoke or vapor is not a good idea.

"Since she came to California from Mexico 24 years ago, Maria Bernal has been supporting her family by often working two jobs at fast food restaurants… But she says she wound up living in a small Kia with her two youngest children, then ages 3 and 15, for six months after she lost her housing in 2019 when one of her employers began paying her minimum wage for eight hours even when she worked a 16-hour double shift." Wage theft is rampant.

"Cars are, of course, expensive, especially with the supply chain fiasco creating shortages. But it's more than that. Shopping for cars is not like shopping for most other products. Unlike, say, computers or refrigerators, cars are typically not sold for one standard price. Ten people could go into a dealership and each pay a wildly different amount to buy the same exact vehicle."

"Diesel fuel and heating oil, which comprise the distillate category, are 63% below the five-year average in New England and 58% below the same average from Maryland to New York, according to a survey by the Department of Energy. Gasoline inventories are not as bad, but are still at their lowest levels in nearly a decade along the entire East Coast, the agency said." Heating oil is always low right now as companies begin to stock up for the winter and refineries start producing more.

"Bank of America said it is now offering first-time homebuyers in a select group of cities zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgages to help grow homeownership among Black and Hispanic/Latino communities." Oh, we're doing this again. Note that this would be a good thing (and about 9 decades too late and about 3 decades after they were legally required to do this outreach) if it weren't for the heinous fuckery of rolling those things into the loan, so the homeowner still pays them, and the extra interest they accrue. And I wonder why they're doing this now?

Oh right, this… "Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Volume was 63% lower than the same week one year ago… The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($647,200 or less) increased to 5.80% from 5.65%, with points rising to 0.71 from 0.68 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment. That rate was 3.11% one year ago."

"Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions — up from last year's 68%. Union support is also up from 64%, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and is the highest the polling firm has recorded since 1965… Support for unions was highest in the 1950s, according to the Gallup, when 3 in 4 Americans approved of labor organizations."

"Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond lost nearly a quarter of their value Wednesday after the struggling home goods retailer announced a restructuring that includes store closures, layoffs and a possible stock offering… The company said it has obtained more than $500 million of new financing and was reducing 20% of its workforce. It plans to close about 150 namesake stores but will keep its buybuy Baby chain."

"Inflation was already causing some homeowners to delay big renovation projects as prices for building materials, fixtures and appliances jumped. More recently, higher mortgage rates have put a damper on the number of homes being sold."

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers discovered more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a place where you would least expect it: a shipment of baby wipes… The narcotics seizure occurred last Friday at the Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge, according to the agency in a news release. The bridge, located on the U.S.-Mexico border, connects Laredo, Texas over the Rio Grande with the Mexican state of Nuevo León."

"Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as 'patterns of life,' according to thousands of pages of records about the company." Well hello there, Big Brother.

"Montenegro’s security agency warned Friday that hackers from Russia have launched a massive, coordinated cyberattack against the small nation’s government and its services." I wondered where you guys went.

"Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have been to some of the world's most sensitive nuclear facilities — from North Korean reactors to Iranian uranium plants. But it all seems straightforward compared to what awaits them at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southern Ukraine."

"Russia late Friday blocked agreement on the final document of a four-week review of the U.N. treaty considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament which criticized its military takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear plant soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, an act that has raised fears of a nuclear disaster." Gorbachev is dead, truly.

"Facebook parent Meta says it has removed a network of accounts linked to the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group it banned in 2018… Meta said on Thursday that it recently uncovered and removed about 480 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups linked to the Proud Boys. That brought the total number of Proud Boys assets it has removed to around 750 this year, it said."

"A Black pastor in Alabama says he was wrongfully arrested and charged with a crime while he was watering his neighbor's flowers… Michael Jennings, a longtime pastor at Vision of Abundant Life Church in Sylacauga, Ala., says he was doing a neighborly deed of watering his out-of-town neighbor's flowers, per their request, when a police officer showed up."

"The signs had the right message, as required by law. One stated 'In God We Trust' over a rainbow background. Another was in Arabic. But the Carroll school district in North Texas rejected the signs, saying it already has enough for its buildings… 'Why is more God not good?' came the retort from Srivan Krishna, a local resident who sought to donate the colorful signs at a school board meeting in Southlake, a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, earlier this week." Because the Texas law is not about displaying the "country's motto", but about enforcing a white christianity myth.

"In the months since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Luisa García has noticed a sharp and striking trend: More Americans are seeking her clinic's services in Tijuana, Mexico." The rich and well positioned will always be able to access abortion (as they always have), it's the poor and people in the interior who will suffer. Just like in the 50s and 60s (note that abortion was not always illegal, even before Roe).

"A pregnant Texas woman who claimed she was entitled to drive in a high occupancy vehicle lane because of her unborn child received another ticket for the same offense, authorities said Tuesday."

"An NPR review of social media accounts, campaign finance records, and leaked audio suggests that CPI may be risking legal trouble as well over its tax-exempt status. Experts in tax law told NPR that the nonprofit group appears to be pushing the boundaries of charity law by closely entwining itself with explicitly Republican and pro-Trump political organizations." The law means nothing if it is not enforced.

"Democrat Mary Peltola has defeated Republican Sarah Palin in the special election for Alaska’s vacant House seat, a big upset over the former governor in the state’s first election under ranked-choice voting… Peltola, a former state legislator who will become Alaska’s first indigenous member of Congress, defeated a special election field that included Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich III. The Democrat finished first in the initial tally and then won enough second-choice votes from Begich’s supporters to see off Palin, who had former President Donald Trump’s endorsement and previously won a statewide campaign in 2006." I would like to say that's good riddance to Palin, but we all know that won't be the case.

"Illinois voters have the chance to sign up to send their ballots for November and spring elections by mail — forever… Elections officials are sending applications for permanent permission to vote by mail to each of the state’s 8 million registered voters."

"Though the GOP is largely supported by white voters, the party has recently made inroads with voters of color. In the 2020 presidential race, former President Donald Trump made gains with Black and Latino voters in part through community outreach centers opened in key areas across the country… Ahead of this year's midterm elections, Republicans have invested millions of dollars into expanding these centers into other minority communities in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas." They're learning how to do it better.

"The photo, which Reuters said Friday it obtained after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, shows Mastriano in the uniform in a 2013-14 portrait for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans and Operations, where he worked until he retired in 2017. Reuters said it was told that faculty at the time were given the option of dressing as a historical figure, and while a few did so, only Mastriano is shown wearing a Confederate uniform." So, was an asshole, still is one as well. Kinda hard to believe that in 2022 asking a politician, "So what are your views of chattel slavery?" would be a legitimate course of inquiry.

"The FBI's search on August 8 uncovering scores of classified material 'cast serious doubt' on the sworn statement one of Trump's lawyers made in June attesting that all classified material had been returned and a 'diligent search' had been conducted, the Justice Department wrote."

"In a late-night filing this week, prosecutors blasted what they called 'wide ranging meritless accusations leveled against the government.' And then, in 36 pages, they proceeded to set the record straight on the unprecedented search of the home of a former president."

"Former President Donald Trump argued in a court filing Wednesday that the National Archives should have expected to find classified material among the 15 boxes Trump turned over in January from Mar-a-Lago because they were presidential records… The filing, his closing written legal argument before a critical hearing Thursday, acknowledged that classified material was found at Mar-a-Lago, but argued that it should not have been cause for alarm -- and should not have led to the search of Trump's Florida residence earlier this month." Ah, we have arrived at the "it's not actually a crime" phase of the defense.

"Former Trump lawyer John Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and cited attorney-client privilege Wednesday when he appeared before a Fulton County grand jury investigating attempts to influence the 2020 election in Georgia, his attorneys said." Funny how often Trump and his lawyers have to plead the 5th.

"The news network, now under the Warner Discovery corporate banner and led since spring by CNN Worldwide Chairman Chris Licht, is trying to inject more balance into its programming and become less radioactive to Republicans. How and whether that can be accomplished remains a mystery." They're not coming back, CNN. They're just not that into you.

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