Day of the Last Beginning, 30th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): The 19th Century was really rife with rotten Presidents. Fun fact: While in the White House in 1886, a 49-year-old Grover Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, the daughter of his late law partner and close friend. Cleveland was 27 years old when Frances was born and bought her first baby carriage. When his law partner died, Cleveland was the executor of the estate. Frances was never Cleveland's stepdaughter or adopted daughter, but he was close to her and her family all through her upbringing. "Grooming," anyone?

Cleveland, like the Stable Genius, served two non-consecutive terms as President. Benjamin Harrison, who served as his Biden by holding the presidency between Cleveland's two terms, was the grandson of the President William Henry Harrison, Old Tippecanoe himself, who gave the longest inaugural address in U.S. history in cold, wet weather and died of pneumonia a month later.

 

Day of the Third Angel, 29th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  More and more uninsured patients are showing up in emergency rooms and have been unable to pay their bills after Republican lawmakers cut Obamacare subsidies. The care they receive drives up the hospital's costs, forcing them to either raise their cost for care to insured patients or consider closing. Which means you're probably paying more for health care because of the Stable Genius' policy decisions.  He's also pledged to end Biden-era subsidies that lowered the cost of Medicare drug coverage, which will also drive up health-care costs.

The Stable Genius is clearly the stupidest man ever to occupy the White House, and we've had some piss-poor presidents. The first five were arguably okay, at least according to your standard amerikan mythology, but four of the first five owned slaves (John Adams was the exception) and Washington's "wooden teeth" were actually extracted from live slaves. Jefferson professed to be against slavery in principal although he owned several and then there's the whole Sally Hemmings affair. I don't know much about Madison and Monroe, other than they were Southern slaveholders, but the sixth president, J. Quincy Adams, like his father, also refrained from owning slaves. But then the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, was a real motherfucker - not only a slave owner but an actual slave trader and "breeder," as well as an Indian killer, responsible for the horrific "Trail of Tears" (ethnic cleansing, broken treaties, population displacement, genocide, et cet). Real piece of work, that Andrew Jackson. 

After Jackson, we had nearly a century of bad presidents (with the obvious exception of Lincoln), from old weird Martin van Buren through McKinley, who loved tariffs as much as you-know-who and favored corporate consolidation and monopolies. The presidents immediately before and after Lincoln, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, are usually considered the worst in U.S. history. 

We had another Indian-killer, William Henry Harrison, famous for the "Battle" of Tippecanoe (actually a genocide), and we had presidents who were too stupid to live more than a few months into their presidency. While not wearing a coat or hat in cold, wet weather, Old Tippecanoe gave the longest inaugural address in U.S. history and died of pneumonia a month later. "Old Rough and Ready," Zachary Taylor, ate copious amounts of cherries and iced milk on the first Fourth of July of his presidency and died after five days, the stupid motherfucker. 

But he was still smarter than the Stable Genius.

I walked a 7-mile Jackson today (I name my walks after the president whose number matches my mileage). It's still warm, but after Tuesday night's storms, the humidity is way down and it actually felt good to be outside again. It's nice to walk a Jackson and come home not soaked in sweat.

Deafening Robes of Dawn, 28th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): It was a wild night last night, and before your imagination runs rampant with lurid and outrageous fantasies, I'm talking about the weather, which is probably no surprise to alert readers. The weatherman estimates there were some 350,000 total cloud-to-cloud lightning flashes as a front passed over Atlanta between 12:30 and 2:00 am, and 35,000 cloud-to-ground strikes. 

I'm fine, no damage, didn't even lose power. But what a show! Over a quarter million lightning flashes in just ninety minutes makes the sky look like it's just constantly illuminated, like some living electrical field from a science fiction film. I barely got any sleep before 3:00 am.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was questioned by a Senate committee today. He didn't answer any questions, repeatedly taking the Fifth on every question. So Senate assholes like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, knowing he wouldn't respond, started asking him "when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife?" type questions, like "Are you willing to apologize to the American people for funding the Wuhan laboratory and purposely releasing the virus?" For the record, Fauci or any U.S. government agency, didn't fund the Chinese national laboratory, and it's still not known if the initial outbreak was a lab leak or not, although there's no evidence suggesting it was deliberate.

The reason for the testimony, some six to seven years after the covids pandemic, was because some CDC worker found a diary Fauci kept on a government server and turned it over to RFK, Jr., who turned it over to Sen. Paul,  who's had a years-long, obsessional feud with Fauci. President Biden pardoned Fauci for any activities he performed while in the government as a pre-emptive move to protect him from vindictive prosecution, so Paul's repeatedly stated goal of seeing Fauci "behind bars" is unlikely, unless he got him to testify under oath and then found some ever-so-slight discrepancy between past and present testimony so he could charge him with perjury. The hearing was really just a perjury trap - no one was pretending there was some urgent matter that required Senate investigation - and Fauci's attorneys advised him to take the Fifth on every question, regardless of how ludicrous, to avoid getting ensnared in that trap.

It was a ridiculous performance and far, far, far from the Senate's finest hour. It was closer to the McCarthy hearings than the Watergate investigation. I hope that Rand Paul gets the psychological help he so obviously needs, and on behalf of the American people, I thank Dr, Fauci for his service and apologize for his mistreatment today.

Finally, am I the only one not concerned that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey isn't a faithful and accurate adaptation of Homer's original poem? I haven't seen the movie yet, but my motivation for going isn't whether or not the film fully captures Homer's characterization of Ulysses' psychological profile, or if liberties were taken with the underlying mythology to make the story more palatable to 21st Century audiences. If I wanted to understand Homer and the ancient Greek mindset, I'd read the fucking book.

 

Day of Wages, 27th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): The outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire has not only taken down her post with misleading to downright factually incorrect climate data, but admitted it was a mistake. Even more, she still maintains that the current climate crisis "is the most important news today and part of the most important news this year, decade, and century. Be a climate activist. The climate needs you.," and replaced the misleading image with verifiably accurate maps and graphs in a revised post. 

Now I admire her even more. No more "otherwise."

We're still under heat advisories here in Atlanta. We hit a high of 93° degrees today with a heat index value of 96°. Helios is a walking day and I got my steps in today despite the heat, although I limited myself to a 6.8-mile Quincy.

Mike Allen of Axios had an interesting point in his morning newsletter email today, although he then discredited himself with some misguided "both sides-ism." He and co-author Jim VandeHei hypothesize that political party transformations follow a predictable six stages of evolution - recoil, squint, rationalize, submit, amplify, and purge. 

In Stage 1, the party Recoils from change, denouncing the new actors by name. For example, in 2016, Lindsey Graham called the Stable Genius a "kook," unfit for office, and Ted Cruz called him a "pathological liar." 

In Stage 2, "Squint," they support without looking too hard. "I haven't seen that tweet" became the Republicans go-to response during the Stable Genius' first term when they were asked about his social media posts. 

Stage 3, Rationalize, the "yes, but" stage, features statements like "I don't love the style, but the judges, the tax cuts, the border - he's a fighter." Accommodation becomes the norm, and justifications emerge for the means.

Submission is Stage 4, and dissent becomes career-ending. After Kevin McCarthy said that the Stable Genius bears responsibility for January 6, he had to fly to Mar-a-Lago to apologize. However, he's ousted as speaker three years later. Silence becomes political survival.

In Stage 5, Amplify, the party fully adopt the vocabulary, the style, and the maximalist claims. After privately calling the Stable Genius "America's Hitler" in 2016, JD Vance is now vice president and routinely seeks to show his own extremism, as does almost every Republican these days.

Finally, Stage 6, is the purge - actively oust anyone who disagrees. You either fully accept and amplify, or get exiled like Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Liz Cheney, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, and John Cornyn, despite many of them voting with the Stable Genius 99% of the time.

An interesting theory, and well documented. But then came their "both sides-ism," aka "the other side is even worse." Citing a Gallup poll that socialism is more popular than capitalism among Democrats, they say that recent electoral victories by self-proclaimed "democratic socialists" are a sign of a political reorientation on the left that's going thorough the same, six-stage process.

First of all, it's misleading to frame what's happening on the left as socialism vs. capitalism, as if they were opposite things. Socialism is not the opposite of capitalism. The Gallup poll might as well ask if ham sandwiches are or aren't more popular than reruns of "Friends." One might have a higher polling number than the other, but that doesn't make them opposing things.  They certainly are not opposites.

I'll repeat that again slowly for those of you on drugs: socialism is not the opposite of capitalism. That would be communism - the opposite of capitalism is communism. Socialism, especially democratic socialism, merely wants to see the government-level profits of capitalism distributed more evenly among the people, and spent for the betterment of all instead of just the top profit generators. The opposite of democratic socialism might be oligarchy, or the reckless, unfettered capitalism of the Gilded Age "Robber Barons."

The Democratic Party may or may not be going thorough a transformation right now, or a new political party or ideology may be  emerging. If so, I welcome it. But to frame it as capitalism versus socialism is just fucking stupid, Allen. Do your goddamn home work and think, t-h-i-n-k, before hitting the "Send" button next time, you reactionary tool.

Did you learn NOTHING from the outspoken feminist writer who I admire?

 

Fifth Day of the Icon, 26th of the Dog Days. 526 M.E. (Electra): We're back under a heat advisory here in Atlanta, with heat index values of 105 to 109 degrees forecast. I know I talk about the weather way to much here, but weather occurs at the intersection of my concerns about climate change and my own lived experience, especially with my alternating day, five- to eight-mile walks. 

The extreme wildfires and brutal heat waves around the world should be enough to concern anyone. There's no need to spread false information or sound false alarms with regard to climate change - the actual, documented record is already alarming enough.

So I was dismayed to find an alarming report on Bluesky stating the temperatures in Namibia and South Africa, which are currently in the antipodal winter, are reaching record temperatures of 36.1 to 40° C (97 to 104° F), 10° C higher than the summer norms. "Insane, mind-blowing winter heat," that called it, claiming "World climatic history rewritten!" in all capital letters. They included a map in their post with a lot of scary-looking red color all over southern Africa and scientific-sounding jargon in the title ("GFS 2-meter Temperature Anomaly based of CSFR 1981-2010 Climatology"). 

Cool story, except it doesn't seem to be the case. I checked several weather forecast sites, and they show high temperatures in Capetown, South Africa of 18 to 24° C (65 to 75° F) this week. But maybe Capetown, located on the coast, is just cooler than the desert temperatures to the north. But I checked Windhoek, Namibia, and the same thing - upper 70s (lower 20s in Celsius) this week. And what's the word in Johannesburg? Same thing, and actually a little cooler, with highs in the lower 60s (17° C) by the end of the week. 

I take no pleasure in debunking climate-change claims, but if we're not factual and scientific, we're no better than the climate-change deniers. The Bluesky account allows only certain people to comment (I'm not one of them) so I can't inquire about their source or ask for a reconciliation of  their conclusions with the easily verifiable weather forecasts for this week. 

Maybe it's an innocent mistake. After all, the graphic they posted doesn't mention the temperatures they cite, it just shows color-coded deviations from normal temperatures, with most of Namibia and South Africa appearing to fall in the +2.5 to +5° C range. Could they have added 2.5 to 5 to the wrong base temperatures? The post claims that the current temperatures are "10C above mid-summer averages," but I don't see anything in their graphic that supports that claim. 

"Greta was right," one person who is allowed to comment said below the post, which misses the mark entirely. Thunberg is an activist and an advocate, and a good one I'll add, but she'll be the first to tell you she's not a climatologist and shouldn't be considered the basis for climate-change science. But whatever, that's annoying, but the least of my concerns here.

An outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire reposted the Bluesky post, saying, "This is the most important news today and part of the most important news this year, decade, and century. Be a climate activist. The climate needs you." And there's the problem. When it's eventually discovered that the conclusions don't match the real-world weather reports, the denialists will incorrectly claim that all scientific data is likewise wrong and should be ignored. After all, if some random account on Bluesky gets the situation in Namibia wrong, how can we possible trust the IPCC or the near unanimous concern of the climate-science community? 

However, the outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire doesn't allow comments on her posts either, so I have no way of tapping on her shoulder and advise her that she may be spreading misinformation.   

Climate change is a problem, and the outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire is correct that we should be climate activists. The El Nino forming in the Pacific shows every indication that it's going to break all records, wildfires are raging across Canada, western Europe, and equatorial Africa, and CO₂ levels are approaching geological records. But no one is experiencing summertime extremes this winter in South Africa and Namibia, regardless of how well it fits the narrative we want to tell.

 

Fourth Day of the Icon, 25th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): There are rare earth elements present in northeast Mississippi, if you have an inclination to go mine them.

To determine their potential suitability for mining, geologists recently sampled Upper Cretaceous through Lower Eocene sand deposits in the region. The titanium minerals rutile and ilmenite, and their alteration product leucoxene, were present in the samples. Zircon, a source of uranium and hafnium was also present, as was  monazite, a source of thorium, and xenotime, a rare-earth source. 

These minerals have many uses and are important for manufacturing, engineering, and technological applications. Sampling and X-ray fluorescence identified at least five sites with percentages of heavy minerals over 2.5% with abundant titanium minerals, hafnium-containing zircon, uranium, thorium, and traces of monazite. 

With the recent interest in domestic sources of critical minerals and rare earth elements, these minerals in the northern Mississippi sand deposits could establish the area as an important and strategic resource. Just thought you'd like to know.

I walked an 8.6-mile Van Buren today. After missing my Betelgeuse walk due to rain, it felt good to get outside again.

 

Third Day of the Icon, 24th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): As wildfires are ravaging France and Spain, forcing some 250,000 people to evacuate their homes, and people worry about the Amazon rain forest, it's worth recognizing that it's Africa that has the highest rate of forest loss in the world. About 9.6 million acres of African forest, or about 15,000 square miles, were destroyed each year between 2010 and 2020.

Africa’s forests occur as rainforests in moist regions of central and west Africa, mostly in the Congo Basin, and in the vast Miombo woodlands, a warm, dry forest area in southern Africa. Clearing forests to make way for agricultural land is the main reason for deforestation in Africa, but unsustainable fuelwood harvesting, logging, and mining are also drivers. 

Severe, heatwave-driven wildfires are also occurring in North Africa, notably in Algeria, where extreme temperatures reaching up to 120° F have resulted in six deaths and over 1,500 blazes since early July. 

Here in the U.S., the third major heat-dome event this month is gathering strength over this weekend, spanning an area from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Plains and the Midwest. A heat dome occurs when a high-pressure atmospheric system acts as a sort of lid, trapping heat in place over a region for days or even weeks.

About 70 million people are expected to face excessive heat advisories as dangerously hot temperatures scorch much of the country’s southern and central states. Temperatures of 95 to 105° F are expected, with some areas of the southwest U.S. potentially reaching 120. The elevated heat is expected to linger into the coming week. But as long as it's not actively raining, I'm still going to take my alternating day walks. What doesn't kill you will make you predictable.

This whole planet is going up in flames! Talk about Dog Days! Where's that meme of a dog in a burning house saying "this is fine" when you need it?

 

Second Day of the Icon, 23rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Rain (again). I wonder if missing my alternating-day walk today will affect tomorrow's sitting. 

Tropical cyclone activity is not expected during the next 7 days.

Have you tried that new diarrhea lettuce yet? I hear it's all the rage.

Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week have caused fresh wildfires to break out in western Canada. As of this morning, there are 90 active wildfires in British Columbia and forests continued to ⁠burn in Ontario. 

More than 90,000 people have fled wildfires in Spain and France. Madrid has declared a national emergency and French authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on the Atlantic coast in the face of an “intense, highly unpredictable” wildfire that has burned through more than 30,900 acres of forest.

In happier news, Tesla’s stock fell about 13.5% yesterday in one of the biggest single-day market losses in the company’s history. The company lost about 27% of its market value as weaker-than-expected profits worry investors and soaring oil prices amp ​up inflation worries. Due to the declines in Tesla and SpaceX stock prices, Elon Musk lost his trillionaire status although, sadly, he still remains the world's wealthiest individual.

 

Day of the Icon, 22nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Every season in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar has a five-day sequence of repeating day names. In Childwinter, it was the five Days of the Hammer; in spring, the season of the vernal equinox, it was the five Days of the Zenith; and in Midsommar, the season of the summer solstice, it was the five Days of Light. There are no orbital events of note during the Dogs Days, but we do have Barkley, and today is the first of the Days of the Icon.

During my third period of meditation today, the concept for a screenplay leapt fully formed into my imagination: a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It set among the REI, through-hiking community. The mise-en-scène takes advantage of the natural beauty of the southern Appalachians and contains realistic sequences of trail-hiking, climbing, and camping, along with witty repartee and clever dialogue and use of modern minimalist music in the soundtrack.

Here's the pitch - two whip-smart and clever sisters, Rosalind and Cecilia, avid outdoors enthusiasts and experienced long-distance hikers, are dismayed about a recent spate of reported violent assaults on the Appalachian Trail. For their own safety, they decide to hike a section of the trail disguised as men. Rosalind shocks Cecilia by taking a shaver to her head and shearing her long hair down to a buzz cut and, trying to think of the most macho, manly name she could come up with, decides on "Gunner" after Cecilia rejects "Butch," "Bubba," and "Rocky" as too obvious. So it's Gunner, Gunner Meade in full. Cecilia decides that a Muslim name would be intimidating and chooses "Ali," "Ali Anniya" after Rosalind rejects "Halal" as sounding too much like "Annie Hall" (note: the cross-dressing characters in As You Like It are Ganymede and Alienna). 

"Gunner" and "Ali" head out on the trail with their dog, Touchstone, tagging along with them. and reasonably pass for two young men. They come across other hikers at shelters, overlooks, and waterfalls, and their disguises hold up. However, one group of macho male hikers suspects them of being a gay couple and teases them, but one of those macho men develops a fixation on "Gunner" and eventually declares he's fallen in love ("I've never felt this way about a guy before"). A hiker from another group of openly gay hikers likewise falls in love with "Gunner," and the two competing suitors embark on a comical competition for his/her favor. 

Meanwhile, the two women, still in disguise, come across a quarrelling couple on the trail. The woman, confident in her attractiveness and quite full of herself, thinks of herself as somehow better than her partner and lets him know that, but Rosalind, as Gunnar, uses her scathing wit to put the narcissistic woman down, insulting her appearance and noting details that only another woman is likely to perceive. The woman is flabbergasted and has probably never been criticized for her looks before, and tries to challenge "Gunnar's" opinion. This ultimately leads to an attempted seduction, and the woman finds herself also in love with "Gunner" as well.

Rosalind and Ali try to keep their distance from "Gunner's" many admirers - the whole purpose of the disguises was to avoid attention! - but one or the other, or combinations of all three, keep showing up to impress and flatter "him" and outcompete the others. Ali finally announces that Gunnar has had enough, that he's made his decision on who he most likes, and will announce his preference at the next trailhead. 

As they approach the trailhead, Gunnar convinces the quarrelling couple that they're really best suited for each other - who else would put up with all their shit and bickering? In a clearing near the trailhead, she finally reveals her true identity (and gender) by stripping bare in the forest (strategically placed ferns and rhododendron keep the scene from being raunchy or exploitative) and convinces the macho hiker and the gay hiker that each one's preferences are actually best met by each other. She also reveals that she and Cecilia (Ali) are actually sisters and that theirs is actually the best and happiest friendship among all of the other hikers in the forest. As they finally reach the trailhead, an older couple, presumably their parents, lovingly greets them from a minivan. 

Cut to credits.

In lieu of paying me royalties, if you make the movie and turn a profit, you can donate money to the Benton Mackaye Association.

 

Day of the Heavy Sight, 21st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): Am I the only one who thinks Bone-Saw Arabia enriching uranium and potentially getting a nuclear weapon could turn out poorly? Is it a radical position to be alarmed by nuclear proliferation?

But what do I know? I'm just a retired old man, quietly bidding my time until the Grim Reaper makes his inevitable call.

I got my steps in today, a walking day, with a 9-1-mile Harrison. My walk coincided with the first game of today's doubleheader between the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles, and I listened to the game on Sirius radio through headphones as I walked. The Sox won, 6-3, their fifteenth consecutive victory, tying the franchise record for longest winning streak. They lost the second game of the DH, 5-1, tonight, ending the streak. Impermanence is swift, and nothing lasts forever. But following the streak over on the sports blog the past couple of weeks sure has been fun. Congratulations, Red Sox, for tying an 80-year-old record.

I've been a Red Sox fan since at least the bicentennial year of 1976. I was in Fenway Park on September 12, 1978 when Carl Yastrzemski got his 3,000th career hit and I've still got the ticket stub to prove it (bleachers, $2.00). I wasn't in the park but I was home watching the October 2, 1978 game on television when Bucky Fucking Dent hit a bloop fly ball over the Green Monster for a home run, and the Yankees beat the Sox in a one-game divisional playoff (Yankees suck). I also remember watching Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when a ground ball passed between Bill Buckner's legs, costing the Sox the game and ultimately the series.

And I remember the good times. Few moments in sports will ever pass the excitement of Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series, when the Red Sox, down 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, and having lost the third game, 19-8, won a 12-inning thriller and then the next three games to beat the Yankees, 4-3, in the series, and ultimately the World Series, their first Series title since 1918. 

I remember the subsequent World Series championships of  2007, 2013, and 2018. I remember Yaz and Jim Rice and Carlton Fisk and Freddie Lynn. I remember Nomar and Damon and Schilling and Pedro, and I remember Mookie and Big Papi. This is my 50th season cheering for this team, and even if I don't go back as far as the 1946 15-game win streak, I now have the 2026 streak to remember and cherish.

The last time I was in Fenway Park was September 17, 1989. Since then, because of where I was living, I've had season tickets to the Atlanta Braves (back in the '90s) and for one year (1993), the Pittsburgh Pirates, but the Red Sox have always been and always will be my team.

 

Rise of the Infanta, 20th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): Tropical Depression Two is now officially Tropical Storm Bertha, but it's still not heading this way so I still don't care.

Having resumed my alternating-day walks yesterday once the weather finally gave me a break, I also resumed my every-other-day sitting today. I hadn't sat since the 2nd of the Dog Days, but once I started it seemed like no time at all had elapsed - I was right back there in that old familiar state, observing the self once again. A per my usual routine, I sat for three 30-minute periods, separated by two five-minute kinhin (walking meditation) breaks.

Meanwhile, forestry experts are pointing out the obvious: Canada’s forest management practices are not to blame for the current wildfires. Climate change is driving conditions that make wildfires more frequent and more intense. There are nearly 900 wildfires burning across Canada and last week Toronto had the worst air quality of any major city in the world. But as the smoke spreads south to the U.S., the Stable Genius is blaming Canada for poor forest management.

Many of the fires now burning are in remote, difficult-to-access part of Canada There are no roads within many miles of the fires, and there’s no practical way that one could ever have enough boots on the ground and enough of a financial commitment to doing management to make any kind of real difference. Further, unmanaged forests are not just a Canadian phenomenon - there are vast stretches of Alaska that have a similar lack of roads. And the U.S. has had its share of wildfires, including major ones that took place last year in California and earlier this year in South Georgia.

It’s natural for forests to go through fire cycles, but the burning and the fires today are much more severe because of increased dryness due to changes in climate.  Warmer conditions lead to drier fuels -  the warmer it is, the faster things dry, and the drier they are, the faster they burn.

As the world warms, winters are no longer cold enough to kill off tree-eating beetles. Their populations explode, leaving millions of acres of dead trees ready to burn. Warmer winters also mean less snowpack, so soil dries out earlier and the fire season runs longer. And climate change has more than doubled the frequency of hotter, drier weather across Canada and increased the frequency of the lightning strikes that spark most fires in northern Alberta and British Columbia.

Both the U.S. and Canada are major contributors to the climate-change problem, although the U.S. emits more greenhouse gases. The U.S. has emitted more carbon than any country in history - around 435 billion tonnes since the 1800s. That's close to a quarter of all the carbon humans have ever put into the air, twelve times Canada's total and 50% more than China's 285 billion tonnes. But the Stable Genius denies that climate change is happening, and his administration has rolled back climate regulations and cut funding for climate-related projects. But good lord, how he whines and points the finger at others when the results of his feckless policies come back and bite Americans in the ass.

If politicians want to clear the wildfire smoke from the sky, the most effective place to start is by cutting the emissions that are driving these fires.

 

Day of Dew, 19th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Tropical Depression Two hasn't been named "Bertha" yet, and isn't forecast to grow into a full-blown (no pun intended) hurricane, but is still headed toward Houston so I still don't care. 

I finally got a multi-mile walk in today, a 9.9-mile Harrison, my first long walk since the Ninth of the Dog Days, and even that was a mere 5-mile Monroe. With my walking days finally back on schedule, I intend to resume my alternating-day meditation tomorrow. 

 A fun article in the journal, Nature, concludes that deaths from wildfire smoke are climate-driven and result in economic damages that exceed existing estimates of climate damages in the U.S. from all other causes combined. The research suggests that the health impacts of climate-driven wildfire smoke could be among the most important and costly consequences of a warming climate in the U.S.   

Wildfire activity has increased in the U.S. and is projected to accelerate under future climate-change scenarios, and evidence suggests that death from wildfire smoke could occur up to 3 years after exposure. Based on statistical tools and AI models, the authors project that fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke could result in 71,420 excess deaths per year by 2050 under a high-warming scenario, a 73% increase relative to the estimated 2011–2020 average annual excess deaths from smoke. Cumulative excess deaths from the smoke could reach 1.9 million between 2026 and 2055. 

But not to worry: the Stable Genius is on it. Today, he imposed 50% tariffs on most imported Canadian goods, claiming unfair discrimination against U.S. autos, alcohol, and cheese. He also asked his aides to look into additional tariffs on Canada because the wildfires hurt air quality in the U.S. The tariffs, of course, risk higher inflation here, and additional "incentives" won't stop the Canadian wildfires any sooner.  

If the Stable Genius really wanted to protect U.S. air quality, he wouldn't be starting new trade wars but instead work on new policies to reduce fossil-fuel consumption and increase renewable energy, but who am I kidding? He's not doing that!

 

Day of the Temple, 18th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): Because of the weather, I haven't walked since the 13th of the Dog Days, and even that was cut short at a 1.9-mile Washington because of approaching storms. I haven't sat since the 2nd of the Dog Days, because I haven't felt like it. 

The storm system off of the Florida panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico is now officially Tropical Depression Two. It has a number, but not yet a name. However, I don't care. The forecasts have it tracking not toward Atlanta, but toward Houston, Texas. Let Gregg Abbott and Ken Paxton worry about Two - knowing them, one will try to pray it away and the other will demand a bribe. One of these days, a real rain will come and wash away all the garbage and trash - nazis, neo-cons, maggats, proud boys, oath keepers, tea-baggers, white christian nationalists . . . sick, venal. Someday, the rain will wash all the scum off the streets. 

The new plagues are Canadian wildfire smoke and diarrhea lettuce, replacing locusts, frogs, and boils. I could add tropical depressions, political advertising, AI bots on social media, and Marvel movies - all harbingers of End Times.

How's your summer going?     

      

 

Master of the Relics, 17th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): According to CNBC, Georgia is the fifth worst state in the U.S. to live in. Fuck CNBC. That don't know what they're talking about.

The four worst states, in order, are Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, and Louisiana, and I can agree that they're all worse than Georgia although I could dispute the exact order. After Georgia, they rank Utah, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. I would rather live in Georgia than any of those other nine states.

Vermont was ranked No. 1, and cool, if you can afford it. Maine was ranked No. 2, so I guess they like it cold, and New Jersey was ranked No. 3 if you can believe it. That about says all one needs to know about CNBC's credibility. I'd rather live in No. 45 Georgia than No. 3 New Jersey, and I should know - I graduated high school in New Jersey. Here in Georgia, at least we can pump our own gas.   

Georgia was ranked low primarily because of its lack of protections for the LGBTQ+ community and therefore lack of inclusiveness. Fair point, but I doubt the CNBC pollsters ever visited the large and vibrant gay community in Midtown Atlanta. There have been several openly gay politicians in Atlanta, including on the City Council, and on both sides of the political aisle at that.     

Georgia was ranked No. 7 by CNBC for "States to Do Business In," and won high marks for its infrastructure, workforce, and access to capital. Now, I recognize "business friendly" is not the same as "quality of life," and can sometimes mean the exact opposite. I also recognize the implications and perils implicit in Georgia's "religious freedom" laws and am angry over the State's restrictive abortion laws, but life here in Atlanta isn't all submissiveness to Bible-thumping bigots and hordes of unwed mothers. It may be different OTP (Outside the Perimeter), but Atlanta's still by far the largest metropolis in the state and holds a significant percentage of the State's population. 

I'm retired and don't have family here in Georgia. I can literally live anywhere in the U.S. I choose, and I choose to stay here in Georgia. Low cost of living, friendly people, lots of stuff to do. Not to mention the best goddamn barbeque in the country. 

CNBC doesn't know what they're talking about. But I can't help but notice that all ten of the worst states are red states with Republican governors, so I'll give them that.

 

Day of the Heart's Release, 16th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Today, the 16th of the Dog Days, is the 198th day of the year. It's the birthday of actress Billie Lourd, daughter of Carrie Fisher.  You may know her from the Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker (she was Lieutenant Connix) or from television's American Horror Story.  On her 30th birthday (2022) her husband called her a "badass hot-Mom wife" and told her "I love you forever" on social media. according to People magazine. 

The 16th Dog Day is known as "Day of the Heart's Release" is the USC, and that's the most romantic thing I could find about today on the interwebs. Other than that, it's all airplane accidents, assassinations, and war crimes; you know, the usual stuff.  

The tropical wave near the Cape Verde islands has pretty much petered out - 0% chance of becoming a hurricane - but the system off the Florida panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico still warrants monitoring. 

With all of the afternoon thunderstorms here recently and the generally wet weather, I haven't walked more than a Washington in the last ten days. I've also stopped my alternating-day, 90-minute meditation. After missing less that ten days in the last two years, I've decided to give it a temporary rest. I found that my motivation for sitting was just to continue the streak, to not let the record break, and so I decided to stop until a genuine desire for sitting for the sake of the sitting, and not for maintaining some record, becomes the driving motivator once again.

The strategy seems to be working, as I already miss the zazen.

Zen master Dogen once wrote that "Driving ourselves to practice is surely delusion" or something like that. What he meant was driving ourselves during practice to some goal, usually enlightenment, is delusional, not forcing ourselves to initiate practice, but the words have been misinterpreted by many Zen practitioners over the centuries (okay, maybe just me). But there's a time for sitting and a time for not sitting, and until a sincere desire to resume practice re-emerges, I'm suspending my zazen. 

As I said, the strategy seems to be working. I find my days strangely off-center since I've stopped, and I'm frequently stumped while trying to decide what to do with myself over the next hour. Maybe when this wet cycle finally subsides and I resume my alternating-day walks, I can resume sitting on the days between the walks.

Have you seen that new Homer movie yet?

 

Day of the Horns, 15th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): And as we come to the end of another week in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, it's time to think about how wonderful life is. 

Potential can run in two directions: positive or negative. But when we look at those two polarities apart from the ego-self and take the broader view, they aren't really opposing poles. They're just opposite poles, and what's good for one person may be bad for another and vice versa. When we look at them either very closely or from very far away, there's no difference. They just seem different and opposed to each other at the scale of our our personal lives, our preferences, and our desires. 

It's like this wonderful Earth we live on: the northern magnetic pole is neither bad nor good, and the southern isn't the opposite of whatever value you place on the other. It's just magnetism - natural and  neutral. But if you're using a compass to find your way and you mistake the two poles, it might not work out all that well for you, but that one's on you - it's not the fault of the poles.

And so it is in life. What's "bad" for me might be "good" for someone else, and when my team "loses" someone else's side "wins." So any outcome, any situation, is neither universally good nor necessarily a loss. It just is what it is and you'll be happier if you keep your eyes on the positive horizon.  

Yes, but . . . as I squint my eyes looking at that horizon, what do I see? I see an area of low pressure forming over the northeast Gulf of Mexico and offshore of the Southeastern U.S. Forecasters say gradual development of this system is possible as it slowly moves toward the northeast and the coast of Georgia. And on the other side of the ocean, if I were to squint harder, I'd see a tropical wave near the Cabo Verde Islands causing showers and thunderstorms. That system may slowly organize during the next day or two as it moves west-northwest across the Atlantic. Either system may be the first hurricane of this season, or this might be the last I hear about either one. 

Anyway, life is good. I'm glad I'm here and I'm glad that you're in this thing, too. Enjoy the ride.

 

Child Found Within the Tree, 14th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): Jury duty. I've been summoned about a half dozen times since moving to Fulton County, Georgia in 2004, but only served once. Other times, I was either dismissed after hanging around the courtroom for a day or received a dismissal notification the evening before.

I received a summons to serve in the mail on Monday, the first time since my retirement. You'd think that since I'm no longer working, I'd be glad to serve. After all, I have nothing else to do with my days. You'd think.

But since retirement in 2019, something inside me has broke. I am no longer capable of getting up early in the morning or to be fully functional much before noon. I generally sleep until 7:00 or 8:00 am, read in bed or snooze a little for an hour or so, and I'm not usually up and about until around 9:00. I'm not proud of that but I'm not ashamed either - it is what it is. I'm an old man, I'm retired, and I don't get up early for no one.

Jury service begins each day at Futon County courthouse in downtown Atlanta at 8:30 am. To be there on time, I'd have to drive downtown in Atlanta's notorious morning rush-hour traffic, park in the designated juror's lot (they included a parking pass in the summons), take the shuttle bus to the courthouse, and pass through security. I'd have to get up by 6:30 am to do all that and leave some time for breakfast and coffee and at last a modicum of personal hygiene. 

In other words, it ain't gonna happen. 

Even if I rallied my sleepy ass and pulled it off for one day, if selected for a trial, it's exponentially less likely that I'd pull it off two or more days in a row. If the trial went into a second or third day, it would only be a matter of time before I'd oversleep and get a contempt-of-court citation for failure to appear.

Fortunately for me, residents over the age of 70 are excused from service. But not automatically - to be excused based on age, one has to fill out an age affidavit also included in the summons, get it notarized and scanned, and upload it to the court's website (no email). I'm capable of all those things, but it is asking a lot from senior citizens, who are notoriously incompetent with technology.

I had to go to the UPS Store to get the affidavit notarized ($14.00) and scanned. I logged onto the website and set up an account. Users are only allowed to request exemptions or deferrals after completing a "juror's questionnaire," which wanted all kinds of information on age, sex, and race, employment history, marital status, and spouse's employment history. After completing all of that, I clicked on "request exemption," and uploaded the completed and notarized affidavit.

I was pleased that within the half hour I received an email from a Fulton County "no-reply" account. I was displeased that the email title was a terse "Denied" and that the text stated "To be deferred, a juror must be over 70 years of age and submit a proper affidavit." 

THAT'S WHAT I JUST DID, YOU ABOMINABLE BOT! What was wrong with my request? I am over 70 (I turn 72 later this month) and I included a fully completed and notarized affidavit. But how do you reply to a "no reply" email? 

I went back to the website, logged back on to my account, and tried to repeat the questionnaire, but was denied access. I re-uploaded the affidavit, although the original upload was still there. That's when I got a second email from Mr. No Reply, this time titled "Disqualification Granted." 

"Based on the information provided, you have been excused from jury service." That's it. No explanation, or apology for the earlier email. I can only assume that some clerk somewhere deep in the bowels of the courthouse just reflexively issued the denial email before realizing that the affidavit proving my eligibility had been submitted. At least they corrected their error, even though without explanation or apology.

So I don't have jury service after all, and I'm not getting arrested for failure to appear. Crisis averted and I get to continue to sleep late, but at least I had something to do today.

If Why Then Vanish, 13th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): In the last decade of the 20th Century and continuing into the first decade of the 21st Century, there was significant tension in Georgia between owners of industrial property and the state environmental bureau, the Georgia EPD. The property owners objected to the strenuous cleanup requirements imposed by the state and particularly to their associated high costs, while the State felt they were responsible not only for the environment but also for the effects on human health if the stringent cleanup standards weren't met. 

As an environmental consultant caught in the middle, I understood both sides. The state had deliberately set the standards low to protect potential future sensitive receptors - a cleanup standard for lead in soil based on exposure to the current adult industrial workers wouldn't be appropriate for children if the property was sold and redeveloped as residential property. On the other hand, technologies to achieve some of the State's cleanup goals either hadn't been developed yet or were exorbitantly expensive, and many of the property owners being required to foot the bill weren't the parties that contaminated the property in the first place.

A solution of sorts were reached when Georgia started accepting the use of engineering controls to address contaminated land. If contact to lead in soil by children was detrimental, instead of removing the soil why not simply put a concrete cover or other cap over the soil to prevent contact? The state agreed with the solution in principal, but was worried what would happen in the future when a new property owner decided that the concrete didn't fit in with their development plans, or when the concrete eventually began to crack, weather, and fail.  

The solution to that concern was institutional control. If a notice that a concrete cover was required to be maintained on site was put onto the property deed and, further, that the notice be a permanent fixture on the deed from one owner to the next, that would address the concern. Deed notices could also require annual inspections of the cap and yearly notifications to the Georgia EPD that the concrete still effectively prevented exposure to the underlying soil. 

These engineering and institutional controls could also be made to work for contaminated groundwater. The Property deed could state that under no circumstance could water beneath the property be used as a drinking-water supply, and annual groundwater monitoring and reporting be performed to assure that the contaminated groundwater didn't migrate beyond the property boundaries.

The downside was that implementation of engineering and institutional controls meant that there would be less cleanup in Georgia, and as a result more contaminated soil and groundwater would remain in the state. The upside is that there'd be less human exposure to that remaining contamination, including to the cleanup and hazmat workers performing the remediations. Property owners were happy because it reduced their out-of-pocket cleanup costs (even as it arguably lowered future property values), and the Georgia EPD was happy because it meant less resources were needed for contentious enforcement actions, it avoided litigation, and the burden of future oversight was shifted from the State to the property owners.   

This approach to addressing contaminated land was institutionalized with the Georgia Uniform Environmental Covenant Act, which went into effect on July 1, 2008. Since then, more than 300 deed notices have been recorded on properties throughout Georgia. 

The EPD has gained experience with this approach over the past decade, but is now reporting instances where property owners claim to be unaware of the deed requirements or are failing to follow the requirements. As examples, they note:

• The owner of a property that contains landfill material was required to maintain a cap over portions of the property, perform annual reporting, and submit notice to EPD of any planned changes to the cap. Georgia learned that, in violation of the requirements, the owner had removed the concrete cap, graded the site, and covered it with soil and gravel.


• A property that contained lead-impacted soil had restrictions on land-disturbing activities and required erosion-control measures, worker protections, and annual reporting. However, a new owner moved the lead-impacted soil around on the property and into a stream buffer and stream, claiming to have no knowledge of the requirements.


• A property that requires groundwater monitoring and annual reporting was sold without notification to Georgia EPD, and required annual reports were not submitted. When the new owners were contacted, they claimed no knowledge of the monitoring and reporting requirements.


• Another owner reportedly did not sample all the required monitoring wells and then sold the property without notifying EPD or the buyer about the monitoring requirements.

These are all examples of where deed notices were in place but the engineering and institutional controls failed. Unfortunately, as the number of properties subject to these controls continues to grow, the number of violations like these will also increase. But rather than scrap the program and abandon the approach, Georgia EPD is proposing that, at a minimum, to ensure that these sites remain protective of human health and the environment, all future environmental deed notices notify the property owners of the requirements on their properties and alert the State to circumstances when follow up is needed. 

To this end, the State has announced development of a standardized Annual Certification form and an online reporting tool, and intends to send automated annual reminders to those associated with properties subject to environmental controls. 

In my years of consulting work, before my retirement, I found the use of engineering and institutional controls to be an effective approach to addressing contaminated land. It was certainly more cost effective and avoided a lot of the litigation associated with expensive remediation requirements. Like anything, there are always instances when bad actors or simple human nature can cause any approach to fail, but it is my hope that the changes proposed by EPD will allow this approach to continue in Georgia. 

It rained again today. I missed my walking day today.

 

Day of the Wand, 12th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): Google stats show that this blog gets 2,000 to 8,000 views per day, with 100 to 150 views per hour. I don't believe it.

First of all, why? Who would want to read this, and to what purpose? A certain percentage of views might be people who've stumbled onto a post here based on a keyword search in Google, but quickly moved on once they realized that nothing's being said here. I'm also doubtful because I've performed test searches on Google for key words used here, like "water dissolves water" for instance, and not received links to this blog.  

I think that if the Google stats are anything near correct, most of the views are really AI bots routinely scraping content on the internet, or spammers, cybercriminals, and hackers scanning the web for vulnerabilities. Some of the views might be my own, even though I keep telling Google Analytics not to track my own views, but I can assure you I don't view this blog anywhere even remotely close to a thousand times per day. Maybe two or three of those 2,000 to 8,000 daily views are mine, but that's about it.

For the record, I don't care. I'm not trying to monetize this blog and I'm not trying to get noticed or build a readership. In fact, I like the anonymity; I can be more honest that way. If you're reading this now, stop. Go away. A little privacy, please?           

Also, who reads anymore? A recent article in The Atlantic identified a worsening “literacy crisis” in the U.S. and beyond. Book reading is down substantially over the past twenty years, although reading of other material, Instagram Reels subtitles, emails, and Reddit posts, has taken its place. Literacy experts argue that deep thinking, textual comprehension, logical reasoning, and inference-making have been lost in the transition away from long-form books, and that we have entered a “post-literate” age. 

It’s a race to the bottom, and humanity is losing.

It's raining outside right now. Again. Fourth consecutive day with measurable rainfall, and eighth in the last ten days, and even when it hasn't been actively raining, it's been mostly overcast and oppressively humid. These Dog Days are wetter than I expected.

 

Day of the Dealt Hand, 11th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham has died, age 71. Impermanence is swift.

I did not care for the politician and even though I did not know him personally, I imagine I would have liked the man even less. Still, a life ends and that in itself is sad - a tragedy, although an inevitable one. All life ends. Impermanence is swift. I'll leave the obituaries and the political analysis to the pundits, and if you want snarky remarks or performative tributes, open social media. Your mind is already made up about his legacy and there's nothing for me to say.

I cut my walk short today after a 1.9-mile Washington when I saw an approaching thunderstorm. I got in the house not five minutes before the wind started whipping and the thunder and lightning started crashing. But I wasn't sorry to cut things short - it was so humid today that it was unpleasant just being outside, mush less exercising. But still, a Washington - barely worth lacing up my hiking shoes.    

The storm has passed but I just took out the recyclables and it's still yuck outside.

Meanwhile, these languid days and nights continue to pass as if in a dream. I missed the anniversary, but as of June 30, I've been retired for seven years, and have pretty much managed not to do even a single productive thing.  

Billows of Possibility, 10th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The Okefenokee Swamp in Southeast Georgia is a natural treasure, an ecologically diverse biome and important freshwater resource. Water in the swamp is contained by natural beach ridges formed during the Pleistocene as sea level rose and fell. 

Did you ever notice on a map of Georgia that odd little area that hangs down along the southern border with Florida? It looks like a pair of tonsils, or a nut sack if you have a dirtier mind. That's Trail Ridge, one on those beach ridges, and it forms a natural dam that prevents swamp water in the Okefenokee from draining to the Atlantic. 

However, placer deposits in the beach ridges of Georgia and Florida are mined for titanium and zirconium. These ridges surround the Okefenokee and are enriched in rare-earth minerals, including ilmenite, monazite, and xenotime, that eroded from the Appalachian Mountains and accumulated in the sediments that constitute the beach ridges.  

Rare earth minerals are increasingly valuable for their usefulness in semiconductor and computer-chip manufacture. The demand for rare earth minerals, found mostly in China and Myanmar, has led to exploration for new sources, especially in North America.

Fortunately, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding wetlands are protected under the Endangered Species Act, which safeguards the habitats of the red-cockaded woodpecker, wood stork, eastern indigo snake, gopher tortoise and other federally listed fauna. These protections restrict activities on federal and adjacent lands that would jeopardize the survival of these species. 

Last year, a proposed strip mine along Trail Ridge for the rare-earth minerals titanium and zirconium was defeated, but not without great effort by environmental groups. But that was last year, and since then the demand for rare earths has only increased and the federal government's appetite for protection has only decreased.   

As discussed here yesterday, the Stable Genius has gutted key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, lessening the protection for habitats like the Okefenokee. The demand for rare earth minerals, driven by large AI operations and data centers, could well result in new proposals to mine and extract minerals from the beach ridges surrounding the swampland. 

It is not difficult to imagine the Stable Genius' administration brushing aside all environmental protections ("regulations and red tape") in a strategic effort to increase the U.S.'s share of the global rare-earth market. 

It's not like we're going to lose the new arms race for AI superiority to China over a woodpecker, am I right?

Grain Passage, 9th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): In his nearly unfathomable wisdom, the Stable Genius, too busy to sign the bipartisan housing bill ("a big yawn," he called it) that's been sitting on his desk for a week, today has repealed a crucial part of the Endangered Species Act. The replacement rule will open habitats of endangered wildlife to development, logging, mining and other uses.

For the last 50 years, the Endangered Species Act relied on a broad interpretation of the word “harm.” The broad interpretation ensured that not just plants and animals were protected, but also the habitats that are critical to their survival. The inclusion of habitat in the “harm” definition was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1995 in a case protecting old-growth forest for the endangered spotted owl.

But despite widespread public support of the Act and hundreds of thousands of public comments submitted opposing the change, the Stable Genius decided that the broader interpretation of "harm" was “regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights.” 

Habitat destruction is the single greatest driver of extinction. The Endangered Species Act has helped safeguard more than 1,700 species and their habitats, preventing 99% of those listed from going extinct, including the spotted owl and the bald eagle. Excluding habitat from the definition of "harm" could cause catastrophic damage to species already on the brink to extinction, and the loss of some of the most beautiful and pristine land in the country to exploitation. 

But should we have expected anything else from the Stable Genius? As a popular internet meme correctly points out, he's a convicted felon, an adjudicating rapist, and a pedophile-protecting, porn-star banging insurrectionist running a dumpster fire of an administration. 

Tonight, 600,000 homeless people will be sleeping on the street. Forty percent of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. Insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. Medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. Women are dying in hospital parking lots because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.

The U.S. locks up more of its own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has two million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.

Our life expectancy is going backwards, the only developed nation where that's happening. Our infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Our kids do active shooter drills in school.

The minimum wage hasn't changed in 15 years. Teachers work two jobs to make ends meet and veterans sleep under bridges, all while the government spends one trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack us.

And now, we're going to open up the Okefenokee and the Everglades to strip mining, clear old growth forests and fell sequoias for timber, and open pristine Arctic lands for oil drilling. 

Other than some lobbyists and a handful of greedy industrialists, no one asked for this.

 

Bugling It, 8th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra):  A recent poll showed that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is more popular among U.S. Jews than Bibi Netanyahu. Even the Stable Genius is getting sick of Bibi's shit. 

Yesterday, a 65-year-old Palestinian aid worker on his way to a World Cup watch party was killed by an Israeli airstrike. Israel claims it was targeting a Hamas militant, but admits to collateral casualties. That's been their go-to excuse for years now. 

A 65-year-old aid worker. On his way to a World Cup watch party. 73,000 Palestinians already killed and the Gaza Strip reduce to rubble. And yesterday's victim was not Hamas. In fact, he had been arrested and tortured by the group before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack because of his opposition to Hamas.

In the Old Testament Book of Psalms, it is written "Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure" (Psalm 7:9). Another passage states, "In the words of the wicked, violence is  concealed" (Proverbs 10:6). A famous Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, once said, "All who draw the sword will die by the sword."  War is not the answer; eternal war even less so.   

 

Last Awe of Sentries, 7th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "We don't torture, we're a civilized nation" - The Au Pairs. 

We now have photographic evidence that Israel is torturing Palestinian prisoners. You've probably already seen the picture in the news. It's revolting and I won't link to it or copy it here: a man, face down on a cot, stripped to his boxer shorts, blindfolded, and a metal rod tied along the length of his body, from the base of his neck down to his right heel. 

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, with over 173,000 more injured. Several thousand are missing, presumed dead beneath the rubble. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, over 1,000 Palestinians have also been killed during the same period.

Sympathy for Palestinian men, women and children, and horror at the sheer scale of the killing isn't antisemitism. It's called being an empathic human being. Israel has a right to exist and has a right to defend itself, but this isn't that. This is genocide, no matter how vigorously they deny it and (some) U.S. politicians don't want to hear it.

Out of concern and respect for Israeli lives, the killing and torture has to stop. Violence only begets more violence, hate only generates more hate. Do Israelis really believe there will be no reprisals for their horrific actions? If only there were some book or reference to provide Israel with moral guidance . . . 

This issue has been talked to death over the last several years. It's been the subject of editorials, op-eds, op-op-eds, panel discussions, and social media frenzy. I have nothing to add to the conversation that hasn't already been said, but in light of the recent torture evidence, I cannot be silent. 

Stop the war. Stop the killing. Stop the hate. Just stop it!            

 

Tremendous and Sheer, 6th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): I finally beat Volgin last night and have moved on in the game, for those of you keeping score at home. 

Back in 2009, I came across an enthused coworker in the office. He was hunched over his phone, and let out a loud cheer over what he was seeing. When I asked what he was so excited about, he said that it was just announced that the 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio.

"You a big Brazil fan?," I asked.  He didn't look or sound Brazilian. No, he answered, he was just glad that the Olympics hadn't selected L.A., because newly elected President Obama had been lobbying the Olympics Steering Committee to bring the games to the U.S., and he didn't want Obama to get any credit. For anything.

I thought his attitude was narrow-minded and bigoted, not to mention unpatriotic. But now, some 17 years later, I find myself in a similar situation. I was glad last night when I saw that the U.S. Men's National Team had been eliminated from World Cup competition by Belgium. Not that I'm a big Belgium fan, but the Stable Genius got himself involved in the competition by petitioning FIFA to overturn a red card against star U.S. player, Folarin Balogun. FIFA complied, the first time a red card suspension had been overturned since 1962. 

The Stable Genius had put his fat, stunted thumb on the scale in the U.S.'s favor, and so I was glad the team lost because I didn't want the Stable Genius to get any credit or to hear him gloat. I have become just like that coworker who was so excited that the U.S. had lost the Olympic games to Brazil.

The irony about the Stable Genius' intervention was the player in question was only eligible to play for the USMNT because of the Constitution's birthright citizenship clause, which the Stable Genius had tied to get annulled. Balogun's Nigerian mother had visited the U.S. while pregnant, and gave birth to him on American soil after she was denied boarding on a flight home by an attendant concerned about her medical condition (she understandably didn't want to assist a live birth at 40,000 feet over the Atlantic). So basically, he's against birthright citizenship except in cases where he thinks it might make him popular.

The Stable Genius fucks up everything he touches. He's ruined the White House and is working on ruining the rest of D.C. He's ruined the Presidency and the U.S.'s reputation and popularity abroad. He's ruined countless U.S. agencies. He ruined America's 250th Anniversary and he's ruined the World Cup. He's like a reverse King Midas - everything he touches turns to shit.

The Stable Genius is a malignant tumor on the undescended testicle on the American body politic.

Go, Belgium! We're all Brussel Sprouts now!

 

Which Past Was Hers, 5th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): For the first day in over a week, either by my calendar or yours, the NWS didn't issue a heat advisory for Georgia today. 

Still, it was hot, 89°, and humid, 68%, for an uncomfortable dew point of 70° and a "feels-like" heat index of 91°. Betelgeuse being a walking day, I went out and hiked a 7.4-mile (according to my phone) Jackson, although the mileposts indicate I walked eight miles. 

More of those scary electrical storms passed overhead last night; one of them knocked my power out at least five times in the course of about a minute, but the power kept returning. Unfortunately, I was playing a video game at the time, and the sudden power loss wiped out my progress. More specifically, I was playing Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of MGS III (which I had never played) and in the middle of a tedious boss fight (Volgin, if you've played the game), I had rage-quit the fight the night before after I kept getting beaten. I took the game back up yesterday afternoon before the power losses hit and I was actually starting to get the hang of how to beat him. I was making some serious progress on whittling down his health when the power went out and my PC shut down, and I lost all my progress. 

Once I felt confident that the power was finally back on to stay, I started the game and the fight again, and after a few close-but-no-cigar attempts to beat Volgin, I finally did it. He went down and a little pop-up alert appeared on the lower right of my screen announcing that I got the "SEIZE VICTORY" Steam achievement for beating him. A cut scene started, but as my avatar rode away on a motorcycle, my PC suddenly crashed. No power surge, just a computer issue, apparently. When my PC started back up, I was back at the beginning of the fight, as if I had never beaten Volgin.

Fuck.

I figured that now that I knew how to beat him, I'd make short work of defeating him again, but it was not to be. I kept getting killed, over and over, just like I had the night before and earlier in the day. I rage quit the game for the second night in a row. 

I thought playing games was supposed to be fun. Between the tedious fight itself, the power loss, and the computer crash, this has been anything but.

 

Apparent Doorways, 4th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): "Regardless of what else is going on around you, make the best of what is in your power, and take the rest as it occurs." - Epictetus 

There was a whole lot of lightning yesterday. Despite the continued presence of the heat dome over the eastern U.S., or maybe because of the continued presence of the heat dome (I hadn't spent much time out of doors in days), I still got my steps in, 15,629 of them on a 5.8-mile Monroe. 

The weather forecast (I checked two sources) said no rain until late last night, but just as I had reached about the furthest point from my house, a gentle sun shower started. That wasn't an issue - I was already pretty wet with sweat - but soon after it ended I heard the rumble of thunder. There were several dark clouds in the sky, although not directly overhead, and I could see a great many lightning strikes off in the distance as I began the return portion of my walk. 

The sky got darker and darker as I walked, and the lightning closer and closer. I couldn't tell what direction the clouds were moving but regardless all I could do was continue to walk toward home. I felt like I was on the edge of a razor blade - I wasn't in danger, but danger wasn't far off at all. I completed the last mile of the walk and got in the house right before the hard rain started falling.

Later that evening, just as the sounds of the Independence Day fireworks were finally starting to subside, the thunderstorms came back. Those second storms were impressive not for torrential rainfall or fierce winds but for more lightning strikes per minute and for more minutes than I recall ever before. It was a full-on X-Men-style Storm vs. Thor lightning-bolt assault. Fortunately, there was no damage here, although trees fell elsewhere all over town. I'm amazed my house didn't lose power through it all. 

The storms returned around 2:30 am, which really bummed me out. Some new bed pillows had just arrived yesterday and, using them for the very first time, I had been enjoying a really good night's sleep (I hadn't fully realized how much my old, flat pillows were impeding my sleep). But the storms interrupted that restful sleep, although I was able to pretty quickly fall back into the Land of Nod (they're some really good pillows!).

Pow! A transformer blew around 7:15 this morning and the power went out, although it came right back on almost immediately, but every clock in my house is still flashing. A milder version of the storms passed overhead this afternoon - milder, but still more lightning that rain. There truly are electrical storms, not rain storms.

Before this heat dome settled over the U.S., the forecasts had said that one of the characteristics of a heat dome is they tend to dry out the ground, posing a wildfire threat but reducing the likelihood of thunderstorms. Boy, was that wrong, at least for this heat dome.   

"Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” - Lao Tzu