Strand of Names, 55th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Tragically, the heat dome in Europe may have resulted in as many as 212 deaths in Spain alone. Ominously, a heat dome is forecast to develop over Atlanta and the Southeastern U.S. this week. Temperatures are forecast to climb into the 90s this weekend and reach the mid-90s by early next week. The heat index is expected to approach 100° by next Saturday and on Sunday, the temperatures could feel like 103° degrees. By Monday, it could feel like 105° in Atlanta. 

Heat domes are large ridges of high pressure that can extend up to about 1,000 miles during spring and summer. They create a region of sinking air, and as the descending air compresses and warms, it can push temperatures up to 30 °F above average and reach 100° F in the eastern U.S. The warm, sinking air also dries the ground, suppressing thunderstorm development, and often results in very little wind at the surface. When a heat dome persists for more than a week, it can initiate or worsen drought and produce long heat waves.

But that's all nothing compared to what's happened in Venezuela. Monday, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck the nation 39 seconds after a 7.2-magnitude foreshock, killing at least 188 people and injuring 1,500 more. Thousands are reported missing and buildings were evacuated as far away as the Amazon Basin in Brazil. The earthquakes are among the strongest in Venezuela in more than a century.

Geologically, the earthquake occurred as a result of shallow strike-slip faulting near the complex plate boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates. At the location of the earthquake, the Caribbean plate moves eastward relative to South America at a rate of about 20 mm/year. This movement is primarily accommodated by the complex San Sebastian fault system, which extends along the northern coast of Venezuela.

The two earthquakes constitute a doublet sequence, defined as two earthquakes of similar magnitude that occur close in time and proximity, likely due to  complex, rupture-interaction processes.

Northern Venezuela has a history of large, damaging earthquakes. However, there have only been seven magnitude 6 or larger earthquakes in the area over the past century. The region recently experienced a doublet in September 2025 consisting of a 6.2 and 6.3 earthquake west of this week's event. The most devastating modern earthquake in the area was the July 1967 magnitude 6.6 Caracas earthquake, which caused around 240 fatalities, hundreds of injuries, the collapse of multiple high-rise apartment buildings, and widespread destruction.

And as if all that weren't enough, in the last couple days, earthquakes also shook Japan (6.9), California (5.6), and Papua New Guinea (5.4). 

Heat domes and earthquakes. Impermanence is swift. Sometimes it feels like Mother Gaia is trying to shake off that pesky species that's causing so much havoc with the climate and ecosystems.

 

Day of the Millrace, 54th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): As luck would have it, yesterday's pleasant weather continued into today, a walking day, as I took in my eight mile course. Even better, my stingy phone finally gave me credit for a full 8.1-mile Van Buren, instead of the seven-point-something distances it's tried to claim in the past.  

Europe hasn't been as lucky vis a vis the weather.  The continent is suffering under an intense heat dome, bringing dangerous conditions to much of Europe. Spain set a new daily record for the month of June and in southwest France it reached 112 °F yesterday at Pissos in France’s hottest day on record. The UK has issued a “Red Extreme Heat Warning” for today and tomorrow, with temperatures forecast to soar to at least 102.2 °F, which would obliterate the UK’s previous June heat record of 96.1 degrees. In France, at least 40 people have drowned while seeking relief from the heat. Heat-related deaths are difficult to track in real time, though French authorities compared this heat wave to one in 2003 that killed nearly 15,000 people.

Moving right along, I was delighted to find this quote by author Joyce Carol Oates on Elon Musk: “So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

I couldn't agree more. I've felt the same way for many years, from well before he even entered politics, about the Stable Genius. So full of grievances, so paranoid that someone, somewhere might be taking advantage of him or, worse, laughing behind his back. Like Musk, the more that he has, the more he seems to want.

In Japanese folklore, there is a spirit called the "hungry ghost," an unfortunate apparition with a mouth so small it can never eat enough to satisfy its hunger, its longing. Musk and the Stable Genius are the opposite - "big-mouth ghosts" - spirits whose enormous mouths can never be filled. Their mouths grow ever larger as they eat more and more. 

I don't wanna be no ghost. I'm so glad I'm not Musk or the S.G.

Last night, two New York House Democrat incumbents, including the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost their primaries to left-wing Democratic Socialist challengers backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The pangram in yesterday's Spelling Bee was "marijuana."

The times, they really are a-changing. 

 

Through the Thin Words, 53rd Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran):  I'm well aware that I talk about weather way to much on this blog, but how else to document the death throes of our planet in this age of climate change and global warming? 

Plus I'm outside walking for several hours every other day, so there's that to consider, too. These are the times, and this is my record of the times, etc.

But having said all that, right now western Europe is suffering through a significant heat wave, with forecasts of triple‑digit highs (in degrees Fahrenheit) and unprecedented nighttime lows breaking records in France, the UK, and beyond. The heat wave’s severity could approach that of August 2003, which caused nearly 15,000 deaths in France. More than 100 all‑time temperature records have already been broken in France, including a 111.7° F reading at Le Blanc. Paris is forecast to see daily highs at or above 100 °F and an unprecedented number of heat‑wave alerts have already been issued across the rest of the country. 

The UK expects June’s all‑time high temperature, set 50 years ago, to be broken, marking the first time since 1911 that two consecutive months recorded record‑breaking highs. London is forecast to reach the mid‑90s on Tuesday and Wednesday before cooling later in the week.

But back here in normally sweaty, sweltering Atlanta, Georgia, things are quite different. A cold front passed through last night, and yesterday's humidity is gone. Today reached a high of only 79° F, with a moderate humidity of 55% and a comfortable dew point of 59°.  Aldebaran is a sitting day, and I'm hoping that the pleasant conditions continue through tomorrow's walking day.

Last week, NOAA confirmed the formation of an El Niño in the tropical Pacific and has issued an official advisory. Forecasters expect it to strengthen through the winter of 2026–27, with a 63% chance it will reach the “very strong,” or "Super El Niño," threshold, placing it among the strongest events dating back to 1950. In a world already experiencing record heat, such an event could bring more dangerous extremes: drought, wildfires, and flooding, and in the Pacific, a more active hurricane season. 

It's worth remembering that in 1877, North America experienced an unusually mild winter. It was known as the “year without a winter.” The mild temperatures coincided with one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded. That El Niño was a major factor in one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Much of the world was enveloped in drought, and harvests failed in India, China, parts of Africa, and Brazil. The drought led to the “Great Famine” which killed between 30 and 60 million people, about 3% of the world’s population at the time.

As Terry Garcia, a former deputy administrator of NOAA, writes in The Guardian, what distinguishes us from the victims of 1877 is not luck, but data. Today we have the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network that delivers real-time ocean data from more than 900 sensors. The lead time that modern monitoring and forecasting system provides can save thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Today, we can anticipate climate shocks before they arrive.

Alert readers will recall that the Stable Genius had tried to dismantle the network. Pulling the sensors was not a budgetary exercise. The  actions are more properly viewed as an extension of the Stable Genius' broader assault on federal climate science. The objective is apparently to weaken the programs that measure climate change and then claim the problem is “uncertain”. But as Garcia points out, turning off the alarm does not put out the fire.

In a rare display of bipartisan unity, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to prohibit the use of federal funds to dismantle the network until a thorough review is conducted. Last week, it was announced that the removal would be stopped, the system allowed to keep running, and that the sensors that had already been pulled out of the water would be redeployed.

The reckless actions have been paused, but the network’s future is still to be decided by some as-of-yet-unconvened panel. Some sensors have already been removed, and data streams have been interrupted. Their redeployment after removal is not equivalent to uninterrupted operation. 

But the system has been spared, for now. Garcia recommends Congress write protections for the system  into law, so the instruments we rely on to understand the ocean are not at the mercy of an election outcome. 

The ocean stores most of the excess heat that shapes storms, marine heatwaves, and climate shocks, such as El Niño events. We came far too close to throwing it away.

 

Day of Fur Gale, 52nd of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): After missing my alternating day walks twice in a row, I finally got in a 7.6-mile Jackson according to my phone, or an 8-mile Van Buren according to the mileposts. It was 84° and quite humid, but sometimes it's good to sweat it out a little.

While I walked, I listened to a podcast about the CIA's MK Ultra experiments of the 1950s. Sick fucking bastards.

According to a survey published today by the global advisory firm Milltown Partners, only 8% of Americans who say they oppose data centers actually live near one. Tech companies will probably spin that survey to suggest that the other 92% don't really have "legitimate" concerns, that only those who live adjacent to a planned data center should be able to express their concerns about construction proposals. 

But data centers can drive up the cost of energy for everyone served by the host utility, and consume ungodly amounts of cooling water. However, Nvidia claims their latest chips recirculate a mixture of water and propylene glycol, similar to antifreeze, and therefore use less water. They reportedly can run at temperatures up to 113°.

Nvidia claims that with their new chip, the data-center water consumption problem is now largely solved. That remains to be seen, with questions of cost and reliability yet to be addressed. Also, I've done environmental restoration projects at enough former Air Force bases to know the potential for ethylene and propylene glycol contamination of groundwater. We may be merely substituting problems of water scarcity for problems of water pollution. 

Millions of chips all across America containing propylene glycol - what could possibly go wrong?

Finally, speaking of AI, since I have no idea what a "fur gale" is, my prompt for the picture above was "Queen of the North."

 

Fifth Day of Light, 51st of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): Happy Solstice! The Fifth Day of Light, the longest day of the year, the day when the forces of darkness and light are most out of balance in favor of the Sun. At exactly 4:24 a.m. this morning, days stopped getting longer, reached their maximum, and started getting shorter. 

Consideration of the Summer Solstice played a big part in devising the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. It's why this season is named "Midsommar" and I wanted one of the five Days of Light to fall on the Solstice. Each of the six seasons in the New Revised USC has a special five-day week, and even though the five Days of Light fall in late July in old Angus MacLise's original USC, that would be next season (Dog Days) in my New Revised USC, so I moved them to Midsommar to fall on the Solstice. 

It's all deliberate, even the AI images. The seasonal five-day events allow me the opportunity to develop themes in the images, and the Days of Light allowed me to lead up to the Midsommar avatar, the Sun Girl, with her head tilted today at roughly the same angle as the Earth's axis, with half her face in shadow and half in light. And here you thought I was just losing my mind with nonsense and AI slop. I may be, but at least there's method to my madness. 

There are only ten more days left to the Midsommar season. During those days, and the Dog Days that follow, the Earth will move from imbalance towards equanimity, towards the Autumn equinox, when the forces of light and dark are equal and balanced, in equanimity. Days will get shorter and nights longer, even though we probably won't notice it for quite a while yet.

It's not surprising that in this moment of stasis between the momentum of days getting longer and days growing shorter, today's I Ching gave me Li, Hexagram 30, in stasis with no moving lines. "Li" is Brilliance, light, the Sun above and the Sun below, on today, the day with the most Sun of the year. The two identical trigrams that make up the hexagram each represent the Sun's movement in the course of a day. 

The oracle for the hexagram suggests that the best leaders don't wield an ax but raise a lantern. Those who try to rule by fire are defeated by fire. Those who rule by bringing light to others join an ever-increasing radiance. To be a source of light to others, the trigrams representing the clockwork-like movement of the Sun indicate that one's spiritual practice should likewise follow a fixed routine, that one should be regular and persistent in their spiritual practice. I take this as an affirmation of my practice of alternating-day sitting, sitting even when I don't necessarily feel like it - especially when I don't necessarily feel like it. Such is the way of Li on this fifth and ultimate Day of Light.

 

Fourth Day of Light, 50th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): As the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the massive system of ocean currents that acts as a global conveyor belt, is on the verge of collapse, it's worth thinking about the Younger Dryas Event. About 12,800 years ago, something caused one of the most abrupt climate collapses in recent geological history. Global temperatures dropped several degrees within decades and megafauna across multiple continents went extinct. Then about 1,200 years later, conditions rebounded almost as fast.

The Younger Dryas was a long time ago, but doesn't predate human history. The oldest of the Giza pyramids were built around this time (more time had passed between construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza and the birth of Cleopatra than the birth of Cleopatra and now). The nomadic Clovis tribes in North America that hunted mammoths, mastodons, and caribou and lived in scattered, temporary settlements, traveling over long distances in search of game, had to switch to a more sedentary, agricultural lifestyle after the megafauna went extinct.  

The generally accepted explanation for the event is that meltwater from retreating glaciers disrupted Atlantic ocean circulation. If disruption of the Atlantic circulation system then could cause the catastrophic Younger Dryas, what would the collapse of the AMOC cause today?

The Stable Genius didn't think the issue was worth researching and his administration was set to remove the system of oceanic monitors and recording buoys in the Atlantic and Pacific that's being used to track changes in the AMOC and elsewhere. Fortunately, an outcry from the scientific community caused him to reconsider the decision, and the system will be left in place for now. But that's how governance under the Stable Genius goes these days - someone wonders "What does this switch do?" and turns it off, and then if the outcry seems alarmed enough, they'll turn it back on.

The specific mechanism that caused  disruption to the ocean currents during the Younger Dryas was thought to be freshwater outflow from the St. Lawrence River as the North American continental glaciers melted. However, salinity data doesn't support that hypothesis. The current thinking now has Canada's Mackenzie River providing the disruptive fresh-water flow. 

An alternative hypothesis to explain the Younger Dryas Event proposes that North America and other continents were subjected to some sort of extraterrestrial event, either a supernova shockwave, the impact or airburst from a meteor, comet, or some other object, or some combination thereof. That event supposedly caused the climate changes that define the onset of the Younger Dryas. More specifically, proponents claim that the proposed impact triggered an "impact winter" and the subsequent climate episode, biomass burning, megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural shifts and population declines.

It's ironic that as human-induced climate change warms the planet, that warming may eventually cause the same kind of disruption to the Atlantic circulatory system that caused the global cooling of the Younger Dryas. Collapse of the AMOC could provide a cooling effect to offset some of the warming, with the added benefit of killing off enough of the human population to stop with all the anthropomorphic GHG releases already.

Third Day of Light, 49th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): The remnants of tropical storm Arthur passed over Atlanta last night and overall it turned out to be kind of a nothing-burger. The rain started right about 5:00 pm yesterday and the power went out almost immediately. But then, almost instantly, the lights came right back on again and by 5:30, the first wave of rain had passed. The National Weather Service recorded a total of 1.12 inches of rain by 8:00 pm.

It didn't start raining again until around 9:30 pm. It was a steady rain that lasted for hours and added another 0.80 inches of rain, but it wasn't anything like the earlier downpour of that first wave. I didn't hear any thunder, see any lightning, and the rain ended sometime shortly after midnight. There were certainly no tornados, which is a good thing (just saying).

Standing water on some city streets caused traffic delays, but a single drop of rain can trigger traffic jams in Atlanta (and don't get me started on snow). The stream gauge on Peachtree Creek rose from 2.34 feet at 4:00 pm, before the rain started, to 8.26 feet just after midnight, well below the flood stage of 17 feet, or even the "action stage" of 13 feet.

Some trees fell in parts of Atlanta and some homes and cars were damaged, although, thankfully, no one was killed AFAIK. Many people lost power for several hours, even if I experienced only the briefest of outages. I know I'd be viewing the storm differently in my house were one of those hit by a falling tree.

Due to wide-spread pushback, the Stable Genius has abandoned the foolish plan to physically remove the system of oceanic monitors and measuring buoys in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The administration has also halted the planned construction of an immensely unpopular ICE detention facility in Social Circle, Georgia, due to public protest. And even Stable Genius sycophants are struggling to find an upside to his "peace agreement" on the ill-conceived Iran War, or for the war itself for that matter. 

There are still two-and-a-half years left to the Stable Genius' second term, but as the editors of W magazine wrote in an email today, sometimes it feels like the Age of MAGA, culturally at least, has already ended. If they were pressed to pinpoint exactly when the end began, they wrote "we might say it was this past January. A few weeks after Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office in New York, Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was widely considered a crowd-pleasing success. In retrospect, the right-wing media looked silly for making such a big deal of it in the first place. 

"The president then went on chasing a spree of contentious and often confusing foreign policy windmills (what was all of that about Greenland again?), while struggling to reassure Americans about the economy. As a result, his approval ratings remain in the gutter. As the president celebrated his birthday by watching grown men fight each other on the White House lawn, Mamdani’s New York was in the throes of full ecstasy. The New York Knicks had taken home their first NBA championship in decades, Jane Fonda was hosting a first amendment singalong with Bette Midler and Julia Roberts at the Town Hall theater, and the city’s World Cup events were going off without a hitch." 

Imagine a world with less MAGA and more Mamdani. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

 

Second Day of Light, 48th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  According to Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, Mike Collins, the Stable Genius' handpicked candidate to run against him, is "a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist currently under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars." Collins, who "is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman, voted to double health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians, for the Iran War, and for the [Stable Genius] tariffs."

That's all true, but as despicable as Collins is, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson is arguably more so. Recently discovered audio reveals Jackson agreeing with a person saying that a woman should have to prove she was raped before she could qualify for an abortion. 

But politics - what does it matter when we're all about to drown? The remnants of Arthur, the first named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, are coming to Atlanta today. Multiple rounds of rainfall are expected through Friday morning with chances for flash flooding. They're forecasting 2 to 4 inches of rain with locally higher amounts of 5 inches or more. Urban areas, like Atlanta, and areas with poor drainage will be the most susceptible to flash flooding. 

Worse, most of Georgia is also under a wind advisory until 8:00 am tomorrow when Arthur finally blows through. Southwest winds of 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph are expected. Some isolated higher wind gusts may also be possible. Tree limbs could be blown down, possibly resulting in power outages. 

I'm fully expecting to lose power within the next 24 hours. I went to the supermarket for bread and peanut butter, fresh fruit, and some premade salads so I'll have some no-cook, ready-to-eat meals on hand. I've checked my flashlight batteries and candle stocks, and I'm keeping my phone charged up. 

It's already oppressively humid outside beneath ominous overcast skies and, oh fun, they just added a tornado watch until 11:00 pm.

No hurricanes or tropical storms made landfall on the U.S. last year, and then this year the very first named storm of the year beelines straight for Atlanta. But one of these days, a hard rain's gonna fall and a blue wave will come along and wash the garbage and trash off the streets - the Nazis, the racists, MAGAs, neocons, and QAnons - filth. The blue wave will wash all the scum off the streets and the storm will be named Freedom.

 

Day of Light, 47th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Rick Jackson won the Georgia Republican primary runoff election to run for governor against Keisha Lance Bottoms. Those obnoxious Jackson ads will continue on television for another five months. Ugh. 

His company, Jackson Healthcare, earned nearly $1 billion between 2020 through 2026, mostly during the covids pandemic, through state contracts. He tried to get Georgia's medical malpractice system overhauled in the 2010s and wanted to privatize the state's foster-care system. He has contributed millions to the Republican National Committee and last December gave $1 million to the MAGA SuperPAC. 

Not that his opponent, Burt Jones, was any knight in shining armor. An election denier and fake elector who needed an executive pardon to avoid prosecution, he was a deportation enthusiast and a Stable Genius ass kisser. 

The lazy mainstream press has taken to covering elections based on the won-lost ratio of the Stable Genius' endorsements. He backed Jones in this primary, as did Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and the press is covering Jackson's victory as a Georgia repudiation of the Stable Genius and his primaries.

I know Georgia - I've lived here for 45 years - and I can assure you that only a small, statistically insignificant percentage of Peach State voters, a rounding error if you will, picked Jackson over Jones in order to spite the Stable Genius. Both candidates stank to high heavens, but of the two Jackson was actually more like that Stable Genius in many aspects than Jones. He even ran ads saying. "I'm just like the Stable Genius" - a political outsider, a self-made billionaire, and a threat to mainstream politics. A statistically significant portion of Georgia Republicans voted for Jackson because they wanted more Stable Genius, or a Stable Genius-like character, in their lives.

I almost didn't vote yesterday - all the significant races were on the Republican ticket and most Democratic races were either already decided if not unopposed. But I did drag my ass to the poll specifically to vote for Lee Morris for Fulton County Commissioner in District 3. Morris had been the last Republican I ever voted for, and this year he switched parties to run as a Democrat. However, despite my effort, he lost to Jodi Merriday, a progressive, even though he had earned more votes than her in the initial primary election back on May 19 (but not enough to reach the 50% required to avoid a runoff). I have no problems with Dr. Merriday, who will run against Republican Paul Burton, it's just that I knew Morris personally.       

Let's talk about something else. Anything else. The weather, yeah, that's always a favorite here. Tropical Storm Arthur, the first named storm of the '26 Atlantic hurricane season, has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and will track along the Texas coast from Corpus Christi to Houston before heading inland and heading across the State of Louisiana. The National Hurricane Center has already issued Special Advisories for life-threatening flooding along the Gulf Coast, with 5 to 10 inches of rain and isolated higher totals near 20 inches.

The storm is forecast to cross Georgia late this week, and there is concern that the storm might actually get stronger over land and that when Arthur's warm, humid air meets an incoming cold front, the wind shear could produce isolated tornados. In any event, we've looking forward to a pretty robust wind field in the 20-40 mph range. Atlanta's under a flood watch from 8:00 am tomorrow (Thursday) until 2:00 a.m. Saturday, with scattered thunderstorms over the next five days.

Not what someone with 10 or 20 tons of timber towering 50 to 75 feet over his house likes to hear. 

 

Day of All Hawks, 46th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): My alternating-day walk got rained out today, but I made good use of my free time by voting in the run-off election for the Georgia primary, and then got my annual emission inspection done (all good). 

Remember in 2020 when, after Georgia elected Joe Biden for president, a group of Republicans fraudulently tried to pass themselves off as the official electors and cast the state's votes for the Stable Genius in the electoral college? One of those fake electors, Burt Jones, is now in the Republican primary runoff for governor, and unsurprisingly has the Stable Genius' endorsement. He's described as a S.G. loyalist and holds fervent anti-immigration views. 

His opponent, Rick Jackson, has never held public office and has no history of public service, but he's supposedly a billionaire and thinks he can run the state like a business. He gives off these creepy Kenneth Copeland vibes, and is bombarding the Atlanta airwaves with a constant barrage of television commercials, each one more distressing than the one before. He compares himself to a home-grown version of the Stable Genius - "an outsider" who has enough wealth that he "doesn't owe nobody nothing." 

A dishonest, borderline criminal Lieutenant Governor (Jones) versus a creepy billionaire health-care executive. The only person who can save us from being governed by one or the other is the Democratic candidate, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta. 

Let me tell you one thing about Georgia politics - candidates, especially Republican candidates, win their races by campaigning against Atlanta. To the rural voters outside the city, Atlanta is too crowded, too dirty, gets too much of the tax revenue, and is too black and too gay. All that either Jones or Jackson will have to do to beat Bottoms in the general election is remind voters that she used to be the mayor of Atlanta. Case closed. Game over.

It's only made worse that she was mayor during the covid crisis and the George Floyd protests and associated unrest. After Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police in South Atlanta and protesters burned down the Wendy's at which he was killed and blockaded the streets, she wisely didn't throw gasoline on the fire by sending in the SWAT team to take back the streets, but that allowed her opponents to label her as "soft on crime." Others remember her for the unpopular mask mandates and school closings over which she was forced to administer. 

So all that Jackson/Jones has to do to beat her is remind voters of those difficult times ("I'll never make you wear no mask") and act tough on crime, especially against immigrants and minorities. One of Jackson's ads already declares that if anyone tries that kind of stuff when he's Governor, "you'll either be departed or deported." Not that Jones' ads are much better - in one he uses an AI-generated video of Jackson shoveling money into a furnace.

But Bottoms is not even that popular with progressives here in Atlanta. Politically, she lost the battle for mask mandates and against early school and business openings when she was outmaneuvered by Brain Kemp, and after the presidential election of 2020, it seemed like she lost all interest in actually being Mayor and was just waiting for a political appointment by Joe Biden. He ultimately made her a Senior Advisor as the Director of the Office of Public Engagement. No doubt, Jackson Jones will label her as a "Biden insider."

On top of all that, she's a black woman in a state where a distressing number of voters still feel that either disqualifies a person from holding office. The name "Stacy Abrams" is still used here as a racist dog-whistle shorthand way of saying "not one of us."

I have no political disagreement with Bottoms. I think she's highly intelligent and well qualified to be Governor. I will vote for her. I just think that it these reactionary times, she doesn't stand a chance of winning a race against one of two white Republican men, unless the candidate who wins today flames out and screws up royally, something which I wouldn't put past Jones or Jackson.                  

 

Day of Suffering Night, 5th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has confirmed that El Niño conditions have officially developed in the equatorial Pacific (oh shit, there goes the old man talking about the weather again). As has been widely speculated, this El Niño has the potential to become one of the strongest on record. The good news is we can expect a quieter Atlantic hurricane season but it likely also means a much wetter winter for the southern U.S. and a near-certain spike in global temperatures. 

Tomorrow, Georgia will hold a runoff election for last month's primaries. Most of the important Democratic candidates have already won their primary and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, is the Democratic nominee for governor (although I didn't vote for her). Tomorrow's runoff will decide between Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Rick Jackson, a creepy billionaire health-care executive. Both are awful, but Jones has the backing of the Stable Genius and outgoing Governor Cheatin' Brian Kemp, while Jackson has no government experience, no record of public service, and has never ran for office before. However, he has run a seemingly endless stream of television commercials, each one more vile than the others, to the point where I've even heard Republicans complain, "enough already."     

I'm invested in the outcome of the Republican primary because I think there's no way Keisha Lance Bottoms (a black woman, a Democrat, and from Atlanta on top of all that) wins the statewide election, and whichever Republican wins tomorrow's primary will probably be my next governor. Please, please don't let it be Jackson!   

The Republicans are also in a runoff here to face Senator Jon Ossoff. With KLB also on the ballot for November, Democrats here are testing the slogan "Vote Your Bottoms and Ossoff." It's going to be a long year. 

Sen. Ossoff has proved to be a prodigious fund-raiser with a knack for going viral, and even Republicans acknowledge that he's a formidable candidate. He may even be a potential 2028 presidential candidate. Tomorrow, two Republicans will vie to run against him - Representative Mike Collins, a MAGA loyalist and immigration hard-liner, and Derek Dooley, a former football coach and son of legendary Georgia coach Vince Dooley. 

The Stable Genius has endorsed Collins, but Dooley is family friends with Kemp and has his support. Kemp famously has clashed with Trump before, refusing to join his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Senator Raphael Warnock, Georgia's other Democratic Senator, was on the Sunday morning talk-show circuit promoting his new book, The Crooked Places Made Straight, and possibly testing his presidential campaign potential.

 

The Offside Mysteries, 44th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): London's The Guardian reports that a petition is underway in central Georgia's Coweta County against something called  Project Sail, a planned 800-acre-plus datacenter near the town of Newnan. The petition seeks a referendum that would also prohibit other datacenters and cryptocurrency mining operations from moving forward. Coweta County has about 160,000 residents, two-thirds of whom voted for the Stable Genius.

The petition organizers say they have collected about 6,500 signatures against their goal of 14,000.  If the campaign is successful, Coweta County could become only the third county in Georgia history to stage a referendum, which allows residents to challenge a county policy or decision.

Recent polling suggests seven in ten people in the US would oppose a datacenter being built near their homes. Monterey Park, California, recently became the first US city to pass a referendum against datacenters earlier this month. 

The Coweta County referendum follows an anti-gentrification effort on Georgia’s Sapelo Island, home to a community of Gullah Geechee people descended from enslaved West Africans who had ben forced to work on coastal plantations. Due to the geographic isolation of the island, the people retained strong African cultural traditions, creating a completely distinct language and cuisine. The referendum successfully defeated a proposal to allow larger houses on the island that would have affected the Gullah Geechee way of life. 

Before that, a referendum on Atlanta's Cop City police recreational facility met the required number of signatures, but the petition was ignored by the city and the effort was tied up in court even as construction proceeded (it's since been completed). Georgia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Chris Carr made his support for Cop City and his persecution of its protesters a campaign issue, and came in a distant fourth in the May 19 Republican primary. Good. Fuck that guy.   

The ability to stage a referendum in Georgia comes from provisions in the state’s constitution. A certain percentage of a county’s registered voters must sign a petition against a policy passed by elected representatives. Once the threshold of confirmed signatures is reached and a referendum is authorized, the county residents can vote on the issue and potentially reverse their elected officials' decision. Referendums (referenda?) are a tool that shows people don’t have to acquiesce to elected leaders, particularly when they don’t have people’s interests at heart.  

Remember, Georgia was recently ranked No. 1 in the country for its freedom of press.