Waymarks of the Otherland, 58th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The number of people now missing from the flood in Nepal has risen to 1,924, with 93,000 survivors in a state of "great need." This is beyond heart-breaking. The humanitarian crisis is almost beyond comprehension. 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson is about the only person I see picking up on the story about RFK, Jr. lying to Congress. In her newsletter, she notes that Kennedy’s visit to Samoa empowered anti-vaccine activists there, and after he left, a measles epidemic killed 83 people. Knowingly lying to Congress is a crime, although it is rarely prosecuted. Still, the apparent proof that Kennedy lied to Congress is a clear opening for hearings into Kennedy’s testimony, history, and conduct in office, including changing the vaccine schedule after promising not to. If Senator Rand Paul could only redirect some of his irrational hatred of Anthony Fauci toward the U.S. health official who actually is harming the health of Americans.

Yesterday, RFK, Jr. suggested that Governor Josh Shapiro’s announcement of the deaths of two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania from measles might “have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” One of the deceased was a newborn, too young for the vaccine and thus dependent on herd immunity. 

The MAGA/MAHA faction is playing the some old game they tried to play during the covids. "They didn't die from covid - they died from respiratory failure," and "Covid didn't kill them, pneumonia did." Those arguments ignore the fact that the respiratory failure and pneumonia were caused by the covids and/or exacerbated by the covids. It's like if I dropped an anvil on someone's head and tried to argue, "The anvil didn't kill then, they died of blunt force trauma."   

As forecast, Dolly petered out in the Atlantic and is no longer considered a tropical storm. There may still be damage and flooding from heavy rains in the Leeward Islands from the remnants of Dolly, but it looks now like the poetic justice of Mar-A-Lago being washed away by Hurricane Dolly isn't going to come to pass. We're counting on you now, Edouard.

 

Day of the Iron Gate, 57th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): The area of low pressure southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is now officially Tropical Storm Dolly. I suppose the alphabetical naming sequence was going to produce the name "Dolly" regardless of the news, but it seems a little ironic that it came up right after the death of Dolly Parton.  

In any event, T.S. Dolly could be nearing the Leeward Islands by this weekend but is forecast to degenerate into a tropical wave before it reaches there. Still, heavy rain from this system could begin to affect the Leeward Islands late Saturday and early Sunday, and the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola by Sunday and Monday. The heavy rain may produce flash flooding, especially in mountain areas.

Light rain was falling when I got up this morning, but I still managed to get in a five-mile Monroe during the afternoon. I deliberately walked a somewhat shorter route due to the humidity and chance of showers in the late afternoon, although as of 5:30 pm, they still haven't materialized.

Another tree fell in the neighborhood early today, blocking one of the three entrances to my block. No one was hurt, and power wasn't affected, but yet another tree down feels ominously prophetic.

Documents obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press indicate that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. lied during two congressional hearings last year when he told lawmakers that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines.” However, in a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, using the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times. In the letter, he wrote that he believed the deaths of two children there were associated with an MMR vaccination, adding “I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines.”  Kennedy’s Samoa visit came just months before a measles outbreak swept through the island, killing 83 people. This week, two unvaccinated people died in Pennsylvania from measles. Kennedy needs to be impeached and removed from office immediately for lying to Congress before his reckless and superstitious polices kill more Americans.

U.S. ships handle approximately 71 million metric tons of freight annually through Canada's St. Lawrence Waterway, approximately 50% of the system's total traffic. The 15-lock bottleneck known as the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ontario conveys around 37 to 38 million metric tons annually. The majority of U.S. freight moving through the corridor consists of heavy bulk commodities like iron ore, agricultural grain (wheat, corn, soybeans), and construction and energy materials like stone, cement, salt, potash, and liquid petroleum products. 

Wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if Canada shut the Seaway to U.S. freighters in retaliation of the Stable Genius' tariffs and trade war, or started charging exorbitant "access fees" to U.S. traffic, just like Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz? The Stable Genius could rename the waterway the "Strait of Whore Moose."

 

Day of the North Sea, 56th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): The pain in my chest is completely gone. Vanished. Kaput. Even if I breathe in as deeply as I can and put my full attention on where I used to feel the pain, there's nothing. As if it never happened. Five more days until I see the doctor, but at this point, why bother?

Showers and thunderstorms associated with the area of low pressure a few hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands have changed little in the past several hours. Environmental conditions are still favorable for development into a tropical depression, which could form over the next day or two as the system moves westward across the Atlantic. However, conditions are still forecast to become less favorable for development over the weekend.

Let's take a look at the headlines. "More than 150 bodies found with hundreds still missing after powerful floods along Tibet-Nepal border sweep away houses, roads and bridges." That's heartbreaking, and my empathy and compassion go out to all survivors. 

"Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and It, dies at aged 80." Impermanence is swift - first Dolly, now Curry. I wasn't a fan of Rocky Horror - I went to one midnight showing in the 1980s, threw toast at the appointed time and yelled, "Janet, you bitch," on cue but never understood some people's enthusiasm. 

"U.S. faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada." Nothing highlights the idiocy and incompetency of the Stable Genius' policies than the continued appearances of the most expected outcomes to his actions. The jokes about "So full of shit, we literally ran out of toilet paper" just write themselves, which is good, because we're probably out of writing paper, too. 

"Judge allows postal service effort to restrict mail voting, for now." Seriously? What the fuck, amerika? Why are you so enthusiastic about ruining this country?

I missed my alternating-day sitting today. I put it off until too late, and then spent several hours on the phone and in email with my sister trying to figure out why I can receive texts from her, but my replies go to some other persons who's getting real annoyed about the unsolicited messages he's getting from me. I can still make up the lost time with an evening sit, but I probably won't - it's okay to miss a day here or there, as long as one doesn't make a habit out of it.

 

Swept Into, 55th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Six more days until I can see a doctor, but now the pain in my chest (heart? lungs? muscle?) is all but gone. If I breathe very, very deeply, I can barely feel a trace of it, and probably wouldn't even notice it if not for the more acute pain last weekend. Now I wonder, should I even tell the doctor about it or just allow him to examine me and let him find what he finds. If I say something, it'll be x-ray, at least - probably an MRI - and who needs that? 

Dolly Parton died today. Impermanence is swift. I liked her - the person, the philanthropist, the feminist icon. Couldn't stand her music. I like country music, I just don't care for her brand of cornball Nashville pop, though - too many syrupy strings, maudlin lyrics, simple rhythmic structures. Give me Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam, even George Strait. But beyond her music, Dolly made the world a better place and was a good person. We'll miss her.

Showers and thunderstorms associated with an area of low pressure southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands appears likely to become a tropical depression during the next day or two while it moves westward across the Atlantic. Environmental conditions could become less conducive for development by the weekend.

Two unvaccinated people died of measles in Pennsylvania. Impermanence is swift and the unvaccinated make it even swifter, and there's no need to elaborate on that statement any further. 

I got in (another) argument with Google AI today. I asked it to translate the Arabic phrase, الترجمة الحرفية فعلاً مضيعة المعنى, لو هترجمها هفكك الجملة الأول, and it replied, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break." I asked it to give me a figurative or general translation then - I mean, I don't need a literal translation and I certainly didn't mean to break the internet with my simple request. Again, it replied, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break." 

Now I was getting mad. "Just fucking try, you goddamn stupid bot," I wanted to say, but I didn't. I toned it down and asked it to at least translate the key words for me. "'الترجمة الحرفية' is 'literal translation'," it replied. "'فعلاً مضيعة المعنى' is 'truly ruins (wastes) the meaning'." It was only then that I realized the Arabic phrase I was asking about was, in English, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break" and that I had left off the rest of the sentence, "I would break down/deconstruct the sentence first."

Okay, the AI won that round, but it got lucky. My bad. Don't let that happen again.

 

The Deserted Garden, 54th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): As you can see, I'm posting again today, so it means that I'm still not dead. The pain in my heart or in my lungs or whatever when I breath in deeply died down but did not disappear yesterday, and it stayed at the same low but still noticeable level all day today. Seven more days until I can see a doctor. 

The State of Nevada filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Interior and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to cut their access to water from the Colorado River by 20%. Much or most of the water goes toward agriculture, mostly alfalfa for feeding livestock. Beef prices are up, along with almost everything else, and in an attempt to address the affordability crisis, the Stable Genius announced he will allow 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported, mostly from Argentina, and sold 25% below market value for the next 90 days. However, China reportedly rejected a 22-ton shipment of beef from Argentina in March after detecting traces of a banned antibiotic, and concerns over an international screwworm epidemic have consumers worried about the safety of Argentine beef.

Some are calling for a 90-day boycott on beef until the Argentine import window closes, but I would take it further than that. Stop eating beef altogether. In fact, stop eating meat. Do you want to throw a monkey wrench in the Stable Genius' plan to claim he's addressing affordability while simultaneously helping out his far-right friends in the Argentine government? Want to save the Colorado River? Stop eating beef. Stop eating meat. 

Eat like I've been eating for the past several years: an English muffin and black coffee for breakfast, a banana-strawberry-blueberry smoothie for lunch (just not Publix' frozen blueberries, because they're contaminated with E. coli), and a salad for dinner. Peanuts for snacks between meals. You'll lose weight and feel better, as well as save water in the Colorado and elsewhere, and muck up the Stable Genius' import plans. Win, win, win. You can thank me this time next year (just kidding - there will be no next year).

Just kidding - no one knows what's in the future or if there will even be a future. No one knows what in our beef or where it's from, what's on our blueberries, what's in our drinking water. No one knows the true extent of our military losses in Iran, or who's winning the Ukraine-Russian war, or the full scope of the atrocities in Gaza. No one knows why each sequel to Game of Thrones is worse than the one before it, or why the original GoT went ass-up in its final season.   

No one knows how long they will live, or when they will die.      

 

Entryway of the Dipper, 53rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Not dead yet. The heart is still ticking, and all day yesterday, as the hours passed, the pain that I had experienced in my chest became less and less noticeable and required deeper and deeper breaths to experience. I can still feel it today, but only on the deepest of breaths, and it feels more like a "pressure" than something I would call a "pain." Also, now it feels more like it may be my lungs instead of my heart. But what do I know? I'm not a doctor.

Still, better safe than sorry. I scheduled a doctor's appointment for the 61st and final of the Dog Days, which was the earliest I could get.     

As my internal body falls apart, I watch the external world fail as well. It's still oppressively hot, and I used my health today as an alibi to not push things and take my alternating-day walk (it all started after my walk two days ago). But it's really the heat and humidity - who wants to work out in that soupy weather? 

The Stable Genius is now in a trade was with Canada, of all people, and is laying the groundwork to declare a national emergency by spewing election conspiracy theories to sow public distrust in the democratic process. A study found that 85% of personal-care products tested, ranging from shampoo to baby lotions, contained unlabeled toxic chemicals, including phthalates, PFAS, and formaldehyde. Dog food is being recalled due to the presence of metal contamination, eye drops over sterility issues, and foods rang from jalapeño peppers to ice cream to soup due to Salmonella and Listeria. A recall of frozen blueberries (a staple of my daily smoothies) sold at Publix stores (where I get them) was upgraded to its highest health-risk classification due to an E. coli outbreak. It's getting to the point where you don't want to go to the supermarket anymore without a printout of the latest FDA recall notices, but even that is no longer considered a reliable source.

The world is shit, the United Snakes is completely off the rails, it's too hot to walk outside, and my internal organs are going through some things. But at least now I'm free from the scourge of paying reasonable prices for timber products from Canada.

 

Lion of the Virgin, 52nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): I'm 72 years old and slowly dying. Old age, gradual slowdown of metabolism and immunity systems, etc. The doctors tell me I'm actually quite healthy "for my age," but that qualifier is an acknowledgement of the mortality inherent in existence.

I bring this up because right now I'm wondering if I'm not having some kind of cardiac incident. I'm 99.9% sure I'm not having any sort of heart attack but starting yesterday, after my Madison in the brutal Dog Day heat of Georgia, there's a sharp pain in my chest whenever I breathe in deeply.  

I'm not experiencing shortness of breath, dizziness, or the feeling of a constriction in my chest, the classic warning signs of a heart attack. A former coworker of mine had a heart attack while he was home alone and managed to drive himself to the hospital, and later told me it felt like there had been an elephant sitting on his chest. It doesn't feel that way at all to me. Just a sharp pang deep in my chest whenever I breathe in deeply.

My chest isn't sore and there's no pain when I touch, prod, or even thump on it. There's no pain between deep breaths and no pain during ordinary, casual breathing. But on a deep inhalation, I feel a sharp. little stabbing sensation right in my left breast. I worried if my heart hadn't somehow become enlarged, and the pressure from fully expanded lungs wasn't causing the pain, or if it was just some old-man muscle ache after overexerting myself during the peak of a Georgia summer.  

I decided against going to the Emergency Room on a Friday night while they triage between gunshot victims and auto-accident survivors. I figured I'd wait and see if it passed, got worse, or what. Eventually, I even managed to nearly forget about it while I was breathing easily during my evening leisure in the comfort of my home. 

I didn't want to sleep on my left side, but eventually found myself  rolling over onto my left anyway. I don't give much credence to the interpretation of dreams, but as I slept I dreamed that as I was walking through a parking lot, someone suddenly opened a car door and pinned me to another vehicle and I couldn't escape. I awoke wondering in the dream wasn't my subconscious reacting to the sensation in my chest. I fell back asleep, but in a subsequent dream I was holding some cute but bizarre furry little animal to my chest, the subconscious mind apparently still fixated on that part of my body. 

When I got up this morning, the pain was still there and still only when I took a deep breath in. As per my morning ritual, I took my blood pressure and it was 105/66, well within normal range. A "normal" blood pressure doesn't mean there's not a problem, but an abnormal BP would have been a red alert. 

To see if the pain was muscular or internal, I ran a little experiment. I took an Aleve, which I find quite effective at easing muscle pains, and sure enough, after a while I could still notice the sensation during a deep inhalation, but it was far less intense. I experimented further during my alternating-day meditation today, deliberately breathing in deeply to observe the sensation, leaning into the pain rather than trying to avoid it was per one's usual custom. Sure enough, the more times I did it, took a long, deep breath in, the less the perception of pain in my breast. The sitting occurred some six hours after I had taken the Aleve, so it couldn't have been the drugs finally kicking in.

It's now been 24 hours since I first noticed the pain. I'm not going to the ER tonight (Saturday nights are even more chaotic there than Fridays), but I was planning to schedule my annual wellness exam soon, so come Monday morning, if the creek don't rise and I don't have a coronary, I'll schedule an appointment with my osteopath and discuss my little internal science projects with him.  

 

Source of the Danube, 51st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): As the water drops to unprecedented levels in the Danube River, old Nazi shipwrecks are emerging from the waters in Eastern Europe. A fisherman found a live WWII mine in the Danube in Slovakia, and in Serbia, a steam tugboat from the early 1900s emerged from shrinking waters of the Sava River. The ship, once a famed vessel known as the Slovenian, is called Sava's Titanic by locals.

Here in the United Snakes, a new framework for managing the shrinking Colorado River calls for California, Arizona and Nevada to reduce their consumption of water from the river by roughly 40%.  The cuts will require the three states to rely more on groundwater, to limit or even cut off some users, and to invest more in water-efficiency projects. They could also increase pressure on the agriculture industry, which uses nearly half of the water to grow crops used for animal feed, such as alfalfa. Building megacities and framing in the desert was never a sustainable proposition. 

I got my steps in today, 12,060 of them to be exact, in a 4.7-mile Madison. There were no active heat stress warnings here in Atlanta, but the 91° temperature and 68% humidity (dew point 74°) made me feel even hotter and more uncomfortable than when we were under one of the dreaded heat domes. In fact, the fatigue that quickly set in as I was walking is the reason I cut the walk short at a Madison rather than shooting for an eight-mile Van Buren or a nine-mile Harrison, although I did resist the temptation to take the early shortcut back to the house and walked that last mile. What doesn't kill you makes you stranger.

 

The Mississippi Delta, 50th of the Dog Days,  526 M.E. (Electra): A door-to-door salesman came through my neighborhood today, apparently promoting a window-washing company. The neighbors freaked out, went on high alert, and generated no fewer than 35 messages to the group chat and an untold number of additional "likes," "ha-has," and "hearts." Eventually, the police were called and if they could, I think the neighbors would have mobilized the State National Guard.

One person said a nanny they hired told her that the salesman tried to take a package off their front porch and looked "dirty." I have trouble believing that. Porch pirates typically don't ring doorbells throughout a neighborhood, calling attention to themselves and appearing on umpteen doorbell cams. And it's unclear why he wasn't able to take the package but could only "try." And on those aforementioned door-cam photos that the neighbors traded amongst each other, he didn't look "dirty" to me.

I think what happened was the first poster to the group chat was alarmed and asked if anyone else saw the salesman or knew anything about him. Everyone else reading the initial post reacted more to her alarm than the actual situation on the ground - a salesman ringing a doorbell. Then the alarm built up into a panic,  the panic spread from household to household, people started talking about turning their dogs loose on him if he came to their homes, and shared second-hand opinions they got from their children's nannies. 

Of course, by the time the police were summoned, the salesman had picked up on the vibes in the 'hood and had long since left. But I can safely say we are now free of the menace of unsolicited offers to wash our windows ("I am the viper! I've come to vipe your vindows!").

In the early 1990s, I lived in a converted barn with a chicken coop next to my house. I always had fresh eggs, and some weekends I'd step into the henhouse to grab a couple of eggs right from the nest for breakfast. Sometimes, late at night, I'd hear a random "bwaawk!" from one hen or another for some unknown reason, which inevitably was answered by another "bwaawk!" from a second hen. Soon other hens, wondering what all the "bkaawking" was about, joined in, and before you knew it, the whole henhouse was going crazy, "bwaawking" and flapping their wings and panicking over they-knew-not-what. After a minute or two of chaos and confusion, it all calmed down, and soon only four or five hens were still going at it, then two, and then finally one letting out one last "bwaawk" before everything went back to quiet for the night.

Today's experience was not dissimilar.

 

The Endlong Ride, 49th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The weather wasn't as obnoxiously hot today as earlier this week and I got my steps in - 20,914 of them on a nine-mile Harrison at a leisurely 1.5 to 2.9 mph. 717 calories burned while walking, 1,194 so far on the day.  

There's nothing like the 106° heat index earlier this week to make a 92° day with low humidity feel downright comfortable.

Today's walk was the first in six days due to rain last Helios and oppressive heat on Betelgeuse. Friendly reminder that the days of the six-day week in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar are Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Castor, Deneb, Electra (ABCDE), and Helios. I managed to get my sitting in on the intervening Aldebaran and Castor, but I notice that it's more difficult to motivate myself to sit if I hadn't been walking. One practice nourishes the other.

There's no virtue in difficulty finding motivation, but a practice without difficulty doesn't prepare one for difficulties in life. Overcoming discomfort to downright pain while sitting prepares one to deal with the inevitable pains in life. Letting go of the expectations of a reward for sitting sets one up to deal with the lack of rewards in existence. Thoughts like these are what drew me to Stoicism, and why I now consider myself a Contemplative Stoic rather than a Zen Buddhist. 

Just before the last mile of my usual walking route, there's a turnoff that would get me back to my house in about an eighth of a mile. My feet were getting sore, my legs tired, and I was wet with sweat, and it was tempting to take that short cut. But the same willpower that allows me to sit for all three of my 30-minute sessions during meditation motivates me to walk that last mile, or the willpower that motivates me to walk that last mile allows me to sit for the third period. One practice reinforces the other.

          

  

 

Day of the Great Roots, 48th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): I accidentally discovered the cure for teenage cell-phone addiction: slow chargers.  

In a California trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta is accused of covering up internal research showing Instagram is addictive for teenagers. The plaintiffs, representing 29 states, say the company knew its products were harmful to children but hid that information from the public.

I've fallen down the Instagram rabbit hole myself, realizing that I wasn't paying attention to whatever I was purportedly watching on television but instead mindlessly scrawling through post after post as the algorithm kept feeding me whatever it was that it determined was engaging my interest.  

But then my 10-year-old charger, a relic from the days of iPhone 6, started losing its potency, taking longer and longer to charge the battery. Even after being on charge overnight, it was only 65 or 70% recharged when I got up in the morning. And the charge works like gasoline in an old v-shaped fuel tank - the lower it goes, the faster it drains. So each night, I was starting the slow recharge at lower and lower levels, and waking up to lower and lower partial recharges.

You can't spend hours on end on a dead phone. I started recharging during the day, plugging it in and leaving it on recharge for hours and hours during the day. Even after I finally got it up to "high" levels, like 80 or 90%, then I was prudent with its use, as I didn't want to drain it back down again.

Long story short, I bought a new charger and everything's fine. But if Apple, Meta, or some other company sold slow chargers to deliberately maximize off-line time, teenagers might start doing other things with their time while their phones recharge. Like, maybe, you know, sex and drugs. 

I might need to think this through a little more.

 

Day of the High Cities, 47th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Man, is it hot! Still 96° F at 6:00 pm, with a heat index value of 104. The high today was 97°, which felt like 106. Needless to say, I didn't get my steps in today. My alternating-day walk can wait until Deneb. 

Yesterday's high was 98, just a few degrees shy of Atlanta's record for that day of 101° set back in 1954. They say it's going to be a little bit cooler tomorrow (92°) with a heat index of 97, so that's a relief. 

The a.c.'s been working overtime, and last month's electric bill was in the triple digits. I happily paid the bill, because if I lose power for any extended period of time, I might roast to death. 

People (well, some people, mostly Yankees) mock Southerners for being "slow," but that slowness was a learned adaptation from the days before Willis Carrier, the patron saint of the South, invented air conditioning. To stay cool and to generate as little caloric heat as possible, people started doing things with an almost exaggerated slowness. You'll be just that little bit less hot if you took 30 seconds to walk to the bedroom than if you made it in 15. People started to do everything in a sort of slo-mo fashion, from placing a folder in a filing cabinet in front of an oscillating desk fan to chopping some Vidalia onions in the kitchen. The adaptation became a sort of cultural affectation, a sign of being a true Southerner, and it's been handed down through the generations even though Carrier's gift to the world now keeps us comfortable. 

But you can't have air conditioning without electricity, and you can't have electricity is areas that rely on hydroelectric power without water. And one of effects of the heat and associated drought in much of the U.S. (and the world) is that major sources of hydroelectric power, like Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are so dangerously low that power may have to be rationed in certain Southwestern cities like Phoenix, which hit an unbelievable high of 113° F today. The drought is so severe in Panama that water may not be available to operate the locks in the canal, and disruption to the canal could limit global trade and impact economies. 

According to data from the AAA, the national average price of gasoline was $4.06/gallon on Monday, $0.05 higher than last week and $1 more than a year ago.  The U.S. gas prices this month are the highest ever recorded for August and have been elevated since last February when the war with Iran began and the Strait of Hormuz closed. Meanwhile, even as peace talks between the the United Snakes and Iran have stalled, the Stable Genius has made new military threats against Oman, because use of military force against Iran worked out so fucking great.

It's not the meat, it's the humanity.