Day of Footfall, 51st of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): "Where can the horizon lie when a nation hides its organic minds in a cellar, dark and grim?" - Oprah, I guess

I'm not going to write about today's Supreme Court decision striking down the Stable Genius' idiotic tariffs. It's all over the media, others who know more about economics than I are posting far better, more informed political and macroeconomic analysis, and it's all but just another headline in the constant shitstorm of this second SG presidency. We'll have a whole other set of headlines tomorrow.

I'm not writing about the Court or the tariffs, so what will I write about? . . . I don't know . . . Nothing else comes to mind. Maybe I'll just shut the fuck up and wish you a happy Friday.

Happy Friday. The tariffs are dead. Enjoy your weekend.   

 

Speech in the Glade, 50th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It was an extraordinarily pleasant 75° F today. Due to a late start, I only got in a 5.8-mile Quincy, a short distance given the weather, but wearing a t-shirt and shorts. 

Other than today, however, this has been an unusually cold Childwinter, as was the Hagwinter before it. I've seen lower temperatures in Atlanta before, but the lows this season were nearly as cold and have lasted far, far longer than in years past.

While I'm thrilled to see the warmth return, I also know from past experience that when the air gets this warm this early in the season, the air mass become unstable and we get severe thunderstorms and even tornados. Too much moisture in the air in too close proximity to adjacent cold-air masses, and, well, you do the science. 

The global climate is nearing so many tipping points, and it's probably crossed many already, even without the Stable Genius' recent recission of the Endangerment Finding (or the "Engagement Rule" as Bill Maher called it). Several environmental groups have already sued to challenge the recission, and they might even win, but we were still well on the path toward climate collapse and its consequences. 

We're going to be facing a decade of increased hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, and tornados, along with alternating periods of drought and flooding. The remaining trees around my house, that is, the ones that haven't already fallen or I had taken down, are healthy, but I may have to take them all down. There's still way too many tons of timber way too high over my head and home for me to be comfortable with knowing the weather that's coming.        

 

Lessening Heart Hums, 49th Day of Childwinter,  526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Knowledge is raw data. Intelligence is knowing how to parse and sort that raw data. Wisdom is understanding what to do with the parsed and sorted raw data. 

Ignorance is not knowing. Knowledge can exist in ignorance, but not intelligence and even less so wisdom.

The bell looks like a mouth, gaping,

Indifferent to the wind blowing in the four directions;

If you ask it about the meaning of wisdom,

It only answers with a jingling, tinkling sound.

- Rújìng (1163-1228 C.E.), Chinese monk who taught and gave dharma transmission to Sōtō Zen founder Eihei Dōgen 

 

Third Ocean, 48th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): Atlanta's Cop City is one of the largest militarized police training centers in the United States. The site includes military-grade training facilities, a mock city in which to practice urban warfare, and dozens of shooting ranges. Construction of the site cleared much of the Weelaunee Forest, Atlanta’s largest green space. 

Back in 2023, I signed a petition to stop Cop City. Some people scoff at opposition to the facility, saying it's important to train the police, and while I agree to that in principle, the training the police need is not in urban warfare but in de-escalation techniques and community awareness, classroom lessons you don't need a mock city to teach. They need hands-on leadership and an on-the-street mentoring  program. 

Further, building the site in a majority Black neighborhood that understandably didn't want it in their backyards reeks of racism, and it's well documented that it's the Black community that disproportionally suffers police brutality and over-zealous enforcement. I'm sure the sounds of gunfire from the shooting ranges and sirens and noise from helicopters, flashbangs, etc. have hurt the already depressed property values in the neighborhood. Would you want to live next to it?    

There's a lot of underutilized space in the City of Atlanta for a training facility, including abandoned shopping malls and environmental brownfields, and it seems preposterous that the only site considered was the city's largest remaining green space. Also, what about the old training ground? Why not rebuild there? And if it's so unusable, why should we turn the forest land over to such irresponsible stewards of property? 

If all that doesn't trigger alarms in your head, look at the absolutely vicious response to protests by the city. They literally murdered one protester while still in his tent (descanse en paz, Tortuguita), and prosecuted others as domestic terrorists and charged them with racketeering under the RICO Act. They even went after organizations offering legal aid and bail assistance. A judge eventually overturned the case, but both the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia have vowed to keep persecuting the opposition and refile the charges, even though construction of Cop City is now complete. 

The petition opposing Cop City requested a referendum on the development be put on the ballot for voters to decide. The petition eventually gathered more than 116,000 signatures, nearly double the number required by the city to put a referendum on the ballot. It’s also more than the number of people who had voted in Atlanta’s previous mayoral election.   

The City engaged in a series of legal shenanigans to ignore the petition and the will of the people. They  announced that would use a burdensome signature verification process regarded by many as a tactic of voter suppression to disenfranchise Black, Brown, and low-income people. Many of the city’s leaders had argued against such verification requirements in a lawsuit over the 2018 election. 

Finally, the city simply refused to even count the signatures on the petition or otherwise acknowledge its existence. When the petition was presented at the city clerk’s office on September 11, 2023, city officials falsely claimed they couldn’t begin verifying signatures because a deadline had been missed, even though a federal court had extended the deadline to late in the month. 

According to recent reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a former municipal clerk was hired in 2023 to help with the signature verification process. The signatures were never counted, but the city still paid the former clerk $910,000 anyway. Nearly one million dollars to not verify or count signatures. Nice work if you can get it. 

The whole case stinks to high heavens. Murder, trumped-up charges against the protesters, persecution of those assisting the protesters, and illegally disregarding a valid petition, not even allowing a vote on the matter. And now we learn there's also what appears to be graft. This whole thing stinks and that's why I voted against incumbent Mayor Andre Dickens last November.

Stop Cop City!

 

The Painted Timbers, 47th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): They're all saying the same thing, aren't they? "Go to a place that's neither hot nor cold." "Do not stay where buddha exists and run quickly from where no-buddha exists." Same thing. I was taught in the Soto Zen tradition and didn't do koan practice, but it seems to me that once you've solved one koan, you've essentially completed them all.

Here's a koan for you: Since the future is very much uncertain and we cannot foresee what will happen next, how should we live this day today? 

These awful times we live in. Today's headlines: Critics accuse administration of cooking the books in claims of cost savings from climate finding reversal. Vaccine makers curtail research and cut jobs amid hostile policies. Shooting at Rhode Island ice rink leaves at least two people dead. US teen who pushed for her father’s release from ICE custody dies of cancer. Producer of Israeli spy thriller found dead in Athens hotel room. Russian dissident Alexi Navalny poisoned by frog toxin, postmortem shows.  Actor Robert Duvall dead at age 95. Documentary film-maker Frederick Wiseman dead at age 96. 

As tennis player Coco Gauff recently put it, "I don’t think people should be dying in the streets just for existing." I agree. 

Life-and-death is the great matter and impermanence is swift. Our life changes moment by moment and it flows by swiftly every day. This is the reality before our eyes. In every moment, do not expect tomorrow will come. 

 

Descent of the Host, 46th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): A monk once asked Zen Master Jōshū, "What is a true statement?" Jōshū replied, "Your mother is ugly."

Is there any surprise that Jōshū (778-897 CE) is one of my favorite Zen Masters? 

When a monk once bid him farewell, Jōshū asked, "Where are you going?" The monk replied, "I'm going to visit various places to learn the buddha-dharma."

Jōshū advised him, "Do not stay where buddha exists and run quickly from where no-buddha exists." The monk replied, "In that case, when you put it like that, I'll stay right here."

Jōshū was trying to get the monk to realize that the Way is not to be found far or near, within or without. To search for it is to miss it. Jōshū had learned this when he asked his teacher, Nansen, “What is the Way?” and Nansen famously answered, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” 

Jōshū asked, “Should I seek after it or not?” and Nansen answered, “If you try to turn toward it, you go against it.” 

“The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing," Nansen explained. "Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is blank consciousness. When you have truly reached the Way beyond all doubt you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong?” 

Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253 CE) said, "Just cast aside body and mind and practice without desire either to realize the Way or to attain the dharma. Then you can be called an undefiled practioner." John Daido Loori (1931-2007) said, "If you seek it from others, you go astray. If you seek it from within, you are far removed from it."   

Today was a walking day, but I barely got in half a Washington because of the rain. Tomorrow is a sitting day, and only the weather in my own mind can deter me then. The forecast, as always, is foggy. 

 

Day of the Inn Dweller, 45th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): The things I do for you. Today, I completed my review of the EPA's regulatory impact analysis titled, Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act. Don't expect it to appear of a bestseller list any time soon.

The February 2026 report (EPA-420-R-26-002) was prepared by the EPA, as in "Environmental Protection," but you'd hardly know it by the report. Instead of attempting to refute the science behind the effect of CO₂ emissions on climate, either technically or even by simply saying, "we disagree," the so-called "regulatory impact analysis" only considers the economics of the decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding (or as Bill Mahar hilariously mispronounced it last night, the "Engagement Rule"). In short, if you don't want to read the 35-page document, it basically concludes that since U.S. consumers don't buy as many electric vehicles as other types of automobile, repealing the Endangerment Finding and its associated regulations will give buyers more "consumer choice" and lower costs for cars without emission restrictions. 

Amazingly, the Environmental Protection Agency didn't consider the protection of the environment in their decision. The word "environment" only appears once in the entire document when not used as part of the agency's name, or in footnotes referring to other organizations or the titles of other reports and documents. Similarly, the word "climate" only appears three times, and one of those is merely a reference to something called the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, and another is a footnote reference to the same institute. 

The third and final use of the word "climate" comes in a sentence on page 5, stating that a model for automobile production and pricing decisions should "capture how consumers make vehicle purchase and driving decisions to maximize their welfare based on their preferences for vehicle attributes (e.g., efficiency, size, speed, reliability) and travel, new and used vehicle prices, and fuel price expectations, subject to their budget constraints and any location constraints (e.g., climate, commuting options, access to fueling infrastructure, etc)." Climate, as considered here, merely considers if a consumer lives in a warm or cold region, and could easily be replaced by the term "temperature zone."

No, the report is a complete and startling abandonment of the agency's responsibility not only to protect the environment but to even consider the environment. It's an absolute dereliction of duty. The analysis simply justifies rescinding the Endangerment Finding because consumers seem to prefer gasoline-powered vehicles, and because automobiles will be cheaper without emission controls than with them. In short, it's the sort of report one might expect to see from an automobile-manufacturer trade group or the oil-and-gas lobby, but not from the EPA.      

Lee Zeldin, the Long Island hack with no prior environmental experience named by the Stable Genius to head the EPA, stated a year ago that the agency's new mission is to focus not on environmental protection but on fostering economic growth, energy independence, and auto-industry expansion by prioritizing the rollback of Biden-era climate rules and cutting costs for consumers. In announcing the rescission, Zeldin said he was "driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” 

EPA's rescission of the Endangerment Finding without consideration of effect on the climate or the environment is exactly the kind of reckless and idiotic actions this godawful administration has inflicted on the citizens of these United States.

The Invading Past, 44th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Climatologist Katharine Hayhoe points out that U.S. carbon emissions are ticking up as the Stable Genius doubles down on coal and other fossil fuels and blocks new wind and solar projects. But China’s emissions, on the other hand, appear to have peaked and may now be starting to actually decline. 

Last year, China installed a full half of all the world's new wind and solar energy, and over the past two years China installed more new solar power each year than the U.S. has installed in total across its entire history. China's clean energy exports alone are cutting CO₂ outside its borders by 1% year after year.

China is apparently looking at solar and wind energy as a cheap (free) source of energy that has the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enriches innovators and tech leaders. The Stable Genius looks at solar and wind energy and doesn't see an opportunity to enrich the oil and coal tycoons who donated to his campaign, so instead doubles down on U.S. reliance on expensive and harmful fossil fuels and allows China to take the lead on technological innovation. 

As was widely reported, the Stable Genius asked oil executives in 2024 to donate $1 billion for his campaign. The request was arguable legal, but the industry had a long list of policy actions it wanted, including dismantling parts of Biden’s green agenda, rolling back regulations that threatened to crimp their profits, and specific executive orders they hoped he would sign.

Financial disclosure records show the oil and gas industry contributed at least $75 million to the campaign and affiliated PACs spent an additional $104 million on lobbying in 2025. Yesterday, when EPA nullified the Endangerment Finding, the Stable Genius provided exactly the benefits the oil companies were seeking.

Nullification of the Endangerment Finding will lead directly to the cancellation of vehicle greenhouse-gas standards. As described in an analysis by the Center for American Progress, new vehicles will consume more gallons of gas per mile than those already on the road, which will increase demand for gasoline and thus the cost per gallon. In short, U.S. drivers will need to fuel up more often and will pay higher prices per gallon when they do. The EPA's own analysis of the effects of repealing the standards concedes the nullification will increase gasoline prices.

Even more significantly, revoking the standards will worsen global climate changes, resulting in  decreased health outcomes, increased property damage from extreme weather, lost agricultural productivity, and increased energy costs. 

The financial burdens of climate change are already being felt. More frequent and severe weather events are already increasing insurance costs. The most damaging hurricanes are now three times more likely than they were in the early 1900s, and the percentage of Atlantic hurricanes that reach Category 3 strength or higher has doubled since 1980. Meanwhile, the area burned by wildfires annually in the Western U.S. has increased approximately 800 percent since 1985, with about half of the increase attributable to climate change.

Revoking the Endangerment Finding and the standards that flow from it means oil and gas companies will make more money, while U.S. households deal with higher energy prices and the costs of climate change that those companies have caused. If the Stable Genius actually wants to lower prices, then he should drop his favoritism toward the oil-and-gas industry and follow China's lead and support solutions that lower costs and raise wages for citizens.

 

Day of the Cat, 43rd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The front page of the EPA's website proudly announced that, at the Stable Genius' direction, the agency just took the "single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history." They did it, folks - they repealed the Endangerment Finding that ruled that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health and the environment, and thus broke the back of the U.S. climate-change regulatory framework. The announcement, written in a highly partisan and unscientific manner, reads as if it were written by the oil and gas lobby, which it probably was.

The Endangerment Finding was the legal basis that recognized greenhouse gases as a public-health threat, allowing the EPA to regulate the gases under the Clean Air Act. The finding meant that the EPA could set and enforce emissions standards and could defend their actions in court. That legal backbone shaped everything from power-sector rules to vehicle standards, and created the framework in which emissions reductions were expected. Without the finding, EPA authority is narrower, more fragmented, and far easier to challenge.

Meanwhile, as The Guardian pointed out this week, continued global warming could trigger an irreversible course of multiple climate tipping points and feedback loops, creating a hellish "hothouse Earth." In short, as ice, which reflects away much of the incoming solar heat, retreats and more of the underlying bedrock is exposed, the rock absorbs more heat and further melts the ice, which exposes more bedrock, which melts more ice, and so on and so forth in a feedback loop. A tipping point is when the system reaches a point where a feedback loop can't be avoided and may already be occurring in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Permafrost, mountain glaciers, and the Amazon rain forest appear to be on the verge to tipping, and other potential tipping points include loss of polar sea ice, retreat of sub-Arctic forests, and collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents that strongly influences global climate. 

Runaway feedback loops would lock the world into a climate far worse than the 2-3°C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would be very different than the conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilization developed.

Human activities have massively upset the global balance of greenhouse gases. The planet has some buffering capacity for carbon imbalances, but the geological cycle for carbon is on the order of millions of years. We can't put tens of millions of years worth of CO₂ into the atmosphere over the span of a few centuries and expect the planet to be able to adapt without serious consequences. There's no way that isn't going to massively upset the ecological and chemical balances we rely on to keep us and everything around us alive.

Repealing the Endangerment Finding and effectively limiting the government's ability to restrict the continued emission of CO₂ is literally the worst thing to do at this fraught moment. The EPA's justification of their move claims the Finding was "massively unpopular" (it probably was among the oil and gas lobbyists influencing the agency), and that repeal would somehow save consumers billions of dollars and give them more choice (the choice to buy big, gas-guzzling vehicles that emit tons of carbon dioxide). 

That all seems colossally short sighted. An unlivable planet with a unstable climate is even more massively unpopular, and the costs associated with hurricanes, floods, droughts, and crop losses will dwarf the money consumers may potentially save in the short term.

It's a bad day for planet Earth.

One final note on the colossal stupidity of this decision. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in an interview that repealing the finding would boost the coal industry.  “CO₂ was never a pollutant,” he declared. “The whole endangerment thing opens up the opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful American coal.”

"Clean coal" was a catch-all term for a range of potential technologies, none of which have yet been implemented, to burn coal without emitting the carbon to the atmosphere. You know, scrubbers, closed-loop systems, and so on. But somewhere along the line, the Stable Genius heard the term "clean coal," and mistook it for a term of endearment of coal as it is without those technologies. "Good, clean coal," he says wistfully as if it were cool, running water, and now his administration knows they can call the dirty fossil fuel "clean coal" without fear of contradiction.

 

The Numb Recall, 42nd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): I spent (wasted, squandered, threw away) some five hours of my life today watching Pam Bondi testify before Congress today about the Epstein files. It's hard to imagine a more vile and nasty witness then Bondi as she responded to questions with personal insults, non sequiturs, and outright lies meant to flatter the Stable Genius. 

I recall Rachel Maddow once noting that the Stable Genius seems to like a little, let's say spice in his attorneys. Not just lawyers who will unquestioningly defend him but aggressive little weasels who will stick it a little extra hard to his opponents, who will walk away from the mildest little disagreement with blood on their hands. Hatchetmen, henchmen, backstabbers, and graverobbers. Bondi filled that role to a T today. Shrilly shouting and with her dyed blond hair and rhinoplastic nose, she was a textbook definition of white trash, the Real Housewives of Palm Beach Circuit Court. Imagine a female Kid Rock with a law degree.

Around three p.m., I couldn't take it any more, the sun had finally came out, and I went for a short, 4.5-mile Madison. I could have been doing that all along, I realized, rather than listening to her invective and lies all day. I hate these times and I can't stand the gooners, creeps, and swindlers that have taken over our government.

Christianity is Stupid Dept. (a random thought while walking): Jealousy is a most human of foibles, a psychological illness stemming from longing, clinging, and desire. Yet the Bible repeatedly describes its god as a "jealous God," a supreme being with the weakest of human weaknesses - "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealousy, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14); "You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5); "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deuteronomy 4:24).    

The Ten Commandments, which couldn't even bother to forbid slavery or racism or child abuse, still has a whole commandment forbidding "coveting," which is a form of jealousy. The "jealous God" forbids his creations from jealousy, but otherwise encourages them to act like him. Just not that. At least with regard to thy neighbor's house, wife, and livestock. 

The jealous God also has another commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me." Who are these other gods of which the jealous God is jealous? I thought the Bible taught there was only one god - nowhere does it mention other gods. Is he jealous of imaginary gods? 

The Buddha taught that our suffering is caused by clinging and desire. Jealousy is considered a particularly toxic form of clinging, causes suffering to both the person and the object of jealousy, and leads to delusion. The Christian God is obviously suffering, as manifest by his jealousy and delusion that there are other gods, and as a result his followers suffer as much as any abused spouse of a jealous partner.

 

The Infant Footprint, 41st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Well, now I know that the FBI's seizure of my 2020 election ballot was initiated by a Kurt Olsen, the Stable Genius' Director of Election Security and Integrity and a leading election denier in the administration. The search warrant relied heavily on claims about the Fulton County ballots that have been widely debunked. An affidavit on which the search warrant was based referenced several debunked conspiracy theories including arguments about fraudulent and duplicate absentee ballots, election machine tabulator tapes, and missing ballot images.

However, there was no allegation of a foreign interference in the election, which makes it all the more unusual that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, was present when they seized my ballot. Her agency’s role in elections extends only to foreign interference, but the Stable Genius reportedly told her to investigate the 2020 vote. “You go do that," he told her. "You get it done.” The day after the search, she arranged a call with FBI agents in which the Stable Genius praised them and thanked them for their service.

Last week, the Stable Genius called for the Republican Party to “nationalize” elections. He also said that “the federal government should get involved” in elections, and cited a list of cities in which he claimed there was voter fraud in 2020. “Take a look at Detroit,” he said. “Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta.” There is no evidence of widespread fraud in any of those places but his words remind me of The Talking Heads' Life During Wartime: "Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?"

I'm waiting for his goons to show up on my doorstep to ask me to confirm that my mail-in ballot was really mine. "Are you aware that someone submitted a ballot with your name voting for Joe Biden?," they'll ask. "You did mean to vote for the Stable Genius, didn't you?," the armed goons will ask. 

Fascism is here, boys and girls. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

 

Day of the Mists, 40th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "Love is a beach, there is no shore to its opening." - Bad Bunny