Third Day of Light, 61st of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): We jazz fans can be difficult. We're suspicious and judgmental by nature. Not because of some intrinsic aspect of our personalities, but because we've all been burned when someone tells us that they like jazz, too, only to have them continue by telling us their favorite artist is Herb Albert. After that, when someone confides to us that they're a jazz fan, we automatically assume they're not really and we start skeptically quizzing them on specifics and artists and albums. 

Chuck Mangione was the epitome of the faux-jazz musician in the 70s. His Feels So Good, a shmaltzy pop instrumental, was a megahit in 1977, and so many people hopped aboard the "jazz" bandwagon but listened to only that one album, or even that one song, and would run out of the room screaming if someone played Anthony Braxton, On the Corner, or late-era Coltrane. 

I hated Chuck Mangione and I hated his music and I resented that I had to constantly argue to ignorant people that no, that's not jazz. At least, not what I mean by jazz. Today, Kenny G is Mangione's cultural successor and basically occupies his karmic space now. 

Chuck Mangione died this week, and while I feel sympathy for him and his family and loved ones, I really couldn't care otherwise. An annoying musician I didn't like isn't going to annoy me anymore.

I never liked Hulk Hogan either, and now he's dead, too. In the early 80s, I found pro wrestling campy and comical and secretly enjoyed watching wrestling Saturday afternoons on TBS, a low-brow forbidden pleasure. But when Hogan emerged on the scene, everything became big and commercial, and wrestling went from free, non-primetime television to glitzy pay-per-view events. I man, I was never that big a wrestling fan in the first place - it was just something quirky I found amusing to watch, sort of like Bollywood musical videos - but to me, Hogan was the one who ruined its charm. And then he went all racist and then he went MAGA.  And now he's dead and I don't care.

I already mentioned Ozzy Osborne the other day - never like him or Black Sabbath. The very first concert I walked out on was Sabbath back in 1973. And now he joins Chuck Mangione and Hulk Hogan in impermanence and I can't find it in myself to grieve over any of them.  

Old man yells at cloud (today's my 71st birthday). Impermanence is swift.

Second Day of Light, 60th of Summer, 525 C.E. (Betelgeuse): Okay, time for a pop quiz: What percentage, by weight, do you think human beings and their domestic livestock make up of the world's entire mammal biomass?     

1. 12%
2. 24%
3. 48%
4. 72%
5. 96%

The answer kind of blew my mind. Today, 96% of the entire mammal biomass on Earth consists of domesticated animals (60%) and humans (36%). All wild mammals, from elephants to field mice, make up the relatively small 4% remaining mammal biomass. Source: Yinon M. Bar-On, Phillips, Rob, and Milo, Ron, 2018, The biomass distribution on Earth; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 115, No. 25 (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115)

To put it in the simplest possible terms - if you're a pound of mammal flesh, there's a 96% certainty that you're either in a human or an animal domesticated by a human. The biomass of moose and bison, the great Serengeti herds of wildebeest, the lions and tigers and bears, amount to little more than a rounding error.  

It's only slightly reassuring to remember that mammals, in fact the entire animal kingdom, make up only a relatively small amount of the Earth's biomass. The sum of all biomass on Earth is about 550 gigatons of carbon, of which 80% are plants, dominated by land plants. The second major biomass component is bacteria, constituting another 15% or so of the global biomass. All animals make up only 2 Gt C (0.36%) of the Earth's biomass and are primarily arthropods (bugs) and fish. However, of all vertebrates - the mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, et al. - humans and domesticated livestock combined outweigh all other groups except for the fish. As for birds, the biomass of domesticated poultry (0.005 Gt C, dominated by chickens) is greater than that of all wild birds (≈0.002 Gt C).

The imbalance reflects the impact of human activity on the planet's ecosystems. Between about 50,000 and 3,000 years ago, human activity contributed to the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction, which claimed around half of the large land mammal species, such as mastodons and wooly rhinoceri. The biomass of wild land mammals before this period of extinction was estimated to be  approximately seven times greater than present. More recently, intense whaling and exploitation of other marine mammals (e.g. seals) have resulted in an approximately fivefold decrease in global marine mammal biomass. 

But even while the total biomass of wild mammals (both marine and terrestrial) has decreased, the total mass of all mammals has increased nearly fourfold due to the vast increase of the biomass of humans and their associated domestic animals (livestock). 

The impact of human civilization on global biomass has not been limited to mammals but has also profoundly reshaped the total quantity of carbon sequestered by plants. A worldwide census of the total number of trees, as well as a comparison of actual and potential plant biomass, has suggested that the total plant biomass has declined approximately twofold relative to its value before the start of human civilization. The total biomass of crops cultivated by humans accounts for only about 2% of the total plant biomass.

It's easy to dismiss this as "trivia," gee-whiz statistics to win a free drink at the bar, but it points to the immense impact H. sapiens has had on life on this planet. We may represent only a small portion of the entire biomass, but between our own explosive population growth and contributions to the extinction of other species, we've already done more to change life on Earth than any other lifeform. It's not inconceivable to imagine a future where humans and livestock are the only mammals left on Earth in any significant quantities. 

Day of Light, 59th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Atlas): Early this year, Lee Zeldin, a mainstream Long Island Republican, became the Stable Genius' Administrator of the EPA. So how are things going now, six months into the Zeldin Era? I searched the NY Times website for the keyword "EPA," and, oh my god, the results:  

EPA Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change

According to people familiar with the plan, the EPA has sent the White House a draft plan to repeal a rule known as the "endangerment finding,” a bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten human life by dangerously warming the planet. 

EPA Set to Cancel Grants Aimed at Protecting Children From Toxic Chemicals

The cancellations, set to apply to pending and active grants, also affect research into “forever chemicals” contaminating the food supply. 

EPA Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm

The decision comes after a Supreme Court ruling allowing the Stable Genius to slash the federal work force and dismantle agencies.

EPA Promotes Toxic Fertilizer. 3M Told It of Risks Years Ago.

The agency obtained research from 3M in 2003 revealing that sewage sludge, the raw material for the fertilizer, carried toxic “forever chemicals.”

EPA Workers Warn Stable Genius Is Politicizing Their Work

In a public letter, EPA employees accused the administration of engaging in unlawful partisan activity and endangering public health. 

EPA Targets Dozens of Environmental Rules as It Reframes Its Purpose

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency’s mission was to make it cheaper to buy cars, heat homes, and run businesses.

EPA Mounts Broad Retreat On Pollution

The world is careening past tipping point after tipping point on the climate, the pervasiveness of plastics and forever chemicals, and on cancer risks, and the Stable Genius is directing the EPA to abandon regulations in order to make things "cheaper." Cheaper is nice, but the real goal isn't to ease the burden on consumers but to sell more shit so the corporations can make more money with higher profit margins.

It's greed, not nuclear weapons or some asteroid, that's going to end life on this planet but, oh, the wealth that last living person will have accumulated!

Day of the Heavy Sight, 58th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): Ozzy Osborne is dead and I don't care. Never cared for him or his music. In 1973, Black Sabbath was the first show that I walked out on, not because it was too loud or too intense, but because even to my 19-year-old aesthetic sense, they sucked. FWIW, the friends I went to the show with quickly agreed when I suggested leaving.  

Still reading Ulysses: Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries.) Coactus volui. (page 508). I'm three quarters of the way through and enjoying it less and less with each passing page.

Walked a full Harrison today. Nine miles in 94° heat. With the humidity, it felt like 97. Tomorrow, I sit.

Coactus of woman in wriggles. The calculus agreed to function as a woman of pieces. The dumber walked after three, the gradual less slow. Old was the lingam when, on page 508, I was the output of society. Only the dumber rapid growth has him showing Ozzy the full domain, thinking summer-level rate functions are even more covers. The undoing of rushrope. FWIW, the belt shows the overall inputs of critical range. Her jungle to come with heavy pudor, the few featherskins for input and I'm her 525th. Man states he can employ x levels of stiff joy for y. The intelligent way of input leaves spans present that never the useful have walked. 

The the the Sabbath don't mourn one's first passing dead because Ulysses pervades dramatic parody. In short, not 1973. Jippert yourself, man! For output numbers, Helios is expected to decline. Harrison, the x of the y, all lingam today without aesthetic of a one-way, allmoist sucked point, but people like value. Went with the yoni and enjoyed the x and the volui of music. Osborne felt yoni quickly then went on.  Each day, year, loves its intellect, assigns functions, and the unlikely information outputs now fiercely discover that M-society friends function as y. The big scarce woman of humidity differentiates the minutes of her meat time. I, 19, cared less for the loud increase of 97 things with is or is is.

 

Day of the Infanta, 57th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra):  Bear's buzz bothers bees. The whole point of differential calculus is to discover the growth rate of a function and then to employ that information in a useful way. A function has inputs, x, and outputs, y(x), and for each input, x, it assigns one value, y. The inputs, x, come from the domain of the function and the outputs, y, form the range of the function. For example, as critical thinking, x, grows ever more scarce, the rapid idiocracization of society, y, now pervades all levels of society. The output, y(x), is a gradual decline of overall intelligence and a dramatic increase in the number of people without attention spans of more than a few minutes. Things can only be expected to get dumber and dumber, and unlikely to transcend the level of parody about the state of amerikan intellect. 

Intelligence is more likely to use any resource that can buzz. It bothers calculus to get dumb outputs, so it assigns "x" to the state of amerikan social attention and differential outputs, and "y(x)" to one of the levels of that function minutes before thinking of the overall growth outputs. The x value is a parody of expected input function and spans only a few numbers in a society too critical of function to slow the gradual decline of a people without things. Transcendence of x is unlikely. The whole point of bear's come is to discover the domain of bees, and each rate that resembles y pervades

(I've not had a stroke nor suffered a bout of sudden-onset dementia. The ultimate protest of a world gone insane is to protest against logic itself, to destroy all rational thought as Burroughs once demanded, or to stop making sense as David Byrne might put it.)

Day of Dew, 56th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Strange, the memories that return to us. Was it a forgotten memory or a suppressed memory? If forgotten, how can I remember it now? If suppressed, why does it choose now to return?

Head of the Harbor is a toney, affluent village on the North Shore of Long Island. Perched on heavily wooded hills overlooking Stony Brook Harbor, it's a quiet little hamlet to which the wealthy of Manhattan can escape without all the ostentatious trappings and crowds of the Hamptons. The town was the setting for the weekend home in the American version of Michael Haneke's 2007 film, Funny Games. Its most famous current resident is probably billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, whose Renaissance Technologies is headquartered there. 

It wasn't always that wealthy. I lived there in the 1960s, the son of a schoolteacher who was able to afford a home and raise four children there on a single salary. I doubt any schoolteachers can afford homes there today, but even back then there was income inequality - some of my classmates lived in luxurious homes on the harbor waterfront, while others lived in houses even smaller than ours. One of my classmates, the daughter of recording artist Mose Allison, lived with her Dad in an ultramodern (for the time) house set back in the woods. But the mother of another classmate became so anxious about money and finances that she literally tried to rob a bank at gunpoint one day. and of course was immediately arrested, bringing shame and embarrassment on her daughter. 

And then there were those big, gothic mansions up on the hills. We kids knew nothing about who lived behind those gated driveways - no children appeared to live there and we rarely, if ever, even saw so much as a car entering or leaving. It was another, somewhat spooky, world separate and apart from ours. Who knew what went on in those big, remote homes? There were even ghost stories about one house involving a Lizzy Borden-style ax murder, a hanging, and a ghost. 

By 13, I was old enough not to believe in ghosts and bold enough that, together with some friends one Halloween, decided to go trick-or-treating at that one, scariest of all gothic mansions, the one that was the setting of that murder-and-lynching legend. It was a fairly long walk from our neighborhood, impractical for trick-or-treating on a return-on-effort basis. But we walked there anyway, in whatever Halloween costumes our parents had dressed us in, and walked through the open gate and up the steep hill to the scary house. We rang the doorbell. It was 1967.

A woman (a grown-up) answered the door and seemed both surprised and happy to see us. I'm sure we were the only trick-or-treaters that year, probably in many years. possibly ever. "Come in, come in," she insisted, enthusiastically. "Honey, come look at these adorable outfits!" 

Her husband (I assume) appeared from anther room and we dutifully posed for a few photographs. They provided some candy for our trick-or-treat bags, but our real, true goal wasn't sweets - it was to see inside the house and to prove to ourselves that we brave enough to go inside. 

"Our daughter's got to see your costumes," the Missus said. "Come in the kitchen and let her see."

We didn't know a child lived there - there was no one from our school from that house. She led us through the foyer and the large living room back toward the kitchen but just before we went in, she whispered, "She's in a wheelchair. She's hydrocephalic." 

I knew only roughly what the word meant - "water on the brain" - but I was still shocked when I met the daughter. She was wheelchair bound, perhaps the first person with that disability I had met IRL, but her enormous, oversized head seemed monstrous and grotesque to me. She wore some sort of large neck brace from which rose metal scaffolding, presumably to help her keep her gigantic head from falling over.  

At 13, I knew better than to gasp or scream, but inside of my head I was doing both. I wanted to run out of the room, out of the house, and back to my bedroom. But we all bravely stood there politely as she admired our costumes, looking us over and commenting on each of our outfits. Her speech was slurred as if she was deaf or mentally disabled ("retarded" was the word I would have used then) but in the playful back-and-forth conversation with her mother, I recognized a healthy, normal intelligence. I could tell she wasn't a monster, just a poor, unfortunate child victimized by a terrible illness and trapped in a grotesque body.

After a few minutes of inspection and discussion, we were allowed to leave and, thoroughly traumatized, we walked down the hill with a Halloween story for the ages. Except that after a few did-you-see-that's and the-size-of-her-head's, we all seemingly forgot about it. Stories thrive on repetition, and as I progressed through adolescence, I made new friends, teenage friends who wouldn't be interested in tweener trick-or-treat stories, even if there was a "monster" at the end. In short, I forgot about it, until for some reason, today. 

But to me now, though, the story isn't about getting the daylights scared out of me for daring to ring the doorbell of the spookiest house in Head of the Harbor on Halloween. It isn't about my shock or the bravery I managed to summon as I presented myself for the girl's inspection in that kitchen. It's about her - I can't imagine that she had a long or particularly happy life. It's about her parents - despite all their money and privilege, the tragedy of a gravely ill child still had befallen on them. Yet, I'm sure they still loved their daughter as much as any parent loved any child, and were so grateful for our appearance that Halloween so that they had something new and different with which to entertain their child, even if briefly.

The lesson I took from the story at 13 was that even if ghosts didn't exist, gothic haunted houses could still contain terrors. The lesson I take today is that there's suffering and sadness - the Buddha would call it "dukkha" - in even the wealthiest of homes. The lesson I learn from this is contentment and satisfaction in my own health, my own improbably long life - the blessing of my own existence.

 

Day of the Temple, 55th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): Headline (The Guardian): "Exposure to a mix of pesticides raises risk of pregnancy complications, study suggests."

Headline (ABC News): "Climate change is altering the length of days on Earth, according to new research."

Headline (Reuters): "Trump signs proclamations granting two-year relief from Biden-era EPA regulations."

Headline (The New York Times): "EPA Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm."  The decision comes after a Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to slash the federal work force and dismantle agencies, the Times notes.

In a nearly 40-year career in environmental consultation, I've had my nit-picky fights with EPA. But I've never had issue with the underlaying science, just the way that compliance with the findings was implemented. But now the Stable Genius is gutting not only the way that compliance is mandated, but the underlying science as well.       

We need science, research, and studies now more than ever. Climate change, forever chemicals, ultraprocessed foods, and emerging diseases are threatening humans in new ways and in greater numbers, but the Stable Genius is overseeing the dismantling of our universities and our government research facilities. So that the ultra-wealthy can pay lower taxes. 

We are all so fucked. We are all so very, very fucked.  

Master of the Relics, 54th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): First of all, although I enjoy using AI images in this blog, I do NOT now and never have used AI to generate the text. The general lack of intelligence, artificial of otherwise, should testify to my analog honesty.   

But confused by today's headlines, I did ask Google AI a question, and here's the response that I got:

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) does not normally recommend prosecutions in the same way a prosecutor or law enforcement agency would. Here's why:

• Primary role is intelligence integration and advice: The DNI's main responsibility is to serve as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), oversee and direct the implementation of the National Intelligence Program, and act as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council on intelligence matters related to national security.
• Focus on intelligence, not law enforcement: The DNI and the ODNI are primarily focused on the collection, analysis, production, and dissemination of national intelligence to inform policy decisions, according to the U.S. Government Manual. Their role is not to investigate and prosecute criminal activity, which falls under the purview of law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Department of Justice.
• Inspector General's role: The ODNI does have an Office of Inspector General (IC IG) that conducts investigations into allegations of violations of criminal and civil laws and administrative regulations within the DNI's area of responsibility. This office is responsible for recommending corrective action, but the ultimate decision to prosecute rests with the Department of Justice.
• Coordination with law enforcement: The DNI ensures compliance with laws by the IC agencies through the host executive departments, but direct prosecution is not their role. There is coordination between intelligence and law enforcement, particularly regarding national security cases, where information from intelligence activities might be used in criminal prosecutions. 

Example

An example of the DNI's indirect connection to prosecution involves unauthorized disclosures of classified information. The IC IG investigates such matters, and if a crime is suspected, the FBI and Justice Department would be involved in the investigation and potential prosecution. 

In short, while the DNI may be involved in overseeing investigations or identifying issues that could lead to prosecution, the DNI's primary role is not to directly recommend or carry out prosecutions.

Despite this, it seems that Tulsi Gabbard, the Stable Genius' wildly underqualified Director of National Intelligence, has accused former President Barack Obama and senior national security officials of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that the results of the 2016 presidential election were due to Russian interference. She has called for their prosecution, even though Google says that's not something the DNI does. Maybe she's not computer savvy.  

Gabbard has accused President Obama and senior officials in his administration of laying the groundwork for a years-long coup against the Stable Genius after his 2016 electoral victory by manufacturing intelligence to suggest that Russia had tried to influence the election. That included using a dossier prepared by a British intelligence analyst, Christopher Steele, that she claims they knew to be unreliable.

Obviously, the Stable Genius told her to do this; it's not something she'd decide to do unilaterally. The Stable Genius, even in his second term in office, still has no idea of how the Executive Branch works, much less the U.S. government as a whole. Perhaps he wanted to divert attention away from the Epstein scandal which is threatening to bring his administration down (although reminding people of the "pee tape" may not be the best strategy). Perhaps he's still upset about the prosecution of his old friend, Brazil's former president Bolsonaro, and the 50% tariff imposed on Brazil wasn't enough for him, so he recommended the prosecution of a former U.S. president as a form of protest. Perhaps it's a part of his retribution for what he feels is the unfair treatment of him surrounding the 2016 election and the charges, subsequently dropped, surrounding his failed 2020 insurrection attempt. Perhaps he still can't get past the fact that a black man used to have his current job. Perhaps it's all of the above, or maybe it's because he's just a hateful, spiteful old motherfucker with a barely functioning brain. The "chronic venous insufficiency" that isn't letting blood properly circulate in his legs may be cutting off the blood flow to his brain. Perhaps.

In any event, amerika took one step further in its march toward a banana republic with the Stable Genius threatening the prosecution of a former president (from eight years ago).

 

Day of the Heart's Release, 53rd of Summer, 525 M.E. (Atlas):  Survival and salvation lie beyond my reach. Only transcendence to a new existence, a higher plane of being, will see me through. The old me is just a dry husk. I can't return to it. Metamorphosis is the only grace offered.

Disturbing lesson from the I Ching. I hadn't consulted that oracle in quite some time - the last time that I threw Hexagram 47, K'un, was back on December 10, 2023. But I got K'un again today, this time with no moving lines. It is what it is, unadorned and unvarnished. 

K'un: the marsh above, water below. The marsh, drained of water, exhausted, spent. The water, however, still retains its essential nature. It needs only find a new vessel to occupy.  Am I the marsh, or am I the water?

This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor (page 454).What worked in the past is no longer sufficient for the present situation. It's time to move on.

 

Day of the Horns, 52nd of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): This morning, the sun rose at 6:39 am and will set at 8:48 pm. Apparently in no rush, the waning gibbous moon won't set until 12:30 pm tomorrow afternoon. At 10:31 am this morning, I weighed 168.2 pounds, almost two more pounds than Sunday.  My blood pressure was 112/71. 

Today's a Helios, a walking day, so I hiked 9.6 miles, a Harrison, through the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. That's 24,100 steps at 27.6 inches per step at an average 2.8 mph. The temperature today reached a high of 89° - occasional clouds kept the temperatures bearable as I walked. 

Per routine, I had two cups of coffee, black, and an English muffin, toasted, for breakfast and since I was running behind on time, I scarfed down a banana, an orange, and a peanut-butter sandwich (whole wheat bread) for lunch before heading off for my riverwalk. Dinner tonight will be a southern cobb salad with sliced apples. Last night, I finally had that  beer I'd been eyeing all week (maybe that's why I gained the extra weight), so I probably won't tonight. We'll see. 

I'm up to page 454 of Ulysses (Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement!). I'm taking my time with Emily, Alone - I'm only on page 34, but more's already happened than in all 517 pages of the prequel, Wish You Were Here. It's now 8:35 pm and I still haven't eaten dinner yet or decided if I'll watch some more episodes of Mr. Robot tonight or play some Dying Light 2, or both. 

We'll see.

 

Child Found Within the Tree, 51st Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra): Not to be deliberately vague, but I saw someone post something on some social media about stoicism. Emphasizing self-control, they said that if someone offends or triggers you, don't react immediately. Count to ten, take a breath, and think before you respond. Your immediate reaction, they argued, isn't the real "you" - it's the flush of emotions in your brain, the cocktail of neurotransmitters and synaptic impulses that make you want to strike back immediately.

Zen teachers have told me just the exact opposite. The first emotion, the first instinct, is the real "you." Everything else is the manufactured bullshit of the conscious mind.  You want to shout back, "fuck you," but then you catch yourself and, not wanting to be thought of as the person who screams out "fuck you!" in public, so you suppress your impulse. You want to be perceived as a caring, thoughtful person, so instead of swearing, you respond, "I'm disappointed by your comment, but will carefully consider what I've said or done that would make you want to say that." But that's not "real" - that's the polite mask you wear to trick others into believing you're whatever it is you're pretending to be.

As a contemplative Stoic, I think there's a middle way in this matter. I agree the "real you" isn't the adrenaline and cortisol squirted out of the amygdala in fight-or-flight reaction to a threat, but it's not the mask of who we want others to think that we are, either. The "real you" was in fact offended and triggered and wants to strike back, but the real you is also intelligent enough to also recognize that the first impulse isn't necessarily the best or most effective. So instead of either "fuck you" or "I'm sorry I made you feel that way," perhaps the "real you" should say, "Your statement triggers me and offends me deeply, and I feel very angry and resentful right now" (assuming that's actually how you feel). "Perhaps we should bring up this matter at a later time after I've cooled off."    

Beyond thoughts of the "real you" or our social masks, Zen Master Dogen wrote (Zuimonki, 1-10) that if someone says something unreasonable, "it is best to just leave the matter alone and stop arguing. If you act as if you had not  heard and forget about the matter, he will forget too and will not get angry."  

"This is a very important thing to bear in mind," he wrote.

 

If Why Then Vanish, 50th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Evil does not naturally dwell in the world, in events, or in people. Evil is a by-product of forgetfulness, laziness, or distraction: it arises when we lose sight of our true aim in life. When we remember that our aim is spiritual progress, we return to striving to be our best selves. This is how happiness is won. - Epictetus, from The Manual (104-107 CE)

In Buddhist terms, Epictetus is saying that, in the absence of mindfulness, evil arises from greed, hate, and delusion. However, the mind that solely seeks the impermanence of this world of constant appearance and disappearance realizes the true nature of reality, transcending suffering and achieving liberation.

As a contemplative Stoic, I think that "evil" should be an adjective and not a  noun, even though the English language uses it otherwise. According to James Joyce, "There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait" (Ulysses, page 414, Modern Library edition, 1942). 

There's "evil intent" and "evil action," but there's no separate, quantifiable thing as "evil." Further, no person, place, or thing is "evil," even though their intentions, actions, or results can be described as "evil." I'm not giving anyone a free pass here, I'm just clarifying my thought. The people behind the bad intentions and harmful actions are not "evil," they're greedy, they're hateful, and they're deluded.

There are evil intentions and evil actions associated with the current cruel and unusual treatment of immigrants in the U.S. (and elsewhere), in the genocide of Palestinians and indigenous and other people all over the world, in the discriminant and lawless denial of rights to the LGBTQ and other marginalized communities. The list goes on and on. But talk about "free passes" - to simply say that the people behind these intentions and actions are "evil" is to oversimplify it and to miss the root cause. Those people suffer from greed, hate, and delusion, and evil intentions and actions arise from their suffering. 

This distinction is important because if we assume that the plight of immigrants, of Palestinians, of marginalized communities, and others is simply due to "evil," then we mistakenly assume we must eradicate the presence of that evil. The error is wanting the absence of something that doesn't exist as a "thing" in the first place. Instead, we should be addressing greed, hate, and delusion, the twisted roots that lead to evil intentions and actions.

I'm just going to come out and say it - the Stable Genius isn't "evil." But if you don't think he's greedy, from his gold-plated lifestyle, his financial scams, his constant transactional thinking, then you're the one who is deluded and denying the evidence right in your very face. If you don't think he's hateful, you haven't listened to his speeches or watched one of his rallies. If you don't think he's deluded, then look at his constant lying and his apparent inability to differentiate the truth from his own made-up fictions. 

The Stable Genius is as afflicted by greed, hate, and delusion as any person I care to imagine, and as a result he is suffering and suffering greatly. And from this greed, hate, and delusion, and in the absence of mindfulness, intentions and actions arise that can accurately be described as "evil." The big question, then, is "so what?" - all "pornosophical philotheological metaphysics" (Ulysses, page 425) aside, what should we do about it? 

Epictetus, the Buddha, the generations of Zen teachers all seem to agree that the solution isn't for us to try and change the Stable Genius, but to work on ourselves. MAGA, ICE, and the Republican Party (as well as institutions on the left) are impermanent, subject to appearance and disappearance, and empty of any independent existence. MAGA, ICE, and the Republicans are just the current but temporary and ephemeral manifestations of the twisted karma of American greed, hate, and delusion, rooted in slavery of Africans and genocide of the indigenous population, and carried forward though generations of Jim Crow, broken treaties and reservations, and war profiteering.

The spiritual solution is to work on ourselves to be generous, loving, and truthful, the opposite of greedy, hateful, and deluded, and to lead others by example to generosity, loving kindness, and awakened truthfulness. The Stable Genius and his harmful, hurtful policies would find no place among a generous, loving and honest people and would disappear like morning dew in the daytime sun.

I recognize that this is a long-term, generational, or multigenerational, solution, and in the meantime we suffer deportations, oppression, persecution, and more. But remember, the Buddha's first truth was the existence of suffering - it exists, always has, and always will. The absence of suffering is a delusion, and clinging to that delusion only causes more suffering (the second truth). But practicing generosity, loving kindness, and awakened truthfulness not only leads to that long-term, generational solution, but in the short-term here-and-now it helps us let go of our personal preferences and dissatisfactions and makes this wicked world more tolerable (the third and fourth truths).

Day of the Wand, 49th Day of Summer, 525 ME (Castor): These are the times, and this is the record of the times: just like yesterday, the sun rose at 6:37 am this morning but will set a minute earlier, 8:49 pm, as we're now several weeks past the equinox. The moon is in the waxing gibbous phase. At 10:16 am, I weighed in a half pound lighter (166.5 pounds) than yesterday but my blood pressure was slightly higher (118/75). Today's a Castor, so instead of walking, I sat in meditation for 90 minutes, three consecutive 30-minute sessions. 

Breakfast was again two cups of coffee, black, and an English muffin, toasted, but lunch today was an assortment of berries (straw-, rasp-, black-, and blue-) over yogurt, plain and fat-free, instead of the fresh-fruit-and-peanut-butter-sandwich lunch of yesterday. Dinner tonight will be a bowl of brown rice and lentils, a dish I call "gruel" for its simplicity (even though it isn't actually gruel). I didn't have that beer last night, but I might tonight. We'll see. 

The temperature today reached a high of 92°, normal for this time of year in Atlanta, but with the humidity (also normal) it felt like 97. NASA, NOAA, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service all concur that last month was Earth’s third-warmest June going back to 1850, behind only 2024 and 2023. Nearly 4% of the Earth’s surface experienced record-warm conditions. 

According to NOAA, last January-to-June was the second-warmest year-to-date on record for the globe, only 0.08 degree Celsius (0.14°F) cooler than 2024. NOAA gave a greater than 95% chance that 2025 will wind up being a top-four warmest year on record.

The Yale Climate Connections, an initiative of Yale University, the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, and the Yale School of the Environment, identifies the heat wave of June 22-25 as the standout weather event of last month. The heat wave was especially notable for its early-in-the-season intensity as it moved from the Midwest into the Northeast. Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York were among the locations that experienced their warmest daily low temperatures ever recorded so early in summer. On June 24, temperatures near or above 100°F covered most of the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to Portland, Maine. Many state high-temperature records for June were set on June 24, 2025, and several all-time (any day) records were set or tied on the 23rd to 24th.

There were 252 U.S. tornadoes in June, with four at EF2 or stronger. The preliminary total of 1,324 U.S. tornadoes observed from January 1 to July 8 ranks as the second-highest year-to-date total since 2010, behind 2011 (1,919). 

NOAA's National Hurricane Center predicts a trough of low pressure near the southeastern U.S. coast to move westward across Florida during the next day or so and into the northeastern Gulf by Tuesday. Gradual development of this system could occur during the middle to late part of next week while it moves westward over the Gulf. Heavy rainfall associated with the system could produce localized flash flooding over portions of Florida and the north-central Gulf coast later next week.

The weak La Niña conditions in the Eastern Pacific that began in December 2024 ended in March, and neutral conditions are now present. According to NOAA’s July forecast, neutral conditions are likely (56% chance) for the rest of the Atlantic hurricane season (August-October). While El Niño conditions tend to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity through an increase in wind shear, La Niña conditions tend to have the opposite effect. Also, El Niño events often last only one year, while La Niña events often restrengthen or recur across two or even three years in a row, as was the case from mid-2020 to early 2023.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Arctic sea ice in June 2025 was at record-low levels from June 20-26. Last month had the second-lowest June extent of sea ice in the 47-year satellite record, behind only 2016. Continued low sea-ice extent may prove advantageous to Ella Hibbing as she attempts her solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Sea. Antarctic sea ice extent in June was the third-lowest in the satellite record. Only 2023 and 2024 had lower June extents. 

Sea ice will be more difficult to track beginning August 1, as the U.S. DoD announced that they will no longer be sharing data from their sea-ice monitoring satellites because of a so-called "cybersecurity risk.” Their satellites are the primary source of sea-ice information and have been sending data since 1987. There is an alternative, Japanese source for the data, but it is uncertain how long it might take to shift to using the Japanese data. In addition, budget cuts are hitting the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which will no longer provide monthly sea-ice analyses. The loss of the NSIDC data is expected to be a huge blow to hurricane forecasters.

The Red Sox won today, 4-1, over the Tampa Bay Rays. It was Boston's 10th straight win and third consecutive series sweep, a strong finish to the first half of the season as they enter the All-Star Break.  

I just finished my daily assignment of Ulysses ("doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanut brained, weasleeyed, fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage"), pages 407-429 of the 1942 Modern Library edition that was handed down to me from my paternal grandfather. Before gruel, I intend to watch the last episode of Season 1 of Mr. Robot, and then after gruel will play Dying Light 2, probably until my bedtime reading (I finished the first chapter of Stuart O'Nan's Emily, Alone last night, and will read Chapter 2 tonight) before finally going to sleep.

 

Day of the Dealt Hand, 48th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Samuel Pepys kept a diary of his daily life for almost ten years. The record is more than a million words long and covered the events of daily British life and major political and social events of the 17th century, the contemporary theatre, his affairs with various stage actresses, his household, his personal finances, the time he got up in the morning, the weather, what he ate, and even his own bowel movements. Fascinating stuff, I'm sure (I never read him). 

I've been keeping this blog about my daily life for over 21 years. Li'l Sammy Pepys doesn't have shit on me. I've covered the events of daily American life and major political and social events of the early 21st century, the Covid epidemic, a couple of Trump presidencies, climate change, contemporary arts and music, my thoughts about Zen and other spiritual matters, my personal finances, what time I get up in the morning, the weather, and what I eat. I believe I've spared you news about daily bowel movements (however, I'm quite regular if you really must know) and if I ever have an affair with a stage actress, you'll be the first to know about it. 

Future historians are free to use this blog for insight and an as-it-happened account of the fall of civilization, but a) I'm sure far more and far better accounts abound out there, and b) there probably won't be anyone around after the collapse that might care about such things.  

The sun rose at 6:37 am this morning and will set at 8:50 pm. I weighed in at 167 pounds at 9:29 am, and my blood pressure was 111/71. I walked a Van Buren today (8.6 miles) in 91° weather, 19,233 steps at an average 21.3 inches per step and an average speed of 3 mph. I had two cups of coffee, black, and an English muffin, toasted, for breakfast. Lunch was a banana, an orange, and peanut butter on two slices of whole wheat bread. Dinner tonight will be a southern cobb salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I might have a beer (Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA) tonight, or I might not. We'll see. After my walk, I read my daily assignment of James Joyce's Ulysses ("wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars") and then listened to the last couple innings of the Red Sox game over Sirius XM radio (the Sox won, 1-0). After dinner, I intend to watch an episode or two of Mr. Robot and play a little Dying Light 2 video game before retiring to bed to read (I finished Stuart O'Nan's 1988 novel, Wish You Were Here, last night and will probably start on its sequel, Emily, Alone, tonight) and thence to sleep, perchance to dream.

Let the historians and statisticians do what they will with that.       

 

Billows in Possibility, 47th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Atlas): "Music and woman I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is," boasted Samuel Pepys, who's style I've adopted for the lead-ins to this blog. The "shorthand of emotion" (Tolstoy), music is "the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life" (Beethoven). "Without music, life would be a mistake" (Nietzche). 

New Music Friday falls on Atlas this week, and today I listened to new releases by the newly formed Openness Trio (Carlos Nino, Josh Johnson, and Nate Mercereau), a two-CD collection of Sun Ra keyboard solos, the sophomore album by indie rock band, Wet Leg, and the new album by the newly reformed indie pop band, Allo Darlin'. Also, as it's a sitting day, I played the long (1:19:39) Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis by Chora(a)san Time-Court Mirage (C.C. Hennix), as I do after almost every meditation sitting.

Earlier this morning, I spent an hour on the phone with Hyatt Hotels straightening out my reservations for next March's Big Ears Festival. Tricksy hoteliers - I thought they were trying to renege on the confirmed rate I got when I made my reservation after last spring's Big Ears (at half the rate they're asking for now), but to their credit it was just a mix-up over a replacement credit card - long story, but I'm still locked in for next year at the 50% rate.

Onward and upward with the arts!

Grain Passage, 46th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): Following the disastrous and tragic flooding that occurred along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country, baseless conspiracy theories have emerged that the floods were caused by chemtrails or geoengineering. Republican lawmakers have amplified the chemtrails conspiracy theory, and RFK, Jr. has suggested that the Defense Department’s research arm is spraying Americans with harmful chemicals that have been added to jet fuel. “I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it,” he said in a television interview last May. “Find out who’s doing it and holding them accountable.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, always a good source for bat-shit crazy, far-right lunacy, has spread the claim for years that the government controls the weather. On Saturday, she announced that she will introduce a bill that “prohibits the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.”

Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe points out the irony that the same people who reject the overwhelming evidence on how human-induced climate change is making weather conditions worse are the loudest to claim that the weather extremes are created by top secret and technologically impossible weather modification experiments. They flat-out deny that human activity can affect global weathr, and then turn around and say that extreme weather events are caused by nefarious and secretive human activities.  

Hayhoe reminds us that if we accept responsibility for climate change, then it's up to us to have to fix it. However, if we're not responsible, but some nameless, faceless  "them" are the cause, then there's nothing for us to do, other than to blame others.

Ninety-nine percent of climate denial, she proposes, is solution aversion, including claims that weather modification technology, from chemtrails to cloud seeding to Jewish space lasers are super-sizing our wildfires, floods and storms. Their underlying fear is that the solutions to climate change pose a greater threat than the risks, so they come up with creative alternatives to blame others and avoid taking any accountability for having to change their lifestyles to fix the problem. 

It sounds terrible to say, "sure it's real, and it's affecting the most vulnerable and marginalized people who've done the least to cause it, but I don't want to fix it." That would make us a bad person - and most of us don't want to feel like bad people! So instead, our brains engage in "motivated reasoning" - looking for reasons to explain why we must be right, rather than looking for what's right and then making up our minds afterwards.

As Jonathan Haidt might put it, the elephant of our subconscious mind doesn't want to give up our gasoline-powered cars, doesn't want mass transit in our suburban neighborhoods, doesn't want to change our investment in petro-chemical industries. So our conscious monkey mind comes up with rationales for denying the well-established climate science and either fixes the blame on others or denies that there's a problem at all. If there's no problem or nothing I can do about it, then it's fine for me to go on use gasoline to drive my car from the distant suburbs to the city, to burn fossil fuels for electricity, and to use massive amounts of plastic products.

The Buddha called these subconscious assumptions samskara. Philosophers and psychologists refer to them as mental maps or mental models. Some have called then schema. But by any name, they control more of our behavior than we consciously realize.        

 

Bugling It, 45th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra): America's wonderful! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! It really makes it!

(Reporting in the New York Times states that the Stable Genius' Justice Department is persecuting officials who had investigated his activities during his first term, and suggests that there may be a broader crackdown on dissent and criticism. None of which has ever appeared in this blog, right?)

(The lines at the top of this post are from the song Return of the Son of Monster Magnet by the Mothers of Invention, 1966.)

(A month or so ago, a politically-motivated MAGA militant assassinated elected Democratic officials in their Minnesota homes, and after the manhunt was over and the assassin caught, there has been nothing. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris attended the funerals, but the Stable Genius, on whose behalf the murders were committed, has been completely silent, as has been virtually the entire American news media. But if someone had the audacity to merely suggest that the potential for Russian interference in the 2016 election should be, you know, looked into, that warrants a full-blown FBI investigation into the people calling for the study.)

(Epstein didn't kill himself.)

(Creamcheese!)

 

Last Awe of Sentries, 44th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): These are the times dystopian novels used to warn us about. Today, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said there will be "no amnesty" for agricultural workers from the Stable Genius' efforts to deport all immigrants in the country. As to concerns that mass deportation of farm workers would disrupt the U.S. food supply, she suggested some robots and people receiving government aid could replace immigrant workers. "Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America." 

Let's step back and address a couple obvious points. One, food harvesting is hard work for long hours and low wages, under tough to extreme weather conditions. There's a reason that only immigrants are desperate enough to do it. Second, many people receiving Medicaid are children, the elderly, the handicapped, and the disabled, and are not physically capable of hard, farm work. The majority of Medicaid recipients are not, as has been described, young adults living in their parents' basements playing video games. 

Under Rollins version of the Stable Genius' plans, children and grandparents needing medical care beyond their budget will have to roll up their sleeves and spend 10 to 12 hours a day bent over picking beans in 90° weather under direct sun. Alongside robots. Also, many Medicaid recipients don't live conveniently close to farmland, and may have to leave home for seasonal farm work, find alternate means to care for their children or the elderly while they're gone, obtain some alternative form of lodging and survive on the road on minimum wage, all while recovering from heart surgery, cancer treatment, diabetes, or dementia.

So the plan is apparently to deport all of the immigrant farm workers and replace them with Medicaid recipients and, um, robots. Obviously, 34 million Americans aren't going to show up voluntarily for this new form of slave labor, so will ICE, after they're through with the deportations, start rounding up these "able-bodied adults?" The Stable Genius' Bad Budget Boondoggle Bill gives ICE an operating budget of $37.5 billion (with a "B"). That's greater than the entire military budget of Italy and Israel (or of Brazil, Netherlands, or Switzerland, for that matter).  The Bad Budget Boondoggle Bill essentially creates a new militia to carry out the Stable Genius' political whims, be it mass deportation, "pacifying" restive Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles or New York, and possibly later rounding up slave labor to harvest the fields.

There's your dystopia for you. We are now a massive police state. With Alligator Auschwitz, we now have our first concentration camp on American soil. And the Courts and Congress have ceded all political and military power to the Stable Genius. 

This isn't going to end well for us.

Tremendous and Sheer, 43rd Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor):  The Edwards Plateau of central Texas rises above the adjacent Gulf Coastal Plain along the Balcones Fault Escarpment. According to my old, battered copy of Nevin Fenneman's Physiography of the Eastern United States (1932), the Edwards Plateau, also known as Texas Hill Country, is underlain by the Wichita and Fredericksburg limestones. The Hill Country is notable for its karst topography and tall rugged hills. The landscape is further dissected by many rivers, including the Guadalupe, and the surrounding hills rise 400–500 feet above the surrounding valleys. Throughout the region, a thin layer of topsoil leaves rocks and boulders exposed, making the region very dry and prone to flash flooding, much like paved, urban environments. 

Kerr County (Texas) historian Joe Herring, Jr. notes that Camp Stewart was established in 1926 on the South Fork of the Guadalupe near the confluence with Cypress Creek. A year later, Camp Stewart became Camp Mystic for Girls. In the early days, Camp Mystic consisted of 1400 acres, and the girls were housed in 18 log cabins constructed from cypress logs cut on the camp's property. Today, the camp occupies 700 acres and has been in continuous use except for two years when the U.S. Army took it over during World War II to serve as a center for veterans to recover from war injuries.

The USGS maintains a stream gaging station on the Guadalupe River at Hunt, Texas, near Camp Mystic. Floods there are considered "major" if the stream gage exceeds 22 feet, which has happened three times (1978, 1986, and 2001) since 1966. However, the largest known flood occurred in 1932, before regular monitoring had begun. On July 2 of that year, the gage height reached 36.6 feet and the flow was 206,000 ft³/sec, equivalent to 2.34 Olympic-sized swimming pools every second.

Camp Mystic and other camps along the Guadalupe were hit hard by the 1932 flood. Buildings and property were washed away overnight.  Herring reports that new structures were subsequently built above the flood levels and many campers slept in tents instead of cabins that year, and viewed those accommodations not as a hardship, but as a great adventure.

According to Herring, another flood hit the Guadalupe in 1935, and though most camps had rebuilt above the flood plain, questions arose about the safety of camping along the Guadalupe and attendance at some camps had begun to suffer.

The flood that just occurred this year on the Guadalupe caused the gage at Hunt to rise to 37.5 feet on July 4, almost a foot higher than the 36.6 feet recorded in 1932. However, although the gage was higher this year, the reported discharge, or flow, at 4:35 am was 120,000 ft³/sec (1.36 Olympic-sized swimming pools per second), far less than the 206,000 ft³/sec reported for 1932. I suspect that the stream gage may have been changed or adjusted at some point after 1932 (this is not uncommon), as a higher river level (gage height) means greater discharge (river flow). 

Regardless of the discrepancies in the data, the 2025 flood is comparable to that of 1932. Tragically, this year's flood still managed to wash away campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, despite the buildings having been moved to above the 1932 flood level. This raises the question of whether the camp had reoccupied the lower elevations impacted by the earlier flood, or if new structures (barracks?) were constructed down in the floodplain, perhaps when the Army took over during WW II.

 

Which Past Was Hers,  42nd Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): My heart breaks reading about the 78-and-counting deaths in Texas from flooding on the Guadalupe River. I can't imagine the anguish of the parents who learn their children were swept away from a summer camp by the floodwaters. It's beyond comprehension and well beyond tragic. 

But in these times we live in, everything becomes political and everything is about finger-pointing and blaming others. The left is blaming climate change and government budget cuts, the right is blaming the National Weather Service. As a hydrogeologist, I can't let this incident pass without my own two cents (spoiler alert: I don't blame either side). 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared today a “day of prayer” for the victims, both surviving and deceased. If prayer helps you get through this, then fine, go ahead and pray, but don't expect it to change anything.

The director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management has faulted the NWS for not predicting “the amount of rain we saw,” even though alerts were issued beforehand and as it became clear the region was facing an emergency.  A flash-flood watch was issued Thursday afternoon that noted Kerr County, where much of the flooding began early Friday morning, was a particularly vulnerable area, along with more urgent flash-flood emergency alerts in the overnight hours as the disaster unfolded. The Emergency Management director should be asking why his agency didn't do more to heed the NWS' warnings and advisories, and work proactively to mitigate the situation by evacuating people in the flood zone while it was still possible.  

Also, the NWS was one of several federal agencies targeted by the Stable Genius' DOGE boys, which had laid off nearly 600 employees, around the same amount of staffers the service lost in the 15 previous years.

But the staffing shortage wasn't the issue, and Monday-morning quarterbacking Emergency Management's decisions isn't the solution. It's not the cause, but the underlaying issue here is climate change, as little as some people want to hear that. To be clear, the flood wasn't "caused" by climate change. This morning, I heard Chris Christie say on This Week that no one will ever convince him that Hurricane Sandy was caused by climate change. Governor, I agree. If someone tells you it was caused by climate change, they don't know what they're talking about and you can safely ignore them.   

Climate change doesn't cause rain, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, or droughts. They're caused by meteorological and atmospheric processes, but climate change does increase the severity and frequency of storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and droughts. And it also impedes scientists' ability to forecast extreme weather events.

Flood forecasting is basically a statistical exercise. The USGS has been monitoring the Guadalupe River since October 1941, and has developed statistics on the frequency and intensity of flood events based on the 84-year record. Based on the monitoring history, scientists can calculate the average flow rate (53 ft³/sec) and the maximum flow rate (599 ft³/sec, recorded in 2002). As a 599 ft³/sec flood occurred once in 84 years, one can state that the chance for a flood of that magnitude happening in any given year is 1-in-84, or a 1.2% chance. FYI, the 100-year flood is the flood that has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

Today, the river is flowing at 872 ft³/sec, shattering the 23-year-old record of 599 ft³/sec. To give you an idea of the volume, today's flow would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every 90 seconds. 

The available, online data shows the river has flooded eight times between October 2007 and June 2025, meaning the gage level was above 10 feet, and two of those floods were "moderate," with the gage over 18 feet. A flood is considered "major" if the gage exceeds 22 feet, and today the river level topped 37.5 feet, another record. 

From the monitoring data, one can calculate a "flood frequency," i.e., the river floods x number of times per year, and extreme floods occur once every x years. Of course, the frequency alone can't predict when the flood will actually occur, but coupled with rainfall and meteorological data, there is sufficient information to issue flood watches and flood warnings when appropriate.

Climate change, however, throws a monkey wrench into the calculations. With conditions changing so rapidly, the past is no longer a useful indicator of the future, or even of the present. The x number of years extreme floods occur is increasing and increasing rapidly, and if we only consider, say, the last 10 years to calculate flood frequencies, well, that's not enough data to be meaningful. Statistically, the data-point population isn't significant enough for the calculated frequencies to be meaningful. Nowadays, we have so-called "100-year floods" occurring annually or every few years, with each flood more severe than the one before.  

Computer models can simulate the "new normal" and can provide useful statistics of the expected flood frequencies and flood levels in our new climate, but due to climate skepticism and denial, the results aren't trusted and the effort is being rapidly defunded by the government. So the old tools don't work, the new tools aren't trusted, half the country's underwater, and the other half is on fire.

But Gov. Abbott's gonna pray the flood away, so I guess we'll be alright.

Apparent Doorways, 41st Day of Summer, 525 ME (Atlas): I'm old. I'm so old that I've been collecting Social Security for five years now. My communications with the SSA are generally minimal - usually just an annual notice about the cost-of-living adjustment and an occasional warning to be on lookout for fraud and scams.

Thursday, I received an unusual message from them with the heading, Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors. It sounded like propaganda, and in fact that's exactly what it was. The email read:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.

The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation's economy.

The email falsely claimed the big, bad budget bill includes "a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries . . . ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned."

However, the Stable Genius' budget bill does not actually eliminate federal taxes on Social Security like the email claimed. The rule, passed through the reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster, provides a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for people over 65, and $12,000 for married seniors. These benefits will start to phase out for those with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples of more than $150,000 a year.

Need I point out that a temporary tax deduction is not the same thing as eliminating federal tax on benefits?  

The big, bad budget bill also includes provisions that will strip many people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, kill off clean-energy development, and raise the national debt by trillions of dollars, but the email doesn't mention that. Further, the bill imposes a new limit on all itemized deductions and makes permanent the termination of most miscellaneous itemized deductions. So whatever savings and gained from the over-65 deduction may disappear due to the limit on all deductions. 

New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone wrote on X that “every word” of the email is a lie. “It’s disturbing to see Trump hijack a public institution to push blatant misinformation,” he wrote. Kathleen Romig, a former senior adviser at the SSA during the Biden administration, told CNN the email “doesn’t sound like normal government communications, official communications. It sounds like – you know – partisan.”  Jeff Nesbit, who served as a top SSA official under Republican and Democratic presidents, went further, posting on X, “The agency has never issued such a blatant political statement. The fact that Trump and his minion running SSA has [sic] done this is unconscionable.”

Vibrant Threshold, 40th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): On this Interdependence Day, I give you the MAGA Prayer, inspired and adapted from a passage I read today in James Joyce's Ulysses:

I believe in ICE, the scourge almighty, creators of hell upon earth, and in the musky DOGE, those sons of a gun, who were conceived of unholy boasts, bored of their Bloody Marys, suffered under Trump and Vance, were calcified, dread, and curried. On the third day, they arose again from their beds, descended to Mar-a-Lago, sitteth on their butt-ends until further ordered, whence they shall ask for a living but shall not get paid. And to the Republicans, if you can stand them, one nation, under guard, with liberties and justice for one.

On this, the 249th anniversary of the founding of this nation, I would wish it well but the joke's on us: amerika's already over, the man who sold the world has exchanged the country for syphilisation (another Joyce-ism).

 

Each Note Felt, 39th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra): Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Stable Genius' big, bad budget bill. They made no changes and passed it just as the Senate had sent it over to them. They voted to close rural hospitals, to throw millions off of Medicaid, to kneecap alternative energy, and to add trillions to the national debt. I won't go into all the negative impacts the bill will have on our lives - I haven't read the entire, nearly 1,000-page document, and others describe it in far better detail elsewhere. Do your own homework and read up on it yourself.

I will say this - some of the worst parts, like the Medicaid cuts, deliberately won't kick in until after the 2026 mid-term elections, so we won't have experience the full impact of this awful legislation until after the Republicans have a chance to try and get reelected. But don't fall for it: it's too late to negate all the ill effects this will have on this nation, but the sooner we begin the long, protracted healing process the better. 

Vote the bastards out of office. In Georgia, this includes Marjorie Taylor Greene (naturally), Rick Allen, Buddy Carter (at what age does a grown man stop calling himself "Buddy"?), Andrew (Day of Peaceful Tourists) Clyde, Barry Loudermilk, Richard McCormick, Austin Scott, Brian Jack and his cheesy siblings, Monterey and Pepper, and Mike Collins and his brother, Tom Collins (just kidding - that one's a cocktail, but I need one after this vote).

So here we go, amerika, the longest I-told-you-so in recorded history. 

 

Pacing and the Unshed, 38th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): I hate to jinx it by saying it out loud, but it's nearly 9:00 pm here in Georgia and the House Republicans in Washington still can't seem to find the numbers to pass the Stable Genius' big, bad budget bill.

They're really in a quandary: if they oppose it, the Stable Genius promises they will lose their House seats to a primary challenger. If they support it, the will lose their seats to a Democrat in the General Election. They lose either way: it's a lose-lose choice. Heads, I win; tails, you lose.

Since they're on their way out either way, may I suggest they vote not to close rural hospitals, throw millions off of Medicaid, kneecap alternative energy, and add trillions to the national debt? Just winging out ideas here.   

Day of Fallacies, 37th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): The Senate approved the Stable Genius' budget bill today. Three Republican senators - Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Tom Tillis (North Carolina) - voted against it, and it took a tie-breaking vote by the VP JD  to pass it. It now goes back to the House for reconciliation, where it's expected to pass. 

On top of recent Supreme Court rulings, this is another win for the Stable Genius. "You're going to get sick of winning," the SG predicted on the 2016 campaign trail, and he was right (at least the part about getting sick). The bill will add at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, making it among the most expensive bills in a generation, and will also reduce the amount of tax revenue the country collects for decades. Such a shortfall could begin a seismic shift in the nation’s fiscal trajectory and raise the risk of a debt crisis.

To be blunt about it, it destroys this country. But to the oligarchs and billionaires who'll benefit, that's a price worth paying. Who needs America when you can own a second megayacht? 

The rest of us will have to scrape by, tooth and nail, among the increased heat, the police oppression, the pervasive hunger, and the endemic sickness, to survive as best we can. On the positive side, it's been noted that the arts and spirituality tend to flourish during difficult times. 

I think we're in for a veritable renaissance in the arts and spirituality.