Gardening Groups - A Problem For Facebook

Stressful to be a Gardening Group Admin:

A hoe by any other name could be a rake, a harrow or a rototill. But Licata was not about to ban the word from the group, or try to delete each instance. When a group member commented "Push pull hoe!" on a post asking for "your most loved & indispensable weeding tool," Facebook sent a notification that said "We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying."

..."And so I contacted Facebook, which was useless. How do you do that?" she said. "You know, I said this is a gardening group, a hoe is gardening tool."

...Then, something else came up. Licata received a notification that Facebook automatically disabled commenting on a post because of "possible violence, incitement, or hate in multiple comments." 

The offending comments included "Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water," and "Japanese beetles are jerks."

One of My Pigeons Got Caught Unawares at the Feeding Spot

Second time in two months.  The trouble with feeding them in the alley.  They are fairly-safe from cat attack, but vehicles pass through, and if they aren't paying attention...

More Swimming Fun!

Cal Fit, Citrus Heights.

Hmm... Saw this as we put away pool noodles.  

They take swimming here pretty seriously.

Covid PacMan - Karma Comes For The Red Hats

Opening Performance of CalCapStudio's Cordova Players (an Improv Group) - July 20, 2021

Empty stage before the performance. 

Fun times!  Now the hard part - developing a consistent audience.

Hail, Satan!

So sayeth the plate...

Props

Trying To Hold Onto "Negro Bar"

A link to Gold Rush history:

A draft map from the mid-1850s by Theodore Judah of the city of Folsom includes small black squares along what was then the Old Road to Sacramento, denoting the settlements near Negro Bar. It’s now the location of the city’s solid waste plant, just off Folsom Boulevard.

...But through the 1930s, the area was known and identified with the racist term in newspapers, a Sacramento Bee review shows. In at least one U.S. Geological Survey map from 1941, the area north of the American River now home to the state park was also identified with the n-word.

...By 1850, Black miners had quickly established several mining camps along the southern bank of the American River just across where the current state park is located, according to historian Clarence Caesar in his paper “The Historical Demographics of Sacramento’s Black Community, 1848-1900.”

According to Caesar, who is also a former historian for the state’s park department, many of the mining communities along the river saw a “growing number of black prospectors, both slave and free. 

“The historical name of Negro Bar, here in Folsom, I believe, is very important to keep the name because it is based on a township that existed in this area of Folsom, and the residents have a really a historical treasure,” said Angela DeShields, a Woodland resident and visitor of Negro Bar.

Trying To Keep California's Assault Weapons Ban From Falling to the Crazies

An eternal battle against the Gun Nuts:

The deaths were the most at any elementary school in the U.S. to that point.

The tragedy prompted the California Legislature to pass the nation’s first assault weapons ban, an effort to keep something of that magnitude from happening again.

Five years later, the federal government would, temporarily, instate a similar ban. Seven other states eventually followed California’s lead.

Now, a decision by a federal judge in San Diego threatens to undo the landmark law California passed in response to the deaths of young Rathanar Or, Ram Chun, Sokhim An, Oeun Lim and Thuy Tran. 

For those who saw what happened on the cold Tuesday morning in 1989, it was one more reminder of gun brutality that never seems to end.

Israel vs. Ben and Jerry's

Israel is slowly but surely bleeding support:

JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister vowed Tuesday to “act aggressively” against the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, as the country’s ambassador to the U.S. urged dozens of state governors to punish the company under anti-boycott laws.

The strong reaction reflected concerns in Israel that the ice cream maker’s decision could lead other companies to follow suit. It also appeared to set the stage for a protracted public relations and legal battle. 

...In Monday’s announcement, Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling ice cream in the occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem. The company, known for its social activism, said such sales were “inconsistent with our values."

Using Beavers in Placer County

I like this intiative:

The creek bed, altered by decades of agricultural use, had looked like a wildfire risk. It came back to life far faster than anticipated after the beavers began building dams that retained water longer.

“It was insane, it was awesome,” said Lynnette Batt, the conservation director of the Placer Land Trust, which owns and maintains the Doty Ravine Preserve. “It went from dry grassland. .. to totally revegetated, trees popping up, willows, wetland plants of all types, different meandering stream channels across about 60 acres of floodplain,” she said.

The Doty Ravine project cost about $58,000, money that went toward preparing the site for beavers to do their work. In comparison, a traditional constructed restoration project using heavy equipment across that much land could cost $1 to $2 million, according to Batt.

The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through its Partners for Fish and Wildlife program. Since 2014, it has worked with the Placer Land Trust to restore and enhance habitat for migratory birds, waterfowl, salmon and steelhead by unleashing the beavers, a keystone species.

Damion Ciotti, a restoration biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who led the project, said he predicted the Doty Ravine project would take a decade to reconnect the stream to the floodplain, but to his surprise, it was restored in just three years. 

I Like This Quote on Voter Suppression

Talking about clueless Democratic politicians in Washington:

There are entirely too many Democratic senators and establishment folks who do not see the existential threat to their own jobs if these voter suppression laws are allowed to stand. They think they can still convince that middle-of-the-road white person that left the party during the Reagan years. And they’d never come back, but they’re still trying to go get that Reagan Democrat. They don’t understand that the base of their party is these Black and brown people who turn out for them. They don’t understand that they cannot win if they do not have overwhelming turnout from Black and brown communities and win those communities 8-to-2 if we’re talking about Black people and 6-to-4 if we’re talking about brown people. 

They can’t win without those numbers. And they don’t understand that. And so they don’t realize that these voting suppression laws are an existential threat to their own positions.

Arrogant Caltech Geoscientists Get a Comeuppance

Running roughshod over Native Americans:

Joseph Kirschvink, a professor of geoscience, had used a portable pneumatic drill to extract core samples for paleomagnetic studies, officials said. He drilled into rock face roughly three feet from a petroglyph and left the site riddled with 29 1-inch diameter holes marked with blue paint.

The trouble is, Kirschvink was not authorized to conduct research in the area designated to be of critical concern in California’s eastern Sierra Nevada, and that was the reason he and Caltech came under investigation for violating the Archeological Resources Protection Act.

The site, near Bishop, is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The expansive petroglyph site is one of the oldest recorded in the West and easily accessible by road. A placard at a popular viewing site roughly one mile north of where the damage occurred warns visitors that “no person may excavate, remove, damage or otherwise deface any archeological resource.”

...Native Americans, archeologists and federal land managers have long complained that unlawful removal and destruction of artifacts and sacred sites destroy priceless cultural connections, along with scientific data that allow a better understanding of the earliest inhabitants of North America.

An uptick in unauthorized incursions by university professors armed with geology picks and pneumatic drills in recent years has only compounded their frustrations. The area is known for its Bishop tuff — a type of rock formed by super-heated volcanic ash, which is of interest to researchers.

Wally Funk Heads To Space

With Jeff Bezos:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — 82-year-old Wally Funk will head to space on Blue Origin's flight Tuesday morning, becoming the oldest person to launch into space.

As a flight instructor born and raised in Taos, New Mexico, Funk has logged 20,000 hours of flight time and has guided 3,000 students to get their private pilot license. 

In the early 1960s, Funk was one of the Mercury 13, a group of 13 American women who passed the same rigorous physical examinations as NASA's first astronauts. But even with that – and all of her accomplishments – she never made it to space.

So, Who's To Blame For Afghanistan?

Timothy Kudo is pissed:

America’s retreat from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war, $2 trillion in taxpayer dollars, and 2,448 dead service members is nearly complete.

...We can now say that this war, in which I fought in 2010–11, will end in defeat. The Taliban currently controls half of Afghanistan’s districts and actively contests an additional quarter that, on paper, remain in government hands. 

...For the second time in the modern era, including the Vietnam War, our military has not accomplished the mission prescribed by the White House and Congress. ... It is the generals and admirals’ foremost job to fight and win wars; dozens of them in every branch of service, across presidencies of both parties and multiple generations, have decisively failed.

Across two decades, our military leaders presented rosy pictures of the Afghanistan War and its prospects to the president, Congress, and the American people, despite clear internal debate about the validity of those assessments and real-time contradictory information from those fighting and losing the daily battle against the Taliban. Or, to put it in the words of John Sopko, the inspector general who issued a series of reports known as the Afghanistan Papers: “The American people have constantly been lied to.”

The promise that victory was just around the corner proved intoxicating to presidents and politicians, not to mention everyday Americans, who blindly trusted anyone with four stars on his epaulettes. ... Cloaked in near-universal trust, these officers repeatedly argued that an unwinnable war could be won.

For example, when President Obama put an 18-month deadline on the surge of 30,000 troops he would announce at the end of 2009, Gen. David Petraeus said, “The timeline was just sprung on us.… And we were then asked, are you all OK with that? [Obama] went around the room and everyone said yes. And it was take it or leave it.” But he later admitted thinking at the time that “40,000 additional U.S Forces was the minimum needed to do the mission” and that it would take much longer than the president’s timeline. And in uniform-clad testimony to Congress, he failed to air his concerns, instead selling the war as vital to the national interest and being fought with a winning strategy.

...These men should have been fired like any other person who fails to do their job. During World War II, it was common for officers of all ranks to be relieved for failing to achieve military objectives. But since Vietnam, the generals have had the kind of job security only afforded to tenured professors. ... The military can only remain an honorable profession if those who partake in it are willing to accept shame as a consequence of failure. But for far too many generals, shamelessness is exactly what is required to reach the top of the flagpole.

...Gen. David Petraeus, who, along with Gen. James Mattis, was a primary architect of our counterinsurgency approach in Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to be idolized in American culture. Petraeus broke the Uniform Code of Military Justice by cheating on his wife—an offense any lesser service member would have been harshly disciplined for—and illegally sharing classified intelligence with a reporter. Generals like Petraeus trade on the trust the American people give them to act with impunity during and after their military service because they justifiably know that they are above the law.

But even an officer like Mattis, who is revered in the Marine Corps and considered one of the great military minds of his generation, should not escape culpability for our loss in Afghanistan. As a two-star general, Mattis upheld a similar standard during the Iraq invasion, when he was one of the few commanders to relieve a subordinate during wartime for failing to achieve a battlefield outcome. ... By any normal standard, Mattis is a decent and honorable man, and yet the stakes are too high in war to hold generals to a normal standard.

...Whatever lessons we learn from Afghanistan will be meaningless if they don’t result in consequences for the war’s leaders. That means no lucrative speeches, no hagiographic book deals, no fawning interviews, no plum sinecures in the private or nonprofit sector, and no appointments to blue-ribbon government posts. May they, in the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, end their “military career and just fade away”—and may their retirement be spent quietly contemplating the profound damage they’ve done to their country.

Valley Vision's Air Quality Monitoring Program

I'm intrigued by the installation of a bunch of new air quality monitors in Sacramento:

It’s well documented that air quality is worse in poor neighborhoods and communities of color across California and the United States, but until now, that trend was hard to determine in Sacramento.

That’s changing: More than 20 rooftop solar-powered air quality monitors have been installed across North Sacramento and Oak Park, allowing residents to see what pollution levels are like in real-time.

...The monitors are placed across North, Central and South Oak Park, as well as across Old North Sacramento, South Hagginwood and Del Paso Heights up to Interstate 80.

The new equipment is part of the California Air Resources Board’s Community Air Protection program, which aims to address environmental inequity by helping residents living in high pollution-burden areas better understand air quality issues at a neighborhood level.

Through the program, CARB awarded a two-year grant to a group of local nonprofits called the Sacramento Neighborhoods Activating on Air Quality coalition to monitor neighborhood pollution and develop strategies to achieve cleaner air. That coalition includes Valley Vision, WALKSacramento, Breathe California Sacramento Region, and Green Tech Education. 

The rooftop monitors measure fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 and nitrogen oxides, two types of pollution that can result from pollutants emitted from cars, trucks, power plants, refineries, warehouses and other sources.

I'm picky. Looking at the map of the sites they've installed, the sites look too close together to provide data of much interest. 

For example, all the sites in North Oak Park are all on the east side of Highway 99. You can't look at the freeway's contribution to air quality unless you have some sites on the opposite side, in Curtis Park. 

If you want to demonstrate that richer neighborhoods have better air quality you need to have monitors in those richer neighborhoods. 

Still, it's good to have extra monitors, no matter the reasons why. 

The acid test, though, is where are the data being archived? Where is that location? Archives are valuable!  Inquiring minds want to know!

Daniel Watts For Governor

The list of California gubernatorial candidates for the September recall election is taking shape. Of the current 41 candidates, 21 are Republicans, 9 have No Party Preference, 8 are Democrats, 2 are Greens, and one is a Libertarian. Three of the candidates also ran in the 2003 Gubernatorial Recall Election. 

I've been resisting the temptation to run for Governor again. I won't run though, because I support Governor Gavin Newsom. (In 2003, I was opposed to Governor Gray Davis). 

The ballot will be divided into two parts. The first part asks whether Newsom should be removed. The second part lists the candidates who would vie to replace Newsom in the event he is removed. I urge everyone to vote no on the first part of the ballot. 

The second part of the ballot is more complicated. Republicans are excited by the recall, so there are many Republicans running, including some of the slimiest politicians in the state. With so many candidates, Republicans are dividing their support, creating conditions that Democratic candidates can exploit provided just a few Democrats run. 

Ideally, there would be just one establishment Democratic candidate that Democratic voters could rally to. I think that candidate should be Lieutenant Governor Elena Kounalakis: someone who could be trusted to continue Gavin Newsom's policies in the event he is recalled. Nevertheless, to date, she is not running. I'm afraid current establishment Democrats may be just as pig-stupid as establishment Democrats were in 2003. In both recall elections, establishment Democrats actively-discouraged any of their number from running at all. 

Still, there MUST be at least one Democratic candidate that Democratic voters can rally to on the second part of the recall ballot. In 2003, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante finally bucked the rest of the establishment Democrats for his unsuccessful run. Will anyone do so in 2021? 

So, if the establishment Democrats won't do the job, one or several of the other Democrats running must do the job. So, are any of the eight current Democratic candidates up to the job? 

Fortunately, one candidate has the background and training suitable to succeed Gavin Newsom in the event the recall is successful. Daniel Watts has the competence, training, and background to be that successful gubernatorial candidate in the event Newsom falters. Daniel was among the candidates that ran in 2003. 

I urge everyone to vote for Daniel Watts on the second part of the September recall ballot.

Rats

Some walks that Jasper and I take are a little disturbing. We had one such walk this evening. 

We came bounding out the back door about 9 p.m. and immediately startled three rats. The rats loudly skittered away across the roof. Jasper was slow to notice. Probably figured they were squirrels. 

Rats generally live in palm trees around here in Sacramento, but sometimes they wander afar on their hunt for food, and I guess tonight is one of those special nights. 

Tonight, our little task was to drop a stool sample of mine into the mail, in response to an unsolicited request from my health insurance people for pre-colonoscopy screening. Cheaper and less-intrusive than one of the usual probes, I guess. In any event, it meant walking past the graveyard to get to the mailbox. 

I heard voices coming from the closed graveyard. I half expect to hear voices in my head these days. When my dad was my age he heard companionable voices all the time, but I have no such luck. I just hear voices telling me to pay the phone bill. As it turned out, for whatever reason, there were two people chatting in the closed graveyard, and so I couldn't even blame spirits for the voices. 

After the mail drop, I decided to take Jasper to one of his favorite places, to the hidden spaces where the generous Cat Ladies at the DMV leave mounds of cat kibble in the bushes behind the pot dispensary. Cats can be found lurking all about! Jasper loves it! Tonight in the darkness, though, I stepped directly into the cat kibble and scattered it all around. No worries. So much cat kibble remains! Maybe the rats can help with the cleanup. 

When we returned home, I could hear at least two rats loudly crashing through the vegetation in the back yard. I heard a loud thud, as one rat dropped off a fence. The rat started squeaking too, plaintively complaining about its bad luck. I'll hear its voice in my sleep tonight. 

I wonder what the little critters have in store for our longer walk later tonight?

Dreams of Dalí

I love these interactive videos! Salvador Dali's voice too.

 

Jerry Lewis Jitterbug

Dusty Snow

And how it handicaps water managers:

“I’m the snow guy who finds himself talking about the desert a lot,” says Derry, who directs the largest high-elevation network of dust-on-snow monitoring sites in North America, headquartered about 300 miles southwest of where he stands. “There aren’t many things we can do to tweak the supply side of our water, but one of them is mitigating dust to keep snow around on the surface longer.”

Worsening drought in the West’s deserts contributed to a heavy dust season on Colorado’s Loveland Pass this year, and the tea-colored snow shows it. Soil intermingled with ice crystals fell here on four occasions this spring. Subsequent storms buried each layer of dust particles under new snow. As the air warmed and the days grew longer, the snow melted and by June, the layers had combined at the surface. 

Snowfields covered in dust across the Rockies don’t just mar scenic views. The dirt acts like a blanket; the snowpack, no longer white, absorbs heat from the sun, melting more quickly and up to six weeks earlier than it would if there were no dust. Forty million people in the Colorado River Basin rely on sustained snowpack for drinking water and to irrigate 5.5 million acres of agricultural land through the hot, dry summer.