Hiatus - Trip to Bremerton, WA

Heading to Jan Becker's memorial service.

I'm So Naïve About Meth

What a transformative article! We are in serious trouble:

Bozenko had joined the DEA seven years earlier, just as the global underworld was veering toward synthetic drugs and away from their plant-based cousins. Bozenko’s job was to understand the thinking of black-market chemists, samples of whose work were regularly plopped on his desk.

...Meth was the drug that Bozenko analyzed most in the early years of his job. Large quantities of it were coming up out of Mexico, where traffickers had industrialized production, and into the American Southwest. All of the stuff Bozenko analyzed was made from ephedrine, a natural substance commonly found in decongestants and derived from the ephedra plant, which was used for millennia as a stimulant and an anti-asthmatic.

...There was another way to make methamphetamine. Before the ephedrine method had been rediscovered, this other method had been used by the Hell’s Angels and other biker gangs, which had dominated a much smaller meth trade into the ’80s. Its essential chemical was a clear liquid called phenyl-2-propanone—P2P. Many combinations of chemicals could be used to make P2P. Most of these chemicals were legal, cheap, and toxic: cyanide, lye, mercury, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitrostyrene. The P2P process of making meth was complicated and volatile. The bikers’ cooking method gave off a smell so rank that it could only be done in rural or desert outposts, and the market for their product was limited.

...Among the drawbacks of the P2P method is that it produces two kinds of methamphetamine. One is known as d-methamphetamine, which is the stuff that makes you high. The other is l-methamphetamine, which makes the heart race but does little to the brain; it is waste product. Most cooks would likely want to get rid of the l-meth if they knew what it was. But separating the two is tricky, beyond the skills of most clandestine chemists. And without doing so, the resulting drug is inferior to ephedrine-based meth. It makes your heart hammer without offering as potent a high.

Bozenko’s sample contained mostly d-methamphetamine. Someone had removed most of the l-meth. “I’ve taken down labs in several continents,” Bozenko told me years later. No one in the criminal world, as far as he and his colleagues knew, had ever figured out how to separate d-meth from l-meth before.

...Even so, Bozenko couldn’t have anticipated just how widely the meth epidemic would reach some 15 years later, or how it would come to interact with the opioid epidemic, which was then gaining force. And he couldn’t know how strongly it would contribute to related scourges now very much evident in America—epidemics of mental illness and homelessness that year by year are growing worse. 

...On Skid Row in Los Angeles, crack had been the drug of choice for decades. Dislodging it took some time. But by 2014 the new meth was everywhere. When that happened, “it seemed that people were losing their minds faster,” a Los Angeles Police Department beat officer named Deon Joseph told me. Joseph had worked Skid Row for 22 years. “They’d be okay when they were just using crack,” Joseph said. “Then in 2014, with meth, all of a sudden they became mentally ill. They deteriorated into mental illness faster than I ever saw with crack cocaine.”

Facebook is Planning a Rebrand

Ignore the man behind the curtain:

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to discuss the name change at Facebook's annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, but it could be unveiled sooner, according to a report from the Verge. The name change will reflect the company's focus on "building the metaverse" and "signal the tech giant's ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail." 

"The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more," the Verge reports. "A rebrand could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform operates today. ...

The Wizard of Christchurch is Being Phased Out

I remember this fellow when I visited Christchurch in 2008. I didn’t realize he was the official Wizard of New Zealand. He will be discontented now, and probably conjure up some bad spells:

The 88-year-old wizard, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, has been a popular tourist attraction for more than three decades, addressing crowds in the city centre, with his flowing beard, straggly hair and wearing a long, black robe and pointy hat.

Nothing was off-limits for the modern-day Merlin, from castigating politicians to successfully leading a campaign to stop "an attack on the soul of the city" when it was announced the red public phone booths would be repainted blue.

He has been in demand casting spells to influence the outcome of events such as crucial rugby matches and being transported to Australia to perform a rain dance.

"It is a difficult decision to end this contract," the Christchurch City Council assistant chief executive Lynn McClelland said.

"The council is grateful for the valuable and special contribution The Wizard made to our city's cultural life, and he will forever be a part of our history." 

But McClelland said wizardry no longer fits the "promotional landscape" of the South Island's largest city, and new programmes "will increasingly reflect our diverse communities and showcase a vibrant, diverse, modern city."

Here is my picture of the Wizard, from December, 2008:

 

Metronomes and "Better Call Saul"

A number of BrBa and BCS vignettes may have their origin in the history of Surrealism. 

For example, in the opening of BCS's 'Cobbler' (S2E2), Chuck sets a metronome and twice plays Gabriel Fauré's 'Sicilienne' from his love Rebecca's sheet music, up to the point where he ruins the music with false notes. Chuck bangs his forehead in frustration. What's that all about? 

In 1923, Surrealist artist Man Ray (an American in Paris) placed a photo of an eye on the pendulum of a metronome in his studio. In 1932, his love Lee Miller left him and returned to New York. Bitter, Man Ray published a picture of the metronome with the instruction: "Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow." 

Man Ray intended to destroy his art work in a public performance someday, but reactionary students stole the art work in 1957 and destroyed it themselves. Annoyed, Man Ray then made a number of editions of the art work and renamed it 'Indestructible Object.' One version featured an eye that blinked as the pendulum swung from one side to the other. 

Chuck doesn't attach a picture of an eye to the pendulum of his metronome. Nevertheless, he does destroy the musical piece with false notes - a piece that was no doubt important to Rebecca. 

The motivations are different. Chuck was frustrated with his mental illness and Man Ray was bitter about the end of his romance. Still, the creative team seems to have used this little bit of Surrealist history for their own purposes in BCS.

Sacramento's Driest Period - EVER!

It looks like Sacramento will have some rain over the next week. Nevertheless, let us not forget that we are now leaving the driest period ever recorded in Sacramento's recorded history: drier than 2014-15, drier than 1976-77 - DRIEST PERIOD EVER! 

I paraphrased the following from two National Weather Service reports: 

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...ALL-TIME RECORD DRY STREAK ESTABLISHED AT DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO... 

THE DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO CLIMATE SITE ESTABLISHED A NEW ALL-TIME RECORD DRY STREAK OF 212 DAYS. THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 194 DAYS WAS SET FROM MAY 13, 1880 THROUGH NOVEMBER 22, 1880. THE NEW RECORD IS MARCH 19, 2021 THROUGH OCTOBER 17, 2021. 

MEASURABLE RAINFALL IS RAINFALL OF 0.01 INCHES OR GREATER AND DOES NOT INCLUDE TRACE AMOUNTS. DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO REGISTERED 0.01 INCH ON OCTOBER 17TH. 

DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO`S PERIOD OF RECORD DATES AS FAR BACK TO 1855. DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF THE PERIOD OF RECORD, THERE WERE LARGE GAPS OF MISSING DAILY PRECIPITATION DATA THROUGH THE MIDDLE 1870S. STARTING IN WATER YEAR 1878, DAILY PRECIPITATION OBSERVATIONS BECAME NEARLY CONTINUOUS WITH MINIMAL MISSING DATA. THE CLIMATE STATION HAS MOVED AROUND THE DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO AREA OVER THE COURSE OF TIME, AND IS PRESENTLY LOCATED NEAR SACRAMENTO STATE UNIVERSITY SEVERAL MILES EAST OF DOWNTOWN. 

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...DRIEST WATER YEAR ON RECORD FOR REDDING AREA, RED BLUFF, AND SAC EXEC AIRPORT... 

THE 2021 WATER YEAR RAN FROM OCTOBER 1, 2020 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30, 2021, AND RESULTED IN WELL-BELOW NORMAL PRECIPITATION AMOUNTS ACROSS INTERIOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. SEVERAL CLIMATE SITES IN INTERIOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA OBSERVED ALL-TIME RECORD LOW PRECIPITATION TOTALS OVER THE COURSE OF THE WATER YEAR, INCLUDING REDDING AREA, RED BLUFF, AND SACRAMENTO EXECUTIVE AIRPORT. 

                         WATER YEAR         WATER YEAR      PREVIOUS 

SITE                 OBSERVED (IN)      NORMAL (IN)    RECORD (IN) 

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REDDING AREA      14.24                      33.52              19.38 (1990-91) 

RED BLUFF              9.48                          23.12          10.89 (1975-76) 

SAC EXEC AIRPORT 6.61                      18.14              6.62 (1976-77) 

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