Thursday, July 29, 2021
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
San Jose Fire - July 27, 2021
This blew up quickly, and caused us concern:
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- Residents near the Coyote Creek Trail near the San Jose-Milpitas border were told to shelter in place Monday because of a brush fire.
The fire broke out just after 4 p.m. Tuesday in the Mill River Lane neighborhood near Tasman Drive and Cisco Way. Advertisement
...The fire was estimated at 50-75 acres, according to the San Jose Fire Department.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
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."
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
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!
Sunday, July 18, 2021
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?
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.
Friday, July 16, 2021
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Sigh:
The California Highway Patrol responded Thursday morning to a car fire in Truckee that the driver reportedly started to try to scare away bears.
According to CHP Officer Carlos Perez, officers responded around 5:30 a.m. to reports of a car fire alongside Interstate 80 near the Farad exit. When officers arrived, they found that a man had lit a fire on the hood of his car in an attempt to “keep bears away,”
Perez said. No bears were found in the area and responding officers determined that the man was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Officers were able to extinguish the fire before it spread beyond the hood of the car, but Perez said there was shrubbery in the area and the incident could have ignited a wildfire.
Fourth of July, 2021
Jasper At Sierra II, Where The Dogs Gather
Today, Jasper got freaked out by a bigger dog and escaped through the bars of a fence in the corner of the park. A little dicey getting him on a leash again!
Trip The Hose Fantastic
Mixed feelings….
I was tending to the front yard, and laid a hose across a public sidewalk to water a tree on the other side.
I wasn’t terribly worried about the hose as a tripping hazard. Most walkers, cyclists, and skateboard enthusiasts are experienced enough to spot hoses and adjust as necessary.
Just then, two inexperienced girls, ages about 4 & 5, came hurtling down the sidewalk on scooters. They hit the hose and went flying, landing on the cracked sidewalk just across the property line in front of the neighbor’s place. The girls started to cry, got up, and ran back to their grandmother, whom they had outpaced.
I came down my steps to accept blame for the hose, but never opened my mouth. Instead, grandmother patiently explained the dangers of cracked sidewalks to the little girls. And because grandmother said it, the girls accepted it, without analyzing their own experience. No one said anything about the tripping hazard of the hose.
Feel like I dodged a bullet, but missed an accountability moment. Fortunately the girls were all right - possibly some scrapes.
The World Of Fake Vaccine Cards
Paying real money and taking real risks to avoid a minor inconvenience:
I did a dive into what is advertised for sale on Telegram, and it turned out that it is possible to buy almost anything—from pizza to travel packages, to vaccine cards as well.
It only took me several seconds to discover three channels—essentially, streams of information and updates that anyone can search for, and subscribe to—advertising fake vaccine records in English. One of them, “Covid19 vaccine cards certificate” has more than 400,000 followers. I reached out to the channel owner pretending to be a buyer and figured out that the CDC vaccine card, filled in with my information, would cost $200.
Why salad bars may never come back
Once common; now endangered:
Grocers and analysts say a combination of factors has kept stores from rushing to bring back their salad bars: Customers are now buying more groceries online and working more from home than they were before the pandemic, reducing the need for quick mid-day trips to salad bars. Some customers have also moved away from them out of sanitary concerns.
Prior to the pandemic, salad bars and other prepared foods were becoming more important for grocers because they drove customers to shop in person, said Scott Mushkin, a retail analyst at R5 Capital. For salad bars to work, though, customers need to quickly use them or the food quality will deteriorate or spoil.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Opera Wednesday - Virtual Concert V // May 2021
I recently posted about how one DMTC YPT alumnus, Nora Unkel, was doing in her movie production career. Here is another such alumnus, Lisa Parente, in her chosen career, in opera. Here she sings the 'The Silver Aria' from "The Ballad of Baby Dow." (I was surprised to bump into her dad while I was walking Jasper - John's dentist is down the alley from me.)
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Antelope Valley Earthquake - 07/08/21
This quake really shook things up in the Sacramento area:
I certainly felt the rolling waves pass through the house. My house is unusually sensitive to shaking: In the past, I've felt distant offshore quakes at the Triple Plate Junction near Eureka that otherwise escaped notice in Sacramento.
An earthquake jolted Central California on Thursday afternoon, shaking up residents of the Sierra Nevada foothills and the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys.
The shaking struck at 3:49 p.m., revised to a magnitude 6.0, and was centered in the Little Antelope Valley about four miles south of Coleville in Mono County, about 150 miles east of Sacramento.
Seismologists dubbed it the Antelope Valley earthquake, during a 5:30 p.m. briefing.
As of 7 a.m. Friday, more than 100 aftershocks have struck, including temblors as strong as 5.2 and 4.6, have shaken the area near the epicenter, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“It’s a region with known active faults,” USGS researcher Austin Elliott said, referring to the remote area on the back side of the Sierra. “This is a classic place geologists go to study.”
There have been about two-dozen earthquakes of this magnitude in the region in the past 50 years; Thursday’s was the largest in the vicinity since a 6.1 quake in 1994.
Dozens of people across California — in Sacramento to as far south as Los Angeles, north to the Oregon border, the Bay Area and beyond — reported feeling the quake to the U.S. Geological Survey. By 7 p.m., over 23,000 self-reported responses were given to the federal agency’s website.
There was some confusion in the first few minutes. USGS reported a second quake near Stockton just seconds later, but quickly decided the second quake was a mirage - a reflection of the first quake.
The experimental ShakeAlert network apparently sounded off, and even though the information the system was working with was incomplete, people appreciated the warning:
Preliminary reports indicated two earthquakes had struck 25 seconds but 100 miles apart — but the U.S. Geological Survey revised the shaking and removed the report of a magnitude 4.8 quake in in San Joaquin County.
Elliott and other seismologists said the glitch is not uncommon as seismic waves cause reflections as they propagate. One of those reflections just happened to center in the community of Farmington, about five miles southeast of Stockton.
Elliott said the mistake happened because “our instrumentation is sparse (in areas) away from the large population centers,” and once officials reviewed the data, they updated it along with the magnitude of the actual quake.
The system initially got the earthquake’s magnitude wrong: called it a 4.8; later, it was upgraded to a 6.0.
The system thought the rupture happened about 31 miles south of where it actually did. And at first it presumed it was detecting three different small earthquakes, rather than one large one.
Such details didn’t matter to some California residents, who welcomed the warning in time to take action.
“It worked. The whole point is to give you a little notice,” said a Lodi-based wine industry consultant who asked that his name not be used. He rushed from his office to the safety of a bathroom when the system’s app issued a startling emergency alert. “It’s really worth it.”
Thursday, July 08, 2021
Many Inspections This Week
Thinking about moving, and so the first step is inspections. There are many deficiencies at current location. Apparently I have termite problems - I did not know this before. The roof is on its last legs. The foundation people aren't pleased. There are some electrical deficiencies too, some of which I knew about, and a few I didn't. So, I'm making some efforts to correct things. On Wednesday, Joe the Plumber removed the toilet and replaced the wax seal there. Since he also had designed and built the back porch, he took the lead in fortifying the back steps - there were immediate hazards there that needed addressing, but probably inadequate for addressing problems noted on inspection. Still, the work needed to get done. I have some painting tasks ahead. Will be a busy few months ahead.
Nora Unkel's Movie Is At Walmart
Nora's movie production career is now at the point where her movies are getting distributed at Walmart! Not bad for a Davis YPT girl! (I wonder if Target is included too?):
Found A Nightmare Wakes at my local Walmart 😱 I hope everyone on the team is as proud as I am. What a crazy, surreal experience. Thank you to @wildobscurafilms @spittingimg @robmenzies @eggplantpictureandsound and @logicalpictures for making this film a reality. This film wouldn’t exist without you. To Eric, thank you for taking the chance on us and I hope wherever you are, you’re smiling. @shudder and @rljefilms thanks for making a bomb ass dvd and bringing this film to audiences all over the world. 🖤🖤🖤 And lastly, thanks to my girls for making this night one to remember.
Flooding in Belen
The premature Southwestern summer monsoon is tapering off right now - it'll revive again later - but it has caused some problems:
BELEN – A monsoon season storm ravaged Belen as between 2.95 and 3.2 inches of rain fell in a matter of two hours Tuesday night, causing extensive flooding.
The downpour caused a breach of the Highline Canal at Delgado Avenue, sending water into Belen, and damaging roads, homes and businesses.
No serious injuries were reported, but the flooding caused plenty of property damage and stranded motorists, according to city officials.
The deluge began around 8:40 p.m., and city crews were immediately out dealing with the emergency.
...At about 9:30 p.m., the city received reports that the Highline Canal at Delgado Avenue near Belen High School had been breached, sending tons of water into the city.
“It busted a huge hole on the east side of the Highline Canal and it took us about seven hours to repair (it),” Cordova said.
While the breach of the Highline Canal caused water to flow into and flood the streets of Belen, other areas were affected directly by the heavy rains.
A new breach was discovered Wednesday morning along the New Belen Ditch on Mesa Road, about a quarter mile from the city’s northern boundary in the county.
A Mountain Lion Named Squeak, and His Journey
A very-surprising Facebook post about a mountain lion born near Albuquerque that migrated up to Mesa Verde National Park: 
For those of you interested in Squeaks, the sub-adult male mountain lion GPS-collared on Tamaya in early February 2020, we are happy to report that he appears to be doing quite well. He was born at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Jemez on Tamaya in October 2018 and dispersed from his natal range in July 2020. His travels took him on a long-distance voyage across two states in search of a new home, and, as of today, his collar has collected 5,146 locations which span approximately 1,380 miles. Our good friends at Mesa Verde National Park recently picked him up on camera--his kitten spots have since faded, but we are glad to know that this nearly 3-year-old male has finally found his home in the beautiful Ute Mountain Ute-Mesa Verde National Park area. From one tribe's land to another, Squeaks' journey exemplifies the importance of maintaining wildlife connectivity across the West and beyond.
Rachel Has a Hospital Visit
Health problems can suddenly take preeminence. From Rachel's Facebook post:
Last night was coming out of anesthesia after emergency surgery finding out my surgeon decides to admit me overnight instead of letting me get the ride that had been waiting for me to go home. So glad to be home tonight.
Thankful for all of the support from my family and close friends, especially for Michael T Norton for giving me a ride to the ER and Marc Valdez being prepared to give me a ride home while Dave held down the fort at home, and to my mom for an early morning ride back home. Also thankful to the nurses, surgeon and anesthesiology team for their work and care
And, again, so glad to be back at home tonight, and to tuck them in in person rather than singing lullabies from a gurney.
Wednesday, July 07, 2021
John Adams - Nixon in China - I am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung - Kathleen Kim
Gabe was watching "Nixon in China" again.
Kathleen Kim is so over-the-top as Chiang Ch'ing!
Kathleen Kim is so over-the-top as Chiang Ch'ing!
Vicky Chow performs Steve Reich - Piano Counterpoint (2011) (arr. Vincent Corver)
Gabe likes this - and I like it too!
Jasper Gets a Haircut
Jasper, after his visit to Anthony Gonzales and Azalia Gonzalez at Critter Cuts 4 Paws Pet Salon, near Fair Oaks and Fulton, in Sacramento:
"Gubernatorious" : A Different Way of Looking at California's 2003 Recall Election
Oh, look at this! In 2021, in light of current events, Jayson Haedrich is once-again promoting "Gubernatorious," his documentary about the 2003 California Recall Election candidates. Such an interesting group of people!
Elsa Kicked My Forecasting Ass
Every hurricane season since Hurricane Ivan in 2004, I've been providing hurricane path forecasts to former coworkers Dwight and Linda Mitchell, who retired to a place north of Tampa, FL.
Having my commentary was helpful to Dwight, since he was part of a management team for senior citizen housing, and would be a responsible party should it be necessary to evacuate people in advance of a hurricane.
My advice was particularly valuable in the early days. There were once delays as important news bubbled through the Weather Service bureaucracy, so sometimes a forecasted hurricane jog would take up to sixteen hours before the National Hurricane Center (NHC) officially reported it. Dwight could not endure any delays in information. He had to KNOW, and KNOW NOW, if there was anything of importance coming his way.
Over the last two decades, hurricane path forecasting has improved significantly. Delays are much reduced these days, and the official NHC path forecasts are much better than they once were.
Tropical Storm Elsa was a NHC textbook case. It behaved exactly as forecast. I tried playing a contrarian role. My feeble contrarian forecasts failed at every turn.
It's been a good couple of decades. All hail, the all-conquering NHC!
Friday, July 02, 2021
Saweetie - Fast (Motion)
2010 High School grad from Elk Grove is now getting the full star treatment! (I have problems with the bougie style, but there's no question she does it well.)
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Brewing Florida Storm?
There have been indications that a low pressure system located in the mid-Atlantic about 1,300 miles east of the Windward Islands, might develop into a storm. Previous forecasts had it moving eventually towards Texas, and so I hadn't been worrying about it too much, but the newest forecasts are suggesting Florida is the target. Both NVG and GFS models agree on this, but it's still very early, and it wouldn't surprise me if the forecasts change considerably in the days ahead. Arrival time in Tampa would be roughly Tuesday evening July 6th - Wednesday morning July 7th.
It's still early, and the storm doesn't have a name yet.
Trump is Fourth From the Bottom
They asked the historians what they thought of Donald Trump, and not surprisingly he ranks near the bottom, but not dead last - fourth-worst - which really surprises me. I’d rather have someone in that office with the gravitas of James Buchanan any day, compared to Trump.
The big Cinderella story in regards to the historians in recent years is the rise of Ulysses Grant. When I was a kid, historians, with their ranks filled with white Southerners, ranked him dead last, even below Buchanan. He’s now about 20th. There are more minorities in historian ranks these days, and greater interest in Black history, and Grant is finally getting credit for his far-sighted but doomed Reconstruction policies.
From C-SPAN:
HISTORIANS SURVEY RESULTS CATEGORY
TOTAL SCORES/OVERALL RANKINGS
President 2021 Final Score Overall Rankings
2021 2017 2009 2000 Overall, historians ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president ever, coming in one spot below former President William Henry Harrison, who died after just one month in office. The only presidents on the list to rank worse than Trump were Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan.
Abraham Lincoln 897 1 1 1 1
George Washington 851 2 2 2 3
Franklin D. Roosevelt 841 3 3 3 2
Theodore Roosevelt 785 4 4 4 4
Dwight D. Eisenhower 734 5 5 8 9
Harry S. Truman 713 6 6 5 5
Thomas Jefferson 704 7 7 7 7
John F. Kennedy 699 8 8 6 8
Ronald Reagan 681 9 9 10 11
Barack Obama 664 10 12 NA NA
Lyndon B. Johnson 654 11 10 11 10
James Monroe 643 12 13 15 14
Woodrow Wilson 617 13 11 9 6
William McKinley 612 14 16 16 15
John Adams 609 15 19 17 16
James Madison 604 16 17 20 18
John Quincy Adams 603 17 21 19 19
James K. Polk 599 18 14 12 12
William J. Clinton 594 19 15 14 21
Ulysses S. Grant 590 20 22 23 33
George H. W. Bush 585 21 20 18 20
Andrew Jackson 568 22 18 13 13
William Howard Taft 543 23 24 24 24
Calvin Coolidge 535 24 26 26 27
Grover Cleveland 523 25 23 21 17
Jimmy Carter 506 26 27 25 22
James A. Garfield 506 27 29 28 29
Gerald R. Ford 498 28 25 22 23
George W. Bush 495 29 33 36 NA
Chester A. Arthur 472 30 35 32 32
Richard M. Nixon 464 31 28 27 26
Benjamin Harrison 462 32 30 30 31
Rutherford B. Hayes 456 33 31 33 25
Martin Van Buren 455 34 34 31 30
Zachary Taylor 449 35 32 29 28
Herbert Hoover 396 36 36 34 34
Warren G. Harding 388 37 40 38 38
Millard Fillmore 378 38 37 37 35
John Tyler 354 39 39 35 36
William Henry Harrison 354 40 38 39 37
Donald J. Trump 312 41 NA NA NA
Franklin Pierce 312 42 41 40 39
Andrew Johnson 230 43 42 41 40
James Buchanan 227 44 43 42 41
And Just Like That, Flooding In The Southwest!
@getagripgarage Major flooding at Zion national Park #zionnationalpark #flooding #fypnationalpark 
♬ Epic - FineTune Music & Jeff Hayat
@not1care #fy #flooding #crazy #newmexico #HotwireHotelGoals #TakisTransformation #wow #emergency
♬ original sound - Not1care
Link Rot
Link rot on the Internet is a growing problem, as are post-publication changes. As our culture moves onto the Internet, the Internet becomes increasingly unstable, and susceptible to tyranny. For example:
Purchased books can be involuntarily zapped by Amazon, which has been known to do so, refunding the original purchase price. For example, 10 years ago, a third-party bookseller offered a well-known book in Kindle format on Amazon for 99 cents a copy, mistakenly thinking it was no longer under copyright. Once the error was noted, Amazon—in something of a panic—reached into every Kindle that had downloaded the book and deleted it. The book was, fittingly enough, George Orwell’s 1984. (You don’t have 1984. In fact, you never had 1984. There is no such book as 1984.)
People in Portland Will Never Forget This Week!
(Monday afternoon, June 28) The highest temp I've ever seen in Albuquerque is 105 degrees F (40.6 C).
Apparently, ABQ can get even hotter - it reached 107 degrees F (41.7 C) in June, 1994.
Interestingly, Portland, Oregon's all-time max before this week was also 107 degrees F (41.7 C).
At 4 p.m. today (Monday), Portland reached 115 degrees F (46.1 C). It's pretty breezy too, with wind from the ENE down the Columbia River Gorge, which brings all that toasty inland plateau air downhill and subjects it to further adiabatic heating.
In comparison, today Phoenix, Arizona could only manage 109 degrees F (42.8 C).
The folks in Portland will never forget this week!
@sea.ya.later I’m clearly not handling the heat wave well #darkhumor #pacificnorthwest #heatwave #humor #comedy
♬ original sound - SeaYaLater
Monday, June 28, 2021
American Workers Are Telling Low-Paying Employers To Get Lost
About time!:
With 9.3 million out of work, surely there would be crowds to beat down the door. But some think it isn't about the jobs but the high cost of other things that make work seem impossible. With fewer child care options, already high costs are soaring. If someone makes less money working and paying for child care, then it makes more sense to stay at home.
For some, the high cost of health and safety is the factor. Work might be great, but if there's no health insurance in the position and they contract COVID from unvaccinated co-workers or customers, they could hurt family members or their children and be bankrupt from health expenses.
Rachel Bitecofer Is Getting Tired of National Democrats Screwing Up Election Campaigns, So She's Going To Fix The Problems Herself
Thank God she's on the job!:
What Strike PAC is doing is not within those two buckets. It certainly has overlap — it's performing both persuasion and mobilization. But what it's arguing is, "Look, the GOP doesn't really run anything except a marketing/branding op and it's predominantly a branding offensive against the left." They don't spend a lot of time on their own brand, but they do spend a lot of time in their messaging on discounting, discrediting and debasing our brand. That will go from everything from economics to the "woke" war, so it's always about showing us as unattractively to voters as possible. We've never answered that.
Democrats, up until now, have been told by their consultants, "Don't worry about it," or "Don't push back on 'socialism' or 'defund the police.'" To their credit, candidates are starting to understand when somebody is lobbing missiles at you, you can't just stand there and pretend it's not hitting. They are starting to try to put forward a response. But the it's a defensive mechanism, it's not offensive. The GOP is saying, "We're going to have a debate about these topics," and when you enter into that field, you are basically on the defense the whole time because you're having a conversation that's been structured by the opposition party.
...It's flipping that GOP tactic over to our side. It's attacking the Republicans to make a conversation about their anti-democratic power grab, that goes back from contesting the results of 2020, an armed insurrection, Trump actually trying to use the Justice Department to stage a coup, and the Republican Party's wholesale embrace of that.
Amazing Goannas and Their Corkscrew Nests
Fascinating article about yellow-spotted goanna nests in Australia. I wonder if other goannas have the same sort of thing going on?:
By the time they were three feet down, with nothing to show for their efforts, Doody was confused. When most reptiles bury their eggs, they do so less than a foot beneath the surface. Even big sea turtles dig shallow nests. But the backfilled goanna burrow kept going. Stranger still, its path began to twist, corkscrewing as it descended. “My partner, who is also a herpetologist, was on the phone, saying, ‘You know, Sean, reptiles don’t dig that deep,’” he told me. “I was starting to doubt myself.”
At five feet down, on the second day of digging, Doody was mentally composing an apology to his colleagues when one of them, lying flat on the ground with his head out of sight and his arm curled down the spiraling burrow, screamed out, “EGGS!”
Conservative Activists Are Salivating For The Newsom Recall Election
It's apparent that conservative activists view the upcoming Newsom recall election as the equivalent of Christmas - a way to directly intimidate liberal voters and strip their votes away:
"An observer in Nevada County raised concerns about the race of a woman seen removing ballots from a drop box outside the county building, according to county records. The woman, who was Black, was the county registrar’s wife.
In San Diego County, a volunteer poll watcher upset voters by telling them they should surrender their hand-delivered mail-in ballots so they could be canceled and instead vote in person. And in Orange County, an observer attempted to interrupt a couple voting together, and another caused a disturbance for three hours by trying to interview voters as they left.
...“They were interfering with voters. They were interfering with our process,” Neal Kelley, registrar of voters for Orange County, said of Election Integrity Project watchers. “They chew up resources like you wouldn’t believe. … Eighty percent of the time it was just nonsense.”
The activists are part of a national surge in poll policing, from Florida to Colorado. In California, the top cop is Linda Paine, a former Santa Clarita tea party activist who founded the Election Integrity Project and claims California — which has one of the country’s most permissive approaches to voting — is part of a national scheme to replace the “constitutional Republic” with a “globalist socialist oligarchy.”
...Buoyed in recent years by support from Republican Party officials and major conservative donors, the Election Integrity Project and a second organization, the Institute for Fair Elections, have challenged more than 3 million voter registrations since 2018, The Times found.
...The activists hunt through these changing, imperfect voter rolls to compile lists of registered voters they say should be removed because they are probably dead, have moved, have multiple registrations, haven’t voted in years or, in some cases, are guilty of double voting.
They have had uneven success in demanding that state and local election officials investigate the names on those lists. Interviews, state government records and data analyses by The Times show activists often made major errors or targeted problems that had already been corrected. Still, these continued claims have succeeded in promoting suspicion in conservative enclaves that fraud is a significant problem in California’s voting system.
Addresses they flagged for having suspiciously large numbers of registered voters included college dormitories, convents and a monastery. Lists of voters whom activists claimed no longer lived at registered addresses and should have their voter registration canceled included members of the military away from home on active service.
Four dozen people accused of voting twice in the March 2020 primary — among 9.6 million ballots cast — turned out to include 32 cases in which election computers erroneously listed them as voting twice. Among the remaining suspects were a set of twins whose names differed by a single letter and elderly people who election officials said probably forgot having voted before doing so a second time.
In 2016, the Institute for Fair Elections alleged in testimony before a federal voting commission that one person, Jung Kim, illegally voted 14 times in five elections. The Times found the votes were cast by three different people who share the same first and last names but live in different apartments in the same large downtown Los Angeles complex. The three had different ages and were all registered under different political parties.
...Paine this year announced that the Election Integrity Project aims to recruit 30,000 people for the recall election to monitor polling places and vote processing centers, where fraud-seeking observers challenged voter signatures.
...The claim of mass voting by undocumented immigrants remains a motivating force. At a 2019 Placer County recruitment meeting with Paine, a local tea party leader said he was moved to join Paine’s group as a poll observer after hearing secondhand that a van carried migrant workers from poll to poll during a local assembly election at the behest of the United Farm Workers union. “I can’t say I actually [saw] vans pull in loaded with undocumented illegals,” he said, according to a video of the event. “What I can tell you is this: In my heart, in my gut, I know I stopped many buses and many vans from coming in.”
...Election Integrity Project observers protesting that they could not stand close enough to hear everything poll workers said to voters; complaining about couples voting together, even though they are legally allowed to; and calling out procedural deficiencies, such as the orientation of voting booths or presence of water bottles.
Paine apologized by email to the registrar of Nevada County after one of her group’s observers raised concerns about the registrar’s wife, who is Black, removing ballots from a drop box outside the county building. Paine said the volunteer would be dismissed, according to emails reviewed by The Times. “She was gushing with apologies. ‘That’s not what we’re here for,’” the county’s registrar, Gregory Diaz, told The Times, “but in my eyes, that’s exactly what they’re here for.”
...Other conservative and political organizations are also recruiting for the Election Integrity Project."
The Omega Pattern Gives and Takes!
It reached 112 degrees F in Portland today. That omega blocking pattern is wreaking havoc on the Pacific Northwest! Nevertheless, it's also allowed a premature start of the Southwestern monsoon. Mother Nature takes away, and giveth! And she'll shut down the monsoon again right after 4th of July, when it usually is about ready to start up. So, summer weather will be interesting this year!
It's rained 0.95 inches so far in El Paso! That kind of rain is rare this time of year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)