Puma’s Secret Garden: Study Reveals Sly Strategy of Nurturing Nature To Lure Prey SciTech Daily
What color were Neandertals? John Hawks
Easter After-Action Report
Easter is God reminding us of this one life-changing thing FOX. Clickbait. My gawd.
Surprise Bitcoin Easter Egg Fuels Wild Satoshi Nakamoto Identity Theory Forbes
What Is an Easter Egg? 27 Examples of Hidden Treats in Software, Websites, Games, and Movies Make Use of
Climate
Spontaneous dark formation of OH radicals at the interface of aqueous atmospheric droplets PNAS. “The ubiquity of aqueous aerosols and cloud droplets and their possibly strong OH-producing capability suggests that we have to rethink atmospheric multiphase oxidation chemistry.” We know nothing. Perhaps we have an atmospheric scientist in the readership?
#COVID19
The Risks of Even Mild COVID-19: 1 in 4 Showing Cognitive Deficits After Mild Case, Brazilian Study Finds BrainFacts.org. Handy diagrams.
COVID-19 delirium and encephalopathy: Pathophysiology assumed in the first 3 years of the ongoing pandemic Brain Disorders. A “narrative review.” From the Discussion: “The close correlation between COVID-19 and neurodegenerative diseases highlights the potential role of COVID-19 in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. The neurological symptoms associated with COVID-19 are sustained by the chronic inflammatory reactions that flood the brain with proinflammatory factors, damaging neural cells and leading to brain ischemia. Oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, cytokine storm, and immune response are the main inducers of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer disease and Parkinson disease. SARS-CoV-2 neuroinvasion, neuroinflammation, and blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction can contribute to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.”
Great metaphor…
"You probably already have everything in your pantry"
What the recipe thinks you have in your pantry:
– a whole bone-in half ham
– red currant jelly
– English mustard powder
– 2-liter bottle of Sprite
– juniper berries plucked from the garden— Eric Kim (@ericjoonho) April 8, 2023
… for “personal risk assessment” in the complete absence of data, and no mitigations.
Hospital Infection Control is at it again:
So sad that we play politics with kids' lives. pic.twitter.com/XCIGZD9ap9
— Sanjiv K Gandhi (@SKGandhiMD) April 10, 2023
Bonnie, good job.
Symptoms of Long COVID Differ for People of Different Racial and Ethnic Groups NIH. Income?
China?
China’s financial sector rocked by expansion of anti-corruption drive FT
Xi Jinping’s inner circle is getting ‘even tighter’ with powerful new chief of staff South China Morning Post
Japan, China meet to discuss maritime concerns as Beijing simulates attack on Taiwan Channel News Asia
Japan government weighs A.I. adoption as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits Prime Minister Fumio Kishida CNBC
Tokyo ramen shop bans customers from using their phones while eating CNN
India
Some Indian states make masks mandatory as COVID-19 cases rise Anadolu Agency
As tiger count grows, India’s Indigenous demand land rights AP
Syraqistan
Israel’s Mossad denies role in protests against judicial overhaul Anadolu Agency. Oh.
Hamas calls for financial donations via Bitcoin Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
France denies military presence in Ukraine Politico. The deck: “Leaked documents imply French soldiers are on the ground.”
Dear Old Blighty
NHS WORKERS BETRAYED: ‘Cover up’ Allegations As Most NHS Trusts Say No Staff Died of Covid on Their Watch Byline Times. Not plausible.
New Not-So-Cold War
Journalist Pavel Zarubin’s interview with Vladimir Putin, 25 March 2023 (abbreviated transcript) Gilbert Doctorow. Missed this. Still germane.
* * * Ukraine May Run Out of Air Defenses by May, Leaked Pentagon Documents Warn WSJ
Europe Has Pledged a Million Shells for Ukraine in a Year. Can It Deliver? NYT
* * * Ukraine likely to face bloody Crimea fight, satellite images show Al Jazeera
Ukraine Broadens State Of Emergency, Calls Up Military Reservists RFE
* * * US officials searching for source of intelligence leak suspect an American is responsible South China Morning Post. I expect the press to start baying for the death penalty at any time.
South of the Border
Brazil workers’ movement steps up land invasions under Lula government FT
B-a-a-a-d Banks
Options trading surges as investors brace themselves for US regional bank volatility FT
Banking Survival Guide: A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Thriving Despite Bank Failures Forbes. Personal risk assessment is key!
The Supremes
This Very Strange Painting Immortalizes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s Freebie Luxury Vacations With a Republican Donor Artnet. The donor is Harlan Crow. Unmentioned in the headline is Leonard Leo, also in the painting. Musical interlude.
Republican Funhouse
Expelled Tennessee lawmakers both seeking seats again AP
Report: Florida officials cut key data from vaccine study AP
Not all Republicans feel ‘Ukraine fatigue,’ as GOP splits over continued aid Iowa Capitol Dispatch
Fox News Settles Defamation Case With Venezuelan Businessman NYT. On voting machines. There’s been a lot of serious work done on voting machines by Democrats, in the wake of Ohio 2024, for example. There’s also a lot of good academic work. AFAIK, the Trump campaign and its entourage relied on none of that, and went with its own cray cray lawyers and activists. So they not only couldn’t make their cases, plural — the real election interference was suppressing the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, in any case — they completely polluted the discourse, good job. If supporting (inherently hackable) digital voting isn’t a badge of liberal Democrat tribalism, it soon will be. So it goes.
Democrats Déshabillé
To Liberal Democrats, the FBI is just “anyone”:
Personally, I think the FBI should stop badgering Twitter with flagged tweets. Waste of time and money and looks bad.
Is that evidence the FBI is 'censoring' Twitter or Twitter is following FBI orders? Nope.
Anyone can badger Twitter if a TOS violation occurs, etc.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 9, 2023
Looks like the good Mehdi’s taking point on Taibbi. Ka-ching.
The Bezzle
Tackling the biggest fraud in US history – pandemic relief Christian Science Monitor. This is America. How else were we going to distribute the money?
Fintech founder parlayed connections for JPMorgan deal before fraud charges FT. When you read “founder,” think “fraudster.”
Police State Watch
What Happens When Your Social Media Photos End Up in the Hands of Police The Marshall Project. Cops make quota?
Abortion
Health secretary slams abortion pill ruling as ‘not America’ AP
Healthcare
Private Equity and Its Hospitals Washington Monthly
Regular old pneumonia treatment just got better. Inside Medicine (NL).
Our Famously Free Press
Twitter removes NPR’s ‘state-affiliated’ designation, replaces it with ‘government funded’ label FOX
Zeitgest Watch
Imperial Collapse Watch
Navy’s future HALO ‘hypersonic’ missile might not actually be hypersonic Defense Scoop
I may have found the most expensive McDonald’s ‘value’ meals in the country – here’s the proof The U.S. Sun (Re Silc).
Class Warfare
America Is Back in the Factory Business WSJ
As Tech Jobs Disappear, Silicon Valley Veterans Reset Their Careers WSJ
Delaware decision shows how private equity preys on vulnerable CEOs FT
Plant Fungus Infects Human in First Reported Case of Its Kind Science Alert. From the original: “The pathogen[ic fungus] enters the human body through damaged skin and the respiratory tract [oh] and can causes infection mostly in immunocompromised individuals [so that’s good news, then].”
The Money-Saving Power of Your Library Card WSJ
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Pspsps, here, kitty kitty…
What a beautiful cat.
Here’s a kitty in a box
https://twitter.com/edwereddie/status/1643103461330894853
My first thought on looking at that cat (mountain lion? I don’t know from big cats so much) was “I know she would take my hand off at the wrist, but that chin needs some skritches…”
Beautiful indeed.
Exactly. With me the danger is part of the attraction!
I was reading a scifi story recently that suggested that humans adopting other predators into our pack ended up taking off the edge of us as persistence predators. Wolves and wild cats were both predators as well and normally would trigger our fight or flight instinct. And yet our ancestors chose a third response and chose to make friends with them and eventually invited them in to share our fires and our homes. Those early wolves then helped us to hunt more effectively while those wild cats kept out mice eating out our stored food. We actually pack-bonded with these other wild species and maybe, just maybe, we became a better people because of it. If you doubt this, consider what we humans would be like if we never had the capability of pack-bonding with other species.
Fantastic that ‘Can We No Longer Believe Anything We See’ describes BellingCat as “an open source investigative organization”, thereby positioning itself as a media source that we should no longer read…
Quis custodet ipsos custodes?
Easter eggs and hidden surprises, pretty fun article. I find the one discussing the particular set of skills for the Qui-Gon Jinn character to be pretty instructive ! Not really a gamer so I didn’t get the other in game references.
Speaking of hidden meanings, while watching the worthy sequel Zombieland Double Tap and actually Laughed out Loud at one particular hidden or maybe subtle meaning. Spoiler alert. A main character is traveling to Babylon ( a supposed last refuge ); her young love interest is instead thinking about the somewhat famous tune from the early 2000s. The young love interest is a dim-witted, wanna-be who was not perhaps aware of the historical city. Just funny.
What’s the difference between an allusion, a reference and an easter egg? Arguably a book like ‘Finneagan’s Wake’ is wall to wall Easter eggs. In computer games, they used to be called ‘secrets’ and ‘cheats’, the former being hidden areas, put into games to rewards multiple play throughs (as the gaming industry shifted from the quarter hoovering arcade model to home systems), Super Mario brothers on the NES had many much such secret areas and short cuts. Cheats were originally codes inserted by developers for the sake of play testing, making the character immortal or otherwise over powered for the sake of ease of testing, they have gone out of fashion and these days it’s all about mods (at least for PC games) and/or exploits for the sake of speed running, wherein a weakness in the code is exploited to drop the player through and over vast stretches of space in the game.
That being said, the article (in excluding TV shows) missed my favourite Easter egg, from ‘Community’ which is best experienced in the context of the show itself, as it is spread over three seasons, spoiler alert -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19FMU3M7Jtk
> Arguably a book like ‘Finneagan’s Wake’ [sic]
Sorry, but that’s Finnegans
It’s application and intent as far as I know. For example, making the other crew in the dungeons and dragons movie game scene look just like the team from the old cartoon was an Easter egg. It had nothing to do with the plot. It was put there purely for aesthetic purposes to reward fans with something visually fun. Same with the details from most of the Marvel movies.
Things like a homage or an allusion do affect significant details and are relevant beyond aesthetics. A simple example would be the use of Rashomon like story telling in the “The Last Jedi” movie a few years back.
RE: Surprise Bitcoin Easter Egg Fuels Wild Satoshi Nakamoto Identity
Apple was always good at marketing. The Bitcoin Paper Easter Egg is marketing. Look how much everyone is talking about Apple the last week. Makes me want to smash my MacBook on the floor.
>Class Warfare
Strange set of links in Class Warfare section today, two articles from WSJ and one from FT. Vulnerable CEOs? Maybe this strikes me as odd since on road trip from FLL to Central PA I listened to The Devil’s Chessboard – by David Talbot .
The Dulles brothers were a piece of work, but more to the point, the book touched on how the NYT, WSJ, WaPo and other media outlets were manipulated by and collaborated with the CIA. There was one chapter which touched on the work by C. Wright Mills’ the “Power Elite” that seemed to be describing today’s political dynamics to a tee. And yet, when I look to who sets/frames the news for us, it’s the same newspapers or their digital forms. You would have thought that we would stop going to the same poisoned water to drink, but here we are…
(sure could use some of those billions sent to Ukraine to fix all the potholes on I95, I can only imagine what it would be like to take a high speed train instead of interstate highway)
I can only imagine what it would be like taking high speed rail in a country where the example of Norfolk Southern (while it may be freight, it has to do with rails and trains)) runs over regulations.
Chomsky said in the old days you could scan the back pages of the NYT to get the real news. Now even that is gone? I haven’t picked up a newsprint version of the paper in years.
I’m not sure about The Devil’s Chessboard but surely the CIA is a menace and always has been. Can’t we get rid of it?
Have you ever seen the movie, “The Good Shepherd” (with Matt Damon)?
It’s about the origins of the CIA. It’s a quiet movie, but probably better portrays the recruitment process better than more cartoonish, spy action flicks.
There’s a scene where the Damon character, a CIA agent/honcho meets with a mobster played by Joe Pesci…around the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
This scene (so epic it was worthy of a YouTube clip of its own) tells what the CIA really think of the rest of the citizens of the USA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbbxQqKXUIk/
“The rest of you are just visiting.”
Excellent clip, thanks, I’ll have to watch full movie
It also delves into academia’s early role in the recruitment of agents.
All star cast all around.
I have seen it. Of course all that Talbot stuff about the Dulles brothers is true–the long standing Kennedy CTs more dubious IMO.
Devil’s Chessboard is a great book for tagging the corporations in bed with the CIA.
Clip: “Just visiting”
Ah, the “melting pot”. If that’s a melting pot, don’t buy US steel.
Pip-pip!
ps Does the US make steel anymore?
“Twitter removes NPR’s ‘state-affiliated’ designation, replaces it with ‘government funded’ label”
NPR are not the only ones to be slapped with the ‘government funded’ label but the BBC as well and they are not happy. They said ‘We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.’ A licence fee that is mandatory and is a government tax in all but name. In the UK ‘the fee is an annual payment of £159 ($197) owed by any household with a television or device capable of receiving television broadcasts’ and contractors are sent around to people’s homes to see if they are paying this tax and if they are not, have to pay a very heavy fine. But for what the British pay, there is not much value for it based on what I see of them in Oz-
https://www.rt.com/news/574440-twitter-bbc-government-funded/
Now do the New York Times.
WORD.
Maybe “Compulsory UK license fee funded organization that prosecutes people who refuse to pay” might appeal to the BBC.
I avoid terrestrial TV and so no longer pay a license fee. BBC can do zero about it.
Do not watch anything anything they have produced post the 90s. Red Dwarf is about the most up to date thing of theirs that I like. Everything today is total drivel and their news coverage is total propaganda, of course.
Good nature shows?
Here in the US we have PBS and instead of a license fee the customers are periodically forced to watch Celtic Women and Josh Groban until they say uncle and cough up some money. Pre Reagan there was a lot more taxpayer support.
The on-air fundraising doesn’t really fund public TV or radio. Like Congress, they are wholly owned by corporate donors, er, advertisers.
It pays for the stations without which no shows. I believe the stations do kick in some small percentage for the content.
The BBC’s complaint us also inaccurate. Parts of it are very much directly funded by HMG. The World Service has a large but vague stipend from the Foreign Office for services rendered.
And remember, Broadcasting House had (and as far as is known, still has) a direct connection to the Underground line beneath (Bakerloo from memory but it could be Piccadilly), where Churchill and others could ride in the driver’s cab and alight there to appear on broadcasts. Supposedly the Cabinet War Rooms connect to the Charing Cross platforms. So very much of the deep state….
The BBC has a board who control the output of the station. They are appointed by the current government. So not only is the the BBC state media, but it is media controlled by the political party in power (coalitions are unusual in the UK political system). The situation is even worse than the Twitter label indicates.
Just in case it wasn’t clear, “prosecutes” translates into “put people in jail”. In the past mostly women, since they were the ones more likely to be at home during the day to answer the door to the police; not sure if that is still the case.
I refused to pay the licence for years (legally, since I didn’t watch TV), and got threatening letters from them on a more-or-less monthly basis. In the end they started offering on-line self-certification, which was a painless enough process for me to swallow my principles and confirm to them I didn’t watch TV.
(The principle being that I didn’t see why I should take the time and trouble to confirm to them that I wasn’t breaking the law; after all, nobody was asking me to confirm annually that I wasn’t keeping fighting dogs in breach of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, or permitting my home to be used for prostitution in contravention of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, or the thousands of other illegal things I could have been doing.)
My dad got into trouble with them when his post code was changed. He had a TV licence under his new post code, but not (obviously) under his old one. They actually sent inspectors round to his house; he explained the situation the first couple of times, and produced his licence,
The leading cause of death in my SoCal neighborhood of say 75-100 homes in the 60’s was a couple of fathers falling when putting up a tv antenna on a tilted roof, more proof that tv is no good for you.
Tucker had a segment about National Pubic Rash being labeled. Of course, they cried that they are independent and were shocked to be accused of being state run. They only get a fraction of funding from the US government, the editor in chief claimed. The fact that their programming is and has been for a long time utterly aligned with the ideology of the Democratic establishment was left to Tucker to explain.
Quite interesting that Government Funded is presumed to be a derogatory.
>>>Quite interesting that Government Funded is presumed to be a derogatory.
It should not be, but there a good reasons for that, today.
Back in the 1970s, if I was thinking at all about it, I would have assumed that PBS and NPR would have been relatively free from government interference. That was actually true, mostly. Today, with the intelligence agencies thorough penetration, not so much.
However, the rot started when Congress cut funding for the networks, which allowed the corporations, foundations, and the very wealthy to get influence and eventually, not control, but the ability to strongly influence hiring and policy.
The public’s individual donations also had some strong influence, due to the percentages, if nothing else, but now the Professional Managerial Elites and adjacent Credentialed Classes are the majority of the public’s donations. The working and lower middle classes’ desires means nothing really.
The wealth, influence, and control of the entire American Nation has devolved into a shrinking percentage of the population with the non wealthy, but still higher classes being almost exclusively college educated, increasingly of an ever smaller number of colleges and universities. Not even good philosophers or architects, just pushers of paper.
I’m a gosh darn socialist, but today’s political economy is not only extremely corrupt with a very incestuous shrinking class of ruling elites, its ideology is more akin to Victorian England’s proto-conservative American libertarianism AKA “neoliberalism” than to FDR’s New Deal; whatever my personal beliefs and desires, or what my goals are, the current regime will pervert it into some obscene hybrid grift with the security state’s wurlitzer attached.
Meanwhile, NPR and PBS will continue to mind screw my older relatives. If it was merely a difference of opinion, or even ideology, it would not truly matter. Instead, it is a mental violation. A deliberate kind of informational rape. Inside a constructed cage of the mind and made more horrible for the bars being invisible. This does make me a touch angry.
When do all the defense contractors get the “Government funded” label?
Strange painting with his circle of friends, hosted by Harlan Crow at his lavish resort. It’s just a couple of pals shooting the breeze, probably sharing a cigar and a glass of whiskey. I mean this isn’t the council establishing what to do with the Ring after all !?! \sarc
The supreme court has an image problem the longer this goes on. My “captain obvious” statement quote for this day has been met.
Well it’s not a Norman Rockwell, but at least they are not showing him wearing a blue dress. I suppose that this painting was a cheap way to butter up the old boy and I note that the three younger men are focusing on Clarence Thomas in that painting which would please him no doubt. The whole thing about Supreme Court Justices is kinda weird though and at least one of them had their own fan club. Seriously? More concerning to my mind is where some of them go around making these speeches to organizations and societies. That is not their job and why the hell are they on the speaker’s circuit anyway. Caesar’s wife would have some words of advice to them.
Nobody can really do anything to them, it seems. Abe Fortas resigned under threat of impeachment, and he’s the only one to lose his seat, ever. Thomas has always had a huge ego and pushed the envelope. A lifetime appointment wouldn’t do anything to discourage him. If wealthy people want to rub shoulders with SCOTUS, they will always find ways.
I’m surprised we don’t have sensitivity painters, as is now the fashion amongst publishers of deceased authors. Lots of works hanging out there, grievously offending, and getting away with it.
Perhaps, I’m just a little early.
At least Scalia didn’t get a painting of him and the cowhands romping at Cibolo Creek Ranch. Robes in the western context do strange things to people, just ask any Catholic priest when you can pry him away from the choir or members of the KKK.
Funny you should mention priests:
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/supreme-court-catholics
Methinks the FBI might be predominantly RC as well?
Didn’t the FBI heavily recruit among Catholic Irish in their early days?
Nasty stuff
https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/02/23/fbi-conservative-christian-hoover/
Roy Cohn Effect, again and again.
Freshly white, they were.
The Mormons wear their robes on the inside, kind of like their preference for incest. There was a long period after Vietnam where the Mormons had a near lock on the CIA middle management, as the only group who could speak a foreign language while being pure to the cause of the 0.01%. The need for ideological purity ala rainbow flags instead of race purity has done much to weaken their hold.
It’s interesting how different “cults” become mainstream in America.
tevhatch, I grew up a few minutes from Palmyra where it all started and spent a lot of time there growing up. It is fascinating to read about the Burned-Over District, and conditions that led to it, and Joe Smith’s antics. My ancestors moved up into the Finger Lakes & Wayne County(incl Palmyra) in the early 1800s and I’m grateful every day that they didn’t get sucked in. They were poor manual laborers(literacy was hit and miss) and would’ve been easy targets for the religious stuff and schemes that were going on. There had even been a Shaker settlement in my hometown, and my aunt’s house was down the road from where the Fox Sisters(Spiritualism) lived in Hydesville. Makes for interesting historical reading if you’re into that kind of thing.
The early 1800s were crazy pants. I enjoy that history. Joseph Smith was definitely an enthusiast. After reading No Man Knows My History I’ve come to think he was a brilliant con artist who was unaware of the way he was manipulated by his fellow travelers.
Yes, a con artist that was too lazy to do an honest day’s work like everybody else in the area. I still cannot believe people fell(still fall) for his scheme(s). A rock in at hat? Seriously? smh.
‘When EF Hutton talks, people listen’
The part that really got me was the statue of the Noble Native American. Paging Renato Ronaldo…
“And a glass of whiskey “.
I would like to see the next painting, “After many glasses of whiskey”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64955559
“On voting machines. There’s been a lot of serious work done on voting machines by Democrats, in the wake of Ohio 2024” That was Ohio 2004.
And by Republicans in Florida in 2000 as well. Tens of thousands of votes from Democrat candidates would disappear and then would re-appear for either Republican candidates or Republican-friendly candidates. I think that one region had 40,000 votes undergo this metamorphosis.
Neither party would ever agree to Lambert’s paper ballots hand counted in public standard as voting machines have too many tempting possibilities for fiddling. And reporting online adds another layer of hackable moments. One might hope for strict honesty by all parties, but a rough equality of hanky panky may be “good enough.”
Pursuing the individual voter has proven to be pointless except as a diversion from petty to industrial scale attempts to” make an election reflect the will of the people for some definition of people.
You’ve got that right. I remember I volunteered for the Dems in 1996 when MD first started using computer voting machines, and expressed concern at a meeting about whether they were vulnerable to hacking. I was invited by the chairman never to return after the meeting. LOL!
IIRC in Hawaii around that time we were using the scanner machine type where voters marked the ballots manually but the counting was electronic. I don’t think the full computer type was tried here until 2002 or so. Most people still used the old type of ballot but a computer student who tried the new system told me it was poorly designed. Hawaii stayed with the scanners for several elections after that but recently has switched to mostly mail-in ballots.
Ah but the Grauniad says that is precisely what the ‘far right” wants::
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/04/far-right-county-throws-out-voting-machines-with-nothing-to-replace-them
AS IF paper ballots “tallied by hand” IS NOTHING.
MO might be doing this as well.
What is up with The Guardian these days?
They stepped too far out of line when they dealt with Edward Snowden, and received a good kicking from the security services. They’ve been totally cowed ever since.
This article is still available on their website, for instance, despite being a complete fabrication.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy
However, their sports coverage is excellent,
Re: Tackling the biggest fraud
A handful of cases seeming to mostly involve theft of personal IDs (not that this isn’t bad) is “tackling the biggest fraud in US history”? What has become of these cases from 2020?
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/i-team-ppp-loan-recipients-take-cash-still-lay-off-tri-state-workers/2555601/
Devil’s Own Advocate
To properly come up with a catastrophe is tantamount to cracking a safe, you need all of the numbers of the combination to come together-if you’re missing one, forget it.
Gonna be 85 here today and the forecast shows sunny and in the high 60’s low 70’s the next 10 days, as close to paradise as it gets here temperature wise, i’ll remember stretches like this come August when its a hundred and hell for a week.
Meanwhile 7 million acre feet of water will be rather orderly melting out, the low hanging fruit here up to 5k is mostly gone, but there’s 9,000 more feet of High Sierra where the goods are stored.
The hope is this pattern continues and eventually Tulare Lake is chock-a-block full and flooding is on the minimal side in the best of all worlds plan, and so far-so good.
Been a winter like no other, so why not a finale in the guise of one last atmospheric river, and make it a warm one where it rains up to 11-12k.
No way, no how do our puny little dams hold back something liquid this way comes if that happens, with the only good news being that we would likely have days of advance notice that all hell is gonna break loose in Godzone on the fruited plain, GTFO!
It’s been dry in Florida. Added water to my pool yesterday and last night, which as Lambert knows, is doubling as my 20,000 gallon aquarium for a small handful of goldfish. Started with three and to my pleasure, they bred. Population grew to 28-30 (hard to count with certainty) but has now dwindled to 5 because a blue heron and a egret have discovered it’s a decent place for a spot of fishing (enough markings to know for certain they’re the same birds returning). Moreover, the pool’s frog population is also, way down. This survey is subjective (you use the tools you have) being based on eyeball Mk II scan plus the how loud nighttime croaking seems. Anyway, compared to your California, or even Texas with more than 7000 dams, Florida has about 15 dams plus many dikes. Instead of atmospheric rivers our concerns are the hurricanes flooding the land with deluges the soil cannot absorb and flatness of the terrain ensures won’t drain rapidly.
I’ve been tracking levels in Kaweah and other reservoirs since my return from the land of J G Boswell owned and operated pols. I like hearing that the lower elevation snow is making an orderly retreat and am hopeful that the worst of possible flooding only affects a certain proportion of the Tulare lake basin (one til now, unaffected due to activities). I have heard rumors that inexplicable and unpredictable shovel-related incidents have been considered.
One has to wonder if any crop in the basin will be productive given the inability of most farmers to plant due to rainy conditions. I expect the billboards demanding that the governor dam all rivers and prevent water from ever reaching the ocean will remain up due to the high costs of never appearing to waste a meme regardless of it’s stupidity…
We don’t need a deluge but some sprinkles would be nice. The ground is drying out quickly. The heavy snow and saturated soil brought down a lot of branches and trees. We are not nearly done with extensive hazard reduction burning that is required to keep a clear understory. With summer in the wind the air quality people and CalFire are going to shut the door on open burning before we are cleaned up.
Next up is endless weed eating. The grass grew three inches day before yesterday and another three inches yesterday. My neighbor was talking about a rent a goat business but around here that is just bait for mountain lions.
I did a burn pile today and could do them well into mid May, but they’ll probably not allow them that late.
Had a lot of trees and tree parts come down this winter, and the way the grasses are growing, it might be awhile before i’d want to weed whack, hate to do it twice.
Took a drive up Dry Creek Road in Tulare County and its always a keeper for golden poppies and was ok, but i’ve seen better.
The highlight this year on Dry Creek was fields of lupines on steep mountainsides, kind of a shimmering violet look. Never saw them displayed in such a manner there.
For golden poppies North Fork Road in Three Rivers was exceptional but only for a mile or so where the 2021 KNP Fire laid waste to the understory about 8 miles from 198, and the look of poppies interspersed with white rocks, gave it the appearance of quartz gold, do seek the treasure.
Day 1 of no masks in the hospital: walked through busy cancer center waiting room. Some patients have masks on, some don’t. I’d say it’s a 60 with-40 without. Cancer center check-in staff that interacts with every patient(or their carer/family member) that comes in: none of them had a mask on. Saw a nurse in gyn onc with one on and that gave me a little hope.
Thanks for the update, petal.
I was at Kaiser yesterday waiting for an mri along with a rotating half dozen patients. A couple of masked patients, nobody on staff was masked. Disappointing, but made me think my own mask was more important now.
“Norway Has Sent To Ukraine All-In-One Breaching Vehicles, Custom-Made For Breaking Through Russian Defenses”
So the Norwegian have shipped a pair of NM189 armored engineering vehicles to the Ukraine. For a front that is about a 1,000 kilometers long. OK then. My first thought was what would happen if it met a Russian Kornet ATGM or had a Lancet drone up the wazoo. But then I read that it was based on the chassis of a Leopard 1 tank – but I hope that it does not also have the armour of a Leopard 1 tank. There is not a piece of artillery in the Russian arsenal that does not have the capability of penetrating that armour. The guy that wrote this article – David Axe – wrote this article as if it was a pr puff piece for these vehicles but two vehicles are going to do nothing, even if mixed in with a bunch of tanks. If I was one of the four guys assigned to these vehicles, I would have the hatches open ready to bail out at the first hit, even at the risk of dropped grenades from drones.
Two vehicles seems hardly enough. How about four?
This is not going to turn into a Maxwell Smart ‘Would you believe a squadron of kiddy carts?’
Or this-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/aPbuhZO1LhXJ/ (37 secs)
It is, in principle, capable of digging itself in before being hit. Here’s a Russian version. Probably the original, UR-77 being from 1977 and NM189 being a version of Pionierpanzer 2A1 Dachs from mid 1980s. I doubt very much these engineering vehicles are expected to operate under direct enemy fire.
Also notice that Russians have one vehicle to dig the firing position and one vehicle to breach the minefield (behind the protection). While this would make a horrible Power Point presentation, in real life situation not having one multipurpose vehicle gives more tactical choices, keeps both vehicles smaller (more difficult to hit and also cheaper) and even if hit, it only removes half of the capability of the team. QED.
My failure for not reloading before posting a long comment (below). As you note, these things can’t work under direct fire, and I’ll add indirect fire is even worse, assuming someone is helping the targeting, as an aerial burst of shrapnel will just chew right through the thin tin on top.
Frankly, the article reads like a weird exercise in PR. NM189 is just the Norwegian designation for Pionierpanzer Dachs. AFAIK Canada also used to have some under the name of “Badger AEV” (Dachs means “badger” in German).
Germany promised 5 Dachse in Oct.2022. Here’s an archived copy in German, it lists “5 Pionierpanzer Dachs” under “Military support deliveries being prepared/carried out” (Militärische Unterstützungsleistungen in Vorbereitung/Durchführung).
https://web.archive.org/web/20221018232228/https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/krieg-in-der-ukraine/lieferungen-ukraine-2054514
As of today, 4 vehicles are reported as already “delivered” (gelieferte):
https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/krieg-in-der-ukraine/lieferungen-ukraine-2054514
And Norway’s whole stock of 19 are scheduled to be retired as the Norwegian army has already signed a contract for CV90 based replacements.
‘Puma’s Secret Garden: Study Reveals Sly Strategy of Nurturing Nature To Lure Prey’
The author seems to be anthropomorphizing. Large cats are aware that their scent and leftovers both attract and repel. Are we assigning ‘intention’ to pumas to ‘farm’ their prey?
Cats are also territorial (telling other cats to stay out, this is mine!) when it comes to hunting and laying down scent. Wouldn’t the carcasses staying within that hunting area be inevitable and incidental? Where’s the evidence this the puma’s ‘sly strategy’?
Apart from benefiting scavengers shortly after the death of the prey, how long does it take for a carcass to breakdown to the point of enriching the soil?
Here we compost some of four tree leaves and have a deep respect for what soil microbes can do to them to unlock the nutrients in that fibrous material. A carcass is another story with a much longer timeline. Are we agreeing that pumas farm prey as part of the cycle of life for which they have an understanding? How long does a puma live? (Google: 8-13 years in the wild). Would that be an innate understanding of carcass decomposition or more oral tradition around a campfire?/s Why is dog man’s best friend? Pumas have missed an opportunity; dog could have been working for pumas and eaten better. /s
Yeah, I really hated the headline. Gardening and farming aren’t the same activity and the intention shouldn’t be projected onto other apex predators.
You bring up a lot of interesting points. As for the point about how long it takes for a carcass to decompose, I looked on the net and the answer seems to be about five days so not long at all. Here is one such gruesome video that I found-
https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/whitetail-deer/video-deer-carcass-completely-decomposes-in-5-days (1:39 mins)
After there is nothing but skeleton left, other animals probably take some of those bones off.
For a nutrient to become available to a plant’s roots, it has to breakdown to a molecular level. The leeching would be slow and within a big cat’s turf, spread out. Would the process be observable to them? Innate over many generations or simply incidental? Something to do with how much territory a big cat can claim and defend?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still willing to believe in magic, but I’m too old not to require some evidence. I keep knocking at the on the back of the wardrobe but they won’t let me into Narnia.
It would not be observable to them as a process. But over time, if any mountain lions tended to do more of this than the other mountain lions, the plants within those particular mountain lions’ rangers might grow better and produce more food for the mountain lions’ prey animals than the plants in regions where mountain lions did not do this. And if so, those mountain lions who did this might be better fed by the better-fed plants in their range, and they might have more offspring to spread out and spread that habit over time, slowly out-reproducing the mountain lions who did not do this.
That’s just a plausible speculative way it could happen without any one mountain lion having to be aware of the process.
Here is another animal who has been found to be doing a version of this. Sloths.
https://www.natience.com/how-do-sloths-help-the-environment/
The cat’s feces and urine would do more good, that’s about the only effect I would expect from it’s prey.
Its pretty common for a mountain lion to stash a deer’s carcass in a tree after dispatching it, there being only 1 large animal that can get to it, bears.
I’d like to know what the details are on Boo-Boo seeking the treasure?
I thought about bringing up the subject of pumas vs. the feeding habits of other large cats, but I have a hard enough time staying on topic (to the consternation of the moderators), so I deleted it.
Norway Breaching Specialist Tanks (Forbes)
Cheap updated flails and crab tanks in mass would be better, but still useless at present conditions. This is just another way to get off the books a bit of corruption, of what would be useless equipment to NATO. Breaching tanks require complete suppression of counterfire, a luxury that NATO never really had against either the Soviet Union or Russia, and breaching is more or less not necessary against even 3rd tier armies like Saddam era Iraq. Further, the explosive rope method is rope-a-dope or soap-on-a-rope by MIC on national treasury.
Even if the breaching tank is invulnerable, with aerial mine deployment, right after the passing of the sweep the cleared path can easily be reseeded. This is one of the reasons why Russia has been happy, willing, and able to attrite Ukraine forces concentrated in urban areas rather than do the “mass tank sweeps in rural areas” that so many were expecting.
“You probably already have everything in your pantry”
The ham is in the freezer. The currant jelly is in the kitchen pantry. I’m more likely to slow-cook with Coke.
The juniper berries are at the store and they aren’t fresh. On that rare occasion when a recipe I’ve determined to follow requires juniper berries, I go to Sprouts in the bulk herb section, count out the exact amount of berries, and take it up to the cashier, who complains it barely registers on the scale. Is there anyone here who bulk buys juniper berries and if so, how are you using them? Just curious.
Also, what specifically makes mustard powder ‘English’? I use the deep yellow not-Chinese one.
Keeping our pantries full of everything we might need so we don’t have to make a special trip to the supermarket is what keeps those middle aisles* profitable.
*’Putting by’… formerly ‘women’s work’.
I laughed because I had all that in the pantry. We grow our own currants, and juniper is native so I always grab a baggie full while I’m out and about. Just picked up a fresh can of Colemans mustard yesterday for carolina sauce to go with a pork shoulder.
Not really a soda family, but we keep sprite and ginger ale on hand for when the kids feel dumpy and I want to give them some sugar water.
Feeling lucky to have a pantry and the know-how to use it.
Should add we use lots of juniper berries with game meat, both venison and ducks. Usually when we braise either with red wine.
Depending on your neighborhood, someone might be growing juniper. There’s a groundcover version that is popular. Those berries are used the same way.
The last patch of juniper was over by the Catholic church (one block away) and they had those removed about five years ago.
Thanks for the heads up; it’s not a flavoring I’ve had much experience with. Ditto on the ‘lucky’ part.
Juniper berries should be cured/aged before use.
Juniper berries are good in pickle brine, so I have some in the basement!
‘Tokyo ramen shop bans customers from using their phones while eating’
‘In March, he decided to ban customers from using their smartphones while eating during busy times, a move that became a hot topic of conversation on social media in Japan.’
LOL! Undoubtedly a ‘hot topic’ they read about on their phones. Ooooo, the irony was thick with this article. It hadn’t occurred to me that a restaurant owner might choose a noodle and cooking style that he hoped would get him a faster turnover rate on his limited tables. Ingredient as part of business strategy, but considering the cost of rent in Tokyo… profit margins at restaurants have always been small… except maybe in Santa Fe.
Can you imagine some (alleged) fast food owners trying to enforce such a ban on cellphones in the U.S.? I prefer slow food but the patrons there are even more obnoxious in their dining habits. They figure they paid for the privilege.
I think when the iphones first became popular some North American restaurants also noticed that customers were taking significantly longer to eat, also the taking pics of your food phenomenon. I’ve been trying to find the article but it’ll be quite dated by now. It was about the cost impact to the restaurant business model which really needs customers to eat, eat quickly, and git out, so as to make a profit.
Side note, I’ve noticed it’s now normal to be asked by the manager to leave. When making a reservation I’m routinely asked how long I intend to stay, and also told, even in advance, that I can only stay X minutes. And now I get them calling to confirm a week before and the day of that I’ll actually be there and on time. And have you noticed they have people roving the restaurants with tablets and making a point of eyeing how much you’ve eaten, marking it on their tablets? I think it’s to add pressure.
To be so rushed rather takes the joy out of dining out. The interesting thing is one benefit of the pandemic is that my cooking has gotten better than the restaurants, there’s now hardly a reason for me to pay money to eat subpar meals.
Where are you, Cetra Ess, that you’ve received this kind of treatment at restaurants? I haven’t seen any of what you describe. The closest I’ve gotten to something that feels like ‘the bum’s rush’ is for wait people to ‘clear the table’, scooping up empty plates as fast as they hit the tabletop and leaving the check. Not subtle. But I’ve also experienced that when there were few customers in the joint, by employees looking for something to do. Wouldn’t want the boss to see them just standing around.
Toronto. :)
Re: Private Equity.
Over the past few years four of my medical providers have been bought out.
First was the eye doctor by Myeyedoctor with over 200 locations
Second was our physical therapist who moved to IvyRehab with over 500 locations
Third was the dentist which I could not trace*
Forth was the gastro place by GastroHealth with over 264 locations
* My previous dental hygienist was gay and was no longer there at my last appt.
He was gay? What does that have to do with it?
Because they dumped him upon taking over.
Journalist Pavel Zarubin’s interview with Vladimir Putin, 25 March 2023 (abbreviated transcript) Gilbert Doctorow
I’d not be worried about the DU from the 120mm tank rounds. It’s the 25mm and 30mm rounds on the American supplied troop movers that will spray up the countryside.
So sad that we play politics with kids’ lives. pic.twitter.com/XCIGZD9ap9 — Sanjiv K Gandhi (@SKGandhiMD) April 10, 2023
Does anyone else think the notice to “not go to the hospital” if you are feeling unwell is so North American? WTF are we suppose to go in such a case?
Go die.
Because markets…
It’s all explained in the most recent edition of the NewSpeak dictionary.
Hospital = forced donation point for private equity profits
There are many other terms whose definitions have recently been updated:
Medicine = a profit center for large pharmaceutical companies, no longer regulated
Regulation = a payment scheme to provide future enrichment for impoverished bureaucrats
Primary = selection by the party with democratic theatrics
Journalist = governmental propaganda scribe
BBC License fee = a fee that was created to guarantee the BBC’s independence, but which is now a tax because the government appoints the BBC director general
Democracy = whomever the US elite class can rape and pillage
Elites = a parasitical class no longer chosen by what was previously called merit
Merit = old boy network, family connections, wealth.
Banks = a place it is unsafe to leave your money
Money = tokens of exchange people may exchange for their life energy, but may only freely use in quantities under 1000 euros
Democrats = left wing of the war-hawk party
Republicans = right wing of the war-hawk party
I recommend buying the latest edition of the NewSpeak dictionary*. It is eye opening.
(* : only available as Samizdat)
JTF: I’d be trademarking these pal.
We are supposed to go home and keep watching episodes of “The Twilight Zone”.
Re McDonald’s and “value”–my impression is that fast food, that was so dominant a feature of late 20th cent US, is on the wane. They are having trouble getting employees and now charging high prices for the same mediocre food. The former hurts convenience and the latter affordability. A mistaken impression?
`Fast food`: you are lucky to get one, nigh impossible for both. I`ve had to wait 15 minutes for an order at McDonald’s – how people with a half hour lunch and 10 minute or more travel time from work are supposed to eat is beyond me. It should take care of “loitering” diners, though.
We never eat at McDonald’s, being vegetarian and also they suck, but we did get 3 large fries and 3 milkshakes on the road recently, and it was $18 bucks. And it sucked too!
I always try, when traveling, to have a small cooler in the car.
Then stop at markets along the way for cheese, bell peppers, carrots, apples, crackers, lunch meat or whatever else would fit in there.
Then you can look for an out of the way place to pull over and grab something to eat.
Cheaper and probably better for you.
“Tackling the biggest fraud in US history – pandemic relief” Christian Science Monitor.
I saw an article about a large increase in bankruptcy filings. In addition to all of the other factors, I wondered how much had to to with shell companies created to take advantage of pandemic relief.
The highlight mass shooting so far this week:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/us/louisville-kentucky-shooting.html/
I call it the highlight because there have beene several since Friday, like 5 shot dead in Mississippi, that didn’t make the NY Times, etc.
Continue to pretend that the cumulative effect of death, trauma, grief, and injury has no effect on worker participation rates.
Well… I have been one of those asking “where is the rage?” – looks like we’ve found it!
Now I guess the next question is, who is going to channel this rage? And into what? I’m not sure Trump is the person to do it. I know Biden isn’t. Pretty sure that all the MSM/librul copium about the Ukraine war won’t help. I wonder what happens when gas prices continue to rise due to OPEC cuts, food prices stay high or go higher, we get rolling blackouts due to the same things we had last year, and we continue to see interest rate increases? That seems like an awful confluence of events to me.
One possible mitigating factor will be how many people are sick. I just visited my oldest at her college campus. Sitting outside enjoying a coffee with them on a bright morning, two out of every three students were coughing and appeared visibly ill. Some garishly so because of the make-up they had applied over sickly pale faces. My kid tells me everyone at her school is sick. None of that is scientific of course. But as anecdata goes, it paints a grim picture. I wonder if the cruel visage displayed on the American Ozymandias will be Biden or Harris or some wastrel we have yet to meet on the national stage?
Hey, Hey!* I’m a wastrel. Don’t lump me in with those of THAT ilk.
Pip-Pip!
* ref (sort of): https://youtu.be/AecCL9XfLG4
I was following a link in a response above and saw the headline. First thought. that’s that school shooting. Uh no, isn’t Louisville in another state? (I am not from the USA). Then, oh lord another one!
“France denies military presence in Ukraine”
Well they would, wouldn’t they? You had French special forces running around Syria for years and they were in Libya as well. Why wouldn’t they also be in the Ukraine doing their part for Project Ukraine? Likely that a few of those NATO officers killed in that bombed headquarters in the Ukraine the other day were French.
Don’t know if it is true but Alex Christoforou was saying that Musk had restored Russian sources back on Twitter again like RT, the Kremlin, their Defence Ministry, etc. If so, maybe he is seeing the writing on the wall.
Some people might be interested in this. A few of my artist friends have turned me on to ethical uses of AI with their art. In this case, improving the resolution of older images that they had lost the master files for, so that they can repurpose them into new works. Since so many on NC are interested in photos, I figured this would be a useful thing to share.
Human beings with a sense of ethics showed you some tips on how to use AI.
Fixed that for ya…
RE: What color were Neandertals?
I believe the correct answer is, “Who cares?”.
Unless of course you are a 21st century race-obsessed USian with an axe to grind.
One of the most refreshing things about reading ancient history is that while ancients sure came up with a lot of reasons to bash each other over the head, the skin color of the enemy didn’t seem to be one of them. It’s almost never mentioned, and on the rare occasions it is, it’s more as a statement of fact than anything else.
The idea of race sure does seem to be a 19th century Western construct designed by capitalists to keep different immigrant communities at each others’ throats so they could be more easily exploited. While it isn’t specifically about that subject at all, the book Railroaded does a good job of explaining this dynamic in the context of the rise of the railroad industry.
Skin cancerologists might care. Vitamin D synthesis-ologists and metabolismologists might care.
But they would not think in “race-color” terms. They might think in terms of ” hue/tone/value” of skin pigment.
New Not-So-Cold War
Seth Cropsey finally figured it out: A global proxy war: Ukraine is now the center of our Eurasian competition with Russia and China
Just for shits and giggles I checked the cost and requirements to obtain a concealed weapons permit for Sonoma County and neighboring Lake County.
I did volunteer work in the Sonoma County Jails for a decade and a half and to do so I went through the same background check sheriff’s deputies do, the CCW requirements are tougher than that and now include 3.5 hours with an approved board certified Psychiatrist.
Total cost @$3,000.
In Lake County it’s the background check, an interview with a senior sheriff’s deputy and a proficiency test with your weapon.
Total cost @ $300.
If I lived in Vermont no license would be needed and never has been.
Due to my physical condition I would very much like to be able to discreetly carry the means of self defense, however I simply can not afford the cost.
Sigh, since the earliest days we have record of the right to bear arms has always been based on class and I’m not classy enough to qualify in Sonoma County
Could be worse, the right to carry use to have a hard skin tone test too. There’s still a soft one, but it gets blurred with the class line. I guess Vermont is too expensive to have too many of the wrong class?
There may be just enough “deep country” type places in Vermont to harbor some people with the “wrong color neck” from a PMC point of view. Gun control laws would probably be written to try targetting people based on a neck tone test. But it might be hard to pass such laws in Vermont.
3.5 hours with an approved board certified psychiatrist? And three thousand dollars to pay for it all? The average wage in this country is ~$53,000.
Nah, this is a class, and indirectly a race, thing. I think Sonoma does have a bit of a racism problem although I can’t prove it. They don’t want the proles having any guns.
If Steve Jobs really is the inventor of bitcoin, then a very huge ugly skycarbon cloud will forever shadow his legacy. Bitcoin is a very major sin against life and survival on this planet.
Because some dev linked a pdf buried inside a file system that means Steve Jobs invented Sh1tCoin? He didn’t even invent the Mac, or anything else I’m aware of. He was smart but please, and I’m not aiming that at you sg, but at the speculators spreading this BS.
Follow the money. / ;)
Inside the CEI system pushing brands to endorse celebs like Dylan Mulvaney
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/inside-the-woke-scoring-system-guiding-american-companies/
adding:
““Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”
Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”
Huh. Nothing in that “positive contribution to society” about about good wages for workers, good benefits for workers, or safe working conditions. PR instead of good wages. / ;)
Fraud: ‘How else were we going to distribute the money?’
There is an Elvis Costello song that which starts with
– Oh, I used to be disgusted
– But, now I try to be amused.
I no longer have to try and here’s the aforesaid antidote: https://youtu.be/Ab_IO-SlK5w