Playing the micro.blog photo challenge game.
Day 1: Switch
Trite Ukraine musings
~ 10:52 EST — There are many other angles, but I buy the analysis that Putin’s ego and attempting to exploit Soviet-era World War II pride and shame (if not subsumed into it himself)) is part of it.
When I visited my sister studying in Moscow the most common question we were asked by Russians was if we were related to a famous WWII General with the same family name.
That sister and another now live in Vienna, Austria.
I’m reminded that Slovakia — between them and Ukraine — is not a large country. With missiles falling in Western Ukraine, they’re as close as if they were on the far North side of the Adirondacks back home and bombs were hitting Northern New Jersey or so.
This doesn’t put them in the middle of it, and isn’t meant to imply any personal ownership or intimate knowledge or expertise with regards to the Ukraine conflict, but my knowledge of that geography as well as our home geography reminds me of the privilege of sense of scale and remove that I and most of my fellow US citizens have. That said: With the news that Russian and Ukrainian forces are battling over Chernobyl, and the worries that artillery hits might disturb and spread radioactive dust over the region, suddenly Vienna doesn’t seem far enough away.
~ 1200 EST — From a friend who lived in Russia in the early aughts: “There’s all this talk about going after the Russian oligarchs. I’m certainly for it, but I think we should strike the modifier ‘Russian’ and go after all oligarchs.” Amen. (Later I was reminded this friend and Putin were once in the same room together, along with George W. Bush, in St. Petersburg. Nothing high-powered; simply because of a program he was involved in, he became part of an obligatory audience and backdrop for them.)
~ 14:00 EST — I’m reminded my mother visited the Soviet Union as part of an extended student tour, and her visit included Kiev and “the Ukraine” at that time. (I’m surrounded by family and friends with various Russian and Soviet life experiences, echoes of the cold war influence on the boomer generation in various ways and not deep hereditary ties, really.)
I remember when the BBC News web site was dense (text dense) and full of often dry but fascinating news from all corners of the world. Now it is barely smarter than CNN (which hasn’t gotten smarter) and even less dense.
We visited the trains at the United States Botanic Garden this past weekend. Kiddo was mesmerized, nearly solemn (head-on shots we exclude from the public web, as best we can).
Dad might’ve liked it too.
A great small loss
I just lost a series of images I thought I had elsewhere. They were of a friend in his family homestead’s kitchen, setting to work on some writing. Nothing dramatic or technically special, but documentation of a man, set to work he was good at, in a place he loved. A small tragedy to be sure, but a tragedy nonetheless. There is now a little bit of fresh mourning this morning.
It seems to me to have been a pretty horrible year. Still can’t get over what we allow to happen. Shit happens, but too much of this is preventable… and what of the torment we bring upon our children?
… when I don’t tell anybody anything, but they catch-up, and they say “that’s crazy,” which is to say they’re telling me that I am not crazy.
Living in the rotor wash
The Presidential Fleet is flying lower than normal over NE Capitol Hill again (others fly this low on occasion, the medical trauma choppers heading to Children’s and Washington Hospital Center, the police choppers). The airspace tracking Twitter accounts seem to validate our visceral experience - and supply attribution.
Crichton and Gibson are right, again
Been sorting out how to “come back online” (sort of literally, more metaphorically) for a while. Haven’t been entirely unplugged, but came the closest in a while over Thanksgiving.
Dialing back into our new Crichton-Gibson-esque reality with the Omicron strain and international spat over intellectual property.
Figuring out which blogging software/CMS I might want to use for another project. Micro.blog would actually cut it, maybe. If it weren’t for some other wrinkles-but Hugo might be the choice.
It’s not a vacation that’s kept me away.
This (the rest of this) is a fucking war
- MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. — “the scenario which was the least closest fit to the latest empirical data happens to be the most optimistic pathway known as ‘SW’ (stabilized world), in which civilization follows a sustainable path and experiences the smallest declines in economic growth—based on a combination of technological innovation and widespread investment in public health and education.” (Vice)
- How the West’s disasters are outpacing its climate action (New Statesman)
- Flooding in Europe, in Pictures (New York Times)
- Climate Changed Is Blamed for Worsening Flooding in Europe (New York Times)
- EU, China Unveil Sweeping Plans to Cut Greenhouse-Gas Emissions — ‘“Our current fossil-fuel economy has reached its limit…”’ (Wall Street Journal)
- Europe Plans Aggressive New Laws to Phase Out Fossil Fuels (New York Times)
- Planes dump water on Siberian wildfires as residents plead for help — “The Siberian fires have raised fears about the permafrost and peatlands thawing, releasing carbon long stored in the frozen tundra. Meanwhile, ash from the fires could blanket nearby snow cover, turning it dark so that it absorbs more solar radiation and warms even faster.” (Reuters)
- Parts of the Amazon Rainforest Are Emitting Carbon Dioxide (New York Times)
- Brazil’s Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals (Mongabay)
- Wildfires Are Intensifying. Here’s Why, and What Can Be Done. (New York Times)
- E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show — ‘“In areas where there’s heavy fracking, the data is starting to build to show there’s a real reason for concern,” said Linda Birnbaum … The presence of PFAS, she said, was particularly worrisome. “These are chemicals that will be in the environment, essentially, not only for our lifetimes, but forever,” she said.’ (New York Times)
- Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office (Intercept)
- Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House — ‘Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.’ (Guardian)
- Explosive Interview Directly Implicates Donald Trump in Tax Scheme — ‘Jennifer Weisselberg’s claims would directly tie Trump to what a New York criminal indictment described as a corporate scheme to pay executives “in a matter that was ‘off the books.’”’ (Daily Beast)
- Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election, according to Mark Milley book — “Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.” (Cable News Network)
- “You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran (New Yorker)
- America Punishes Only a Certain Kind of Rebel (New York Times)
- The Left Needs Free Speech — “I would support free speech even if it wasn’t a tactical necessity right now, because I don’t think I have a lock on all the truth in the world. But the fact is, given American realities, where almost half the electorate voted for Donald Trump and large numbers don’t even believe in evolution, no one needs it more than the left. It’s messy, it’s contradictory, it means living with insults and stupidity and even, sometimes, evil and pain. Fortunately, your enemy is in the same position. That may be as good as it gets." (Dissent)
- Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Just a Friend’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57 — ‘“I’m going to be Biz Markie until I die,” he said. “Even after I die I’m going to be Biz Markie.”’ (New York Times)
- Biz Markie Dead: Rapper Had a Hit With ‘Just a Friend’ (Variety)
Missing the high desert hard right now.
Jeito, jeito, jeito.
I cannot help but like Oblivion better
The Red Hand Files - Issue #158 — “Not a question but just thank you for actually loving my favourite female poet, Stevie Smith (issue #157). ‘Oblivion’ has always been my story.” (Nick Cave)
I’m not sure a poem has spoken to me more in the past couple of years.
A link post is overdue.
Tides are rising, but are our boats floating?
- Quiz: Are You Being Nice Enough About the Climate Apocalypse? ❧ “The world is on fire! But let’s talk about your tone, okay?” (Current Affairs)
- Our climate change turning point is right here, right now (Guardian)
- The ocean is full of tiny plastic particles – we found a way to track them with satellites (Attention to the Unseen)
- Heatwaves and drought are killing trees at an alarming rate (Attention to the Unseen)
- Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse (New York Times)
- ‘This Is What Bipartisanship Looks Like’: Vicious Fire Tornado Caught on Film in California — “Climate policy isn’t about imagining a spectrum from left to right and finding the sweet spot in the middle. It’s a zero-sum battle with physics.” (Common Dreams)
- Chuck Schumer Says He Doesn’t Consider Gas “Clean Energy” (New Republic)
- Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming (BBC News)
- Pope reappears after surgery, backs free universal health care (Reuters)
- Campaign to Rein in Mega IRA Tax Shelters Gains Steam in Congress Following ProPublica Report (ProPublica)
- Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves — “How workers’ retirement savings are enriching billionaires and, in every way imaginable, financing the apocalypse.” (Daily Poster)
- The South, Slavery & the Lost Cause — Jeffery Robinson (Alternative Radio, 2017)
I don’t think I’ve cried more in the rest of my life than I have in the past two years. For the good and the bad.
Finally
The Capitol Fence Comes Down (HillRag)
The footprint of the fencing was reduced to the Capitol Square itself the weekend of Mar. 13 and 14th. Matthew visited the Capitol Grounds Friday with his 22-month son. The family lives nearby, and said that the Capitol Grounds are part of the neighborhood. “I felt a little bit of emotion,” he confessed of the moment he saw the fence dismantled. He said he felt lucky to witness such historic moments, but views the future with a touch of cynacism [sic].
“I appreciate the eventual response to the insurrection, but also feel like I see a lot of security theatre in this town. So I wonder what’s next? When you put up walls and you shut things down, and you do it for what I think is way longer than necessary, you set a precedent. And I’m not sure we’ve rolled anything back –we’ve just paused,” he said.”
Fight greed
- Opinion: Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back — “America’s test, therefore, has come down to the question of honesty, honor and survival. Can we overcome corporate greed and a broken political system to save our nation and our world?” (CNN)
- June Was Hottest on Record for North America, Fourth Hottest Globally (New York Times)
- Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming (BBC News)
- We Are Not Ready — “On the climate crisis and other hyperobjects” (Charlie Warzel - Galaxy Brain)
- Biden Defends Ending a War He’s Not Fully Ending (David Swanson: Let’s Try Democracy)
- Biden Drafting Executive Order to Promote ‘Right to Repair’ (PCMag)
- Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s Partnership Did Not Survive Trump — “…He relies on two internal metrics, known internally as GFW, Good-for-the-World, and CAU, Cares-about-the-world. Facebook constantly polls its own users on whether they saw Facebook as one or both of those things. Both the numbers plummeted, and remained low, after the revelations about Russian election interference and data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica. For years, they failed to rise, no matter how many promises Facebook made to do better and how many new security programs the company started.” (New York Times)
- Tucker Carlson sought interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim (Axios)
- Delta variant said to be far more widespread than federal estimates — “The reality on the ground is likely much higher because states and private labs are taking weeks to report testing results to the CDC.” (POLITICO)
Rough, with a side of sweet
It’s been a rough couple of weeks, and this and subtweeting the nature of my sleep interruptions is how I vent.
But there are good things too, I wish felt like I could share them fully on the open Internet. My kiddo is into making dinosaur noises and I’ve got a sweet video of it from this morning. He seems to be on the tail end of this bout of HF&M.
Inconvenient truth
- War on Science Persists Within Biden EPA as Staffers Allege Chemical Reports Altered (Common Dreams)
- Climate Change Drove Western Heat Wave’s Extreme Records, Analysis Finds (New York Times)
- I fucking hope so. (Keten Joshi on Twitter)
- Erik Prince Planned to Create Private Army in Ukraine: Exclusive (Time)
- Campaign to Rein in Mega IRA Tax Shelters Gains Steam in Congress Following ProPublica Report (ProPublica)
- The Rise and Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper (Intercept)
- The Tech Cold War’s ‘Most Complicated Machine’ That’s Out of China’s Reach (New York Times)
- Trump files class action lawsuits targeting Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube over ‘censorship’ of conservatives (Washington Post)
- Iceland tried a four-day work week. It was an overwhelming success (ZME Science)
- Culture, History and Economics: Louis Proyect & Harvey Pekar Present ‘The Unrepentant Marxist,’ An Extraordinary Graphic Novel Memoir (Washington Babylon)
- Local: Rudy Giuliani suspended from practicing law in D.C. court (Washington Post)
- Local: Capitol Fence to Come Down Starting Friday (HillRag)
- Local: “We need a mural for Gil Scott Heron” (Popville) Anyone got space?
I hate quoting Al, but whatever his acquiesence to other inconveniences, he was right about this one and it is among the many things that speak to the true inherent corruption of the whole fucking system.
Foot in mouth about Hand, Foot and Mouth
At the end of last week my wife and I were congratulating ourselves for missing a Hand, Foot and Mouth outbreak at our daycare. But, by Saturday morning it was clear something was off about the kiddo and a rocky weekend was underway. By Saturday afternoon, blisters were visible. By Sunday he had broken out and he had a fever.
Luckily he kept eating, drinking enough to not get dehydrated and children’s Tylenol and Motrin do their thing fairly well. Sleep came hard from the irritation of the rash and an incessant fusillade of neighborhood fireworks, with near professional grade barrages lasting for hours, going past midnight. After hours of trying to console him in his room, we brought him into our bed and we all slept, some.
Today we measured no fever, but the blisters continued to break out and cause havoc. Sleep still did not come easy.
It’s been an exhausting weekend with no bandwidth for catching-up on anything, let alone for relaxing.
This—these few words—are the extent of the “breaks.” I hear him awake again and crying despite being exhausted himself.
I understand this is not an exceptional hardship in the panoply of parenting challenges. It is merely another first for me, and it is wrapped in skating on the edge of burnout, and limited ability to get the kind of childcare help we’d normally have the privilege to tap because of the pandemic and other circumstances. So, I’m just kvetching.
Living nightmares
- Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) — “We are now living our ancestors’ nightmares, and it didn’t have to be this way” (Guardian)
- Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat — ‘It’s not just camp days that have changed; with climate change, nights don’t cool down as much. … Fans at night used to be enough to cool both cabins and campers. “About 10 years ago we noticed this was no longer the case,” and they installed air-conditioning in the cabins … after a “particularly brutal summer.”’ (New York Times)
- Climate change has gotten deadly. It will get worse. (Washington Post)
- Edinburgh flooding: Half of July rain fell in one hour (BBC News)
- Teaching ecology to, building habitats with disadvantaged children: ‘You’ll be amazed at how many animals arrive’ — “A charity worker says the children she teaches about the environment seem increasingly concerned.” (BBC News)
- Local: Access To D.C.’s Cooling Centers Was Limited Last Week, Despite Heat Emergency (DCist)
I’m sitting in a blacked-out room with a sick child clutching to me, listening to the world explode around us. That’s got to be a metaphor for something.