1/. Bill McKibben with a realistic look at where our climate is going......
He also delves into the Hormuz issue and how that is driving many countries to stop being dependent on fossil fuels.
And yes, we are going to have a horrible year of a "Super" El Nino.....
Every once in a while I have to snap out of the hypnotic grip of the bizarre news cycle and remind myself—and you—that there’s something even more important underway than the obvious mental and moral decline of the president: the relentless rise in the temperature of the planet. So here’s my latest occasional update from the physical world, and I fear the news is not good.
Let’s begin with the immediate past, and stay close to home, because the U.S. has been the center of some of the most extreme meteorological action on planet earth recently. Consider our winter: though it was chilly in the Northeast, if you averaged the temperature across the lower 48 it was the second-hottest winter on record. Thats because nine states had their hottest winter ever and five their second-hottest. As Andrea Thompson pointed out in Scientific American, “nowhere in the U.S. had a record cold winter this year. Nowhere even came close.”
2/. Ashley Padilla is a new SNL cast member, and really funny. Five minutes.
3/. Trump as Mr Green.....he's too stupid to appreciate what he's done....
George Monblot in the Guardian.....
Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive. Fossil fuel companies bankrolled his presidential campaign to stop the transition in its tracks. But when you back a volatile narcissist, unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you shouldn’t expect to control the outcome.
4/. The continuing saga of Dementia Donnie.....
5/. Interesting story, and it looks like the Democratic elites haven't learned a damn thing.
We're doomed......
When the Democratic party’s governing body adjourned its meeting on Saturday in New Orleans, supporters of Palestineand an end of the genocide in Gaza had few reasons to celebrate. The Democratic National Committee had refused to give any ground to the large majority of the party’s voters with distinctly negative views of Israel.
Last summer, a Quinnipiac Poll found that 77% of Democrats agreed that “Israel is committing genocide”. Last month, an NBC poll found that 67% of Democrats felt more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, compared with 17% who felt more sympathetic to Israelis.
But the DNC continues to operate as if fully sealed off from the party’s voters on such matters. When the national meeting got under way on Thursday, the party’s resolutions committee proceeded to quickly discard a pair of resolutions critical of Israel.
6/. A funny SNL......5 minutes...."Husbands"
7/. Ever heard of the Bilderberg group that meets once a year?
Probably not, because the billionaires who own the media don't want you to know.
If you did, you might think the world is run by a secretive group of elites and oligarchs.....kind of the Epstein class.
The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.
Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.
8/. I know it's over a week ago, but stretch your memory about Kristi Noem's husband......
Sarah Sherman being truly weird, and funny! Five minutes.....
9/. Think back to 2015......if the elite Democrats hadn't fixed the primary for Clinton we would have never had Trump.
And it would have been President Bernie.....
Bernie Sanders has sounded an alarm over the US economy, warning “the worst is yet to come” unless workers overcome a “ruling class” of billion
The US senator spoke at a rally in Manhattan on Sunday alongside Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, who cautioned that artificial intelligence was “coming for human jobs” amid mounting concern over the technology’s rapid development.
As the pair headlined the launch of Union Now, a new drive to boost labor unions across the US, Sanders issued a bleak assessment of the consequences if workers fail to organize against billionaires like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Jeff Bezos, executive chair of Amazon; and Donald Trump, the US president.
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” he declared, citing pushes from billionaires like Musk to invest in robotics and AI to replace workers, and Bezos, who recently announced an effort to raise $100bn to buy and automate manufacturing companies.
10/. Black Snape [Harry Potter] goes on Weekend Update.......quite amusing.....4 minutes....
11/. The Military-Industrial complex is in deep trouble......they are obsolete..
“History is littered with great power militaries that looked in the mirror every day and told themselves that they were the best in the world — until they got popped,” the former Pentagon official Michael Horowitz told me. “This is the time where danger lights should be flashing for a great power like the United States, if we take history as a guide.”
As soon as the first day of the war, when Iran retaliated against unprovoked American and Israeli strikes by targeting civilian infrastructure around the Gulf, the battlefield of this conflict looked different. It didn’t take long for Iran to deploy its “Hormuz weapon,” attacking civilian energy infrastructure and attacking commercial oil tankers and mining the strait and taking the world’s fossil-fuel economy hostage.
12/. Tom Tomorrow nails it again......
13/. Americans are bypassing traditional medicine, which isn't keeping up with GLP-1's......
Interesting story.....
IN NOVEMBER 2017, on a bike ride to pick up her daughters from day care in Portland, Ore., Laurel Schmidt was hit by a car and tossed headfirst over her handlebars. She walked away with a bruised elbow and a headache that, over the next few days, became excruciating. She was in her mid-30s at the time. Her suffering didn’t meaningfully abate for nearly 10 years.
Ms. Schmidt was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and severe postconcussion syndrome with no cure. Frequently dizzy, with her vision impaired and her memory faltering, she felt as if she were living inside a snow globe, she said, constantly “shaken up.”
She no longer trusted herself to cook, out of fear she’d forget to turn off the stove. She stopped driving after she noticed she couldn’t register traffic light changes quickly enough. Most days, she’d hide away in a dark room, seeing her children for only short periods of time.
14/. Jack Black as a truly weird AirBNB host......4 minutes....
15/. Thomas Edsall on how the real danger of AI and social media is to rot our brains, taking away our ability to reason.
Scary and you can see it in young people.....
As I was gathering material on the absence of young people at anti-Trump demonstrations, I came across evidence of powerful technological forces weakening persistence and cognitive tenacity across the board.
Most interesting, the most immediate danger posed by artificial intelligence may not be the futuristic moment when A.I. becomes so smart and so independent of human control — in other words, conscious — that it takes over politics, economics and the social order.
Instead, it may be the current power of A.I. to undermine persistence, curiosity and personal effort, encouraging in their place growing passivity and indifference, that poses the more proximate threat. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/opinion/trump-protest-ai-phones-social-media.html?smid=nytcore-
16/. A "nice" TV series, Kevin Kline and Laura Linney star in "American Classic", four stars from the Guardian.
A combination of Ted Lasso and Schitts Creek......
Ah, the roar of the greasepaint – the smell of the crowd! Who doesn’t love the theatre? Or at least the idea of the theatre. Not the fact of the theatre – spending a fortune on a ticket, getting dressed up and going into town, either hungry or with too early a dinner inside you, trying to suspend enough disbelief to engage with Actors doing Big Acting in front of you when you’re too used to Small Acting watched from the sofa in front of a streaming platform. Then home too late to recover properly before bed.
It’s not just me. I know it isn’t.
But I defy even my fellow philistines not to fall in love, even if just a little bit, with American Classic, a new light comedy created and written by Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/apr/11/american-classic-review-kevin-kline-laura-linney-comedy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
17/. A David Attenborough story about a family of gorillas in Rwanda......five stars from the Guardian.....netflix....
The most famous sequence in all of wildlife film-making happened 48 years ago. During the filming of Life on Earth – the groundbreaking BBC show that set the blueprint of nature programming as we know it today – David Attenborough crept through the forests of Rwanda, and unexpectedly found himself being playfully set upon by a family of gorillas. As they clambered over him, Attenborough turned to camera and said: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”
Almost half a century on, the sequence still has the power to give you goosebumps. This is possibly why it has formed the backbone of a new documentary. A Gorilla Story is a much starrier affair than its predecessor – it was directed by the Oscar-winning James Reed and boasts Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer – but its conceit is fascinating: after all this time, how are those same gorillas doing?
Today's mistress joke
A husband and wife were having dinner at a very fine restaurant when this absolutely stunning young woman comes over to their table, gives the husband a big kiss, says she'll see him later and walks away.
His wife glares at him and says, "Who the hell was that?"
“Oh," replies the husband, "she's my mistress."
“Well, that's the last straw," says the wife. "I've had enough, I want a divorce."
“I can understand that" replies her husband, "but remember, if we get a divorce, it will mean no more shopping trips to Paris, no more wintering in Barbados, no more summers in Tuscany, no more Infinities and Lexuses in the garage and no more yacht club. But the decision is yours."
Just then, a mutual friend enters the restaurant with a gorgeous babe on his arm. "Who's that woman with Jim? " asks the wife.
"That's his mistress," says her husband.
“Ours is prettier," she replies.......
Today's counseling joke....
After 35 years of marriage, a husband and wife came for counseling.
When asked what the problem was, the wife went into a tirade listing every problem they had ever had in the years they had been married.
On and on and on: neglect, lack of intimacy, emptiness, loneliness, feeling unloved and unlovable, an entire laundry list of unmet needs she had endured.
Finally, after allowing this for a sufficient length of time, the therapist got up, walked around the desk and after asking the wife to stand, he embraced and kissed her long and passionately as her husband watched - with a raised eyebrow.
The woman shut up and quietly sat down in a daze.
The therapist turned to the husband and said, "This is what your wife needs at least 3 times a week. Can you do this?"
"Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, ..............But I fish on Fridays.
Today's military joke
A U.S. Marine Colonel was about to start the morning briefing to his staff.
While waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing, the colonel decided to pose a question to all assembled.
He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed to get his usual amount of sound sleep.
He posed the question of just how much of sex was "work" and how much of it was "pleasure?"
A Major chimed in with 75%-25% in favor of work.
A Captain said it was 50%-50%.
A Lieutenant responded with 25%-75% in favor of pleasure, depending upon his state of inebriation at the time.
There being no consensus, the colonel turned to the Private First Class who was in charge of making the coffee and asked for his opinion?
Without any hesitation, the young Private First Class responded,
"Sir, it has to be 100% pleasure.
The colonel was surprised and as you might guess, asked why.
"Well, sir, if there was any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them."
The room fell silent.
God Bless the enlisted man.
Today's medical joke
I recently picked a new primary care doctor.
After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, doctor said for my age, 75, I was in good physical condition.
I couldn't resist asking, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?'
'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?'
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
'Do you eat red meats, steaks & barbecued ribs?'
'I said, 'Not much. My former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?'
'No,' I said.
He looked at me and said, 'Then why do you even give a shit?'
