1/. Think this summer is hot? Wait till next year.....
A person drinks water in ‘the Zone’, a homeless encampment in Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
It’s been a record-breaking summer of heatwaves across large parts of the US and the world, and trying to stay cool and safe has been an unprecedented challenge.
There has been a rise in heat-related fatalities; companies and organizations have been under greater pressures to protect workers; and officials from small towns to the White House have been scrambling to respond.
All of this could be the start of the “new normal”.
2/. Good one.....look at the arrows to see who's talking....
3/. The godfather of climate activism Bill McKibben explains our warming oceans....
Of all the astonishing facts about our blithe remaking of the world’s climate system, the most astonishing might be this: if oceans didn’t cover seventy per cent of our planet, we would have increased the average temperature to about a hundred and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit. That’s because those oceans have absorbed something like ninety-three per cent of the extra heat trapped by the greenhouse effect and our burning of fossil fuels. In the past hundred and fifty years, we’ve made the ocean soak up, on average, the heat equivalent of a Hiroshima-size nuclear bomb every second and a half; in recent years, that’s increased to five or sixHiroshimas a second.
4/. Bob Lefsetz on Mitch freezing, which leads on to a frank discussion of getting old people out of power.....
Most interesting, and depressing too....
This is why we can’t have octogenarians, never mind nonagenarians, running the country.
But oh yeah, you can’t say that. It’s elder abuse. Why is it everybody in America feels entitled to play at a professional level in every endeavor they choose for their entire life? If you’re five foot two, you can’t play in the NBA. And if you’re fifty you can’t win the sprint. But you should be able to govern for the rest of your life?
Come on, been driving with any of these people? That’s the hardest thing to do with the aged, take away their license. And you’d be surprised how many baby boomers don’t like to drive at night, because of the decline of their vision. But no, we need to let the nearly dead run the country!
This is Mitch freezing up.....
5/. Tom Tomorrow is fed up....
6/. Heather Cox Richardson on the white supremacist movement, how it started and why, and how it is the biggest and most dangerous threat to our society.....
Four days ago, on Saturday, August 26, in the early afternoon, a heavily armed, 21-year-old white supremacist in a tactical vest and mask, who had written a number of racist manifestos and had swastikas painted on his rifle, murdered three Black Americans at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida. He had apparently intended to attack Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution, but students who saw him put on tactical gear warned a security guard, who chased him off and alerted a sheriff’s deputy.
As David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put it two days later, “America is living through a reign of white supremacist terror,” and in a speech to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law on Monday, President Joe Biden reminded listeners that “the U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism, rooted in white supremacy, is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland—the greatest threat.”
7/. One of our favourites - "Whiskers are We" with Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon.....
8/. More detail on the damage DeSantis has [quietly] done to Florida's laws - most people have no idea how badly he has screwed us all.....
A lawyer for Ron DeSantis just gave away the game.
It happened last week, inside the Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. Court of Appeal Building in Atlanta, where the DeSantis administration is trying to defend one of the Florida governor’s most cherished achievements: The so-called “Stop WOKE Act.”
You may remember this law, because it got a lot of attention last year, when DeSantis personally pushed it through the Florida Legislature. Branded by DeSantis as the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act,” it sets restrictions on how public schools and private employers can talk to their students or employees about concepts like systemic racism, unconscious bias, and male privilege.
9/. There is a pattern to what the Republicans are doing to our society, and it started in the Reagan years.
Make two classes - workers and elites.....and we are well on the way right now....
Republican politicians and the rightwing billionaires who fund them want a nation of uneducated, compliant serfs in their workforce, not a nation of well-educated union-conscious people who are willing to strike to get better pay and benefits.
Which means Job One is to get America’s kids out of the clutches of those evil unionized teachers. Education, after all, is a liberal value. The conservative vision is “quality education for the children of the wealthy, while ending child labor laws for all the rest.”
And they’re getting their way.
Florida and Arizona are well on the way to destroying their entire systems of public education with statewide private school voucher programs available to every child.
10/. Coming to schools near you.....
11/ And another Republican Governor that was elected as a moderate, and has turned MAGA - Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.....
He wants to make Virginia a copy of Florida....
Glenn Youngkin’s name keeps coming up. Donald Trump’s four indictments and waning support for Ron DeSantis have made the Republican Virginia governor a vessel for hope among GOP donors (who have already opened their wallets for his PAC to the tune of millions in donations). Even Rupert Murdoch, who has reportedly soured on Trump and DeSantis, has made a personal push for Youngkin, who is one year into his first term in office, to join the presidential race, per The Washington Post. Youngkin has done little to quash the buzz; in May an aide said he’s not running for president in 2023, but that he’s not ruling out a run. Among the political chattering class, a Youngkin presidential run is not a question of if but when.
12/. Did you know DeSantis reacted really badly to a question at one of his rallies from a 15 year old?
Had his security guys harass him?
This guy is really unpleasant......
Quinn Mitchell has seen at least 35 presidential candidates in person since 2019, when he first started showing up at New Hampshire primary events to ask them questions.
Not a single one of them had ever treated the now-15-year-old as if he were a threat—until Ron DeSantis came to town.
It all started with a straightforward question. In June, when DeSantis stopped for a town hall event in Hollis, Mitchell raised his hand in the crowd.
Here is the kid asking the question, which of course he doesn't answer....
13/. Are you wondering what happened to the Georgia and South Carolina peach harvest this year, which was down 80% from two years ago?
Yup, climate change.....
Workers pick peaches from the trees at Pearson Farm in Fort Valley, Georgia. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Farming is inherently risky, a profession that always involves an expectation of loss and damage. But among many farmers, peaches are considered an unpredictable crop, with high risks and high rewards.
“Farming peaches is like gambling in a casino,” said 44-year-old Robert Jackson II, of Lyman, South Carolina. The fruit bruises easily and is vulnerable to weather changes, but can earn handsome profits.
He and his 70-year-old father, also named Robert Jackson, live and work on a 33-acre farm where peaches are their main revenue stream.
“One day, everything could be fine, and then the next day, you could have nothing.”
14/. Fun story on how Jimmy Buffet's plane was shot at by Jamaican police [a mistake], which led to the song "Jamaica Mistaika"....
‘Jamaica Mistaica’: Jimmy Buffett Song Inspired After Plane Sprayed by Gunfire
In 1996, the police in Jamaica mistook Buffett for a drug smuggler after he landed his seaplane with the singer Bono and others on board and opened fire on it.
Here's the song....
15/. Book review - Stephen King's latest "Holly".....
A friend of mine has become a scaredy-cat since having a baby. She has been forcing herself to watch horror movies through parted fingers, hoping they will steel her nerves for the frights of everyday life. I thought of my friend’s experiment while reading “Holly,” the new mystery from Stephen King: Here is a thriller scary enough to test its readers’ mettle — and toughen them up
16/. The Guardian is recommending "Slotherhouse", and before you laugh and move on have a quick read of this review.....
The magic of cinema is in its ability to take our world, in all its messy complexity, and reflect its core truth back to us. Cinema opens our eyes. It can teach us empathy, open our eyes to wider issues. It can change us. Or it can give us a film about a killer sloth with a samurai sword, which is honestly quite a lot better
On paper, Slotherhouse (that’s right, it’s a pun on the word “slaughterhouse”, but with sloths) has The Asylum written all over it. It has the potential to be a cheaply made, lowest common denominator Sharknadoalike; a great title and an outrageous premise that, in reality, amounts to a stunt-cast non-actor emoting in a single location for an hour to fill the gap between the three VFX shots you already saw in the trailer. Even if you actively enjoy the idea of watching a sloth murder a bunch of people, Slotherhouse still won’t be something worth raising your expectations for.
17/. I have to say we have missed this series on MAX, but this article says give it another chance....
It’s hard to find a doctrine that better explains this country’s political and cultural trajectory over the past 50 years than the so-called prosperity gospel, which reversed the old dogma in one key, seductive way: It came to interpret the attainment of worldly wealth and privilege as proof of spiritual exceptionalism, the rewards of a life lived righteously. Jesus says in Matthew 19:24: “And I say again unto you — it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” But across the end of the 20th century, any number of figures built immense and lucrative flocks by coming at that problem from a very different direction: a promise, perhaps, that you might look great crossing into heaven in a camel-hair suit. That this sentiment aligned so well with politically ascendant strains of conservatism may or may not be coincidence, but the net effect was the same. There is the elevation of wealth as a sign of virtue. There is the sense that if only those in need had been more righteous, they, too, might have been blessed. There is, in short, the long, strange trajectory of American temperament that has, on some level, brought us to HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones.”
18/. Vanity Fair with "46 movies to look out for" this year.....
Today's military joke....
The train was quite crowded, so a U.S. Marine walked the entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman's poodle...
The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may I have that seat?'
The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.'
The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down? I'm very tired.
She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'
This time the Marine didn't say a word; he just picked up the little dog, threw it out of the train window, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!
An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong things.
You live on the wrong side of the Ocean.
You hold the fork in the wrong hand.
You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road.
And now, Sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window!!
Today's Irish joke....
Mrs. Donovan was walking down O’Connell Street in Dublin when she met up with Father Flaherty.
The Father said, ‘Top o’ the mornin’ To ye! Aren’t ye Mrs. Donovan And didn’t I marry ye and yer Hoosband two years ago?’
She replied, ‘Aye, that ye did, Father.’
The Father asked, ‘And be there Any wee little ones yet?’ She replied, ‘No, not yet, Father.’
The Father said, ‘Well now, I’m going to Rome next week And I’ll light a fertility candle for ye And yer hoosband.’
She replied, ‘Oh, thank ye, Father…’ They then parted ways..
Some years later they met again.
The Father asked, ‘Well now, Mrs. Donovan, how are ye these days?’
She replied, ‘Oh, very well, Father!’
The Father asked, ‘And tell me , Have ye any wee ones yet?’
She replied, ‘Oh yes, Father!
Two sets of twins and six singles, Ten in all!’
The Father said, ‘That’s wonderful!
And how is yer loving hoosband doing?’
She replied, ‘E’s gone to Rome to blow out yer fookin’ candle!!!
Today's Little girl joke....
Hello?"
"Hi honey this is Daddy. Is Mommy near the phone?"
"No Daddy. She's upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul."
After a brief pause, Daddy says, "But honey, you haven't got an Uncle Paul."
"Oh yes I do, and he's upstairs in the room with Mommy, right now."
"Uh, okay then, this is what I want you to do.
Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs and knock on the bedroom door and shout to Mommy that Daddy's car just pulled into the driveway."
"Okay Daddy, just a minute."
A few minutes later the little girl comes back to the phone. "I did it Daddy."
"And what happened honey?" he asked.
"Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of bed with no clothes on and ran around screaming.
Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on the dresser and now she isn't moving at all!"
"Oh my God!!! What about your Uncle Paul?"
"He jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, too.
He was all scared and he jumped out of the back window and into the swimming pool.
But I guess he didn't know that you took out the water last week to clean it.
He hit the bottom of the pool and I think he's dead."
***Long Pause***
***Longer Pause***
***Even Longer Pause***
Then Daddy says, "Swimming pool? Is this 612-486-5731?"
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