August 22, 23

 Sunny, dry and warm--but not too warm. We have been able to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows for most of the last week--those days when we didn't have rain which weren't many. Most of the plants are looking a bit ragged now especially the early blooming ones. They are still blooming but sparsely and I think suffering a bit from being pot bound. I think is is about time to start taking some of them out. I think the Meyer lemon didn't like that long spate of very wet weather we had. Its leaves aren't just getting spreading yellow spots but falling off. I am already thinking about what I will do next year.

This post from The Atheist Revolution expresses my thoughts on Liz Cheney quite well. I don't at all agree with most of her policy or her philosophy over all but I do respect her courage and willingness to stand by her convictions. There is a line from a country song the title of which I can't remember which says "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." The current Republicans are demonstrating the truth of that. They don't stand for anything and they fall for all of The Former Guy's shit--even if the shit of today contradicts the shit of yesterday.

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Another day like yesterday. I should have watered some things but didn't. We did our grocery shopping today and we don't do much else after a shopping trip we don't want to do more than lounge. We filled the gas tank thankful that the price had fallen below $4/gal.  But I noticed on the news this morning that the Saudis threatened that OPEC+ will cut production if the price of oil falls. I also noticed that the price of oil is again over $90/barrel.

I have read several articles on the phenomenon of the "quiet quit." I'll let you do your own google search. I will just make a coupe of observations. I see two diametrically opposed opinions expressed. Either the "quiet quitters" are lazy, entitled millennials or gen-zs who want the world given them; or, the "quiet quitters" simply want boundaries which protect family time and workers' mental health. I grew up in a society which encouraged people to give more than "officially" asked in the job description, to sacrifice relationships with friends and family for the job/career and lionized those who 'worked through' exhaustion, depression, and physical or mental collapse. It never worked for me. I find myself now in my old age with a small (barely sufficient) Social Security income, unemployable (considered too old, to overqualified, or without pertinent experience), and with few close friends and family. Frankly, I am cheering for the quiet quitters.

Naked Capitalism posted this article on the energy situation for U.K. consumers which is severe and promises to become worse in the next year. Brits are basically trying to mount a payment strike. That will be interesting. The problems in China's real estate markets where some buyers are doing something akin to what happened during the housing crash here a little over a decade ago: sending the banks the keys and saying we won't pay. I guess Biden will finally make a decision on forgiving (perhaps) $10k of student loans for those borrowers making less than $120k. I'm not holding my breath because that level of forgiveness wouldn't do me much good--it would disappear in interest within in a year. This was another feature of our social/economic system I wish I had gotten wise to much earlier--like before I ever took out the loans. But I was told it was "good debt" which I could easily handle after I got the "good" job commensurate with my education. No debt is really good, the good job never appeared and the labor market has been changing drastic over most of my adult life and the jobs I hoped to qualify for either disappeared or were drastically reduced both with respect to both numbers of jobs and pay.

August 17

 OH. MY.GOODNESS!!! Half past August.The time just slips by. I was just thinking that some of the trees have a tinge of yellow on their leaves. The days for the last ten have reached into the high 70s to mid 80s and the nights into the 50s and 60s. The gardens are doing well though I have squash doing well on the summer squash vines. However I consider them a success because the bees seem to have enjoyed them. The morning glory vines are blooming--finally. The little rose is still doing well and shows no sign of that mosaic disease that plagued last year's roses. The dahlias are providing a great show--too bad I have to grow them as annuals here. They aren't hardy enough for this area.

There are times when I seriously wonder if our high tech provides the convenience promised. Today is one of those times. I had to reconnect our blue ray player to our wireless router to get Pandora. Every so often the system kicks it off and I have to go through the frustrating process--AGAIN. I used to have quite a collection of CDs and often regret that I donated the lot to the local library. However, we have reached a stage where freeing up space and having fewer things to dust (barely) edges out having the things.

Just this morning the news had a brief mention that the Federal Government is projecting new water restrictions for the states on the lower Colorado River and Mexico because the water level is so low the operations of Hoover Dam are threatened. A story I saw yesterday said the Feds are telling the states to negotiate some binding settlement or else Federal mandates will be imposed. It may be of interest to note that electrical generation at the dam is now about 50%. Other major rivers are also running dry. This little story is about "hunger stones" on the Elbe river now revealed by the low river levels. Transport on the Rhine is threatened by similarly low levels. And after the wildfires in France I read that Paris got a month's worth of rain in 90 minutes. Paris isn't the only city receiving a deluge.

August 9

 I think the predictions may be right for a dry and sunny day. I hope the more moderated temps forecast will materialize as well.

The Former Guy, as expected, is bleating about the FBI search warrant for his Mar-a-lago home for documents (some classified at an extremely high level) that should have gone to the National Archives according to the Presidential Records Act. He did return some, but evidently not all, last year. His presidency shows the fallacy of the frequently heard belief that "we need to put a businessman not politicians in charge." Unfortunately, a businessman is not necessarily a businessman is not necessarily a businessman. (apologies to Gertrude Stein) Yeah, he was a businessman. But he ran a family business--basically a little kingdom of which he was king. The only constraints on his actions were laws and he worked very hard to evade those laws and  the consequences if he was caught. He was his business and he tried to run the country the same way--as though he could parrot Louis XIV in saying "I am the state."

I am not going to weigh in on the legal process by which the FBI got its warrant. What I have seen and heard so far indicates it was entirely above board and by the book. On other aspects of the case, Infidel753 has a succinct post that reflects many of my own thoughts. 

Some time ago I saw a graph to illustrate a phenomenon anyone who has followed health care debates for the last decade would find familiar: Americans pay more for health care than citizens of any other advanced country and have a much lower life expectancy. This article from Naked Capitalism is a study covering the last 90+ years and comes to the conclusion that the U.S. is killing Americans.

To continue the health care theme I found this N.Y. Times article on the growing reluctance of parents to have their children vaccinated with traditional vaccines. That has been a growing phenomenon for a good while. That should worry everyone. The so-called "childhood diseases" used to kill thousands every year. The vaccines cut the death rate to a minute fraction of previous numbers. (You can easily look up the CDC stats on whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, polio mortality rates) But over the last couple of decades I have read accounts of groups of college students infected with measles because they were unvaccinated and traveled to a country where the disease was epidemic. Recently New York reported the first American case of polio in decades. And polio is rising in many of the world's conflict zones. I am old enough that I actually met a person who had been paralyzed because of polio. I was in seventh grade and my fellow student was a refugee from Czechoslovakia.

August 8

 Well, I might be able to work on Bloglovin' which has not been the case for the last three or so weeks. We'll see how long that lasts. I still have no idea why it was unavailable.

So what did I miss? Well, Charles Hugh Smith had this post on why employers are having such a difficulty finding employees in, what we are assured, is a booming economy. When we are out and about here we still see signs everywhere that the business is hiring. We are retired and have no desire to return to the workforce. Neither of us have the strength or stamina for most of the jobs out there and don't have the experience or education for most of the rest. He notes that younger people aren't eager to sign up for employment as was traditional. Another article I saw recently called their attitude the "quiet resignation." The workers want a better work-life balance and no longer do whatever the employers demand. Overtime? Nope. Answering calls after work hours? Nope. Kids' games, school plays, recitals" Yep, even if they have to take time off. 

August 7

 I had planned to water the gardens this morning but the weather forecast is predicting rain for the afternoon through tomorrow morning. I will let nature provide when I can. I have some inside work planned instead. We are going through another round of culling things we no longer use. Some of our canning jars and the smaller of our two dehydrators are going to a new home where they will be used. We haven't canned anything for the last couple of years and it has been that long since I used both dehydrators. Neither of us have the energy for canning any more.

We can easily get fixated on our strange weather and forget that other areas of our world are also experiencing really unusual conditions. Euronews posted this article which gives a good overview. It isn't good.

August 5 (or whenever)

 I didn't realize I forgot to come back and post the last entry. Oh well, I just get busy doing something or reading something and forget about the post. We'll see if I get this one out in a more timely manner.

I found this item which reflects some of my own thoughts. We aren't used to adapting ourselves to the world having spent so much of the last few hundred years trying to adapt the world to us. A glaring example of that attitude is in the included op-ed in this Naked Capitalism article. I guess the writer of the op-ed didn't remember the time within the last ten years when barge traffic on the Mississippi was halted because the water level was too low. And I remember when the good people of Georgia floated the notion of a similar pipeline to tap into Lake Michigan when Atlanta and towns around it were down to less than a month's worth of water. They got five "Hell, NO" screams from the states bordering the lake. I don't have much faith in any significant number of people choosing to adapt given the stories of wealthy Atlanteans who kept their pools filled and their lush lawns watered by paying hefty fines. 

Aug 3

 Yesterday was a major shopping day. We didn't intend it but with all the empty shelves we have seen lately we often get things we normally use but don't actually need immediately. The cat litter and canned food shelves were very thin on product so we picked up what we could easily store and stocked up. Our favorite supermarket sends out coupons we actually use so we also stocked up on those items. By the time we got home, got everything put away, and had breakfast we were done for the day so we had to catch up on our housekeeping today.

I have always been skeptical of cryptocurrencies. Some of the articles and ads I have seen argued that it is a viable and secure alternative to "fiat" currencies. But I don't see any greater security for crypto (which isn't tied to gold or some other hard value) over dollars (which aren't either). I wasn't surprised about the bankruptcy filing from Celsius and wasn't surprised that its customers/depositors are likely screwed. It reminds me of the crisis about 30 years ago in the savings and loan industry. I worked with people who didn't get access to their deposits for weeks and lost some of their money. Like the savings and loans the crypto industry isn't backed by the FDIC system though at least one company (which filed for bankruptcy before Celsius) claimed (fraudulently???) in its advertising and on its site. You can check out the situation with this Forbes article.

In spite of the efforts by the Kansas Republicans to confuse voters concerning the probably effect of the ballot measure to change the state constitution to allow the legislature to abolish abortion, inspire of the strategy of placing the measure on the ballot during a mid-term primary when independents and Democrats generally don't turn out, and in spite of the financial support of the Catholic Church Kansas voters rejected (59-42%) the measure so abortion remains constitutionally protected in Kansas.

August 1-2

 First day of August and it is nice and sunny though it is a bit warm and we have a strong possibility of thundershowers later. I just threw some of my all purpose fertilizer in my squash pots and found a small thumb sized fruit developing. I think it is a spaghetti quash but I have forgotten which variety I planted in which bucket. The bees have been quite busy.

I wasn't going to post anything but then I saw this. I decided to do a search for other sources and found several including Fortune, The Guardian, and Barrons. Just when you think he can't be any more of a self-centered, narcissistic, greedy waste of allegedly human flesh, he proves he can go lower.

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Well, a repulsive murderer has been repulsively and deservedly murdered (to paraphrase Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express.) I refuse to soften the rhetoric around the death of Al Qaida's leader whose long history of killing (and not just Americans and not just military personnel) makes him a just target of the action. By any possible justice rendered by a court wasn't possible because of his geographic location so some other kind of reckoning had to be meted out. The Taliban has shown, yet again, that they can't be trusted to keep any agreements they make with us, as has Putin. 

July 31

 Damn!! Last day of July already. We have had a nice break from the brutal heat but the next week (first week of August) will be hot again. 

I don't have to water the plants outside because I watered them yesterday. The plants are doing very nicely. I think I need to add some fertilizer to the squash pots. The plants are doing very well and I think I saw a little squash developing. The bees are back hitting the squash and the bee balm. 

I may have a problem: I gave in to an impulse when buying plants and got a Meyer lemon. I knew I would have to bring it inside for the winter but I didn't think about how it would do with the cats. Evidently the fruit and the roots are toxic for cats and dogs. I am not worried about fruit since it is a young tree that hasn't bloomed yet. I don't think the cats would dig it up so the roots aren't likely to be a problem. I hope the little monsters won't munch on the leaves.

Last weekend one of the local news shows reported that many everyday items in drug and convenience stores were being put in locked cases. I found this report this morning. We haven't seen it here yet beyond the high priced cosmetics, pharmacies, and photo areas. But sooner or later those strategy appears here as well. Target and Meijer no longer display their computers and smart phones. We lost a small Apple centered store when it was hit by smash and grab thieves three times in two months a few years ago.

I love the cartoon at this link. We have often thought that every election should have an option to vote for "none of the above."

The new fire in California has pushed the fires in New Mexico out of the media spotlight. However, this article indicates that the New Mexico fires, which are still burning, may have a much more severe consequences that we thought. The city of Las Vegas, New Mexico (population about 13k) has, maybe, 50 days of water left because they get most of it from the Galenas River and don't have the capacity to filter out the ash and contaminants.