December 12

 Dawn is just breaking here. It looks like we have frost on the most surfaces so it got cold last night.

Annie Snider at Politico Nightly presents a nice overview of the water situation along the Colorado River basin. For the moment a few of the interested parties have agreed to slight limits on their claims to water for an infusion of $1.2billion from the Infrastructure Act. But that is temporary and there are seven states, Mexico, several Native nations, farmers who supply a large share of our food, and tens of million urban dwellers struggling to come to an agreement that meets needs AND recognizes environmental limits.

Censorship has become, again, a controversy. Senators in hearings rake three university presidents over the coals because they didn't punish demonstrator calling for "genocide of Jews." On the one hand you can deplore the sentiment but what negates rights to free speech? And what responsibility should one take when someone else takes one's words and acts on them? That is what is at the core of the gag orders on The Former Guy. He speaks and someone else threatens the people he criticized. This piece by Dr. Naomi Wolf brings up another part of the story: censorship of controversial views by social media. Who decides what is "misinformation," "disinformation," or whatever? I have seen at least two sites I read regularly faced similar de-platforming. The issue is at the intersection of science/medicine (and when is it trustworthy), economics (whose pocketbook is affected by which arguments are accepted as trustworthy) and politics (whose position/reputation is involved in which story is accepted.)

Gizmodo had this story which should be put up for a "stupid of the week" award. It is one thing to "forget" the gun in your luggage but entirely another to forget the one you are carrying a gun into an MRI exam.

Connecting on a link in a story on Naked Capitalism this morning I found this story on "aphantasia" which I had never heard of before. It is the inability to construct mental images. The longer article reprinted from Aeon is an interesting discussion of how differently people perceive the world around us.