July 7

 The last post was a bit longer than usual on a single subject. And that was triggered by the first item in my e-mail. Today is another day so let's see what my e-mail has.

First on my list was this piece by Ugo Bardi. He has written about the "Seneca Cliff" for a long time. The notion comes from a quote from the Roman philosopher, Seneca, who proposed the growth is gradual but the subsequent ruin comes on quickly. Much like the often cited comment from Hemingway who replied to a question about how he went bankrupt "slowly then all at once." Usually writers apply the Seneca cliff when discussing economics, but Bardi decided to apply it to our dysfunctional politics. he presents a very interesting argument. I love the word borborygmus. Yeah, hot air going through pipes.

Anna Dorn on MEDIUM asks a question in the title of her new post "Is ChatGPT causing delusion or merely holding up a mirror?" She doesn't really answer that question but it brought up an image in my mind from the old SciFi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET. The technology of an extinct race allowed them to create psychic avatars which fanned out across the planet to exact deadly, bloody revenge on their enemies, real and imagined. Those avatars wiped out the entire population overnight. Eons later a scientist taps into that system which allows him to do the same without realizing what he is doing. We all have a dark side and perhaps that is what our social media, including ChatGPT, is revealing but how many of us recognize or dark selves in that dark mirror?

A thought about the Texas monster flood: I saw Kristi Noem, alleged director of Homeland Security and FEMA, on a news segment yesterday. It struck me that we should take her pronouncements far more seriously than we tend to because she is a very unserious person. She claimed that FEMA would soon be on site more than 24 hours after the disaster struck. She insisted that it role was ENTIRELY supportive of local efforts but the vast majority of the efforts were local not federal. Once upon a time I remember when FEMA would have pre-positioned resources and personnel to respond. I remember that from Hurricane Katrina. Evidently that isn't done any more given the response to Hurricane Helene. This is a clear expression of George W. Bush's notion of an "ownership society" which I have said is really a "you're on your own society." The Federal government seems to be saying, through Kristi Noem, we'll take your tax money and give you little or nothing back.

Thought about Elon Musk's announcement that he is forming a new political party: Y-a-a-a-wn! I doubt he could come up with a platform that would simultaneously advance his egotistic goals and ANY possible measures that I would find attractive.

A second thought about the flood: Noem seems to be blaming the National Weather Service for the catastrophe. That is rich given the government of which she is a part has cut staffing severely. But her entire shtick seems to be to blame everyone but her, her agency, and the administration. There are some questions about whether there any alerts and how specific the alerts were. But such warning are only effective if they are 1) accurate and 2) if people hearing the warnings take them seriously. And we have to remember that many people don't or can't get the warnings. And we also have to accept that the system deals with people who are variable to put it kindly. There is an old saying about "fool proof" systems--there is always a fool out there who will break it.

Thought about the growing controversy over the warnings and whether they were sounded at all, whether people could get them, whether they paid attention etc. I thought of a story I heard about the Fukushima meltdown, earthquake, and tsunami. Many people did evacuate to higher ground but were swept away as the weather rose to their positions. After the event, some who explored how high the tsunami actually got found markers just at or above those levels. They marked the high water achieved by an earlier tsunami. However, no one remembered what those markers signified.

Another in the string of stories about food thefts over the last decade or so.

And for those who think the insurance crisis being driven by pricy weather disasters driven by the Climate Change Hoax only affects by the poor idiots who live in disaster prone areas.  Also note that the old "Tornado Alley" has move into areas north and east of the southern plains. And we are seeing more 1-in-a-hundred (or five-hundred, or thousand) year events.