December 28

Rainy, very rainy, this morning and warm for the season--or what used to be the season. But any puddles left tomorrow morning will be ice. The high today should hit the lower 50s and fall to the teens overnight. The next week is supposed to be in the 20s for the most part. We haven't any errands scheduled so, barring the unforeseen, we won't be going out in it. I do have to go out and get the car running to make sure the batteries are still alive. If we didn't have doctors' appointment we could easily do without a car.

Bill Astore has linked to a spoof video of an Italian woman claiming a British man's house in Bath where Romans had a commanding presence about 2000 years ago. Since she is Italian, a descendent of ancient Romans, she figures she can evict the guy and claim the property. As Astore notes it is, and probably was intended to be, a good analogy for the Jewish presence in what used to be Palestine. About the time the Romans occupied Bath they were expelling Jews from Judea.

This is one reason why I don't expect 2026 to be better and fear it might be worse than 2025.

Found this by way of LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE and even though it specifically deals with Canada and how dis/misinformation affected how Canadians responded to government information about drought and wildfires many of the observations apply on this side of the border as well. How people respond to information depends on several factors but especially how people in their social circle receive the information, how it accords with their own perceptions, and how reliable the "experts" are viewed. But I had another thought as I read this: neither the experts nor a government can really force people to respond in any given way. Some people die in every hurricane because they don't believe it will hit, or that it will be as severe as predicted, or believe that because they survived previous storms they will survive the next one. The economists and the government can say what they like about how good the economy but if people don't see it in their lives the experts and government lackeys can piss into the wind.

The GUARDIAN posted this article (also found via LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE) concerning the Trump administration defunding of a long term research program studying soil fungi. The article details the long term possible benefits from the research it doesn't say anything about why the program has been defunded. I can make a guess. The fossil fuel industry produces the fertilizers applied in very large quantities to crops AND those fertilizers have to be applied every year. That creates a cycle of profits they want to keep. Also, agribusiness runs on large scale and it is far easier to apply a chemical than to learn how to farm without the chemicals. Individual and independent farmers also have been lured away from sustainable techniques because applying the chemicals seemed easier and produced, they thought, more reliable results. What people don't value they see no reason to study or understand.

And what makes anyone think "reality" will in any way affect what Trump does or wants. CNBC posted this article on Trump's proposal to build new battleships and declares that it will run into a major problem: reality.