May 10

Another nice, warm and sunny day starting here. I plan to look at the garden centers on our next shopping day. I don't see any freezing temperatures for the next two weeks so it might be safe but I will keep some of the protective caps just in case.

Found this on Treehugger this morning. When I read something that advocates what some author thinks everyone should do to ease the climate crisis I always look for what they aren't saying. When those advocates pushed for pushing for solar and wind power on a massive scale I noticed they were stopping their "analyses" with end users: how much energy the individual could "save" by shifting to wind or solar. They said nothing about the energy and resource demands for creating the solar panels and wind turbines which both pull on fossil fuels massively. They also didn't talk about what to do with the panels and turbines when their useful life is over because they contain non-recyclable materials (or materials that also require massive fossil fuel inputs to break them down to a recyclable state.) The proposed shift from beef to chicken (and even to a completely vegetable based diet) has similar problems as the article outlines very well.

We noticed this morning that our federal officials predict a fall surge of COVID that will see 100k+ cases. We decided sometime ago that we would have a booster for COVID as well as the flu shot in fall. Both of us are over 65 and Mom had a bout of viral pneumonia in January which wasn't COVID for which the hospital tested. This article from the BMJ (British Medical Journal) postulates a vaccine booster to prevent the winter surge they expect and that such boosters will become a yearly ritual for the foreseeable future. If the "past is prologue" we will be seeing the same on this side of the pond.

This NY Times article provides a number of articles on COVID including one which parallels what the TV news stories this morning. I noticed the headline on one indicating Taiwan is moving away from its zero-COVID policy and finding a way to "live with COVID what ever that might look like. And we now have a budgetary tug-of-war over continuing aid to provide sufficient vaccines for fall. The Republicans, as usual, are stonewalling on it.

Infidel753 has a nice list of aphorisms today. Ones I especially like: 

Some people, it is said, see retirement as the end of a meaningful life.  I see it as the end of a meaningless life.  No more spending eight hours a day doing things so inane and irritating that they literally need to pay me to do them.  Retirement is the time to bloom.  Most jobs wilt you.

Better my own road to Hell than someone else's road to Heaven. 

 Ah, how nice to have Bloglovin' back to some semblance of normal. I am still keeping my blog list handy--for the next time.

So Musk has announced he would end the Former Guy's exile from what used to be his favorite megaphone if he (Musk) succeeds in buying Twitter. I am not on Twitter and don't read Tweets unless they are cross posted by people whose blogs I read. I was totally annoyed my the exorbitant amount of attention the regular media. So far the Former Guy has insisted he won't reenter the Twitter arena because he has gone on to his own site: the so-called Truth Social which started and which hasn't done very well so far.

For a bit of humor follow this link to see the end of the life cycle of the Russian Tank.