August 10, 11

We have had internet interruptions almost daily for a while now. So I have posted whenever have had a connection. We'll see what happens today.

Gizmodo posted this story today. Get ready for higher beef, milk and cheese prices. Gizmodo also posted this and this. World wide we have had one nasty year for weather.

11**********************************************************************

Still having intermittent internet interruptions. 

The Maui fire is hellish--but it reminds me that it is one of several that have occurred over the last few years. One of the weather reporters noted that the conditions on Maui were very dry. That reminded me of the Drought Monitor maps I have seen and the islands have been abnormally dry to drought for some time. We think of the island and think lush tropical vegetation but that ecosystem is tuned to a certain level of rainfall. When that fails the vegetation dries out and is ripe for fire.

I have been ignoring the news for the most part unless it has nothing to do with either the 2024 election or The Former Guy's legal problems. That means I am ignoring the news on our media. There is BBC though it drifts into the same stories.

Robert Reich posted this article on his substack this morning. I'll let you read it. I will say that he doesn't go far enough to trace the American adulation for rampant individualism. Those strains were present from the very beginning of the English colonies and became stronger as Americans drove across the continent. When Huck Finn felt too constrained by "civilization" he "lit out for the frontier." Shane confronted and defeated the violent criminals who threatened the farmers and their community, and then rode off with the small boy begging him to "come back." That is a theme that goes very far back in Western literature--back to Greek myth. After Frederick Jackson Turner declared the end of the frontier we have been searching for a new mythology and the supreme individual taming the wilderness so communities could move in mutated into simply the supreme individual out for himself. That is really the at the core of the "trickle down" theory of economics: the wealth accumulated by the Uber-rich will (eventually) trickle down. But what trickles down is never enough to support a vibrant community and community simply drops out of the equation. The Former Guy represents the epitome of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

And then Charles Hugh Smith has this article which encapsulates our society so well. He explains why so much of our society is so damned boring.