February 22

 Rain today. I won't complain since the rain will help the soil in my containers fully defrost. That seems to be doing well. I noticed that, though we didn't have rain yesterday, I had small streams of water flowing slowly from the buckets.

Aurelien has a good, but long, post on his substack this morning. It reminds me of Daniel Boorstin's book THE IMAGE published in the 1960. It also reminds me of the new ad for (I think) Audi where the selling point seems to be the notion that you can choose, O Joy,  the configuration of lights in your headlights. Lovely image but how does that improve the performance of the car? Some years ago a book I read on the growth of advertising claimed that as a product became nearly universal in society the advertising became more about the aesthetics and less how the product worked.

Listening to the news this morning about the collapse of the newest base the Republicans in the House claim for their attempts to impeach Biden I was reminded of the Upton Sinclair quote: It is difficult to convince a man of something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. Rep. Jordan was asked about the arrest of the (newest) devastating witness and the document he provided to the FBI which was totally generated by Russian misinformation and the man's imagination. Jordan insisted that it did nothing to debunk the "facts." Unfortunately his facts aren't really facts; they are merely his own fevered imaginings. I think a corollary to Sinclair would read: A man will always believe what supports his ego, position, or salary even if false.

I found an interesting post that claimed 10 Israelis had been killed because of Israeli bombing in Gaza. I followed the link but the site is in Hebrew which I don't know. I tried to see if there was any mention in two Israeli media outlets and in Al Jazeera but found nothing recent which amount to 10 Israeli casualties of Israeli operations. Since I can't verify the claim I have put it in my mental "Maybe" file. The blogger claimed that it put a lie to the Netanyahu government's supposed concern for getting the hostages released. Well, I have always thought the two aims antithetical. I never believed that the "eliminate Hamas" aim was compatible with getting hostages out alive. I also wonder how many hostages are still alive. I wonder if the hostage exchange/pause talks have broken down because Hamas doesn't have all that many bargaining chips left.

 Ouch!!! The Edmonton Journal in Alberta, Canada reports the government has declared an early start to the 2024 fire season. They still have 54 fires (new and continued from last season) burning. The problem: low snow pack and very dry weather. Yesterday the Weather Channel reported that a large area of west Texas, Arizona, and southern Colorado was under fire warnings. Same problems.