January 24

 The melt has started. The patio path to the gate is clear and the snow has diminished by about half. I tried to put a letter in the mail box yesterday morning and gave up. I told Mom that, after slipping four times before getting to the sidewalk going to the street and wasn't going to even try that slope--and I wasn't letting her try it either. Shouldn't be a problem today. The forecast today predicts on-and-off rain with temps in the mid- to high 30s.

Well, Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary with a final tally of about 54%. However, his coronation has been postponed because Hallie came in at a bare 11% below him. It wasn't the blow out win he wanted and the poor baby is unhappy because she refuses to leave the field to him and him alone.

Improve The News posted this piece abut a leading cancer institute retracting or correct recently published studies. I remember looking at news stories about hopeful scientific/medical "breakthroughs" and deciding I would wait until a "trustworthy" source confirmed the results. Now--I am even skeptical of what were once trusted sources.

I find I skim more of the news posts--sometimes just the headlines. My interest in politics is dwindling fast. Too much inflated egos and too little policy. And most of the policy is terrifying. 

Stray thought: watching the news recounting the demonstration that interrupted Biden's speech demanding that he somehow stop the war in Gaza and I am, again, amazed that the demonstrators think the American President can simply lay down the law and Israel will roll over and do what he says. And, of course, it is Israel they think he should bully because no one expect Hamas to stop fighting. I remember, way back during George W.'s administration, the surprise in the pundit corps and the Media, went to Saudi Arabia and begged them to increase oil production and lower the price because the high prices were hammering our economy. They cut production almost as soon as George W. left the country. The Saudis were, and some think still are, our allies and, we thought, should accommodate us. There are limits to a president's power and to a country's power. That is a fact our leaders and most Americans have been able to ignore for the last half of the 20th century. 

January 22

Found on Jan 20

I love this piece "Boomers: Worked. Gen X: Irked. Millennials: Shirked." The author is anxious to see what Generation Alpha does. I remember falling into the "do whatever the employer wants," show up for mandatory meetings that were "off the clock," go the "extra mile," expecting that the effort would be rewarded. It never was. I remember being told that you should send "thank you" notes after an interview. Since then my caustic remark that we "work ourselves to death to make a living" changed to we "work ourselves to death and still can't make a living." I am a boomer who worked, got irked, and wish I had shirked. I am glad to see trends that say that workers are setting rules and boundaries. I want to see more of it.

We are getting a bit of snow but the temperatures should be going up and the are promising rain. If that comes through much of this snow and ice should go away. Several communities from west of Chicago to east of here are watching because their rivers a both high and ice clogged which might change to flood. We plan on hibernating for the week since the forecast is for rain and/or freezing rain til Friday.

Well DeSantis is gone. Won't be missed. After all of the caustic remarks he made about so-called Republicans who oppose Trump and then cave and "kiss the ring," DeSantis set a speed record for doing the same.

We are doing what we can to cut the crap that is passed off as news. Saturday we got two soccer (football for those on the other side of the pond) games. And the BBC for a bit. Yesterday we had another two soccer games, the women's basketball game (I forgot which teams but it went into overtime, and the Lions vs Buccaneers (American football). Every now and then I put out a stack of our DVDs and we watch our re-runs.

January 19

 We had a fair bit of snow over night. It isn't light yet so all I could actually see is what is on the patio. A car's headlights showed a vigorous snow falling. 

Saw this first thing this morning which doesn't bode well economically. Market Watch provides more information here. Note that throwaway line where an official acknowledges that the water problem isn't just affecting the Canal--it is country wide. Actually, the drought is major factor in the immigration situation. The entire region has had a multi-year drought.

We shouldn't be surprised by this post by Susie Madrak on Crooks&Liars. All the "childhood" diseases are coming back as larger parts of our society reject vaccines. She does note that "exemptions" have been liberally allowed but pulling that back won't work. Most of the reason those diseases became rare is states and local governments and school officials mandated kids be vaccinated before going to school. I grew up before the vaccines were introduced. I and most of my cohort had measles, mumps, chicken pox. Thankfully, I don't know anyone who suffered severe complications but we should remember that those diseases decimated the native populations where ever Europeans arrived in the Americas and the Pacific islands. They can be deadly.

This is absolutely crazy. Some F&&king conspiracy theorist admitted at trial he started 14 of the Canadian wildfires. He said he wanted to test whether the governments were speaking truth when they warned about how dry the forests were.

Interesting piece by David Kaiser at his History Unfolding site. It reflects my own notions that no one is very happy with our politics and that both parties are more aligned with the financial powers than with voters.

I have read two posts over the last couple of days on the matter of trust both spring off the Davos meeting this week. One noted that the participants represent individuals and industries that have earned our distrust because of lies, predictions that fail, gaslighting (your economic pain isn't real because the numbers say something else), and other such self-serving tactics. The other today noted that we generally trust what touches us directly and that we can see. If you use something and it functions as it should, you trust it to continue to do so and the company that made. The farther the phenomenon is from your direct experience the harder it is to trust it. If you can see it and verify it, you trust it. The opposite is also true: if you can't verify it, you don't trust it.

So, our politicians mustered the gumption to pass....another continuing resolution kicking the budgetary can down to early March. One day they will run out of road. The potholes are getting pretty big already.

Major irritation: Nikki Haley trying to explain why the U.S. isn't a racist nation, and in her mind, has never been. Somehow she thinks the aspirational sentiments of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution wipe out how people have actually lived. The fact of slavery. The fact of indigenous genocide. The fact of Jim Crow and the KKK. Not everyone was racist. But we had enough and they had enough influence to give the whole a tinge of racism. 

January 18

New snow again with lake effect probable. The temps won't exceed 32 til the middle of next week. I hope some of the ice under the snow will melt then. We didn't get the slush shoveled before the real cold set in. Every year such tasks get harder to do and easier to forget to do.

Bill Astore takes on the notion of an American turn toward isolationism. He  makes a good point that unraveling the net work of bases and the political/economic ties the U.S. has spanning the globe is a complicated project no one is honestly addressing--not addressing at all really. Reassessing our military footprint, our relationships world wide, and where our resources is not the same as retreating into isolationism. Conditions change and such periodic reconsiderations are necessary.

Another Republican thinks we should put kids to work. She has drawn up a bill that will allow children to leave school after graduating 8th grade. My grandfather graduated 8th grade in the 1890s which would have qualified him to teach. He preferred to work as a farmer. My father dropped out before graduating high school to enlist in the Navy during WWII. He worked as a truck driver. My mother dropped out though she had all the credits she needed to graduate (they refused to give her the diploma) to get married. Nearly 20 years later she took a GED test so she could go to Purdue and earn a nursing degree. My siblings and I have various histories. But by the time we came along my mother strove mightily to keep us in school to graduate. Statistics show that life time incomes increase as one completes high school and increases more with a college diploma. That would seem to be a good thing for the person, for the family and for our society. Evidently others don't think so. Stray thought: my mother and I have often listened to stories where some supposedly educated people spouted incorrect "facts" on some subject and wondered what the schools are teaching now. I often worked retail and found much younger colleagues who couldn't do basic math or make accurate change without the register telling them what the change should be. I have seen stories of young people who couldn't read or write cursive. Recently, I read a semi-biographical part of a blog written by a person who recounted how the parameters of his submissions have changed from articles of 4000 words to  nowadays a limit of under 1000 because the publishers think people won't read longer ones. I could accept letting kids leave school after graduating 8th grade if we had a rigorous system which provided kids with skills to go back to school later and learn other skills/degrees. I don't see that. All I see is politicians who think dumping kids on the labor market so that employers have a resource that will let them pressure adult wages downward.

Stray thought: there has been a lot of space given to the polls which say people, generally, are pessimistic about the economy. I have mentioned some of them along with my own skepticism about statistics that are cherry picked and massaged. Over the last few I have seen another poll which reveals the importance of what question is asked. The pollsters asked their respondents the usual question about what they think of the economy and got the usual pessimistic responses. But then they followed up with the same respondents and asked how they felt about their own economic situation and found most people were both satisfied and optimistic. Interesting. I can relate to that because we are in that position--skeptical about the over all direction of the economy writ large and satisfied with our own economic situation.

Stray thought: the article title proclaimed that Trump was "denied" access to evidence that doesn't exist. That seems a bit moronic. No one can deny access to what doesn't exist. I didn't read the article.

Charles Hugh Smith has a post about trust in American Society. Spoiler: there isn't much any more.

January 17

 Let's see what is going on besides more of the same. It is still very cold. I had to put out-going mail in the box. A lot of the snow on the sidewalks has disappeared--probably blown away. However, that is on the south side of the house. On the north side the ice and snow are still there. I forgot that Monday was a holiday and trash pick up is delayed by one day. I struggled to get the gate unlatched and then struggled to  roll the tote out to the street for pick up--and then remembered that it won't be picked up til tomorrow. Well, it is staying out there til after the trash trucks come by. I can't close the gate because the frozen ground has shifted the gate post up. Oh, the joys of winter. Even through my gloves my hands were ice cold when I got back inside. (UPDATE: I guess the company our landlord uses to collect trash doesn't celebrate the MLK holiday. They picked up trash today.)

The continuing effect of the drought in British Columbia: reduced water flow in dams and rivers=reduced power production, dry wells, dangerous low water in reservoirs. One of the local power companies is importing power at a hefty cost and offering customers who reduce their usage by 10% this year compared to last year a nice credit.  Stray thought: this situation is and has been repeated over wide geographical areas for several years now and show the weakness of relying on one form of power generation. Hydroelectric plants require a certain water flow, solar requires a certain level of sunlight, wind requires wind at certain speeds, natural gas requires the supply of gas and can be interrupted by breaks or freezes in the lines. I could go on but the lesson here is to have back-ups for the back-ups for the main systems. I wish we had backups but we don't own our place.

Doomberg carried this article which shows the problems around government agencies mandating types of technology. Electric vehicles, or Zero Emission Vehicles as the Canadian government calls the technology, are perfectly good for certain environments--but, and it is a big but, not all.  I live in a medium sized city and I have seen several gas stations have put in charging stations. I still wouldn't want an EV. Or, rather, I wouldn't want to only have an EV. If I had to go outside the city I don't want to worry about whether charging stations are available. Also I have no idea how much it would cost to charge the vehicle. Too many unanswered question--sometimes the questions aren't even asked.

Found this substack post by way of my Facebook feed. I linked to a BBC (it think) article on the pains of self checkout technology. The piece today makes a few other good points. First, the technology is all about reducing the numbers (and therefore the cost) of minimum wage employees. Second, it isn't really labor saving because the customer has to do the work cashiers did--without pay. When gas stations introduced the practice of "letting" customers pump their own gas, they gave a choice for those who wanted full service and an incentive of a bit lower price for those who didn't mind doing the work for themselves. Now you don't get a choice and you don't get a price break. The retailers putting in self-serve kiosks do keep the choice because you can still, for now, go to a cashier manned station but they don't offer any price cut for those willing to do the work themselves.

Heather Cox Richardson made a couple of points about the Iowa Caucus before those of us who wouldn't vote for Trump unless he got a conscience implant (and maybe not then) start having palpitations. The turnout was considerably less than the previous Caucus turnout. It only represented about 15% of Iowa Republicans Trump's "win" amounted to 51% of 15%. The pundits keep reminding us that Iowa is not representative of the rest of the states. I am amazed the his supporters can't see him for the con artist see is. But my amazement has given way to a realization: he is a sound track for some people's grievances (real or imagined) and/or he is the vehicle for some peoples hopes for various changes they want (dismantled "deep state," "restoration" of a country they imagined once existed, creation of a society in which they would get what they think is their due, etc.) Those supporters don't give a thimble of warm spit for his moral failings.

January 16

 Good morning. It is still cold and we can really tell it because of how often our furnace turns on. The birds quickly realized I had filled the feeder. The feeder has six perches and at least five of them were occupied most of the time while several other birds sat on the fence waiting for an opening. I don't know why none tried to take the one empty place. The cats, of course, were mewing at the door wanting so much to get out among the "chew toys." 

Watching the postmortem on the Iowa caucus. Nothing much added to the commentary in real time last night.

Stray thought #1--the commentators said that those who were hoping an alternative to Trump (I guess I will have to give up "The Former Guy" because he may be The Future Guy) were disappointed. Well, I have to wonder why because none of the candidates were true alternatives. Christi dropped out and Haley is simply Trump with heels. They all, even Christi, were in the same philosophical bucket.

Stray thought #2--one of the reporters said that a couple (no idea how many) of voters claimed that they voted for Trump because he was the one who would return THEIR country, the country God has given them, to their control. I would be shocked at this if I hadn't read enough history to see it as the latest iteration of the "City on a hill" notion expressed by Puritan Preachers which later morphed into the American civil religion incorporated in Manifest Destiny and into Madelynn Albright's concept of America as the "indispensable nation" in world affairs. Those evangelicals want to return to a country (and a world) where God's people call the tune and everyone else dances to it.

Stray thought #3--I remember a scene in the Dune series movie "The Children of Dune" where Alia, ruling as regent for her brother's minor twins, becomes more and more repressive in the face of growing opposition to her government. The voice over tells us she is "unable to recognize the true forces arrayed against her" and so responds with increasing political violence. I see a parallel between Alia and our politicians who fail to see that our local problems are local manifestations of global problems. Look at any of the events here (migration, labor unrest, economic problems, environmental crises, etc.) and you see similar occurrences world wide. We have a globalized society. The competing demonstrations for and against Israel or the Palestinians demonstrate that. Vladimir Putin has tried, with some success, to characterize his war in Ukraine as one of a virtuous Russian conservative society resisting a decadent West. The Houthis buy sending drones and missiles against ships flagged in, owned by, or shipping to Europeans and Israelis are doing the same in solidarity with the Palestinians. Like Alia our politicians can't see the real forces arrayed against them.

More frequently over the last couple of decades I have found that new technology simply isn't convenient, or reliable. I recently got a "smart" phone and the only thing I like about it is I have it set up so I can access my bank account easily--thanks to a very nice, patient, young teller. Next week I plan to get a new flip phone on a new number. We never liked the self check outs in the stores that have put them in. We usually have far more items than the stores want to pass through those stands and we like to talk to the cashiers. This article on BBC indicates that the technology hasn't delivered on any of its promises and some retailers are removing some if not all of them.

One good outcome from the Iowa Caucus is that one of the Trump clones has suspended his campaign. Good bye, Vevek Ramaswamy, we hardly knew you and didn't really want to.

January 15

 Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Temperature is -8 and will not get out of single positive digits today. Not going anywhere. The Weather Channel has a reporter in Mississippi and they are also cold with snow/sleet.

Found on MSN this morning. Another power company's gas storage/transport operation failed over the weekend as the huge area it serves is suffering through brutal winter conditions. A couple of points interest me. First, the recognition that the U.S. has aging utility infrastructures. I put that last in plural because we don't have a single, unified system. Perhaps that is a good thing. Just imagine a nationwide outage rather than more local, though large, one. Second, though the Federal Government approved an expansion of the system no new infrastructure has been built because there is a battle over how the money should be spent. Some want more investment in so-called "green" technologies opposed to those who want an expansion of current infrastructure. In the mean time nothing at all gets done.

I found an interesting opinion piece on Boston Globe this morning. (No I don't subscribe but I do sometimes get such things and can sometimes read part of the article.) The piece "We are all plagiarists now" looks at the increasingly difficult problem of defining exactly what is plagiarism. The author cites another writer who tested a popular A.I. program for detecting plagiarism with one of his own articles. It resulted in a 7% probability that he had lifted some phrase from another author. He realized that he had never read the article in question which was posted on a site he had never visited. Then he checked out a passage from the Book of Job and found that God was a plagiarist. The program labeled as plagiarism future uses of the original material.

Green Prophet put out an article on how to tell "real" honey from processed or adulterated honey and explains why you should care. For years, since the first articles about "fake" honey appeared, we have bought honey from local sources. It costs a bit more but worth it. We do the same for maple syrup.

I am still digesting this post by Lambert Strether on Naked Capitalism. I can see about half and am doing my usual "yeeeees, but..." dance for the rest.

Evidently the COVID tests many people turn to if they suspect they might have the virus aren't as reliable as they once were. People test at the first appearance of symptoms and get a negative reading only to take a second test a few days later which comes back positive. The experts say that it is taking longer after infection for a person to test positive. Here is the link.