Like a freezing lahar.

This is one of the predicted effects of climate change. While this disaster is immediately horrific, the worse damage may be to come from the loss of this river.

Almost 2 billion people get their water from glacial sources that are rapidly shrinking. There is no replacement source.

Reusable hand warmers that get hot by freezing has been added as a related post - related requested by w1ndex on that post.

Points for overkill, but now all that melted snow is just going to freeze up again and turn your driveway into a skating rink.

Edit: some of us would prefer the president be up to speed on day one, not as a spectator but as a leader. I get that a leader who's prepared to lead is a new concept, but we need one desperately.

You seem to be under the impression that distribution nation wide doesn't need constant supervision and revision. You are sadly misinformed.
The preparation from the Whitehouse isn't complete, distribution of most vaccines requires deep freeze shipping to facilities with proper sub zero storage, and all the equipment for each shot, and a system in place to offer it to only the most at risk (and to deny the asshole who won't wait), personnel, facilities, policies, and equipment. None of that is completed.

Edit: oddly you seem to think a program set up by the Trump team will be flawless and perfectly functional from day one, unlike every other program they set up. When it turns out they planned to use ice cream trucks for delivery, but they aren't cold enough so 30 million doses spoil on the docks, Biden shouldn't be prepared? When it turns out the vaccine that needs sub zero refrigeration is the only one that really works, he shouldn't have a backup plan ready? Why would you assume it will function adequately totally hands off when nothing works that way, especially the biggest mass vaccine program ever?

If you think the federal government isn't going to be in charge, you're again misinformed badly. Operation warp speed, the distribution policy/agency, is in charge... it's a federal program. It will need constant supervision and retooling. Biden will be directly in charge there and should be informed and prepared, not shooting from the hip.

You left out the federal government and manufacturers and manufacturers of needles etc...The most important players in distribution.


Lol...You act like the white house isn't directly in charge of the distribution, they are.

Biden is just now being told the details of the plan, who's involved, and how it's supposed to work. As the leader of the plan, he should be fully informed before taking charge so he can fix whatever the moron who's sycophants designed it screwed up. Until he knows the plan and where and how we are setting it up and what stage we are at, he cannot possibly make his own plans to improve and facilitate it. Duh, that's the point here. You can't be that dense.

Two months is not enough time to be properly briefed on everything he needs to know, as explained in the 9/11 report.

The army, cia, and other agencies had plans for Osama in spring 2001, but Bush was all but unaware of any issues because he lost a few weeks of briefing time during the transition. This is a MAJOR factor in the success of the attack, as he didn't take any action on a problem he was unaware of.

Same goes here.

I know you disagree, you do little else. Fortunately, people with your mindset won't be running things for long, then we can make progress on this and a multitude of fronts Trump screwed up...is it that you even disagree he screwed up his pandemic response despite America being the worst hit country, and despite Covid not disappearing November 4 like he promised? Edit: do you not think it likely a trump response plan could be improved on?

There's so much to fix, like a looming depression, looming homeless armies about to be evicted, payback of the payroll tax holiday, new war with Iran, revision of our Russian policies, international relationships to mend, internal civil unrest, complete erosion of trust in law enforcement, 4 more years of completely ignoring infrastructure, treaties to rejoin, etc. He needs every second available to be as briefed on everything so he doesn't repeat Trump's ignorance of policy and law leading to more trumpian mistakes of ignorance and bravado, costing more lives.

You mean a Brahma day? Close. It's around a 311+ Trillion year cycle, and hardly resembles astrophysics beyond the one hypothesis that the universe "bounces" in and out of existence, expanding then collapsing then expanding....forever....but most hypotheses disagree. Some claim the universe will not collapse but expand eternally, ending in a big freeze, some suggest collapse in 5 billion years from now. Until we understand dark matter/energy, we are in the dark on this question.

The lifespan of Brahma (creator god) lasts for 100 of his years. His 12-hour day or Kalpa (a.k.a. day of Brahma) is followed by a 12-hour night or Pralaya (a.k.a. night of Brahma) of equal length. At the start of his days, he is re-born and creates the planets and the first living entities. At the end of his days, he and his creations are unmanifest (partial dissolution). His 100-year life is called a Mahā-Kalpa, which is followed by a Mahā-Pralaya (full dissolution) of equal duration, where the bases of the universe, Prakriti, is manifest at the start and unmanifest at the end of a Mahā-Kalpa.[13][24][25]

1 day (12 hrs: Kalpa) of Brahma = 4.32 billion solar years (1,000 Mahā-Yugas) (14 Manvantaras + 15 Sandhyās)
1 Day (24 hrs: Kalpa + Pralaya) of Brahma = 8.64 billion solar years
30 Days (1 month) of Brahma = 259.2 billion solar years
12 months (1 year) of Brahma = 3.1104 trillion solar years
50 years (Parārdha) of Brahma = 155.52 trillion solar years
100 years (lifespan: 2 Parārdha) of Brahma = 311.04 trillion solar years
I see a slight similarity, but not a correlation.


Oh my god, that's what you call perfectly describing psychology? Ok, your standard of proof is clearly light years away from mine.

Good poetry outweighs crusades, dark ages, etc?! Not to me.

You can say that, it's just a tool and can be used for good or bad, but in reality it's a tool for controlling the masses and pitting different segments of the population against each other. As a whole, religion has done exponentially more damage to individuals, society, and progress than any estimation of it's real world benefits. Only by adding the infinite good of heaven can the scales be even close to balanced imo.
The same may be true of science, it's real world benefits, which are ubiquitous and undeniable, may be outweighed by it's side effects since making the planet uninhabitable clearly outweighs extending grandpa's expected lifespan by 10% and keeping his lights on.

Oh yes, I remember last times, 2001 and 2008-9. They've used 96% of cash flow to buy back stock, now they want another. Oddly enough, it's the free market believers that insist they should get more free money instead of letting the market decide, and that's why our airline industry is one of the worst, most despised industries where customer service is non existent. Why waste time serving customers when the government will give you more money for nothing? Not for stocks, cash, promises to keep employees, promises to upgrade aging fleets, just free money. It was a near guarantee they wouldn't improve anything, but CEO compensation would skyrocket....and that's what happened.

I would be ok with bailouts if there were stipulations freezing ANY buybacks or bonuses, requiring improvements in service and planes, and ownership of the companies equal to the bailout amount accepted as collateral that transfers permanently if they don't meet all the stipulations or miss any payments on the loan, no handout. Not going to happen, so neither should a third bailout in under 20 years. Let them fail, service will improve.

I'm astonished the wheel bearings of the wheelchair don't freeze, lock up, melt, and dump him onto the street

Freeze at 33 seconds and tell me what that reminds you of. First one who guesses what i'm thinking gets 10 power points.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

I looked up some stats just to see.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

30 per million blacks fatally shot by police.
12 per million whites fatally shot by police.

So cops are roughly twice as likely to kill a black person, per racial group.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219gg

US being 76% white and 13% black, that works out to an aggregate ratio of roughly 9 whites killed per 4 blacks, per capita. In the end the death toll is high all around, white people aren't getting away scott free.

We should also consider poverty. Poverty and crime tend to track one another. It's safe to assume that areas with more crime will be more likely to experience police encounters, and hence more police shootings on average.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%
22%7D

White poverty rate (9%) is roughly half of black poverty (22%), which implies that crime is also half as frequent among whites, which is roughly similar to the per capita difference in police shooting rate.

30/12 is 2.5
22/9 is 2.44
2.5 > 2.44, so it implies bias against blacks, but not as big as I expected.

As far as total people killed, cops kill plenty people of all races. The numbers don't look as lopsided as I expected, which surprises me.

I appreciate the solidarity among black people. They at least try to hold authorities to account.

White people couldn't care less when cops kill whites. They just shrug it off as 'well the guy must have done something to piss off the cop, so it was probably their own fault anyways'. You can sit on liveleak watching cops kill white people all day, but other white people never get worked up about it. It's a shame they don't have the same sense of unity as black people do.

I wish the protests were about police abuse in general. Or even goverment abuse. There are so many issues that need fixing (e.g. civil forfeiture, repeatedly trying people for the same event by tweaking charges until a conviction sticks, government budget being infinitely larger than a defendant's budget, government freezing a defendant's funds so they can't afford lawyers, etc).

-scheherazade

Isn't that always true in any situation (like cowbell)? ;-)

You can buy mantis egg clusters for your garden from most nurseries, they hatch out by the hundreds. I buy a few every year, but rarely see full sized mantises (mantes) in my garden, and never new egg clusters. I did catch one a few Octobers back before it got cold and kept it alive until spring in my window plants, but I think they normally die before it freezes outside...hornet queens hibernate underground if I remember correctly. :-(

They poured more concrete in two years than US did in the 20th century. IN TWO YEARS! That's a factual statement. (Shows article and chart showing it took 3 years. Apparently they don't understand that 2011-2013 is 3 years, even when it's in the title.)

Also mentions the new Chinese city with 550 square feet of office space with 95% not occupant. *facepalm

China dipped into our retirement funds to pay tariffs? No, they didn't. That's simply asinine in numerous ways.

They harvest most of the world's frozen fish? No, they freeze most of the world's frozen fish. No one harvests frozen fish.

These people are morons. Typically, they are fast and loose with facts and definitions, maybe just to avoid being truthful, something the right now finds distasteful.

What a disgusting piece of shit and outright liar.
Her achievements already outweigh his by miles...he's only managed to get himself kicked off Fox, impressively hard to do if you're right wing. Fox has apologized for his disgraceful ad hominem attacks against a child who he couldn't factually contradict....but Laura Ingram has also personally attacked her on her show, as has Trump on Twitter.

Being on the autism spectrum, she says she has aspergers, is a developmental disorder NOT a mental illness.
Being a pathological liar, that's a mental illness apparently now shared by an entire political party.
Being a fecal golem is a personality disorder he clearly has in spades.

The Carnegie Mellon study he sites said no such thing, and it's authors have stated that it's a total misrepresentation of their findings....repeatedly.
The study actually said certain produce at it's worst might be more ecologically harmful per calorie than some kinds of white meat eating by comparing things like bacon vs lettuce on a calorie to calorie instead of serving to serving rate, so 4 strips of bacon were compared to > 40 cups of lettuce. Get real.
To compound the confusion they chose a calorie poor produce like lettuce with high greenhouse gas emissions instead of kale, broccoli, rice, potatoes, spinach and wheat (just to name a few) which all rank lower than pork in terms of greenhouse gases.
The same argument holds for water usage...they chose lettuce, with high water requirements, instead of things like corn, peanuts, carrots and wheat which all use less water than all non-seafood meat.
It's also assumed the produce will be wasted at exponentially higher rates than meat, which can be preserved more easily. That may be true, but they don't include the preservatives or energy to refrigerate and/or freeze meat on the bacon side of the equation.

Of course the lettuce takes more resources if you eat 40+ cups instead of 4 thin bacon strips, just like when you compare a single fish stick to several giant pumpkins.

*rant over*