Everyday Erinyes #375

 Posted by at 4:30 pm  Politics
Jun 182023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Deforestation. You’ve all heard of it. We all know it contributes to climate change. But I’ll bet you didn’t know wha else it contributes to – and that is “spillover.”

Spillover is what it is called when a virus or other disease agent leaps from an animal to a human being. Spillover is what caused the Ebola outbreak (and in that case, the outbreak can be linked directly to deforestation.) Spillover is what brought is CoViD-19, and all its variants. And the next spillover may be only one forest clearing away.

Pro Publica, which has the story inas much detail as a non-medical-professional can be expected to grasp, is a Creative COmmons site. Following certain guidelines and attributions (such as include all links but no pictures), it’s perfectly kegal for me to quote a full article from them here. But this is not just one article – it is a three-part series – and any one of the three is too much reading dfoe a Sinday afternoon, and especially on a holiday weekend. So, instead, I am going to share links to all three, in order, with at least one startling quote from each. I am not trying to scare anyone just to be scaring you, no am I trying to make a simple political point – it’s way too complex for that. But some of this information should scare anyone. That’s just how it is.
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Part One of the series is “On the Edge.” It details sequences of events in Guinea – specifically in Meliandou, Guinea – where the Ebola outbreak started.

By 2013, a village had bloomed where trees once stood — 31 homes, surrounded by a ring of forest and footpaths that led to pockets residents had cleared to plant rice. Their children played in a hollowed-out tree that was home to a large colony of bats.

Nobody knows exactly how it happened, but a virus that once lived inside a bat found its way into the cells of a toddler named Emile Ouamouno. It was Ebola, which invades on multiple fronts — the immune system, the liver, the lining of vessels that keep blood from leaking into the body. Emile ran a high fever and passed stool blackened with blood as his body tried to defend against the attack. A few days later, Emile was dead.

On average, only half of those infected by Ebola survive; the rest die of medical shock and organ failure. The virus took Emile’s 4-year-old sister and their mother, who perished after delivering a stillborn child. Emile’s grandmother, feverish and vomiting, clung to the back of a motorbike taxi as it hurtled out of the forest toward a hospital in the nearest city, Guéckédou, a market hub drawing traders from neighboring countries. She died as the virus began its spread.

On average, only half of those infected by Ebola survive; the rest die of medical shock and organ failure. The virus took Emile’s 4-year-old sister and their mother, who perished after delivering a stillborn child. Emile’s grandmother, feverish and vomiting, clung to the back of a motorbike taxi as it hurtled out of the forest toward a hospital in the nearest city, Guéckédou, a market hub drawing traders from neighboring countries. She died as the virus began its spread.

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But looking back, researchers now see that dangerous conditions were brewing before the virus leaped from animals to humans in Meliandou, an event scientists call spillover.

The way the villagers cut down trees, in patches that look like Swiss cheese from above, created edges of disturbed forest where humans and infected animals could collide. Rats and bats, with their histories of seeding plagues, are the species most likely to adapt to deforestation. And researchers have found that some bats stressed out by habitat loss later shed more virus.

Researchers considered more than 100 variables that could contribute to an Ebola outbreak and found that the ones that began in Meliandou and six other locations in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo were best explained by forest loss in the two years leading up to the first cases.

It is now clear these landscapes were tinderboxes for the spillover of a deadly virus.

Part Two of the series is “Seeding Hope.” It deals with events and lessons learned in Madagascar, one of many areas in the world which have rainforest problems – because they are disappearing.

The following year, representatives from each of those villages gathered in a soccer field to watch as their chiefs pressed inky thumbs onto paper, signing an agreement that affirmed their communities would stop encroaching on the forest. In return, Health In Harmony began providing affordable health care through mobile clinics and teaching residents how to grow more food and support themselves without cutting down more trees.

Founded in 2006 to save rainforests and combat climate change, Health In Harmony may have stumbled upon a way to help prevent the next pandemic.

Researchers have shown that deforestation can drive outbreaks by bringing people closer to wildlife, which can shed dangerous viruses. Scientists found these dynamics can explain several recent outbreaks of Ebola, including the largest one nearly a decade ago in Guinea, which scientists believe started after a toddler played in a tree that was home to a large colony of bats. The child may have touched something contaminated with saliva or waste from an infected bat, then put his hands in his mouth, inadvertently giving the virus a foothold.

The moment in which a virus jumps from an animal to a human is called spillover. Though we now know more than we ever have about why, where and how these events happen, global health authorities have failed to make preventing them a priority. Instead, they’ve focused resources on fighting outbreaks once they begin.

Many see stopping deforestation as an intractable problem that would eat up the scarce money set aside to combat pandemics. Experts convened at the request of the World Health Organization last year argued that the “almost endless list of interventions and safeguards” needed to stop spillover was like trying to “boil the ocean.”

But this Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit, with an annual budget of just $5.3 million for programs in three countries, is demonstrating how working creatively across health, agriculture and the environment may be the key to prevention.

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In 2019, Health In Harmony launched its program in Madagascar. An island nation off the southeast coast of mainland Africa, Madagascar is a biodiversity hot spot with hundreds of mammals and birds that can be found only there. Researchers say the extensive range of unique animals makes it a more likely place for a novel virus to emerge. Madagascar fruit bats, which roost in the Manombo reserve, can carry coronaviruses, filoviruses (the family of viruses that includes Ebola) and henipaviruses (the family that includes the brain-inflaming Nipah and Hendra viruses). Rats and fleas in parts of the country carry the bubonic plague….

“I have learned that the forest, humans and animals are interdependent,” Jocelyn said, “and if the forest is sick, then the animals will be sick, and animals will surely impact humans’ health too.”

Part Three of the series is “The Scientist and the Bats.” Set in Gympie, Australia, it examines the work of Peggy Eby – the latest in a line of research scientists stretching back centuries who have continued their work despite being denied serious consideration (and serious funding.)

Dressed head-to-toe in protective gear, Peggy Eby crawled on her hands and knees under a fig tree, searching for bat droppings and fruit with telltale fang marks.

Another horse in Australia had died from the dreaded Hendra virus that winter in 2011. For years, the brain-inflaming infectious disease had bedeviled the country, leaping from bats to horses and sometimes from horses to humans. Hendra was as fatal as it was mysterious, striking in a seemingly random fashion. Experts fear that if the virus mutates, it could jump from person to person and wreak havoc.

So while government veterinarians screened other horses, Eby, a wildlife ecologist with a Ph.D., got to work, grubbing around the scene like a detective. Nobody knew flying foxes, the bats that spread Hendra, better. For nearly a quarter century, she’d studied the furry, fox-faced mammals with wingspans up to 3 feet. Eby deduced that the horse paddock wasn’t where the bats had transmitted Hendra. But the horse’s owners had picked mandarin oranges off the trees across the street. The peels ended up in the compost bin, where their horse liked to rummage. “Bingo,” Eby thought. Flying foxes liked mandarins. The bats’ saliva must have contaminated the peels, turning them into a deadly snack.

Eby, however, longed to unlock a bigger mystery: Could she, with the help of fellow scientists, predict when the conditions were prime for Hendra to spill over from bats, before it took any more lives? What if they could warn the public to be on guard — maybe even prevent the virus from making the leap? It would be painstaking work, but it wasn’t a pipe dream; Eby was already spotting patterns as she crawled around infection sites.

But when she pitched her research to a government funder the following year, she got a flat no. She proposed starting small, gathering basic data on flying foxes that could be used to figure out when and why they spread the virus. Her work, she was told, wasn’t considered a “sufficiently important contribution.”

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In a world still scarred by the COVID-19 pandemic, Eby’s dogged success exposes a global scientific blind spot. It’s not that trendy science involving the latest AI wonders isn’t worthy of research dollars. It’s that it should not be funded at the expense of the sort of long-term, shoe-leather work that allowed Eby and her colleagues to solve the mystery of a deadly contagion, Vora and other public health experts say. “All of these actions are important if we want to save as many lives as possible from infectious diseases,” Vora added.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I don’t like stories that make me think, “Oh, God, here we go again,” or “Oh, God, I’m glad I’m old.” But of course those are the stories that the world most needs to hear – and also to act on. People have been saying for hundreds of years that “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” (Benjamin Franklin first used it in writing in 11735, but it can’t have been new, and the concept goes back at least to Aesop), but we still don’t seem to get it.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Jun 152023
 

Yesterday was Flag Day, commemorating the day in 1778 when the Continental Congress (the second one) voted to accept the design.  I wonder what they would think if they could see it today.  And IMO it needs to be expanded again.    DC, Puerto RIce, and the US Virgin Islands for starters.  It’s time we gave all citiens full citizenship.

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Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Trump Admits Guilt During Asinine Speech Post-Arraignment
Quote – Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissman was appalled…. “[T]hose statements that you just played are admissible as admissions, regardless of whether Donald Trump takes the stand or not,” Weissmann said. “Those are admissions. So, that is part of what he said is just a straight-out confession. It’s not a defense. It’s confession.”,,, Who knew being “too busy” was a proper legal defense for refusing to return top secret documents relating to our national security?
Click through for story. I can’t guess whether he actually believes this is exculpatory or just thinks his base will believe so. I know that when I find myself thinking “I don’t have time for that,” it really means there are other things I’d rather do. And sometimes that is actually legitimate, if the thing I’d rather do gives me some needed benefit that the thing I “don’t have time for” doesn’t – but some of those things I “don’t have time for” really need to be done, and eventually I have to do them.

Denver Gazette “Out There” – Denver Zoo gets big donation after winning bet on Nuggets’ NBA Finals victory
Quote – Denver Zoo took to Twitter on Tuesday to thank Zoo Miami for their $2,500 donation to the Mile High City zoo’s efforts related to the bighorn sheep and mountain goats on Mount Evans. The donation was the result of the Denver Zoo making a bet with Zoo Miami based on the outcome of the Miami Heat versus Denver Nuggets NBA Finals match-up, which the Nuggets won on Monday night in a four-to-one series. Had the Heat won the series, the Denver Zoo would have been obligated to make a donation to the Zoo Miami sea turtle conservation effort.
Click through for details. I’m not a betting person. If it’s something not terribly important, I may consider betting on what I don’t want (so that I win either way.) But I do realize many people are fascinated by gambles, and I have no objection to that fascination being used to publicize good causes. (There’s a cute pcture of a baby bighorn, BTW.

Food For Thought

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Jun 142023
 

Yesterday, I was astonished to receive a “Tuesday Trivia” email from Ken Jennings. He stopped doing those years ago (after having done 800 of them.) But this one is because he has a new book. And I have to think that this is a terrific marketing strategy – emails to a list of people who followed you for 800 weeks (that’s more than 15 years.) If you are curious about the book, the trivia, or both, you can see the questions and answers here (I got two- Mahler and Marley – which is IIRC about average for me, and I don’t remember ever getting a Question 7.) The book is a compendium of everything anyone has ever believed about the afterlife, through history and across cultures, and down at the bottom of the page there is a left arrow (much like the ones under our comment sections) to the book’s main page.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?
Quote – Someone has to win the lottery, right? [On Saturday, just after we spoke, the Southern District confirmed to the Times that Cannon was randomly chosen, stating, “Normal procedures were followed.” Because the judge was chosen based, in part, on proximity to West Palm Beach, Cannon was one of seven active judges and three senior judges in the pool for the random draw.]
Click through for more speculation. I have used two videos, one in Sunday’s video thread and one in yesterday’s, made by Michael Popok for Meidas Touch. He lives and has worked in the Southern District of Florida, and is the only attorney I have found who points out that Cannon is in the Palm Beach Division, whereas the grand jury and the indictment and the arraignment (and presumably the trial itself) are in the Miami Division – not only a separate Division, but als a 200-mile round trip if it comes to that. He is also the only one to notice that the Magistrate Judge assigned is from the Miami Divison. This is going to have to be addressed. A 200 mile round trip is four hours – and that’s in Colorado, which is much less highly populated than southern Florida. It’s not reasonable to expect that of anyone. I am expecting less bickering than many experts are expecting.

HuffPost – Donald Trump Becomes First U.S. President To Be Formally Charged With Federal Crimes
Quote – Trump lawyer Todd Blanche entered the plea on Trump’s behalf shortly after 3 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, according to reporters in the room. Trump spent much of the time stonefaced, arms crossed, as the proceeding unfolded over the course of an hour. The judge released both Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta, a personal aide to Trump, without bail and travel restrictions. Trump was, however, ordered not to contact or speak with witnesses about the case, including Nauta, who continues to work for him.
Click through for story. As expected, the presiding judge was a Magiatrate Judge, not a District Judge, and specifically, one from the Miami Division (also specifically, not Judge Reinhart.) I’m going to avoid as much as possible even mentioning Judge Cannon, unless something comes up that is factual in nature and well-substantiated, because – to quote C. S. Lewis quoting an inagined afterlife spirit of George MacDonald, “all answers deceive.”

The Nib (Kay Sohini) – Breathless
Quote – I grew up in a sleepy little suburb parallel to the Ganges, and we were forever privy to a vast expanse of sky stretching from the shore. On the weekends after dinner, my grandfather woud take us stargazing. We only had to walk up to the roof. When I moved to Calcutta for college,… I could not see the stars. And I could not breathe.
Click through for graphic essay. This is the last one I have been sitting on, but I don’t rule out using another if one comes up.

Food For Thought

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Jun 132023
 

Yesterday, we had thunder, lightning, and hail, and also a power outage which lasted about an hour. And, of course, it was cold – low fifties with a “feels like” in the high forties. The outage must have stressed me, thoug, because I tripped and fell – no damage to speak of – two small cuts is all – just annoying. Incidentally, if anyone is wonderng abot whether the indictment really has 37 or 38 counts, the aner is 38, but the 38th one only applies to the pool boy, so 37 relating to Trump** is correct.

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Short Takes –

NPR – What is HAPE? How people in the mountains can still fall ill to mountain sickness
Quote – High altitude pulmonary edema — commonly referred to as HAPE — is a more serious case of altitude sickness that, if not treated quickly or properly, can lead to death…. “There are deaths usually every couple of years in adults who come to ski or have a vacation with their friends,” [Summit County’s Dr. Christine] Ebert-Santos said. “There are so many times when people are sick with a virus and you don’t really give it a second thought. Without having somebody’s eyes on you or having a pulse oximeter to see what is happening with your oxygen, you can’t really know if this is something going on in your lungs or it’s just a cold.”
Click through for details. I know, I’m the only one who lives in the mountains. But people do come up ere for reasons – and this was certainly news to me. I do own a pulse oximeter and I know how to use it, so here’s that.

USA Today – I don’t want to live in a country where Trump could be held accountable
Quote – It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”… TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.
Click through for full satire – if it isn’t too close to reality for you to stand. It realy doesn’t get any more “bothsiderist” than this.

The Nib (Rosemary Mosco) – The Future Is on Thin Ice
Quote – Growing up in Canada, I used to skate home from school. I know this sounds like a stereotype…. I grew up in … Ottawa. A canal runs through the city…. [I]t holds the Guiness World Record for the largest naturally frozen ice rink. In the winter, the canal freezes over…. Only this year it didn’t.
Click through for graphic essay. Back in the ineties, when the general public started to hear about climate change (which fossil fuel pushers had known about for decades), the changes resulted in some extremely heavy swnowfalls for us (because so much polar ice had thawed, there was more water in the air elsewhere.) So many ignorant people thought that was a reason to deny that glabal warming existed. What will that say to this, I wonder? Will they even see it?

Food For Thought

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Jun 112023
 

Talking Feds with Harry Litman – Trump INDICTED in Most Important Federal Case in HISTORY

The Lincoln Project – Everything Woke

Thom Hartmann – Trump Didn’t Act Alone – Deadly Crimes, Treason & More!

Liberal Redneck – Canada, Climate Change, and Crazy People

Cat Is So Clingy With His Dad

Beau – Let’s talk about old men bumping their heads….

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Jun 112023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Der Fliegende Holländer” (The Flying Dutchman”). This was the earliest of his operas to feature the theme of a man’s redemption through a woman’s love by means of her death. Yes, that’s totally nuts. But he wasn’t alone – literature, music and art all had influential practitioners in 19th century Europe who were obsessed with this idea. Most of his operas after this one riffed on the theme. Exceptios would be “Lohengrin” (he doesn’t need redeeming, and Elsa doesn’t die – maybe) and the Ring Cycle (unless Brynhilde’s immolation redeems Siegfried – but he’s already dead when that happens.) But I digress.  In any case, the music of the Dutchman is impressive. It was written before he fine-tuned his “leitmotif” system but is already characterized by tone painting. A lot of music has been written by a lot of people purportedly depicting storms at sea, but Wagner’s in this opera is the one that convinces me. Senta is self-destructive and as dunb as a MAGAt, but at least she doesn’t take anyone else down with her, and her music convincingly depicts her obsession. And so on.

Also yesterday I received a petition from Move On titled “Convict Trump” I was shocked. I had to go to their website to send a message, but I thought it was necessary. Here’s what I said: “Have you lost your minds? No, I’m not going to sign a “convict Trump**” petition. Only a jury can convict Trump** (or anyone else), and they are not supposed to have any outside influence. Sending a jury a petition like this is jury tampering. Unless he makes a plea deal – that would result in a conviction – but do we really want that? Come back to me when you have a petition which is Constitutional. This one isn’t.”

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Short Takes –

Colorado Public Radio – Sen. Michael Bennet wants to strengthen the watersheds that help protect clean drinking water
Quote – The bill reauthorizes the USFS’s Water Source Protection Program (WSPP), which helps fund projects that prevent pollution at the source, usually by restoring forest health and watersheds. It would increase funding for the program to $30 million per year for the next five years for work done in partnership with local communities, water utilities or agricultural producers. WSPP also tries to prioritize projects that focus on drinking water or improve resilience to wildfire or climate change.
Click through for story. I’m certainly aware of watersheds. But it never occurred to me what, besides lack of precipitation, might threaten them, nor of what could be done to keep them strong. D’oh! So i’m very glad to know that I have been voting for a Senator who does know.

The Conversation – Forts Cavazos, Barfoot and Liberty — new names for army bases honor new heroes and lasting values, instead of Confederates
Quote – The renamings so far have come off without controversy – and with no one seriously defending why the bases should continue honoring Confederates. As Trevor Noah said on “The Daily Show,” “Imagine being a Black soldier training at a base that is named after somebody who didn’t even think of you as a human being.” Celebrities popular with conservatives have praised the base redesignations, too. For example, Mel Gibson applauded renaming Fort Benning for Col. Moore, whose memoir was the basis for “We Were Soldiers,” a 2002 film starring Gibson.
Click through for details. How many people know more than one or two names of Hitler’s henchment? Honoring Confederate generals is not history – it’s just disgusting. And if even Mel Gibson – not just a conservative favorite but a – not terribly nice person – doesn’t mind, then really no one should.

The 19th – Could access to child care be the key to helping parents clear arrest warrants?
Quote – Cierra was among dozens of people who came out in early June for the so-called warrant clinic, one in a series of nationwide events that aims to address active warrants, usually those tied to outstanding traffic violations and misdemeanors. The periodic one-day events can be life-changing. People with lifted warrants can get back a driver’s license. They can apply for jobs. They can seek services that help with housing and food insecurity. They can also vote. “We are adding capacity to the justice system,” said Anza Becnel, the creator of the warrant clinics and the founder and executive director of Growing Real Alternatives Everywhere (GRAE), a nonprofit that helps organize the clinics. “We are adding capacity to things that we’ve identified that the community needs.”
Click through for more. If you didn’t realize this was a problem … you’re not alone … and you’re probably white.

Food For Thought

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Jun 082023
 

Yesterday, my re-registration came – two copies, one for the car and one for my files, and the sticker Whew! Well, it should be easier for the next several years, at least. There was a flash flood warning on the radio, but not for me – for “northern” Colorado Springs and points north. Not that it wasn’t raining here – it was – but definitely not flooding (just a little too wet to put the sticker in place).

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Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – TV Host Loses It Over Kids Learning About Deodorant In School
Quote – Real America’s Voice host Karyn Turk argued that children should not learn about deodorant in elementary school lessons preparing children for puberty…. “Not in school!” Turk gasped. “I don’t think they need to learn that in school. Elementary school. They learn that at home?”
Click through for story. There is a video but I didn’t think I could bear to watch it. “Karyn”? Coincidence?

The Nib (Issy Manley) – Not Working
Quote – Today’s CEOs exalting the four-day-week future echo industrialist Henry Ford. Ford famously reduced autoworkers schedules from six- to five-day weeks in the 1920s to maximize productivity AND spending. “Leisure is an indispensible ingredient in a growing consumer market.”
Click through for graphic article. Henry Ford was no angel – far from it – but he was also no dummy. He got it that any business needs customers to survive, let alone prosper – and got it beyond that that a business’s employees are a great potential customer pool. Why can’t today’s owners and CEOs get it? And then there are the climate effects.

Food For Thought

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Jun 022023
 

Yesterday, I had sent my disability certification without the witness signature to the DMV with an explanation, and I received a response that I could sent a photo of ny driver’s license to her and she could sign as witness. What a relief! I had gotten up earlt with not enough sleep and dreading having to go out again. Instead, I got to go back to bed. After getting up the second time, I made time to write a little essay to reply to John Pavlovitz’s email – some thoughts about the Bible I’ve been trying to spread for years in comments on petitions and article but which no one seems to be picking up on. The graphic he sent was so disturbing to me I just felt this was the time. It shows numbers and kinds of anti-transgender legislation in the states, Here it is –

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Short Takes –

KDVR Denver – Polis makes wager: If Nuggets win finals, Disney World moves to Colorado
Quote – Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called for a friendly wager with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney on Tuesday: If the Denver Nuggets win the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, Disney World moves to Colorado…. The Walt Disney World Resort currently resides in the Sunshine State and has since it first opened in the early 1970s. However, recently there have been rising tensions between the amusement park’s parent company and DeSantis.
Click through. KDVR is a Fox affiliate, but as I’ve often said, they are often good at local news. And the quote sounds just like Polis to me.

Vox – A big El Niño is looming. Here’s what it means for our weather.
Quote – El Niño is the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, and this year’s El Niño is poised to be a big one, sending shock waves into weather patterns around the world. It’s likely to set new heat records, energize rainfall in South America, fuel drought in Africa, and disrupt the global economy. It may already have helped fuel early-season heat waves in Asia this year. “A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, in a statement earlier this month. “This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared.”
Click through foor details. Republicans talk about Democrats being big spenders … but with the money they waste on fighting culture wars instead of climate change, we could really save a lot – of money, and of people.

Food For Thought

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