What just happened and why?

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From the newsletter of my local Indivisible group:

Our first response to this loss must be humility. We fought, we lost, that is on us regardless of any explanatory framework that might eventually emerge.

Our other first response to this loss must be skepticism wrapped in patience. Nothing in politics is simple. Occam’s razor is a pernicious fallacy and a very poor guide to thinking about complex things. When your favorite football team loses a 34-33 game because the kicker missed the final field goal, that was not a problem with the kicker (exclusively). Single cause and simplistic explanations we hear people tout are more likely to be part of, rather than an explanation for, the problem. Did you know that there is a thing called “the voter files” assembled over weeks following an election and subsequently analyzed by groups like Pew Research? This is the corpus of data from which all experts draw verifiable conclusions about what actually happened during an election. This is a better resource than gut feeling or anecdotal data, and will produce a better analysis than that produced by the usual immediate lamentation and rending of cloth. Have patience.

Having said that, here are some preliminary thoughts on some of the things.

CONTINUE READING HERE


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Trump Is Expected To Be The Next President

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… according the the most respected and usually accurate polling, out today.

The most current, just released, and final New York Times-Sienna poll has just come out and, alarmingly, Harris and Trump are tied at the national level. Normally, if a Democrat is tied at the national level, they will lose the electoral college. That basic math has been true for many cycles, and is almost certainly true today. Polls are not predictions of the future, but rather, samples of very recent thinking and behavior of a sample of voters. But we use them to predict the near term future, and based on this, we will be electing Donald Trump for a second term as President, and we as a nation will choose to end our democracy. Good people will be imprisoned or killed, bad people will rise to global domination, we will all suffer, and we will all ask ourselves, “why did we bring children in to this world.”

Read the rest on my Substack (and subscribe!)


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Storm World

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Recent Political Threats and Violence in America: a partial listing

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This list is more comprehensive (but still very incomplete) for the last 10 years, but goes back to 2016 in order to capture the spate of threats and violence related to the Trump for President campaign in 2017.

Year Month (may be approximate) Target Perpetrator Nature of threat
2015 1 Barack Obama ISIL linked terrorists Complex Plot to kill President Obama, hijack an airplane, and bomb Coney Island
2016 3 Journalists Donald Trump Trump calls for violent attacks against journalists who do not agree with him, and promises to pay the legal bills of supporters who do so.
2016 11 Sasha Obama South Korean Lee Threat of rape against Sasha Obama, and threats against the US ambassador to South Korea and others.
2017 7 Suspected arrested by the police Donald Trump Trump called for police to physically beat suspects.
2017 7 Journalists Donald Trump Trump tweets produced video in which he violently attacks and beats a CNN reporter.
2017 8 All people in America who are not white males. Donald Trump Trump supported white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, during which white supremacists called for an all white controlled society and killed one counter protester.
2018 9 Barack Obama Cesar Sayoc Mail bomb attempt. Perpetrator sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2018 9 Hillary Clinton Cesar Sayoc Mail bomb attempt. Perpetrator sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2018 9 Robert De Niro Cesar Sayoc Mail bomb attempt. Perpetrator sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2018 11 Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Robert DeNiro, among over 1 dozen prominent Democrats and media outlets Trump Supporters Mailed pipe bombs.
2019 2 Cameraman Ron Skeans Donald Trump supporter BBC cameraman attacked by trump supporter in El Paso.
2019 3 Barack Obama and Maxine Waters Stephen Taubert Convicted of threatening to kill former President Obama and US Representative Maxine Waters
2019 4 Barack Obama Larry Mitchell Hopkins, militia member Led a militia band in training to assassinate President Obama. Sentenced to 21 months.
2019 4 Barack Obama Stephen Taubert Threatened to hang the president. Convicted and sentenced.
2019 6 Migrants Donald Trump Trump calls for the shooting of asylum seekers on the border to “slow them down.”
2020 5 The People, mostly people of color, of Minnesota Donald Trump President Trump threatens to send his military into Minnesota to end protests against police violence against black men.
2023 4 Joe Biden Cody McCormick Pleaded guilty for making death threats against the President.
2023 6 Barack Obama Taylor Taranto, January 6th participant Stalked the Obama home with bomb making materials and weapons
2023 8 Joe Biden and Jon Tester Anthony James Cross Charged with threats to kill the President and the Senator from Montana. Under indictment.
2023 8 Joe Biden Craig Deleeuw Robertson Threatened to kill President Biden. Killed by FBI agents.
2023 8 The Press Steve Bannon and Kash Patgel Former trump advisers openly discuss plans to target, arrest, or assault members of the press, in revenge.
2023 11 Unspecified members of the Biden Administration and Justice Department Monica Crowley and Donald trump Crowley threatened (“they will pay”) these victims and Donald Trump followed up by repeating the threats.
2024 1 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Russell Wren Threatened violence against the President and Vice President and others
2024 5 Joe Biden Jordan Gee Charged with threatening the life of the President and his Cabinet.
2024 5 Juries, Judges, others Trump Supporters Following comments on his legal troubles by Donald trump, numerous supporters call for hanging or executing judges, juries, etc.
2024 7 Joe Biden Jason Alday Florida man charged with making threats against the President.
2024 7 Joe Biden Jason Patrick Alday Florida man accused of making threats against the President and other federal officials.
2024 7 Donald Trump Thomas Crooks Candidate Trump shot in the ear, would-be assassin Crooks killed by Secret Service CAT team.
2024 8 The Press Donald Trump and unnamed Trump supporter Candidate Trump called the press the “enemy of the people” inciting a supporter in his rally to attempt to physically attack or kill members of the press at the rally.
2024 8 Employee of National Cemetery Employee of Trump Campaign Physical assault
2024 8 Donald Trump Ryan Routh Florida Man Routh found near golf course with an automatic rifle, arrested.
2024 9 Children, families, private citizens at large Trump Campaign and their supporters More than 30 bomb threats and other threats made by likely Trump supporters incited by Trump/Vance comments about Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio

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Litani, a novel by Jess Lourey

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My childhood home had a double-barrel certified scary basement.

The wooden stairs leading down varied in size and smoothness, as they had all been replaced at different times over the century since the house was built. A large area of the concrete floor had been dug up as though something was buried down there. Two large kraken disguised as furnaces lurked in the darker nether regions. I would have to walk past them to get to the hidden chamber in the far corner, inside of which was the tunnel leading to an exit door I’m pretty sure I was the only person aware of. This cellar sat beneath a house occupied by a family (mine) that believed in spirits, poltergeists, and all of that. When WP Blatty’s “The Exorcist” came out, my mother obtained a copy and had all the family members read it so we would know what we were up against. That is when I learned that my cousin, at that time a Catholic Archbishop, had been trained as an Exorcist in the Vatican. The scary cellar, the buried chamber in the backyard, the concrete crypts in the woods near my house, the famous haunted cemetery a few blocks away (Graceland, home of Hattie the Hitchhiker, the ghost of a young woman who died on the corner by my house), all of it, created a world of built in horror for my very young self.

I’m sure that growing up in Scary Movie scarred me, but I grew out of it, and forgot about it, and never really thought about how a childhood spent in a world with some very dark corners could have an effect on an adult. Everything was fine. Then, I discovered Jess Lourey’s novels.

Now don’t’ get me wrong. Not all of Lourey’s novels are born in childhood horror of one kind or another, but several are. Her breakthrough novel Unspeakable Things resonates with me, since as an anthropologist with links to forensics and living in the same region, I have special memories of some of the things that shaped that book. The first novel of hers that I read was Bloodline, which is scary novel to Minnesota what a Coen Brothers’ film is also to Minnesota … is it fiction? Or is it documentary? Fiction? Or documentary? Hard to say.

Litani addresses that thing that happened several years ago that you may remember, documented to varying degrees in true-crime news shows ala 48-Hours, when large numbers of people were accused of abusing large numbers of children, but then it all turned out to be made up. Except it wasn’t actually made up, just gotten wrong by the authorities. It happens that the author’s childhood included this story not just because it was on the news, but because it was in her neighborhood, or at least, her extended lived experience as a kid. If I was an author like Jess Lourey, there would be a novel about my basement. Lourey’s novel (this one and others) is better than my basement.

I can judge how fun it is to read a particular book by how many times I highlight a phrase and note “steal this” (I’m a writer). My copy of Litani is full of those marginal notes. The characters are palpable, the story is intense and driving, and the pages demand turning. There be monsters in Litani. Pick this up and discover how central character, the very young Frankie Jubilee, hopes to slay them.

Litani is a free-standing novel, no need to read it in some order in relation to other novels by this author. But Lourey has some that are in order, and a new series coming out, the second one being available now for pre-order. Check out her work. The Quarry Girls, Unspeakable Things, Litani, the first in the new series, The Taken Ones, and the aforementioned Bloodline stand out. An entirely different lineage (only two books so far) concern young Salem and her best friend and various family members engaged in the modern phase of an ancient battle between forces of good and evil, and those two novels are page turners.

Funny thing about many, maybe most, of Lourey’s books: They may be classified as horror, but horror usually has stuff that isn’t real (like “The Exorcist” — yes, for the record I know that is made up!). Lourey’s novels, as far as I know, do not stray into unreality or science fiction. Somehow, they don’t have to, and somehow, that makes the horror more well done than a lot of other stuff that is out there. You can read these novels at night, but the experience might make you give people you meet during the day the side-eye.


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2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season

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It starts.

Tropical Storm Alberto has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, just to the right of Actual Mexico.

As I write this, Alberto is making landfall as a naty storm with 50 MPH winds, downgrading quickly to a 35 MPH storm that will dissipate over land. However, the wet and disturbed air remaining from this storm will cross the country of Mexico and emerge incoherent in the Pacific, where it may become a weather feature of interest.

When the nucleus two atoms of a certain size range are mushed together by gravitational forces, the force that holds the elements of atomic nuclei and the mass of the nuclei themselves interact at the quantum level in a way that transforms that combination of matter and energy into a different mix of matter and energy, with much more energy and much less matter. IE E = MC2. This happens regularly inside our Sun, and some of that resulting energy can contribute to the formation of a hurricane.

I’ve left out some details.

One detail is this: Atlantic Hurricanes form amidst massive air currents that translate some of that sunsourced energy into the movement of air around the equator and from the equator northwards towards the North Pole. That movement of air and associated transfer of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean can be regular (aka “Neutral”) in form in the Pacific ocean, or it can be irregular (aka “El Nino” or “La Nina”) in the Pacific. The El Nino and La Nina forms of movement of air and transfer of heat involve either a blowing out of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere or the absorption of more than average amounts of heat from the atmosphere into the ocean, respectively.

So imagine you are an Atlantic hurricane forming on a long hallway carpet that is itself being pulled forward. As you move forward the air around you swirls and moves in just the right way to facilitate your increased spin and make you bigger, and the heat that comes up from below you adds energy to your spin. But suddenly the carpet gets bunched up way down the hall, way farther than you can see (in real terms, on the other side of the Earth). That disrupts the whole thing, and the forces that were spinning you up and giving you strength are reduced and made more chaotic. Maybe you’ll form into a full hurricane, maybe not. But even if you do, you won’t be the best hurricane you can be. That bunching up of the carpet was the disruptive El Nino pattern of equatorial air and ocean interaction.

Now imagine the same scenario, but way ahead of you, instead of the carpet bunching up, a force is pulling it along a little faster and more efficiently. Now, the effects causing your spin-up are enhanced, and the overall energy you take in is increased. Now, the chanced that you will reach hurricane strength and form are increased over “neutral” conditions, and the overall strength and size you may achieve is greater. That is La Nina.

Now imagine a second factor other than the carpet: overall heat. The warmer the surface of the Atlantic ocean over which you are forming, the more likely you are to become a hurricane, and the bigger and/or stronger you can become. The bunching-up aka El Nino phase of the climatic carpet system adds heat to the atmosphere everywhere, which increases the heat of the Atlantic Ocean’s surface, that energy source down below the carpet. But while El Nino is adding heat, it is also disrupting the process. But, if El Nino ads a bunch of heat and then goes away, the heat remains for months as it slowly dissipates. Therefore, if El Nino changes quickly to La Nina, then El Nino increases a key variable to enhance Atlantic hurricane formation, then immediately after, La Nino increases a key variable to enhance Atlantic hurricane formation.

That is what is likely to happen this hurricane season. We are leaving El Nino conditions over the next several weeks, and we are likely to plunge into a La Nina phase right away. That is why this Atlantic Hurricane Season is expected to be a humdinger of a hurricane season.

Storm Beryl

As I write this, Beryl is a Tropical Storm located about 10 degrees north, lined up with the mouth of the Amazon (far to the South). The numerous models mostly agree on this: Beryl will be classifiable as a hurricane by mid day Sunday, and proceed towards the Windward Islands, likely passing somewhere between Roseau and the South American coast, with the current National Hurricane Center’s track running through St Vincent and the Grenadines, with Kingston the current center of the bullseye. By Thursday or so next week, the storm will be closer to Other Kingston, the one in Jamaica, and Jamaica the island of Hispanola, and Cuba are all under the gun. That would put the hurricane, very likely a Category 3 storm, in the western Caribbean and wondering where to go next. That is very important, since it could do what a lot of hurricanes do, and turn north to overrun Cuba the threaten Florida, or it could penetrate further into the Gulf of Mexico, and then who the heck knows. In the first instance, it would probably weaken somewhat, in the second instance, it would be over very warm water in the Gulf and may well strengthen.

Beryl Update: 6/30/24 PM

Between now and tomorrow at this time, Beryl will achieve major hurricane status with winds of 140 mph, gusting to 165 mph, as it bears down on the southerly Windwaard Islands, that band of tiny nations and protectorates that form the southeastern edge of the Caribbean.

Beryl is a weird and strange looking hurricane. Not to be to judge, but it almost looks more like a typical thunderstorm cluster disturbance that hurricanes resemble before they are fully born. This is a major hurricane born so recently there are fragments of the placenta draped across its shoulders. Presumably Beryl will circle-up and start looking more organized soon. Beryl is not a monster size hurricane at this time but is expected to get larger.

This is very conjectural, but bear with me. Most models of the hurricane’s intensity have it remaining a Category 1 even after it slides across Yucatan and starts to leave that very flat mainland region behind. This is not going to be good for humans and habitats in that region. After about 5 days from now, it is reasonable to expect Beryl to be a Category 1 hurricane, or at least, still be a tropical cyclone as it re-enters the Gulf of Mexico. Most models, and this is way too far out to be more than cautionary information, have Beryl continuing across the southern Gulf of Mexico and re-landing on the MExico coast, but about 1/4th of the models have the storm curving northwards and striking the US gulf coast. Right now I see no estimates for Beryl’s likely strength at that time, but the Gulf is warm and tends to cause strengthening. So, again, this is way too far out to say, but not to far out in time to be concerned if you are along the Gulf coast anywhere from Poza Rica to New Orleans.

For perspective, Hurricane Harvey took a very similar track, crossed the Yucatan, then turned into a big storm before hitting Texas. At this point, Beryl looks bigger and stronger than Harvey.

Beryl is the farthest east forming hurricane in June on record. This time of year we tend to not have the “Cape” hurricanes that come all across the Atlantic. Once Beryl becomes a Category 4 storm (any hour now), it will be the earliest Category 4 hurricane in the Atlantic, and presumably the only such hurricane in June. It is the earliest major hurricane within 100 miles of Barbados and Grenada.

Beryl Update 7/1 9:45 AM

I just want to put this here so we can compare realty with the current estimates in a day or so:

Beryl Update 7/2 6:25AM

As suspected, Beryl will remain stronger than earlier projected:

Also note that this hurricane’s path has shifted to the north a little, placing Jamaica in serious danger.

The people of Carriacou and other islands hit by Beryl over the last day have lost homes in infrastructure, but so far the death toll is minimal. We’ll see if that remains the case, hopefully it will.

Wind shear was expected to cause Beryl t drop to below Major status about now, but the storm is remaining at Category 4 level for the next day or two.

The estimated track of Beryl becomes extremely uncertain after Friday. The spaghetti models have continued to shift the post-Yucatan path northwards, with the Texas-Mexico border being the approximate center of the largest cluster of models, but a goodly number suggesting landfall as far east as New Orleans. The models are ambiguous as to how strong this storm might be by the time that happens.

Beryl Update 7/7 8:17M

One thing you can say about Beryl: as a named storm it feels like it is lasting a very long time. I think the record for longevity in the Atlantic is the 1899 Ciriaco hurricane, which hung out at sea for just over a month, and lasted as a storm from August 2rd to September 12th, with the last 8 days being extratropical. Beryl formed on June 28th, so it’s only been going 9 days, but somehow feels longer.

Beryl, currently tropical storm, a will strengthen back into a real Hurricane over the next 24 hours, then make landfall in Texas, affecting areas upcoast Corpus Christi and Galveston. As the storm moves inland, serious flooding is expectged as far north as the Dallas-Shreveport area. This does not seem to be a Harvy-eque situation.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic: Nothing. Yet.

Up to and including Debbie (August 11th update)

I asked a super hurricane expert, about two weeks ago, if we still wanted to say this year’s hurricane season was likely to be very active, given that it hasn’t been too active. He said, “Yes, of course. But if nothing happens over the next couple of weeks, then ask again.” He also pointed out that the important variable was how much overall total energy happens, not the number of storms. But we were still, at that time, at a modest level.

Then Debby happened. Debby, however, was only one storm, so I’m thinking that the 2024 hurricane season has so far not been active.

Prior to mid August, here is the number of storms up through mid-August in each year since 2015 and the total number of storms:

An here are the same data plotted, showing that the mid-August count predicts the final year with an R-squared value of 0.68.


BUT, note that the darta lacks ideal uniformity, with the largest year (2020) potentially skewing the result. When we recalculate R-squared without that year, it drops to a miserable 0.34.

Debby, of course, was a storm of the century kind of storm in that it was very wet, and it’s post-hurricane self caused major, fatal, and catastrophic flooding all across the eastern US.

Ernesto?

We know the next storm will be Ernesto, but we can’t say with certainty that current tropical disturbance #1 will become it. But it likely will.

Right now, all the information about this mid-atlantic dust up of vapor and wind is in the form of divergent spaghetti models, but a pattern of likely behavior is starting to form. Briefly, and very much subject to revision, Ernesto could become any where from a Category 1 through Category 3 hurricane, with a very small possibility of being stronger or remaining as a tropical storm. Ernesto is potentially heading directly towards Cuba and all the caribbean islands between the the Virgin Islands and Cuba, including Puerto Rico and Haiti, OR more likely it will curv north in the atlantic and head roughty in the direction of eastern Canada, which it could easily miss. Or drench. There are few models that have the storm heading towards the Yucatan or into the Gulf. So, as you can tell, anything could happen! In a few days, there will be better predictions.

Ernesto is for real (August 14 update)

Category I hurricane Ernesto is menacing eastern Puerto Rico, but is curving north and will aim towards the Canadian Maritimes. The storm will likely become a Category 3 storm while it heads for Bermuda. The current expected tracks shows a direct hit on Bermuda, but probably as a Category 1 or 2 storm. Either way, it is not good for Bermuda.

The storm will remain as a full on hurricane even as it pulls abreast of New York and Boston, but well out to sea. This storm will not pull a Sandy, but rather, will continue to curve its path out towards the north Atlantic, according to most models, though the chance of it menacing Nova Scotia and/or Labrador nowhere near zero.

Helpful Information

In the spirit of keeping things all in one place this hurricane season, here is the Saffir-Simpson scale, and below, the name list for the Atlantic Hurricanes.

Names for 2024:
Alberto
Beryl
Chris
Debby
Ernesto
Francine
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Milton
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sara
Tony
Valerie
William


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Nitpicking the Press: Numbers Count!

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This morning’s news story: “President Biden Will Remove 1.5 Million Lead Pipes”

Thanks, Joe, but “no thanks” to the culture of journalism, which sometimes strings words together that make no sense. We do not count pipe this way, usually. A line of pipe that runs from a main to a house may be made up of one or more pipes (usually more), if you count the number of tubular objects fixed together to connect everything up. Say they the installers use five pipe segments. Is that five pipes that President Biden will dig up, or is it one pipe all fixed together? The water pipe that feeds Boston, Massachusetts is a complex of pipes that runs about 70 miles, I believe there are two of them in parallel, and although they are not made of lead so President Biden will not be digging them up, I suspect there are tens of thousands of segments joined together to make that work. Or does this count as two?

So who is counting wrong? CONTINUED ON SUBSTACK


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How Trump Ends

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I heard an absolutely awful person (via media not someone I know) proudly complaining that if a good friend or lover suffered a physical insult, such as tripping over a broken sidewalk and landing on their face, that she thereafter could not look at that person again without disdain.

That sounded unbelievable until I remembered this story: SEE MY SUBSTACK!


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Enviro-Misconceptions and Wrongness

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Is climate change accelerating? No.

A subset of climate change scientists and activists are known in the mainstream science community as doomers. These are often credentialed and legitimate scientists who prefer the scarier interpretations of data, and who tend to have hair-on-fire reactions that they pass on to the general public. This does not help us in the broader mission of helping the public understand the science. Assertions that underestimate the amount of warming or the severity of effects do not help; assertions that overshoot the mark also do not help.

I wrote a substack on this, which you can visit HERE.


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Happy Memorial Day: Take Down Your Flag

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There is a story about a young woman named Yara. Yara worked for the city of Franklin in the clerk’s office. During election season, she worked mainly on elections, and during the rest of the year, other things, including staffing the “input line,” the main telephone interface with the public.

One fine June morning she left her house in a quiet cul-de-sac walking distance from City Hall. It was actually her parent’s house; she was living with them until she saved up enough money to move to the Boston area, where she had deferred admission to a graduate program in public policy. Her passion was to work for the government, because she believed public service to be her calling, and she believed in good government. This was something she picked up from her grandfather, who had been a civil servant in Iran; he was an honest government worker, who believed in the elusive concept of democracy. Thus his removal to the united States decades earlier.

Anyway, Yara headed out towards work and as she passed by two side-by-side homes near the corner, the shuddered a bit, thinking about the occupants. They were known to her as MAGA people. One of the residents, a man in his 50s, had one time let himself into Yara’s home while the family was eating dinner, to tell them what the #BLM sign they had just put out on their lawn really means. About how it was racist, and all lives actually matter. And so on.

Read the rest on my substack.


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