It has been a quiet Atlantic Hurricane Season. That is expected for an El Nino year, when wind patterns tend to throw sheer at the storms, messing up their plans to become giant rotating vortices of chaos and destruction. Not sure if “vortices” is a word. Anyway, it is now* expected, according to NOAA, that wind sheer is going to lose to super heated ocean surface, allowing the rest of the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Seasons to blow up to be bad.
Here, let us begin to record the high points of the season. I’ll start:
After days of quiescence, there are suddenly two stormy bits emerging off the coast of Africa. They each have a 70% chance of developing into a storm. They will be moving over very warm water.
*My friend and colleague Michael Mann and his research group had already predicted this, well before the start of the season. He has an excellent track record. The longest range and thus least reliable spaghetti map projections suggest that one of them will curve up into the midst of the North Atlantic. The same not very reliable projections allow for other stormy blog moving farther west and not recurring over the next several days, which leaves open the possibility of a meaningful relationship with land.
That is all for now, keep an eye out. As it were.
Entry of 8/28/23
This is a google map screenshot of Horsdhoe Beach, Florida. The average elevation at the surface here is 7 feet. Most of the homes are on stilts. The expected storm surge, estimated two days in advance, so this may be very inaccurate, is over 9 feet.
At the moment, this community is almost exactly at the expected eye landfall of Hurricane Idalia.
Remember the MRAs? They and others begat 4Chan. 4Chan begat QAnon. QAnon begat January 6th. And, never mind the guy with the horns. Donald Trump is the QAnon Shaman.
John Favreau interviews Will Sommer, author of Trust The Plan, on Offline:
Note: There are about the same number of QAnon followers in the US as there are “mainline Protestant,” ca 12-15%. Considering that this is a violently anti-Semitic belief system (and this Antisemitism is core to QAnon doctrine) it is concerning that there are about 17 million Jews in America, but close to 50 million Q-Anon believers (though the latter are hard to count).
Read the book. Watch the video. Don’t let your friends believe in this. Also, just so you know, children are not pizza.
In America, extremists claim the flag, fireworks, and country music. It used to be mom and apple pie, and eagles have always played a part.
As any new trope emerges in public discourse in America, it is sorted out in relation to extremists and progressives. Folks who benightedly think they exist in the “independent” space between those two categories will sustain confusion temporarily, but eventually fall into one camp or another. (By count, most people are progressive, if you based the determination by checking off the issues they support or oppose. “Independent thinkers” are just citizens who have not actually thought about it much.)
But what about dog or cat owners? Are dogs or cats or their owners extremist or progressive? I’m thinking as a whole, neither, though I suppose certain breeds may trend one way or another. What about autism spectrum or neuro-divergent individuals, are they extremist or progressive? Well, everybody I personally know in that broad category is a progressive, but that is a biased sample. I would like to think that neuro-divergent folks would ultimately lean progressive, once exposed to the hate heaped upon them by the extremist right. So there may be some bias there, but not 100%. What about veterans? There is a strong association between conservative politics and the military, but most veterans are not part of the actual Military-Industrial Complex, and tend to be highly diverse in their politics. It is not possible for the extreme right to claim veterans. Veterans are everywhere and of every kind, politically. Who loves fireworks? Who hates the, or at least, is annoyed or bothered by them?
Dogs, cats, and dog or cat owners that pay attention to and care about their pets are not super keen on fireworks.
Vets are often bothered by fireworks.
Folks with sensory processing issues, or noise sensitivity, are not super happy about fireworks.
So, I would say that the politics of liking or not liking fireworks, the question of whether firework displays are a good thing or a bad thing, should not match closely with the standard American political binary. People who like them may be across the political range of thought, and people who don’t like them should be as well. But, the principle I referred to above, that all new tropes will be shoved into one of the other of our two actual political silos, is true. And this is causing some interesting friction. If you don’t believe me, just check in on your local NextDoor community. People are staring to question whether or not we should have fireworks, including large displays by municipalities, neighborhood fireworks displays, and individual use, which tend to be small scale, but that also tend to be carried out over several weeks time centered on the Fourth of July. And others are lining up to fight on behalf of this Great American Tradition.
It turns out that loving fireworks is an extremist position. Caring about kids, vets, our pets and pet owners, others, who don’t like the noise and the smell, and in some cases, are really bothered by them, is a progressive position. Mostly. The bifurcation of viewpoints around the loud smelly bang-toys is not complete, but it is happening as we speak, and it is happening rapidly. Why, just his year, a city that can be counted as one of the most progressive cities in the US cancelled its fireworks display, and will have a laser light show instead. I speak of Minneapolis. Saint Paul has cancelled fireworks in the past, I’m not sure if they are doing it this year or not. At least one city in California has cancelled fireworks. Canadian cities have cancelled fireworks.
The reasons are not strictly political. In the case of California and Canada, a concern over air quality is the reason. But if the politics were hard right in those communities, those fireworks displays would not be cancelled. Extremists don’t believe that pollution exists. Some cancellations over the last few years have been Covid-concern. But Covid-concern is at least as political as the rockets’ red glare. Extremists don’t believe in viruses.
Fireworks are offensive, polluting, and jingoistic, not to mention dangerous in some settings. If you think so too, this is a good time to write an LTE to your local paper, to start the process of normalizing the idea that we might do something other than setting off smoke and noise polluting explosions to express our patriotism, and patriotism is not, despite what the extremists say, a right wing franchise. It belongs to all of us.
If the current flag of the State of Minnesota is problematic due to its treatment of our Native people (and it is), one might assume the Apartheid-era flag of South Africa was worse. Actually, that would be an incorrect assumption. The architects of apartheid didn’t think to make their flag a tool of that particular form of repression, though it was full-on colonial, and needed to be replaced when the New South Africa emerged in April 1994.
After Apartheid was lifted, I began to work in South Africa, doing archaeology and helping with some development projects. It was then that I heard the story of the new flag, from the white liberal citizens with whom I worked in the Limpopo province.
One thing you need to know about South African culture (and this permeates all subcultures) is that if there are four South Africans having a conversation about something, there will be five opinions about that topic. Or at least, this bit of self-deprecating humor is about the third or fourth thing you’ll hear about South African culture from any host, and South African hosts are both warmly embracing and funny. So when the idea of a flag for the New South Africa came along, the only way to move forward was with an infusion of wisdom, and who among the citizens of South Africa was most wise and able to make this happen with minimal stress? Nelson Mandela, of course.
I was told that Mandela’s idea was this: Have a contest of sorts, or otherwise, get some flags in competition to use as the new symbol. Then, pick one but with the proviso that it would only be the new flag for a year or two, during which time, a diligent effort would be made to come up with the actual new flag.
Another expression describing South African culture may have been, according to my friends, “If you’ve already done something, why do it again.” That is not only sensible, but probably universal. In any event, once the temporary flag emerged, and yes, it was hated and complained about by many, it went into use, people became accustomed to it, and in a very short amount of time, fell in love with it. The idea of replacing it was forgotten, and at some point (1996 to be exact) the new flag was made official in the final draft of New South Africa’s rather amazing constitution. (Give that constitution a look when you have a chance you will be amazed.)
One important point about the design of the flag: there is no official description, and no two people agree on what it means. The flag is unique, I believe, in that it has more colors than any other nation’s flag, and that certainly means something. I think it means: we have a lot more colors available for use these days for flags than they did in the 17th or 18th century.
Dr. Lynn Vavreck, Professor of Political Science at UCLA, and contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, sits down with Jon Favreau to talk about 2022 midterms. After 2020, Lynn and her colleagues interviewed over 500,000 voters, leading them to conclude that our politics aren’t just polarized, but calcified. She argues that calcification has placed our politics on a knife’s edge, raising the stakes of every election, and that 2022 was the biggest case of calcification we’ve seen yet.
Let’s be real. Most books (and web sites) providing instructions for building projects with an Adruino assume the reader is just starting out in this arena of Maker-World. That is probably a reasonable assumption, but it also means that those of us who seek an Arduino guide that provides more advanced work are out of luck. Arduino for Arduinians fills that void. I highly recommend this rich, detailed, and extensive treatment of Arduino makery.
Arduino for Arduinians is suitably named, as it provides guidance and a beyond-the-basics level, for folks who have already been bitten by the Arduino bug, and can already tell the difference between a CAN Bus and an RS232, or Charlieplexing and ATtiny microcontrollers. In fact, one of my favorite applications laid out in this book is using the CAN bus interface to diagnose why the dashboard “transmission fault” light won’t go off on my friend’s Land Rover.
Arduino for Arduinians covers I2C bus devices, interfacing with or emulating the action of keyboards and similar devicese, some inexpensive but advanced Bluetooth mojo, and working with higher than novice-level voltages and currents. Be careful though.
You should know the basics of how Arduinos work (I recommend Arduino Workshop to get that if you don’t have it already). You should be able to read standard circuit diagrams. You should be familiar with Sketch and the Arduino IDE. Also, you will need parts. Helpfully, Arduino for Arduinians has a web site (see the inside of the book) with the Sketch related software, and yu can find in the intro a suggestion as to where to get parts (but you can get these parts lots of places, including Amazon.
The Author, John Boxall,is a master projecteer, and author of several Maker-supportive books in multiple languages.
I was getting the impression that the media have settled on a Trump-Biden match up in over 500 days from now, and wondered what the list of potential candidates looked like at this time (plus or minus a few weeks) during previous election cycles at this time. So I made some lists.
2017
Barack Obama; Hillary Clilnton; Mitt Romney; Jim Gilmore; Tommyh Thompson; John McCain; Sam Brownback; Bill Richardson; Duncan Hunter; Ron Paul; Chris Dodd; Tom Tancredo’ Mike Gravel; Joe Biden; Mike Huckabee
2011
Jon Huntsman; Michel Bachmann; Herman Cain; Tim Pawlenty; Mitt Romney; Garyh Johnson; Ron Paul;
2015
Vermin Supreme; Pogo Mochello Allen-Reese; Hillary Clinton; Rick Perryh; John Kasich; Marco Rubio; Donald Trump;
2019
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kristen Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne Williamson, Pete Buttigieg, Donald Trump, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker; Steve Bullock; Julian Castro; Bill De Blasio; John Delaney; Mike Gravel; John Kickenlooper; Jay Inslee; Seth Moulton; Beto O’Rourke; Tim Ryhan; Eric Salwell;
2023
Donald Trump; Ron DeSantis; Nikki Haley; Mike Pence; Ryan Binkley; Larry Elder; Asa Hutchinson; Perry Johnson; Vivek Ramaswamy; Tim Scott; Kristi Noem; Mike Rogers; Chris Sununu; Greg Abbott; Chris Christie; Joe Biden; Robert Kennedy
I’ll leave it to you to search for meaning in this.
Having recently revived and updated my KDE Linux install, I went looking for the context menu to manipulate images. This tool makes life easier. Like when you want to toss an image into your blog post, but WordPress complains it is too large, it is nice to be able to simply right click on the image and in a click or two resize it (or rotate it, or maybe do other things to it). Historically there was a tool called KIM (KDE Image Management) that did this, but this seems to be no longer maintained and is not that easy to install. Instead, install “ReImage” from KDE Services Menu. Look for the “deb” link on that page if deb is your preferred install method. There is also a tar file there for other architectures.
Evangeline Reed was a woman with some seriously disturbing secrets, at least one of which threatened to sideline her in a quest to put to rest a decades old and still ongoing crime. Jess Lourey, the author who created Reed and put her in the new novel “The Taken Ones,” continues in her own ongoing and highly successful quest to lure various facies of her readers’ limbic systems into a dark room and her her way with them.
Jess Lourey winning the Minnesota Book Award for The Quarry Girls.Evangeline’s childhood was a horror, a horror that seems to have given her a gift, and a drive, that she would eventually put to use as a Minneapolis homicide cop to save lives, and to help snatch others from their own horrors. Known in adulthood as Van, detective Reed required the trust and goodwill of her partner to literally turn her nightmares into evidence, and procure extremely unlikely legal convictions. But that partner was now gone, and Van Reed was now barely holding on to her job as a cold case investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, her drive and her apparently preternatural evil detector now untethered.
There is an abyss, and Jess Lourey knows where it is. The Taken Ones, a complex mystery-adventure with a terrifying antagonist, a really annoying boss, a close-in set of very sympathetic compatriots, and a real jerk-face of a rival, implores the reader to visit multiple abysses, which may or may not (no spoilers) be linked in interesting ways.
Agent Harry Steinbeck, straight laced, well bred, and very put together forensic scientist is now the closest thing to a partner to Van. He seems to know more than he lets on. The years 1980 and 2022 bookend the activities of a spooky, demented, and highly unusual taker-killer. The four decade gap in time allows Lourey to create complex and interesting then-and-now type characters that seem to appear in many of her books.
You should read several of Lourey’s books, many of which are organized in series. The Taken Ones sports the subtitle “A Reed and Steinbeck Thriller.” We can rightfully assume that this is the first in a series, and it looks like it is going to be an excellent ride. I strongly recommend you pick up The Taken Ones as soon as it is available (pre-order here), then wait impatiently with the rest of us for the second Reed and Steinbeck to come out. In the meantime, read Lourey’s breakthrough book “Unspeakable Things,” her latest and highly acclaimed “The Quarry Girls,” and one of my favorites “Bloodline.”
The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey* is a literary thriller set in late 1970s Paynesville, Minnesota. To cut to the quick: I’m strongly recommending that you read this book.
Minnesota has an interesting relationship with “caves” and tunnels. Our downtowns have flying tunnels connecting the upper floors (third or fourth, usually) of skyscrapers. There are “caves” going under Saint Paul along the Mississippi river, some converted into tourist destinations, others sealed off because they are dangerous. Most or all of those are mines, not caves, but somehow our news media and other spokes-entities of our local culture have decided that a major human-made landscape feature that kills children will be dubbed natural. If you want more detail on that, put a note on a post-it to remind yourself to look it up at a later time. Closer to Minneapolis, and, really, beneath Minneapolis, is a network of natural caves. Actually, these natural caves are in many parts of the state. They would be better known were it not for the last glaciation, which covered much of our landscape with a very thick layer of till, temporarily (in geological time) obliviating the sinkholes that make up much of our karstic terrain. This is why we have very few home-swallong sink holes, even though we should have many.
Among all the tunnels and caves, some of the most interesting are to be found in Panville, Minnesota, which happens to be near where Jess Lourey lived as a kid. Panville, a neighborhood of Saint Cloud, was founded by a guy who seems to have been the Elon Musk of his day, sort of, by the name of Samuel Pandolfo. Pandolfo build an automotive factory, and an adjoining factory town with several dozen diverse homes. Pandolfo came up from Mississippi to Minnesota, so naturally, when he got a look at the climate, he freaked, and built tunnels connecting the factory town’s homes to the factory, in order to keep his workers at work and alive. He probably dind’t need to, they would have walked, but he was from a much warmer clime, so what did he know? Anyway, the Pan Motor Company’s cars never made much of a splash, and Pandolfo ended up in Leavenworth which at least is in warmer Kansas. But the tunnels, and the homes, remained. And the whole thing is a little spooky.
Enough about tunnels Let’s talk about serial killers. See the chart.
We’ve had a lot of serial killers in the US (check Wikipedia if you don’t believe me) but there seems to have been an extra large number in the 1960s and 1970s. Note that the rapid fall off on this chart probably reflects the fact that serial killers tend to remain active for decades before they are discovered and popped into the Table of Known Serial Killers in Wikipedia. But the 1980s looks like a real drop off, and I think it is safe to say that the American Serial Killer had a bloody golden age in the 1960s and 1970s. And, a few of them, at least, were operating in the general vicinity of Jess Payne’s childhood, both in time and in space.
So, what do you get when you add together a creepy old factory town with creepy tunnels, a plethora of mad men who abduct, rape, and kill, some nearby quarries, and a highly talented and experienced writer who is, by the way, actively and successfully experimenting with using writing to heal and understand childhood fear and adult angst about, well, serial killers and tunnels and stuff?
Quarry Girls hase one of the best ever opening sentences at one end of the book, and a tear jerking final chapter. It is filled in between with a tightly structured story with characters that grab you by the limbic system, draw you in, and keep you there until you finish the story and order another one by the same author. In my fiction reviews, I rarely discuss the story itself. Let’s face it. If you are reading this, you are one of my trusted and trusting readers. Just go read the book.
I should tell you right now that I was drawn into the Lourey sphere of literature when I came across an earlier book, “Bloodline” This is a story set in a similar environment, central Minnesota (for reference, dead in the middle of Michele Bachmann’s old Congressional District, so you know it is going to be a little creepy). Also, in a similar older period. I sense that Lourey sets her stories in an earlier decade in part because the things that make Minnesota Minnesota were less adulterated by the outside world in those earlier times. (There are other reasons as well, having to do with her personal history, as stated by the author herself.) Bloodline is a creepy story about some creepy people, and a lovable but still a little creepy protagonist. I loved it, and it made me look for more, and that is how I eventually came across the author’s most recent book, Quarry Girls. Meanwhile there is another book that I’ve not read, and frankly I’m a little scared to. I have some of my own emotional baggage that is threatened with exposure from the story presented in Jess Lourey’s breakthrough novel, Unspeakable Things. I am going to read it, though. Fortunately on-line therapy has become readily available an doesn’t cost that much.
(OK, OK, I admit: I’m teasing the author here a little. I’ve got an unspeakable story, but it isn’t really that debilitating. I’m sure I’m going to enjoy the book. I’ll tell you about it after I read it.)
So, go start reading Jess Loury’s books, and report back!
Titus Alone* by Mervyn Peake, is the third in the Gormenghast series.**
This is one of the most highly regarded of fantasy world constructions, while at the same time one of the least appreciated. Personally, I think this is because most, possibly all, of the printed version of the books are big and heavy with tiny type. And, there’s not been a movie. Regarding the first problem, that is solved by there being a Kindle version, and now is your chance to stock up the third of the three for super cheap, two bucks, but only for a day or two.
see associates note below
** Not a trilogy, though there are three of them. Peake died while writing the fourth in the series, leaving only three, and thus leading many to believe that this is a trilogy.
This is a google map screenshot of Horsdhoe Beach, Florida. The average elevation at the surface here is 7 feet. Most of the homes are on stilts. The expected storm surge, estimated two days in advance, so this may be very inaccurate, is over 9 feet.
Minnesota has an interesting relationship with “caves” and tunnels. Our downtowns have flying tunnels connecting the upper floors (third or fourth, usually) of skyscrapers. There are “caves” going under Saint Paul along the Mississippi river, some converted into tourist destinations, others sealed off because they are dangerous. Most or all of those are mines, not caves, but somehow our news media and other spokes-entities of our local culture have decided that a major human-made landscape feature that 
