Making the whole world ring like a bell

And it tolled for 9 days!

Climate change is increasingly predisposing polar regions to large landslides. Tsunamigenic landslides have occurred recently in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), but none have been reported from the eastern fjords. In September 2023, we detected the start of a 9-day-long, global 10.88-millihertz (92-second) monochromatic very-long-period (VLP) seismic signal, originating from East Greenland. In this study, we demonstrate how this event started with a glacial thinning–induced rock-ice avalanche of 25 × 106 cubic meters plunging into Dickson Fjord, triggering a 200-meter-high tsunami. Simulations show that the tsunami stabilized into a 7-meter-high long-duration seiche with a frequency (11.45 millihertz) and slow amplitude decay that were nearly identical to the seismic signal. An oscillating, fjord-transverse single force with a maximum amplitude of 5 × 1011 newtons reproduced the seismic amplitudes and their radiation pattern relative to the fjord, demonstrating how a seiche directly caused the 9-day-long seismic signal. Our findings highlight how climate change is causing cascading, hazardous feedbacks between the cryosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere.

Shorter summary: a glacier in Greenland collapsed catastrophically in a fjord, setting the water sloshing back and forth with enough force that seismologists all around the world could detect the clock-like movement.

Better summary: Someone who knows the geology explains the event and all the terms on Bluesky.

The thinning ice sheets in Greenland led to oscillating waves, 100 meters tall, bouncing between the rock walls of a fjord. Fortunately, no one was there to witness it. Or if they were, they didn’t survive it.

Recreational boating not recommended here. Surfing is right out.

Isn’t it exciting, just waiting for another unexpected side effect of our slow destruction of the planet? As if the predictable disasters aren’t enough!

Let’s chop the Endangered Species Act to bits, shall we?

Uh-oh. The lawyers have been deployed. They’re trying to parse the wording of the Endangered Species Act to legalize habitat destruction, narrowing its meaning to apply only to the direct killing of organisms, but killing the environment? That does not apply.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) prohibits the “take” of endangered species. (1) Under the ESA, “[t]he term `take’ means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”  (2) This makes sense in light of the well-established, centuries-old understanding of “take” as meaning to kill or capture a wild animal. (3) Regulations previously promulgated by FWS expanded the ESA’s reach in ways that do not reflect the best reading of the statute, to prohibit actions that impair the habitat of protected species: “Harm in the definition of `take’ in the Act means an act which actually kills or injures wildlife. Such an act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering.”  (4) NMFS’ definition is materially identical: “Harm in the definition of `take’ in the Act means an act which actually kills or injures fish or wildlife. Such an act may include significant habitat modification or degradation which actually kills or injures fish or wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including, breeding, spawning, rearing, migrating, feeding or sheltering.”  (5)

Then follows many paragraphs of Latin and reiteration of case law, but the intent is clear: the law simply says you can’t “take” wildlife, but we have laws that also say you can’t “harm” wildlife. Those all need to be reinterpreted, because “take” means literally kill individual animals, and that’s the only definition they’re going to use.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (collectively referred to as the Services or we) are proposing to rescind the regulatory definition of “harm” in our Endangered Species Act (ESA or the Act) regulations. The existing regulatory definition of “harm,” which includes habitat modification, runs contrary to the best meaning of the statutory term “take.” We are undertaking this change to adhere to the single, best meaning of the ESA.

Habitat modification shall not be policed anymore. You want to extract oil from a watershed? Go right ahead, poisoning the communities downstream is fine, since you’re not using a shotgun to kill the ducks and fish. Oops, you ‘accidentally’ dumped phosphates into the streams in Tennessee, and all the snail darters died? As long as you didn’t “take” the fish, you’re cool. Environmental law doesn’t apply to the environment, but only to individual animals that live in that environment you want to wreck.

Don’t worry! Our government is accepting comments on the changes to the interpretation of existing legislation. Go ahead, tell them that this is ridiculous, enabling habitat destruction is far more lethal than literally killing individual animals.

They won’t care. They’ve got lawyers who are willing to warp the law to enable more short-term profiteering and more long-term annihilation of the landscape. It’s America the Beautiful, don’t you know?

I can’t take accusations of blasphemy seriously

I wouldn’t normally quote the odious Matt Walsh, but I was amused that he was taking umbrage at a new version of the Bible. Then I read these excerpts, and actually sympathized with Walsh — a truly horrible sensation — because, yes, this was an embarrassing translation, something assembled by one of those old people who think they can be “cool” by naively aping slang they don’t understand.

It’s real. It’s something called The Word According to Gen Z: A 30-Day Devo Challenge, a month-long exercise in introducing young people to the Bible.

Over the next 30 days, the guys at Sunday Cool will guide you through unique daily devos written specifically for Gen Z. You’ll learn about the reverence, ministry, and application of God’s Word. You’ll also see how Scripture isn’t just about reading, but deep study and enjoyment of the very God who created you.

From the creators of the popular YouTube series with Cool Carll—the youth intern who grew up but never left.

If you have to call yourself “cool,” you aren’t.

I dug a bit deeper, and at least this video from Cool Carll suggests that there’s a little tongue-in-cheek action going on here.

They’re trying too hard. Most of my students would qualify as Gen Z, and I’ve never heard this kind of slang…but fine, I can believe some people talk like that, just as some people of my generation could talk like stoned hippies, man. But it’s all about context, we all know how to speak appropriately in different situations, and Gen Z kids don’t talk like that in the classroom, or in Bible study, unless they’re trying to get a laugh.

And then I found this interesting insight from a Christian blog.

Lifeway, the media and publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has long been known for its proclivity toward placing its bottom line ahead of biblical integrity when it comes to the materials they’re willing to peddle to Evangelicals and Southern Baptists for cash. Headed by Thom Rainer — and formerly, along with Ed Stetzer who now holds the Billy Graham Chair at Wheaton College — Lifeway has been criticized for its continued lack of concern over the heresy they publish and sell.

Lifeway is particularly dangerous because, being a part of a perceived conservative denomination, it is blindly expected that the store only produce, promote, and sell theologically sound materials. In reality, however, LifeWay’s model requires it to promote heretical garbage to maintain a steady income and it is part of the reason so much heresy has influenced the denomination over the years.

From its in-house Cash-Cow of Bashan, Beth Moore, who regularly fancies herself with silly stories of talking to God face to face who tells her to do silly things which sounds more like schizophrenia than anything biblical, to serial plagiarist, Christine Caine, Hillsong Australia’s rebellious version of Beth Moore, and others, such as Priscilla Shirer, Ann Voskamp, and practically any heretical lady-preacher you can think of, along with rank heretic and anti-Trinitarian, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Steven Furtick, and even at one time, “gay pastor,” Matthew Vines, the list is practicalkly endless — Lifeway has made millions over the years peddling this garbage.

But now, Lifeway is taking it a step further by selling what is being dubbed a translation of the Bible — the Gen Z translation which is part of a new pragmatic approach to millennials called “Sunday Cool” — which practically turns every verse of the Scripture into a mockery of God by downplaying and stripping the majesty and deity of God by using meaningless words and artificial language that even millennials can’t understand.

I don’t follow Christian media at all, but I do know that “Christian culture” doesn’t exist — there’s a wide range of beliefs from innocuous “faith” with little commitment to insane fanaticism, and in between there are a lot of grifters, like the ones listed above, who get wealthy by seizing the power of capitalism and making a buck by telling gullible people what they want to hear.

One thing is for certain: you can always find a Christian who will call some other Christian a “heretic” or “blasphemer,” because it’s all of it, every word of it, made up. There is no foundation to any of it, not even the Bible they hold sacred, because they’re always happy to mangle the words to get any interpretation they want, and will go to war with anyone who mangles it a different way.

I found the next Patient Zero!

This doesn’t sound like my childhood swimmin’ hole.

“Swimming and wading are not allowed due to high bacteria levels,” the National Park Service states on its website. “Stay out of the water to protect streambanks, plants, and animals and keep you and your family (including pets!) safe from illness.”

In addition to the high levels of bacteria, the waterway also has “other infectious pathogens,” making swimming, wading, and any other water contact a “hazard” for humans and pets alike.

I wouldn’t go anywhere near it, and I’m a guy who went swimming in a cow pond when I was 14, wondering what the squishy stuff I was wading through was. I’ve encountered places like that before, I would never do that again! One thing worse would be wading into human waste.

“Getting into Rock Creek anywhere inside the Beltway is sort of weird and kooky, getting into Rock Creek downstream from the National Zoo is bugnuts. Basically begging for a zoonotic parasite. Forget Chinese wet markets, this guy is cooking up COVID-25 inside his grandkids.”

Yeah, don’t bring children into such a place. Who would do such a thing? Would you believe the head of Health and Human Services?

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went swimming with his grandchildren in Rock Creek in Washington, D.C., even amid warnings that the waterway isn’t safe for swimming because of high bacterial levels.

Kennedy wrote on X that he went on a “Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson” and took “a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek.”

The 71-year-old posted a number of photos, showing him shirtless, jeans on, in the water in the Potomac River tributary.

The man is an absolute legend. He’s bathing in effluent and eating rotting road kill; of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, he’d be Pestilence. And he’s in charge of American health!

I’d spider-watch it

I am so tired of super hero movies, but they keep drawing me back in. I’m not going to be tempted until 2026 by Spider-Noir, at least.

This is apparently a limited television series, not a movie, built on the limited bits and pieces of Sony’s IP investment in Spider-Man.

I don’t understand these weird IP rules at all. Why not just start from scratch with a stylish movie about a completely independent spider-associated person? No one owns the rights to spiders, I hope.

What is wrong with California?

It’s a beautiful state with a fabulous climate, when it’s not on fire, but what’s going on with their politicians? This question was prompted by an observation about their current governor, Gavin Newsom.

After two months and a gratuitous 15 episodes — including interviews with far-right talking heads Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, Obama-era Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein — guess how many women the governor of California has deigned to interview on his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom”?

One.

That (dubious) honor went to Amie Parnes, a senior political journalist at The Hill, who shared the interview with Johnathon Allen, a political journalist with NBC News. The two co-authored “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” about the 2024 presidential election, which was released in April.

Good for her. But in a state that’s home to nearly 40 million people, more than half of whom are women, the governor really can’t find any of them to interview for his little podcast project? Yikes.

I know — that’s not the worst thing he has done with his little podcast, that honor belongs to his willingness to throw trans athletes under the bus. That podcast, which I’ve never listened to, seems to be a self-constructed catastrophe to his political aspirations, and he keeps on doing it. There was a time a few years (or eternities) ago that he was considered a solid presidential candidate, but would I ever vote for him? No. It’s incredibly shallow of me, I know, but just the hair kills my impression of him. He looks like an insurance salesman or a preacher. His policies make me think he’s in the pocket of Big Tech. He’s definitely not progressive at all.

But then I started wondering — California is a populous and rich state, where are the national leaders it should be turning out? There’s Richard Nixon, the least said the better, who was our only president born in California. Then we had Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for starting the country’s downward spiral, who wasn’t born there, but was governor and is always associated with the state. Why do so many awful political careers start there? Is it something about Sacramento?

I’m already biased against California presidential candidates, so let’s not ever nominate another one. I hope Gavin’s political career has reached its apogee.

Speaking of big powerful states with an appalling political culture, dare I mention…TEXAS?

Useful insight to begin the day

A plea for moderation in the face of fanaticism:

You don’t have to be that gung-ho on trans rights to realize that a world where girls’ genitals need to be inspected before they can play any sport is worse for girls than a world where once in a while there’s a trans girl on a girls’ team.

Being aware of the consequences is a good perspective to have for any goal.

There are an awful lot of extremists running the game right now who need to be sat down and told to grow up and shut up. They’re making the whole damn world worse for everyone.

Why Lamarck was wrong

I teach (in the distant future) a first year class in genetics and evolution. I’m going to have to use this comic when I discuss the inheritance of acquired characteristics — I think the bit about helicopter moms might resonate.

But not now! No teaching until January 2026! I’ll just file this away for now.

There will be nothing left after the billionaires are done with us

It’s a toasty 33°C (93°F) here in this northern state, and the White House has fired our researchers who contributed to the National Climate Assessment. 400 scientists abruptly got the axe. I guess if they destroy all the thermometers, we won’t notice how hot it’s getting.

Goddamn these Republican scumbags to hell. If and when violence arrives at their doorstep, don’t expect me to express the slightest regret or remorse.

Also, fuck all you Democrats who sat out the last election.