The allure of extreme temperatures

Parts of the US, especially in the southwest and west, are going through record-breaking heat waves. I am not personally affected by it since where I live in California, because it is on the coast, temperatures have so far not exceeded 70F (21C) this year. But as you go inland, the temperatures start rising dramatically even within just a few miles. Salinas Valley has been seeing temperatures of 100F (38C).

Death Valley National Park in California is notorious for its high temperatures even in normal years, and global warming has just accentuated it. But many people are drawn to visit it on even the hottest days precisely because of the heat.

Death Valley is hardly a stranger to elemental extreme and has long attracted those drawn to the edge. The park bills itself as the “hottest, driest and lowest” – the hottest place on Earth, the driest place in the United States and the lowest point in North America. Visitors make the trek there from around the world to experience its surreal, lunar-looking landscapes and dramatic temperature swings. A famously difficult ultramarathon, the Badwater 135 sees runners race across the cracked salt flat of the park each July.

But even by Death Valley standards, this has been a remarkable summer. The park, which set the world record for the hottest air temperature (a withering 134F, or 56.67C) more than a century ago, approached modern heat records this week. An excessive heat warning, involving daytime temperatures “well over” 120F and nighttime averages still hovering around the triple digits, remains in effect until Sunday.
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This week, tourists congregated around a display thermometer in front of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, posing for photos as the temperature ticked from 123F to 124F. The impenetrable wall of desert heat, a shock to the system after being inside a chilled car, forced each group into the shelter of the visitor center after only a minute or two.

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The strike by writers and actors

The film and TV industry in the US has pretty much shut down following strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) that began on May 2 and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) that began on July 14, both against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the media companies that produce shows.

The main complaint of the writers is that they are being squeezed by being asked to do more, working with fewer writers on shows for shorter seasons, making their profession even more precarious than it already was. Another major issue for both writers and performers is one that has been brought on by the increasing popularity of streaming services that the old contracts did not deal with. This involves the payment of ‘residuals‘, payments that are made to writers and actors when the shows they worked on are rebroadcast later.
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Thanks, Marge!

Nutcase congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech in which she outlined all the. dastardly things that president Joe Biden is doing and continues to do. It is quite extraordinary the things that she lists in her attacks on Biden. The irony that the Biden campaign has used her own words in a campaign ad will be lost on her.

Abraham Lincoln’s complex views on race and slavery

In the US, Abraham Lincoln has reached the status of secular saint so that even in these partisan times, no member of either major party will dare criticize him. In fact, Republicans will point to the fact that he was a Republican to deflect the charge that they are racists or at least racist-adjacent.

Although I was generally aware of the story of Lincoln and his role in ending slavery, I had never actually read a detailed treatment about the man himself. I really did not know much about Lincoln apart from the bits and pieces that I gathered here and there but there was one thing that I knew about him that bothered me, and that was what he said during one of his debates with Stephen Douglas when they were competing in 1858 for the US Senate seat in Illinois. It was jarring, utterly at odds with what people commonly think about him, that he was a believer in equality for Black people that resulted in him being given the title of The Great Emancipator

He said:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races, that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, not to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of racial and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and as much as any other man I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” (Meacham, p. xxxii)

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Cell phone data as investigative tool

The ubiquity of mobile phones has led to all manner of novel uses. The fact that each phone transmits data as to where it is enables others to use it to pinpoint their location at any time. This was one source of data that was used to identify a suspect in the notorious Gilgo murders, even though burner phones were used.

Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

Kevin Drum describes another less dramatic use and links to a study that uses cell phone data to study weekly church attendance. It turns out that the number they find is far less that what surveys that ask people to self-report attendance get.

I guess that we should not be surprised that in a country where there is such a high level of public piety and where being religious is seen as being essential to being a moral person, people will fib about how faithfully they practice their faith.

How the rich avoid taxes

The invaluable ProPublica has come out with another article about how billionaire Harlan Crow, the generous benefactor of justice Clarence Thomas who showered him with vacations on his luxury yacht and private planes, has used the tax law loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

He adopted a well-known tactic by the wealthy, to use so-called ‘business losses’ to reduce their net income. In his case, how this was done was to set up a company for his luxury superyacht that was purportedly a business and then use the ‘losses’ incurred by the company (i.e., the money used to run the yacht for him and his family and friends) to offset his income.
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Naval origins of some English expressions

I recently read the book The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann (2022) about an ill-fated secret expedition by the British navy that left England in 1740. It was part of their imperial war against Spain and it required the ships to reach the Pacific Ocean by going around Cape Horn at the tip of South America in search of a treasure-filled Spanish galleon. The expedition was a disaster, with the fleet experiencing the most atrocious weather with one ship The Wager being shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of Patagonia.

Facing tremendous deprivation, what remained of the crew experienced a disintegration of command, followed by mutiny, deaths and cannibalism. Incredibly though, a small group managed to put together one small flimsy boat containing remnants of the original crew that had mutinied against the captain and managed to get to Brazil in 1742, while six months later an even smaller remnant led by the captain who had been left behind on the island reached the coast of Chile. The two separate returns to England by crew members that had long been presumed to be dead created a sensation and led to a court martial inquiry to try and determine what had happened.
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Even a cult leader’s death does not kill the cult

Two years ago I wrote about a particularly bizarre cult surrounding John F. Kennedy Jr. that believes that he faked his own death and would be returning as serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) running mate for 2024. A large crowd of believers of this cult congregated at Dealey Plaza (where JFK was assassinated) in November 2021 on the 58th anniversary of his death thinking that both father and son would appear there. Spoiler alert: They did not appear.

The leader of this particular QAnon subcult was someone named Michael Protzman who also went by the label Negative48.
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The other GOP primary

The Republican primary race is heating up even though the first actual contest in Iowa is still six months away. The first debate among the candidates is scheduled for August but which members of the already crowded field will meet the criteria set by the. Republican National Committee is still unknown.

Another big unknown is whether serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) will take part in the debates. Typically, a candidate who is far ahead in the polls (like SSAT is) will try to avoid taking part in debates, and those who are far behind are eager to do so. The low-ranking candidates seek to raise their national profile by appearing on a national stage on an equal footing with their competitors while the high ranking ones want to deny them that opportunity.
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Musk has the mind of a six-year old

Twitter has been in the news a lot and not in a good way, as Elon Musk erratically makes changes to its operations, seemingly without necessarily thinking things through, most significantly firing more than half of its workforce as a cost-cutting move that has had a deleterious impact on the user experience. The resulting chaos has resulted in widespread grumbling among users as well the entry of competitors like Meta’s Threads system seeking to take advantage of its woes. Threads racked up over 100 million users within a week of its unveiling and Twitter has reportedly blocked links to that service.

As is often the case when reporters write about these things, they contact the people and companies they are writing about to get a response before going to press. Sometimes the respondent simply says ‘no comment’ or issues some kind of bland statement. But not Twitter. They do not have a media relations department anymore but when a reporter contacted them to ask about a $500 million lawsuit that was filed against them by laid-off employees who had not been given the contracted severance payment, the company responded with a poop emoji.

This is not the first time that Twitter has responded this way to media requests. It has apparently become company policy to respond this way. Musk is claiming credit for this practice, saying that he has decided that all press requests will get this automatic reply.

One has to wonder about the mind of an adult who has not outgrown the notion that scatological references are clever and/or funny.