Friday, September 30, 2022

DeSantis Loses the Recovery: 45+ Dead from Hurricane Ian

This toll has only grown higher and higher today and will grow God knows how many more in coming days. DeSantis certainly does not know. It will likely top the dead in Hurricane Andrew, a much more powerful storm thirty years ago. DeSantis could no better and almost certainly worse. He wants to be president. Good luck with that. Ian is an anchor tied to DeSantis' ankles and it will take his political hopes down with it.

Smaller story but may hold some interest...

Middle Tennessee State University, conquerors of the University of Miami Gardens by tyoo TD's in a game they were road dogs by 25.5, are trailing the University of Texas San Antonio (we need a conference with all 4-letter acronym schools) 10-0 at the end of the first quarter in hallowed Waffle House Stadium. NTSB's first quarter drives read thusly:

-Punt
-Punt
-Punt

Enjoy the rest of your eve-en-ing, "Gardeners."

Some Florida hospitals hit by Ian are still scrambling to evacuate

patients, or just provide care.

Water utilities in Lee County were permanently damaged, officials said, and at least nine hospitals lost access to potable water. The facilities were “fast approaching a point where they will not be able to safely take care of their patients,” Mary Mayhew, the president of the Florida Hospital Association, said on Thursday.

My goodness. The entire county's water system "permanently damaged"; NINE hospitals.

Lee Health...Children’s Hospital, is without water and has begun transferring fragile newborns.

The water supply and power loss have put “incredible strain on our health system. We cannot run a health system without running water.”--Dr. Larry Antonucci, CEO Lee Health

?

Myrtle Beach Police
@MBPDSC

A boat has washed on shore near Williams Street. DO NOT GO NEAR THE BOAT. It is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. The information we have is that no one is on board. DO NOT GO NEAR THE BOAT. 


Okay! Okay! We won't go near the boat! Is that guy too close to the boat? HEY YOU, YOU'RE TOO NEAR THE BOAT! GET BACK OR WE'LL SHOOT!

Was that really necessary, Myrtle? Jesus Christ.

Lies, Damn Lies, and DeSantis

46 minutes ago

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said about 85 percent of customers statewide had power, though many remained without service in the hardest-hit counties.

Yeah, I bet we're OVER 85% in Miami-Dade County! How about nationwide DeSantis? You want to be president of the WHOLE country, don't you? What is it nationwide? Don't forget to include North Dakota. You're worse than a damn liar, DeSantis. You're a goddamn liar.

Sept. 30, 2022, 4:35 p.m. ET1 hour ago
1 hour ago

Mitch Smith

Officials in Charlotte County, on Florida's hard-hit Gulf Coast, said they were not providing fire, sheriff or emergency medical services on the county’s barrier islands "at this time." 

 

Sounds like a Miami-Dade Dire Miscue operation to me.

>/=36

 Florida officials said they had identified about three dozen deaths that could be linked to the storm.

U.S. "Satanic," the "Enemy": Putin

 


Putin Frames Illegal Annexation as Part of

Existential Battle With West

RIGHT NOW

Ukraine submits application to join NATO, with big hurdles ahead.

Putin on Friday asserted that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions and decried the United States for “Satanism"...

...
Even by Putin’s increasingly antagonistic standards, the speech was extraordinary, a combination of bluster and menace that mixed conspiratorial riffs against the American-led “neocolonial system” with an appeal to the world to see Russia as the leader of an uprising against American power.
 
He referred to “the ruling circles of the so-called West” as “the enemy,” a word he rarely uses in reference to the West...

“Not only do Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law,” he said in the 37-minute address. “Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid.”

He sounds like 45th, doesn't he? Seriously. Or vice versa. Up is down, truth is lie.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Mr. Putin’s speech on Friday by announcing that he was fast-tracking his country’s application to the NATO alliance. [NO! JUST SAY NO TO VOLO IN NATO.] In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it.” “Ukraine will not allow that,” he said.

That's 45th, too!

Putin insisted that Russia’s position on annexing the four territories was nonnegotiable, adding that the country would defend them “with all the forces and means at our disposal.”

“I call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire and all military action,” he said, and for the Ukrainian government “to return to the negotiating table.”

He is deranged.

“But we will not discuss the decision of the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson,” he went on, referring to the four Ukrainian regions being annexed. “It has been made. Russia will not betray it.”

The old Soviet doctrine of what's ours is ours and what's yours is negotiable.

Putin cast the conflict with the West in even more severe terms than in previous speeches...

“The repression of freedom is taking on the outlines of a ‘reverse religion,’ of real Satanism”...

Putin offered few new details on the matter that is now perhaps of greatest concern in Western capitals — whether, and at what point, he may be prepared to use weapons of mass destruction to force Ukraine to capitulate. His spokesman said earlier in the day that after the annexation of the four regions — a move that virtually no other country is expected to recognize — an attack on those regions would be treated as an attack on Russia.

...Putin hinted that the role of nuclear weapons in war is on his mind. ...[He] noted that the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war. He then added: “By the way, they created a precedent.”

21

Wall Street Journal. So unnecessary. Why did they not leave? Why did the state of Florida not organize transportation and shelter out of the strike zone? There is nothing more that could have been done, really? Bullshit.

It is a spectacular weather day here in the 33140. Cloudless blue sky and a 78 degree temperature that feels so mild I have both front door and sliding glass doors open to get the breeze.

The story is far down on the front page, right under "Read the Veggie Newsletter", of America's so-called newspaper of record but it is still on the front page:

Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa Hospitalized After

Second Head Hit in Two Games

 

Even as Iranians Rise Up, Protests Worldwide Are Failing at Record Rates

Mass protests, once a grave threat to even the fiercest autocrat, have plummeted in effectiveness, a study shows. Factors appear to include polarization, social media and rising nationalist attitudes.

“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said. 

Poot-Poot

Putin: Russia will use all means to guard annexed regions


In a speech preceding a treaty-signing ceremony to make four Ukrainian regions part of Russia, Putin warned his country would never give up the occupied areas and would protect them as part of its sovereign territory.


Tua

“We insisted on these rules to avoid exactly this scenario. We will pursue every legal option, including making referrals against the doctors to licensing agencies and the team that is obligated to keep our players safe.”-NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.

if it does come out that Tagovailoa did suffer a concussion against the Bills, and the Dolphins swept it under the rug, the entire coaching, training, medical and personnel staff should all be fired and never allowed to work in sports again. The ownership should also be stripped of the team.

Ian

17 confirmed dead.

GOOD MORNING SMALL CHICKENS HOW ARE YOU I AM FINE
At this hour 15 confirmed dead by a respected media outlet in southwest Florida from Hurricane Ian. If the dead end up numbering in the “hundreds” I will eat my hat. If they don’t the incompetent sheriff of Lee County who said this morning that “I know definitely” that the dead are in the hundreds, should be peremptorily fired. Maybe he can join Pete Acevedo in Uvalde in the only vocation they are qualified for, professional pizza delivery.

Thursday, September 29, 2022

National Concussion League

Four days ago in a home game against the Buffalo "Bills" Miami "Dolphins" quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was pushed and fell backwards hitting the back of his head, the thinnest part of the skull, on the turf.

                                         Tagovailoa got up and began jogging a few steps back toward the line of scrimmage when he suddenly buckled, going to his knees and all fours.
                                                  
                                                      His teammates helped him to his feet as the medical staff came onto the field. As you can see Tagovailoa was not able to stand on his own.

Tagovailoa was taken back to the locker room and the half ended. Everyone, including the "Dolphins" coach, thought Tagovailoa had suffered a head injury on the play. He came back out to play in the second half however. The National Football League Player's Association immediately, I mean, I think as soon as they saw Tagovailoa come back out on the field, filed a complaint with the league and asked what if any concussion protocols were followed, as mandated, and the results. Post-game "Dolphins" coach Mike McDaniel cheerfully told news reporters that the injury was actually to Tagovailoa's back, not his head. I stopped following the story after Sunday and Monday.

Tonight, as stated, just four days after the injury in the "Bills" game, Tagovailoa was back as the "Dolphins" starting quarterback. He played all of the game until this in the second quarter:

Tagovailoa was in the grasp of a Cincinnati defensive lineman who whipsawed him backwards from the waist...

                               

                                    ...striking the turf with great force again with the back of his head.

Immediately after his head hit the turf national television cameras caught this:

Tagovailoa's hands came up to his face and his fingers splayed in a grotesque clawed position that I had never seen before. The network took a break and when they came back they had consulted with a medical individual who had worked in the NFL. The hands-claws were "a neurological reaction to head trauma." Tagovailoa was taken off the field fully dressed, his helmet still on, on a stretcher...

...and taken to a local hospital. The "Dolphins" released a statement that Tagovailoa had suffered head and neck injuries and had feeling in all of his extremities.

The Miami "Dolphins" under owner Stephen Ross, is a corrupt organization. Ross is corrupt; the medical staff is corrupted by pervasive organizational corruption. The National Football League, accurately termed here the National Concussion League for years, is corrupt. The commissioner, Roger Goodell, is corrupt. Under Goodell NFL lawyers have vigorously defended the league against concussion-related lawsuits, denying and deriding that there is any connection between their game and the epidemic of concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that has plagued NFL players during and for long after their playing careers are over. The NFL denies to this day any connection. Tonight Tagovailoa is flying back to Miami with the team. That's the thing about concussions and about this league and about this team: You don't recover, and they don't care. One concussion makes the concussed person more susceptible to future concussions and the full effect does not manifest until later in life. CTE produces depression, incoherence, and has led to suicide among former NFL players.

Joe Flint
@JBFlint
Ryan FitzPatrick should not be saying Tua is OK. We don't know that. And even if he may be "OK" now, check back in 30 years.
12:03 AM · Sep 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Tua Tagovailoa should never have played in this game. I do not believe the company line that Tagovailoa injured his back, not his head, in the Buffalo game. It's all part of this league's and this org's game plan to cover up and to deny the reality that they have organized a competition as a corporate entity that specializes in subjecting its employees to repeated concussions that are "just part of the game."

The Fix Is In: Loose Cannon Fires Again to Protect 45th, Overrules Special Master

...overruling an arbiter she had appointed herself. [And who was suggested by lawyers for 45th himself]

...
The first provision Judge Cannon set aside was a measure that had asked Mr. Trump’s lawyers to certify by Friday the accuracy of the F.B.I.’s inventory of the property it seized from Mar-a-Lago — and to indicate whether there was anything that agents did not take from the compound.

That had put Mr. Trump and his lawyers in a bind. If they acknowledged that the bureau had found sensitive documents, the admission could be used as evidence against Mr. Trump. Moreover, in public statements, Mr. Trump has repeatedly accused F.B.I. agents of planting evidence during their search.

In her ruling on Thursday, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, sided with the former president, eliminating the stipulation about the inventory. Her initial order, she said, “did not contemplate that obligation.”

“There shall be no separate requirement on plaintiff at this stage,
prior to the review of any of the seized materials,” she wrote.

Judge Dearie had also directed Mr. Trump’s legal team to sort any documents over which he intended to assert executive privilege into two categories: privilege that would shield White House information from disclosure to people outside the executive branch, like Congress, and privilege that would purportedly shield such information from review within the executive branch.

Mr. Trump’s legal team also objected to that requirement, saying Judge Cannon had not given the special master permission to make them engage in such a distinction. On Thursday, Judge Cannon appeared to side with Mr. Trump on that issue, too.

Trump’s lawyers need only say whether something was subject to executive privilege — and, if so, to include a statement with “a sufficient description of the rationale and scope of the assertion from which to evaluate the merits of the assertion,” she said.

Cannon also rejected a swift timetable Judge Dearie had set to resolve the review of the documents, slowing the matter down.

Trump’s lawyers have complained that the review was too fast; Judge Cannon on Thursday slowed down the process, giving Mr. Trump’s lawyers significantly more time to assess the documents.

Under Judge Dearie’s proposal, he could have analyzed the central issue raised by Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege as soon as late October. But Judge Cannon’s order could delay his submission of a report and recommendations to her until December.

...Cannon essentially let Mr. Trump and his legal team out of a box that Judge Dearie had tried to put them in.

...
As the judge who appointed the special master, Judge Cannon has the authority to overrule Judge Dearie. But a federal appeals court in Atlanta has already blocked part of her original order as well, exempting documents with classification markings from the special master’s review and allowing the Justice Department to continue using them in its investigation.
...
Dearie’s requirements had imposed significant disadvantages for Mr. Trump by threatening to swiftly puncture Mr. Trump’s defenses. But Judge Cannon’s intervention on Thursday eased that threat.


Repeating myself shamelessly: DOJ strategically erred in paring down their appeal to the 11th Circuit rather than firing at Loose Cannon with all guns blazing. Now Dearie can't be done with just the special master delaying tactic until December.

About that leadership in Lee County...

“While I don’t have the confirmed numbers, I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds."--Sheriff Carmine Marceno, Good Morning America, ABC today.

About an hour after Sheriff Marceno appeared on ABC, he spoke more cautiously about the possible death toll in an interview with CNN.

“I don’t know the exact numbers, it’s very preliminary,” he said, adding that “roughly five” fatalities had been confirmed,

Did Florida Fuck Up?

I don't know. I was startled that Lee County officials didn't know the extent of the damage until today and couldn't get rescue crews out to the stranded because of danger to their own lives. I was surprised that the FP&L energy grid had to be "rebuilt not restored". FP&L is a regulated state utility. To make matters worse, the Lee County’s 911 system is down and calls are be rerouted to Collier County Sheriff, according to the post. “You can’t imagine the calls,” the post read.

Lee County is ninth in the state in population--out of sixty-seven--788,000 people. Big cities there, Fort Myers, Cape Coral. Not a remote county far from sophisticated urban centers. A BIG county and I assume without really knowing, with a robust, competent local government. Roger Desjarlais certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But Hurricane Ian is not the most powerful hurricane to strike Florida; Florida has quite a bit of experience with canes. So how is it that Ian might be (they still don't know the number of dead) the deadliest hurricane in Florida history? 

I'm prejudiced. As long as I've lived down here I have thought that if you are ambulatory and die in a hurricane the cause of death on your death certificate should read "stupidity." You have so much lead time with hurricanes! Tornadoes can rear up in minutes. Earthquakes in seconds. Hurricanes are slow as molasses in January. We have satellite images, we have trackers, we have hurricane hunters, we have spaghetti models. All warned that Lee County was in the cross hairs.

Yesterday morning the governor, Ron Desantis, said publicly that it was then "too late to leave," that people should stay put. The hurricane made landfall at 3:05 pm. That does not sound irrational; there does come a time when it is too dangerous to be out on the highways. But was yesterday morning the time, with this storm? With this storm surge peoples' homes became their coffins. Could all Lee County evacuations have been made mandatory? Instead Desantis made hunkering down mandatory. I don't mean to unnecessarily dump on Desantis--who I loathe and despise--I don't know. I don't know if Desantis fucked up, if Lee County fucked up, if anybody fucked up. I just have the macro picture: 1) Nobody should die in a hurricane 2) Florida of all states should be hardened against the damage to critical infrastructure--911 is down!--that has occurred in Lee County 3) Critical infrastructure--a bridge collapsed!--was completely knocked out (97% without electricity in Lee) 4) Lots of people died. I don't see how you can add those four together and get "competent" on the other side of the = sign.

The Morning After



An active and intelligent city of Miami Beach emergency worker keeping us all safe. 10:16 am.

We're not that good; in fact we're pathetic

Do you remember during the Obama years there was a catastrophe within the U.S. intelligence community where dozens of American spies in China were uncovered and executed? I do remember that vividly. We went dark. It was really ominous. What the hell happened? Keystone Cops CIA statecraft is what happened. This Reuters article today exposes how CIA mishandled homegrown spooks in Iran, failures that occurred "in at least 20 countries, among them China, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Ghana..."

China was always difficult for us to penetrate because of racial, linguistic and nationalistic distinctness. An American, with our distinctive looks, stands out in China. I encountered this on both occasions I went to Beijing when I caught Chinese taking photos of me and my American girlfriends. When I met with Mr. Wang one time it was by his choice in the empty lobby of a Bally's fitness center. Very difficult to recruit within China. The U.S. hasn't had a diplomatic presence in Iran since 1979. Embassies are full-service spy headquarters. Without an embassy to act as clearinghouse we had to recruit online.

The most vivid example of CIA bungling for a techno-luddite like me was a series of "clandestine" websites created by CIA for spooks to contact them. The sites were created with off-the-shelf software bought online. One website name was "Iraniangoals."Nothing to see here, only a soccer website.

Iraniangoals and the like had IP addresses that could be easily traced. "http:langley22101" maybe I don't know.


But a non-spook stumbling onto Iraniangoals trying to perform a search would get no results. A right click on the page spelled out the real purpose of the search bar:





So guess what Iran's intelligence did? Just waited around for some dope to login. Hooo, hard! Result? The homegrown spook was arrested by Iran, along with dozens of others, and CIA went blind in Iran. Way to go, CIA!

Are you copying me?

“While I don’t have confirmed numbers, I know the fatalities are in the hundreds,” said Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno on ABC’s “Good Morning America” this morning. Lee County was ground zero for Hurricane Ian’s landfall on Wednesday afternoon.—Orlando Sentinel

                                   Ian End.
                                     Pathetic


Wednesday, September 28, 2022

"Hurricane Ian’s catastrophic winds will mean parts of our system will need to be rebuilt – not restored. Be prepared for widespread, extended outages as we are assessing the damage. We are already at work restoring power where we can do so safely," Florida Power & Light said. 

...

  • Close to 97% of Charlotte County was without power.
  • The largest number of residents without power are in Collier County, which includes Naples: 70% of the 262,000 customers.
  • 81% of customers in Sarasota County experienced outages; Manatee had 52%.
  • 95% of the nearly 472,000 customers in Lee County are without power.

Imagine the health consequences of no lighting, no safe water to drink, of having at present not even the capacity to assess the extent of the damage because it is too dangerous. We are going to find out how long people in these decimated communities can survive without electricity, without safe water to drink, without food, and with these shortages widepread, with 180,400 without electricity for an "extended" time, with 183,000 without power in Collier; 347,000 in Sarasota, 205,000 in Manatee; 448,000 in Lee; a total of 1,363,000 people in just those big five counties WITHOUT ELECTRICITY. 1,360,000 human beings cannot survive for "an extended time" without electricity, clean drinking water, and food. The Biden administration has got to declare martial law and employ the military to evacuate these 1.36M people while the utility grids are being "rebuilt" or there are going to be hundreds of thousands of Floridians dead. This is the greatest catastrophe to human life in America from a natural disaster in my life time.



That truck is fucking destroyed, DONE. Like the power grid you can't restore that truck, you have to sell it for parts or rebuild it from top to bottom.

                                                          

That is the first floor of a HOME. The photo taken by the homeowner from the second floor. Can you imagine what that volume of water--over the entirety of the first floor and lapping over the first step to the second floor, does to 1) the foundation of the house 2) to the structural integrity of the building. Can you imagine the disease in those waters with the sewers completely swamped, the disease that will be hiding in the mold in the walls and floors for years. That's a nice, prosperous home. Is it doomed?

NHC was not exaggerating: the Lee County Hurricane is a CATASTROPHE.

Rescue Deferred in Lee County “for fear it could kill the rescuers.”

Lee County is going to remembered as Ground Zero for this hurricane, like Hiroshima, like the Johnstown Flood; like the Galveston Hurricane.This should not be remembered as Hurricane Ian but rather the Lee County Hurricane. The county has been "decimated" as those other unfortunate places were, as Homestead was by Hurricane Andrew. The articulate words of the Lee County Manager are blood-curdling.

“I am sad to tell you that while we don't know the full extent of the damage for Lee County right now, we are beginning to get a sense that our community has been, in some respects, decimated.”

Damage was so severe that it was decided by county and local officials to wait before making some evacuations, for fear it could kill the rescuers.

"It left families suffering the agony of knowing that loved ones cling to life in areas that can not yet be reached by rescue crews because it is it too dangerous to save them.”—Roger Desjarlais, Lee County Manager.

County Public Safety Director Ben Abes said the county made a reluctant decision based on the dangers and threatening conditions rescuers would face.

"We are aware of a number of calls from people stranded due to high water," Abes said. "However, we are faced with conditions that make it impossible to respond right now."

Rescues assistance from the federal government will be dispatched as soon as it is safe for them to travel to Lee County. Boats, high water vehicles and helicopters will be used in the rescue operation.
"We know that there is tremendous damage on Sanibel and in Fort Myers Beach, we know that LCEC, about 75% of their (electric) customers are without power, 80% of FP&L customers are are without power. we don't know yet the extent of the damage to our infrastructure whether its the electrical grid, or utility systems."

In Cape Coral, sewer lift stations have failed at more than 200 locations, and city officials have urged residents to reduce their use of water.

"This is going to be a very difficult, trying time for the next several months," Desjarlais said. "The response and recovery effort is going to be complex, it is going to be costly and it is going to require very concentrated efforts by federal state and local government agencies and the private sector."

"For all of us who have lived in Florida for a lot of years, we have been through many, many hurricanes locally." Desjarlais continued. "It seems as though every storm that we have endured we have heard about tidal surge and we have heard about flooding, but it hasn't been our time.

"You wonder whether it is going to be our turn. Well it appears to be our time to endure that."

NHC 8 PM Advisory (excerpt)

STORM SURGE:  The combination of storm surge and the tide will cause
normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters
moving inland from the shoreline.  The water could reach the
following heights above ground somewhere in the indicated areas if
the peak surge occurs at the time of high tide...

* Englewood to Bonita Beach, including Charlotte Harbor...12-18 ft
* Middle of Longboat Key to Englewood...6-10 ft
* Bonita Beach to Chokoloskee...8-12 ft
* Chokoloskee to East Cape Sable...5-8 ft
* Anclote River to Middle of Longboat Key, including Tampa Bay...4-6
ft
* Flagler/Volusia County Line to Altamaha Sound...4-6 ft
...
The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast near and to
the right of the center, where the surge will be accompanied by
large waves.  Surge-related flooding depends on the relative timing
of the surge and the tidal cycle...
...
 RAINFALL: Ian is expected to produce the following storm total
rainfall:

* Florida Keys and South Florida: 6 to 8 inches, with local maxima
up to 12 inches.

Ian's Incredible Storm Surge

There are these bizarre photos of Tampa Bay where the hurricane has sucked up so much water that the Bay has receded!

Hurricane Ian sucked water away from Florida's coast as it moved north (NPR)


                                                                 


 Weather Channel:

Meanwhile, winds are blowing offshore producing a blowout tide in Tampa Bay. Water levels are around 6 feet below average and many parts of Tampa Bay are dry.

Ian's storm surge has arrived along parts of the southwest Florida coast, including in Naples, Florida, where over 6 feet of storm surge inundation has been measured, more than any other storm at that gauge location in at least 50 years. The tidal gauge there has since broken. 

...

In Fort Myers proper, storm surge is now over 7 feet with high tide on the way. Previously the highest storm surge was 3.36 feet MHHW during Hurricane Gabrielle in 2001. Widespread flooding is ongoing.

NHC senior meteorologist Eric Blake noted Wednesday morning nobody alive has witnessed storm surge as high as forecast for Ian in southwest Florida. This was, in fact, a record storm surge for southwest Florida, according to data from the National Weather Service, and some spots could still rise.

Rick Scott

@SenRickScott

Now is not the time to take risks with your life, your family or the lives of first responders. January 6 was the time.

Twitter Media Studio


4:31 pm. That was unbelievable. Ir was by far the fiercest wind and the hardest rain of this storm down here. And it came on suddenly. You can see by the last video I posted at 4:20--I was making fun of the storm and the city of Miami Beach--the streets were dry and the wind wasn't blowing. I was back in my unit just a few minutes when I saw this squall out my sliding glass doors. The video is like 29" long, the squall came and went in about 40".

Ian Makes Landfall At Cayo Costa, Florida

I know it's uncool of me to post gifs. BUT...


 


023 
WTNT34 KNHC 281758
TCPAT4

BULLETIN
Hurricane Ian Intermediate Advisory Number 24A
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL       AL092022
200 PM EDT Wed Sep 28 2022

...IAN CAUSING CATASTROPHIC STORM SURGE, WINDS, AND FLOODING IN
THE FLORIDA PENINSULA...

I will update you on a Boomer’s two favorite topics, how he slept and his bowel movements, I promise, but first this. My daughter’s boyfriend, who I have not met yet, solicitously asked an inadvertent set-up question yesterday:

Nice to meet you, son, welcome to the family.

Holy shit Ian’s a 5. …I swear that was the headline. The consensus is it’s approaching 5.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

"I'm facing due east" as my hair gets plastered straight back "so the wind is blowing due west." Yeah! I have a keen, deductive intelligence like that. 

Beautiful, beautiful night here.  I am mindful of the luxury of that statement. The approach of a major hurricane is enervating, I know that first hand, and the folks on the west coast of Florida don’t have the luxury to make that statement. As you can see from the wind-speed maps the storm system has toggled east more towards Miami and Miami Beach.

We are still out of even the smallest chance of hurricane winds (at star). But our probability of getting tropical storm winds (40-74 mph) has increased significantly over the day and 50-60 mph winds can open a can of whoop ass on you. We are now in the orange color which codes to a 60%-70% chance over the next four days. The gust I felt tonight did really wobble me, but I’m not so experienced that I can tell if that was a tropical storm gust. It was more than 21 mph! More like in the 30’s since the sustained were 21.



The weather is always dramatic in Miami. The weather and the beauty of Cuban women were my first impressions of Miami and they have only solidified over the 40 years I have lived here. Forty years! God, I’m old. It’s a great life.


It is paradise. The weather app on my phone says it was blowing 21 mph when I was out there. I got a gust that was higher.


Coffee Drinking Is Associated With Increased
Longevity

 Livin' forever.

Be darned

‘Gifs are cringe’: how 

Giphy’s multimillion-

dollar business fell out of 

fashion

Generational divide threatens future of tech firm as it seeks approval for $400m takeover by Facebook owner Meta



It is rare for a multimillion-dollar company to explicitly state that its business is dying because it is simply too uncool to live.

I have always wanted to be cool.
...
Its valuation is down by $200m from its peak in 2016 and, more importantly, its core offering shows signs of going out of fashion.

I have always wanted to be fashionable.

“There are indications of an overall decline in gif use,” the company said in its filing, “due to a general waning of user and content partner interest in gifs.

“They have fallen out of fashion as a content form, with younger users in particular describing gifs as ‘for boomers’ and ‘cringe’.”

I have always been a boomer.
...
The generational divide is real, says the internet culture writer Ryan Broderick. “Gifs feel extremely dated. They were never easy to make and didn’t work particularly well on mobile.
 
I have always been dated.

“So now they are basically the cringe reaction image your millennial boss uses in Slack. ...
 
What's Slack?

I just learned how to use reaction gifs and the teenagers are now informing me that gifs are "cringe"— Dan Robinson (@danrobinson) June 30, 2022
 
Note to self: stop using gifs, also blogger. 

“Where exactly should we evacuate?”

Russia issues new


nuclear warning


An ally of President Vladimir Putin issued a stark new nuclear warning to Ukraine and the West on Tuesday as referendums billed by Russia as a prelude to it annexing four Ukrainian regions entered their fifth and final day.

Tuesday's nuclear warning by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, is one of several issued by Putin and his associates in recent weeks.

Analysts say they are designed to deter Ukraine and the West by hinting at a readiness to use tactical nuclear weapons to defend newly annexed territory, where Russian forces have faced strong Ukrainian counteroffensives in recent weeks.

Medvedev's warning differed from earlier ones in that he predicted for the first time that the NATO military alliance would not risk a nuclear war and directly enter the Ukraine war even if Moscow struck Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

"I believe that NATO would not directly interfere in the conflict even in this scenario," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram.

"The demagogues across the ocean and in Europe are not going to die in a nuclear apocalypse."

Russian government officials have repeatedly warned they might use nuclear weapons to defend the new territory if Kyiv's forces, who are already in control of some of it, try to take what Moscow says it will soon regard as its sovereign territory.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with Swiss newspaper Blick that Ukraine was preparing for the possibility of a Russian nuclear strike, but said the onus was on nuclear-armed states to deter Russia.

"...Where exactly should we evacuate people in the event of a Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine?" he asked.

Are you copying me?

Hank Greely
@HankGreelyLSJU

I like this discussion in
@Slate of the 11th Circuit's smack down of Judge (loose) Cannon of the US Dt Ct for the District of Trump: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/09/trump-mar-a-lago-case-how-two-trump-judges-ended-aileen-cannons-reign-of-madness.html… Nice job,
@mjs_DC. (BTW, your handle is substantially worse than mine in terms of intuitiveness.)


10:39 PM · Sep 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Trump v United States

Amazing to see that in black and white in an official document.

As the appeals court decision makes clear, everyone who read Judge Aileen Cannon’s decisions benefiting Trump is now less intelligent for having done so.

Monday, September 26, 2022



Representatives of Iran’s supreme leader are urging law enforcement to make public places “unsafe” for women who are “improperly veiled”…Oct. 5, 2020.

 


Mission. Accomplished.


During a meeting on Friday with military and security officials, the Friday prayer leader of the central province of Isfahan said women who are not properly veiled should be made to feel “unsafe” in public.

Friday prayer leaders across Iran are appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and are his representatives.

So I have a question: why are the father and brother and supporters female and male of Mahsa Amini not making Khamenei and the morality police “unsafe”? 

They murdered Mahsa. Fractured her skull and flat-out murdered her. Surely her family and supporters can get weapons.

Related question: why are we seeing the umpteenth unarmed demonstrations in the Muslim world since the blessed Jasmine Revolution and Arab Spring? Name me one country in the Middle East Islamic world that is kinder and gentler for those protests. 

Women of Iran, women of Islam, have you learned nothing? You’re burning your hijabs whilst wearing “chartreuse and hot pink, embroidered and appliquéd,” your hemlines shorter, your hair longer? Allah Akbar, what’s next, bra burnings? Can you secrete a semi-automatic handgun under those fashionable dresses? 
 
You must make your oppressors feel “unsafe” until, like Mahsa, they can no longer feel anything. You must kill to get change in your societies. What about that do you not understand? Get guns, use IED’s and kill Khamenei. 
 
You remember this chap, no?

That’s not a flattering photo of brother Gaddafi. Here’s a better one:

Yes, that’s best side. Or perhaps his backside with a metal pole up his asshole is his best side.

Here’s a warm photo of your Supreme Leader with some borscht head.


You know ladies, gents of Iran, funny thing: that really frightened the asshole on the left! Getting Gaddafi’d really scared him. Don’t you think your guy would look good avec metal pole in anoose? I don’t want to see your guy again unless it’s an “after” shot like Muammar.

Kill the morality police. You see a morality cop turn him into a pig in a blanket. I don’t want to hear about peaceful protests and other Iranian women being killed. Wake me up when you’re making pigs in a blanket.