Keeping Score.

 Declaration of Independence Grievances – Checklist

Government and Legislative Issues

☒ Prevented laws necessary for the public good from being passed.

☒ Refused to approve laws unless the people gave up their right to representation.

☐ Called legislative meetings in inconvenient locations to make governance difficult.

☐ Dissolved representative houses for opposing his policies.

☐ Refused to allow new representatives to be elected after dissolving legislative bodies.

Judicial and Legal System

☒ Refused to establish fair judiciary powers.

☒ Made judges dependent on his will for their office and salary.

Military and Enforcement Issues

☒ Created many new offices and sent officers to harass the people.

☐ Kept standing armies in the colonies without consent.

☐ Made the military superior to civil authority.

☐ Quartered troops among civilians without consent.

☐ Protected soldiers from punishment for crimes committed against colonists.

Trade and Economy

☒ Cut off colonial trade with the rest of the world.

☒ Imposed taxes without colonial consent.

Legal Rights and Due Process

☒ Denied colonists trial by jury.

☒ Transported colonists overseas for trial on false accusations.

Government Overreach and Tyranny

☒ Abolished colonial laws and fundamentally altered governments.

☐ Suspended legislatures and declared himself the sole ruler.

☐ Waged war against the colonies, burning towns and destroying lives.

☐ Hired foreign mercenaries to attack the colonies.

☐ Forced colonists into the British navy or army against their will.

Response to Colonial Petitions

☒ Ignored peaceful petitions for redress of grievances.

☒ Repeatedly acted as a tyrant rather than a fair ruler.

Is Creativity Dead - in Antarctica?

Comment to "Is creativity dead?" 

to nyt article:  "https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/opinion/social-media-algorithm-creativity.html"  

Look, !'m 201 years old and spent a lot of time growing up in Antarctica. If you want to see sameness, you can't beat 19th century Antarctica. 

 Listen to me, because I can barely remember it.

A six month night means you get to know the stars really well. The aurora australis bathed us in beauty while katabatic winds basically freeze dried everything. Even more than the Arctic, reality is stripped to essentials in a barren, continent sized desert. We were isolated from the cultural and political turmoil that took place in the 19th century. Narratives and structures like "religions" and "politics" were unimaginable in the dry frozen dark. We developed language that mimiced the sounds of the fulmars, whales, penguins, and seals that we were barely distinguished from. That meant a lot of our communication was singing.  We were humbled to be part of the animal kingdom. 

In my 40s, our world ended when some sailors blew in from Ushaia and kidnapped us. We had no idea of the world beyond the  Southern Ocean. I can't believe how often the sun rises and sets! We had never seen clothes that were not made of skins, land plants, and especially, wood.  Wood is a miracle. 

You youngsters are so easily distracted. You'll find it different after flood, fires and droughts reshape your culture to something closer to how I used to live. 

Comment on NYT: "A Big Climate Goal Is Getting Further Out Of Reach"

We're pretty obviously galloping madly in the "More Carbon" direction. The feedback loop of more heat means:

 - more release of methane from permafrost

 - less efficient uptake of CO2 from forests

 - Wildfires put their own carbon load in the atmosphere, which lasts after the cooling effect of the ash has precipitated. 

 - Extinction events for the biosphere due to moving growth zones and the reduction or cessation of the AMOC mean those creatures who survive will have a harder time of it.

- Positive feedback loops work faster and more reliably than economic growth.

There are a few straightforward solutions that are totally politically impossible. Stop drilling and processing now. Stop military action, which is a wanton carbon emitter at all stages of production and deployment. Plow those resources into sustainable tech, relocation off the coasts, housing for the upcoming waves of climate refugees. Whatever it costs - and money is largely fictional - it will be a tiny fraction of the cost of continuing. 

Regarding:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/climate/climate-action-tracker-temperatures-emissions.html?smid=url-share]

Comment on NYT "Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In."

In re: climactic optimism:  as seen in the  NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/arts/television/climate-change-apocalypse-optimism.html

Take a look a the book "I Want a Better Catastrophe" by Andrew Boyd. If you think we are not going to surpass +1.5°C , well, the sine qua non of that, i.e. ACTUALLY surpassing +1.5°C in the last 12 months, each of which has been the hottest of that particular month ever, has already happened. 

Also: the oceans are radically warmer. Really, every climate metric you examine is going the wrong way. 

The solutions are stunningly simple, of course. Shut down all oil production now, and stop all petroleum powered vehicles when their tanks empty. Stop war - the destruction and prep for it, and logistics for it are a major source of atmospheric carbon. Getting rid of petroleum traffic will go a long way toward dropping consumption, and the waste of all sorts that that produces. Stop eating meat. You don't need to eat meat. Get food that doesn't need refrigeration or air travel. 

There's really no tech fix that can replace these wasteful, carboniferous practices in a timeline fast enough to avoid the even worse consequences than the economic downfall these actions will produce.

The 14th Amendment

 As they say, I am not a Supreme Court Justice, but states in fact do not elect presidents in a presidential election. They elect state-based electors, which cast their votes for president. There are no federal administrators of elections: these powers are indeed reserved to the states. 

The 14th Amendment is not about the election process, it's about who can hold office. For example, it's pretty clear that legislators violating their oaths on Jan 6th forfeited their right to serve in Congress or any other federal office. They need not be indicted or tried for insurrection, their participation is as straightforward a disqualification as the age and nativity qualifications. A number of them should be booted right now.

That said, nothing about the 14th Amendment constrains who can be on the ballot; it merely disqualifies any insurrectionist from being seated, absurd as that sounds. You can vote for anyone - whether they are qualified or not.  The timeline is irrelevant, so if there are FURTHER insurrection attempts between now and Jan 2025, those restrictions still apply to other insurrectionists running for federal offices. That's right, I'm accounting for yet another insurrection in the hot summer of '24. 

So the question remains: which authority enforces these restrictions? It probably should be whomever is administering the oath. Should Trump actually select a Vice President who was not an insurrectionist, then by the order of succession, that person would become president. If not, so on through the presidential line of succession.

Aerosols to the rescue?

[comment to ars technica https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/former-head-of-nasas-climate-group-issues-dire-warning-on-warming/ ]

We're now getting the kind of disaster that wipes out entire cities as a time. Just a few right now, but that's clearly going to accelerate, and not even be in places already acknowledged as vulnerable (that is, poor people and the global south). Temperatures that stay high evaporate more water, and there's going to be more water available anyway. 

We're used to storms destroying places, but having time to rebuild, sometimes even rebuild with the future in mind (e.g., not rebuilding in a flood plain), but whole new secondary effects are now getting enabled with the temperature rise: things like permafrost melting, fire tornados, and soon, large areas with wet bulb temperatures for extended periods of time that humans can't live in, any more than they can live under water. 

Oh, and it's not just humans, navel gazers, it's all the other plants and animals. 

Photosynthesis becomes less efficient at high temperatures, making the only at scale natural carbon sink less reliable. Aerosols may be increasing albedo, or lowering it, depending on the aerosol. Apparently, there's a lot of microplastic already in the air. Also: any geo-engineering without pumping up the carbon volume is kind of a pipe dream at this point.

Why anyone thinks any semblance of resilience and adaptability will be possible after around 2030 is a mystery to me. P.S.: hot wars are just about the most carboniferous activity people can participate in.

Decarbonizing

 You'll be surprised how well the economy will work without burning carbon. 

We can have a gentle decarbonization, first by stopping exploration and opening new sources now, before they start. Then, by shutting down pipelines and refineries one by one, randomly. Removing fossil fuel subsidies, which are artificially depressing the fuel prices.  We can do this, and it needs to be done internationally.  As this happens, we can cut down consumption, find alternatives, not fast enough at first, but faster as the technologies mature. 

Or, we can let the true ruler of the earth, the climate, do it for us, more cruelly, more suddenly, more capriciously. Vulnerable populations will be hurt more at first, forcing migrations to the unwilling not-yet affected areas, but it's only a matter of time - a short time - before smugly secure places are also affected and also made uninhabitable. The lifeboats in this chaotic sea will be the communities that are sustainable - that pay their debt to the earth. But it will not have the flexibility of response that a controlled shutdown would allow. 

The collapse of non-human ecosystems and geological process like ocean steams, jets streams, glaciers, which underlie all economies, no matter which system, will collapse them. You can't claim that working to stop carbon pollution is too expensive. Its expense is pitifully small compared to the collapse of everything underlying value, worldwide.

We know of no processes that can pull the carbon out of the atmosphere as rapidly as we put it in, at scale. So we have to start by not making the problem worse. 

Climate Trigger points

 The Collapse of AMOC is just one working ecological system that can quickly break down due to consequences of too much heat in the atmosphere and sea. We can relate to it because the Gulf Stream has been anomalously heating Northern Europe, where many of its populous cities are above the latitude of Montreal. Without the stream's movement, we can expect more effects, such as the decline in fish stocks, changes in hurricane development, sea level changes independent of the addition of melting land ice's fresh water.

Other predictable systems such as reliable monsoons, permafrost, and glaciation: changes in these can stress the natural world that needs to be predictable for us to exploit it in our current cultures. When to plant and what to plant? Will the birds and insects return to pollinate? Will the forests be there to stabilize the soil? 

A trigger point is where the process is unbalanced just enough to be a self-sustaining cascade, usually exponential in nature. A bit of the energy released contributes to the energy that is doing the releasing.  Humans, who are fairly innumerate to begin with, have a hard time understanding processes with exponential velocities. When we drop rocks off a cliff, that's 32 feet per second squared, but we're rarely high enough or in a place to observe its motion over a period of more than a few seconds. It's just not in our experience. 

The feedback loops we have here not only feed the process releasing the energy, but any other nearby process that by itself would take more energy to reach that tipping point. They are not isolated.

The amount of CO2 in the air already is a huge ecological debt. This is the debt that matters. Innumeracy is keeping decision makers from measuring the cost of shutdowns, conversions and climate refugee migration against the cost of the shutdown of natural processes that were assumed to be free throughout the development of human cultures. Cultures that value property rights - the climate does not value property rights. Cultures that rely on natural growth cycles, natural animal migrations, tide heights, snowpack growth and melting - these cycles will change. Cultures relying on the effect of polar ice on sea salinity and the jet stream - we can't change these but the climate can. 

We have to start by not increasing the debt.  For things we directly control, that means literally not burning carbon emitters to run machinery, or as a source of heat, not removing carbon sinks like forests and oceans. The trouble there is that forests are worse carbon sinks the hotter it gets, and the oceans already have absorbed much of the new CO2 and can't keep up. 

You can watch the interplay of source and sink in the measurements of Co2 from Mauna Loa (and Maunakea while Mauna Loa is erupting). When the global north, which has the most forestry, is growing, the amount of CO2 goes down. When it's more idle, the amount goes back up. But the net addition of carbon outside this cycle pushes the next peak higher than the year before. 

[ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ ]

But it does prove that there is a natural process that takes carbon out of the air. As long as those plants don't burn, that carbon can be added to the soil. Can a similar process be optimized and scaled? Can the process that does it actually be carbon neutral or negative? Unfortunately, it's a tech fix, which means it won't happen  unless someone makes money.

 Bitcoins and Energy Use 

One day, the final bitcoin will be mined, since there are a finite number of them. Will that be the end?

On that day, in that country, scorched by drought, swept clean by tornados and floods, burnt dry by wildfires, starved by the consequent soil destruction, and overrun by internal and external climate refugees,  a new crypto currency will be proposed and implemented, resistant to quantum calculations, that will burn up the remaining fossil fuel. 

 1.5°C

Here's a quick reminder of what an average global temperature is. An average temperature is the sum of all the temperatures divided by the number of readings. That means some temperatures are lower, some are higher. At the current 1.1°C, 1.5°C  has already been reached, not constantly yet, not everywhere yet.

1.5°C and 2°C or other numbers are not magic numbers, they are checkpoints of climate models. Reaching any average temperature implies that some places are far above that level, so there are places in the world already where we can see what the effects of more heat are. These places are more or less at the poles, the North Pole the most,  and working their way down the latitudes. 

The poles are effectively linked to other climate zones in our ecosystem. We are already experiencing the effect of more energy in the air and water through the higher absorption of water vapor, itself a greenhouse gas, which adds mass to air masses, and adds chaos to the flow of circumpolar jet streams. 

It doesn't have to be a disaster everywhere for unrecoverable catastrophic weather events to happen right now in some places. The usual story we associate with a disaster is: despite some planning and preparation, a disaster occurs, destroying human and animal lives, infrastructure, and in some cases, the shape of land, seas or rivers. As these are rare events, there's period of recovery where the knowledge that that kind of disaster is possible informs the rebuilding efforts. In our new situation, we won't have time to rebuild and the assumptions for designing civil engineering are now unclear.

 This week (March 20, 2023), there will be a 40-50°F shift in temperature in North Carolina, from 29 to 80+ degrees. This stresses animal and plant life, but  also stresses steel and concrete. Cracks in roads and buildings lets in water and plant roots, two powerful corrosive and destructive  forces. This destruction is not proceeding at the pace of centuries.

Ecological system components influence each other. More water squeezed out of the air means more water on land, more fresh water in the ocean. The higher mass of water in the air means the air moves more slowly and powerfully, and the contrast between the weight of dry and wet air means more powerful winds. The parched earth has less capacity to absorb that water, creating new arroyos in what used to be stable formations.

Poverty

It is expensive to be poor. Cash flow can look adequate if averaged over time, but when it bottoms out and the bank starts charging overdraft fees, and hours are spent trying to negotiate for services that should be human rights, you end up each day - each hour - in worse shape than before. 

As long as we demand that essential services necessary for human rights - shelter, food, heath care, education - be paid for with money, then for social justice, there must be a universal basic income. There must not be means testing. Rich people also deserve a basic income, and their hubris as to perceived needs  versus what their actual needs are, should be revealed and healed through catharsis (that is radical taxation). 

We are about to enter an era where the foundation of wealth, great and poor, is going to be removed through frequent unrecoverable climate emergencies. The bottom is going to drop out of the only economy that matters: the water cycle. As different populations find themselves in unlivable territories, there'll be a new kind of poverty, borne by climate refugees whose land equity has been cancelled. Among these will be many who thought they were living in a sustainable, or growing, security, that they alone were responsible for their wealth. 

The true landlords are the Earth, the seas, lakes, and rivers, the air, and the biosphere that maintains it and enriches it. That's the rent that has to be paid, in the currency of sustainability. 

Climate deadlock

 It is not "the Left" or "The Right" that have the actual votes. The Climate does. It does not check your vote before burning down your hillside, flooding your city, dropping a tornado or derecho just anywhere, or evaporating your reservoirs.  

It's only coordinated international work that can drive us off of carbon burning as an energy source. Nuclear has a whole other set of problems - guarding its waste for longer than recorded human history being just one of them. 

Progress in transitioning to a sustainable energy future is not something that should be hoarded by those making progress. Solutions for carbon free energy, and getting the unbalanced amount of carbon out of the atmosphere that's there is technology that must be rapidly shared without regard for profit or traditional rivalries. We have a common crisis. 

We consider acts of war justifiable - even though every act of war is a crime. As Pres. Carter remarked: we need the moral equivalent of war to attack this problem. That means we must disregard a status of protecting business and property that stand in the way of this victory, just as it is morally and civilly  justified in a war. 

Guns Are Magic

 Guns are magic!

They turn men from cowards into mighty lone warriors defending their life, their family, their culture, their home and property.

They are ONLY wielded by good guys.

The targets are well established non-persons, or the gun turns them into non-persons very quickly and conveniently. That's part of the magic. Non-persons don't have families, culture, or their own property.

It's much easier to kill the second non-person after killing the first. That wasn't so hard, was it? Automatic weapons mean you don't even have to aim so well. 

Let's get back to the coward. Where does that fear come from? How is that fear concentrated and directed? Why is there a feeling of injustice when others share the same rights you do? And why is a violent solution the preferred, even cultivated, "solution" to these fears? 

Why is a solution for security involving community support and connection, and reality checking, not the first place to go, rather than, say, a militarized police force, or self appointed individual.

That's where the real transformational magic is.

Blame Assignment

As I often I point out, it's the major parties that are "stealing the votes" from the Greens. No one voting for third parties is doing so in spite of the fact that they really want to vote for someone else, unlike major party voters. The Green agenda is the only one that truly aims to mitigate the Climate Crisis at its core, which will also have many other positive side effects in order to actually be put into place. The time to have started that work and to treat it seriously was way more than 30 years ago.

A party or faction doesn't have to win to be influential in politics - see the Republicans for an example - but having the ideas vigorously brought up in every debate is important. 

The Climate crisis is basically "whataboutism" turned inside out: literally everything else is "whataboutism". 
I like to point out Brecht's take on the Buddha's Parable of the Burning House. 
https://www.mysteriology.com/blog/the-buddhas-parable-of-the-burning-house-by-bertolt-brecht/

It will change civilized human life patterns, and not for some far off generation either. It will also take down functioning ecosystems, and to some extent, even change geography through shifting shorelines, receding glaciers and melting permafrost. The buck has already been passed to us, and we're left holding the bag (block that metaphor). There is no natural process - which is the only thing that can treat the crisis at scale - in place or planned to be in place that can deal with the enormity of our environmental sin. 

Good luck being, say, pro or anti choice as your house is swept away in a flood or derecho, your hospitals burn to the ground in wildfires, and you and your family and friends become sudden climate refugees in places where municipalities and their governments cannot handle the massive influx. 

Time zones

Time zones are determined politically. Keeping track of what time it is everywhere is subject to the whims of sovereigns and legislatures. 

Let's step back a little and ask, what do we want out of a clock? For instance, what time should solar noon be? What time should dawn be? What time should sunset be? Why should that matter?

In the tropics, this is not a big deal. However as you leave the tropics, the length of the extent of useful sunlight varies until a day (or night) lasts half a year at the poles. Approaching the poles, "the time" and "the date" are concepts that make sense somewhere else, especially after sundown.

The idea of standardized times and time zones only really dates from the age of railroads. Prior to that, you couldn't get anywhere fast enough to make a difference, and time was very local, based on the loudest clock tower. 

The continental US (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii and Guam) is about 3 hrs and 48 minutes wide. This is currently fit into 4 time zones. These zones have borders based on political boundaries, so parts of each zone may be astronomically separated by more than 1 hour. Furthermore, the length of the day in the southern parts of the country varies less than in the northern parts throughout the year. Summer daylight in Brunswick, ME is about 7 hours longer than winter daylight, whereas in Corpus Christi, TX the difference is only 4 hours. Therefore, it's less disruptive in the South to make no accommodations to the official local time than in the North.

Nevertheless, it'd be nice to get daylight aligned to a working day: so as to be able to be used during whatever passes for a commute on both ends. The easiest way to do that is to make the working day vary with the light available, or to eliminate the commute, period. Agriculture has always needed to align with natural cycles, why not everything else? 

That said, rather than linking everything to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), which makes a lot of sense for any inter-temporal transactions, we'd like to have local times that give you an idea of how much light and heat there will be from the number alone. 

Right now, the time zones we have are not particularly accurate everywhere locally within them, but it's not that impractical. We could move to a system of finer grained zones, say, 8 of them roughly 1/2 hour wide each, and split up north to south so that southern ones don't need to compensate through the year whereas northern ones do, possibly more than twice a year. Fortunately, they'd only be a half hour early or late if they missed the time zone change. This would be much improved in terms of daylight alignment, but people would be even more angry about clock changes than they are now. 

Globally, there already are a number of  time zones aligned on the half hour relative to UTC. All of India, and Iran, for example. Nepal Time is 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of UTC, showing it can be even more fine-grained.

China, which also spans about 4 hours in width, is all on one time zone, and the day length difference is about 14 hours longer in the summer than in winter in the far north, whereas the difference in Hong Kong is only 3 hours. Clearly, China is not fiddling with the number on the clock to make it correspond to any nation-wide concept of how a named hour is experienced!

To summarize, the current twice-a-year changes, spread among the states and possessions, is a little frustrating twice a year, but again, it's less frustrating than either making it more precise or making it less precise. 

Debating the cost of Climate Crisis Action

 What does the American West cost? It will burn until there's nothing left to burn, and dry out first, taking the hydroelectricity with it. The air will burn the fields, vineyards and orchards, the pastures and the pools, the national parks, Hollywood, Disneyland, and the oil refineries. 

What does the Gulf Coast cost? The hot, dead water will rise in oil slick waves, topping the levees, washing out the streets and the music, while the rain and wind will come and stay. 

What does a glacier cost? When its water changes the sea chemistry, who will raise the krill from the dead, weigh the continents back  down, paint the bare land a reflecting white again? What will speed the course of the Gulf Stream when it slows and stops moderating Western Europe's climate?

What does permafrost cost? What will freeze the methane back into the collapsing, burning soil?  

Costs such as those under debate are nothing compared with the debt to the earth, an earth that is now collecting its debt from all life, not just the ones responsible,  and the interest rate is climbing. 

Innumeracy, continued.

Here's a reminder of what one million is.

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Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 

Thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand,  thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand.

If it takes 6 seconds for you to say each line (reasonable), that's 10 minutes just for you to say what a million is in thousands. 

It's the same amount of time with millions for a billion. Millions.

If you were still reading it in thousands, that's 16 2/3 hours.

=====

America is not the richest country in the world, it a poor and struggling country with a few 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, 

very, very, very, very, very,  very, very, very, very, very, rich people.

 

I'm a one issue voter.

2017-12-13 12:28:12-0500

I'm a one issue voter.

If a candidate doesn't prioritize laws which prioritize a transition to sustainable economies/ecologies, really there's not much else to say. The basis of civilization - implicit rights to air, food, water, shelter and the ground truth of non-human life that underlies any other rules and customs and narratives - is eroding under human overpopulation, uncontrollable wildfires and storms, melting ices and escaping methane, moving growth zones and migration patterns.
Climate change is not a straw man.

Furthermore, this need not be solely implemented with laws and incentives: it also needs leadership that lives this attitude. The bully pulpit is powerful. 

To Keep Our Numbers Up Song

2018-09-22 22:18:03-0400

To Keep Our Numbers Up
Aug 14, 2017
Rev Aug 1 2018
Rev Sept 22 2018

I actually do this in D now!

DM7 Asus7

A:

Asus7                          DM7
To Keep Our Numbers Up
      D6                   Em7
We have to let you go.
         A7                       F#m7
This quarter, sales are down,
      GM7                    Asus7 A7
Our price-to-earning's low.

A7sus             A7            DM7
So please clear out your desk.
        D6                    EM7
and fill out all these forms.
           A7                    F#m7
We're right-sizing the staff,
      Em7     DM7      (GM7 DM7)
To calm financial storms.

B:

  DM7                              Gm7 FM7
Our brick and mortars have to close,
 FM7                        Gm7          FM7
We're sorry but you have been canned.
   FM7                          Gm7       FM7
We're training your replacement now,
  FM7                   Asus7
Disruption is our brand.

A:
We're sunsetting your work
And writing it off as "loss"
Our acquisition group
Has just outsourced your boss.

We're giving all your tasks
To someone in Ukraine,
We're sure that you will find

Employment once again.


B:

Your health insurance you have lost
With COBRA, you'll pay twice as much,
Go freshen up your resumé,

Too bad you aren't Dutch.


A:
Try networking online
And liquidate some stocks,
Th'Economy's not bad,
It's you that's on the rocks!



The Gig Economy
Is what the Job God wrought
It's "Uber" über alles

Experience counts for naught.

The Climate is telling us something.

2017-09-07 13:49:49-0400

The Climate is telling us something.

Politics is a process for the distribution of resources. That distribution is influenced by the common need to externalize risk: provide for the enforcement and definition of property, insure equitable access to resources determined to be common, helping insure stability and predictability in the short and long terms.

Implicit in all these decisions and lawmaking is that there is a world that doesn't burn up, or get washed or blown away, or covered in massive rainfalls or snowfalls, or the cascade of after effects resulting from these catastrophes. This baseline of predictability - the climate of decision, as it were - is eroding. You can't have a rule of law in a world without access to safe food, air, and water. You can't allocate and defend resources that aren't there.

That's why I say we have to reassign priorities in a radical (in its original sense of "down at the roots") way to work, more or less, only on this environmental problem.