Hot and humid, possibly with rain. We did get a little bit of rain late yesterday evening, and temps came down slightly. No idea what today will hold. Openweathermap says mid 90s and light rain. We’ll see.
Hopefully, I’m still asleep with the airconditioning running and the kids in bed.
If not, I’ll surely update this.
n
Off to Des Moines for a week long gig, today. I’ll be logging some hotel time as MrsAtoz and associate teach one of her courses. I’m taking the time to learn some basic iPhone photo/video use. Using Filmic Pro to record on iPhone. Editing video with LumaFusion on iPad.
Off to Des Moines for a week long gig, today. I’ll be logging some hotel time as MrsAtoz and associate teach one of her courses.
Several friends have recommended the SAC Museum outside Omaha to me, but, since the move west, I have not been back through the region.
Day trip from Des Moines, but 80 has some surreal things to see along the whole length of Nebraska if you ever get a chance.
The structure on 80 (literally) which will definitely “make you say ‘hmm'” is this one:
https://archway.org/
The slow motion flooding disaster throughout the mid west and mid south continues.
This summary from FEMA—
Flooding & Tornadoes –
Central U.S.Current Situation:
Severe thunderstorms are possible across portions of the central and southern High Plains into OK and across portions of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions today and tonight.
Major flood stages will continue in MO, OK, and AR for weeks.
The Mississippi River is now at its second highest level on record at St. Louis, MO (pop. 318k) and is expected to continue to rise.
Lifeline Impacts:
Safety and Security
Levee breaches reported in IA, MO, and AR:
•IA: The HESCO flood barriers in downtown Burlington (pop. 25k) failed Saturday afternoon, flooding the area and impacting approximately 20 businesses, the post office, and a sanitary lift station
•MO: A breached levee flooded part of the city of Levasy (pop. 83), prompting evacuations and high water rescues
•AR: A levee breach in Dardanelle was mitigated with a temporary levee, giving residents of about 800 homes time to prepare to evacuate; flooding has already closed roads and surrounded about 25 people in a rural community a few miles south of Dardanelle
•LA: USACE delayed the opening of a bay at the Morganza Control Structure to June 6, and plans to open additional bays by June 9
•IL: Several levees are forecast to overtop in Scott and Greene counties, impact limited to primarily agricultural areas
Food, Water & Sheltering:
•27 (+3) shelters open with 417 (-9) occupants (ARC Shelter report June 2)
oOK: 7 / 118 (-7); KS: 1 / 12; MO: 6 / 63 (-8) oOH: 4 (-1) /100 (-11); AR: 9 (+4) / 124 (+14)
•Evacuations:
oAR: Mandatory for portions of Jefferson County along the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff due to record flooding; voluntary remain in effect for 11 counties
oIL: Voluntary for portions of the City of Columbia (Monroe County)
oMO: Mandatory for West Quincy (industrial area) due to levee breach; mandatory for the city of Levasy
oKS: Independence (pop 9,483) and Coffeyville (pop 10,295) due to Verdigris River flooding; Reno County may evacuate approx. 200 people due to water and sewage issues cause by flooding
oOK: Voluntary remain in effect for 11 counties; mandatory for 1 community (Webber Falls; pop. 600)
And we have a tropical storm formation area in the southern Gulf, forecast to develop and move WNW up the coast of Mx toward Brownville, arriving in 6 days. Let’s hope that one either peters out or fails to develop further.
n
LA is not the only city that looks like this.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7095533/Pictures-downtown-LA-capture-problem-faces-trash-tries-rodents.html
Parts of downtown looked this way in the late 80s/early 90s when I worked there. NO WHERE NEAR the size and volume of this time though.
The captions are clueless. “Man gesturing” is throwing gang signs. Lots of gang graffiti in the backgrounds. I’m not sure the homeless are responsible for the forklift truck tires in the one pile. and way down at the bottom, some truth sneaks in…. “limited access to clean bathrooms or being immigrants from countries where the illness is more prevalent”.
Of course the truth is surrounded by cluelessness:
“Dr. Abinash Virk, an infectious disease specialist with the Mayo Clinic, said it’s likely the officers were infected through contaminated food or drinks from the same cafeteria or restaurant.
She said homeless people could have a slightly higher risk of typhoid fever than others because of limited access to clean bathrooms or being immigrants from countries where the illness is more prevalent, but she doubted that the officers got sick from their work on Skid Row.
‘You’re not just going to get it from shaking hands,’ she said. ”
This woman is an ignorant fool if she thinks that’s how those cops interact with this population.
n
My temperature “rule of tens” is almost in effect. It’s 11am and my weather station says 101F. That is in the sun, 3 ft above the edge of my roof, so biased on the high side.
53%RH is dry by Houston standards, but the air can hold a lot of moisture at 100F….
n
at noon, it’s 90F in the shade.
And we have a tropical storm formation area in the southern Gulf, forecast to develop and move WNW up the coast of Mx toward Brownville, arriving in 6 days. Let’s hope that one either peters out or fails to develop further.
Is the Weather Channel already forcasting a 1000 year flood for Houston?
I remember the dire forecasts last year when the first storm formed in the season. The Weather Channel seemed to regret letting Clear Channel get the publicity by calling the fake gas shortage in San Antonio on Labor Day 2017.
Water temps are still not warm enough in the Gulf, and cold fronts are still sweeping Texas. If you’re worried, watch this page:
https://spaghettimodels.com/
Not worried, don’t like models.
Models are a good way to be very precisely wrong.
Just pointing out that 2019 hurricane season seems to be getting off to a very active start. It would be nice to get a bunch of small storms and not a killer like Harvey. unfortunately, they’re not earthquakes and it doesn’t work that way.
When it comes to prepping, don’t delay, start today!
n
Models are a good way to be very precisely wrong.
The models are useless beyond 2-3 days out.
Jeb! Bush got in trouble in one of the active seasons near the end of his time as FL Governor for expressing astonishment that not everyone has 2-3 days of food stashed during hurricane season.
I guess it was ray-cisss that he expected people to feed themselves?
n
Possible more corroboration on the sick congolese invaders story. I’m pasting the whole thing because of gatewaypundit’s new extremely obnoxious response to ad blockers. On a site that has very high value content but is almost unreadable without adblockers.
paste- click to link for the video link
“Very Large Group of African Migrants Wade Across the Rio Grande Into US (VIDEO)
Cristina Laila by Cristina Laila June 2, 2019
US Customs and Border Protection posted a video of a group of illegal aliens from Angola, Cameroon and Ebola-stricken Congo wading across the Rio Grande into the United States.
The video shows men, women and children crossing the river in the dead of the night.
Border Patrol announced they apprehended 116 invaders from Africa on Thursday.
“Agents have encountered 182 large groups (100+ individuals) across the SW border this fiscal year. This is the first large group apprehended in Del Rio Sector this FY and the first large group apprehended on the SW border this FY consisting entirely of African nationals,” CBP said in a statement.
WATCH:
U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to Del Rio Sector apprehended a large group of 116 individuals—from Angola, Cameroon and Congo—after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande River into the U.S. on Thursday: https://t.co/5VsJsD4nPF pic.twitter.com/HWGyVtzEC6
— CBP (@CBP) May 31, 2019
The White House tweeted the video of the Africans crossing the Rio Grande, saying, “Our southern border is now a magnet for illegal immigration from all over the world. It’s time for Democrats to help close the loopholes!”
Last night, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 100 illegal aliens from Congo, Angola, and Cameroon near the U.S.–Mexico border.
Our southern border is now a magnet for illegal immigration from all over the world. It’s time for Democrats to help close the loopholes! pic.twitter.com/lxe7qqQiNj
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 31, 2019″
Bubonic Plague ‘Likely’ Already Present In Los Angeles, Dr. Drew Says
Remember that one of the signs of the collapse is that existing systems start failing. They don’t get repaired or replaced.
LA has no rodent control program.
If junk and garbage is piled in the streets, then they don’t have an effective sanitation program.
They clearly don’t have an effective mental health program (I can’t fault them for this as I believe you can’t fix crazy.)
Nor do they have an effective public heath program (public health is the phrase that describes efforts against big general threats, not that some of the public have poor health.)
Graft, nepotism, cronyism, civil service unionism, all the third world ills are present and exacerbated by the third world people living there.
When I left in 90, LA was the second largest population of Guatamalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, whatever nationality you care to count, in the world. I’m sure it’s gotten worse. Where you have large concentrations of third world people, you will have third world problems.
n
Heh! you saw it here first!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7096559/116-migrants-AFRICA-caught-video-wading-Rio-Grande-U-S.html
n
(note the power of twitter. straight past the gatekeepers in trad media, right to the public eye, just like DJT…)
and not coincidentally why everyone should be concerned by systematic and systemic de-platforming by the established e-media, whether you think twatting is a waste of time or not, it is powerful.
“Did The Government Just Test The Internet Kill Switch?”
–or did Skynet just wake up?
n
They clearly don’t have an effective mental health program (I can’t fault them for this as I believe you can’t fix crazy.)
Nor do they have an effective public heath program (public health is the phrase that describes efforts against big general threats, not that some of the public have poor health.)
Austin/Travis County don’t have either one of these except for the drunk tank … er “sobering center” that the county built inside the old morgue. I would imagine that the situation is similar in Houston because the city is effectively insolvent.
My wife has prescribed more Adderal in the last five years practicing in Texas than she did in the previous 15 of her career. Easily, an order of magnitude.
Well, you guys live in Cali-lite. It’s not really Texas anymore. Being effectively surrounded by Texans has to be very stressful for the Cali transplants and wannabes.
n
I’ve noticed this phenomenon on youtube recently, and noted the growth to the point I wondered if I should buy a quality mic and give it a try.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7094673/The-UK-YouTube-stars-earning-60-000-year-AMSR-videos.html
I haven’t even listened to any of the vids as the whole thing has a high ‘squick’ factor for me. Crunching into chips, popcorn, cheetos, and licking my lips couldn’t be THAT hard…
n
The proglibs in LA have no idea of what to do, or if they do, as progs they cannot implement it. For example, in prog newspapers lengthy articles about immigration issues (but never using the term “illegal”) and articles about homelessness due to the high cost and shortage of housing.
However, they absolutely refuse to connect the two on a cause and effect basis.
They don’t see the connection between the lack of “good jobs” and all the illegal adults in service jobs either. OR the NAFTA offshoring destroying the domestic auto industry. Or the overall drop in quality and durability that comes with designing crap to be sold to minimum wage households.
n
98F in the shade on both sides of the house, and 107F at my weather station.
RH dropped to 47%. Hot. HOT. HOT!
So I cut the grass, blew the walks and driveway clean, watered one garden, picked up the lawn bombs, moved some stuff in the driveway and I’m going out to look at the chainsaw that came closest to running…
nuts
n
“Did The Government Just Test The Internet Kill Switch?”
–or did Skynet just wake up?
Please. The kill switch is in the Intel Management Engine and AMD equivalent.
In re “homelessness”, several podcasts ago John Derbyshire invoked the mnemonic CATO4321 to describe the makeup of the group:
C: Crazy; 40%
A: Alcoholics/Addicts; 30%
T: Tramps (AKA bums); 20%
O: Others, those who would benefit from and welcome help; 10%
As a society we used to be able to provide for, in one way or another, each of the four subgroups above. We could do so again, if we had the will.
In re “homelessness”, several podcasts ago John Derbyshire invoked the acronym CATO4321 to describe the makeup of the group:
C: Crazy; 40%
A: Alcoholics/Addicts; 30%
T: Tramps (AKA bums); 20%
O: Others, those who would benefit from and welcome help; 10%
My wife put the pre-Obamacare percentage of the population who truly needed help with medical bills at about 10-15%.
Well, you guys live in Cali-lite. It’s not really Texas anymore. Being effectively surrounded by Texans has to be very stressful for the Cali transplants and wannabes.
It isn’t just West Coast transplants. And those folks tend to make frequent trips to SE Colorado instead.
How bad will it have to get in LA before it’s cordoned off from the rest of the country?
Anyone have a comment about the Google cloud being down? Just read that on Instapundit.
Maybe the emergent behavior they were seeing a couple of years ago woke up?
n
Seriously though, it will be interesting to see what they have to say about it. How did it take down so many services? Was there a cascading failure? One shared weak point? An attack?
It also points out the downside of using things you don’t control for critical business functions.
n
I read about the Google Cloud outage. Took out Gmail, and others.
Fortunately, it happened during my nap. So, no problems for me.
It also points out the downside of using things you don’t control for critical business functions.
The dangerous folly of “Software as a Service”
How California’s Homeless Crisis Grew Obscenely Out of Control
Excerpt:
So, it’s Trump’s fault–wotta SOO-prise!
Added: The linked article makes it seem that dealing with the “homeless” has become both a major municipal income source and a thriving industry in its own right. As JEP famously said: “If you want more of something, subsidize it.”
From the comments:
Meh. As soon as he started conflating the “homeless” with working poor, I stopped reading. The guy on the street with the shopping cart and the cardboard sign is utterly unaffected by housing prices – he is there because he wants to be, is on drugs (legal or illegal), is mentally ill, or is chasing welfare payouts (which is really why there are so many in California – many of them move here from elsewhere. The weather is good for outdoor camping and the pickings are profitable).
To “solve the problem”, we must go back to the way things used to be: Involuntarily institutionalize the mentally ill and drug addicted, and enforce vagrancy and fraud laws on the rest. And yes, the mental institutions are all but a memory now – but that had nothing whatsoever to do with Reagan (either as governor or president), and everything to do with leftist politics finding an issue (in this case, corruption in the institutional system) and inflating it all out of proportion to reality, leading to a complete abandonment of the whole system and the thinking behind it rather than careful and common-sense repairs. Sound familiar??
So now nobody wants to admit they made a mistake, and made a stupid move in the first place. Besides, there’s taxpayer moneys to be had by flailing about and wringing hands… so that’s what the pols do.
My thoughts exactly.
Our local food provider brags about how many meals they provide to “hungry” people. They happen to provide the dinners for our after school, YMCA program. Most of the dinners go right into the trash as they are pretty nasty, and often completely inedible.
Not “I’d only eat that if I was starving” but actually inedible. Like pears so green and hard they are like wood.
Further, the rools won’t let anyone else than the kid the meal was intended for take the meal or part of it. So after the 30 meals go uneaten (because there are only 20 kids there that night, or because the dish was unappealing) they MUST be thrown out. That includes any individual fruit and the single serving MILK cartons. The YMCA councilors, many just above the poverty line themselves, would love to take the milk, fruit, or sometimes the whole tray home.
I know it kills me to see the wasted food.
But the hunger industry gets paid for those meals, even the ones that couldn’t be eaten and the ones no one eats.
Catholic Charities makes a bundle resettling “refugees”.
Running the interment camps must pay pretty well, people are fighting for the contracts.
n
Catholic Charities makes a bundle resettling “refugees”.
For the church, it isn’t about the money as much as the power. The refugees, especially from Central/South America will be a lot more in tune with what the local clergy have to say than the existing population in the area. Butts in the seats means priests get promotions, and the congregation is more likely to keep their mouths shut about abuses. No more sex scandals!
Americans aren’t sheeple anymore … at least when it comes to the Catholic Church.
I see the same thing with H1B in big companies. It isn’t so much about the money as much as having employees who know their place. People looking to get out of the subcontinent before “grid down” will put up with a lot from a big company (cough … Dell … cough).
#13 Catholic Charities USA
Revenue$3.7B
“Catholic Charities USA provides service to people in need, pushes for justice in social structures, and calls upon the entire church and other people of good will to do the same.”
Catholic Charities is a freestanding org, like Red Cross.
They are very active in resettling somalis and other african and “asian” populations to the US under .gov contract. They are def on the “commie” side of the Catholic Church.
n
How bad will it have to get in LA before it’s cordoned off from the rest of the country?
LOL
Escape From L.A.