Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - September 1st
The catastrophic flood in Nepal was astounding. We saw bridges and buildings get destroyed, and people getting swept up as they fled. It was heart wrenching, yet was a reminder of nature's fury.
The reality is that we keep seeing these kinds of things happen, with a greater frequency every year. Recorded history tells us there are more events, and they cause increasingly more damage.
And yet, we can’t seem to wrap our heads around it, and spend time foolishly debating about the cause of disasters. And as a result, we don’t spend much energy on understanding them, and even less on finding solutions, or having proactive in our response.
This rush of water was caused by a piece of a glacier that detached. Some people simply want to say that it’s the old “act of nature” for purely political reasons, setting aside any notion of science telling us there is a change happening.
Heck, we can see our climate is changing with our own eyes. Glaciers haven’t simply fallen off like that in our recorded history. So something is happening. And it’s our duty to humanity and the future of our planet to investigate what’s going on and try and prevent disaster and destruction.
Of course, you can apply it to other things as well. Hurricanes are something we’ve known about for a very long period of recorded history. We’ve been studying them and trying to understand what’s going on with them. And yet, for purely political reasons this administration simply does not care and has no intention of doing anything other than letting us know one might be coming - without any sort of understanding of how it’s formed, where it might go, and more importantly, why…
And of course there was the assertion that Canada "is (somehow?) responsible for" the fires this year, as a way to cast aspersions, rather than using logic to try and address the underlying problem.
The one piece of good news is that while the number of these natural disasters has been on the uptick, the deaths resulting from them have been on the decline due to better infrastructure and preparedness.
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For some reason - probably because ESPN is Disney owned and there’s some money changing hands between ESPN and the NFL - Disney announced that there’s a “collab” where Disney characters would be used with team logos. And uhhhh…
This week, the full lineup was revealed, and it is fascinating, confusing, and everything in between.
Agreed. It’s just weird. And stupid. And it’s something no one asked for. But don’t let that stop you from merchandising!
For the dolphins they selected king triton. And while I think flounder from the same movie would have been better, triton works too. He’s the ruler of the seas, but he’s not paying attention and his daughter just does whatever, and focuses on shiny objects. In the end, he gives in and just lets her be. Which is kind of a metaphor for the dolphins owner.
Info about these shirts:
And you can see them all here :
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Back in the 1970s, as urban sprawl was just beginning in Miami, the transit authority thought building a light rail would be a solution to getting people around through the city. They had grand plans and ambitions, but they only wound up building about 11 miles of elevated track when they opened it 40 years ago. Metrorail was a bit of a mess in the early days and took on the nickname of “metrofail” for a while.
It’s since been expanded, but the one thing you can say is that it was amorphous. Just concrete jutting from the ground, with nothing beneath it. Broken bottles, overgrown weeds, concrete parking lots, and the homeless. But now, they’re making an effort to make it something. They call it the underline - which IMHO is pretty amusing.
And yay, beautification!
By the way, the right of way they used was originally a train track owned by the FEC … which as you may recall was what was originally Henry Flagler’s rail to Key West. It remained a working rail line until sometime in the 1970s. And as my dad shared with me, it was used by the military during the Cuban missile crisis in the 60s, to move weapons down to the keys efficiently. Miami acquired it when it fell into disuse and thus became metro rail.
The Miami Herald reported on progress, but it’s behind a paywall. You can read it here:
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Corn stalks. Plastic bottles. Oxygen. High temperatures. Just add water and voila, you have a protein rich cookie that can help with the world’s hunger problem.
Now I’m a little dubious about what they did and whether it’s viable, but they do attack two of the more pressing issues. So maybe they have something great here.
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File this under "no good deed goes unpunished" ....
This is the story about the man who spent years of his life to draw the first geologic map of Britain.
His debts had amassed over his years away, and so he sold the fossils he collected to the British Museum. Yet, that wasn't enough and he wound up going to debtors prison.
And then when he got out - with no money - he had to literally walk home, only to find that his house and all his possessions had been seized to cover his debts.
He was left destitute. And his accomplishments in map making weren't recognized for many years.
What a shame. And I guess in a way "he didn't know the right people" who can literally get away with anything.
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This is a rather interesting story about the Ama free divers in Japan. They are all women, and are engaged in a centuries old tradition to be one with nature.
If you’d like a little recap of their story, here’s a short piece CNN did on them.
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On Sunday morning, NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman telescope. It will take some time to reach its desired location, because it’s headed to a Lagrange point (like the James Webb space telescope, this will sit in a space between two gravitational objects so it’s unaffected by them and can see great distances through our solar system).
The telescope will look into the cosmos and study dark matter and dark energy. It’s a very exciting thing!
By the way, this is the first satellite named after a woman, and who better than astronomer Nancy Grace Roman. You can read her story here:
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Bonus: I did enjoy reading about “Freedom Fuel” which some MAGA aligned people started. They came on the scene around July 4, and were selling it at a lower price than any competitor - or really what the market allowed for.
Of course the orange menace had to promote it, because ‘Murica!
The question was: just how could they sell fuel at that low a price. This week, we got our answer: They stole it! (I should say “allegedly”)
Now that is winning!
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