Pluvious
Pluvious's JournalExcellent message of hope from historian Heather Cox Richardson
She is an American Treasure
Relentlessly trying to teach and educate us about the lessons of history,
and how they measure up to the present and help understand the options ahead
( the whole entry is well worth the read )
But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once.
At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime.
In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-28-2024?
America is not the greatest country in the world anymore (Jeff Daniels classic response resonates now more than ever)
From The Newsroom
Today's Top Five Random Reddit Pics - 02JUL2024
Images which make you go hmmmI'm thinking the person in the boat has gained a whole new perspective on life lol
GenZ just has ZERO idea WTF this is !!
Perfectly symmetrical trees, road, sky and river
Linn Cove Viduct at Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina
A growing concern about evolving personality traits
ICYMI - 24JUN2024: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10182027692
The Atlantic: "Miami Is Entering a State of Unreality"
IMHO, Al Gore shouldn't have titled his movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
A canker sore is inconvenient.
He should have named it something like "We Are Fucking The Future, They Will Curse Our Names"
"...a deluge that meteorologists are calling it a once-in-200-years event. It was the fourth such massive rainfall to smite southeastern Florida in as many years."
( facepalm )
Thirty years ago, when the dangers of climate change were beginning to be understood but had not yet arrived in force, the creeping catastrophe facing Miami might have been averted. But as atmospheric concentrations of carbon reach levels not seen in 3 million years, politicians promise resilience while ignoring emissions; developers race to build a bounty of luxury condos, never mind the swiftly rising sea. Florida is entering a subtropical state of unreality in which these decisions don’t add up.
...
The state government isn’t exactly ignoring the rising water. Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration have attempted to address the havoc caused by the changing climate with his $1.8 billion Resilient Florida Program, an initiative to help communities adapt to sea-level rise and more intense flooding. But the governor has also signed a bill into law that would make the term climate change largely verboten in state statutes. That same bill effectively boosted the use of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in Florida by reducing regulations on gas pipelines and increasing protections on gas stoves. In a post on X the day he signed the bill, DeSantis called this “restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”
( facepalm )
Climate researchers, for their part, refer to this strategy as “agnostic adaptation”—attempting to deal with the negative effects of climate change while advancing policies that silence discussion or ignore climate change’s causes. On Friday, at a press conference in Hollywood, Florida—which received more than 20 inches of rain—DeSantis repeated his message, emphasizing that “we don’t want our climate policy driven by climate ideology.”
( facepalm )
The Earth’s carbon cycle—which has not witnessed such a rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the past 50,000 years—is without ideology. The carbon goes into the atmosphere, and everything that follows follows. In Miami, as the water levels rise, researchers predict that low-lying neighborhoods across the region will lose population. Eventually, Florida’s policies of agnostic adaptation will have to deal with this looming reality, where adaptation is clearly impossible, and retreat is the only option left
#FacepalmFatigue
Archive link: http://archive.today/6NzrO
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/06/miami-climate-change-floods/678718/
Humor from Reddit - Germany has reinvented the Low Rider... (for real)
OMG
This is funny as Hell 😝
( sound required !! )
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestofinternet/comments/1dcqas7/germany_finally_catching_up_with_mexico/
And after that, if it put you in the right mood, the epic classic of all time...
Today's Top Five Random Reddit Pics - 24JUN2024
Images which make you go hmmmCan you name these three ladies from the You Know What show ?
Feed me !
NOW !
( Kefir, the biggest cat in the world: it is so big that people think it is a puma, a lynx, or generally some rare breed of dog )
This olive tree in Crete, Greece, is 3,500 years old
A cool guide to the most popular fast food in each state
I woke up and this is the first thing I see
ICYMI - 25MAY2024: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10182016047
Just Mesmerizing: Scarborough Fair, S&G with Andy Williams (1968)
Many years later, Andy shared his thoughts about this performance and his own description of this remarkable duo
Then we see the song he joined them in
Note: this happened before the pair had yet to rock the music world
What a moment this was 
Are We Doomed? Here's How to Think About It (New Yorker)
Whew, quite the journey, this article
My head's still spinning (should not have read it all in one go, lol)
Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear annihilation,
biological warfare—the field of existential risk is a way to reason
through the dizzying, terrifying headlines.
By Rivka Galchen
June 3, 2024
Most of the several dozen students had not been alive for even a day of the twentieth century; they laughed. In advance of Hinton’s talk, they had read about how A.I. could simplify the engineering of synthetic bioweapons and concentrate surveillance power into the hands of the few, and how a rogue A.I. could relentlessly pursue its goals regardless of the intentions of its makers—the whole grim caboodle. Hinton—who was a leader in the development of machine learning and who, since resigning from Google, last year, has become a public authority on A.I. threats—was asked about the efficacy of safeguards on A.I. “My advice is to be seventy-six,” he said. More laughter. A student followed up with a question about what careers he saw being eliminated by A.I. “It’s the first time I’ve seen anything that makes it good to be old,” he replied. He recommended becoming a plumber. “We all think what’s special about us is our intelligence, but it might be the sort of physiology of our bodies . . . is what’s, in the end, the last thing that’s better,” he said.
...
Brown, eighty-six years old, spoke with the energy of someone sixty years his junior who has somehow had conversations with Xi Jinping and is deeply knowledgeable about the trillions of dollars spent on military weapons globally. “We’re in a real pickle,” he said. He brought up Ellsberg, a longtime advocate of nuclear disarmament. Ellsberg, who died last June, thought that the most likely scenario leading to nuclear war was a launch happening by mistake, Brown said. There are numerous examples of close calls. In June, 1980, the NORAD missile-warning displays showed twenty-two hundred Soviet nuclear missiles en route to the United States. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, was alerted by a late-night phone call. Fighter planes had been sent out to search the skies, and launch keys for the U.S.’s ballistic missiles were removed from their safes. Brzezinski had only minutes to decide whether to advise a retaliatory strike. Then he received another phone call: it was a false alarm, a computer glitch—there were no incoming missiles. In 1983, a Soviet early-warning satellite system reported five incoming American missiles. Stanislav Petrov, who was on duty at the command center, convinced his superiors that it was most likely an error; if the Americans were attacking, they wouldn’t have launched so few missiles. In both instances, only a handful of people stood between nuclear holocaust and the status quo.
...
Nuclear destruction had also been the topic of the first class of the term, when Rachel Bronson, the C.E.O. and president of the Bulletin, was the guest lecturer. In that first class, more than half the students had listed climate change as their foremost concern. By the end of the course, nuclear threats had become more of a concern, and students were speaking about climate change as “a multiplier”—by increasing migration, inequality, and conflict, it could increase the risk of nuclear war.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/10/are-we-doomed-heres-how-to-think-about-it
Top Five Reddit Political Memes - 29MAY2024
My "Cake Day" is 18JAN2013, and been a regular since
In general, it's a younger crowd than here in our Dem Oasis, and much heavier with international as well
Since the emergence of TSF, things have gotten way more politicized, reactive, and snarky
Here's my curated Top Five for your pleasure, or displeasure 
#1 "I'll take "People Who Were Vaguely Relevant in a Small Niche 25+ Years Ago" for $800, Alex"
#2 "She needs to go so bad!"
#3 "The American Political Spectrum."
#4 "Donald Trump has needs"
#5 "A cool guide to where America's largest landfills are located"
Who Is Generation Jones ? ( A.K.A. The Lost Generation )
In general, a "generation" span of time is considered 20-30 years, both in a family genealogy and a social context.
So a "social generation" is a group who've shared similar events during their similar stages of life.
The cohort of people born in the eleven years of 1954-1965 fall between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, they are sometimes referred to as The Lost Generation, or Generation Jones - a term coined by cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell.
Pontell noted that this generation grew up during significant events like Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation, which were different from the experiences of the earlier Baby Boomers.
Key characteristics of Generation Jones include:
• They were children during the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s
• They became young adults when HIV/AIDS emerged as a global threat in the 1980s
• They reached maturity during a time of economic change, moving from a manufacturing to a service economy, which led to mass unemployment and stagnant wages
• They experienced high mortgage interest rates, making it difficult to buy a house on a single income
• They are known for their "jonesing" or "yearning" for the more prosperous days of the past due to the economic downturn they faced as they came of age
The name "Generation Jones" has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a "keeping up with the Joneses" competitiveness, and the slang word "jones" or "jonesing."
This generation is recognized for its political influence due to its substantial size and voting power.
And there is, of course a Subreddit
Some of us STILL have our old Viewmaster Lance Link Secret Chimp set of circular 3D slides !!
But, unlikely still have our old lunch boxes with thermoses ...
Profile Information
Member since: Sun Jul 11, 2004, 06:18 PMNumber of posts: 4,664