Steve Cropper

Bird is the word

 

Green Heron

Male harrier

White tailed kite

Quicksilver

Viper Madness

A couple things.

First, Shawn sent me this note this morning from Thailand.

Phew! Bit of a close call today! While I was checking charts at my desk, my housekeeper just yelled for me from the kitchen…went to see what was up and found her standing on the countertop. She had heard a noise behind the curtain under the sink and when we looked we saw a 160 cm, (5'2") very thick King Cobra hooded up and ready to strike! 🐍

I’ve seen more than my fair share of them over the years, both at home and in the nursery, but this one looked like the angriest one yet! His/her hood was easily larger than my fully spread palm. Outside I just shoo them away, or more often they just scram on their own… but in the house, particularly in a constricted space, it was unfortunately ‘curtains’ for this one.

Ahhhh, Life in the tropics! 😂 Might have a hard time falling asleep tonight! 🤙

Well, let me tell you. First time I see a king cobra arching its neck is the last time. The next shot is me running to the airport having booked my ticket out of there.

I wrote him back and asked him exactly how the snake was dispatched.

Stout stick to the head. Didn't want to, but he was pretty aggressive and my kitchen is a tiny, very confined space. He was 'dinner' tonight!

I'm not really sure what he means by the last sentence. Did he really eat the viper? I killed and ate a rattlesnake once and it almost killed me, having got a bone stuck in my throat. 

Hmmm.

I will be eating no more snakes of any kind until I leave this mortal coil. 

In any case I wondered how many blows to the head it would take to kill it and he said multiple.

Now I have killed my share of rattlers in my time and I would never use a stick, a round end shovel is my weapon of choice but different strokes for different folks.

Egads.

Postscript from Ricardo: 

Here is a picture of another kind of Snake that Shawn might come face-to-face with or more likely already has. This is a Burmese python underneath my pick up truck. I’m taking a picture from the driver’s seat and my passenger is telling me the tail is sticking out on the other side of the truck. And that was a thin one for it’s length.

Regarding Shawn‘s tale, his desk is only 20 to 25 feet away from that kitchen counter. Also, his housekeeper is from a part of Thailand where they do a lot of foraging and eat just about everything. My own two impressions from brief encounters with cobras is that one that  they are so fast and athletic. They make a rattlesnake look like a pudgy suburbanite compared to an Olympian. And two, when I found a 12 inch long baby king cobra outside my rental the Snake Rescue guy told me that it was already capable of killing me with one bite.

Jerry Hall just sent me this message and king snake photograph.

I saw this snake in a Temecula parking lot last week. Two crows were trying to make a meal of it, but it wasn't having it. It kept striking at the crows when they got close. It moved fast and made its escape into some bushes.

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I am getting ready for the Utah run and I took my ProMaster to Pro-Tire to make sure everything was copacetic before I embarked. They are such great people over there, top to bottom, they perform this task for me gratis every time I have a major roadie.

Good thing we stopped. 

I would never have made it to Salt Lake City, my coolant reservoir was cracked. Two hours and a bunch of money but we are now good to go.

Thank you Gary, Joey, Ted, Evan, Walker and all the rest of the fine mechanics down there for always taking care of me.

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I stuck a post on NextDoor that is getting a lot of attention. My wife Leslie came upon a single car accident at Willow Glen and Willow Heights the day before yesterday, you might have heard the sirens in the afternoon.

A young guy in a Prius had rolled over on its side. The engine was on, car smoking, tires moving. Leslie forced the door open and pulled the guy out of the car.

I was talking to her when it happened and heard her yell at the guy for crawling through broken glass to shut the car off. He was hyperventilating and she calmed him down and gave him water.

With the other hand she dialed 911 and waited until emergency vehicles were on scene before directing traffic around the acccident.

What a woman! I'm very proud of her.

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I got a bit scared reading about the newly proposed SDGE Golden Pacific Powerlink. These are some big ass towers. They couldn't be going near my home, could they?

I will cross my fingers and hope for the best. The maps I see point to a more east west configuration and the river is a little more north south where I live but I could be wrong.

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I haven't been posting pictures of the hawk's nest for a reason. Two of the three babies are gone. Last one stands on the nest looking so lonely. I believe that they were killed by a great horned owl. An owl killed a red tailed on my property, Leslie found the feathers. They will take over a red tailed nest. I hope the young surviving fledgeling is not traumatized for life for what it has witnessed. I know all about childhood trauma, sticks with you like hot glue.

Guess who lies?

 Let's look at oil prices

"Oil prices are higher now than they were when President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. But Trump posted a wildly deceptive chart on Friday that wrongly suggests oil prices are lower than they were upon predecessor Joe Biden’s departure.

The text at the top of the chart claims, “Oil is Down 25% or $30 Per Barrel Since Sleepy Joe.” The chart has two bars: a blue bar labeled “Biden $120” and a much smaller green bar reading “Trump $90.” An arrow points downward from the “Biden” bar toward the “Trump” bar.

Here’s the big problem. The price of oil wasn’t anywhere close to $120 when Biden left office.

US crude oil futures actually closed below $80 per barrel on January 20, 2025, the day of Trump’s second inauguration, and on January 17, 2025, the last full trading day under Biden. By contrast, after a spike in oil prices triggered by the war Trump launched against Iran in late February, US crude was trading above $94 per barrel most of Friday morning."

 

Charlie Daniels

 

South going to do it again.

The speed at which the South is moving to rid itself of any black congressional representation is astounding.  Efforts are ongoing in Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Soon there will be no minority congressmen left, at least in the south.

Going to lose Steve Cohen too in Nashville. Not black but close enough. But that is okay because as we all know and as Justice Alito assures us, racism is over and a thing of the past.

The only real racism today is that which is directed at white protestant males.

So now pretty much all black Memphis will have no black representation. But as one Southern GOP consultant stated, these people will just have to learn to vote for white people.

It is interesting to think about the subject of racism and the GOP. 

Sen. Richard Russell

Now, not every Republican is a racist but pretty much every racist tends to tack towards their side of the line, at least since the Southern Democrats gave up their axe handles in the sixties.

It is funny to me that Republicans can be whining about losing voting power in Virginia, or at least they were until this morning, when the Supreme Court disallowed the voter's referendum there, but have no problem when it happens to the other side.

I guess it just matters whose ox is getting gored?

Black voting jumped exponentially when the Voting Rights Act of 1964 was enacted and we got rid of literacy tests, poll taxes, and all sorts of impediments to minority representation that were born in the Jim Crow era.

Now of course, thanks to this Supreme Court, it is not enough to prove that discrimination exists, one must prove that it was intentional and not merely the byproduct of political partisanship.

Good luck with that.

 Excellent article on the subject here.

The Supreme Court  in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 6-3 decision effectively nullifies Section 2 and, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “threatens a half-century’s worth of gains in voting equality.”

Section 2 addresses racial vote dilution—a tactic commonly used to reduce the power of Black voters in the South after the Voting Rights Act. When states could no longer deny ballots to Black Americans, they used electoral maps and at-large election systems to give minority citizens’ votes no or minimal weight. 

Just for your information, Louisiana has never had a Black Congressperson elected from a non-majority-Black district. And it looks like now it never will.

This Supreme Court has been hell bent on dismantling civil rights and when you look at the players, it is quite understandable. Like Amy Coney Barrett, who as a circuit judge authored an opinion concluding that a Black employee who was called a “stupid-ass n—” by a supervisor still had not shown a sufficiently hostile work environment. Okay then... They pretend to be non partisan but their thumbs are always on the scales.

After the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment barred racial discrimination in voting, but states continued to disenfranchise Black voters through poll taxes, literacy tests, and violent intimidation—especially in the South.

Selma, Alabama, is one example of how effectively these tactics prevented Black people from voting. In 1965, half of Selma’s population was Black, but only 2% of the county’s 15,000 Black eligible voters were registered to vote.

On March 7, 1965, Black residents planned to march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery to demand their right to vote. Alabama state troopers and local police used billy clubs, whips, and tear gas to attack hundreds of nonviolent voting rights protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, stopping their planned march to Montgomery. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Two weeks later, thousands of voting rights activists from across the country gathered in Selma and set out for Montgomery. When they reached the Capitol, 25,000 people strong, on March 25, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a powerful speech demanding voting rights.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act less than five months later, on August 6, 1965. The landmark legislation banned discriminatory qualification laws and required jurisdictions like Alabama with the worst records of discrimination to “preclear” new voting laws with the federal government. Congress reauthorized the VRA in 2006, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.

In the decade after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, more than a million Black people registered to vote in the Deep South. The surge in Black voters included around 200,000 in Alabama by 1975. The number of Black people elected to office in the Deep South soared from virtually none to about 1,000.

...June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision to strike down the preclearance requirement because “things have changed dramatically” since 1965—voting tests were illegal, racial disparities in voter turnout and registration had diminished, and “record numbers” of minorities held elected office.

As the dissent noted, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

I find it funny when people like Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch pretend that racism is a thing of the past. Because while progress has admittedly been made, they and their people tended to fight it every step of the way.

Here in San Diego, Blacks, Jews and Mexicans were forbidden by covenant to live in La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe until UCSD founder Roger Revelle's pressure on La Jolla to rescind the anti-semitic deed restrictions or risk not having professors and for not requiring Scripps researchers to sign loyalty oaths. His nemesis was a prominent attorney from the prestigious Gray, Cary, Ames and Frye law firm named Jim Archer.

In the early 1950s, Revelle had criticized the La Jolla Real Estate Brokers Association’s restrictive property deeds. “You can’t have a university without having Jewish professors,” he warned. “You’ll have to make up your minds whether you want a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You can’t have both.” Neither Archer nor the property owners of La Jolla were happy with his stance and as UC President Kerr later said: “Archer was a terror when his sense of patriotism was aroused.”

Real patriot, huh? This actually continued into the mid 1960's here in San Diego. Think about how much worse it was in the south. Rinse and repeat.

 “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)

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Racism of course starts at the top. I was wondering how many times President Donald Trump has referred to a black or latino person as low i.q. but I can't count quite that high.

But let's see. Where should I start?

...researchers also scrutinized a collection of Trump’s public statements for the past 10 years, searching through a repository of C-SPAN videos that covered Trump speaking at rallies, press briefings, and other events. They found he deployed the “low IQ” aspersion at least 75 times. Forty of these instances—53 percent—targeted Black people. He also used it to describe Somali and Hispanic immigrants.Harris clocked in with the most mentions (23). Biden was next (17). Then came Waters (8), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (5), and Crockett (3). Trump claimed Harris was too “low IQ” to be president. In October, he said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was “low IQ” and could not pass a cognitive test.

Last week, speaking at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida full of Trumpers, he also declared that Barack Obama could not pass a cognitive test. In the past, he has often derided Obama’s intelligence and suggested he was accepted at Columbia University and Harvard Law School only due to his race. The idea that the first Black president was a smart fellow seems to be too tough for Trump to accept.

Hakeem Jeffries, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Jasmine Crockett, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris,  Al Sharpton, Donna Brazile, Ihlan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Letitia James, Brandon Johnsonand  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Who else am I forgetting?

Speaker Mike Johnson said last week that America needed to elect Republicans because they were "the adults in the room."

Is this how adults speak and act? Adult bigots certainly.

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If this is how the adults think I will vote for somebody else, thanks.

Of course, the young ones are probably just as bad if not worse.

 

Here but I'm gone

 

Seattle Creepos

Two thugs beat a 77 year old in an unprovoked attack in Seattle. Broke his arm and his knee and put him in the hospital for a week with multiple facial injuries. 

A 29-year-old Seattle man with a criminal history is facing a felony assault charge after a “senseless” attack on a 77-year-old man in the heart of downtown. The incident happened just before midnight on April 19 near 3rd Avenue and Pike Street.

Prosecutors say the victim had just stepped off a bus and was minding his own business when defendant Ahmed Abdullahi Osman and another person suddenly struck him in the head, knocking him to the ground. According to the probable cause certification, the victim told investigators he was “both punched and kicked several times” before losing his bearings. He said he wasn’t even paying attention to his attackers before the assault began.

The Democratic Socialist mayor, Katie Wilson, thinks that the closed circuit camera system that captured the crime should be abolished because it makes certain immigrant groups uncomfortable. She ran on a platform to do away with the surveillance.

CAIR, the local islamic rights group, concurs:

Wilson has amplified concerns from local activist groups that CCTV cameras will pose a threat to illegal immigrant communities.

"We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees," the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle said in a letter last year.

I don't want to sound uncaring or cavalier but my sympathies are with the old guy who was beaten up here, not Somali Ahmed and his pal, Jes'shon.

I want to acknowledge that this is a controversial issue," Wilson added. "For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in the neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe."

"Those feelings are important, because our quality of life is partly about our feelings of safety or lack thereof, and our sense that our city is a welcoming place that is designed with consideration for our well-being and our humanity."

Wilson continued, "But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause."

I'm sorry but this is the sort of ultra liberal crap that drives people in tho conservative ranks in droves. By the way perp #1 Osman is now on the run and "currently wanted on a $200,000 warrant" and officers are actively searching for him. Guy is a total loser.

This wasn’t Osman’s first brush with the law. Court records show prior misdemeanor convictions for harassment (2023), assault in the fourth degree (2022), attempted criminal trespass (2022), and criminal trespass (2021). He also has two additional cases pending from 2026.

Then there was this:

Last month, Fox News Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.

“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”

Pretty sad indeed. This kind of attitude is why I gave up my Democratic registration and became an independent. I don't want to hear about Ahmed's lousy childhood or bad upbringing or his hurt feelings. He beat up an innocent old man. Throw him in jail, throw away the key and keep the cameras.

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California funding hate - The Hill

New Stones album

ehhh...

God help us

The anti vaccers have been quite busy since covid, apparently they have managed to scare expectant mothers so badly that many have put their children in jeopardy.

Medicine and established science that have kept us healthy for a hundred years are now being rejected in the new MAGA/MAHA hysteria.

At the morgue, the babies were brought in with their diapers and blankets and with their hospital ID bracelets still wrapped around their tiny ankles. The pathologists’ findings were like those you would typically see in ailing adults, not newborns — the kind of bleeding seen during strokes or brain tissue loss similar to what happens when radiation is administered to treat cancer.

Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.

Interesting story at ProPublica, Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth.

Turns out that Candace Owens is one of the far right talking heads who helped poison the well.

On Facebook, comments about the shot include: “Don’t do it!” “Huge lie!” and “It’s a scare tactic.” One person wrote, “Never will I ever inject my baby with poisons from big pharma.”

Families have also pointed to a 2023 episode about vitamin K shots by conservative podcaster Candace Owens, who said, “What Big Pharma is saying is that we realize that babies were born wrong. They don’t have enough vitamin K, and so we’re going to give them what they always needed. God designed us wrong.”

Owens did not respond to a request for comment.

Her last statement says it all. A kid can't be deficient at birth because that means that god didn't design us right. You get the message?

Jimi and Johnny

 

5-5 sell out

Interesting story at Pro-Publica about a Republican drugs for votes scheme whose prosecution was stymied by the present administration.

I saw a picture of Bezos's wife with her Mar a Lago face at the Met Gala and wanted to gag this morning. So synthetic. Nothing that you would ever want to look at tripping, that is for sure.  Could never pass the acid test. And 99% of the women in the Trump-o-sphere look just like this.

Anyway I read somewhere that Zuckerberg was also there in a tux, having traded in his grunge hoody somewhere along the way.

And it got me to thinking about an old hero of mine named Abbie Hoffman. Abbie was a wise old man who never sold out. Kept being Abbie until the day he died. Stayed radical until the end. Went undercover when he was on the lam and did environmental work up near Buffalo.

And he said something once I will never forget, about what happens to once radical people when they get co-opted. 

co-optation—the process where mainstream society absorbs radical ideas and people, defusing their threat.

They start running with the moneyed set and then forget who they really are inside and somewhat unconsciously adopt the social status symbols of the ruling class. They don't even see it coming. Your kids go to school with the rich, maybe you work at the same job, or you live in the same posh neighborhoods, ultimately you have to become them, full blown Randian materialists who stand for nothing except selfishness (e.g. Bezos and Zuckerberg.) Why swim against the stream?

Could be the coolest, hippest, most righteous and enlightened vegan flower child and then throw a little dough at them and they are adopting all the mannerisms of the caviar and blini set and suddenly you have no idea where the person you once knew or were vanished to? And they don't either. Sucked right in.

I saw it happen once with one of Tony Maguire's organic hippy girlfriends, Sweet girl started running with a diamond merchant and all of a sudden it was about the ferraris and maseratis and she basically became unrecognizable and insufferable. Changed overnight. She probably never even noticed.

Don't get co-opted.

Define who is an asshole early on and don't become that.

And never forget that conformists come in all sorts of shapes and packages too.

We are all wearing a mask.

Yow

Ever look in the mirror?

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Republicans include $1 billion for White House ballroom in funding package.

Get yours yet?

As a person raised in Manhattan I have to reiterate that this gilded guy is so nouveau riche flushing queens I want to barf. Represents everything I ever hated about the borough. Doesn't get any more pukey.

Vignettes

These little scenes flash by in our lives sometimes, unexplained, that often crave clarification. 

I  think about this one from time to time.

The exact moment had to be thirty or forty years ago.

The Hazard Center was being built on Friars road, right off the 163, at the site of the old Hazard plant.

I was driving south on the freeway when I saw from the corner of my eye that a crane had fallen.

Not a little crane, this was a giant one that towered eight or ten stories in the air.

It fell basically parallel to the building.

But when it landed it fell squarely on the bed of a small Datsun or Toyota pickup truck.

Never touched the cab, it grabbed the car out of its flight on the road as deftly and cleanly as a cat traps a mouse's tail in its paw.

But left the front compartment untouched. Amazing.

I never got any more information about the crane collapse and it left me with a lifelong sense of wonder.

If a twenty or fifty ton object was to stop you in midflight like that is there any way you survive? Was the driver's spinal cord and disks forever damaged from the shock? Or could they have miraculously walked away?

I guess I will never know.

Airplane Outtakes

 

Utagawa Yoshitora 歌川芳虎

There are times when art is purely decorative, other times it might give us unique insights into historical times. This is such a print. But it requires a bit of backstory. 

The Shogun Tokugawa issued an edict around 1630 that all foreigners in Japan be relegated to an artificial island off Nagasaki called Dejima. By 1639, all foreigners were expelled under the policy of sakoku, with the exception of Dutch traders on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, beginning a period of isolation. Prior to that time it served as a trading post for the Portuguese. 

This time in Japanese history is called the Edo or Togugawa period and it took place roughly between 1603 and 1868.

Due to a Christian uprising, the Portuguese were expelled in 1639 and the practice of christianity was forbidden. From about 1641 to 1859 it was inhabited by Dutchmen. Japanese were forbidden to visit the island with the exception of a few merchants, tax collectors and perhaps an occasional courtesan.

In 1859, after over two hundred years, the edict was reversed and a treaty was made with the Dutch to build ships for Japan, something which opened up the island. Japanese flocked to Dejima to get their first look at the foreign "barbarians."

Utagawa Yoshitora (active 1850-1880) was the name of the artist who created this print of dutchmen somewhere between 1861 and 1863. It is titled "Banko Wakai" or Barbarian languages on the top banner and Dutchmen or "Oranjin" on the right vertical. 

It is part of a series, enormously popular at the time, called Yokohama-e prints, the Japanese had a great curiosity for these foreigners, somewhat like circus amusements. One dutchman here smokes a long clay pipe, which was probably also very unusual in Japan.

I find it quite fascinating.

Mick Taylor

 

Los Tacos

We have some good Mexican restaurants in Fallbrook, we always have. The late El Jardin and La Caseta had their loyal devotees. Some people love Estrellas, or Mariscos, our personal go to is Rosas, on the strength of their camerones de mojo de ajo and their excellent enchilada sauce. I just had menudo there yesterday.

I am not as big a fan of Las Brisas or Luna or El Parque but they are not terrible, just not my thing. El Parque is always out of something I want to order. I have been eating at Robertitos for ever and have to say that it is getting a little stale for me, everything tastes the same somehow. Still it can be awesome in a late night pinch and the carnitas burritos are excellent. El Toro has raised their prices on their burritos so high I rarely stop there anymore but I like Mohammed a lot.

I haven't done a deep dive on the food trucks or sidewalk joints in town, I confess. I worry about sanitation and the couple I did try were just okay.

So lets talk about local tacos. In my book, for chicken tacos you can't beat Rosas. They are exceptional. For rolled and fish, Robertitos. And that is the end of the story on Fallbrook tacos for me right now.

Because I want to talk to you about the place we now love in the city to the north, Temecula called Los Tacos. 

It is located in the Redhawk Center where Kohls is on 79. 

A very plain and nondescript place from the outside but absolute gold waits within.

Street taco heaven.

There you will get an exceptional taco, without peer in Fallbrook, in fact there is nothing even close.

Flavors are so good, they keep your taste buds happy for hours.

I stopped there the other day coming back from Tucson, had their choriqueso, carnitas and carne asada tacos, all under four dollars a piece.

They serve them with cilantro, lime and radish and some of the most heavenly sauces that you will ever find. 

The sauce on the very left of the setup is called the chilango, ostensibly a Mexico City blend. 

It is a piquant red that is so smoky and complex, one of the best I have ever tasted.

We stopped there this evening after a day of shopping, only gringos in the place. 

Leslie's first time, my fourth, she had a carne asada and a carnitas, then we split a quesobirria taco.

It was one of the very best I have tasted.

Perfect amount of cheese.

They had two green sauces, Leslie loved them both. 

Loved the red too.

There is a lot I still need to try on the menu. 

My friend Kirk told me he was there earlier tonight and had a shrimp and garlic quesadilla.

I'm telling you Fallbrook, this place is a gem, check it out!

From the internet

 

I find this hilarious because I know the shop and the dealer in Palm Springs (and Texas) that this resembles and they are so dead on.

Has a throne in his shop in Texas.

More shrimp, Dennis.

Go Sixers

I was chirping to my buddies all morning about the sixers beating the celtics tonight. 

They did. 

Came back from a 3-1 deficit to win game 7, their first series win against their Eastern rivals since 1982. 

Joel Embiid, one of my favorite big men, had a monster night, thirty four points, twelve rebounds and six assists.

I like this team, especially with Paul George and Maxey heating up and think they will be dangerous and gain confidence after this win.

I hope that they can keep it going. Beat the Knicks.

rejoyce

 

Jefferson Airplane reinterpreted by the Tufts Electronic Music Ensemble, Paul Lehrman, director (and bass)

Meanwhile on Terra

 

I watched this video a few weeks ago and was pleased to see how the re-introduction of our largest land mammal to the great north was benefitting the eco system. I was taken aback by the realization that the initial killing and almost complete eradication of the bison herds was planned and executed to starve the Plains Indians out of existence.

Anyway this video reminded me of a video I posted a long while ago on trophic cascades, How wolves change rivers.

I saw another article today on a potential approaching El Nino, California's ocean is in crisis, by Sean Bothwell, which I am reprinting.

The marine ecosystem along Southern California’s coastline is in crisis. Sea surface temperatures are hitting record highs, rivaling the devastating marine heat wave known as “the Blob” that wreaked havoc on West Coast fisheries and ecosystems a decade ago.

Scientists from NOAA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources are warning that a developing El Niño could intensify conditions further. There are steps we can take that would relieve the pressure on these already stressed waters, and it’s past time for California lawmakers and regulators to act.

Last year, harmful algal blooms led to the illnesses and deaths of hundreds of sea lions, dolphins and seabirds off Southern California. Further north, Dungeness crab shells are dissolving in acidic waters. Fish populations and marine mammals are struggling to survive in growing oxygen-depleted zones that can stretch 50 miles from the coast. Warming ocean temperatures are accelerating all of it.

The critical factor contributing to this crisis within our control is nutrient pollution from wastewater discharges and agricultural runoff. Every day, California’s coastal wastewater treatment facilities discharge partially treated sewage into the ocean. When those nutrient-rich discharges meet warming oceans — waters already pushed to the edge by this record marine heatwave — they trigger harmful algal blooms that create toxic hot spots spanning more than 1,000 square miles of coastal waters. As bacteria break down these blooms, they consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide, driving the twin crises of hypoxia and ocean acidification.

The consequences to wildlife are severe. Available marine habitat compresses dramatically, leaving large swaths of ocean effectively uninhabitable. Tiny sea snails, oysters and baby crabs cannot form shells in acidic water. Anchovies and other forage fish suffocate in oxygen-depleted zones. Marine mammals and seabirds suffer neurological damage from algal toxins, leading to seizures and even death. Southern Californians have watched this play out on our own beaches. Harmful algal blooms have forced repeated closures of recreational shellfish harvesting from Malibu to San Diego, and the sea lion strandings that have become a grim fixture of local news are a direct consequence of these toxic conditions.

The stakes for California are economic as well as ecological. Our state’s coastal economy generates $44 billion annually and sustains thousands of jobs in fishing, tourism and recreation. The Dungeness crab fishery alone generates more than $60 million in good years. The sportfishing fleets out of San Pedro and San Diego, the shellfish growers, the beach towns whose entire identity depends on a healthy ocean — they are all at risk. Los Angeles County’s coastal tourism generates billions in annual revenue, and beach closures and marine die-offs erode coastal health and the reputation that draws visitors here.

By allowing ocean conditions to deteriorate, we are not just failing our marine wildlife. We are undermining an economic engine that supports families and communities the length of the state.

Climate change is driving the marine heatwave. That is a global problem without an easy fix. But nutrient pollution is a local problem with known solutions, and that is exactly where California lawmakers can act. In March 2025, the California Ocean Protection Council called on the State Water Resources Control Board to develop science-based water quality objectives for nutrient pollution. Such standards would establish clear, enforceable limits on what wastewater facilities can discharge into coastal waters. Advanced treatment technologies, which already exist, can remove more nutrients from wastewater before it reaches the ocean, significantly reducing the inputs that lead to toxic conditions.

What is needed now is the legislative will to prioritize this issue. Lawmakers must allocate funding for the State Water Board to develop and adopt an ocean acidification and hypoxia policy with clear, enforceable limits on nutrient discharges, with a firm deadline to complete that regulatory process by 2028. The deadline matters. Every year of delay is another year of untreated discharge flowing into waters already under historic thermal stress.

Future infrastructure bonds should include funding to help coastal wastewater facilities upgrade their treatment systems, investments that protect both the environment and the coastal economies that depend on it. California has 124 marine protected areas up and down our coastline. Those investments mean nothing if we keep fouling the waters around them.

The ocean is warmer than it has ever been, battered by forces we cannot fully control. But it is absorbing pollution we can control. The science is settled and the technology exists. The sea lions, the anchovies, the oysters and the pelicans are not waiting for the next legislative session. Neither should we.

Sean Bothwell is executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance.

Many of my friends are dismissive of any attempts to right the damage we have done to the ecosystem, it is all in Jesus' hands of course. I have little faith and am quite cynical about our ability to course correct, clearly the money and ignorance is stacked against us.

Crimson King

 

Quick political stuff and other whatnot

• MIT Press reader - The whistleblower who uncovered the Big Brother machine.
• Borowitz Report - Don has learned nothing
• Texas Tribune - Talarico leads Cornyn and Paxton in Texas
• HuffPo - Ex-Trump Ally: MAGA Influencers Were Paid To Coordinate Talking Points After WHCD Shooting
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• Al Jazeera -Trump expands Red Snapper fishing while critics warn of overfishing.
• ProPublica - EPA to weaken more chemical regulations
• NPR - Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone
• SFGate - Trump proposing massive cuts to National Park Service

Quick Roadie

I just did a very fast drive out to Tucson and back to buy a sculpture and a couple paintings and help an older fellow out with a seat of the pants appraisal.

Took three days, with driving. 

Now you wonder about people that live on the edge of nowhere and what motivates them.

I do too, but it is mostly green where I live, not brown.

I guess it takes all kinds.

Very happy with my purchases and the people I encountered were wonderful.

I got to hang out with my buddy Barry.

I have been busting my ass of late and there are no signs of things slowing down with two shows on the near horizon.

I was thinking today, the most successful people I know work the hardest.

Imagine that?

I have been waiting for my yucca rostrata to bloom.

Still waiting, any day now.

It throws the most beautiful and gigantic bloom.

Glad I didn't miss it.

I did have a hooded oriole male on the Mexican bird of paradise today.

Glad they are back.

Will have to bring the real camera home one of these days soon and do some real shooting.

Mose Allison

 

Chicken piccata

I was in the mood for chicken piccata tonight. I had the option of going heavy cream for the sauce or combining chicken broth and white wine and I went with the latter.

Did you know that this dish is not really Italian but actually Italian American? Who cares, I love it. If that is the case, it makes me proud to be an American. Probably invented in the 1930's by Sicilian immigrants.

I pounded my skinless breast filets between wax paper and dredged them in flour and seasoning. Gave them a nice sautée in olive oil and butter. [Note: Recipes say to go five minutes a side browning. Don't. They are thin. By the time it gets out of the sauce at the end it will be overcooked. Three minutes is fine.]

I removed the (perfectly browned breasts, if I may say so myself) from the skillet and added the tablespoon of capers, garlic, lemon juice, white wine, chicken broth and the zest of a lemon. Brought it to a boil.

Let everything simmer and reduce for about five minutes and added the chicken back to cook for a few more minutes and get up to heat.

Added chopped parsley and fresh parmesan.

Leslie loved it. 

We debated using the heavy cream but she wants to stay away from it for healthy reasons and it really wasn't missed.

Such a nice, easy meal.

Super tasty.

*

I was just saying aloud to my wife that Le Creuset should give me free stuff, I do so much free advertising for them.

She had a better idea.

Kent Borsch, who worked for Le Creuset in college, should give me a few pieces from his huge collection that he honestly never uses. Probably locked away in the closet.

Top rate idea, let's go with that!

Kent used to get on my case for calling it a Dutch oven instead of the more proper French Oven. Oh, those French.

Lets start with the Signature Braiser. 

Any color is fine but I would honestly like to stay with the cerise or flame. 

Having said that, the new Riviera is kind of nice. 

Thank you.

Another one from Barona

 

E.V. Blues

Ken brought his new Tesla over for me to check out the other day. Nice but the white seats wouldn't last a week in my world. 

Truth is, I would love a great electric car but would never put a single dollar in Elon Musk's pocket. I abhor the man on so many levels, from the thai pedo falsehoods to doge, so many areas. I find him truly despicable.

I will have an electric car one day but it may take a few years. We will probably all be driving one.

I would love to try one of the Chinese E.V.'s that are taking over Europe. 

But I can't, they won't sell them here. 

Yet.

Good article on the new E.V. technology in China here.