Smooth Operators

It only sticks to your guts and arteries...

I am a prejudiced person. I think we all are but I think that I am fairly open about my prejudices. I saw this headline the other day; Thousands of pounds of “forever chemicals” have been injected into Texas oil and gas wells, study finds and it just really pissed me off.

A new report from a public health watchdog found that more than 40,000 pounds of PFAS has been injected into more than 1,000 wells across Texas — and warned that the chemicals could pose a risk to public health.

I have a prejudice against chemical and energy companies. Think that they put us at great risk. I hate that people, often knowingly inflict this sort of danger upon the American public, whether it be for cheap energy or simply to make money. Look at the recent train derailments that hit those midwestern communities with chemical exposure. You think that stuff just blows away? Those people will be fighting the consequences of the spill for hundreds of years. The companies will go under and we will be left holding the bag.

I have been battling cancer for the last thirty eight years, various cancers caused by, principally, benzene exposure. This cancer was traumatic for me, I lost a kidney and have gone through a ton of crap and multiple surgeries that I don't need to recount. Obviously I am an expendable statistic to the chemical companies.

All you have to do is look at the Superfund site map to realize what an awful job we have done in managing chemicals and pollution.

Superfund sites  - 2022

The EWG estimates that twenty three contaminants are currently in Fallbrook Public Utility District's drinking water, thirteen known to be harmful and cancer causing. That is not a particularly bad score, comparatively. Rainbow is slightly worse, heavy on the arsenic.

Thank god they aren't fracking around here. As it says on the site, the EPA has not updated its drinking water standards in 20 years, you think there is any political pressure on them to stall?

the nasty ones...

Bromodichloromethane seems to be one of our biggest culprits and offenders. 128 times the guideline. While it is not shown to have conclusive harm to humans it does to lab animals. It is termed potentially carcinogenic to humans in the study. That always makes me squirm. The toxic haloacetic acid levels are troubling.

We live in an imperfect world, some carcinogens are either natural or difficult to evade. But it is also obvious to me that many of our water pollutant ills are self inflicted and could have been avoided by people that knew better.

And I also know that to a big businessman, my health problems are just acceptable collateral damage, you don't make omelettes without breaking a few eggs. But we all have been impacted.

The scientists estimated that more than 200 million people—the majority of Americans—have tap water contaminated with a mixture of PFOA and PFOS at concentrations of one part per trillion (ppt) or higher. Andrews and Naidenko say previous research shows that levels higher than one ppt can increase the risk of conditions such as testicular cancer, delayed mammary gland development, liver tumors, high cholesterol and effects on children’s immune response to vaccinations. 

I have written about the dangers of Teflon and other cancer causing substances for years. People at the big chemical companies always know about the dangers and they always find a way to bury the findings. 

Take the money and run. By the time the shit hits the fan the immoral scientists and engineers are dead and gone, having long since got their cut. But the prior knowledge and perfidy always somehow seeps its way to the surface, eventually.

A pox on these companies and the scientists that play the game with them and put all of the globe and even their own families at risk. May they share in the outcome.

The companies knew exactly what they were doing and we citizens had no vote or buy in.

May they rot in hell.

It's alive!

 

Adobe Photoshop has a new Beta version with a generative fill function that uses artificial intelligence. I downloaded it this morning and made a couple attempts, with very mixed results.

It does some things very well but is pretty lacking in other ways.

I downloaded a picture I had taken of Grandview Beach in Leucadia. I selected an area with the lasso tool.

A popup came up asking me if I wanted to use a generative ai tool to fill the selected area.

I asked for a dolphin jumping out of the water and morphing into a bird. 

No dice, I got a rather boring dolphin or two, on three attempts. 

I actually like the highlights on top of this dolphin but still, it was supposed to be half bird. Nothing.

But the pictures do fit nicely into the background, I will give them that. I shifted gears and went for a dinosaur coming out of the water. I got this brontosaurus, a little better but don't like how his tail is mostly lost and foreshortened.

The chimera was evidently beyond the capabilities of the machine brain still. Pretty cartoony too. I tried to fit some zap cartoon characters and an Ignatz mouse in a photo and was told I ran afoul of some copywrite gremlins. No go.

I am pretty ambivalent about ai. I won't even use cruise control in my car. I like to be in control and especially creatively. I don't think an artificial intelligence will ever match the human brain, in any artistic endeavor, but call me a hopeless romantic. I can see how this product would occasionally prove useful.

I can also see how people without their own creative or artistic vision might rely on a machine intelligence but can't see much benefit for me. I have very clear ideas about how I want things to look.

Whatever.

Pork ragu with fennel, lemon, pecorino romano and pappardelle

I had been thinking about tackling this recipe for several weeks. Tonight was the night. I bought a much larger pork butt than the recipe required at Major Market, reserving the excess for carnitas. 

Pretty much did it per the instructions although I did not add pasta water to the sauce in the end as called for because the dish seemed quite liquid enough. 

Put a whole fennel bulb in the sofrito with twice the garlic as called for, our standard. 

I used four ounces of pancetta, I think we could decrease that somewhat, it was a bit salty and we had to omit salt later to balance.

I braised the pork for 90 minutes at 350 degrees. Let it cool. Shredding was a two fork job.

Because of its size I should have used more liquid and added a little more time as the non submerged pieces were drier than their underwater compatriots.

It was a lovely sauce, the fennel and lemon aromas magnificent and intoxicating. We did put fresh parmigiana on top as a kicker. Sprinkled chopped fennel fronds for some added spice.

We don't eat a lot of pork, pecorino or egg noodles in our house but this was wonderful. The smell of this dinner was just beyond. I love these rich noodles too. Mix and melt the cheese in at the end and you have magic.

We will do this again. Next time I will probably add crimini mushrooms for a little extra unami. Might tinker a little but love the concept. Have plenty of leftovers for later.

My Friend

Around my hood...

My friend RoxAnn had her first dahlias come up. 

They are one of my favorite flowers, I have not had the best luck with growing them personally. 

They are expensive and I am too cheap!

The late Shogo Yamaguchi used to grow the most marvelous dinner plate dahlias and would exhibit them at the Del Mar Fair. He was one of Fallbrook's great gardeners and botanists. I like the blood red dahlias especially but do love them all.

My garden is sort of in holding. The puyu alpestris is continuing to unfurl. Anxiously awaiting the turquoise spire, my first!

The yucca rostrata has another flower spike, which I like and don't like as it throws the plant symmetry off when you cut them. Oh well. 

It is one of the most beautiful blossoms in my garden. Here is a shot from two years ago.

The roses are continuing to be very happy.

The young hawks are in sort of a gawky holding pattern, still quite a few weeks away from flying.

This picture from this morning is unusual as it shows only one eye with the nictitating eye shield activated.

*

Have you followed the Michael Block golf story? Pretty much storybook, club pro from Mission Viejo sinks hole in one at PGA and has best finish by a club pro since 1986. Wonderful tale. Wishing him all the best, living the dream.

Mose Allison

Birds of a different feather

I got up at two o'clock in the morning Sunday and drove to get in line to sell at the Long Beach Flea Market at Veterans Stadium. 

Leslie usually helps me but she had a concert in Pasadena so I was flying solo. 

Gates opened around 5:30 a.m.

I was busy, had a good day, never got more than five feet from my booth so I couldn't shop.

But I did have time to pull out my camera. 

Long Beach is one of my favorite places to practice my portraiture and street photography skills. 

I almost always ask to shoot, the great majority of people smile and assent. 

Obviously, most like to strut and be seen.

You encounter a wide panoply of the American condition.

The people that sail by have quite the individual flair and self confidence to be different. 

Those are my favorite people to shoot. 

You can have the normals. 

I love a nice smile.

I'll take the quirky and alienated and those souls that are comfortable in their own foliage and plumage. Even Dodger fans.

Gay, straight, right, left, retro, futurist, skinny, fat, whatever color of the rainbow. 

An endless parade of infinite hues and individual style.

The last time I sold at Long Beach I never took a single shot, wasn't feeling it. I enjoyed myself yesterday!

Individuals who like to have fun and express. By the way, the giant contraption behind the lady in red is a jellybean dispenser. Can you imagine filling that thing and having it in your house? The last sight would be me slipping into the diabetic coma.

Some of my favorite people in the world, these pickers.

Woman with umbrella, Los Angeles

I sometimes like to look at my old shots because they make me happy and trigger good memories. Adobe allows you to make a collection public. I started one yesterday, have a lot to do to fill it. You can check it out here.

They're saying the quiet stuff out loud now...

From the News & Observer:

A white legislator in the North Carolina House interrupted his Black colleague Wednesday to ask if he could have achieved his educational successes at Harvard University had he not been “an athlete or a minority.”

 Rep. Jeff McNeely, a Republican from Stony Point and a member of the chamber’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, made his remarks during floor debate Wednesday on a controversial education bill. Legislators were arguing over a bill that would expand the eligibility requirements for North Carolina Opportunity Scholarships. 

As Rep. Abe Jones, a Democratic lawmaker from Raleigh, debated the bill, McNeely interrupted with a question. “I understand that you went into public schools and you went to Harvard and Harvard Law,” McNeely said to Jones, who is Black. 

“And the question I guess, is, would you have been able to maybe achieve this if you were not an athlete or a minority or any of these things, but you were a student trapped in a school that the slowest — you know, in the wild we’ll say the slowest gazelle does not survive, but yet the herd moves at that pace. So the brightest child sometimes is held back in order — “

Who wears a jacket and bow tie like that to work? Did he get it from John Wayne Gacy? 

All right then...

New York Post kicked up a hornet's nest last week with a story about a hotel in upstate New York where a group of veterans had been booted out of hotels to make way for migrants. 

The outrage in the right wing blogosphere was swift and merciless. Of course Fox & Co. took the story and poured gasoline on it.

Local politicians were understandably incensed.

Which is fine, except for the fact that the story was a complete hoax and fabrication.

Sharon Toney-Finch, the founder and head of a small local nonprofit, the YIT Foundation, which focuses on veterans issue and premature births (?) was the source of the original story. But it turns out the she recruited a group of 15 homeless men from a local shelter to impersonate veterans and talk to the press about their tale of woe.

A bunch of the homeless guys explained what happened to reporters and Toney-Finch has now seemingly admitted she made the whole thing up but not yet on the record for reporters. To add insult to injury, Toney-Finch didn’t even pay the homeless guys the $200 a piece she promised for participating in the scam.

There was a story this morning that Fox is radically denuding its investigative news department. Isn't that the one department they should keep and strengthen? Might want to slow that down a little bit, Rupert. Hire an editor that can vet stories like this.

Rotary Connection

Who are they trying to kid?

There's an interesting phenomenon playing out across red state America. Deathly afraid of ballot initiatives legalizing abortion like the one that passed in Kansas, and worried about rising public sentiment, conservatives are unilaterally passing 12 week abortion bans and calling them a compromise. 

They are often couched with language like "We really wanted a six week ban, do you see how moderate we are?"

These "compromises" take place in back room, late night deals, with no public comment and no input from the opposite party. They will continue to chip away, at the state and federal level, against the pills and the procedures and won't stop until they finally outlaw contraception.

It is not a compromise if you do not allow the opposition to speak. Hopefully, Americans will see through these sorts of parlor tricks.

The American public, red or blue, has shown that it is strongly in favor of reproductive rights. I would like to see an abortion ballot proposition in every state of the union.

Why not let the people decide?

*

Like it or not, Planned Parenthood clinics are the front line, go to, access point for healthcare for women in many rural, poor and underserved communities. You have to wonder how curtailing abortion access will affect women's' health in general. New doctors, gynecologists and obstetricians are fleeing red states in droves.

Soon we will see a marked degradation of general healthcare in these regions, for everybody.

*

Study - libertarians care for men's, but not women's, reproductive autonomy.

Mixed bag

Ricardo sent these two shots. Not sure if the cat photo has been doctored... hope it is legit but nothing surprises me these days.

*

Geography 101: Hertz employee won't rent a car to a Puerto Rican customer without a passport. Threatens to call Border Patrol. Cops equally ignorant.

*

In the "We are Americans and so we are dumb and easily manipulated department" I bring you "What's in a name?" As in Dutton. The last name of a family on the Yellowstone television show is now the fastest rising baby name in America. While I admit that it is at least semi refreshing to have a kid called something besides Liam and Olivia the whole thing is mind boggling to me. Dutton? That's how we pick our baby names?

New data from the Social Security Administration shows that “Dutton,” the last name of the fictional family of ranchers featured on “Yellowstone,” is the fastest-growing baby name in the U.S. Between 2021 and 2022, the name Dutton jumped up 986 spots on the list of popular names for baby boys, from No. 1,821 to No. 835. It’s the first time the name has ever appeared in the U.S. Top 1,000, as 291 newborn boys (plus 16 girls) were named Dutton last year. It’s also the biggest increase for any single name on the boys’ or girls’ lists.

According to experts, “Yellowstone” is assuredly behind the name’s rise. The Paramount Network show is one of the most-watched series on television and has spawned talk of a growing list of spinoffs.

“Most parents absolutely discovered Dutton on ‘Yellowstone,’” Abby Sandel, creator of the baby name blog Appellation Mountain, told HuffPost. “Dutton doesn’t appear in the U.S. Social Security Administration data at all before the series’ 2018 premiere.”

Oy. 

*

That was then, this is now.

*

Gnarly Nunchucks.

*

*

Sonoran desert toad can alter your mind.

*

*

Japanese team has new idea for how life began.

*

Red mirepoix

Mirepoix is a french word for the mixture of diced vegetables and fat that starts off so much of their cooking and is cooked very slowly.

It is also sometimes referred to as the trinity, specifically onion, carrots and celery. 

In Italian cooking it is known as a sofrito or battuto. In Germany, suppengrün.

French chefs call these vegetable blends aromatics. 

If the dish was minced instead of diced it would be called a matignon. I used a rough dice.

I added salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, oregano, fennel, herbs de provence and a bayleaf.

This is last night's mirepoix for my short rib dish. 

I used red potatoes, red carrots and tomatoes along with my celery and garlic, no onion as my wife has once again thrown it away. 

No matter.

I think I like the yellow potatoes better but this was nice chromatically. It was also very sweet, the carrots were exceptionally sweet.

I then braised the beef after adding bone broth and wine. Three hour cook in the oven at 325 °.

Chef Jean Pierre reminds us to always add the garlic last so that it does not burn. Onion always goes first, if your wife or husband hasn't chucked it.

Actually, since I have added tomatoes to this, the proper french term is actually pinçage.

From Wiki:

Though the cooking technique is probably older, the word mirepoix dates from the 18th century and derives, as do many other appellations in French cuisine,^[2] from the aristocratic employer of the cook credited with establishing and stabilizing it: in this case,^[3] Charles-Pierre-Gaston François de Lévis, duc de Lévis-Mirepoix (1699–1757), French field marshal and ambassador and a member of the noble family of Lévis, lords of Mirepoix in Languedoc (nowadays in the department of Ariège) since the 11th century.^[4] According to Pierre Larousse (quoted in The Oxford Companion to Food), the unfortunate Duke of Mirepoix was "an incompetent and mediocre individual ... who owed his vast fortune to the affection Louis XV felt toward his wife and who had but one claim to fame: he gave his name to a sauce made of all kinds of meat and a variety of seasonings".^[5]

The term is not encountered regularly in French culinary texts until the 19th century, so it is difficult to know what a dish à la mirepoix was like in 18th-century France. Antoine Beauvilliers,^[6] for instance, in 1814, gives a short recipe for a Sauce à la Mirepoix which is a buttery, wine-laced stock garnished with an aromatic mixture of carrots, onions, and a bouquet garni. Marie-Antoine Carême, in 1816, gives a similar recipe, calling it simply "Mire-poix".^[7] By the mid-19th century, Jules Gouffé refers to mirepoix as "a term in use for such a long time that I do not hesitate to use it here".^[8] His mirepoix is listed among essences and, indeed, is a meaty concoction (laced with two bottles of Madeira), which, like all other essences, was used to enrich many a classic sauce. By the end of the 19th century, the mirepoix had taken on its modern meaning. Joseph Favre, in his Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (c. 1895, reprinted 1978), uses the term to describe a mixture of ham, carrots, onions, and herbs used as an aromatic condiment when making sauces or braising meat.^[9] The matignon is very similar to the mirepoix, except that the matignon is designed to be brought to the table and eaten with the dish or alone as a side dish.^[9]

*

My next dish will be a pork, fennel, lemon ragu with pappardelle. This is made with a traditional sofrito. Looks so delicious.

*