Cute AI climate projects hide AI increasing fossil fuel use

I finished the book Only Son by Kevin Moffett. A sticker on the cover says it was on the longlist for the National Book Award. A description is straightforward: In the first third of the book the narrator describes the effect of losing his father at about age nine. In the middle third he talks about life as an adult with a son of his own. In the final third he and his son take a road trip, the basic outline taken from a brief description in his father’s diary. The trip happens the summer before the son goes off to college. While the book is praised and Goodreads gives it a decent reader rating of 3.9 out of 5, I was less pleased. Each scene in the book is short – rarely up to two pages, usually just a couple paragraphs, many times just s sentence or two. A lot of those scenes, especially in the middle of the book, seem to have topics all jumbled together, most of them seeming to have little to do with the general flow of the story. I bought the book because it was about the relationship between a father and son, including how the narrator losing his father affected how he raises his son. I don’t think I got much of that. With a book that gets this much praise I did enjoy reading it. I don’t think the story adds up to much. Last weekend Dan Gearino, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos discussed the chatter about AI at Climate Week NYC. One part of that chatter was about how AI could help reduce emissions in transportation, manufacturing, and buildings. Those benefits would outweigh AI’s big climate footprint. But AI also produces climate denial and perhaps misplaced optimism that technology can get us out of the mess. There was also chatter in how AI could optimize fossil fuel extraction and production – coming up with ways to increase the use of fossil fuels. So the benefits of AI are still hazy and off in the future and the problems of AI, such as high electricity demands for data centers, are happening right now. Holly and Will Alpine wrote about all that in the journal Nature. Holly said in an email to Gearino:

What we’re seeing at Climate Week is a familiar pattern: companies spotlighting a handful of clean energy pilot projects while the overwhelming majority of AI’s actual applications are aimed at increasing fossil fuel extraction and production. Nvidia’s post is a good example—highlighting a renewable energy partnership is easy and photogenic, while conveniently omitting how much AI is being deployed to find, extract, and produce more oil and gas.

Gearino turned to data centers. The AI companies don’t know how many of what size they will need. Electricity companies don’t know how many power plants to build. If they build too many, if the AI boom slacks off, the electricity companies may have to cover their costs by billing the rest of us. But if they don’t build enough and fast enough AI centers will use the “least efficient and most expensive power technologies, such as natural gas combustion turbines.” Lisa Needham of Kos wrote:

Bloomberg is reporting that the Trump administration has hit yet another milestone, and it is not a good one: For the first time, federal contract spending is more than $1 trillion. That’s “trillion,” with a T. Part of why you’re paying more is that because President Donald Trump’s gutting of the administrative state means outsourcing tasks to private companies, and that costs more.

These contracts to private companies are to pay for services the government used to do before DOGE fired 400,000 government employees. The services still need to get done and if the government doesn’t have enough employees to do it they must pay a private company to do it. And private companies want profit. So DOGE “savings” cost us more than leaving employees in place. Two weeks ago Needham told another side of the story.

Right now, every week, you’re paying $1.6 million to Voice of America employees, which probably sounds totally good and fine, because we should pay federal employees and pay them well, right? The problem is that you’re paying them to not work, and you’ve been paying that for months now.

The nasty guy wanted to close VOA and appointed Kari Lake to dismiss the staff. But a judge ruled her appointment to be illegal and those hundreds of employees were ordered back to work. But with VOA closed these employees have nothing to do. They’re not the only workers in this predicament.

Last month, an entirely different government agency, the Government Accountability Office, issued a report saying that in the aftermath of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampage through the federal government, $9.5 billion of your tax dollars have gone to paying federal employees not to work. That’s because DOGE’s antics resulted in a 435% spike in paid administrative leave.

DOGE claimed they would save us $2 trillion, a number that kept dropping. But in its first few months DOGE cuts cost us $135 billion. Some of that was because of cycles of firing and rehiring.

Overall, after all of these cuts, the administration shrank the workforce by over 350,000 employees. Yet somehow the federal deficit is higher and total spending is higher. Terrific job, everyone. It costs a lot to be this stupid, apparently.

Kos of Kos discussed a New York Times article that talked to disaffected conservatives. They are voters who want to punish Republicans by voting against them or tuning out the election. Kos says not voting is better than the alternative of voting for Republicans. But it must be nice to simply tune out the suffering their vote for the nasty guy caused. Even nicer would be to take responsibility for that mess and help clean it up. Yes, that means voting for Democrats. People who care for others.

We use media for indoctrination, so you must be doing it too

Arcelia Martin, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported:

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday. ... In the new estimates, scientists at the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab project the hotter land conditions brought by El Niño will resemble the higher temperatures climate change is predicted to deliver in 20 years. The estimated heat death toll, the scientists warned, are on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding, expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns in a world already superheated by greenhouse gases.

This El Niño could be the strongest on record and could permanently push average temperatures past the 1.5C, the rise determined by scientists and written in political agreements to be the point where climate impacts could be irreversible. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, looked at the conservative view of Rachel Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel who is popular on various children’s television.

On Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” co-host Lawrence Jones described Ms. Rachel as “sinister” while the network displayed a graphic of the host, detailing her donations to charities assisting Palestinian children and her interactions with Democrats, including Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon. Among Ms. Rachel’s infractions: She discussed the joy of cartwheels with Nixon’s 5-year-old daughter Ashanti.

Other words used were “pure indoctrination.” Ms. Rachel is, of course, part of a long line of people where a conservative talking head has made similar accusations of children’s entertainment. There was Jerry Falwell condemning Teletubbies of turning kids gay. Sesame Street was attacked for advocating for vaccines. They also didn’t like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The motivation for these attacks can be traced to the right’s weird view of the media. Unlike the rest of the population, the right has come to believe that programming (like Fox News) mostly exists to indoctrinate viewers into a right-wing lifestyle. Since the programming they enjoy is oriented this way, they then believe that lessons about compassion, grace, and even sharing are the left-wing mirror of their media world. In this twisted take on things, Ms. Rachel isn’t just a figure advocating for Palestinian and migrant children, but an insidious left-wing agent. ... Trump so thoroughly embodies cruelty, bigotry, and discrimination that when “Sesame Street” or Ms. Rachel tells children to be kind, it sounds like a direct rebuke of conservatism.

Well, kindness is a direct rebuke of conservatism. People on children’s TV are popular because they are authentic advocates for value most people support. Republicans are included in “most people.” This is the American Library Association Banned Books Week. I’ll get to a few of the books on their top ten list of challenged books (actually eleven this year because of a four-way tie for eighth place).

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

The ALA says many book challenges are not reported to them or covered in the press, so this isn’t a full count of challenged books.

OIF documented 5,668 books banned from libraries (66% of the total challenged) in 2025. An additional 920 books were censored through access restrictions such as relocation or requiring parental permission. This is both the highest number of titles censored in one year and the highest rate of challenges resulting in censorship from 1990–2025.

The LGBTQ books in the top 11 list, which seems a lot fewer than in previous years. 2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 3. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe 5. (Tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. The club is a lesbian bar. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The European Parliament unveiled “The Orange Plague,” a new gold leaf-covered statue depicting President Donald Trump naked while sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man. The 8-foot statue—which is in a parliament building in Strasbourg, France—shows Trump holding a golf club on top of a pedestal that reads, “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.”

The nasty guy’s part of the statue is covered in gold leaf. In addition to the golf club he is also holding the scales of justice. Alix Breeden of Kos has been interviewing Democratic candidates for US Congressional races who have a better chance of winning than pundits thought just a few months ago. One of those is Lindsay James, running for Iowa’s 2nd district. She is also a Presbyterian pastor. Her answer that caught my attention is in response to the nasty guy administration’s claim that Christianity is under attack.

Part of the reason why I’m talking about my faith a lot on this campaign has to do specifically with how I’ve been shaped by the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” What I love about that parable—I think that this parable really meets this moment—is how Dr. Martin Luther King talked about it. Because what King said about this parable is, it’s not just our moral obligation to pick up the person who’s hurting and harmed on the side of the road. It’s our moral obligation to fix the road, because what King knew about the road was that it was a place that was notorious for being dangerous, where people were regularly exploited and hurt and harmed. And too often, this feels like what’s exactly happening in Washington, D.C. Politicians who have the power and the ability to actually fix this person’s circumstances are turning a blind eye and walking the other way, and we need leaders who have the courage to help their neighbor but also to fix the challenges that have caused the harm in the first place.

The story of the Good Samaritan is in the Bible, Luke, Chapter 10. A man is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. Important church officials pass by on the opposite side. A Samaritan, someone loathed by Jews at the time of Jesus, offers considerable help. Jesus asks: Which of them acted like a good neighbor? I’ve heard a similar take on our obligation from Soulforce, an organization working to dismantle spiritual violence against LGBTQ people (I donate to them). Their version went like this: You are watching a swift flowing river. You see a person in the river calling for help and you rescue them. Soon you see more people in the river and rescue them as well. As the number of people in the river increases, at what point do you go upstream to find out why people are being thrown into the river and get that to stop? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jerry Zremski writing for his own Substack:

In the most impassioned and eloquent sermon I’ve ever heard, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, admonished all of us who have seen the suffering in front of us and then turned our heads. In his homily for the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, McElroy likened us not to the Good Samaritan, but to the priest and the Levite who, in Luke 10:25-37, saw a wounded robbery victim and just walked away. “For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by,” McElroy said. And that was just the start of a sermon that served as a call to action — one that seemed to make some parishioners squirm either out of guilt or, in some cases, disagreement.

An article in Politico said that this year Republicans have been trying to find a new boogeyman to rail against. The usual targets – Joe Biden, Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders – aren’t working as targets so well this year.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

In the comments indianobserver wrote:

Democrats seem to be in a David vs Goliath situation. Democrats are up against: 1. Billionaires and unlimited cash 2. Tech overlords and cutting edge tech 3. Wall Street 4. The oil and gas industry 5. Bought out national and local media 6. The DOJ (maybe) 7. The FBI (maybe) 8. The Trump administration 9. A majority of the Supreme Court 10. Elements of the Netanyahu govt/Israeli intelligence (maybe) 11. Elements of the Putin regime/Russian intelligence (maybe) What the Democratic Party has against this arsenal are 1. the rule of law 2. the judiciary 3. millions of votes. 4. stout hearts :)

Ben Urban tweeted a tweet by John Fugelsang:

My dad was a public school teacher; and he always said the toughest parts of the job were: 1. Having to play for your own classroom chalk, and 2. Performing gender-reassignment surgeries during class hours w/out parents finding out.

A cartoon by Jen Sorensen posted on Kos shows two women, one saying it feels like something is taking over everything and no one is capable of stopping it. The second says, yea, AI is scary. The first responds, “AI? I’m talking about our insane shareholder-first economy.”

Constructing masculinity consciously and intentionally

In an article for Between the Lines Kelli Dunham wrote about masculinity, as in assigned female at birth, but wanting to be masculine. Dunham was the youngest in a large farm family so grew up in the midst of masculinity. “It drove tractors. It fixed things. It wore work boots…” It seemed like a club but no one said whether admission was possible or where they kept the application. In 2008 the Butch Voices conferences were founded. Dunham could now discuss what it means to be masculine.

Suddenly, masculinity wasn't just something I wanted access to; it was something we could examine together. What parts had we inherited? What parts had hurt us? What did we love about it? What kind of masculine people did we actually want to be? For the first time, I was having those conversations with other masculine-identified people instead of just quietly standing near the power tools hoping gender would somehow eventually explain itself.

All these years later Dunham is in a position to mentor young trans people.

Watching young trans men construct masculinity consciously and intentionally is almost like watching a painter create a watercolor landscape. They aren't starting with a blank page exactly — the colors are already there, handed down by family, culture, every man they've ever loved or feared or wanted to become. But they get to decide which ones to use, which ones to dilute, which ones to let bleed into each other and which ones absolutely do not belong in this particular painting.

Dunham’s brother is career military and the picture of masculinity. Yet, he cares deeply for his children.

I used to think healthy masculinity meant removing the bad parts: Don't suppress emotion, don't dominate, don't confuse anger with strength. But maybe that's only half the work. Maybe we should also notice what's already there.

Such as empathy and caring. EagleOfFreedom of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Climate Change has always been an anondyne phrase that does not offend. Maybe that was a good option when things were not dire as they are now. But just look out your window, if they haven’t been blown out by high winds, to know that a non-descript “change” is not what we are experiencing. What humans are doing to the planet is Climate Disruption. And what humans are experiencing right now is a rolling, widening Climate Catastrophe. ... Climate Disruption? This is something different. It evokes what happens when a supervolcano blows and suddenly disrupts the atmosphere and thus also the climate. It evokes what happens when an asteroid or comet impacts the planet and kicks up so much debris that it disrupts the climate, creating a global catastrophe. ... So I’m not going to call it Climate Change. That’s simply not enough.

Kos of Kos wrote that the United Nations voted 164-1 to, as Kos wrote, “encourage the use of world maps that more accurately represent the relative size of nations and continents, moving away from the familiar Mercator projection.” The frequently used Mercator projection shows far northern countries, such as Greenland and Russia to be much larger than they are in comparison to African countries. Greenland is seen as about the same size as Africa when Africa is actually 14 times larger. That single no vote? It wasn’t Russia, which benefits considerably from the Mercator projection yet approved the resolution. It was the US.

“While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions, the United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to—as its most vocal and committed proponents plainly and openly state,” explained the U.S. mission to the U.N.

That “radical” ideological agenda is “cognitive justice” and refers to the way knowledge is produced and presented which can privilege some perspectives over others. That includes which projection is used to create a map as that influences how we perceive different regions of the world. The resolution endorsed the Equal Earth projection because it preserves the relative size of landmasses. The size of Africa is in proper proportion to the size of Russia. About the same time the nasty guy tweeted a map of North America showing everything from Nicaragua to northern Canada plus Greenland and Cuba under an American flag. Kos wrote:

So would Greenland hold quite the same fascination for Trump if the map he grew up looking at didn’t make it appear nearly as large as Africa? Would Canada? That’s the fascinating part of this entire controversy. The African nations pushing this resolution argue that distorted maps aren’t merely cartographic curiosities—that maps shape how people perceive the importance and power of different places. And here comes Trump, essentially volunteering as Exhibit A.

Of course, map geek that I am, I had to learn more about the Equal Earth projection. A page from Sakshi Education shows Mercator and Equal Earth side by side. It also covers the vote in the UN, then gets into the differences between the two projections. It also explains why the Mercator has been in use since it was created in 1569 – it is great for maritime navigation. I add the mathematics of converting from latitude and longitude are much simpler than many other projections. Sakshi notes what the UN passed is a recommendation. It is not mandatory. A page from Equal Earth explains the projection, compares it to a few others, and gives the mathematics. One could even download a map. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos and after a tweet of another nasty thing done by the nasty guy Raelerin wrote: “I sure wish I understood why no one is willing to tell him “NO!’” RandomNonviolence replied:

Some like what he is doing, some have been bought, some are afraid. Trump is a mob boss who has no empathy for others. He is willing to do anything to get his way and now that he controls the government, he has a lot of power to give people gigantic gifts, make or destroy careers, and physically hurt people. He shows us this every day with his grifting, the detentions and deportations, his attacks on Republican politicians, etc. There has always been a lot of grift, fraud, and corruption in our society and in Washington. Trump is a master at seeing that and using it for his own benefit. Trump is completely ignorant and incompetent at being a normal human being, but he is a genius at being a sociopathic mobster.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet from GOP Ls:

Trump is now single handedly responsible for 27.7% of the national debt. This is dramatically more than any President in American history.

Politics in the Wild added:

Huge congratulations to President Donald J. Trump for achieving his 7th bankruptcy.

With the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Friday the nasty guy said he was at the World Trade Center and that “Two firemen, big strong guys, I’m not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here,’ and they literally lifted me up.” No, he was a few miles away in his own tower. But the comment was great for meme creators. Several of their images are in these comments: Being guided out by state mental hospital orderlies. Being carried out by really buff firemen and giving them longing looks. Being carried out by Jeffrey Epstein. Being carried out by Hulk Hogan. A cartoon by Nick Anderson posted on Kos shows the triumphal arch the nasty guy is planning to build.

Woman: Triumph over what? Man: Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, common sense, taste...

Counts of death by heat are way too low

I finished the novel Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher. Art is a descendant of the legendary King Arthur many generations and a few centuries back. Or maybe the line goes through Mordred. He’s the son of a lord and has no interest in doing the things lords do and a lot of interest in being a playboy. Gwen is a descendant of Guinevere and probably not King Arthur and she is glad her full name is Gwendoline. Her father is the current king of England, who has relocated his capital back to Camelot. Gwen was betrothed to Art when she was an infant – something that happens with royalty at the time. But while they were growing up Art acted like a bratty brother and they still despise each other. The summer Gwen turns 18 and Art is 19 Art’s father sends him to live in the King’s castle for the summer in hopes the two will turn their spat into love. Within a day of arriving Gwen sees Art kissing Mitchell the assistant to the master of the hounds and Art sees Gwen swooning over Lady Bridget, a female knight who has arrived for the summer to take part in the season long tourney. They agree to cover for each other, which means they have to spend time together acting like their relationship is developing. And it works – they no longer hate each other. But will someone please call off the wedding? In the meantime Art notices the bookish Gabriel, Gwen’s brother and crown prince, looks mighty cute. The story is enjoyable and the writing pretty good, though not to the high quality of Fredrik Backman’s work I praised in my previous book discussion. There is a sequel. Alas, I think its title and book cover are somewhat of a spoiler for this book. I had recently written about projections that high heat could kill off half of humanity by 2050. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to investigator Alejandra Borunda who, along with Quinn Adams of Boston University, took two years to investigate how many people die each year of heat-related causes. The segment I am linking to is one of several being aired this week. US Federal numbers day 1,700 people die each year from high heat. Boruda’s reporting made her think the number was much higher. Her research suggests the real count is about 9,000 deaths a year. Boruda explained the difference:

So to show up in those official counts, heat must be marked down on someone's death record, but that doesn't always happen, and that's because it can just be really hard to figure out how heat influenced a death. There's often multiple factors at play, like a preexisting heart condition, and so doctors or medical examiners or coroners often have to really look for heat role - heat's role. And that takes time, it takes training, it takes money, and there aren't really clear national standards, so everyone is kind of figuring this out for themselves.

She talked to people who lost family to heat. Factors can include: Living in a manufacture home. Addiction and drug use. Medical conditions. Financial pressure so the people couldn't afford to run or fix an air conditioner. What do do? Count deaths more accurately. We can’t fix a problem we don’t understand. A barrier to doing that is heat may not leave a mark on the body. The medical examiner may not think to ask whether the deceased had just been in a hot environment. Other needs: Understand who is most at risk. Teach people and their caregivers what to do. Pay for cooling. Pay for insulation. A comprehensive article of the series is here. It includes a chart showing the CDC counts compared to their models and a chart showing maximum temperature across the US – 2026 is at the top as the hottest. It also includes the study methodology. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos exlrrp posted a meme:

You know you’re a terrible person when the photos of you with Jeffrey Epstein are real, but the ones of you with Dolly Parton are fake.

I’d revise that a bit. He’s not going to know he’s a terrible person. So it should say, “We know he’s a terrible person...” and “...photos of him...” A tweet from Headquarters News posted by paulpro:

Fox News complains that underage teenage girls aren’t getting pregnant enough: “The problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19, the fertility rate is down 70% in the last 2 decades, which means we are telling people who are young not to have babies.”

Something is profoundly wrong when a dude insists that 15 year olds should be getting pregnant. That seems way too adjacent to being a pedophile. I went to the tweet where Midatlantica added, “Teen pregnancies and single mothers were literally sold as the root of all societal ills by this same cohort through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.” A cartoon posted by paulpro shows an AI robot sucking resource, wages, and intellect out of a worker.

Bears, beavers, and moose defend Canada from tariffs

My Sunday movie was Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It was released in 2022 and sounded interesting, but I always found something else to watch (my lists are long). I watched now because Kanopy is dropping it at the end of the month (as in tomorrow). Marcel is a shell, an inch high, with feet (with shoes on) and one eye. He lives in a human house with his grandmother Connie. The house is used as an Airbnb and there used to be a much larger community of shells. Most of the time the shells hide from the humans. Marcel thinks that during an argument someone threw their stuff in their luggage and happened to include the rest of their community hiding in the shoes and clothing. Now Dean is living in the house (that’s Dean Fleischer Camp, who wrote, directed, and acted in the movie), discovered Marcel and is making a documentary about Marcel’s life. Dean uploads episodes to social media and gets a lot of response – even the house becomes famous. But the thing Marcel really wants – to find his community – remains elusive. Help comes from a surprising source and Connie has to persuade Marcel to seize the opportunity. Marcel and Connie are quite inventive in creating their environment. They tend a garden. Marcel steps in honey so he can walk up the walls (to the annoyance of the cleaning lady). He hollows out a tennis ball for a faster way to get around. Marcel moves through stop motion animation and this is done quite well. His world is well thought out. The story is cute and touching. I quite enjoyed it. Marcel was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature film. It was also nominated and won a slew of other awards. Last Monday an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discussed climate disasters. They will be more frequent and more intense. As that happens regular people will think scientists are exaggerating, like the boy who cried wolf. A few other things in the article:

In the 1850s, while living in Seneca Falls, New York, amateur scientist Eunice Newton Foote did a series of experiments that put different substances, including carbon dioxide and moist air, inside glass cylinders and left them in the sun. What she found was extraordinary: cylinders with carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is released when coal, gas or oil is burned, heated up faster and took longer to cool after the sun went down. ... Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at Australian National University, says she had a “come to Jesus moment” when she realized that constant extreme weather events wouldn’t stop even if the world could immediately reach net zero, the point when as much greenhouse gas is taken out of the atmosphere as released into it. Many countries and major companies have net-zero targets for 2050 or beyond. Because carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and so much has already built up, the damage could take centuries to reverse. And we keep adding more.

We’re not prepared for major climate disasters. Also, the risks are changing. We don’t like to talk about uncomfortable things, and the worst the weather can dish out is one of those. Denial is a way of coping. However, if people believe risks are real and solutions are possible they will make changes. Alex Brown, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos wrote about his experience in becoming a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager. Brown didn’t take the course to become a manager, but to be able to accurately write about those who do as part of his job of environmental reported. A Prescribed Burn Manager is a person who can use fire to clean out the undergrowth in a forest, to start a small fire with the intention of preventing a massive fire. This is a well known tactic to improve a forest, but for perhaps a century it is one forest managers have been avoiding, thinking all fire is bad. Those who completed the class have to consider the current plant moisture level; to understand the current weather to know what the smoke will do; to know the nearby roads, dwellings, and businesses and how they might be affected; and to know what city and county organizations need to be contacted and involved. Those leading the class want all kinds of people to attend because so much forest land is under private ownership, including timber companies and native tribes. Prescribed burns need to happen there too. The bad news is the nasty guy has cut the funding for such training and operation. The good news is state and local governments are picking up some of the shortfall. Andrew Mangan of Kos, in his weekly look at important surveys, looked at the state of Texas gerrymandering. Texas fired first in the Great Gerrymander War in an effort to flip five House seats from Democrat to Republican. A new poll showed Democrats leading in three of them. One of them, the 15th District, was designed to be very safe for Republicans. Yet, Democrat Bobby Pulido is ahead. This is a 23 point swing towards Democrats. Part of what is happening is Republicans based their new districts on the Latino vote in 2024 and Latinos have made a huge shift away from the nasty guy. Just remember a poll result is not the same as an election result. Kevin Hardy, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, wrote about ALEC and Democratic efforts to match it. I’ve written about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative effort started in 1973 to craft conservative state legislation and to get state legislatures to pass them. They have been annoyingly successful. Hardy wrote that Democrats are becoming more serious in matching that effort. ALEC had recognized that they can do a great deal to advance their goals at the state level. Part of that is because Congress can be dysfunctional and is sometimes firmly in Democratic hands. When a state legislature passes a bill the national discussion is changed, making the passage of the same bill or similar bill in another state or in Congress more likely. So doing the same effort for liberal goals improves our chances. The current Democratic effort isn’t the first. However, ALICE – American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange, started in 2012, seems to be gaining strength. Matching the strength of conservative efforts might still take a decade or two. I’ve written that Republicans are very concerned about the national debt when a Democrat is president but not when a Republican is. Oliver Willis of Kos confirms that and adds a bit more to the story.

In 2020, after working as Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney laid out the entire scheme in a speech to the Oxford Union in England. “My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party,” he said.

Willis wrote that this two-sided effort by Republicans is promoted by mainstream media because they tend to repeat Republican propaganda. In doing so they also push the lie that Republicans are better at economic issues. Jessica Kutz, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos wrote about men’s fascination with cars, the bigger, louder, and faster the better. The most recent examples are the Indy style race in Washington in the Mall and down Pennsylvania Avenue and the plans to defund “DEI bike lanes” Kutz has a few examples of men who love cars and their message of “freedom, domination over the environment, strength, power, speed.” There are examples of administration officials promoting car culture and with it the idea that women belong in the kitchen. There was also ridicule of Pete Puttigieg and his commuting to work on a bicycle. The effort to defund bike lanes is part of the promotion of the macho image of cars. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been leading that charge. Along with it is lying about the benefits and harms of bike lanes. A bit of truth: bike lanes improve the safety of both cyclists and drivers. In contrast, American cars have gotten bigger and the number of deaths of pedestrians and cyclists has been going up. Back in January I wrote about AI generated videos showing polar bears and walruses coming to the defense of Greenland as the nasty guy threatened to take it over. The images were accompanied heroic music. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, has included a similar video by the same maker, demonflyingfox. This one shows bears, beavers, moose, and a few wolverines (the actual animals, not residents of Michigan, which is known as the Wolverine State), on their way to take up the barriers to defend Canada against the tariff war begun by the nasty guy. The video quality is quite good, the tune again heroic, and all quite fun. Beavers playing bagpipes... I went to the YouTube channel for demonflyingfox and found the video made for the defense of the name of Lake Ontario. It has been up for only three days and has 1.8 million views. An eagle with a nasty guy hairdo keeps erecting signs claiming the name was now Lake America, but beavers, moose, and finally bears with big guns keep destroying the ever bigger signs. This one has a lot more interaction between the animals and humans as it promotes what fun activities can be done around the lake.

Constantly be tested on what it means to be a man

My Sunday movie was Drive Back Home. It is set in 1970 Canada. Weldon, in a small town in New Brunswick, gets a call from Toronto police saying his brother Perley was caught having sex with a man in a park. If family picked Perley up and took him home he could avoid jail time, as much as five years. Yes, this is a way to out a man to his family. Weldon, definitely a blue collar type, refuses to do it, but his mother demands that he go. So he does. He “borrows” his boss’s old truck and loads up with gas and sandwiches so that he doesn’t need to stop in Quebec – he doesn’t know French – and does the 800 mile trip to Toronto. He collects his brother. The purpose of a road trip is so the two people, through the adventures they experience, begin to understand each other. That takes a while because Weldon is quite annoyed he has to do this and with Perley’s insistence on bringing his taxidermied dog. There’s also some homophobic violence along the way. Thie IMDb page says the writer and director Michael Clowater based the story on true events involving his grandfather and grandpa’s partner. Though this is Clowater’s first film, he has enough friends in the movie business he was able to get Alan Cumming to play Perley. The actor who played Weldon isn’t someone I know. Overall, it’s a pretty good story about a time when being gay was dangerous. I was amused that whenever we see the truck crossing the rural landscape there is no other vehicle in the frame. But when we see into the truck to watch the characters interact, we can see out the back and there are always two vehicles following. Bob Berwyn, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported on the political consequences of the series of deadly heat waves that hit Europe this summer. One part is elected leaders facing constituent scrutiny because their response to the heat has been significantly insufficient. The other part is far right parties are “blaming governments they oppose for failing to protect people from the impacts of global warming, while denying that human activity is driving it.” In that first part a Green Party official said leaders know what to do. Meteorologists know how to forecast extreme heat. Public health experts know what things to do to reduce deaths. Yet, large numbers of people still died. That implies the known things to do weren’t done, but could also mean even if they were done well they couldn't handle the magnitude of the problem. Last week I wrote that perhaps four billion might die from the effects of global warming by 2050. Include in that tally 10,000 from the first heat wave this year, 63,000 in 2024, 51,000 in 2023 and so on back through the years. In Linz, Austria there is a department to make the city more resilient to climate shocks. They took “climate” out of the name of the department. Support of climate mitigation is tenuous. The far right parties complain that trees, which offer shade and lock away carbon, take up space that should go to roads and parking spaces, things that contribute to the heat. They also have a propaganda campaign to confuse the causes of the climate crisis and undermine the shift to renewables, such as wind. As for the general public, the heat has removed the political apathy. That comes as the media is covering climate change less. Kelcie Moseley-Morris, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, reported a federal court ruling in Idaho could send abortion to the Supreme Court again, this time in a way that is beneficial to women. The ruling says there is a narrow right to an abortion if the pregnancy could be a risk to their health and, key phrase here, including their mental health. Maybe this could be the start of a slow erosion to Dobbs in the way anti-abortion advocates chipped away at Roe. The problems of an abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for a woman’s health – there are states with such bans – are becoming well documented. I’ve written about a few cases. They center on the issue of how sick does a woman have to be before an abortion is allowed to be done. I’m glad to see a court decision saying such abortions must be allowed. In this ruling anti-abortion advocates are concerned about what constitutes a pregnancy causing mental harm. What if a woman comes to an emergency room and threatens to harm herself if not given an abortion? Of course, I believe that if a woman wants an abortion she should get one. Dion Nissenbaum, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reported that the US Census Bureau released a report showing an analysis of the 2020 election that has “high confidence” that 24,000 noncitizens voted that year. The nasty guy said that proved he won the 2020 election. The Census Bureau said they examined 128 million voters to come up with their 24,000 figure. Election experts say there are some big flaws in this report, and that itself is concerning because the Census Bureau is usually meticulous in getting all the details right. Some of the problems: 24,000 is only 0.019% of 128 million, statistically minuscule. In no state election in 2020 would the number of noncitizen votes assigned to that state in this report have changed the outcome. This report does not list authors. It does not detail the reliability of the data nor the method of analysis. That makes them look like they’re hiding something. Of course, the nasty guy will use this report in his cry of voter fraud. NPR host Danielle Kurtzleben spoke to political reporter Elena Moore and producer Marc Rivers about how manhood is portrayed in movies. This is a part of their weekly series discussing various aspects of cinema. Yeah, there are whole genres of films that portray manhood – Westerns, gangster films, and movies like Top Gun. Rivers discussed two in particular.

In both of these films, we see that to be a man, living as a man means to constantly be tested on what it means to be a man. And so in "Carnal Knowledge," it's what kind of woman you can get. It's - and how many women can you get with? What kind of job can you get? In "Wake In Fright," it's - how strong are you? How many drinks can you guzzle? The screenwriter for "Carnal Knowledge" has talked about how he pitched his movie as a film about heterosexual men who don't like women. ... They think of women as objects that kind of project their own fantasies about how their life is supposed to be. So yeah, both of these films, I think, it presents masculinity as a constant performance and a fear of being humiliated by other men.

Moore said:

Some of the big themes that I've heard talking with young voters for years now, and especially young men out of the 2024 election - I'll go even more specific - is this feeling of feeling forgotten, this feeling of buying into a system that has not worked for them and this feeling of not meeting expectations that have been set for them. And I think for many people, in the political sense, that's translated to disaffection. That's translated to distrust in the system. And those are themes that have been reflected in movies forever. But, you know, not going too far back. I think a prime example is David Fincher's 1999 "Fight Club." ... The whole movie kind of explores this idea of, like, men realizing they are not alone in that anger and that frustration.

Then there are films like “Moonlight” of 2016 which is about a man who is gay and black. It shows how a man can break from the community expectation of what a man is.

The gargantuan lie: We have more time

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed comments by film director Adam McKay. He created The Big Short about the 2007-9 financial crisis, Vice about Dick Cheney, and Don’t Look Up about our tendency to ignore global warming. McKay wrote an essay for Current Affairs titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate.” Dartagnan wrote:

In an essay for Current Affairs, titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate,” McKay highlights a phenomenon that he argues is the most insidious and dangerous impediment to any effective action on global climate change: “It is a lie told worldwide by hundreds of thousands of institutions, elected officials, many universities, legacy news, some large non-profits and eventually—as the deception entered mainstream culture—even by ourselves, to ourselves, every single moment of every day.” What is this “lie” about which McKay writes? It is the lie that “we have more time.” ... He’s talking about the more insidious interpretation: the unobtrusive hum in the background of our mind that knows something is terribly wrong here, but counsels us not to think about it too much, because it’s too exhausting and debilitating. It may not even be a conscious denial of reality, more of a reflex actually. The lie that soothingly says tomorrow is another day, so don’t worry and its really OK to “keep doing what we’re doing” because tomorrow is — without a shred of doubt — most assuredly “another day.”

UK Chief Scientist David King warned that what we do over the next three-four years will determine the fate of humanity. The problem is that warning came five, almost six, years ago. And in that time nothing significant has been done – even worse, the country elected the nasty guy who is doing all he can to make the situation worse. And that implies it’s too late to save humanity. Climate scientists said we should act to avoid warming the planet by 1.5C. We’ve passed that. The benchmark is now not to exceed warming by 2.0C and we’re way too close to it. But that much warming means we leave behind a stable climate, one that has “seasons.” The human population is now above 8 billion. Warming by that much means potentially lethal heat-related survival stress, crop failures and mass, involuntary migration. Some predictions predict the death of a billion people, others say two billion. If warming reaches 3.0C, and we’re not doing anything to prevent it, predictions say deaths could reach four billion – yes, half of humanity – by 2050. Those deaths have started to happen. Back to that gargantuan lie. That played out three weeks ago in a news report of tornadoes in New York City that said nothing about the historical significance of those tornadoes and said nothing about climate change. This week the New York Times discussed the depleted water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The article did mention climate change, which is good, but didn’t mention the drivers of climate change. McKay showed that as the temperatures go up, US news mentions of “climate” go down. As the problem worsens the media is informing us less. Fossil fuel companies and their enablers are working to distract us. Part of how they do it is keep saying, “we have more time.” Oliver Willis of Kos reported that ABC and parent company Disney sued the Federal Communications Commission in response to FCC Chair Brendan Carr bringing their station licenses up for renewal early with a threat of cancellation. ABC says it’s a First Amendment issue and the FCC threat is because some of its shows are critical of the nasty guy. Willis wrote that ABC has grown a spine. After the nasty guy won in 2024 ABC paid $15 million over a suit experts argued was frivolous and could have easily been won. But they caved, hoping for some good will from the nasty guy. That good will didn’t last long. To stay in the nasty guy’s good graces, one must forever agree to his demands. Thankfully, ABC saw it couldn’t do that. Emily Singer of Kos reported Sen. Jon Ossoff, in his bid to keep his seat is blasting the nasty guy and his opponent Mike Collins. Over the weekend at a campaign event he said:

He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.

Who is Natalie? That’s Natalie Harp. She’s been seen traveling with the nasty guy. She has been leaving him notes that sound like love letters or a great deal of sucking up. Her role hasn’t been defined by the White House. I’ve read a lot of speculation. Aide? Eye candy? She does look a lot like Ivanka and Melania. Nurse or nanny to a decrepit old man who butters him up to make him feel better about himself? Note that Ossoff mentioned her name, but made no comment about what role she fills. Even so, the White House freaked out, saying nasty things about Ossoff. Singer concluded:

If Trump and the White House really wanted this story to go away, they would simply let it go rather than draw attention to it with childish social media posts. But leave it to Trump and his administration to create more problems for themselves based on their sick desire for revenge and humiliation.

In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a lot of commentary about Ossoff’s comments. My favorite is by Niles Francis:

Idk if it was the point but man Ossoff sure has flabbered the gasts of an entire administration and right-wing media ecosystem.

The nasty guy has spurned the leaders of South Korea for another attempt to be best buds with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. That prompted exlrrp to post a meme in the comments showing the nasty guy saluting someone in uniform that is not American (I don’t recognize the person). In the background is Kim. The caption says, “Every time a maga tries to claim Dems are Communist, show them this pic.” In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet from middleageriot showing Kim and the nasty guy shaking hands for the camera. The caption (which may be fictional): “Kim Jong-un: ‘I moved on Trump like a bitch. When you’re tyrannical dictator, he’ll let you do it. He’ll let you do anything.’”

They decided a republic was worth more than their own comfort

I did not go out to see fireworks this evening, partly because my city isn’t putting on a display and I don’t want to search the schedules of neighboring cities. I am hearing a lot of fireworks shot off by neighbors. I did listen all day to the weekend classical station that featured American music – I think I heard The Stars and Stripes Forever about four times. And some of the commentary between pieces and on NPR got me to stop and ponder the day. And this evening I spent time as a patriot writing about what is wrong with the country and how it could be better. Andrew Mangan of Daily Kos discussed the Independence Day festivities.

In his second term, Donald Trump scored one of the biggest gimmes in presidential history: His term included America’s 250th birthday. How easy it should have been to unite the nation—at least a little, at least briefly—under a common star-spangled banner. Instead, he has failed to find popular support for the key events in his semiquincentennial project.

An aside: The best Latin can do in naming the anniversary is “Half-Five Hundred”? I’ll admit I don’t know the Latin rules for how to name numbers. Why bother with the Latin? But onward.

Excitement isn’t matching the occasion, and Trump is the most to blame. He doesn’t know how to throw a party.

There’s the fight on the South Lawn of the White House. Only 8% of Americans follow mixed martial arts, compared to 40% for football (that’s American football). The concert was a bust when so many unknown artists pulled out. The Great American State Fair is a bust. So many states refusing to participate and the rest favoring the nasty guy and conservatism was part of that. The nasty guy is doing quite well at degrading America’s view of itself. Those who are proud to be American is at 53%, down from over 90% in 2004. One part might be because he doesn’t know how to throw a party. Another part, likely much bigger, is that people recognize his party isn’t about America, it’s about him. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community discussed several signers of the Declaration of Independence who lost quite a bit to the Redcoats in the War of Independence. Are the Redcoats (or the Redhats) ruling America again? How did that happen? Hartmann points to the Reagan Revolution fueled by the Powell Memorandum. This was led by a group of rich people and industrialists fed up with the gains made by Labor and the Middle Class since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They wanted to reassert their dominance.

For the morbidly rich and big corporations back in the 1970s, this average American’s trust in a government that was then maintaining high tax rates and — through the newly-created EPA, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act — holding corporations accountable for their pollution and poisonous products, was, they believed, an existential threat to their wealth and power.

Powell described it as a hatred of corporate power, an assault “on our government, our system of justice, and the free enterprise system.” This is an example of portraying their opponents not as someone who disagrees, but as an enemy. I’m sure many middle class people liked corporations because they funded their middle class lives. The response of the rich was to create think tanks to alter public opinion, pack the courts, create conservative media empires, repeal bans on corporate donations to candidates, replace trust in the government with cynicism, and to fill schools and colleges with conservative educators while pushing out the liberals. Yeah, all that began back then. The goals included reducing the tax rate. If I understand it right (it’s not mentioned in this article) a high tax rate meant the bosses didn’t ask for big salaries because they would be taxed anyway, which left more money for the workers. That bit about trust in government was to get Americans to reject government programs in favor of corporate sponsorships of research centers, health centers, and civic centers. Medicare was partially privatized through the “Advantage” scam. There is an ongoing attempt to privatize education through vouchers and charter schools. Public parks, stadiums, museums, and more are encouraged to turn to billionaire charity (and naming rights) instead of tax dollars. All that to say government bad, rich people good. The effort of those think tanks shows up in college textbooks and thousands of opinion pieces in media outlets and social media every day. Conservative talk radio provides a steady stream of stories that “government can’t do anything right” as the hosts get millions in subsidies. That’s a gusher of political poison. All that to say don’t trust the government your ancestors fought to establish. Reagan and his VP Bush I negotiated trade deals that moved 15-20 million good-paying union jobs from America into low-wage countries. There goes the middle class. And their campaign has been and continues to be effective. The number of billionaires and the size of their wealth has jumped considerably. Fox News is quite influential and half of Republican voters are ready to reject democracy. Voter suppression gets lots of effort. The head of the Heritage Foundation said the Republican Party is willing to slaughter Americans who oppose Project 2025. The party no longer believes in democracy, “equality before the law,” and a government whose power comes from the “consent of the governed.” They’ve sworn their fealty to the rich. Many people believe we’re headed to another Civil War because many conservatives say that’s what they want. They believe democracy was a dangerous mistake and the rich (the modern version of the white male landowner) should run everything, suppressing all dissent. Some individual thoughts:

A political network run by a group of right-wing billionaires has a larger budget and more employees than the entire Republican Party. The single largest source of threats of violence and murders by terrorists in America today are committed by white-supremacists aligned with the GOP who hate and fear the idea of a pluralistic, democratic society. Tragically, for the third time in our nation’s history, patriots who believe in the ideals of July 4, 1776 must defend America against those who don’t. We had our third chance in 2024, and we let it slip. Trump won, and he came back not chastened but emboldened, surrounded by the same billionaires who bankrolled his rise and are now getting their return on investment in spades. Everything the Loyalists and the Confederates and the Redcoats ever wanted — rule by the rich, contempt for the ballot, a leader who answers to no one — is being assembled in front of us in real time.

All that means is getting rid of the nasty guy and voting out Republicans isn’t enough. We must also rein in the rich. The people who signed the Declaration were not the big guys.

They were outgunned, outspent, and written off. But they won anyway, because enough of them decided a republic was worth more than their own comfort.

We must do the same. Will Democrats? Will they reject “big, dark, and foreign money”? Will they agree a republic is worth more than their party, their reelection, and their own comfort? When they win at least one chamber of Congress will they work to throw off the control of the rich, or join it? That’s a big reason why Democratic Socialists are making big gains. From Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” In last Tuesday’s Pundit Roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Colby Smith and Tony Romm of The New York Times discussing the Supreme Court ruling that prevents the nasty guy from firing Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook just because he wants to.

But the Supreme Court left much unresolved. The justices did not clearly articulate the full legal criteria that would allow Mr. Trump to fire Ms. Cook, who denies any wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime. Nor did they wager an opinion on the exact allegations against her. And the court majority did not even prescribe the exact venue in which Ms. Cook should be allowed to respond to the allegations. […] The president did not hesitate to seize on that legal ambiguity. In a social media post, he described the decision as merely a “procedural” matter and vowed to “take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not be making vital decisions concerning the Welfare of the United States of America!”

Joshua A. Douglas of Washington Monthly wrote about an aspect of another Supreme Court ruling that allows states to count ballots that were postmarked by election day but received a few days later. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, affirmed 5-4.

Instead of affirming the security of our election system, however, Justice Barrett seemed to accept the premise that absentee ballots might lead to the appearance of fraud. She wrote, correctly, that “even under plaintiffs’ interpretation, last-minute flips are possible, because the election-day statutes set no deadline for counting ballots or certifying election results.” Yet there is no such thing as a last-minute “flip,” and speaking in terms of “flipping” the results during the election night count is improper. Leads may change as ballots are counted, but no results are “flipped” because they are not final until the state has counted all ballots and election officials have certified them. It’s the same as saying the result in a World Cup match is “flipped” by a last-minute goal; although one team might have had the lead, there is no winner until the final whistle blows. So, while the Mississippi decision was good for voters, it was concerning for the underlying message about voter fraud and the leeway the Court may give to states to combat it.

The word “flip” also implies individual votes were switched. That also fuels the appearance of fraud. In Friday’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Bill McGuire discussing the El Nino weather system developing in the Pacific Ocean.

This is absolutely terrifying. The Nino 3.4 forecast temperature anomaly mean is now at 4C, when even the biggest historical super ninos have seen less than 3C. I really have no idea what this is going to bring over the next 12 months, but it will be very, very, grim.

Might we have massive crop failures this year or next? In the comments exlrrp posted a meme: “The saddest part of Trump’s historically corrupt 2nd term is witnessing the impotence of our entire political system to do literally anything about it. Another meme posted by exlrrp:

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool had aging pipes and filtration issues. Trump’s administration spent $14 million. Not on fixing the infrastructure. On painting the pool dark blue. Now it is covered in algae. It’s the perfect metaphor for modern Republican governance. Paint the surface. Ignore the problem. Blame somebody else.

I watched another video from Broadway Backwards, the annual show that raises money to combat AIDS. This one was from 2023 and is a reinterpretation of “One Day More” from Les Misérables as a group of LGBTQ activists preparing for a march in Washington. This one wasn’t just the song, there was a scene to introduce the characters – a newly out man afraid to be seen protesting, a mother who lost a son to suicide. The whole thing was nine minutes and it’s well worth watching.

Why is someone donating this much money?

Kos of Daily Kos posted a piece titled Why Democrats need their own Trump. He admitted that was a poor choice for a title. But his point is a good one: The nasty guy has been the most effective recent president. Alas, what he’s done is all to benefit himself and not the country.

The reason is simple: Trump doesn’t believe in constraints. He doesn’t care about norms, traditions, public opinion, elite opinion, or whether anyone thinks he should be doing what he’s doing. ... Trump has shown that all those traditions and conventions were nothing more than artificial constraints on the power of the presidency. All those Democrats before him who claimed they couldn’t do this or that? It’s all been shown to be bulls---. The office has extraordinary power, now with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval. ... Trump has exposed something that many Americans—and certainly many Democrats—never fully appreciated: The modern presidency is far more powerful than anyone admitted. For decades, Democratic presidents treated many of those powers as off-limits, constrained by norms and a fear of backlash from the wealthy and powerful interests most invested in the status quo. Sometimes public opinion mattered too. But more often, caution was treated as wisdom because the people who benefited from inaction demanded it. Trump has demonstrated that most of those constraints were voluntary.

Too often Democrats used their time in power to make small adjustments while explaining why they can’t make bigger changes. I see that as a big reason why voters are so annoyed with Democrats. To succeed in 2028 Democrats much actually use power. Anything less and voters are caught between Republicans who break the government and Democrats who restore the status quo. There is the illusion that good things can’t happen quickly. That illusion benefits the wealthy – and we now have a trillionaire. Kos knows what kind of candidate he wants out of the dozens who will run for the Oval Office in 2028. He knows what kind he doesn’t want. Anyone who talks about the old Congressional camaraderie, who wants to make sure the other party has a voice, who accepts that the Supreme Court can’t be fixed – instant disqualification. I add: Yes, Democrats have been too constrained. But in many cases we need that constraint. We need a president who spends money according to how Congress allocates it, who brings Congress with him when he thinks war should be declared, who respects the right to vote and its outcome, who protects the little guy from the big guy instead of the reverse, who works for democracy instead of breaking it. That post prompted a second. In the comments of the first post many said the nasty guy and Republicans smash things. Democrats need to build. Kos agrees that Democrats need to build – housing, clean energy, infrastructure, health care that actually works, an economy for all people. But before building, Democrats need to smash a lot of things too, to make all the building possible. They have to stop protecting the machinery that created and protects today’s extreme inequality. Kos lists more than a dozen things Democrats should smash and says in his first draft of the post the list went on for pages. Here’s just a few things from his list.

+ The Senate filibuster + Citizens United and the campaign finance system it unleashed + Corporate monopolies + The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington + Social media algorithms designed to maximize outrage instead of informing people + Major media outlets owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires + Private prison companies

These things exist because they protect the people with money and power. Democrats need to stop treating them as if they were inscribed on stone tablets – that was the party’s big mistake between the two nasty guy terms. Democrats like to say change takes time. Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York because he was able to say here is part of the solution we can implement right now. Obama accepted the conventional limits to the presidency. The nasty guy tested every limit. Don’t mistake the status quo for progress. Robert J Petersen of the Kos community posted Hunter Biden’s advice to Democrats prior to the New York primary earlier this week. Here are a few of his points:

+ Authenticity is measurable. Voters can smell a focus group from a mile away. + Conviction beats caution. The candidates who said hard things about rent, about who pays for what, about Gaza, they won. The triangulators lost. + Cost of living is everything. Everything else is wallpaper. + If you want to lead a party you have to be willing to fight inside it. Mamdani didn’t ask permission. He took the field.

In a third article Kos wrote that conservatives are sicker and die younger than liberals. We remember their antics during the pandemic when they refused masks and other things that could keep them healthy. But this study includes data from the mid-to-late 2010s. One reason for the disparity might be that less healthy people became more conservative. See how the right responded when Michelle Obama suggested children eat vegetables. Another reason might be more disturbing: “Conservative politics itself may now be a health risk.” People on the right are more skeptical of medicines, not just vaccines. They’re more distrustful of the “institutions and professionals trying to keep them alive.” They’ve been told expertise is the enemy and are hostile to it.

And to add insult to injury, liberals are now subsidizing those ridiculously unhealthy conservatives through higher health insurance premiums, just like rural red America wouldn’t survive without blue states and cities subsidizing them.

Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos, assembled by Greg Dworkin, features several quotes about the New York primary I mentioned. The short answer is that the candidates that Zohran Mamdani endorsed won. Below that Dworkin included tweets by Jamie Dupree:

Senate rebukes Trump over the Iran war, voting 50-48 to approve a House-passed resolution directing the President to remove U.S. military forces from hostilities against Iran. 4 Republicans voted Yes, 1 Dem (Fetterman) voted No. Trump cannot veto this war powers resolution on Iran - because the form it was in (a concurrent resolution) does not go to a President for signature. In essence, it is a non-binding vote by Congress.

Axios commented on US House races in Maryland suburbs to Washington. The summary: There is such a thing as spending too much on a candidate. It leads to people asking, “Why is someone donating this much money?” Down in the comments. ClimateHawk reported on the number of formerly Confederate states won by Republicans (the party that freed the slaves) from 1880 (after Reconstruction ended) to 1948. In those 18 presidential elections Republicans took zero of those eleven states, except for 1920 when they took 1 and 1928 when they took five (Hoover). They took 3-5 states from 1952-1965, two of those were for Eisenhower. Then Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965. He said he was doing the right thing but would lose the South for a generation. In the 15 presidential elections since then (much longer than a generation) Democrats have taken 0-3 states except when voting for Carter after Watergate, when all Southern states voted for him, and when Clinton took 4 of 11 states. In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Robert Jimison and Michael Gold of The New York Times:

“Hours after President Trump angrily confronted Senate Republicans for joining Democrats to approve a war powers resolution rebuking his handling of the war in Iran, Republican leaders brought another, nearly identical measure to the floor. In a 50-to-47 vote, with one senator voting “present,” they defeated the measure in a largely symbolic move that did nothing to change the resolution the Senate had narrowly approved a day earlier. Instead, it served as an unmistakable gesture to mollify a furious president who had just berated them. ... Ultimately, the maneuver did not undo Tuesday’s vote, which was the first war powers measure approved by both chambers since the war began and remains adopted. Wednesday’s vote neither rescinded nor superseded it. Still, Republicans sought to characterize the procedural move as a chance to “re-vote,” even though the initial action cannot simply be erased through a subsequent vote on different legislation.”

Jay Michaelson of Forward wrote that Israel is now pretty much isolated in the world and is doing a good job of alienating its allies in the US.

And for what? For what bowl of porridge did Israel sell its birthright as a member of the civilized world? For nationalist pipe-dreams of Gaza wiped off the map? For keeping Bibi’s coalition alive so he doesn’t go to jail for bribery? For messianic dreams of Greater Israel? For the most hawkish possible interpretation of Israel’s legitimate security needs? For revenge?”

I saw images of this elsewhere (which I can’t find now). The Independent in Britain reported that in 2014 a French TV channel showed a fictional weather report for August 2050 to show the effects of climate warming. It showed France hitting 43C (109.4F). That prediction was surpassed 24 years early. France and much of Europe and Britain are in a heat wave and the temperature in Paris hit 42.6C (108.7F). And that happened in June. This is a big problem because only a quarter of homes in Paris are air conditioned.

“Climate change” is abstract. A heat wave isn’t.

Brother’s visit was a pleasant one. One thing we did was to visit the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House overlooking Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit. Edsel was the son of Henry Ford. Eleanor’s ancestry included the founder of JL Hudson department stores (alas, none left). So, yeah, the place would be called a mansion – the ballroom had more square feet than my house (though my house is small). In one sense the décor of the house is thrifty – a lot of the materials, paneling and such, was rescued from English manor houses that were being demolished. Sister (who wasn’t with us at the House) added that those houses were being demolished because so many men died in WWI the families no longer had the money or staff to keep running them. The tour guide said things like, “This paneling is from the 1500s, that chandelier is from the 1600s, and that medallion in the window is from the 1200s.” My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards. I enjoyed the show, glad to see some of the dances from the musicals, and wish more of the nominated plays were included (very little was). I now have a few more shows to check out, though not Schmigadoon. Andrew Mangan began a post for Daily Kos by showing a graph of the average temperatures between January and April, dating back to before 1900. Yes, 2026 is the hottest winter on record, though barely beating out a year more than a decade ago (maybe 2012?). Then Mangan reported on a YouGov poll about protecting the environment.

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact. But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. ... “Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts. Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

This is the same sort of messaging mistakes as when Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Yes, that word accurately described the topic of their message, but used a word many people don’t recognize. They would have done better with “Fighting the Rich” or “Fighting Corruption.” Kos community member ranger995 posted a brief mention of a situation that Brother also found on a variety of sources and had him quite concerned.

The military conducted urban warfare exercises in our town last night. Helicopters, explosions, gunfire in suburban Pasadena. It lasted until 2:00 am. What the f---? Intimidation? Preparation?

Local Council person Rick Cole posted videos on Instagram and ranger995 included a link.

[Cole] indicated that the town was only warned in the morning and told that they could not inform citizens of what was taking place until an hour or so before the exercises started. Of course the comments are loaded with fascists and manosphere fantasy types. I bet they are the same people who went nuts over Jade Helm, which took place on military bases, not urban or suburban centers. It is really odd for the military to conduct any actions in the middle of suburban or urban areas. Especially without much notice to our authorities or citizens.

Last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. Yeah, that’s money for the ICE goons. What wasn’t in the bill was language to limit that $1.776 billion slush fund to pay the traitors who attacked the Capitol. Though Senate Republicans have slammed the fund, they refused to adopt any language officially killing it. They seem to believe acting AG Todd Blanche that the fund is dropped and the nasty guy’s claim he will follow a court order temporarily blocking the fund. Also last Friday Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Looks like the Trump administration has finally nabbed a high-profile criminal conviction. Sure, it’s a plea deal. And sure, it’s a Republican. And sure, it’s one of President Donald Trump’s own first-term Cabinet members. But hey, gotta take those vindictive prosecution wins where you can. Former national security adviser John Bolton is reportedly going to plead guilty to one count of retention of classified national security information. The extremely mustachioed hardliner was indicted in October 2025 on 18 counts of, well, basically the same thing that Trump was charged with when he stashed classified documents in one of his ugly Mar-a-Lago bathrooms.

Needham also wrote about billionaires. The net worth of the top 15 increased by 33% between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. Collectively, their worth rose from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. Elon Musk (according to Forbes) is worth $839 billion. The next few are:

Larry Page — $257B (Google) Sergey Brin — $237B (Google) Jeff Bezos — $224B (Amazon) Mark Zuckerberg — $222B (Meta) Larry Ellison — $190B (Oracle) ... That’s a genuinely distressing list on its face, showing all that money locked up by just a few people. But it’s worse when you realize that out of the top 10, arguably all but Page, Arnault, Buffett, and Ortega are fully in thrall to Trump.

Another way to say all that is they are doing nothing out of the kindness of their hearts.

If you compare billionaires writ large to the rest of us, they come up pretty short. In the last decade, American billionaires with a net worth of a collective $5.7 trillion over that time have donated $185 billion, or roughly 3.25% of their vast, vast wealth. By contrast, people earning under $50,000 per year give about 14%, while people who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year donate about 7.8%.

Needham named two people who have given away sizable chunks of their fortune. One is George Soros, the guy declared to be evil by conservatives. The other is MacKenzie Scott, formerly married to Bezos.

And, even more than perennial GOP bogeyman Soros, Scott donates to things that bedevil conservatives: groups that promote forbidden DEI, reproductive health initiatives, racial justice organizations, you name it. It would be great if no one had this much money—but if they do, they should be giving most of it away. And if they decide to position themselves as a one-woman wrecking ball to the Trump agenda, even better.

Also last Thursday Oliver Willis Kos reported the Kennedy Center is beginning to comply with the court order to remove the nasty guy’s name from the side of the building. Employees much change email signatures and letterheads to list only the original name. Then there are forms, signs, brochures, and websites that must change by this coming Friday. All this because the judge ruled Congress named the facility and only Congress can change it. The nasty guy said he’s turning the whole thing over to Congress. The Good News Roundup of Kos wrote that Hunter Biden is very good at trolling MAGA types on X. Here’s three examples of what’s included in the roundup. First:

So let me get this straight. Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?” Please.

Second:

Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honestly. ... Everything else is just noise.

Three:

Things most Americans agree on: Groceries cost too much. Tariffs suck and make no sense. Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks. The debt is a mess. The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good. Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants are have never been explained. Americans are exhausted. AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process ... [not quite half of the list] Things we’re told to fight about: Me. Laptop. Vaccines. Transgenders in sports. Pronouns. That’s the joke.

Hunter’s comments included a reference to Jared and Ivanka in Albania. They bought an island there. Next to their property is a protected land and many of the locals have an understandable fear whatever the Pandemic Prince and Princess decide to build will harm the ecosystem of the protected land. Though the Albanian government agreed to the deal, worth $4 billion, the citizens of Albania definitely do not agree. There have been mass protests. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a 22 second video showing the size of the crowd at the second day of the protests.

Sick of religion being used as a cloaking device for hate

I hadn’t heard much of John Fugelsang. I had to look him up to know he’s “an American actor, comedian, writer, television host, political commentator, and television personality” as his Wikipedia page describes him. I followed a link to his Substack to see his comments on Holy Hypocrites, also known as Christian Nationalists.

But nothing says “We worship Jesus, not idols” quite like unveiling a giant gold statue of a reality TV billionaire felon politician at a golf resort. Somewhere Book of Exodus just filed a copyright infringement claim. These same folks who’ve spent years screaming about the “War on Christmas,” just built the Golden Calf Expanded Universe near the 18th hole buffet. I saw this two days ago, and I’m still recovering from an overdose of metaphor. It’s like a deleted scene from the Fall of Rome.

Towards the bottom of the post is a photo of the statue. Fugelsang concluded his short rant with a parody of something Christians will recognize:

The Lard’s Prayer: Our Ruler, Who Art in Florida, Branded be thy name. Thy kingdom, dumb Thy cabinet, scum Thy girth, size fifty-seven. Give us this day our bigly bread; And give us our guest-passes, As we trespass against those who look more defenseless; And lead us now, to more inflation, But deliver us from feminists; Yay Men.

The source of the original link also linked to Fugelsang’s book, which looks like it might be a fun yet important read. The title is Separation of Church and Hate, a Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. From the book’s publisher description:

For more than two centuries, the United States Constitution has given us the right to a society where church and state exist independently. But Christianity has been hijacked by far-right groups and politicians who seek to impose their narrow views on government, often to justify oppressive and unequal policies. The extremists who weaponize the Bible for earthly power aren’t actually on the side of Jesus—and historically they never have been. How do we fight back against those acting—literally—in bad faith? ... But Fugelsang’s message is about more than just taking down hypocrites. It’s about fighting for the love, mercy, and service that are supposed to make up the heart of Christianity. Told with Fugelsang’s trademark blend of radical honesty, comedy, and deep political and religious knowledge, Separation of Church and Hate is the book every American needs today. It’s a rallying cry for compassion and clarity for anyone of any faith who’s sick of religion being used as a cloaking device for hate.

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on news of the nasty guy’s “anti-weaponization fund” to pay Capitol attackers who were convicted of their crimes. A slush fund. The news is that both California and New York are saying that the tax on any slush fund payout will be 100%. Democratic members of Congress are trying to pass such a provision, but they know it won’t go far, so states, at least blue states, are stepping in.

On Tuesday, New York state Assembly Member Alex Bores—who is currently running for Congress—introduced the New York Anti-Insurrectionist Act to fight the “slush fund created by a lawless president.” “It’s simple, if you’re a New Yorker and you take from this illegal slush fund, New York state will tax 100% of it,” Bores said Tuesday in a post on X. “If you storm the Capitol and you take from this slush fund, too bad we’re taking it.” ... “We can’t stop Trump from breaking the law in Washington. But we can decide that in New York, money you got for attacking American democracy is fully taxable,” Bores told NBC News.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is now saying the same thing. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports:

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from paying any claims through a new $1.776 billion settlement fund for the Republican president’s allies who believe they were victims of a weaponized government. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, also barred the government from moving forward with the fund’s creation while litigation is pending to challenge it.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote:

According to The New York Times, government data and assessments by experts in drug trafficking show that the Trump administration’s fight against “narco-terrorism” is a dud.

The nasty guy and the war nasty said they were bombing boats to stop the flow of drugs to the US. But the street price hasn’t changed, meaning the supply of cocaine and other drugs hasn’t changed. So the attacks, which have killed people, have accomplished nothing in protecting US citizens. We’re not surprised. In Britain Alan Milburn published interim findings of his government-commissioned review into British youth unemployment. It said that the youth unemployment rate stands at 16.2%, higher than at the peak of the pandemic. Beyond that there are 957,000 (almost a million) youth who are NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). 84% of them want a job or to be in training. They have essentially stopped looking for work or trying to get into a training program. The reason is the disappearance of entry-level jobs and a big drop in apprenticeships. Employers want work experience and there is no way to get that without entry-level jobs.

Meanwhile the government is spending £25 on benefits for every £1 it spends on helping young people into work. The system is optimised for managing the consequences of youth unemployment, not preventing it.

This is creating a lost generation. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article in Politico talking of the consequences of Ken Paxton winning the Republican nomination for US Senator from Texas.

“It means that $100 million will have to go to bail out the Texas seat instead of helping win seats in Maine, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and elsewhere,” said the person, who, like many others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Last night will go down as one of the worst self-inflicted political wounds of all-time.” “No one is happier than Democrats. Even if Paxton holds the seat — as is likely, though not guaranteed — donor funds will be diverted from critical races,” a second GOP donor concurred. “And Cornyn, one of the Republicans’ best fundraisers, will be sidelined.”

David Graham of The Atlantic:

The situation demonstrates a few reasons that Trump is such a bad negotiator. My colleagues Tom Nichols and Robert Kagan have all written illuminating articles on the specific failures inherent or likely in any deal with Iran. But the incident also shows the structural problems with the president’s approach. First, Trump is unprepared. Some effective presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush) came to the White House with a history of deep engagement in public affairs and foreign relations, which made them ready to handle sensitive foreign negotiations. Others brought a formidable work ethic and a ruthless intellect (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton). Both types surround themselves with smart advisers whose input they take seriously. Trump is 0 for 3 on these conditions, which is one reason he wrote off the risk of Iran closing the strait in the first place: He both surrounds himself with less qualified aides than past presidents did and refuses to heed their counsel. The same failure of preparation extends to the frontline negotiators. Even after many of its top officials were killed in the war, Iran has maintained a hard-nosed corps of diplomats who have long been involved in foreign policy. Trump, by contrast, has dispatched a real-estate pal and his nepo-baby son-in-law. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, perhaps the best informed of Trump’s aides, has been largely invisible.

Another AP article on Kos reported:

In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United Nations climate projections. The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic that warms nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius) between now and 2030 and a dangerous drought with potential wildfires for the Amazon, a crucial part of Earth’s natural defenses to lessen human-caused climate change. A hotter globe from the burning of coal, oil and gas means more extreme weather including floods, droughts and heat waves, scientists said. ... There’s a 91% chance that at least one of the next five years will shoot past the 1.5 degree threshold and an 86% chance that one of those years will smash the record for Earth’s hottest year set in 2024, the WMO report said.

The article also commented on the Arctic warming faster than the rest of the planet and that the forecast is for warmer and unusually dry conditions in the Amazon basin, leading to wildfires. The region that serves as the world’s lungs, that does the most to pull in carbon dioxide and push out oxygen, might be choked and damaged by smoke and making the whole problem worse. All this will affect the food supply. Back at the end of April, a week after Earth Day, Meteor Blades, Kos emeritus, posted about the Earth Day release of the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, jointly released a new report — Extreme Heat and Agriculture. Blades titled his discussion of the report “‘Extreme Heat and Agriculture’ report released on Earth Day got less attention than the dumbest Truth™ Social post last week.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has now issued six assessments of the climate. The first came out in 1990. By the fourth report in 2007 it started saying global warming is affecting the world’s agriculture now. There is hope (at least a little) that this latest report won’t get put on a shelf. Some numbers from the report: Crop yields drop sharply in the heat. For many crops the threshold is 30C (86F). Livestock productivity and survival drop in the heat. Heat disrupts fisheries. Agriculture workers face health risks in the heat. Blades wrote:

As noted, many staple crop species begin seeing yield declines above roughly 30°C, with some, of course, more sensitive than others. Heat can interrupt pollination, accelerate maturation before grain development, increase water demand, and invite pests whose geographical ranges expand in warmer conditions. But for livestock, thermal stress commonly begins above 25°C (77°F), and at even lower temperatures for pigs and poultry, which cool themselves poorly. The consequences include reduced eating, slower growth, reduced fertility, reduced milk production, and death in severe episodes. One analysis found milk yields fell half a percent for every hour cows were exposed to high heat stress, with effects lingering for days. ... Labor, a topic often erased from food discussions, gets some focus in the report, too. Agricultural workers are among the most exposed people on Earth: long hours outdoors, limited protections, and little bargaining power. In some already hot regions, the report asserts that days unsafe for outdoor work may climb to 250 annually before the end of this century. Think about the cruelty embedded in that statistic. The people least responsible for emissions are asked to work inside the blast furnace those emissions built.

Brazil is a major food producer for the world. It is experiencing climate stress. If its productivity drops it will have a harder time feeding its own as a lot of food goes to export. (That reminds me of the Irish potato famine in the 1840s and the Holodomor in Ukraine in the 1930s – look them up!) Brazil is now a warning to the world.

Cut emissions fast. No adaptation strategy can keep pace with unchecked warming. Protect workers. Mandatory heat standards, paid breaks, hydration, cooling shelters, and enforcement. Build public resilience. Storage, irrigation efficiency, grids, extension services, and local processing. Democratize seed banks and research. Climate-resilient genetics should not be monopolized. Finance justice. Debt relief and grants for climate-hit nations. Diversify agriculture. Monocultures are profitable in spreadsheets and brittle in heatwaves.

Agricultural adaptation can happen with money. But at the moment it is poorly supported by those with money.