Massive melon-sized hail could be a Texas record - The brick-sized chunks of ice surpass the DVD-sized hail that fell last week, By Matthew Cappucci
June 3, 2024
"...How is such large hail created?
The production of giant hail requires exceptional thunderstorm updrafts that can suspend a large hailstone as more layers of ice accrete on it. Once a stone grows too heavy for an updraft to keep in midair, it plummets to Earth at speeds often topping 100 mph.
In the case of Sunday’s hail, copious instability, or storm fuel, lead to explosive thunderstorm development. Warm, moist air probably ascended at speeds in excess of 110 mph for a time, lofting stones that weighed between one-half and three-quarters of a pound..."
At some point homeowners insurance is going to stop paying for this stuff crashing through your roof at 100mps, class.
#TheMetalDogArticleList #BraveWords
Today In Metal History 🤘 May 24th, 2024 🤘 MAYHEM, AC/DC, BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, SLIPKNOT, VAN HALEN, DESTRUCTION
Talent We Lost R.I.P. Paul Dedrick Gray (SLIPKNOT's the Pig #2): 1972 – 2010 (aged 38 years) TINA TURNER: 1939 – 2023 (aged 83) Heavy Birthdays 83rd Robert Zimmerman (BOB DYLAN) - 1941 78th Steve Upton (WISHBONE ASH) - May...
#POTUS Biden will champion a new Microsoft #Artificial Intelligence investment in #Wisconsin on Wedn — showcasing the failed #economic commitments of his political rival Trump, whose promises for a #job-rich Foxconn plant in the battleground state never materialized.
The #Foxconn facility was to have dozens of bldgs on a giant plot of land 3X the size of NY’s Central Park. But the project accomplished little more than the #destruction of 100 local #homes & #farms before the co drastically scaled back plans.
In Sept 2020, #Wisconsin state ofcls denied the Taiwanese co special #tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed <520 people & spent just $300M. Local #taxpayers were left w/a tab of >$500M for site prep.
A temple run by Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) near Valiyasala was partially gutted due to a suspected short circuit. Thankfully no casualties were reported in the incident.
What’s so bad about a road?
Roads are forest killers.
"A road means access. Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive. Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples. This looting of the natural world robs cash-strapped nations of valuable natural resources."
Reports that the city of #Minneapolis has posted an #eviction notice of an encampment of #unhoused people at 5th Ave & 24th St S for Wednesday, tomorrow, during a continued #blizzard and sub-freezing temperatures, forecast high of 27°F and low of 14°F, down to 8°F within 24 hours of planned encampment #destruction.
Nobel Laureate economist #Angus#Deaton has delivered a ferocious rebuke to his own profession, saying economists have failed to understand that ⭐️capitalism is about power.⭐️
Deaton lobs a series of truth bombs at his own profession, the result, he says, of “changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practising economist for more than half a century”.
These include:
🔸“We have largely stopped thinking about #ethics and about what constitutes human #well-#being”.
🔸If “economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators… 🔹the others regularly fail to materialise🔹, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution
— frequently though not inevitably
— our recommendations become little more than a #license for #plunder”.
🔸“#Historians, who understand about contingency and about multiple and multidirectional causality, often do a better job than economists of identifying important mechanisms…”
🔸Far from being “a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency”, #unions “once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments.
🔸Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening #gap between executives and workers, to community #destruction, and to rising #populism.”
🔸“I am much more sceptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers and am even sceptical of the claim, which I and others have made in the past, that globalisation was responsible for the vast reduction in global poverty over the past 30 years”.
🔸Immigration contributes to inequality.
But Deaton’s main point is a recognition of how #power distorts #policy:
“Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game.”
Deepwater Sharks Are Threatened by Demand for Liver Oil
One in seven species of deepwater sharks and rays is threatened with extinction because of the liver oil and meat trade and emerging fishing technologies that make it possible to catch deep-sea fishes.
‘Revolutionary’: EU Parliament votes to criminalise most serious cases of ecosystem destruction
"Countries will have two years to put the updated directive, which covers crimes 'comparable to ecocide', into national law. Ecosystem destruction, including habitat loss and illegal logging, will be punished with tougher penalties and prison sentences under the EU’s updated environmental crime directive."
On the systematic #destruction of the #health system in #Gaza. On what it means to try and save #civilians there. On learning more and more #medical professionals are being killed. On little #children starting to wish they were dead.
[Coup de gueule] À 300 mètres de chez moi, il y avait une grande friche de buissons et d'herbes hautes, le tout bordé d'une longue haie épineuse. J'ai jamais su si ça appartenait à des agriculteurs ou des chasseurs (les deux ?) mais ça restait un coin semi-naturel assez sympa épargné par les monocultures et plutôt fourni niveau petite faune.
Évidemment ça ne pouvait pas durer.
À l'automne dernier, la friche a été entièrement labourée - laissant un champ de boue avec un immense tas de branchages au milieu. La haie a bien été conservée mais réduite de moitié.
Aujourd'hui j'ai constaté que les propriétaires agro-chasseurs l'avaient entièrement rasée...
C'est un mini désastre écologique pour le coin. Parce que les haies et les friches dans les milieux agricoles, ça permet de drainer les sols (donc d'éviter les inondations), ça ralentit l'érosion, ça régule l'humidité et ça aide à contrôle les températures. Tout en fournissant un abri pour de nombreuses espèces.
Rien que dans le coin dont je parle j'ai vu : des alouettes des champs, des pipits farlouses, des vanneaux huppées, des bruants proyers, des bruants jaunes, des bruants zizi, des bruants des roseaux, des cisticoles des joncs, des tariers pâtres, des tariers des prés, des rougequeues noirs, des merles noirs, des pie-grièches écorcheurs, des rougegorges, des pouillots véloces, des pouillots fitis, des orites à longue-queue... et c'est sans compter les rapaces autour (dont un élanion blanc) et tous les insectes et petits mammifères que je connais moins.
Aujourd'hui il n'y avait plus rien. Que des branches à moitié broyées. Un fossé saturé de flotte. De la boue et un chemin ravagé par des tracteurs taillés pour les monocultures.
J'irai faire des tours voir comment ça évolue mais ça craint.
En attendant je rappelle qu'en France, 1,4 million de km de haie ont été détruite depuis 1950. 70% des haies (et la vie avec) ont disparues pour permettre des monocultures dont on sait se passer.
"The Romans conquered the world through seriousness, discipline, organisation, continuity of vision and method; through the conviction that they were a superior race, born to command; through the well-considered, methodically calculated use of the most ruthless cruelty, cold perfidy and the most hypocritical propaganda, employed simultaneously or in turn; by an unshakeable resolution to always sacrifice everything to prestige, without ever being sensitive either to peril, or to pity, or to any human respect; by the art of decomposing under terror the very soul of their adversaries, or of putting them to sleep with hope, before enslaving them with arms; finally by such skilful handling of the crudest lie that they have deceived even posterity and are still deceiving us. "
Simone Weil, in "Some reflections on the origins of Hitlerism". @history
"Life expectancy at birth in Roman Egypt was just 27.3 for women and 26.2 for men."
"As the empire expanded, the Romans took the show—including all their diseases—on the road. In every location, “The empire’s arrival led to the hasty construction of the first town, in Roman style, with baths and aqueducts, drains, heating systems, and latrines. Despite the amenities, a reasonable answer to the question ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ might have been ‘Got us sick.’ Mortality rates went up.”