Arizona's top court revived a #law dating to 1864 on Tues that bans #abortion in virtually all instances, another setback for #ReproductiveRights in a state where the procedure already was barred starting at 15 wks of pregnancy.
As I write this (and I may update later), there have been 19 earthquakes in central New Jersey beginning with a real glass-shaker of 4.8 Magnitude this morning at 10:23. I, unfortunately, did not feel it but several close relations did because they were closer. Good for them. It’s always a cool bucket list item to feel a substantial but not dangerous earthquake to remind you of how small and unsubstantial people are.
Earthquakes three days before the eclipse are not helpful for people trying to be rational
If you have been following along, the quakes are just 3 days ahead of the eclipse. The 2024 eclipse will not pass over this epicentral area of New Jersey, but the correlation in time has sent the nervous and Biblically-minded people into fits. The timing makes this very hard to explain that there is no correlation between the two interesting events. Seriously, no matter what I say, certain people will not believe me. Take one very awful person, MTG:
I mean, TAKE HER, please, get her the hell out of here. Sadly, she is not the only one promoting the idea that End Times are upon us. The heat from religious fearmongering about the eclipse was just turned up. I have to go back and update my last post because I found more about it being the Rapture, End of the World, with human sacrifices, etc. Check it out if you haven’t already, just to feel prepared for potential chaos on Monday.
The need to share the experience with each other
The eclipse is one of those events that can, actually, bring people together in a collective experience. Today’s earthquake(s) did the same. People wanted to talk to others and share what they felt. They turned to social media to do that, which is really cool.
What wasn’t great were the very many “suddenly seismologists” who appeared to opine about plate tectonics, the Ramapo fault, and the logarithmic magnitude scale. It did not help that the news media appeared to grab their meteorologist to deal with the science of earthquake reporting. The amount of misinformation may exceed the factual information. The degree and quantity of insane claims will grow, I’m sure. If you want to see some unhinged ideas, they are on TikTok and Reddit.
Just like with all the Google University bridge engineers who emerged on the internet 10 days ago, people want to contribute to the conversation by sounding sciencey. They want attention. Many of the commenters who felt the quake were very scared and overreacted because they don’t know anything about earth sciences. This is not unexpected, but social media feeds full of bogus airbags spouting nonsense makes all this much worse. Scientific explanations can help us understand a scary thing and alleviate some of the concerns. But the catch is that people have to be able to hear qualified and helpful voices and to trust them. The “qualified” and “helpful” voices are being drowned out, and the “trust” has been eroding for decades.
It’s disturbing to be faced with the barrage of information without having a trusted source about science and nature. Where is Carl Sagan when you need him! Note that some media outlets called the 21st century version of Dr. Sagan – Bill Nye. That’s OK, I know he checks his sources before speaking.
In a fortunate bit of timing (maybe), the BBC posted an article about how and why earthquakes are occurring outside of plate boundaries, in unexpected places. This was published 3 days ago:
Something very weird is happening to the planet’s earthquakes
Earth-shattering seismic events can occur away from the fault lines between tectonic plates. And there’s no easy way to predict when or where they’ll hit.
The article describes the problem of intraplate quakes, like the one that occurred in New Jersey. The faults can be hidden or quiet for so long that the population is unprepared. Exactly what happened today. Usually, intraplate faults can’t store a huge amount of energy so when they rupture, it isn’t big. But it can get up to magnitude 7, which is definitely destructive. If you are feeling nervous about earthquakes, I suggest you not read that article because it might make things worse. Clearly, these natural events are adding to the severe national anxiety we are experiencing every day for the past decade.
I told my cousin in New Jersey that aftershocks are likely and they did happen. It may not be just the seismic ones that are felt. People are edgy, the daily news is unsettling. When the ground actually shakes and your congressperson is insisting that the sky is falling, we are rudely reminded how very mired we are in Strange Times.
Finally, a favor to ask: if you see any strange stories about the earthquake, drop me a line. I’d love the links. See email address in the header or follow me on Mastodon.
I just saw probably the worst image I’ve ever seen out of the Gaza Genocide. The remains of a child smashed to pieces under a tank. Most of his body parts were not even recognizable. Do you have any idea how fucking evil the United States and Israel are? Why are we doing this?
@VPS_Reports#Mammon &/OR #EndTimes The weapons we make here in the states, are sold to Israel to kill civilians. While the Christian Nationalists believe that Jesus is coming back, and there must be a nation of Israel in Jerusalem, and those pesky Muslims keep getting in the way.
#TheMetalDogArticleList #MetalInjection
Heavy Metal Exorcism: YouTuber Turns Televangelist's Ritual Into Headbanging Anthem
He's possessed by Thor. Yes, we're serious.
Is it the fluoride in the water, the 5G towers, the microchips in the vaccines? Something must be doing it. Another country votes in a right wing government. This time the Dutch.
@bananabob It's the subconscious awareness that humans are entering the #EndTimes. Much of it relates to #ClimateEmergency and all the disaters related to that like water shortages, wars over water allocation (like in Syria), loss of arable land and crops, rising waters around island nations, 1 in 4 displace people (refugees) having to move because of environmental disasters ...
Covid19 and reactions to lockdowns may have escalated but the causes were boiling up before then.
FYI @benchaotica
Pack your shit, folks. The #Christofascist author of those terrible "#LeftBehind" books has declared that all the #Biblical#prophecies have been fulfilled, and the #Rapture should be happening any day now. Personally, I'm looking forward to the #peace that will surely descend upon the Earth once all the #Christians have been teleported to La-La Land, or wherever it is they think they're going.
10-30-23 Nicole Sandler Show — Starting a New Week with Digby
View on Zencastr
It's Monday and this promises to be an interesting week. The former guy's three eldest spawn all will take the stand in the fraud trial against the organization with their name on it. Wars continue raging overseas while antisemitism has been ratcheted up to levels I've never experienced in https://nicolesandler.com/10-30-23/ #NicolesBlog#Digby#EndTimes#gaza#Hamas#Israel#news#speaker
"Israeli MP Tali Gottlieb (Likud): No regrets! Gaza must be crushed. Do everything before you consider sending troops to Gaza. We have artillery capabilities. We invested huge budgets in it. You have to use everything you have in your arsenal! The life of our soldier is more important and valuable than the life of any person in Gaza. Take off your gloves!"
via the other place #FreePalestine#EndTimes
Everyone had major damage, myself included. We huddled in a safe location inside while the winds tore the front off my house and many shingles from the roof. I lost one big tree, a white pine.
My damage, while extensive, was superficial. You can live with siding off. When we had a phone service, I had to put in an insurance claim.
Since hurricane Dorian (2019) my trees and plants have been damaged. Cherry tree lost a 20 foot branch, leaves were rolled off the trees early, and then this year, we had late frost and my orchard of 8 types of fruit trees, never had a blossom or fruit.
We had rain for days, weeks, every other day. No sunlight made the garden produce poor, we had zero zucchini survive, and plants drown and died from lack of sunlight. #EndTimes .
We finally got zuccini the last few weeks. Otherwise we've grown fungus and bud rot.
Lost a brand new magnolia to drowning. Our crop of annuals washed out. Potatos were small, but had split from overwatering. Got about 25 cherry tomatos out of 6 plants.
"Jesus himself said, before he ascended into heaven, that he was simply going to prepare a place for his followers, implying that he would be back and that it was not going to take long. So when John, an exiled follower of Jesus, sent a letter to a church, his writing that Jesus said he was coming “quickly” would not have been an odd statement.
But it has been over 2000 years, and maybe it is safe to say that either Jesus is not coming back “quickly” or that his definition of “quickly” is vastly different from our own. Here is the problem with that second line of reasoning, though. The people who hold that God is outside of time and so when God says “quickly”, they mean quickly for them, are the same people who believe that when the Bible says everything was created in six days it means six literal 24-hour days. In other words, they are being inconsistent at best with the way they handle their Scriptures." #religion#eschatology#endtimes