This was an interesting email to receive today. It reminded me of some things we discussed back on The Oil Drum about this very thing (the online archive still available: http://theoildrum.com/special/archives ) - how paving over all the old city & county gravel roads had introduced a pile of fixed costs (not just paving, but regular re-grading, snow plowing, etc) that towns would eventually have to shed.
In other words, at some point in the not too distant future, they will start turning roads back into gravel roads, slowly but surely, starting at the very outside edges and creeping inward until only a certain core of local paved roads remains.
The History and Mystery of Yemen’s ‘Well of Hell’ - The first-ever expedition to the bottom of a startling desert sinkhole found wonders—but only natural ones, by Sarah Durn October 20, 2021
"...Actually, there was a concern more sinister than reptiles and spirits when Al-Kindi finally reached the bottom: unexploded ordnance. Since 2014, Yemen has been in the midst of a bloody civil war and, Al-Kindi explains, pilots sometimes drop bombs into caves, since people seek shelter inside. “So that got me worried a bit,” he says. “Apart from that, it was a very enjoyable moment.” ...Al-Kindi estimates the sinkhole could be several million years old, but its origin, too, is the subject of local legend. One legend says an ancient king forced jinn to carve the “well” as a place to hide his treasure. In others, the well has always served to contain evil, uncontrollable jinn..."
"The Key to a Strong Downtown Is Smart Policy Changes, Not Big Projects" || by Tiffany Owens Reed June 4, 2024
"...But relying on the master-planned, “Big Project'' approach to revitalization is a risky way forward. Rather than growing the city’s wealth, these big projects often require significant public investment and incentives, which put cities in the risky financial position of making large, expensive bets in the present and hoping to recoup that money down the line.
Not only that, but these plans also lock cities into committing to a future they can’t possibly evaluate for profitability, relevance or resilience. It’s simply impossible to know if these plans will achieve their intended goals, and their large, centralized nature makes it hard to adapt to shifting market conditions or changes in regulation and funding.
The good news is that cities have alternatives..."
Private automobiles are not the future of anything, and it is a gross mis-allocation of funds to waste money on expanding roads.
The communities that were crushed and divided by highways can be repaired, though they will never have the same vibrancy as before, nor will the original displaced inhabitants benefit in any way.
But it's a start.
"...Decades ago, people decided to create the freeways. Now, we must decide if we will continue this path or reverse the damage to repair our communities..."
"...But the main problem...is simple: They’re no longer getting paid enough to stay in business. In the multifront battle to cut costs in America’s expensive health care system, pharmacies say they are shouldering a disproportionate...burden.
“That traditional model of that corner drugstore that is just dispensing prescriptions is very difficult, if not impossible, to make work these days,” says Oftebro, adding that at his pharmacies, “reimbursement on the majority of prescriptions is now at or below the acquisition cost of the drugs.”
For this, many blame the middlemen: the pharmacy benefit managers. The three largest PBMs are owned by or affiliated with insurance companies—CVS’s Caremark (which shares a corporate parent with Aetna), UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx, and Cigna’s Express Scripts—and together they control how 80% of all U.S. prescriptions are processed..."
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.
Well, at least these probably didn't float around and land on you.
This Arachnid in Illinois Had Armored Spikes on Its 8 Legs - The new species is too strange to be assigned a category, by Olivia Young May 30, 2024
"...“This is the big question,” says Jason Dunlop, co-author of the study. “The new fossil resembles some (but not all) living harvestmen”—aka daddy longlegs—“with spiny legs, and has some vague similarities to mites,” although he says its body is much bigger. The segmentation pattern and slight constriction between the head area and abdomen suggest that it may belong in a group with whip spiders and whip scorpions, “but unfortunately we can’t see the mouthparts, which would help us to confirm this hypothesis.”
So, maybe giant biting mites, possibly poisonous (ala daddy longlegs). Sounds fun [not].
Plate Tectonics Has a Surprise Silver Lining - Without this restless geologic process, which triggers destructive earthquakes, Earth would not be habitable, by Robin George Andrews May 29, 2024
"...on geologic timescales, plate tectonics ensures that Earth won’t grow so catastrophically hot that its surface becomes unlivable. Without plate tectonics, Earth would turn into Venus. And no planet aspires to be more like Venus.
...And, had it not been for—among other things—our world’s endlessly shifting tectonic plates, Earth could have shared the same grim fate as Venus.
Yes, those tectonic plates buckle and stretch, slip and slide, creating faults that jolt and snap, which generate earthquakes—sometimes devastatingly so. But these tremors are the vital sign of a planet with a beating geologic heart, an orb with a transmogrifying face..."
[I immediately thought of Calvin and Hobbes here, lol.]
The world made by hand, By Brian Kaller, originally published by Restoring Mayberry June 1, 2024
"...All the crafts disappeared in a generation or two – the coopers, wrights, milliners, cord-wainers and thousands more. All the stories handed down through generations disappeared in a few generations, until we all know only the same few pop-culture stories. Almost all the apprenticeships, lodges, clubs, co-ops and guilds disappeared... We are the survivors wandering the ruins of a post-apocalyptic society, but it has been a cultural apocalypse, a mass forgetting, and it’s still going on...
...I realize that we could not build some of these [buildings] now; the crafts to create them are forgotten, along with...[all] these [handcrafted] trades and … everything. The entire human infrastructure.
And I think: None of this world could have been built by the people now living in it."
I would advise everyone to fill out a new voter registration card, sign it, and take a picture of it with your signature before handing it back in. This will do a few things. One, if you're like most people you may not always sign things exactly the same. This way you will know how you signed and can remind yourself before elections or before filling out an absentee ballot.
Republicans are rejecting ballots if the signature is not exactly the same. You will be disenfranchised for nothing more than omitting your middle initial or some other stupid thing.
Second, if your registration gets "lost" or purged, you may need to be able to prove you did register to join a lawsuit or some such.
Keep a printed copy of it with your other important papers.
And check online a couple of times a year to he sure you're still registered.
Finally, push for your local govt to stop calling any elected positions "nonpartisan." There's no such thing anymore. It's just a way for MAGA to hide their party.
From ChartR: There might soon be a vitamin C-shaped hole in many Americans’ breakfasts: orange juice prices are hitting all-time highs, as a series of poor harvests strain the existing supply of frozen juice futures.
Indeed, while the price of OJ has climbed at an alarming rate in recent years due to reduced production yields, this week saw frozen concentrated orange juice futures ...reach a record price of $4.87 per pound. That’s roughly 5x where they were trading in 2020.
These juiced-up figures have arisen from a blend of bad weather and disease that’s long plagued the world's orange groves...And Florida, world-renowned for its oranges, won’t be able to pick up the slack. The Sunshine State has seen output decline steadily for more than 2 decades, thanks to citrus greening, hurricanes, falling yields, and a booming housing market that’s turned citrus farms into premium real estate.
From NCJW:
Next week, the Senate will vote on The Right to Contraception Act which would uphold the right to access contraception, first recognized by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. The Right to Contraception Act would safeguard a person's right to seek and obtain birth control, even if the Supreme Court were to ever overturn the existing constitutional protection.
We need your voice in this fight. Take action today and tell Congress to support the Right to Contraception Act. Our Jewish movement has our own playbook: everyone deserves access to basic health care, including abortion care and contraceptives. Let’s get out there and play.
Has the Mystery of the ‘Mona Lisa’ Background Been Solved?
Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and art historian, says she’s identified the location in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting.
Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent - May 20, 2024
"...Past theories about the background have focused primarily on the bridge and the road in the painting...
However, Pizzorusso says these theories ignore the rock formations in Leonardo’s artwork.
“The arched bridge was ubiquitous throughout Italy and Europe, and many looked very similar,” she tells the Observer’s Dalya Alberge. “It is impossible to identify an exact location from a bridge alone. They all talk about the bridge, and nobody talks about the geology...”
How the Brain Processes Different Components of Language - Moving beyond neural localization of language. Posted May 28, 2024
"...This is in line with recent ideas about a "cortical mosaic" architecture for linguistic structure within overlapping portions of posterior temporal and inferior frontal cortices for processing demands that bias syntactic and semantic computations, whereby, for example, effects of composition can be found within a narrow strip of tissue within the broader lexicality-sensitive cortical sites (a spatial mosaic), or where different demands of sentence-level inferential semantics can be detected over closely overlapping temporal windows within a small area of cortex (a spatiotemporal mosaic)..."
@shekinahcancook Dr. Suess' phonics is not allowed in mandated schemes which have to be "Synthetic Phonics" strict sound by sound-no rhyme patterns allowed. Interestingly (to me anyway) almost every method of teaching reading works for almost every kid. Just none work 100%. I learnt in the 60s by Look and Say- now banned everywhere as Wrong. But most of my generation learnt to read that way.
The problems occur are 1) when the ideologically fixated believe there is One True Method and 2) when the method becomes more important than the outcome- i.e. the kids actually wanting to read. When in some places in the 80s phonics was an anathema as a specialist teacher I taught phonics where appropriate. And where Synthetic Phonics the current Shibboleth was taught I'd use the other (Dr. Suess compatible) type where appropriate. And a range of other techniques too, for kids having reading problems.