Althouse: Sunrise

May 18, 2024

Sunrise — 5:33.

22 comments:

Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Happy Mt. St. Helens Day! Forty-four years ago today, Mt. St. Helens blew its top and spread ash to the east. Eastern Washington had ashfalls that blocked out the Sun and grounded airplanes. The Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers were overwhelmed with mud flows. Thousands of acres of trees were blown down. Harry Truman (old codger, not the president) was buried along with his Spirit Lodge under 600-ft of mud.; 5/18/24, 7:22 PM
MadTownGuy said...: From the NYT:

Secret Hamas files show how it spied on
everyday Palestinians

It's behind the paywall, but I found out that Hamas wanted to know how expatriates were spending their spare time on foreign countries, including extramarital affairs, and other things Haram.

No wonder Progressives love them so. They admire the way they wield control.; 5/18/24, 8:41 PM
Josephbleau said...: I just walked over the Valles Caldera today, got some poison ivy. It’s a super volcano that last erupted 40k years ago in New Mexico. 800 times more powerful than st Helen’s, and has put a layer of ash tuff 300 ft thick over three states. When it goes again the world is toast. And there are dozens of others around too. The caldera has a rhyolite magma bulge that is growing, lots of steam venting in the hot springs, but nothing that sounds like it will go next week.

So I am not too worried about global warming, that risk is inconsequential in comparison. But the elites can’t make us eat bugs due to volcanoes, they are smart enough to know that everyone knows that won’t help.; 5/18/24, 8:56 PM
Rocco said...: Josephbleau said...
“I just walked over the Valles Caldera today, got some poison ivy. It’s a super volcano that last erupted 40k years ago in New Mexico. 800 times more powerful than st Helen’s, and has put a layer of ash tuff 300 ft thick over three states. When it goes again the world is toast.”

So instead of SMOD it should be SCOD (Sweet Caldera of Death)?; 5/18/24, 9:38 PM
Candide said...: Very nice.; 5/18/24, 10:10 PM
gadfly said...: New York Times Pitchbot
@DougJBalloon
May 17

Biden pledged to be a president for all Americans. But by flying the American flag right-side up, he thumbs his nose at those who believe he stole the election via large-scale voter fraud in majority Black cities.

by Ginni Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito; 5/19/24, 12:56 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Medicare Advantage Plans Are About to Change

"Medicare Advantage patients might be in for a rude awakening as CVS plans to get rid of 10 percent of its plans.

CVS Health made the decision to cut the Aetna health insurance plans in an effort to prioritize profit margins, company leaders revealed this week.

"The goal next year is margin over membership," CFO Thomas Cowhey said. "Could we lose up to 10% of our existing Medicare members? It's entirely possible. And that's okay, because we need to get this business back on track."

...

"With rising medical costs outpacing government reimbursement increases, CVS is prioritizing profit margins over membership growth for its Medicare Advantage plans. However, this strategy could impact benefits and plan availability for many retirees," Michael Ryan, a finance expert and founder of michaelryanmoney.com, told Newsweek.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration said it would be cutting next year's payments to Medicare Advantage plans by 0.16 percent, adding onto the financial pressure CVS and other insurers are feeling at the national level."; 5/19/24, 4:40 AM
MadTownGuy said...: CNN political commentator Alice Stewart dies

"Alice Stewart, a veteran political adviser and CNN political commentator who worked on several GOP presidential campaigns, has died. She was 58.

Law enforcement officials told CNN that Stewart’s body was found outdoors in the Belle View neighborhood in northern Virginia early Saturday morning. No foul play is suspected, and officers believe a medical emergency occurred."

Lots of 'medical emergencies' these days.; 5/19/24, 4:44 AM
Leland said...: Biden flew the Pride Flag at the same height as the US flag over embassies across the world that he eventually withdrew from Vietnam style.; 5/19/24, 6:42 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: The Yellowstone super caldera is caused by a mantle hot spot. The North American plate has been sliding over that hot spot for millions of years. There are a string of calderas from Oregon, through Idaho and to Yellowstone due to eruptions of that hot spot.; 5/19/24, 7:07 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Gadfly’s bleat reminds me:I accidentally clicked “For You” or was redirected there this week when Twitter’s URL finally changed to X. My feed was flooded with hyperventilating lefties so excited by the alleged dog-whistle. They could all hear it! They were all certain, based on this one brief incident, that it could mean nothing else but Alito is an insurrectionist! It just must be so! And they were all extremely excited about declaring that Alito should (and would) recuse himself from hearing any Trump appeals that reach our highest court.

It is fascinating how the variety and ubiquity of dog whistles are on the extreme left. Only they can hear them. Only they repeat and amplify the “news” encoded in them. Only they ever bring them up here. Yet they simultaneously always, as in every time, take the position that the whistle is for ordinary Americans to hear and obey. When all the evidence is that the energy and physical responses happen at the lefty end of the spectrum. Positively Pavlovian to the objective observer.

Fascinating!; 5/19/24, 7:13 AM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: Joe "Bribe me!" Biden's staff has created a new phobia: biphobia, the fear of a bisexual person. Bribe me! certainly didn't think this up, he has too much trouble remembering his name to create such a lunatic phobia.

Our foreign policy is now going to fight biphobia. Does that mean SOS Blinken will be calling out Muslims for seeing if bisexual people can fly when thrown off of buildings? Fat chance, Blinken is all in on antisemitism and the encouragement of Islam through the world.; 5/19/24, 7:22 AM
Saint Croix said...: I hate gender, it's so academic and stupid. It's like going down a rathole of insanity.

I prefer sex. Sex is biological and real (and fun!)

Whenever I say "sex," and somebody corrects me with "gender," my response is, "Well, cut off your balls, buddy."

The gender insanity has gotten so widespread, now actual doctors will do that, for money.

Let me quote something Jordan Peterson said, as quoted by Nellie Bowles, as quoted by Laura Kipnis, as quoted by Althouse, it's like quadruple hearsay, it's like that game of Telephone we used to play in fourth grade, now I'm wondering if Peterson actually said it...

You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn’t be human anymore.

I hope he didn't write it, because this is an example of an academic reading and thinking so much that he's saying insane shit that has nothing to do with reality. In fact, he sounds exactly like one of the trans writers quoted in the Bowles book (Andrea Long Chu).

"All efforts toward civilization are male," Chu writes.

That's just an embarrassing thing to say. You know how the Spaniards divided up the universe into male and female? How is it the sexist pigs in whatever century they did that managed to be way more respectful to women than these 21st century academics? I'd like to ask Mr. Peterson how the table, with its four phallic legs, managed to be feminine in Spain. Maybe because the Spanish just pulled random shit out of their ass. "You see this thing I built? I'm calling it a girl."

Anyway, apparently Chu and Peterson are reading the same ancient texts -- I'm guessing gay men in Athens, but who knows -- that say that all civilization is male. And female is chaos and/or empty holes full of despair.

It's just kind of insane to be so sure of your academic bullshit that you say if you change your gender theory, humanity would cease to exist.

Actually, humanity will only cease to exist if we listen to the gender theorists, and cut off our balls and/or stab our babies.

Sex is real. Baby-making is real. Humanity is real. Academics are imagining things.; 5/19/24, 7:59 AM
lonejustice said...: Just finished reading "In the Garden of the Beasts" by Erik Larson, and I highly recommend it. It's a non-fictional account of life in Berlin in 1933 and 1934 from the perspective of William Dodd, America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany, and chronicles Hitler's rise to power as leader of the Nazi Party, becoming chancellor in 1933 and then Fuhrer in 1934. What was really chilling to me is how largely indifferent the State Department was to the fact that Jews were being attacked, the German press was being censored, and draconian new laws were being enacted. The world just didn't recognize the grave threat that Hitler and the Nazis posed until it was too late. Makes you think it could happened again, anywhere in the world.; 5/19/24, 8:11 AM
wendybar said...: See new posts
Conversation
Wall Street Apes
@WallStreetApes
There Really Is A Revolution Happening

Black American Responds To NFL condemning viral speech by Super Bowl champion Harrison Butker

“So we learn in the NFL, you can be a rapist, woman beater, abandon your kids, a racist, misogynist, adulterer, you can be a number of things, a murder, assaulter.

One thing you can't be an NFL Is a truth-teller of Christianity

Because if you by any chance think that you're gonna have the ability to say hey, maybe maybe we should focus on more on wives and family dynamics, you know Christian values you looked at like you've done the worst thing in the world.

But leftists will sit around and they won't, they won't do none of this stuff they're doing to that man. To the killers, the rapists, the adulterers. They don't even lift their voice to say anything to those people.

But when someone promotes Christianity, it's a problem.

That just tells me he was doing the right thing about what he said. Because when the people that promote all sorts of debauchery go against you, you gotta be right.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1791864999549567243; 5/19/24, 8:14 AM
Humperdink said...: There were 3 pharmacies in our one horse town. CVS being one of them. CVS bought one and promptly close it down. The other pharmacy is grimly hanging on.; 5/19/24, 8:15 AM
Political Junkie said...: FULL STOP - Read Mo Dowd piece/interview with Bill Maher. Not bad. Enjoyed the closing paragraph. As good as we can get from Mo Dowd.; 5/19/24, 8:18 AM
Scott Patton said...: Viewing the sunrise photos sometimes causes synesthesia. The sunrises have a sound. This one in particular. Usually a lot of brass, backed by strings and or synth. Very dynamic. There seems to be a correlation with the symmetry.; 5/19/24, 8:33 AM
Scott Patton said...: "...Bertrand Russell, of all people, predicting the effects of the welfare state on male & female behavior."; 5/19/24, 8:39 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Destruction of a Pristine Forest?
No Problem!!

https://x.com/Oscarelblue/status/1755514845661900880; 5/19/24, 8:56 AM
Candide said...: So Serene; 5/19/24, 9:45 AM
Michael McNeil said...: While we're talking about ways that giant volcanoes (and other geologic features) can destroy themselves, one might point to space activist Robert Zimmerman in his Behind the Black blog who put up a post the other day about long-fall-out landslides (or sturzstroms)—on Mars, in this particular case, resulting from the collapse of a long section of a martian crater wall (which likely occurred ages ago but was recently photographed in detail by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter).

Those kind of long-fall-out landslides (or sturzstroms) are pretty amazing, not to speak of disconcerting; I remember a memorable (fictional) recounting of such an event in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (if I recall correctly which of his trilogy it's in)—but they also occur on earth (+ other planets, the moon, moons, and even apparently on tiny Phobos).

Here on earth, there's supposed to be a relatively recent such occurrence, which can be visited (though I never have), near Mount Lassen (in its National Park) in Northern California. But closer to (my) home (Siskiyou County in far-northern California), Mount Shasta—at 14,179 ft. (4,322 meters), tallest and bulkiest “stratovolcano” in the volcanic Cascade Range (stretching from [that same Mount Lassen in] Northern California up the Northwest Coast into British Columbia, Canada)—provides a near-at-hand, eye-opening exemplar, though not so dramatically recent and well-preserved.

As it happened, Mount Shasta's previous incarnation as a mountain—rather than blowing itself sky-high, as did (e.g.) Mount Mazama (at what's now known as “Crater Lake”), Oregon—instead, some 150,000 years back (i.e., within the lifespan of our own species, though there were no humans in North America at the time), the precursor-Mt. Shasta stratovolcano simply collapsed, producing the kind of long-fall-out landslide that we're talking about.

As it happens, 30 or so miles northwest of Mt. Shasta lies the county seat, Yreka (pronounced “Why-Ree’-ka”—i.e., the Shasta Indians' name for what we call Mount Shasta). The precursor-Mt. Shasta's collapsing landslide didn't quite reach to Yreka's present location—the slide diverted north before it got there—but in all it traveled some 40 miles [64 km], nearly reaching (California's 3rd largest river) the Klamath. As a result, all along the Shasta Valley north and west of the modern Mt. Shasta (traversed by Interstate-5 for sight-seers) one finds odd-looking, so-called “hummocky terrain” resulting from the great slide 150 millennia ago. (While almost the entire modern Mt. Shasta edifice has rebuilt itself since.)

Beyond that, from near Yreka, or to the north closer to the Klamath, (the present) Mt. Shasta doesn't loom overhead or protrude far above the horizon; rather—but while still wholly dramatic as a (now) snow-drenched, (always) glaciated, mountain—it's definitely way over there, next to the horizon, compared with lower, nearby mountains. It's incredible to me that one could stand in or near those locations, watching the mountain collapse in the distance (seemingly safe where you are), but actually—unless one takes prompt action to get to higher or protected ground—the landslide would thereupon reach all the way up to and sweep over one, perhaps half an hour later. (Sturzstroms are kind of like tsunamis in this regard.); 5/19/24, 9:58 AM