The data center next door.

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A rosy prediction: Unhealthy. Up from Very Unhealthy.

In the maroon zone.

ADDED: "Live Updates: Wildfire Smoke Pushes Air Quality to Dangerous Levels for Millions/Dense smoke from Canadian wildfires is choking a vast stretch of the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Officials encouraged residents, including in New York, to stay indoors" (NYT): "As wildfires rage in Ontario, driving a haze of smoke over New York and other parts of the United States, officials in the Canadian province are bracing for a potential escalation and widespread community evacuations. Roughly 135 active wildfires were burning across northwestern Ontario as of Wednesday night, with more than half a dozen new fires reported late that evening...."

"Hiking in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, the one and only time he dropped acid... Mr. Cunningham peered down at the town of Silverton and was overcome by the feeling..."

"... that 'cars were the boss and people were the servants of the cars.' In the 1970s, he had been known for wearing a mask around the Bay Area, breathing with an oxygen tank to protect his lungs from air polluted by cars. Other machines could also drive him to distraction. He and Ms. Phelan, who married in 1988, regularly slept in what was essentially a treehouse outside their home in Fairfax, Calif., near San Anselmo — for the fresh air and the nightly respite from the plugged-in world of cellphones, fax machines, televisions and computers...."

From "Charlie Cunningham, Mountain Bike Innovator, Dies at 77/In the late 1970s, he built what is considered the first off-road bicycle with a frame that was aluminum rather than steel, one of his many inventions" (NYT).

"Fireworks release tiny particles that can irritate lungs and trigger asthma attacks, along with gases like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide..."

"... and sulfur dioxide and metals including aluminum, manganese and cadmium, according to the American Lung Association. Even Freedom 250, the Trump-backed group that helped organize the event, acknowledged on its website that 'air quality will decline' and visibility 'may become compromised.' It advised children and older people to avoid extended time outdoors and advised residents to keep windows closed and to use air filters. 'It’s probably going to be incredibly hot and adding a firework show is just going to compound the air quality that’s already destined to be poor,' said Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician.... He encouraged people with respiratory conditions like asthma to stay indoors and watch the spectacle on TV. 'Sometimes we need to just be mindful of safety versus grandiosity'.... Dogs tremble. They drool. They try to hide by cramming themselves into spaces that are too small. They have accidents indoors and tear up clothes or furniture...."

From "Bombs Bursting in Air Means Hours of Smoke and Confused Dogs in D.C./Organizers want the July 4 fireworks in the nation’s capital to break the world record. But the fun will also come with air pollution and possibly headaches for pet owners and zoo keepers" (NYT).

Pattie Gonia is making it hard for Patagonia to defend its trademark.

Full Instagram video here.

Read the comments over there and check out the NYT article, "Patagonia Is Suing Pattie Gonia Over Trademark Infringement: What to Know/The outdoor apparel company says the drag queen and environmentalist is using its name for commercial purposes. She’s ready to go to court" (gift link).

Mx. Gonia... said the company was trying to take away their name permanently and “erase an activist”.... Mx. Gonia said the timing of Patagonia’s lawsuit, “at the height of anti-LGBTQ politics and attacks,” was purposeful. “They looked at this political moment and thought they could pull this off without a pushback,” she said.

By the way, I think the NYT is getting the pronoun wrong when it writes "She's ready to go to court." I'm seeing this in Outside: "My name is Wyn Wiley, but you might know me as Pattie Gonia, Patricia Gonia, if ya nasty. I’m a drag queen, I’m an environmentalist, and I’m a professional gay person. As Wyn my pronouns are he/they and in drag, my pronouns as Pattie are she/they."

You might think the easiest solution is to use "they," but in that headline, "They're ready to go to court" would be read as referring to Patagonia. Patagonia has already filed suit. The caption on the court papers, I believe, is Patagonia, Inc. v. Entrepreneur Enterprises, Inc. (doing business as Pattie Gonia Productions) and Wyn Wiley (individually, as the owner/founder). I think the person "ready to go to court" is Wiley, so it should say "He's ready to go to court."

Paxton wins and gives us a dose of his comedy stylings.

Ken Paxton just put on a 30-second comedy routine for his audience, as he debuted his favorite nicknames for his radical Democrat opponent, James Talarico.

The crowd was loving every second of this!

PAXTON: “My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever… pic.twitter.com/kvEtsoyKmY

— Overton (@overton_news) May 27, 2026

I know some people seem to think that's hilarious. I don't see the value of kicking someone around for being a vegan. You'll say but Althouse is not a Texan. I sort of am though.

AND: Paxton's satirizing of Talarico doesn't work on me, but Talarico just being Talarico strikes me as hilarious:

James Talarico: "I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign. We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses." #TXsenpic.twitter.com/SkZZ05IXMj

— Lone Star Liberty PAC (@LoneStar_PAC) May 27, 2026

"In 2025, more than 100 dams were dismantled in 30 states, reconnecting around 4,900 miles of waterways...."

"The resulting free-flowing waterways are healthier, cooler and less prone to algal blooms, and serve as vital habitat for migratory fish and other aquatic life. They’re also safer.... While dams that are critical for flood regulation, water storage or irrigation must stay in place, many no longer serve their original purpose and are at risk of collapse.... The National Inventory of Dams, compiled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, lists about 92,000 dams.... But, according to the National Aquatic Barrier Inventory, there are hundreds of thousands of smaller and unregulated structures that block waterways. The majority were built to create swimming and fishing holes or reservoirs for water supplies, or to generate power and irrigate farm fields.... Low-head dams, which are designed to have water flow over them, create a recirculating current downstream that can trap people and debris. They’re known as 'drowning machines'.... 'There’s just so many of these deadbeat dams on the landscape.'..."

I'm reading "America the Undammed/More miles of the country’s rivers were reconnected last year thanks to dam removals than at any other time in history" (NYT).

And I noticed this, from a few years ago: "Dams like the one that killed Anna Last are 'drowning machines'" (Knox News). There's a good diagram at the link, showing the treacherous water flow, and here's part of the explanation:

"Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts."

"Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast. Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric...."

I'm reading "As Oil Prices Stay High, China Doubles Down on Wind Power/An industrial policy of subsidies and import restrictions laid the foundations for China to become almost as dominant in wind turbines as in solar panels" (NYT).

Do you wish we were more dominant in wind power, with more hilltops are dotted with wind turbines? Do we want long rows spanning many miles? 

"Ukraine is intensifying drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, hitting a key Black Sea refinery four times in two weeks and setting off a days-long carcinogenic blaze..."

"... that environmentalists say represents one of the country’s worst ecological disasters since the fall of the Soviet Union. A plume of black acrid smoke once again rose over Russia’s Black Sea city of Tuapse on Friday after Ukraine struck the refinery and oil terminal there overnight, the fourth in a spate of attacks that have also caused oily droplets of 'black rain' to fall on residents and contaminated more than 30 miles of coastline as an oil slick spread...."

From "Poisonous black rain falls in Russia as Ukraine strikes oil facilities/Residents of Tuapse, on the Black Sea, complained of an inadequate government response and coverup of what they say is a huge environmental and health disaster" (WaPo).

"Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis — but that doesn’t mean they grow better when there’s more carbon in the air, scientists say."

"A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. 'As a scientist, it’s really interesting,' said Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey, published in November. 'As a person … you don’t want to see such a shift, because it’s so negative.' For the past several years, ter Haar and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2.... Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels — and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million...."

From "Carbon pollution is making food less nutritious" (WaPo). That's a gift link, so you can figure out the science and whether this is a case of lying with statistics.

It occurs to me that percentages of nutrients would change if plants just contain more water, but a plant composed of more water might be more appetizing, so just eat a bit more of it. I'm always suspicious of articles that stir up climate-change anxiety.

"In 2022, a group of union members asked the Sierra Club to 'follow [its] values of antiracism and justice' and cancel sightseeing trips it operated in Israel...."

"'Palestine is an environmental issue from our standpoint,' Erica Dodt, the president of the Progressive Workers’ Union, which includes Sierra Club employees, said in an interview. 'People are a huge part of our environment.'... Internally, the club’s commitment to a progressive workplace curdled into a culture of allegations and investigations.... Delia Malone, an ecologist and volunteer for the club’s Colorado chapter, said she heard from attorneys hired by the Sierra Club, seeking to interview her as part of an investigation against her. 'I said, "What’s the claim, and who made the claim?" And they said, "We can’t tell you that,"' Ms. Malone said. Ms. Malone thought that someone else in the chapter had filed a complaint. She recalled an incident when a club staff member had scolded her for saying that the club should lobby Colorado’s legislature for more protections for wolves. 'One of the staff said, "That’s fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?"' Ms. Malone said...."

From "The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart. The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration" (NYT).

"Blazes in these areas consume, in addition to brush and undergrowth, all sorts of manufactured materials: lead paint and piping, lithium batteries and computers..."

"... cleaning solutions and artificial fibers, automobiles and electric wires. Soil samples collected from the Palisades and Altadena have revealed the presence of heavy metals and other toxic elements, including arsenic, lead and mercury. If not properly remediated, such contamination can linger, with potential effects including not only cancer but also damage to the brain and nervous system, especially in children under 3.... For all the visible damage to Altadena and the Palisades, in other words, there is a more insidious set of dangers, both in the homes and structures left undamaged and throughout the broader region. Even after the January fires stopped burning, wind distributed toxic smoke and ash across much of Los Angeles County, before blowing them out to the Pacific by way of Long Beach...."

Writes David L. Ulin, a USC English professor who wrote a book called "Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles," in "Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now" (NYT).

"Buying a cemetery plot where I can have a green burial, on the other hand, proved to be surprisingly affordable and will allow my body, once no longer in use..."

"... to decompose as quickly and as naturally as possible, with minimal environmental damage. Bonus: If my descendants ever care to visit, my grave will be in a beloved place, where my daughter has come nearly every summer of her life. 'Do you see a lot of interest in green burials?' I asked the friendly town cemetery commissioner who was showing me around. 'I don’t think we’ve had a traditional burial in two years,' he said. 'It’s all green.'"

From "When I Go, I’m Going Green More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable" (NYT).

"Have you noticed that trump is one of the very few presidents who does not have any kind of pet? I would sooner get rid of those folks than the cats and dogs. Absurd."

A comment on the NYT article, "We Love Our Dogs and Cats. But Are They Bad for the Environment? Some pets have wide-ranging effects on the planet. Here’s how to lessen them."

In the comments, everything always gets around to Trump. 

From the article: "Gregory Okin, a geographer at the University of California, Los Angeles, calculated in a 2017 study that the estimated 163 million cats and dogs in the United States consume a whopping quarter of the country’s animal-derived calories.

The NYT stirs up empathy for the man who said "It truly feels we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge."

In "An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life/Brent Efron’s 'boring' Tinder date wanted to hear all about his work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so Mr. Efron talked. If only he’d seen the hidden camera."

They matched on Tinder shortly after the November presidential election, shared their mutual disappointment about Donald J. Trump’s victory and agreed to meet for a drink. Sitting at a table at Licht Cafe, a bar on Washington’s U Street corridor, Brent Efron and his date, Brady, talked a bit about home and hobbies. But Brady — or at least that’s the name he used — repeatedly steered the conversation back to Mr. Efron’s job at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It was a boring date,” Mr. Efron, 29, recalled. “He just wanted to talk about work.”...

"The windmills are killing our country, by the way. The fields are littered with them. Junk. They get older and rusty and get bad...."

"It's the greatest scam in history. The most expensive energy you can buy. They are ugly. A friend of mine comes from Minnesota... He said it's unbelievable what happened.... The most beautiful fields.... I was so looking forward to seeing them again... and they had windmills all over them. These horrible structures.... these ugly horrible things.... I looked at this field that was one of the most beautiful places in my own mind and imagination. It's littered with this garbage. It looked like a junkyard, he said. Then you get different manufacturers, and [the windmills] don't look alike. And they're not painted alike. Different colors. Even if they're white, one's a beige-y white, one's a darker white, one's a lighter white. And they start to rust after four or five years. And then they start to wear out. And nobody takes them because you're not allowed to bury the props... There's a certain type of fiber, and if it goes the ground, we are all going to die. What bullshit this is! Okay?... What they do is leave them up.... Windmills all over the place. Tall ones, short ones, dead ones, they're all dead. Some are hanging over by a thread...."

Said Trump today.

 

You may not like Trump's aesthetics all the time. We were just talking about all the gold leaf in the Oval Office. But he is attentive to the details of the visual world. He's an aesthete. What kind of man cares that the windmills are not painted alike even if they are all white because one's a beige-y white, one's a darker white, one's a lighter white? He not only cares, he will calmly detail the problem of shades of white as if you are expected to notice the variations and become unsettled by them as he is.

You are expected to see it as part of what should concern the President of the United States, this discontinuity of the whiteness of windmills.

I like this about him. I think it matters how things look. These places that are beautiful in our "mind and imagination" need to be kept beautiful. Anyone who modifies the landscape owes us all a duty to take care of this beauty. I don't think this comes naturally to most politicians, but it's something that Trump slowed down to contemplate out loud. 

"Having spent two years in a mild hysteria over tap water, I no longer have my old, unthinking faith in it. Sometimes I miss that naïveté."

"But in its place, I have something better. The whole ordeal encouraged me to ask questions and engage others in dialogue instead of trafficking in superstition — to make up my own mind. Instead of simply relying on the warnings of others, I did my own research, learning that tap water is subject to more regulation than bottled water; the most recent survey of L.A. tap water showed it to be compliant with the Environmental Protection Agency’s measures.... Drinking tap water feels to me like a kind of civic duty too, because it means consuming the public resource that an ostensibly well-intentioned government system — and not a for-profit bottled-water company’s marketing firm — has worked hard to offer its citizens....."

Writes A. Cerisse Cohen, in "The Unparalleled Daily Miracle of Tap Water/Paying closer attention to what was coming out of my faucet changed the way I see the world" (NYT).

I drink tap water, and I always have. 

"I’ve been wanting to come for weeks and weeks and weeks. I’m excited that the spring is happening and she’s really activating the girls to touch some grass — literally — and get outside."

Said Lydia Burns, a model, quoted in "These New Yorkers Are Touching Grass" (NYT).

I'm a devotee of ritualistic nature walks myself, but I still laughed at:

This Sunday, at 10:30 a.m. sharp, a group of stylish, mostly 30-something New Yorkers gathered at the Hare Krishna Tree in the center of Tompkins Square Park. Despite a few complaints of hangovers, they had made it there on time for a plant and history tour of the park led by Olivia Rose, who handed out tote bags and forest green zines she had made for the occasion....

I loved the video snippet of the stylish, youngish folk walking quite slowly, each holding a disposable plastic cup of something brownish and milky. Plastic cups, tote bags, zines — zines! — nature is so great.

Here's the Wikipedia article on Tompkins Square Park, where I learned that the park is the namesake of Daniel D. Tompkins, who was once Vice President of the United States.

"The most extreme end of the promortalism movement is 'Efilism,'which takes its name from 'life' spelt backward..."

"... and argues that all sentient life should be extinguished to prevent suffering. Gary Mosher... one of its most prominent proponents... endorses violence towards women, even claiming he will murder any woman he gets pregnant who refuses an abortion. 'The end goal is for the truth [Efilism] to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilising this planet of the disease of life,' he wrote in an online manifesto. But after the IVF clinic in Palm Springs was bombed, he distanced himself from the violence. 'The fact is that there’s people in the world who are lonely, and some that are crazy, and this, that and the other thing,' he said on [YouTube]. 'They have some reason to be despondent, and they have low investment in their existence, and those are dangerous people.'... [I]t is not hard to find members recommending various methods for killing oneself, or using the term 'CTB' — or catch the bus — for suicide...."

From "Inside the ‘strangest terrorist movement the US has ever seen’/Guy Bartkus tried to destroy an IVF clinic to save the embryos the pain of existence. Alarmingly for national security, his ‘promortalist’ philosophy does not die with him" (London Times).