Well, it’s a pleasant day here at the Cottage. 86 degrees and sunny, with a bit of a breeze. Noonish. Of course the internet weather thingie says it’s Deathwave Heatstorm Olga or something. It also says, with a straight face, that it’s currently 93 degrees at my house, a temperature that it has never reached as long as I’ve lived here, and doubtless never will.
I had to go to the doctor’s office this morning for their yearly attempt to get me to take copious amounts of drugs I don’t need, and to get things inserted hither and yon into my person, and for them to get their yearly dose of nope. The nurse asked me if it was “brutal” outside. It was 9 AM, and about 73 degrees. The teevee and the intertunnel have had many deleterious effects, but none so prominent in my mind right now than the way they goad their audiences into believing any nice weather is bad news. Yes, it’s warm-ish in Maine in mid-June. Something must be done!
Me, I sit on the porch and survey my new parking kingdom and love it. And of course, wait for Archie to pick up the trash, and the internet to pick up the trash I’m about to leave on the intercurb. Enjoy.
The recent rapid decline in population growth—even pre-COVID—suggests that a population peak prior to 2050 is not outlandish, provided that current drivers continue to apply. Recent declines in fertility rates, together with a flattening age distribution of young folks, combine to set the stage for population peak and decline.
Most Malthusians believe there are too many people. I believe there are way too few useful people. What if we’re both right?
ASU study points to origin of cumulative culture in human evolution
“By 600,000 years ago or so, hominin populations started relying on unusually complex technologies, and we only see rapid increases in complexity after that time as well. Both of those findings match what we expect to see among hominins who rely on cumulative culture,” said Paige, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Missouri and an ASU PhD graduate.
Ooh. Knapped flints lead directly to atomic weapons. Or something.
Bolivia’s little-known tribal kingdom
There, hidden amid the tapirs, jaguars and spectacled bears that call the Yungas home is a remarkable community that has remained largely unrecognised by the outside world for nearly 200 years: the Kingdom of the Afro-Bolivians – the spiritual capital of thousands of Bolivians of African descent and one of the last kingdoms left in the Americas.
It’s a real kingdom. The king grows coca and keeps his crown in a cardboard cookie box. Someday maybe he could upgrade to a Burger King crown.
In a significant breakthrough in sustainable materials science, researchers have developed a plant-based leather alternative using pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) and natural rubber (NR). This eco-friendly material promises to revolutionize the leather industry with its impressive strength and sustainability.
“Sustainable.” Hmm. In some alternate universe than mine, we’re going to be running out of cows soon. Oh well. Say, that sounds swell and all, but will I be able to purchase rich, Corinthian PALF? That’s bound to be the good stuff.
EV startup Fisker files for bankruptcy, aims to sell assets
The hyper-competitive EV market has seen several companies, including Proterra, Lordstown and Electric Last Mile Solutions, file for bankruptcy in the past two years as they grappled with weakening demand, fundraising hurdles and operational challenges from global supply chain issues.
Over the winter holidays, we went to visit relatives. They had regular teevee playing in their house the whole time. I hadn’t seen regular teevee, or commercials, for many years. I was mystified to see three or four car company commercials in a row, none of which I’d ever heard of. If I’d stayed away another year, I could have gone my whole life without hearing about any of them, I guess. Maybe they would have been more “sustainable” if they had rich, Corinthian PALF seats.
Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time
By now, you probably know that plastic recycling is a scam. If not, this white paper lays out the case in devastating detail. To summarise, amid calls to reduce plastic garbage in the 1970s and ’80s, the petrochemical industry put forth recycling as a red herring to create the appearance of a solution while it continued to make as much plastic as it pleased. Multiple paper trails indicate that industry leaders knew from the start that recycling could never work at scale. And indeed, it hasn’t. Only about nine percent of plastic worldwide gets recycled, and the US manages only about six percent.
Fourteen years ago, I told the intertunnel exactly that, and recycling fans just about came at me with knives. By the way, six percent sounds high to my ears.
Tolkien memorial unveiled at author’s college
A memorial to The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien has been unveiled at the University of Oxford college where he used to teach.
The bronze sculpture, created by sculptor Tim Tolkien, the writer’s grand-nephew, was revealed at Pembroke College.
There’s a picture of the bronze memorial sculpture. It’s evident that Tim Tolkien was hired for his amazing grand-nephew skills.
Unskilled and unaware: second-order judgments increase with miscalibration for low performers
Researchers proposed that the same knowledge and skills needed for performing well in a test are also required for accurately evaluating one’s performance. Thus, when people lack knowledge about a topic they are tested on, they perform poorly and do not know they did so.
In the distant past, I’ve called a person into my office to fire them for cause, and they came in and asked me for a raise before I could say anything. So, yeah.
Have a good Trash Tuesday, everyone. And don’t forget to recycle! I’ve been assured it’s sustainable.
6 Responses
I’ve been sustainably recycling the same jokes for decades. That’s probably the hot air that’s seeped up north to Maine, ’cause we have a surplus here in Texas.
Hmmph…it’s currently 45°F here in NW Wyoming this evening, heading down to a guesstimated low of 35°F tomorrow morning. We’re hoping that the tomatoes that we held off on planting until last week don’t get hit with a frost. We should have known better, but in our area there’s been snow at least once in every month of the year. You just gotta roll the dice.
On t’other hand it’s supposed to be in the mid-90’s by the end of the week so we’ve got that going for us. After everything wilts from the frost they can then burn up in the sun. At least we don’t have squirrels here; that ecological niche of “things that eat everything you’d like to keep” is fully occupied by the hoofed rats, aka “mule deer”.
We’re in the city limits and we can’t reasonably discharge firearms. so if you see a headline something like, “Deranged WY Man Kills Deer with Sharpened Dead Tomato Vine” you can say you saw it coming.
“continued to make as much plastic as it pleased”
No, they made as much plastic as their customers wanted to buy. Somebody has to pay for it, or they stop. If you stop buying it, they’ll stop making it.
(get down off soapbox)
That shoulda been “gets down off soapbox”.
Don’t mean to be pushy.
Hi Blackwing:
Here in western MT we are sharing your same weather patterns. Rain yesterday with a small amount of snow on peaks. HOWEVER, we are looking at a devastatingly dry summer. Our irrigators are already shutting down. We are currently at 1500CFS but should be at 4,000CFS for this time of year. We have NO snowpack. We started keeping records in 1899, and this is the lowest it has been at this time of the year since then. It is so strange not to see snowpack in the higher elevations. OTH–Glacier park on the other side of the divide is still deep in snow, or at least it was last week. Glacier is only about 1.5 hours drive from us! It is beautiful clear and sunny today. We expect 90 degrees in two days! That’s up from low 60’s yesterday! With regard to planting tomatoes–you know better! Never before June 15! We did the same thing and they are gone!
Anne:
We got lucky…the back deck thermometer said 34°F the next morning, and while there was frost on the roofs in the neighborhood, none of it showed up on the plants or the grass. Tomatoes came through just fine along with the peppers and cukes.
Funny, but we had a couple of big snowstorms this winter that dumped a load on us, and this spring the rains we had down low came as snow up above. The big reservoir in Park County (the Buffalo Bill) is pretty high the last time I saw it, and they’re still dumping 2,500 CFS into the Shoshone in anticipation of more snowmelt. Since our water comes from the South Fork of the Shoshone, that’s good news for our raw water irrigation system.