Surging surge

News blues

Omicron – forecast as “milder” – is pushing the US to the brink of collapse:

Dire shortages as U.S. nears record for COVID-19 hospitalizations But it may get much worse. Already struggling hospitals could house about 300,000 covid patients later this month if models, which even researchers say are difficult to forecast, are correct.

Read “U.S. breaks record with more than 145,000 covid-19 hospitalizations” >>

Additionally,

The United States surpassed its record for covid-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday [January 10], with no end in sight to skyrocketing case loads, falling staff levels and the struggles of a medical system trying to provide care amid an unprecedented surge of the coronavirus.
[January 10’s] total of 145,982 people in U.S. hospitals with covid-19, which includes 4,462 children, passed the record of 142,273 set on Jan. 14, 2021, during the previous peak of the pandemic in this country.
But the highly transmissible omicron variant threatens to obliterate that benchmark. If models of omicron’s spread prove accurate — even the researchers who produce them admit forecasts are difficult during a pandemic — current numbers may seem small in just a few weeks. Disease modelers are predicting total hospitalizations in the 275,000 to 300,000 range when the peak is reached, probably later this month.

Read more >>

It’s not just the US. World Healthy Organization suggests more than half of Europe could be infected in next 2 months >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

“One of the hardest things to grasp about the climate crisis is the connectedness of all things.” Add to that, the interconnectedness of biomes, ecosystems, and environments that, out of balance, lead to pandemics such as this coronavirus. We still have very little idea of the genesis of this virus. We do, however, know far more about what we can expect if we do not address environmental imbalance. Resistance to address these real issues is endemic. Take what we know about burning coal and the roots of climate change.
Senator Joe Manchin, West Virginia, aka King Coal, represents a powerful person bought and paid for by Big Coal. With Manchin’s help the dying coal industry is pulling one final heist — and you and I and our planet may pay the price >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Hunkered down from assorted coronavirus variants, socially distancing from potential human “vectors” - plus dealing with cold winter, I’ve delved into many – oh, let’s call them – obsessions.
Reading? ✔
Always a reader. My online library tracker, Reading Insights, states I’ve read every day for 181 weeks.
Baking? ✔
Rediscovered baking. I make my own bread. I cook. I even gather online recipes for future tasting treats. I’ve watched most episodes of the Great Baking Shows - British, and Kiwi, and Canadian….
iPhone’s battery charging graphs? ✔

I create “designs” from these graphs. I like capturing the “red zones” – below 20% charge remaining – as accent color. The intensity of this obsession ebbs and flows but hasn’t evaporated. As we see with this latest version. 
Exercise? ✔
Too cold to swim but encouraged by my Steps app, I reach my daily goal of 6,000 steps/2 miles each day. Overseen by the pitiless Steps app, it’s either walk or delete the app as I do not want a “forever” record of not walking on my phone.
My latest obsession?
Drum roll … American serial killers. ✔
Specifically, Netflix documentaries on American serial killers Ted Bundy, Wayne Williams, Henry Lee Lucas….
This trio was operating within the US when I first arrived in the country. I heard about them peripherally, but was busy adjusting to my new life, new country, new family, and new friends to pay attention. Registering serial killers was at the bottom of a long list of more important adjustments – and, as Goete suggests, I may not have had the imagination to cope with such activity.
Ponder Goete’s words: “Few people have the imagination for reality.”
Indeed.
Superficially “knowing about”/watching fictionalized versions of the violence and horror that humans inflict upon one another is different to focusing on this human psychological phenomenon. Different, too, from traveling in a war zone. (Been there, done that .)
TV, movies, and online media “neutralizes” horror by normalizing it, making it ubiquitous therefore superficial, merely entertaining background to TV’s main role: advertising and selling goods and services.
Today, soaked in the reality of these three serial killers’ actions, I’m re-evaluating Goete’s words and also allowing my imagination to grapple with the heretofore unthinkable: Civil war in the United States of America.
With lack of effective pushback from “leaders” in a position to pushback – the Department of Justice, the duly-elected current president, sane members of the US Congress, concerned (and sane) Americans – Trump/Trumpies ongoing insurrection and slow-moving but real coup endangers the country and We the People.
Information to imagine this reality:

• Christiane Amanpour interviews Prof Robert Pape and his new study shows the single biggest motivation for the Jan. 6 rioters  (17:40 mins)
• Prof Robert Pape’s report as Powerpoint pdf >> 
• Insurrectionist movement in U.S. is larger and more dangerous than expected, research finds >> 
• Prof Barbara Walter on likelihood of another US civil war?  (14:45 mins) If none of the others, do watch this interview!

***

New information on this mural first mentioned December 19, 2021 post. Back then I didn’t know who was the artist. I suspected, incorrectly, a local muralist I know as Michael who lives and paints in this island town. 

Rather, this Webster Gateway Mural – aka From Land and Sea, was created by Oakland muralist Dave Young Kim  and Reno, Nevada artist Erik Burke. 

It is 34 x 110 ft / 10.36 x 33.5 meters.

***

Bay Area, California:
Sunrise: 7:23am
Sunset: 5:10pm

Howick, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:11am
Sunset: 7:03pm
Still raining….

COP(out) 26

News blues…

RIP South Africa’s F. W. de Klerk

***

New political ads (and commentary): Joe Manchin (2:04 mins)
Meidas Touch: GOP Lies  (0:38 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

COP(out) 26. Another potential moment to address critical issues associated with climate change wasted. Disappointed – again - but not surprised. And, to top it off, “leading figures took to the floor for what they hoped would be the final time, to exhort each other to cooperate in the interests of people threatened by the climate crisis around the world”:

At stake is the world’s chance of holding global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the tougher of the two temperature goals in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and a “planetary boundary” beyond which the ravages of climate breakdown will rapidly become catastrophic and irreversible.
Read more >> 

We know what we face, but we cannot agree on who should make the most money from the current situation. (See Joe Manchin ad, above.)
Meanwhile… PPE and “pandemic-related plastic waste" continues to pour into our oceans:

Some 8 million metric tons of pandemic-related plastic waste has been created by 193 countries, about 26,000 tons of which is now in the world’s oceans, where it threatens to disrupt marine life and further pollute beaches….
The findings, by a group of researchers based in China and the United States, were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Concerns had been raised since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that there would be a boom in plastic pollution amid heightened use of personal protective equipment and rapid growth in online commerce. The study is among the first to quantify the scale of plastic waste linked to the health crisis.
The impact of the increase in plastic waste has been keenly felt by wildlife.
This according to a Dutch scientist-founded tracking project.

Read “The world created about 8 million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean” >>  

Coverage from the COP26 U.N. climate summit 

The UK’s chief scientist correctly states that “changes in behaviour are needed to tackle climate crisis.”
 Ah, the one thing most of us humans refuse to do – indeed, cannot figure out how to do: change our behaviour/behavior …

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Life in my corner of the universe is good – for now. There’s no question that my modest condo on the park and beach will suffer the ravages of rising sea levels in the future. Sure, it’ll take another decade or two, but coastal flooding is on its way. Plus side of that? The waterfowl and shorebirds, ground squirrels, opossums, raccoons, and other critters will do fine (well, as fine as they can, given the ongoing toxicity of garbage pouring into the environment).
I carried binoculars during yesterday’s beach walk. Crowds of brown and white pelicans, cormorants, gulls of all shapes and sizes, sanderlings, curlews, Marbled Godwits, bowditches, avocets, wood ducks, ruddy ducks, grebes, and the usual flocks of mallards and Canada geese; quite the scene for our feathered friends – and those who admire them.
And, yes, I regularly find PPE – particularly masks – littering beach walkways. And yes, I regularly pick up and dispose of these discards into provided plastic garbage bins, lined with more plastic. This to, y’know, ensure garbage is placed into the correct receptacle to ensure it’s placed into the formal stream of garbage before ending up in the informal Great Pacific Garbage Patch .

I’ve been commenting on our – humanity’s – unconscious attitude toward garbage for many years. Moreover, my sculpture series, “Heedlessness” address this attitude. Riffing from a line of Rumi's poetry - "Heedlessness is a pillar that sustains our world, my friend" - I researched the location and dispensation of our planet's largest landfills. The Great Garbage Patch appears to beat all human attempts to formalize landfill.
What to say?
We humans do our best. Unfortunately, as COP(out) 26 demonstrates, that’s just not good enough.