Category: linkdump

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UT professor of education Angela Valenzuela (website) rails about how UT-Austin (the flagship public university in Texas) is applying pressure on academic departments to eliminate diversity buzzwords from its websites and research:

All this should alarm Texas taxpayers whose hard-earned money helps fund higher education and whose children attend our universities. As one of Texas’s two flagship institutions, alongside Texas A&M, these actions mark a troubling decline and a predictable loss of reputation that will be challenging to reverse if this agenda continues to gain traction. We cannot allow the Monopoly Tycoons who are ideologically vested in this takeover to continue trampling over students’ free speech and faculty’s academic freedom.

Ironically, in allegedly wanting to minimize so-called bias in the university curriculum, anti-DEI censorship is itself a demonstration of bias, against Latinos and Latinas and others. In education, a subject that I teach, one can never stand outside of either bias or the politics of education as the entire enterprise is inherently subjective, comprised of value judgments, ethical and moral dilemmas, sociocultural factors, power dynamics, and so on. 

Mark Joseph Stern does a brilliant dissection of Aileen Cannon’s overstepping of judicial authority when blocking the Special Counsel report. As outrageous as it is, I have a feelilng that Trump will nominate her to an appeals court. By the way I’m a big fan of Amicus podcast with Dahlia Lithwick.

Here’s a terrifying story (YT) by actor James Woods about the panic that ensued while he was trying to evacuate the LA fire.

A climate scientist & former LA resident laments the toll that climate change is taking:

Here’s a fun panel discussion of open source, GPL and how WordPress got started. (YT) I think I mentioned already that I was one of the earliest adopters of WordPress (back in its b2/cafelog days), and by sheer coincidence, ran into Matt at a local geek meeting in 2003 after I installed it. (My mind was blown that this UH student was the brains behind it). BTW, I recently have renewed my WP enthusiasm after deploying 2 WP sites with 2023 and 2025 themes using the block editor. Semi-related: Photomatt dissects a negative article written about him and his company.

Speaking of WordPress, I filed a bug about the 2025 theme. Even though the support thread I raised did not resolve it, eventually someone came along and proposed a workaround.

I am feeling really good working with the bundled WordPress themes. I totally redid my Personville Press home page and the book page template. At first glance, these web pages look pretty unremarkable, but they are mobile-friendly, and doing that with two columns is no easy feat. I had been putting off that home page upgrade forever — I even put together a single static page a year ago which I thought was a massive improvement. But I was spending way too much time making web pages and had to admit that despite my commitment to ebook quality, the website looked like crap. That said, just having a good web page for a book isn’t enough to drive up sales.

Part of the problem is that I wanted a more sophisticated content management system with content types. (I had been playing with Drupal, etc). But that seemed a lot of trouble, and eventually I just opted for the convenience of WordPress. Learning how to design web pages with the default themes was a major accomplishment. A lot of people pick a theme for their website and then find themselves locked into a set of plugins which limit your ability to upgrade and extend.

Recently I’ve been enjoying Big Girls Blouse, a wacky Australian comedy show from the 1990s starring the women who made the great Kath & Kim in the 2000s. Here’s Patty Stacker (a 60s feminist parody), The End, Gay Olympics, Medieval Girls,

Gosh, I miss blogging. This is not really blogging — just linkdumps which sometimes were already on social media, but occasionally I spit out something substantial. I’m busy with family affairs or for certain periods my publishing projects. Keeping up a weblog is something I do mostly out of obligation, but out of passion.

Candid camera about how students react to a gorgeous teacher.

POLITICAL LYING: This bald-faced lie — and Trump’s personal defense of it — reveal a lot about the contempt these guys have for the American people.

“A President cannot eliminate an appropriated federal agency by executive order. That’s what a despot – who wants to steal the taxpayers money to enrich his billionaire cabal – does.” (SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY, on Trump’s recent decision to put the USAID website offline and presumably to gut it).

QUOTE: “I lived in Hungary for a long time. I also lived in Russia for a long time. And this is the third time I’ve ridden this escalator from democracy into someplace very dark. And unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is so similar to what happened in Russia and particularly to what happened in Hungary. And part of the reason why it’s so alarming is that Americans have this idea that when democracy fails, it’s going to fail with tanks in the streets, it’s going to fail with some radical rupture, it’s going to fail with normal ceasing to be normal. And when you look at how autocracy works these days and the rest of the world, it almost always comes in on the backs of a free and fair election. So somebody who is called a populist …. charismatic leaders who promise to shake things up — they get elected often fair and square. The first time you go back and you look at the election monitor’s reports from when Hugo Chavez was elected in Venezuela or when Vladimir Putin was elected the first time in Russia, or when Viktor Orban was elected the first time in Hungary. The election monitors all said, free and fair election, no problem. And then as soon as these guys come to power, they start to just take over and disable all of the checks on executive power. And they do it while their cover story is a lot of inflammatory rhetoric that causes pain to people. So now we’re seeing immigration, we’re seeing attacks on people with gender fluidity, we’re seeing attacks on affirmative action, we’re seeing attacks across the board on vulnerable groups and people who have really never been treated equally. But behind the scenes, what’s that disguising? This was also true in Hungary, it was true in Venezuela, it was true in Turkey. It’s in all these places, inflammatory rhetoric disguises the real work of autocracy. And what’s the real work of autocracy? Removing all checks on executive power. And a lot of that is happening in a very unsexy way in laws that are buried deep beneath the surface that only a technical lawyer could love. And that’s where you start to see chipping away at every single constraint on what the president can do.” (PRINCETON SOCIOLOGY & LAW PROFESSOR KIM LANE SCHEPPELE, ON YESTERDAY’S AMICUS PODCAST)

STUPID NEGOTIATIONS: (Quote) “There’s a school of thought that, in tangling with adversaries, it’s sometimes wise to seem unpredictable—to tip them off balance. But zigzagging has no upside in dealing with allies, especially when it comes to the partnership’s leader. Alliances depend crucially on steadiness and trust. Yet when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on two of America’s closest allies for no real reason (the Wall Street Journal editorial page deemed it “The Dumbest Trade War in History”), he stepped on the brink of violating the trilateral trade agreement that he himself had initiated and signed during his first time around in the White House. In other words, he was telling not just Canada and Mexico but every other country in the world, “Don’t believe anything the United States says, not even in writing.” (Fred Kaplan, Paywalled link)

READ-WRITE ACCESS. Despite Musk’s claims to the contrary, a business reporter quotes people who say that Musk’s employees in fact have read & write access to important Treasury Dept payment systems. Among the implications, 1)Musk and others have access to confidential personal information and financial records and 2)it makes it theoretically possible to create backdoors for hackers. The reporter Nathan Tankus has been providing ongoing coverage of this scandal.

Legendary comedy writer Merrill Markoe writes a semi-serious essay about being invited to a fancy meeting in 2019 and running into (of all people) Elon Musk. That encounter did not go well.

Here’s a good expose of the Trump Crypto Currency and how many people are getting fleeced (while Trump earns $100 million)

Apparently Elon Musk’s canard that some 150 year old Americans were receiving Social Security checks resulted from his programmers’ failure to understand the legacy COBOL code.

A roundup of the crazy stuff Republicans are doing that is crowded out by bigger crazy stuff. Interesting how the egomaniac who claims to want to enforce immigration law better does it by firing immigration judges — the very people who actually can do so. (more) Then, again, TCF wasn’t very adept at listening to judges.

PATHOLOGICAL LIES. I never ceased to be surprised at how often Trump lies about basic facts. Starting from the crazy lie that Obama wasn’t born in the US, the recent lies about Zelinsky and Ukraine fill me with horror. Call me naive, but is it unrealistic to expect that politicians should be held accountable for the lies that they tell and repeat. It is one thing to occasionally mistake or exaggerate a fact (as long as it is walked back later). It is quite another thing to buckle down and keep repeating the same lie in the hopes that voters can’t tell the difference.

NYT did a deep dive about Elon Musk’s claim that millions of people over 100 were collecting Social Security. SUMMARY: After SSA’s Inspector General unearthed that in 2023, they concluded that “almost none” of them were receiving Social Security payments, which is why the Agency argued that it wasn’t worth the expense to try to clean up information about people who largely died before the advent of electronic records. (NYT Gift Link)

ARTICLE ABOUT MY CELEBRITY CRUSH. I’ve been a rabid fan of the actress Parker Posey. Imagine my delight to find this very long profile about her. (NYT Gift Link). It is always a delight to discover that Parker Posey has a role in a TV show or movie. She was outstanding in The Clockwatchers and Daytrippers and Fay Grim. Parker Posey is known for her meltdowns; my fave is in the underrated Price Check. It’s nice seeing that she can play straight roles (like Thelma, Irrational Man, Columbus) and dramatic roles (Louie). Don’t forget her online sketch comedy (“Genie on Hard Times,” “Emmy Speech Master Class,” “Mary Phelps Jacob Invents the Modern Bra.”) I would love some way to watch her ill-fated sitcom “Return of Jezebel James.” Yes, I’m a rabid PP fan!

AP and UPI reporters were excluded from today’s White House press pool, but … a Russian state agency was included?! Is anyone really surprised that Trump is afraid of being around honest domestic reporters and yet perfectly comfortable around propaganda makers from a foreign adversary?

Jeez! What an asshole! (about Trump and Vance’s yelling at Zelinsky). If there’s any silver lining in this, it’s that Trump has completely discredited his ability to broker any kind of solution. Even honest conservatives in the USA will find this assholery hard to rationalize…

“THE HARDEST THING IN THIS WORLD IS TO LIVE IN IT.” If you are a BUFFY fan, you already know that actress Michelle Trachtenberg (1985-2025) had a role which was ontologically terrifying, but she played it with panache (and hilarity). Here’s her lovely dance number in the amazing “Once More with Feeling” musical episode. (YT)

That quote comes from what the Dawn character says after Buffy’s “show-stopping number” in the same episode (probably Joss Whedon wrote these words, but to have the Dawn character utter it really resonated at the time — and even more so today). I must admit being totally shocked when it became clear who the Dawn character turned out to be. Hope to have an opportunity to see Trachtenberg’s other appearances in her other grown-up roles before she passed.

Update: Turns out that Dawn’s line was repeating Buffy’s farewell line Buffy said to Dawn before Buffy’s “death.” The full quote is here: “Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles … tell Giles I figured it out. And, and I’m okay. And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world … is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.” I admit I have been listening and rewatching some of the songs from Once More with Feeling… All are brilliant, and it turns out that the wonderful actor who played the demon Sweet (Hinton Battle) passed away this year. I just love the song’s reprise later on.

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I am still convinced that Trump (and Musk and friends) will sell ALL their shares of DJT stock on election day (November 5) or the day after. We’ll see how right …or how wrong I was.

To my surprise and delight, here’s a link that allows you to view FB postings by your friends and nothing else! It seems to be in chronological order but does not include any postings by you.

LAUGHING WITH TREVOR NOAH. Noah is making the rounds on the talk show circuit to promote his new podcast. (YT)

UNFORTUNATE DEATHS: This week Pro Publica reported on 2 tragic cases of TX pregnant women who died unexpectedly after hospitals refused to provide adequate treatment for their life-threatening sepsis. Medical experts blame these deaths on the state’s abortion restrictions and the failure to provide better guidance on when doctors can intervene. “Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” commented one health law expert. Here’s the case of an 18 year old pregnant Houstonian who died because of hospitals refusing to get involved. Here’s the other Texas case. I’m sure there are much more.

BROAD CITY BROADS BRING COLBERT SOME BAGELS: The chicks who did the great “Broad City” sitcom let Stephen Colbert know about what’s cool and the secret to Rainbow Bagels. (YT)

ODD/AMUSING AMPHIBIAN DRAMA. You may already know about the viral 30 second vid showing a frog playing video game on a mobile phone (It’s great!). Here is a wonderful and compelling 9 minute video (YT) by a pet/aquarium freak named Dr. Plants about how he raised a frog for the specific purpose of teaching it how to play video games. I love this guy’s YouTube channel; it’s a new take on teaching people about the population of creatures outside our own.

I have many strong reactions to Trump’s near-landslide victory in Texas and nationally. (It might warrant a separate post). That said, my reactions are probably not that unique; you can probably find the same sentiments expressed elsewhere.

Here’s a collection of public statements by Trump to get revenge on his political enemies. I already knew many of the statements, but this list is incredibly long.

James Fallows on the election:

“This time, it was not a fluke…. This time we don’t have that distraction, or that consolation. The electorate of our country has had a good, clear, years-long look at Donald Trump. His braggadocio and his decline. His corruption and his vulgarity. His resentments and his threats. The warnings about what he would do from the most senior people who had ever worked with him, starting with his own vice president. And, with eyes wide open, with the evidence before them, most of our fellow-citizen voters decided: Bring him back…. “

I already mentioned it a few weeks ago, but I HIGHLY recommend Anne Applebaum‘s Autocracy in America podcast (which actually only has 5 episodes). Applebaum recently published AUTOCRACY, INC. and has spent a lot of time trying to imagine the unimaginable.

Here’s an NBC exit polls about the presidential election. Looks like older white males and Christians voted for Trump. Shit, even white male college graduates voted for Trump (50-47). 58% of Catholic voters, 61% of white Catholic voters,

Here’s an amazing story about two couples who do IVF and end up with the wrong baby .. and then discovering a few months later. Really makes you wonder how people would respond to such an unlikely and distressing event.

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BAD WITH MONEY. I realize that everybody is more focused on the (masterful) debate performance by Harris in exposing DJT’s empty cynical lies. But today I am more interested in how quickly the value of DJT’s scam stock will fall over the next week. I imagine that the kind of people who think DJT stock will retain its value are the same kind who believe that immigrants are stealing your pets or that Kamala Harris is a Marxist.

HORRAY FOR GANDER! There are many ways to remember 9/11 today, but let me mention the wonderful and heart-warming musical production “COME FROM AWAY” (streamable for free on Apple+) which tells the unconventional story of air travelers diverted to a small Canadian airport on that day because all American airports had been closed. The original cast were brilliant and entertaining, and the story itself so strange and funny that you would never think it could capture the chaos of that week. Yet it does so, and still manages to be entertaining. Here’s a reunion of the original cast singing a few of the songs (YT)

ALSO: It can be hard to find on streaming networks because of the boring title, but the defining documentary about that day is without a doubt “9/11: FIFTEEN YEARS LATER” (streamable on MAX) directed by and starring the Naudet brothers. The Naudet brothers were two French filmmakers in NYC to film a documentary about the life of their firefighters. They filmed almost everything about 9/11, including footage inside the Twin Towers after the planes had hit the building. Tastefully done and absolutely riveting! (The film is actually called “9/11”, but on MAX its title is “9/11: FIFTEEN YEARS LATER”)

Trump lost the debate because of epistemic closure.

Electoral-vote says that “Fundamentally, Trump’s strategy is to lie about everything on the assumption that his base doesn’t realize that he is lying. When a neutral moderator calls him out, Trump goes bonkers because that upsets his whole strategy.”

Matt Haughey notes on a mastadon post:

missed the debate so I watched an hour of clips from late night and political shows and realized I had to watch the actual debate in full.

Trump floods the zone with so much disinformation even MSNBC and The Daily Show can’t capture most of it.

Rewatching it, I was amazed at the unhinged things he said that no one even quoted last night because there were so many bigger absurd things he did.

She played him like a fiddle. It was great to see a lawyer draw a witness into self-incrimination.

FYI, I’m all over mastadon and haven’t visited Twitter more than once a month. The problem is, Mastadon still doesn’t have a lot of regular posters. Also I haven’t quite grasped how to quote people without being too self-promotional. But at least the people on Mastadon are honest, intelligent and not dominated by bots or shitpostings.

Here’s a funny/annoying/Australian comedy sketch Rolald Backison Verbal Assault System
(Love the fake Australian accent).

INSURER FRAUD IN FLORIDA. I was shocked to watch this 60 minutes report about how some insurance companies in Florida have been rewriting damage reports by insurance adjustors to significantly reduce the amount paid. It’s unclear how widespread this practice is in Florida — or anywhere else — but it points to the need to have better oversight — and perhaps have criminal as well as civil penalties. (YT)

Here’s an interesting and informative piece by Jonathan Alter about Carter’s presidency and last decade of charity work. “My mother [Lillian] went into the Peace Corps when she was 68 years old, my one sister [Gloria] is a motorcycle freak, my other sister [Ruth] is a holy roller evangelist, and my brother is running for president. I’m the only sane one in the whole damn family.” (Billy Carter in 1975)

Here’s a fun Halloween-themed illustration commissioned by the Democratic challenger in my congressional TX-22 district. Political issues are no laughing matter, but I’m glad to see a little levity. PS my current congressman Troy Nehls once called Trump the “greatest president we have had in our lifetimes.”(Newsmax, Aug 13, 2022) I looked up the artist Stefan Poag — he has lots of other wild drawings. Here’s a higher resolution version of that great political haunted house.

MUST READ. Progressive columnist Nick Kristof criticizes Biden for continuing to send weapons to Israel without conditions. QUOTE: “Biden’s failure to apply enough leverage — or perhaps even uphold American law — has damaged other interests the White House cares about, including support for Ukraine. Hypocrisy alerts go off in foreign capitals when American diplomats hail the ‘rules-based international order’ and simultaneously provide the bombs that destroy Gazan civilian infrastructure and induce starvation. ”

AUTOCRACY IN AMERICA podcast is an excellent look at how Trump and Company have been following the autocracy playbook from other countries. (The latest episode talks about how autocrats repurpose the word “freedom” to make it serve their purposes). Applebaum recently published AUTOCRACY, INC . which I’ve started recently.

SPREADING HATE: Quite apart from the fact that it is un-Christian and offensive to demonize and denigrate transgender people of all ages, GOP’s reliance on anti-transgender ads during this election campaign reveals just how intellectually vapid their political ideas are. Just to name a few off the top of my head Climate change, health care, economic growth, immigration reform and strengthening foreign alliances strike me as much more important to the American people than the specific nature of some people’s genitals.

Colbert did a great roundup of the political appearances of Harris and Trump. Pay special attention to the woman at the 9 minute 45 second mark (that’s destined to go viral, I’m sure). (YT)

On that same night, Colbert did a great sketch about youth slang. Yes, it drives me crazy too! (YT)

On Slate’s Amicus podcast, there’s an interview with Matthew Seligman, an election law expert about the various ways that bad actors could bring about a victory of their presidential candidate. Seligman has been talking about a conspiracy theory rampant on Fox News and other conservative outlets that illegal aliens will be stealing the November election.

Amazingly, this chart is already out of date; Texas just added 200,000 more voters to the voters roll in the last few weeks, making the total 18.6 million. (Source: Houston Chronicle/Off the Kuff)

23 Nobel-winning Economists Prefer Harris’s Economic Plan over Trump’s. ““While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we believe that, overall, Harris’ economic agenda will improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness and be vastly superior to the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump,”

Here’s a nice takedown of Project 2025 — in comic book form.

ODD/AMUSING AMPHIBIAN DRAMA. You may already know about the viral 30 second vid showing a frog playing video game on a mobile phone (It’s great!). Here is a wonderful and compelling 9 minute video by a pet/aquarium freak about how he raised a frog for the specific purpose of teaching it how to play video games. I love this guy’s YouTube channel; it’s a new take on teaching people about the population of creatures outside our own. (YT)

NO POLITICS ON FACEBOOK — WHY?! I realize that I’m more politically dialed in than most people, but I am struck by how rarely politics are mentioned on FB on the WEEK BEFORE A CRUCIAL NATIONAL ELECTION!! Instead I see ads and the usual “Facebook Slop” (random anonyously written articles that seems curiously targeted to my demographic). Contrast this with MASTADON (more of an academic/intellectual social media network) which brings my attention to lots of articles and opinions — and other cultural things posted by ACTUAL LIVING PEOPLE. As recently as 2 weeks ago, my FB feed was flooded with lots of political ads, but now it’s flooded with SEINFELD memes and random trivia about celebrities. Thanks, but no thanks.

RECOMMENDATION: LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (Netflix) is not a horror movie … or is it? It’s a mystifying movie about something strange. Outstanding cast, and it will keep you on your feet. I enjoyed watching this weird and unpredictable movie. Days later, I figured out a flaw in the plot which I won’t mention, but it’s still a great Halloween or (pre-Halloween) watch. P.S. Don’t watch the trailer — it’s better to be surprised!)

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN: I predict that Trump (and Musk and friends) will sell ALL their shares of DJT stock on election day (November 5) or the day after.

When I posted that remark about DJT stock on social media, I included this video (YT) which is a Precious Roy sketch from my favorite 1990s show Sifl & Olly (W). I compiled a YT Playlist of almost all the Precious Roy sketches. You’re welcome.

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This 6 minute report by NBC details the difficulties with obtaining homeowners’ insurance in Texas.

“I am a retired Command Sergeant Major in the Minnesota National Guard and, after years of firing artillery, I sustained severe inner ear damage. Because I have good health insurance provided through my employer, I was able to have surgery on my ear. As my ear healed, my hearing was gradually restored. One morning, several weeks after the surgery, I awoke to a sound I couldn’t identify. I asked my wife what I was hearing and she told me: ‘That’s your 4-year-old daughter Hope.’ You see, Hope wakes up singing every morning but I had never heard that sound until that day. I am running for Congress because I believe we as a country have a moral obligation to ensure that every father can hear his daughter sing, that every citizen receive the best care our medical community has to offer.” (TIM WALZ, 2006, radio ad when he first ran for Congress).

MY SECRET GUILTY PLEASURES: Whenever I want to relax, I confess I watch random clips compilation from Will & Grace. Outrageously fun…

Texas has recorded a death on its roadways — motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists — every day since Nov. 7, 2000, with an average of 12 deaths per day, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. In Houston, a lack of protected bike lanes and the crumbling sidewalks make cyclists and pedestrians more vulnerable. Some say road rage and fast driving has also contributed. (Source)

I officially retired from my illustrious JUST DANCE career 12 years ago (after being totally bested at the game by my niece Abby but I found this video of wacky Just Dance routines to be hilarious.

QUOTE: Texas has recorded a death on its roadways — motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists — every day since Nov. 7, 2000, with an average of 12 deaths per day, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. In Houston, a lack of protected bike lanes and the crumbling sidewalks make cyclists and pedestrians more vulnerable. Some say road rage and fast driving has also contributed. (washington POST)

This 6 minute report by NBC details the difficulties with obtaining homeowners’ insurance in Texas.

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If you’re looking for a great movie to watch on July 4th, try BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), the Oscar-winning drama about WW2 soldiers coming home to USA and finding that the society they remembered had changed. It’s a long old-fashioned story full of drama and heartbreak, but still great! FREE TO STREAM ON KANOPY, AMAZON PRIME, PEACOCK, HOOPLAH.

MOVIE RECOMMENDATION: “Problemista” (on MAX) is a surreal comedy about an El Salvadoran immigrant with dreams to design toys in NYC. While awaiting word on his internship (and work visa), he works for a crazy woman (played by Tilda Swinton!) trying to get her husband’s paintings at a major art gallery. It’s crazy and surprising and hilarious — stylistically it reminds me of AMELIE and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. Swinton will surely get an Oscar nomination for this one, and the writer/director/star Julio Torres is an amazing talent. Former SNL writer, he’s also done comedy specials and has two comedy series on MAX. I was laughing the whole time.

FLED TO AUSTIN! Just wanted to say that Mom and I survived the Houston hurricane. We live in Katy (West Houston), and Monday morning we were in the direct path of the hurricane. As it happens, it was somewhat bad for 5 hours, and then everything was fine. Weather was good and cool, no damage really. But power was still out – and unlikely to return for a while. Also, irritatingly, cell phone coverage was nonexistent – although a few miles away (I was later to learn), it worked perfectly. With little chance of electricity returning, we decided to visit my sister in Austin and to wait for power to come back. Frankly this hurricane was not that bad, and it’s astonishing that Houston (considered the energy capital of the world or at least the USA), can’t figure out how to make their electric grid more reliable for a hurricane nowhere near as bad as it could have been. 6-9 hours of no power – sure we can tolerate that during a weather event(barely). But when you talk about 1 or maybe 2 days – or who knows?! – I stop blaming the weather event and start blaming the political apparatus.

STRANDED DAY 2 IN AUSTIN. Killing time while waiting for electricity to be restored back home in Houston. Mom and I go out for breakfast … AGAIN! We went to the same place as yesterday, wearing shirts gifted to us by my sister Maureen (who had just returned from NY). Mom had French toast; I had an egg frittata and coffee. We spent 50% of the time complaining about Centerpoint Energy, 20% talking about the hot weather, 15% talking about Mom’s grandchildren, 10% talking about national politics and 5% talking about the other customers. Luckily we had time to snap this photo while Mom was talking to a native New Yorker who admitted that she was finally getting used to the hot Texas weather. Mom and I have been here for decades … and still have never gotten used to the high summer temperatures — (sigh!)

NETFLIX RECOMMENDATION: “Big Eyes” is a fascinating story based on the life of painter Margaret Keene who painted pictures of expressive children who had big eyes and how her husband ended up taking credit for her paintings and commercial success. Interesting plot and characters – and a terrific final scene. Also, topnotch acting by Amy Adams – who always excels. I was pleasantly surprised to find the movie directed by Tim Burton, and I was struck by the compositional beauty and radiant colors in almost every scene. Every scene of this movie could have been a painting. No spoilers, but I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that the real-life artist herself appeared in a scene near the beginning of the movie. She was the old woman sitting at a park bench relaxing….. and looking at nobody in particular.

Every time I watch this funny nutty song in the Popeye movie, I fall in love with Olive Oyl all over again. RIP Shelley Duvall. I haven’t seen all the things Duvall has done — but I wanted to mention the Faerie Tale Theater she started in the 1980s — where A list actors reenact satirical versions of fairy tales. It’s great fun for the entire family! By the way, HE NEEDS ME and other songs in the Popeye movie were written by the great Harry Nillson. Here’s another gem from the movie.

MOVIE RECOMMENDATION (Apple+ Only) TETRIS (2023) tells the crazy and entertaining story of the race by a game company to obtain a license for the Tetris videogame from the Soviet government in the 1980s right before Gorbachev lost power. The movie captured the uncertainty and chaos and deception of trying to do business in the late Soviet world and how suspiciously the Soviets viewed Western businesses (and vice versa). Actually a lot of the backstabbing occurred between the two Western companies competing to get an exclusive license. Never did I imagine that a movie about business negotiations would be so exciting, so sad and so hilarious.

STILL IN AUSTIN, STILL WAITING. 4 days have gone by since we left West Houston after losing power at the house. Still no electricity. I guess that power outages lasting 2-4 days has become the new normal..

THINK OF THE TREES: This comment (found on a longer blogpost about the power outage) offers a lot of insight about how managing trees properly can reduce the amount of power outages.

I’d like to offer you my husband Frank Thompson’s unique perspective as the owner of a tree service in NW Houston. (Interestingly, Ike was the inception of our business back in 2008!)
Here are his ideas about why such a “wind-friendly” hurricane as Beryl (compared to Ike) has caused so much tree damage and subsequent power outage:
1. 10+ year history of extreme weather conditions has weakened the region’s trees, especially the older ones: The severe droughts of many years back, Harvey’s flooding that covered trees with water for days, the extreme freezes of recent years, more floods, and most recently last summer’s extreme heat/drought conditions have all contributed to weakening the area’s trees and their root systems. Declining trees are also more susceptible to disease, destructive insects, and fungus. Ike did a lot of damage from high winds and twisters, but trees in general were stronger then than they are now.
2. Recent heavy rains of May and June have soaked the ground, and Houston’s tall trees with poor root systems and dense interior canopies became prone to tipping. That’s why we’re seeing so many huge trees down roots-and-all during Beryl. That was not as much a problem with Ike. I wonder what the devastation would have been this week had Beryl been a Cat 3? I shudder to think.
3. Fewer and fewer people are taking care of their trees because of our inflationary economy. It is expensive to: thin trees to reduce wind sail, to trim them back well away from power lines, and also to remove them entirely. People just don’t budget for trees, and when they have a need, it’s unaffordable. And as living things, tree problems always get worse with time. If our current economy continues, trees will be more and more problematic during storms, and power outages will increase. Comparing Ike and Beryl, trees were very likely better-maintained during Ike than what we are seeing now in preparation for the 2024 hurricane system.
4. So where do energy distributers fit into all of this? They need to know the facts above and increase their own tree-maintenance of power lines accordingly. They need to be MUCH more pro-active. With so many trees in decline, they need to increase their distance requirements for tree lines from power lines. And yes, underground lines would solve the tree problem.
We’re no scientists over here, and the opinions above are purely based on experience, so you can take them with a grain of salt if you like; but if we’re going to have more storms this summer, we believe people will see more of the same (and worse) when bigger winds come our way. Yes, a lot of trees are gone, but the one’s still standing have suffered the same

Longtime humor columnist Ken Hoffman passes away. I totally forgotten about how great a columnist he was. Apparently he jumped ship in 2017 from the Chronicle for Houston Culture Map. Here’s the (Gifted) Houston Chronicle obituary. Here’s the salute to Hoffman’s wacky humor by David Gow.

His last column was about the incompetence of Centerpoint Energy for managing the power outages during Beryl hurricane. I look forward to catching up on his column archives on Culture Map. I’m afraid I haven’t really been paying attention to Culture Map (which looks like a well put together news and entertainment website).

CONFESSIONS OF A GEOGRAPHY NERD: Here’s an entertaining & inspiring 30 minute speech that Minnesota governor Tim Walz recent gave about geography and GIS tools. Walz (a former high school geography teacher) genuinely believes that a better understanding of maps and geography makes for better government. Walz made this speech a week before Biden withdrew from the race … and now he’s being seriously considered as a vice-presidential candidate! I’d love to see it happen!

RARE MONTY PYTHON: I only recently learned about this hilarious comedy sketch — where the pope gives artistic feedback to Michelangelo for his unusual painting of the Last Supper.

I confess: I am hopelessly addicted to Will & Grace compilation clips on Youtube. Not linking for fear of promoting bad behavior.