A drying Rio Grande won't fix itself

The Observer reports from south of the border on the drying up of Mexico's Conchas River. It's a good story; the river is Mexico's main contributor to the Rio Grande and is the heart of a 1944 treaty. Related to that, local Chihuahua unrest against Mexico's federal government started in 2020. But now, the drought is so bad that many area farmers are beyond protest. And, as the story notes, many of them have gone to El Norte.

Trying to fix border water allocations, primarily here but also in the Southwest on the Colorado, is going to get ever more problematic.

Per the above? 

Strangeabbott likes to thing he's part of the federal government when Washington makes a decision under international law over which he has no power, but that he doesn't like. The sensical amendment to the 1944 US-Mexico water treaty that governs the Rio Grande is the latest. Let's add in, which the Trib doesn't, that then-Mexican President Lopez Obrador, beyond the drought hitting both sides of the river, had cited Strange's floating border barriers as part of why water was being held up. Big John Cornyn and Havana Ted Cruz, per the story, also didn't talk about that.

And, as I noted not quite a year ago, to which the Observer refers, part of this is Texas' fault. Tributaries on the north side of the Rio Grande, and the reservoirs they fill on the lower stretches of the river, are running lower and lower on water.

Per what happened on the Guadalupe last weekend, this too is part of climate change and neither tots and pears nor pouts and posturings will change that. 

Brendan the History Nerd Toddler, the cult-followed book review idiot

This guy on Goodreads.

He calls himself, after his name, "History Nerds United."

Worse, he has a website, which he started three years before joining Goodreads. (Or rejoining, or jumping from Amazon, reading between some lines.) I had thought of deleting this post until I clicked through, but the "about" made me double down instead. 

First, plenty of history lovers, like me, don't consider ourselves "nerds." And, from that about:

Brendan Dowd is a full-time government consultant but is always a History Nerd. He lives in Vienna, Virginia with his daughter whom he regularly tortures with the double whammy of dad jokes and history jokes. He is the son of a history teacher (big surprise) and is originally from New York.

If your mom or dad think they're a nerd too, oy vey. 

Related is that this plays up to all sorts of history stereotypes. (And, if your mom or dad do that, too? Oy vey.)

I called him, in a comment on his review of "The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV" the History Toddler instead of Nerd. Why? This:

I plan on going on quite a bit of diatribes in this review. So, before you say, "Brendan can you get to the point, please?" I will summarize it with this. Helen Castor's The Eagle and the Hart is magnificent and you should read it. It is long and in-depth but never boring. It is a dual character study while also putting its time period in perspective. It is definitely going on my list of best books of 2024. Okay, now on to the diatribes! If you want to exit now, I thank you for your time.

Still with me? Great! Now that the impatient and rude people have left, let me tell you something. I believe Richard II might be the reason men named Richard are nicknamed Dick. (My apologies to all Richards who do not deserve it.) Do I have any scholarly source on this? Absolutely not. Will I look it up? Definitely no. Was this all to elicit a cheap laugh from those people who share my sophomoric sense of humor? Not entirely! Castor's narrative did make me believe he is one of the worst English kings in history.

How can anybody take him seriously as a reviewer, at least anybody who actually cares about learning about history in depth? We start with pretentious, pontificating prattle. Then, it's off to insulting anybody who won't agree that his pretentious, pontificating prattle is more than that. Then, there's the claim that, after admitting his humor is sophomoric (grow up), that it has real insight behind that. (It does not.)

Again, how can anybody take him seriously. Well, his cultish followers do. And, I guess they like being, or at least being called, nerds as well.

So I mentioned that in this bon mot:

God, what a stupid review, with the second paragraph. Perhaps you could retitle yourself "History Nerd Toddler."

Which apparently fed his ego (shock me):

But that means you liked the other paragraphs though, right? By the way, truly enjoy you being so obsessed with my reviews. Thanks for reading!

To which, one last reply:

I just like pointing out stupidities. Otherwise, don't flatter yourself. (Not that that admonition has any chance of success.)

From here on out, I call him out in my reviews, as I first did here.

And also, dood, an occasional comment elsewhere doesn't mean obsessed. I think I've commented on four or five of his reviews.

Otherwise, taking right-wing nut job Maureen Callahan's book about JFK seriously, let alone 5-starring? You're not even serious as an alleged historian. He also reads a lot of semi-clickbait fluffy history.

And, as exemplified by "The Eagle and the Hart," many of his reviews are surface-level, not noting actual historical problems, as does my review. (I'm often the first reviewer to catch such things.)

And, that gets to the real problem. He says he wants to make history "fun." Fine. But, you know, history is more than just a "story." It's about ... history. And, good historical writing is — accurate, factual, empirical, etc., not just "fun."  (I've updated my Goodreads profile with a more extensive version of this.)

In short, Brendan is giving the cult, and non-cultic readers of his reviews, a bad idea of history. 

I'm going to drop this link in occasional reviews by me of books he's also read.

Side note: The cult didn't really develop until the last 18 months or so, it seems. Older reviews of his have generally no comments. So, was the "History Nerds United" itself a marketing ploy? I would have said yes, at first, but seeing the website game before the Goodreads, I am not sure.

Also, I find the "Dear Reader" affectation an insult to Isaac Asimov, whether Soy Boy adopted it in deliberate imitation of him or not. 

That said, the website has one more bit of pretentiousness, which also means no way in hell I delete this.

Above links to his social media sites, he does NOT say "Follow Me."

Rather?

"Follow Us."

You know exactly what you can do with your "royal we," dude. (And, that's what it is; you may do interviews on your podcast, but your site is a one-man band.)

Actually, per the start of the "about," there's more reason yet not to like him.

Former Army brass hat? Now a "government consultant"? He's either a Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ member (State) or military-industrial complex (DoD). Barf me either way. 

Finally, per Rotary's Four-Way Test, which I thought of?

1. Is it true? Yes.
2. Is it fair to all concerned? Per Walter Kaufman, "fair" in reality and abstract are two different things, and fairness can never be universal all at the same time. It's close enough for jazz.
3. Will it build goodwill? Not a concern.
4. Is it helpful to all concerned? See "fair." It's certainly helpful, IMO, to people needing to find good history books.
   

There you are.

And so, if I AM obsessed, I've excised it, and it is now a WAS.

Tots and pears on the Guadalupe (regularly updated)

As the death toll hit 70 Sunday morning from the Guadalupe River flooding, several questions abound.

The biggest was about warnings. Even with local and state officials offering caveats about lack of prediction in location, nonetheless, with the initial warning of 7 inches in the area already early afternoon on July 3, followed by the first flash flood warning early July 4, I think, per the Trib:

“The heartbreaking catastrophe that occurred in Central Texas is a tragedy of the worst sort because it appears evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities had the organizers of impacted camps and local officials heeded the warnings of the government and private weather sources, including AccuWeather,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter wrote in a statement Saturday morning.

That Kerrville and Kerr County officials are full of shit.

Second question, not even being addressed yet by Tex-ass Rethuglican Congresscritters who voted for Trump's bigly ugly bill? How much will it reduce the accuracy, and cut the amount of advance notice, that the NWS was able to offer in this case, even though it went largely unheeded?

Here's the same second link on that, at least at the professionals' level:

The flooding came amid concerns about staffing levels at the NWS, after the Trump administration fired hundreds of meteorologists this year as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The NWS Austin/San Antonio office’s warning coordination meteorologist announced in April that he was retiring early due to the funding cuts, leading to speculation that vacancies could have impacted forecasters’ response.

As I've half-jokingly said elsewhere, the "Gulf of America" will get renamed back to "Gulf of Mexico" the first major hurricane that spawns in it hits the Texas or Louisiana coast.

Per later comment in the story, they're adequately staffed NOW. Six months from now? A year? 

Zeynep Tufekci talks more about that official, Paul Yura, in a column asking other questions, like — why haven't more camps moved their camping areas just, even a few feet higher and a few yards further away from the course of the river? 

[A]t Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors were washed away, the kids whose cabins were on just slightly higher ground all survived. Only those in the lower cabins were lost. Those lower cabins were less than a quarter of a mile away from the higher cabins. Every moment would have counted.

There you are. 

On Yura, it's not just about total staffing; it's about loss of experience. But, per places like LinkedIn, you'll see capitalist America, like the Elmo Musk behind DOGE, can't and/or won't put a dollar value on that. (Neither will neoliberal Democrats except when it's worth political haymaking.) 

The first piece has bullshit from dog-shooting Homeland Security head Kristi Noem trying to hand-wave away these concerns.

How much of this is the fault of the youth camps' staff? After all, both the 1 am and 4 am July Fourth alerts were available by cellphone alerts. Mystic's co-owner Dick Eastland is among the dead, so he can't be asked, but other owners of other camps, and managers of them, certainly can be. Or, per The Barbed Wire's piece that references self-backpatting of state and federal officials, will this get swept under the rug?

And, to go there? These are Christian girls camps, even if not affiliated with a particular church? How many girls are told that climate change is a myth? What about camp owners and staffers?

Refudiating the likes of Chip Roy in that Barbed Wire piece? This was not a once in a century flood. The Monthly, like others, references the 1987 flood in Comfort. (Update: Death toll is at 89 Monday afternoon, as Der Grüppenfueher is also lying about this being a 100-year flood.)

So does the first Trib piece, at top link, which has a good "wrap-up" on some of these issues:

Billy Lawrence, a 73-year-old San Angelo man, has dealt with this type of tragedy before. During flooding in the summer of 1987, he spent more than 30 days looking for bodies. The first one he found was of a child in a tree, 20 feet up.

But he said this flood is twice as bad as it was in 1987. On Saturday, he was back patrolling the river for bodies. A former volunteer with the Red Cross, he said he's gotten used to the morbid practice.

“I’m used to death. I’ve been around it a lot," Lawrence said.

He noted there are about 20 camps along the river in this area and said the camp counselors should receive training to check the weather every night.

"I'm not blaming them. They just have to do that,” he said.

Refudiating Danny Goeb, the jefe during this with Strangeabbott out of the Pointy Abandoned Object State? His Tex-ass Senate, and Rethuglicans in the House, killed a bill that would have updated state warning systems. 

Tots and pears are no substitute for training and the acceptance of modern realities.

And, even if campers can't have cell phones on, per this Texas Monthly story, at least at that particular camp, camp counselors, managers and owners sure as hell can. Or you can have a weather-band radio that gets the same type of emergency alerts.

As for the climate change issue? You don't have to go back to that 1987 flood, per the top link:

The region has experienced catastrophic flooding before, including the 2015 Wimberley flood that left 13 people dead, as well as major floods in 2007 and 2002.

Notice how close together these things are now getting?

Kuff had Evil MoPac grappling with the Hill Country flooding tragedy. I moved it here because after it going all nice and polite on getting to the bottom of things, this:

There will be a thorough accounting of what infrastructure issues and human errors may have been present and, hopefully, there will be common sense policy changes to try to reduce the terrible human and propery tolls of Texas floods in the future.

And this:

But we also need to grapple with the fact that this tragedy and the incredible rainfall amounts that caused it were not totally unprecedented and the impacted area has long been at risk for this type of event, even if rare. It’s that feeling of helplessness that will be one of the hardest things to process going forward: we can make improvements (including to local warning systems) and increase spending to try and solve the flooding problem, but it might never be enough.

Are both untrue.

The former is untrue per what I said about climate change and Tex-ass Rethuglican leadership, if nothing else. Any "changes" will be a right-wing corporate socialism bailout of capitalism.

The latter will be untrue starting with climate change, which the "we" wingnuts running Tex-ass won't grapple with. It's also untrue in that, from all I read, ownership and management of the various camps easily could have done a better job with the resources they had — ie, smartphone warnings — as could have local governments.

That's as Inside Climate Change notes this is more and more NOT a one-off — as the death toll crosses 100 July 8. 

And, per my update about the killed HB 13? Stop cutting these people slack, you fucktard. 

I suspect lawsuits are coming — and they need to come.

(I mean, good old BlueAnon Neil Aquino gets it right on this being a political issue, but gets it wrong of course on not looking at how it's various forms of business as usual for both duopoly parties.)

Abrahm Lustgarten, who has a great book on climate change, now weighs in at Pro Publica. 

Zionist false flags are real and related items

By Betar’s own words, you usually can’t go wrong making false flag accusations against the government of Israel or its Zionist apparatchiks and allied organizations abroad.

Betar? The false flags are related to this:

Betar US largely operates out of New York City, and in a video published and then deleted by their official X account, Betar’s members recently advertised their attempts to instigate a confrontation with the volunteers for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

As the story goes on, they talk about burning Qurans and such to do this.

==

Meanwhile, in Israel, the masks fall further off, per two pieces by The Dissident.

Ha'aretz admits that the Palestinian Health Ministry has actually UNDERCOUNTED the death rate in Gaza.

And, Ha'aretz earlier admitted that Israel was deliberately killing people at aid stations in Gaza.

And, the Zionist flies flew into comments on both sites, with the lies that The Dissident was antisemitic and that antizionism is antisemitism.

==

Conflating antizionism with antisemitism isn't just an American thing, as British native and online friend Paul Braterman notes.

The Observer presents Reality Winner

Something kind of nice, kind of thematic and kind of snarky for the Fourth of July — starting with the Observer's brief interview, which links to a piece Winner wrote at the Wrap.

I agree with restoring voting rights for felons.

That said, the rest of her story?

I long ago called her out for believing in Russiagate. As far as I know, she's never repudiated that. Now, a few L/libertarian types may also believe in it, as do a few leftists of some sort, like Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins, but, by and large, it's an issue limited to the left hand of the duopoly plus never-trumper Rethuglicans. (That said, Hillary's likely CIA head was among early rejectors.)

I also noted she was naive — she's a Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ contractor and she emails Glennwald from a work email? Really? And, as the above, she overrated the seriousness of what she emailed, too. That second one makes you wonder just who the likes of Fluor and DynCorp hire at times. I am NOT a total fan of the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ contractor Snowden, just to remind you, and know he's a liar, and that he got suckered by Assange, too.

Sadly, Dementia Joe didn't give her a commutation, even if the now-deblogrolled (and not hugely missed) Counterpunch lied about the 2004 election.

Happy Fourth. Per Ben Franklin, it's an oligarchy not a republic. It was lost long ago, if it ever was fully what Franklin claimed in 1787. It never was a democracy, though, contra Joe Costello.

Nathan J. Robinson channels his inner Peter Singer — for SHRIMP!

Yes, you read that right.

Nathan J. Robinson, via Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla, channels his inner Peter Singer, as in the Australian utilitarian philosopher known for his sometimes strident, occasionally off-putting, takes on animal rights — for the intelligence, and the suffering potential, of shrimp.  The intelligence of squid and octopus is generally overrated and also largely anecdotal. Therefore, extrapolating from them to shrimp is a fail.

Robinson's an interesting person. A Brit expat who launched A Current Affair here in the US (his home base is New Orleans), he's best seen as a DSA Rosey, even if he's not an official member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In other words, a squishy pseudo-leftist who will chide Democratic Party leaders every 2 or 4 years, but then, presumably, vote for them in the voting booth. He certainly has never talked up third parties, and for that I've called him out at my primary blog and at Shitter. 

Anyway, per the second link, even if Nicholas Humphrey is not all right, I certainly don't think he's close to being all wet. Warm-bloodedness is where to start with animal intelligence.

Linked inside that piece, but getting separately posted now, is the piece on how octopus intelligence is both overrated and often anecdotally assessed. 

Per Daniel Engber's piece, first, there's been cases of fraud on octopus escape abilities. Second, that doesn't mean conscience-type intelligence anyway, as shown by exactly how they, squid, and presumably other cephalopods control their tentacles.

Beyond that, shrimp aren't cephalopods, which are a class within the phylum of molluscs. They're crustaceans, a subphylum within the phylum of arthropods. And, yes, you'll get people talking up spider intelligence. 

They're wrong, too. 

One can still protest what does look like animal cruelty, cutting off one eye of female shrimp to get them to breed better. And? I'd protest cutting out one compound eye of a drone honeybee to get them to pollinate better. Bees aren't intelligent, either, and surely have even less of a sensation of pain than shrimp.  

So, shrimp alfredo? Dine away, unless you're vegetarian, period. Or worried about the environmental issues of farmed shrimp.

Oh, speaking of that? You'll find NOTHING about it in Robinson's article, nor on Zorrilla's website, the Shrimp Welfare Project.

Oops.