It seems many eyes are on Hurricane Milton. I am watching some live storm video of it Key West and Tampa are seeing some rain. This one does seem to be following a very unusual path:
I do believe the technology exists to steer and seed storms. I can’t fathom why anyone would want maximum impact:
I’d guess most people who were going to evacuate already have. Who pays for the evacuation? Mickey Z brought up an interesting point regarding worries a friend had of both looters after the disaster and the cost of maintaining a home that is no longer liveable during and afterwards. The people of Maui have been experiencing this type of death by one thousand cuts for over one year in the burn zones. To me it looks like a land grab. And wasn’t there a major Hurricane just last week?
Alicen Grey’s thoughtful on the ground coverage of damage around her in Ashville, North Carolina following Hurricane Helene was very eye opening.
In reading her insightful posts I was immediately taken back to my viewing of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It was a few months later, so immediate rescue and recovery efforts were long done. I had just found out some days prior that I was pregnant with what is now my 18 year old daughter. I was looking for some memento perhaps of the beach side hotel I had stayed out in Gulfport, Mississippi during Mardi Gras some years prior. Everything was levelled.
I couldn’t get my bearings straight on the roads by the beach. There were no stop signs, no street signs, few traffic lights and even fewer buildings. The stately gulf mansions, some a few centuries old, were all wiped out, leaving only driveways. There were boats still in very high trees up to two miles inland, along with the hides from likely long decomposed cattle. A riverboat casino had wedged on top of one of the taller buildings. It was an alternate dimension indeed.
It took away any illusion of permanence which we spend our entire lives building up and grasping for. You go to sleep to some heavy rain and don’t expect to be swept away by an early morning landslide. The death toll from Helene is almost certainly underestimated as it appears that the brunt of the flooding happened while people were sleeping. My prayers are with all in this.
Does it sometimes feel like 2024 has contained so many catastrophes just to hide investigations into the past ones? It’s like things have to spiral faster and faster so that even if you don’t forget what happened last week you do not have the leisure to care. What happened during Covid and with the vaccines? Hey look over here is a war and another war and more bombings and here’s some catastrophic disasters too! Look over here now!
This comment by Kamala Harris says it all:
Currently I’ve been fighting in the mundane dimension of lots of government offices. I added it up today and realized that if counting the 1 1/2 hour drive each way to Phuket Immigration, the five seperate trips, the six visits to two different Amphurs and the gathering of paperwork I have spent a total of 34 hours in the past eight days trying to secure a marriage visa. I’ve been sent away because there were no more counter tickets available, sent away for some missing paperwork and sent away for reasons I’m not really sure of. But in thinking back in the past five years, how many hours have been spent on some mundane regulatory requirement? It has to add up to weeks. I’ve been sent away from the door because they only do online booking, have had multiple sites where the online booking either didn’t work or did not have a slot that fit my availability or with the Nevada DMV within a 60 day window of time. I’ve visited four different hospitals and multiple clinics not because me or a family member had any type of symptomatic illness but to fulfill some regulatory requirement regarding something else. Every year it grows like a cancer. Even the online things for your convenience rarely are helpful.
Could they rebuild without all of those offices? I think they lost the plot when they started given illegal immigrants driving and voting rights regardless of whether they should drive or vote, say. The laws are uncountable and unaccountable to anybody. But it sure keeps a lot of people employed.
For a better way
Exactly, Amy.
"It’s like things have to spiral faster and faster so that even if you don’t forget what happened last week you do not have the leisure to care. What happened during Covid and with the vaccines? Hey look over here is a war and another war and more bombings and here’s some catastrophic disasters too! Look over here now!"
Coupled with this experience is a time element. While one catastrophe is highlighted, the time period feels enormous. We experience both long and short time. "Where did the week go?" "God...will this ever end?"
My main complaint these days is that I feel like I'm living in a afternoon soap opera.
As a teenager out of school for the summer, my sister and I became addicted to soap operas over at my grandmother's. As I began attending college, I lost sight of soap operas. Years later, I realized some of the same soap operas were still on air. I was amazed. More years passed. The same soap opera, with obviously different characters or the same ones grown a trifle old, played the same scenes: someone was cheating or truly in love with the other person; the sweet, simple girl would cry buckets; the plucky, hardworking clerk was groomed to be the next romantic lead; dear old granny died.
It's a little like living in "Waiting for Godot." Nothing ever happens; nobody comes; nobody goes. Israel bombs the hell out of Lebanon. Hezbollah attacks the IDF. Nobody comes; nobody goes. The Russians are advancing west from the Donbass. Zelensky says his current military tactics are turning the war...and say, could the U.S. let him have another 1.8 billion dineros?
In short, I'm bored. I'm bored with the soap opera. I can't lose sight of the soap opera no matter how hard I try. It's always the same old plot.
"VLADIMIR
We wait. We are bored. No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. ...In an instant, all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness."
I'm exhausted. I'm truly considering when moving to another state into a rural area next year turning off the computer and pretending I'm living in the 1950s. I was aghast when some "spiritual people" said they highly limited their intake of news. Now, their action looks revolutionary.
How is a dishwasher like a horny Walrus?
All they want is a tight seal!!!