Sociable

Mantis (at Wikipedia)

Real People

 I posted some street work recently on my photography blog from New York's Chinatown in the mid-'60s.  I wondered if anything of that lively community could still be found on those streets of lower Manhattan.

I haven't had an answer to that query so far, but I'm skeptical of finding a scene like this now. It seems most likely that modern counterparts of the group would all be focused on the screens of their phones and oblivious to any surrounding reality.

Rebecca Solnit expresses similar misgivings in a thoughtful essay in The Guardian:

Turns out the zombie apocalypse isn’t as fun as they said it would be –

Stop American Complicity in War Crimes

 Biden is about to leave office with his catastrophic policy of unconditional support for the Israeli war intact.  He has backed away from the anemic threat to withhold some American bombs which have already killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.  Harris' failure to separate her campaign from Biden's policy certainly contributed to her defeat.  Time to send a clear message to the Democrats.

Support Amnesty International

See Owen Jones' opinion piece in The Guardian: Is there any red line that Israel will be held to? Biden has just confirmed the answer is no

Turning The Page

 During the run-up to the election I received a half dozen emails daily from the Harris campaign asking for money.  Those emails have continued after the loss to Trump.  Today I unsubscribed from that email onslaught.  I also made a contribution to the immigrant defense organization, United We Dream.

Visit the Website

What Now?

Michael Tomasky in The New Republic asks:

Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

He goes on to assert that:

"The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win."

and, "...I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action."

That observation about the tidal wave of right-wing media is not inaccurate.  I would suggest however, that it leaves something to be desired as the basis for an action plan in the moment. It seems to me that focus on media is something of a distraction right now, and that it is a prescription mostly for tinkering with the status quo. It also overlooks the fact that fascist regimes of the past achieved power without the benefit of social media.

What is most needed right now is a strategy for survival, including identification of the most obvious threats and feasible plans for harm mitigation.  Rather than trying to build a bigger and better social media response, financial support would be better devoted right now to supporting immigrant defense organizations.

There is no question that Trump and his allies will be working to put the right-leaning billionaires like Musk in charge of the country.  However, that is a long, slow process.  In the near term, the executive powers available to the Presidency will enable an immediate massive assault against millions of immigrant families.

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See also: Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Dark ( A podcast at The Nation)

Just to be clear...

 A majority of the electorate has chosen a disgusting racist criminal to lead the country.

I don't expect Trump to be more rational or effective than he was the first time around.  However, the right-wing think tanks have had time since the first Trump regime to fine-tune their plans to take control of the country's institutions and the economy.

My expectation is that Trump's attack on immigrants and his sabotaging of efforts to deal with climate change will get a lot of headlines.  Meanwhile, the Project 2025 promoters will be working in the background to make the fundamental changes which will lead to ever greater inequality and a generally degraded quality of life for everyone except for the top 1%.

Biden is still the President

 There is a very long list of initiatives available to Biden in these final days of his term in office.  What is actually attempted will depend mostly on feasibility.  My hope would be that the emphasis would be on pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, and on doing whatever is possible to lessen the impact of Trump's attack on immigrants.

An overview of the possibilities for executive action is available in an article in  The Nation:

Executive Actions Biden Could Take

Rio Bravo Fall

I took a long walk to the middle of the Rio Bravo bridge to see the color in the riverside forest.

On the way back I was met by the flashing lights of a sheriff's car.  The sheriff said someone had called in a report of an old guy hobbling across the bridge.  I hadn't seen anyone like that, and I thanked the sheriff for his concern.

Photo Murals

 Chip Thomas murals at the Albuquerque Museum

Watch his larger than life story in a PBS video.

 Or, watch the talk Chip gave at the University of Colorado at Boulder about his time as a doctor in the Navajo Nation and the development of his photo mural project.

Dead Morning

 A quiet morning in Old Town as preparations were being completed for the final day of Day of the Dead celebrations.

The Nash Metropolitan is an American automobile assembled in England and marketed from 1953 until 1962.

Everything to be known about the little Metropolitan is in the Wikipedia page.

Evidence

 There was a brief flurry of action at this nearby street corner last night.  As has been the case for many years, however, none made it to our front door.

Two Idiots enter an intersection...

 We approached this intersection at Lomas and Broadway this morning about 11:00 AM on a sunny morning.  The traffic was light, we were in the center lane heading west.

Google Earth Pro

I saw a sporty red car coming up fast on my rear.  As I expected, the driver swung over in the right lane to pass and then moved leftward as he entered the intersection.  Just then a gray sedan in the oncoming turn lane lunged forward. The red one caught the gray one right in the middle,  caving in that side of the car.  The gray car was pushed up against the corner curb, while the red one came to rest at the divider with its right front fender nearly ripped off.

I thought it was a pretty good demonstration of the current state of traffic affairs.  None of the other drivers in the vicinity were behaving inappropriately at the time and the scenario might have accommodated one instance of poor judgment, but not two simultaneously.

If, like me, you tend to travel somewhere close to the posted speed limits you will find yourself being passed by most of the drivers on the road.  Speed limits on highways and city streets seem to be treated as mere suggestions, and they are mostly ignored.  That means that any small deviations from expected traffic movements become potential sources of accidents as a few milliseconds of response time are lost.  I'm pretty sure Albuquerque is one of worst places to drive a car in the country, but I'm guessing the situation is not a lot better anywhere else.

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Same day in northeast Albuquerque:

Police investigate 6-vehicle crash in northeast Albuquerque

Bernie's thoughts on the choice, including Gaza and Lebanon

 

How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she supports Israel’s war? Here is my answer

Bernie Sanders

Politics Endangers Health

 I doubt the title will provoke an argument, particularly this year.  

A couple of things have brought the issue into sharper focus for me.  Trump is scheduled to visit Albuquerque on Thursday and will hold a rally at the Albuquerque Sunport.  As it happens, there is a high probability that the airport was where I contracted Covid during our recent five-day trip to Boston.

There were many opportunities for contagion at the stops along the way, but the long and densely packed security lines at our trip's beginning should have been a red flag.  Covid booster shots shortly before traveling seemed worthwhile, but did not stop the disease this time. A guide from New Mexico's Department of Health illustrates the possible precautions in addition to vaccination:

 

The first safety practice is likely the most important: Avoid large gatherings.  The next, Social Distance, is not available in airport security lines.

In relation to two of  the specifics applicable to the upcoming Trump rally, mask wearing and vaccinations, there can be little hope of compliance in the Trump crowd.

Public health tracking of Covid is very sporadic at present.  If you google "political rallies covid" all the links refer to a study from around the time of the last election four years ago:

(from a CNBC article)

  Researchers looked at 18 Trump rallies held between June 20 and Sept. 22 (2020) and analyzed Covid-19 data the weeks following each event.

   The researchers found that the rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

   They also concluded that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees.

 That study was conducted near the height of the pandemic, so the results are likely not accurately predictive of what will be produced by the Sunport rally.  It is also unlikely that the poor level of monitoring now in force will give a true picture of the public health outcome.

Update:

It turns out that Trump could have staged his rally in Albuquerque's Convention Center if he had paid the $440,000 he still owes the City for the last time he was here.  Just as well for public health as it  now looks like Thursday's event will take place on the tarmac near CSI Aviation, so a better ventilated venue.

A Response

 I've been getting half a dozen emails daily from the Harris-Walz campaign asking for money.

I decided it was time for a reply:

 

 

 

Elon Musk's Contribution to the Night Sky

 This shot was posted on Flickr by Felip1 with the following explanation:

"won't make a long argument of it, but my mind is set firmly that the destruction of the integrity of the night sky for commercial purposes is a form of expropriation of common resources for private and privileged gain, and a kind of vandalism and theft.

This dashed line is a parade of Elonmuskalites across the dark sky a few nights ago. It is very uncommon these days to look at a dark sky and not see many such satellites."

I'll only add that if Musk can own the night sky, there is a pretty good chance he can buy the election as well.

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Update:

Europe In Talks With SpaceX On Tackling Space Junk (reuters.com) 19

Posted at Slashdot

Posted by BeauHD on Friday October 25, 2024 @06:00AM from the growing-problem dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:
The European Space Agency is in talks with SpaceX about the possibility of Elon Musk's space venture joining an international charter designed to reduce a growing swarm of debris in space, Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters. The 22-nation agency is spearheading one of several efforts to roll back the mass of space junk swirling round the planet from past missions that poses a risk to active satellites. Aschbacher said 110 countries or entities have joined ESA's Zero Debris charter, which aims to stop any new orbital garbage being generated by 2030.

Boston

 We spent five days in Boston, staying in this old house in Newton Center.  The place was nicely maintained and provided a good idea of what was likely considered elegant living in the early 20th Century.  The heating and plumbing were a bit deficient by today's standards, though probably easy to get used to in a short time.

(Click on a picture to view full size.)

 

Fall was just getting started on our arrival.

 

We enjoyed visiting with a few old friends.  Aside from that I only had the time and energy to make a few shots of the neighborhood architecture on our morning walks to breakfast.

Many yards were ready for Halloween.  There were only Harris-Walz signs on view.

On the way to the election

Boston is a very civilized looking place with wonderful light just about any time of the day.  It would be a good place to be an architectural or real estate photographer; the multi-million house prices would enable a good living for an ambitious photographer.

We only spent time in a couple high-end neighborhoods and were not surprised by the absence of homeless encampments even though the city has one of the highest rates of unhoused people in the country.

Crystal Lake was just a block away from where we stayed.  Margaret biked there as a kid to swim in the summer and iceskate in the winter.  A friend said it was unlikely now that the lake would freeze solid enough to support skaters.

Temperatures had not yet dropped past freezing and there were quite a few flowers beside the walkways.

Boston seemed to me almost like another planet after our decades in the Southwest.  I was sorry we did not get to visit the many places Margaret would have liked to show me.  It would have been nice to have spent a significant amount of time there to really get to know the place, though I don't know how that would ever have been possible.

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Update: 

It seems I may have picked up Covid on the way home.  I'm not surprised if that is the case as we spent a lot of time in three airports, including some long security lines.  I'll test to make sure.  In the meantime I don't think reading this blog will endanger health.

Walking the Dog

 

Look Up!

 The weather reports show a good week for Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta. 

It has been a long time since I felt tempted to brave the crowds and traffic at the event site.  My usual strategy is to keep a camera loaded with film and wait for some balloons to pass over my house.  The chances look a bit thin this year for that to work as the slight predicted winds are mostly pointing the wrong way.

The VP Debate

 I doubt anyone will claim that the needle was moved in either direction by the performance of the VP candidates in terms of the election outcome.  Vance may have earned himself a little less critical assessment by the "undecideds".  The thing is that he had a very low bar to clear.  All he had to do was not spout the wild lies about immigrants eating pets to look more like a normal person.  It was unsurprising that he also carried forward Trump's waffling about abortion, apparently betting on the idea that Americans' memory is already foggy about the fact that Trump packed the Supreme Court to undo women's right to chose.  He may be right with that assumption.

Friday Sunset

 

Cool Morning

A Platform for Democrats

 Bernie has fleshed out a platform for Kamala and the Democrats emphasizing urgent income and health care reforms.  See:

Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win?

NOAH BERGER | Credit: AFP via Getty Images

On Solving the Wrong Problem

 I've long been opposed to the huge amounts of time, money an talent which are being proposed in support of the quest to take people to Mars.  It has always seemed to me that an equivalent amount of resources devoted to combating human-induced climate change might actually have a chance of success.

It is indisputable that space-directed technology has produced useful results in the fields of earth and climate sciences.  If science wants to lob some instruments at the moon or further that is likely also to produce something of value to humanity.  Such projects, however, get dicey when the rockets are loaded with weaponry or when humans are included in the cargo, which vastly complicates things and results in astronomical budgets, along with clear threats of the extinction of life on earth.  

The men-to-Mars proposal as envisioned by billionaires like Musk will result in more billions flowing into their accounts, but is unlikely to yield anything of value to all the rest of us.  All of this is explained at length in an excellent article at Defector by Albert Burneko, Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars.

And the Winner is...

 In the debate it seems to me that Kamala clearly came out ahead in that she spoke to those in the middle who may be the ones to decide the election outcome.  She also did a good job of getting under Trump's skin with reminders of Trump's compulsive lying, his legal and ethical vulnerabilities, and his waffling about his abortion stance.

Trump stuck to his script pretty well, emphasizing those issues which he thinks favor his chances.  However, he seemed unable to resist the bizarre extremes believable only to his faithful followers such as the stories about people's pets being eaten, or the extravagant and unsupported claims about migrant criminality.

The debate is not the election, and it alone will not be determinant in the final outcome.  Trump has unlimited financial support which will help to produce the appearance of a more coherent platform in the time remaining.

Harris made some unforced errors which she may be penalized for.  She could have taken a lot of wind out of the attacks on her stance on fracking by just pointing out that the advances in green tech will gradually make the phase-out of coal and oil inevitable.

The Harris response on gun violence was woefully weak.  The only response she came up with was a statement that both she and Walz are gun owners!   No mention of the most recent school massacre?  That is quite a missed opportunity.

Harris elected to stick with the Biden's position of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza without backing that up with any proposals for U.S. actions that could actually force a stop to the indiscriminate bombing.  Unless she can make at least some move in the direction of real action, she is endangering the support of people like me for whom Gaza is a high priority.

Kamala may have tipped the scale slightly in her favor with this night's performance.  However, as Hillary showed us, just winning the popular vote - even by over a million or two - is not enough in our electoral system.

UPDATE:

Lots of media commentary contrasting the Harris and Trump performances.  The best I saw was from Ben Burgis  at The Jacobin.  He recognized the superior showing by Harris, but also put her performance into the larger context of American society and politics:

...We live in a profoundly unequal and militaristic society. America is the only developed country where cash-strapped diabetics die because they try to ration out their insulin. Our billionaires take private space flights while our working class is one of the only in the world that isn’t guaranteed so much as a single day per year of paid vacation. And as Americans argue about what to read into the tea leaves of the latest polls from Pennsylvania, US-supplied bombs are dismembering children in Gaza...

The West Bank

I was pleased to discover recently that I can once again access magazines online from the Albuquerque Library through my old Kindle Fire tablet.  Even though the long-outdated tablet is slow and cumbersome it is still a nice way to read (at no cost) the two magazines that I follow, The New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books.

This last issue of the NY Review has some particularly good book reviews and articles, including an extraordinary account of the the atrocities currently taking place in the West Bank against the Palestinian population by right-wing Israeli settlers with the full cooperation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

An 'Unlawful Presence' is by David Shulman, an Israeli human rights activist who works on the ground to try to combat the endless, horrific persecution of the rural Palestinian people.  He also, in this article, describes how it is that so many of his fellow citizens have become numb to the facts of the genocidal assault in both Gaza and the West Bank. He mentions in regard to that skewed perception of reality that it is attributable in part to the dereliction of the Israeli news sources, with the sole exception of the Haaretz newspaper; how that paper's willingness to persevere in the country's climate of right-wing terror is another story that needs telling.

wheels

 I went by the Wheels Museum this morning; it is housed in one of the Rail Yards buildings.  There are a bunch of nicely restored vehicles, but the place is kind of a jumbled mess.  There is no shortage of pleasant docents who pay close attention to every visitor.  I'm told they are looking for a bigger location on the site where the exhibits could be better sorted out.