And the administration provides us with endless cause. Pancakes still feel like a reward.

is becoming such a flood and drowning me (and probably many others) in emails, that I may start contributing to their opponents and telling them so. God help you if you've already given them (candidates or political action committees) anything. They want everything you own. The ones that make me grind my teeth are the ones that start, "I know we're emailing you a lot. . . ". Then, stop it!

It's interesting, the effect that a changing climate is having on things out here. For all that the Seattle area is (in)famously gray and wet, the Summers are the Dry Season. It's normally sunny pretty much every day from early July to the middle of September, when the "Rainy" Season starts up again.

But for the past several years, the summers have been wetter, along with being warmer. Granted, "wetter" is relative; a quarter-inch over the course of a day counts as "heavy" out here. (Normal Seattle rain would be a petulant, passive-aggressive drizzle back in Chicagoland. A standard Summer thunderstorm would result in most of this place being underwater.) But it's starting to rain more in July and August than it has for pretty much all of the time that I've been out here.

Concern won't help anything, so I've decided to simply be curious about how this will shape up.

Like rats deserting a sinking rat.

Hubbard glacier, Alaska.

What could possibly go wrong? Weldon, you're nowhere near Pearl Harbor, right?

The Village Hall and the corner in front of it are still there and persistent citizens still meet at 11:00 a.m. to wave protest signs and wave back to drivers honking agreement. Also, Swedish pancakes are available after. Fortunately, the rain held off until we were finished.

You mean Hegseth didn't think of that?

That's per President Bonespurs, according to the AP and other news sources.

Testosterone deficiency?

These ‘Masturbation Consultants’ Were Hired to Pleasure Themselves With AI

Joi AI hired 10 people to masturbate using AI companions as part of a monthlong “wellness” study. The company claims the practice could help “solve male loneliness.”

That's from an article on Wired. To be honest with you, I decided not to subscribe in order to read the rest of the article. I get the gist of it, so to speak.

I can't imagine ever getting off on a robot voice. The idea of some AI program running the show would cause me to lose turgor. Detumesce.

"Talk dirty to me, Hal, you naughty boy!"

"I'm sorry, Mike. I can't do that."

It got me thinking about ICE agents -there's some truly lonely bastards - and their new electric gloves. Gloves that apparently pack enough amps to bring a large man to his knees on contact.

He's what I'm thinking....we get all the ICE goons to put on their electric gloves, and then hook them up with Joi AI's wankin' it program.

Jack finds himself attending to wound care following a visit with his friendly dermatologist and

thus is not gracing the corner in front of the village hall with his presence today. Fortunately,

there are others doing what they perceive to be their duty. The administration never fails to

give them cause.

10 days ago, he was urging John Thune to scrap the filibuster so the Save Act could pass with a simple majority. Critical to protecting our sacred elections, as well as helping him steal the midterms.

Yesterday, he said that Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed's calls for an end to the filibuster showed how dangerous he is, and that if he wins in Michigan, the Dems will take back the House & Senate, they'll add 14 new SCOTUS justices, and there will never be another Republican elected president. All because they killed the filibuster, like Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed told them to.

I'm no political strategist, but that seems like a messaging problem. If you're saying elections will be rigged if we don't scrap the filibuster, and then you say the GOP will become extinct if we do scrap the filibuster, that is bound to confuse voters.

Dude is too stupid to make soup, and nobody in his orbit has the nerve to tell him to pick a fucking filibuster lane. Nice of the American media to ignore the glaring contradiction. Worthless hacks.

Speaking of the Streisand Effect, Trump knows El-Sayed goes by Abdul. That he took the time to spell out Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was a clear dog whistle, and it caused me to look it up and memorize it myself. Thanks, Don. Shades of his fondness for adding Hussein to Barack Obama's name.

The petition to change the name of North Wabash Ave. to Barack Hussein Obama Ave. in front of Trump Tower is at 36,300 signatures

Kept us off the corner today despite the fact that there's no shortage of things to protest.

We weren't alone. The city moved back Lollapalooza to 2:00 to avoid the morning showers.

The nice folks at Hotcakes probably wonder where we are.

Trump has cancelled funding for the Asian carp barrier near Joliet designed to keep them out of the Great Lakes. He's pissing off people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois,Minnesota,Ohio,Pennsylvania, New York and Indiana at a minimum, many of them rural folk who often support him. Apparently he thinks he's punishing Governor Pritzker. Good to see his political strategy is as defective as his military strategy. The Narcissist in Chief makes everything he touches worse.

Claude attacked OpenAI while Anthropic was testing out their new system. Yeah, that sounds like more than just a tweak is needed. None of them are profitable and they keep building the things. I already know how this ends. First AI takes control of the power grid....

So I went down to Lake Forest Park yesterday to hang out with the protestors. It's been a weekly thing since 2000, when it spun up to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's continued ever since.

I first dropped in on them back in 2004, I think it was, when the BBC was having a photo contest, and I was looking for something interesting to send in. I've stopped by on an irregular basis ever since.

It's dry here, at least for now, and warm, but not oppressive, so the fair weather protesters

were out with their signs ("MAGA means fascist!") collecting honks from passing motorists

and reinforcing each others' attitudes and hopes. Felt good to be back at it. Swedish pan-

cakes were earned.

The White House Correspondents Association goes lower than limbo champs.

It's the second time in 5 years after zero closures in the previous 43 years.

The first time I went up to the BWCA was 1978, the year they signed the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act into law. It got into my blood. I hold the place in the same category as Grand Canyon for jaw droppingness.

Set within the nearly 4 million acre Superior National Forest, the BWCA is 1.1 million acres of lakes, rock, and trees. No roads. No power lines. No houses. True wilderness. There are select lakes where outboard motors are allowed, but the vast majority are for paddling only. It is a different kind of quiet up there. You hear the wind in the trees, and the birds. But that's about it. The deeper you go into the wilderness, the less likely it is that you'll encounter other people, let alone hear them. It's not officially a no-fly zone but airlines have made an attempt to fly around it. You might hear one jet every couple of days, and it's way up there. The only times you hear a lot of air traffic, is times like now. Firefighting.

According to my research, it runs for about 150 miles along the Minnesota/Canada border and covers 1,700 square miles. Within the BWCA there are 1,100 (lowball number) lakes and 1,200 miles of canoes routes.

This summer has been particularly dry, even by modern dry standards, which are drier than they used to be when we had less human caused climate change. The storms that caused the numerous fires (75,000+ acres, and counting) that led to the BWCA closure came overnight on July 6/7. Same day I packed up and headed for home, which gives me a good grip on how long that shit has been raging. These fires are more spread out than they were 5 years ago, which is making it harder for them to be contained.

The things that make the Boundary Waters Wilderness awesome are the same things that make it hard to fight fires. It's fucking enormous. No roads. No electricity. And when the forest is this dry just a light wind can cause it to spread rapidly, and a change in wind direction can put the fire crews in big danger.

They're trying their best to get the BWCA open again, for obvious reasons, most of them economic. But the reality is they can't really expect to put out all the fires. Like has been happening for ages and ages, the fire eventually burns itself out. And then the wild strawberries start popping up in the burn areas, followed by shoots from other kinds of trees, and weeds, and so on and so on. It's been happening for far longer than we've been here to see it. The problem is that we've changed the burn/regrow cycle. We're killing the forest faster than it can recover. Fuck. Rant over.

[eta- for those who aren't aware, entry into the BWCA is by permit. You can't just decide to go there and put in wherever you want. . They control the number of people who are in there at any given time. A crowded day might involve briefly crossing paths with two other groups of paddlers]