I stumbled onto a great, succinct source of relevant information on Ukraine. The Visual Capitalist. Their visual representations of many subjects are quite good.

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This weekend I’m going to a tech conference for the first time in at least two years, maybe three. The Western Winter Workshop. Indian Wells is pretty nice this time of year.

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I absolutely love the fact that a group of academics from Sweden and Penn State have done a serious mathematical analysis of the probable number of Dyson spheres in our galaxy. From the abstract:

Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures built by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations to harvest radiation energy from stars. Here, we combine optical data from Gaia DR2 with mid-infrared data from AllWISE to set the strongest upper limits to date on the prevalence of partial Dyson spheres within the Milky Way, based on their expected waste-heat signatures. Conservative upper limits are presented on the fraction of stars at 𝐺 ≤ 21 that may potentially host non-reflective Dyson spheres that absorb 1–90% of the bolometric luminosity of their host stars and emit thermal waste-heat in the 100–1000 K range. Based on a sample of ≈ 2.7 × 105 stars within 100 pc, we find that a fraction less than ≈ 2 × 10−5 could potentially host ∼ 300 K Dyson spheres at 90% completion. These limits become progressively weaker for less complete Dyson spheres due to increased confusion with naturally occurring sources of strong mid-infrared radiation, and also at larger distances, due to the detection limits of WISE. For the ∼ 2.9 × 108 stars within 5 kpc in our Milky Way sample, the corresponding upper limit on the fraction of stars that could potentially be ∼ 300 K Dyson spheres at 90% completion is 􏰁 8 × 10−4.

Bottom line, there could be as many as 300,000 advanced civilizations in the Milky Way that have constructed barriers around their star to harvest energy. How cool is that? And why haven’t we heard from them? My suspicion is that the speed of light is indeed a barrier (no free FTL lunch), and interstellar space is very, very large.

I watched the entire 80-minute SpaceX update with Musk on the stage explaining things, and I came away fired up. Musk isn’t a great speaker, but his message is mind-blowing. This is really history in the making, science fiction become reality. And the guy is 100% authentic, 100% committed to his goal of getting us to Mars ASAP. You couldn’t make this shit up – the richest guy in the world building giant silver rockets that do things we never believed possible. Well, maybe Tony Stark, but Musk isn’t a comic book character – he’s a real guy building real shit in Texas and Florida and California and Nevada. And lobbing it into orbit. Maybe the best applied engineer in history. He’s talking about delivering a million tons of payload onto the surface of Mars to make sure the Martian colony is self-sustaining. Think NASA times a billion.

He plays down the interim milestone of a base on the Moon, and that’s OK, even though I’m a little obsessed about a Moon colony. I think I’ll see that in my lifespan (knock on ALL the wood), but not sure I’ll be around for the timeline for the Mars colony.

The more I listen to the guy, the more I realize he’s a complete anomaly. One in several billion. Brilliant, fearless, visionary, childish, churlish, pragmatic…and ultimately the perfect person to get us out of our gravity well jail once and for all.

I listened to the questions of the journalists attending the event, and I’m embarrassed. Most of them were about “what will you do if TX/FAA/NASA regulations get in your way and force you to delay/try again/move your operations”? They don’t get it. His only real oppositions are physics and engineering. He’s pushing the state of the art of materials science, automation, manufacturing, chemistry…all at once. The government’s rules and regulations are nuisances, but not on the critical path to his goal – getting us to Mars.

If you’re a Star Trek fan or just an aerospace geek, watch the video. And get fired up.

Everyone else on the Internet is writing about Ukraine and Russia today. I decided to write about some other things.

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Here’s a little bit of gambling history I did not know. The man who beat the roulette wheel.

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If you like movies, I highly recommend Dennis Hartley’s Den of Cinema. Dude has a great take on films from all eras. His Top 10 lists are a lot of fun. He *does* have the occasional political post, so it’s not all fun and games.

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Yesterday’s UK loss to Arkansas was painful. We could have won, but made some bad mistakes in the final couple of minutes. Oscar Tshiebwe was amazing with 30 points and 18 rebounds, but that wasn’t enough to make up for the mistakes and some poor guard play. Only two more games in the regular season – where did the time go?

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I really enjoy reading this summary of Elon Musk’s Feb 2022 update on Starship and the Super Heavy booster. The full video with the man himself is here. I’d give a lot to see one of those launches up close. His approach to launch systems is just so practical, so anti-NASA. Starship should really launch the commercial Space Age.

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My friend Jon in NOLA had his big Mardi Gras parade last night. His spooky costume, worn while riding his Krewe‘s float (his Krewe is Endymion) through the streets, is featured in the picture below.

It’s a pretty big deal. From the MardiGrasNewOrleans website:

The Krewe of Endymion is host to Samedi Gras, the greatest block party on earth. drawing 30,000+ from Mid-City neighborhoods to help kick off Endymion. The krewe’s motto is “Throw ’til it Hurts.” They estimate that they toss more than 15 million throws along the parade route which ends with a ride through the Mercedes Benz Superdome for the Endymion Extravaganza.

I was there in person for it once, and it was surreal. Hope to do it again sometime.

You learn something new every day. Here’s an approach for green power generation that uses high-power millimeter waves to drill (vaporize) through solid rock to tap geothermal energy 12 miles beneath Earth’s surface. Very cool idea, and I’d love to see it working. I’m not in love with the idea of thousands of 12-mile deep holes in North America’s crust, but…it beats burning dinosaurs. And there’s no doubt about the theme of the website where I found the article: Treehugger.

While doing research for my book, I find more and more weird facts about the Moon. Here are a few that most people aren’t aware of:

• There is no “dark side of the Moon”. We call it that because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, and the combination of its rotation and revolution allows us to only see one side from Earth. The other side, hidden from us, gets just as much sunlight as the one we see.
• The whole tidal locking and synchronous rotation thing is really hard to get your head around. This writeup on Wikipedia is helpful.
• A Lunar “day” is 14 of our days long. So at any point on the Moon, you’ll get 14 days of scorching +260F degree-ish sunlight followed by 14 days of frigid -280F degree-ish darkness. I don’t know why the cold is deeper than the heat.
• The Lunar poles are likely to be relatively mild, as they get small amounts of incidental sunlight constantly. At the extreme poles you would see the Sun circling around just on the horizon – a forever sunset.
• The Moon has taken quite a beating in its long life. The south pole is dominated by one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, The Aitken Basin, some 1600 miles across and up to 5 miles deep. Something really big blasted that hole. And it turns out we may have found the culprit, a mountain-sized metal blob deep under the Aitken Basin.

There’s a lot more to learn, and I hope I get to see the day when we return to the Moon and start exploring it in earnest.

I find it galling that the far right political party has claimed the word “patriot” for its exclusive use. The obvious intent is to paint their ideological opponents, liberals of any type, as “not patriotic”, or traitorous. It’s a very divisive practice.

And in times of conflict or danger, what does being a patriot mean? I think it means supporting the United States’ official stance on a worldwide crisis. Support your country, support the President, be a patriot. That seems pretty obvious to me.

Given that, this little story taken from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American today is really something.

And yet, while some leading Republicans are expressing support for Ukraine and simply ignoring President Joe Biden, the same Republicans who have been most closely associated with Trump and the January 6 insurrection are trying to use Russia’s attack on Ukraine to undermine the president. Following the lead of former president Trump, who says that Putin invaded because Biden is weak, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who took over for Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) when the House Republicans stripped her of her position as the third most powerful House Republican, tweeted that “Joe Biden is unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief. He has consistently given into [sic] Putin’s demands and shown nothing but weakness.”

This is simply an extraordinary statement for a lawmaker to issue at a time when a president is rallying the global community to stop an invasion of another democracy, but she is not alone. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called Biden weak and corrupt; Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said that former president Trump’s “unpredictability” (!) kept Putin cautious; Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) complained that the administration “project[s] weakness.” Representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ); Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Ron Johnson (R-WI); and others all are working to undermine Biden in this moment of global crisis.

Diplomat Aaron David Miller, who spent 24 years in the State Department, had his own assessment of the president. He said: “So far, Biden has done a masterful job of leading and maintaining both E.U. and NATO unity.”

From Letters From an American, Heather Cox Richardson, 2-26-22

Support your country. Support your country’s important treaties, like NATO. Support your President in a moment of crisis, even if you don’t agree with him or her on other things. That’s patriotism, unlike the foul-mouthed disinformation spewed by the likes of Stefanik, Greene, Gaetz, Jordan and the like. They’re disgusting.

Well, it finally happened. Bombs and weapons active in Kiev (or Kyiv, whatever) today. And Kiev is way, way inside the Ukraine border. This is no longer a nibble of some territory around the edges, it’s a full-blown “…nice country you have here, we think we’ll take it” action. Predictably, the stock market is crashing and the media is going nuts.

Next big question is which western country fires the first shot in opposition. Kinda feels like an all-in situation – if you go active in combat against the Sovs, you better bring your A-game. It’s not hard to imagine US F-35s getting involved very soon. WW3 is at the bottom of this very slippery slope.

Only good news so far today is that Southwest dropped $1500 on me to take a flight 90 minutes later than the one I was on. That’s the most money I’ve made per hour in a while. Pretty good retirement gig – travel and be flexible on what flight you take.

And while waiting for my profitable flight, I did something unusual – I bought a paperback book. A real physical book, imagine that. Airports are doing a “buy the book and return it to most airports for 50% refund on your sale price, within 6 months” deal, and that looks good to me. I picked up Grisham’s “A Time for Mercy“, a 630 page tome. Apparently Grisham has gotten more verbose in his old age.

And now a word from the Louisville restaurants we’ve sponsored this week:

• Big Bad Breakfast
• Con Huevos
• Cask
• Red Hog
• Green District
• The Grales
• Five Guys
• Please & Thank You
• Senora Arepas
• Ciao
• Time 4 Thai
• Joella’s

Not a bad list, if you’re trying to gain weight.

What a day. Exhausting. Weird.

I left Louisville this morning in a blinding rainstorm. I wanted rain and I got it. I drove with both hands clutched on the wheel all the way to Midway, half way between Frankfort and Lexington. After that it was just a drizzle and semi-slick roads.

Arriving in Ashland, I was happy to take Dad and Phyllis on their big day out, visiting CVS, PNC Bank, her beauty salon, his old-school racist barber (another story there), a CBD shop (!!) to get something different for Phyllis’ shoulder pain, and a tired old Italian place in Ironton where they enjoy eating some of the worst spaghetti ever. If that’s not love I don’t know what is.

Duty fulfilled, the real trials of the day started on the way back to Louisville that afternoon. For some unfathomable reason, authorities shut down I-64W – closed the entire highway, about 8 miles from the point where it crosses the KY River. Shut. It. Down. I spent 90 minutes making my way a few feet at a time to a little gravel road just east of the river that I knew would take me to the opposite freeway direction. I made that janky traverse, went east, vectored through Frankfort and drove the back roads to Shelbyville. On a good day I can get from Ashland to Louisville in 2.5 hours. This trip took about 4 hours. Not a tragedy, but patience-sapping. A test of resilience.

Once I got back on the freeway at Shelbyville I received the next Twosday surprise. I got word that an old friend, my best friend during the early 80s, is in Cleveland Clinic with a bad case of esophageal cancer. He’s suffering. He was my best friend in the years right after college, and I’ve never forgotten him. We only touch base once every year or two of late, but now…one of the best people I know is in a hellish state. And there’s nothing we can do for him.

I made my way on to the Galt house, poured a glass of wine and sat down to consider the perversity of the Universe, given today. I relaxed a bit, and then noticed that a large bat was flying around in our little house. Figures. Not a cute little bat, but a big Dracula-sized fucker. It flew back and forth from the kitchen to the TV room, looking for a place to roost. I jumped up, closed the doors to keep it from making its way upstairs to our vaulted-ceiling bedroom, and chased the damn thing for a while. It finally found its way out the front door into the night. It probably picked up a dog down the road.

That brings me to now. Not the day I hoped I’d have, but my Ohio friend’s illness makes all my little problems of today quite trivial. I’ll keep that in mind.

Off to Ashland to see my Dad on a rainy day. I enjoyed listening to the rain and thunder last night, and I should get more of that fun today as I drive. Amazing how great precipitation is when you don’t get any. (Substitute almost any noun for precipitation.)

My cousin’s family had a tragedy a couple of days ago; his mother-in-law died of a heart attack at age 70. My heart goes out to them – all I could think to do was drop off a card and a big pan of Lotsa Pasta lasagna. Nothing says “we care” like a hot meal.

And…it looks like Dear Leader Putin has carved off a nice piece of the Ukraine and some idiot journalists are trying to decide if that qualifies as “an invasion”. I wonder if they’d be parsing words if Mexico occupied Texas with weapons and moved the border. A meaningful side effect of Russia’s move is that the US stock market is going to take another dump today. I won’t dare to look at my equity accounts for quite a while after this.

Just noticed it’s an auspicious date today, 2/22/22. Popular media has a name for this: Twosday. So Happy Twosday.

If you like the blues, this is worth a listen. Buffalo Nichols. Distant relative, perhaps.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, but I felt like crap so I stayed in and rested most of the day. Some combination of travel fatigue and extra spicy Thai food Saturday evening caught up with me.

Today I feel much better but I wake up to news that the Russia invasion of Ukraine is imminent. I sure hope not, though stopping the expansion of Russia does seem to be something both US political parties can agree on.

While resting yesterday I watched a lot of Homeland season 6, and wow, I had forgotten how much of that show mirrored recent reality. It was aired in 2017, meaning it was written in 2016. It featured an ultra-aggressive right-wing popular media voice, attacking a Presidential candidate by attacking her child, secretive bot-powered social media disinformation factories and a sharp fracturing of the American electorate. Sound familiar? Either those writers were genius-level prescient or they manufactured the scripts in real time as these same events happened in real-world 2016. And 2020, in fact.

But fortunately for all of us here in 2022, we have future leaders getting ready to take power in our troubled world (below).

From Heather Cox Richardson today:

President Joe Biden addressed the nation to update us on the threat of Russia’s launching another invasion of Ukraine. He emphasized that we and our allies stand behind Ukraine and pledge to continue diplomatic efforts to prevent a war, and yet will deliver “massive costs on Russia should it choose further conflict.” He urged Russia “to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table.”

Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf tweeted that Biden is speaking as the leader of the free world. “It has been a long time since a U.S. president filled that role. His remarks were concise and pointed…and underscored Western resolve. But the headline: He is convinced [that] Putin has decided… to invade.”

I really don’t want us to go to war with Russia. I grew up during the Cold War, where nuclear destruction if/when the US and Russia started lobbing bombs at each other was the existential threat every child learned about. People built bomb shelters and stockpiled iodine (for radiation exposure). I remember being taught to get under my desk in the case of an attack (it was called “duck and cover” – yeah, that sounds effective). For years I had nightmares about nuclear attacks, and in college I took four semesters of Russian language because I thought I might work for the CIA. Then Russia failed/fractured economically, the Berlin Wall came down and Communism was no longer a threat. Until Putin.

Russia under an autocrat/oligarch like Putin isn’t quite the threat that Russia under the Communist Party was. Putin has a a self-interest that Party leaders didn’t have, and that self-interest can be used as leverage in negotiations. I hope that Putin’s self-interest and business sense outweighs his ego and need for a warm water port.

630pm, and watching the sunshine-washed golf from Socal while it’s below freezing here in Louisville – but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I got to spend nine solid hours with the grandsons today and it was fabulous. Just what I needed. They’re both such great kids (no grandparent ever said that, right?) who return the love you show them in lots of ways. Great day.

We started the day with some carryout from the new breakfast hot spot in Louisville, Big Bad Breakfast or BBB. It was packed (see below). Big place, nice remodeling, and every seat filled. Their takeout service was excellent and the meals were first class. My grits bowl and biscuit egg sandwich were perfect. Yet another nice stop on the foodie tour of Louisville.

Tomorrow I get to watch a KY game here in the state, hopefully with a cousin or two. We play Alabama and we need a big win after the debacle in TN. Right now it feels like we’re at a crossroads. Come back from the TN loss and we can have a great year. Lose the momentum and let the TN loss leak into 1-2 more games, and this season loses its fragile magic. High hopes for tomorrow.

It’s one of those travel days that requires patience. My flight from San Diego to Phoenix was delayed about 45 minutes. Because I arrived in plenty of time before the flight, that gave me a LOT of time before leaving. Then in Phoenix, my flight to Louisville is 40 60 minutes delayed. So I posted up at a restaurant bar to do some reading and writing. Patience, right? Within a few minutes, I noticed a puddle of water under my laptop (!!!) and my phone, yelled an expletive, jumped up and grabbed the gear. Turns out the waiter was trying to fill a plastic cup with water and the cup was broken, but he didn’t notice but just kept pouring on the water. As a result, the entire bar was quickly flooded. I think I escaped with only a little water on my clothes, but another few seconds and my laptop would have drowned. And there’s no CPR for short circuits.

Now, while enjoying a terrible little glass of $14 Merlot, I’ve got the love child of Rodney Dangerfield and Archie Bunker sitting next to me. Won’t leave me alone; raging about mask wearing in flight; buying drinks for every woman in sight; telling the waiter to add $50 tip to his bill so everyone could hear; altogether loud and irritating. I’m writing this right next to him because I’m pretty sure he can’t read. Patience.

Travel days in the eastern direction require you to pretty much throw one day of your life away. You do have some experiences (if you’re lucky) and you get to read a book, but what you need most of all is patience. And my family knows I have so much of that to spare.

Mark Zuckerberg has completely lost his mind. In a Washington Post article today, Zuckerberg outlined changes to Meta’s corporate values, including “Move Fast Together”, “Live in the Future”, and wants employees to call their co-workers “metamates”. Now, we all know statements of company values are often complete bullshit, but at least they’re usually understandable positive qualities like “ethical behavior”, “commitment to excellence”, or “environmental stewards”. I dumped Facebook Meta years ago based on their commitment to destroying Internet privacy and monetizing my identity (and because some of my relatives used it as a platform to insult each other). I predict this wacky transition to becoming “Meta” will carve off half their market value as people see what idiocy it is. Nuff said.

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I think it was last night’s game that put me in a foul mood this morning. The Cats were flat, and Tennessee played hard. It was tough to watch.

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Looks like the same storm that blew through here yesterday (strong, cold winds, some rain) will be hovering over the Midwest when I land there tomorrow. Certain clouds will get a second chance to rain on me.

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I decided to read Ann Leckie’s entire Ancillary series (also know as the Imperial Radch trilogy), and I started with the second book (Ancillary Sword) because I read the first one long ago. It’s a wonderful book, so now I’m going back to the beginning. That book, Ancillary Justice, won pretty much every SF&F award in 2014. Her work isn’t for everyone – it’s a complex setting and story with lots of world building and mind bending ideas. Definitely my thing. The main character, Breq, is a human who was once an AI that controlled an FTL ship, then was later a peripheral, or ancillary, of that ship. Being a mere human is quite a come-down for her. Leckie does a masterful job of dealing with multiple points of view, shared identities and one of the strongest characters in memory. Good stuff.

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And finally, I can’t wait for this. Bloom County is becoming a TV series. The synopsis:

Bloom County centers on a collapsed lawyer, a lobotomized cat and a penguin in briefs and fruit headwear living in the world’s last boarding house in the world’s most forgotten place deep in the dandelion wilds of FlyWayWayOver country. To wit, today’s America at a glance.

I always loved the comic strip, and the series should be great fun. When faced with tragedy I almost always default to comedy (at times in poor taste), so this will be perfect.

Just got back from Cabo, and now off to KY in a couple of days. Will be great to see the family there. Grandsons are getting older fast (me too, now that I think of it). Go Cats, and hello Bluegrass State.

Lotta interesting stuff happening in the world right now.

UK is heading to Tennessee to see if we can keep our win streak alive. We crushed them in Lexington, but in their home arena it’s likely to be a tough, ugly game. Stay tuned.

The Trump Organization’s accountants just threw them under the bus. Their Valentine’s Day announcement basically said “We’ve, ummm, discovered that our client lied to us and so their tax filings the last decade are no longer correct. Also, we understand our client may be going to jail and we would prefer not to join them. So they’re no longer our client.” Perhaps the oh-so-slow wheels of justice are finally about to catch up with our former President. If that happens, the hardcore MAGA crowd will lose what’s left of their minds. Definitely stay tuned, and break out the popcorn.

Our Socal heat wave has broken and temperatures will be down about 30 degrees today.

For the first time ever, there was more than one solution to Wordle today. One solution if you linked to the original Wordle site, another if you went directly to the NYT link. The Times says this is temporary, but…this is why we can’t have nice things.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to stretch its muscles and get ready for some heavy lifting. Today it’s still cooling and aligning its mirrors. I can’t wait for the pictures that should result.

Belgium officially approves a four-day workweek. The Europeans definitely like their time off. Can’t say I blame them.

Russia invading Ukraine still looks like a 50-50 coin flip. If it happens, things could turn very bad very fast.

Back in Socal and looking over what a week of hot, dry Santa Ana conditions do to greenery. We’ve got dead and dying plants, lots of downed branches and just a general mess. Other than the truly native plants, it’s getting harder and harder to keep things alive here. I should explain that the previous owner planted many (hundreds) exotic, non-native plants and trees here, and as the drought has deepened these last 18 years it has taken its toll. There’s always something old and established dying. Saw this LA Times headline after I had posted: “Western megadrought is worst in 1,200 years, intensified by climate change, study finds.” Yikes.

We ended our Cabo week with a great lunch at Flora Farms, a five-star restaurant in a most unusual place. Hidden in a little valley a few miles from the Sea of Cortez’s coast, accessed off some rough dirt roads, it’s a farm, an art colony, a BnB and a superb restaurant. Farm-to-table eating at its finest. Flora Farms will be a regular stop for us in future Cabo trip years.

I missed watching the Super Bowl yesterday, as we were in flight during the game. To be more precise, I missed getting together with friends to watch the game. The phrase “there’s always next year” comes to mind, but these days that phrase sounds pretty dumb. Every annual tradition lost or missed has the potential to be…sadly final.

In a weird coincidence, on the day that we leave the whales have disappeared. WhaleTV is off the air. The day is overcast, the ocean gray and flat, and not a cetacean to be found. Makes it easier for us to walk away for another year.

Last night’s UK game was a good one – always good to beat the Gators. I had to rally all the wait-staff in the resort’s sports bar to figure out how to change the channel on their satellite TV service to the US version of ESPN. (ESPN has channels dedicated to certain countries, and ESPN/MX was carrying soccer (football) instead of college hoops.) But the four of them figured it out and I got to watch the game at the bar. I tipped them well.

Our last event of this trip will be a lunch at Flora Farms, a highly-rated foodie place I’ve always wanted to visit. Big expectations.

Tomorrow it’s back to life in Socal and dealing with some business problems. Wish me luck.

I spent close to an hour crafting a nice essay about the last 48 hours with pictures. Had a network problem and WordPress’ g’damn stateless browser interface lost it all.

So here are the pictures; I may redo the narrative later.

One thing about watching WhaleTV all day, it gives you a lot of time to think. And one of the things I’ve thought about is an idea for a new book. Working title, Intervention.

If I were an advanced alien race watching the human race, and if I cared about our fate, this might be just the time to make myself known. To intervene.

I mean, Russia is about to ignite WW3 as it invades Ukraine, we’re experiencing mass wildlife extinctions, the US is blowing itself up (half the population hates the other half), we’ve engineered ourselves a nice little worldwide pandemic, the planet’s very climate has gotten wonky…I could make a pretty good case to my superiors that it’s time to set aside The Prime Directive. Bring on the Klingons.

Now, this isn’t a new idea. It’s been done again and again. Childhood’s End by Clarke (from 1953!) comes to mind, a seminal book. And probably a hundred others over the years. So I would have to find a new take on things. Are the aliens benevolent? Militaristic conquerors? Can’t trust ’em traders? An intergalactic mining operation? Religious fanatics looking for converts? Covetous of our precious bodily fluids? Or just inscrutable?

Given all the ground others have covered, a fresh take will require some thought. So back to WhaleTV (still trademarked, so mitts off).

Yesterday’s news sure puts things in perspective. Sure, we all have problems, but then there are Problems. Reminds me of a quote I used to like: “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and by the way it’s all small stuff.” Can’t remember who that is attributed to.

Dad was admitted to King’s Daughter’s Hospital (where all my brothers and I were born – you can blame them for our legacy) after a loooong wait in the ER. A long unnecessary wait, but that’s a rant for another day. He’s doing fine and should begin treatment for fluid in his lungs today.

But back to perspective. Thoughts of mortality, of how much time one has left and how you’re spending that time, what happens next, if anything – not your typical vacation thoughts. In contrast, I just finished an interesting book about an immortal man who had lived at least 60,000 years, and he had become pretty nihilistic about life. His point was “there is no point to it all.” Kinda depressing, but I’m in no danger of getting that jaded/skeptical in anything less than 1000 years. So probably OK on that front.

In local news, absolutely huge waves on our beach this morning – just saw a couple that had to be 15 feet high. That happens occasionally here on the Pacific side of Land’s End, and it’s damn impressive. No swimming on this beach. You have to laugh at the irony.

Strange day, bad news. A married couple we know and care about has decided to call it quits, and my Dad has been admitted to a hospital for pneumonia. Not good, not good at all.

One of my brothers is on the way to be with Dad, and if I need to get there ASAP it’ll take 24 hours. Actually, more, because I need a negative Covid test from the day before to even get on a plane bound for the US.

I didn’t take this into account when I was doing my risk analysis.

For anyone who likes thoughtful science fiction (as opposed to spaceships slugging it out with rail guns – not that there’s anything wrong with spaceships and rail guns, mind you), I highly recommend this week’s Transfer Orbit interview with Christopher Brown. After reading it I immediately bought one of the cited novels (Tropic of Kansas), and will likely acquire more that were mentioned.

There’s something about sitting here all day watching WhaleTV that brings home the point of how awful it would be (will be?) if/when we have a true environmental collapse. Lifeless oceans, or all the insects or birds are gone, or other horrific I-told-you-so scenarios.

Brown used a phrase I haven’t heard much, “the extractor economy”. It’s a good one, and it begs the question what kind of economy isn’t an extractor economy? I suppose the so-called renewable resources we hear so much about would qualify, but there’s really no free lunch. Those solar panels we love were built from minerals mined (extracted) and refined. And those industrial-scale crops we eat require an awful lot of hydrocarbon-burning equipment and chemical treatments.

And while watching WhaleTV (trademark, copyright, legal minefield, don’t even think of borrowing this name, etc.), you also see hundreds of boats, large and small, cruising up the coast every single morning taking schlubs like me ocean fishing. Only a couple of decades ago, every boat would come back with plenty of fish, huge catches. A hundred years ago, I can only imagine. These days only about 20% of these daily fishing boats come back with anything (my estimate based on experience and observation, not a factual study), here in one of the greatest fishing areas of the world. That oughta tell us something.

US Covid-related deaths crossed the 900,000 line this week. Imagine if you knew back in early 2020 that the disease would take out almost a million Americans. The headlines would have been a foot tall. It’s been a tough couple of years, particularly for those folks who won’t get vaccinated.

And in other bad news, we decided to open up a nice bottle of wine this weekend. An old one. It was a nice Chard and we were saving it. Opened it and it had turned into something harsh and vinegary. Thought to myself “well shit, that happens” and went to another great one, a 2005 red we’d been holding onto. Same result. I’ve now got a bad feeling about any of the bottles that have been in our cellar for more than a decade. Looks like the lack of temperature and humidity control have taken a toll. My old winemaking buddy, now departed, told me not to worry, but…it doesn’t look good.

At least the Cats won another road game last night versus Alabama. Life is still worth living. 😉

How am I just hearing about this? The Kentucky Meat Shower. Yuck…sometimes my home state horrifies astounds me. But at least I don’t have to think any further about the name of my new rock band.

Watching last night’s UK victory over Vanderbilt was fun. Frustrating at times, but fun. This is a special team, unselfish, with new players stepping up when needed. The inexperienced zebra crew threatened to ruin the game, but both teams and coaches soldiered on.

Meanwhile, I’m watching the news reports of the coming Icepocalypse across Kentucky. I hope it won’t be as bad as the predictions. For friends and family there, charge those device batteries now and stay safe.

In the “you learn something new every day” category, I give you Hick-Hop. Strange bedfellows, but it’s a big world and there’s room for everyone. Well, almost everyone – jury is out for me on some of these dudes.

Finally, I have a new lens coming in today and I’m pretty excited about it. A compact, 400mm catadioptric super telephoto. Should be perfect for long range outdoor and wildlife photos.

Today is an interesting day. A date palindrome, 2-2-22. And it’s Groundhog Day, a long-celebrated (since 1887!) random weather predictor circus. According to Phil the rodent, we’ll have another six weeks of winter ahead.

Today the COVID positivity indices for both Louisville and Cabo fell a little, but not a lot. Watching it daily, and slowly getting a little closer to saying “let’s go”.

Today we have a Kentucky hoops game to look forward to, against Vanderbilt this evening. If the same Cats show up as they did for Kansas, Vandy is in for an ass kicking. One can hope.

Today is another hazy, cool, and dry high-desert kind of day in Socal – one of my least favorites. It appears my part of Socal has shifted from a Mediterranean climate, in which we get (got) a decent amount of rain during a couple of months each year, to a true high-desert climate with a cool dry winter. If that continues, we’ll have large changes in plant life and big (bigger) water problems.

Hello, February! Starting the month by tying up some loose ends from January.

First, I did go ahead and invest in an ExpressVPN account. Using it now, in fact. So far the only downside is that about every 30 minutes Google makes me prove that I’m not a bot with some inane “select all the crosswalks” puzzle. They’ll work themselves right out of being my default search engine if this persists.

Next, I’m making some tentative reservations for Cabo. Baja COVID stats are trending down fast the last two days and I’m more optimistic about going. One more downward trend day and I think we’re good. Los Tres Gallos and The Wine Bar, here we come.

Next, I decided to become a patron of Louisville’s summer creative conference, Imaginarium. It happens on my birthday weekend this year, and while I’m not 100% sure I’ll be there, it seems like a good idea at the moment. And a good cause. In return for my small donation they published a cool logo for me on their site:

Finally, I spent hours the last two days wading through credit card statements, identifying the business expenses for last year’s consulting work and rental property management. A dull task, made better by some decent wine (Daou Cab, at the end of yesterday’s sorting session) and some Khraungbin in the background. All done now and ready to file taxes.