Day: August 22, 2020

Ain’t the climate crisis fun?

benfell

Walbridge Fire

Much of Healdsburg and parts of Windsor are now included in evacuation warning zones, which extend to the very northern extent of Graton and Occidental (figure 1).
FireShot Capture 292 - County of Sonoma Fire Incident Map - sonomacounty.maps.arcgis.com.png
Fig. 1. Screenshot of Sonoma County Fire Incident Map, taken by author on August 22, 2020, at 9:11 pm EDT (6:11 pm PDT).

Tropical Storms

eusgm
Fig. 2. 72-hour gif of satellite imagery for the eastern U.S. and Gulf of Mexico.

Giant Meteor Small Asteroid in 2020

It turns out an asteroid is on track to pass by earth on the day before election day. You might call it a dark horse in the race with an estimated probability of hitting us of a mere 0.41 percent.[1]

Jay Croft and Melissa Alonso, “Oh, great: NASA says an asteroid is headed our way right before Election Day,” CNN, August 22, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/us/asteroid-earth-november-2020-scn-trnd/index.html

  1. [1]Jay Croft and Melissa Alonso, “Oh, great: NASA says an asteroid is headed our way right before Election Day,” CNN, August 22, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/us/asteroid-earth-november-2020-scn-trnd/index.html↩

Cops, polls, and very old voter suppression tactics

benfell

Horse race

Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey, and Matt Zapotosky, “Trump’s suggestion of deploying law enforcement officials to monitor polls raises specter of voting intimidation,” Washington Post, August 21, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-suggestion-of-deploying-law-enforcement-officials-to-monitor-polls-raises-specter-of-intimidation/2020/08/21/4ff6407a-e3bb-11ea-8dd2-d07812bf00f7_story.html

Walbridge Fire

FireShot Capture 289 - County of Sonoma Fire Incident Map - sonomacounty.maps.arcgis.com.png
Fig. 1. Screenshot of Sonoma County Fire Incident Map taken by author on August 22, 2020 at 9:12 am EDT, 6:12 am PDT.

The problem of police handling protests against the police

benfell

California

Summer Lin, “How are wildfires named? What’s the Lightning Complex? Answers for California fire season,” Sacramento Bee, August 20, 2020, https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article245117530.html

Pittsburgh

I’m not sure if this is more bullshit or if Bill Peduto is climbing down[1] from being an asshole about protests at his house.[2] In a way, it’s inherently bullshit and can’t be otherwise because police are, in many ways, fundamentally a wrong answer.[3] And it certainly doesn’t help when Peduto claims,

My job is the only job in the city that has to be in that middle and has to be able to recognize the rights of everyone. And yes, that makes me unpopular to both sides, but if I wasn’t unpopular to both sides, I would not be doing my job.[4]

If there is one thing that can be said about the “middle road” in any contest of ideas, it is that it is guaranteed to be incoherent. In this case, it’s at the very least problematic to (still) have police enforcing controls on protests when police are in fact a large part of the problem protesters are protesting against with the racial justice movement—anything they do other than withdraw is guaranteed to further exacerbate protesters’ anger. But Peduto is changing how protests will be handled;[5] I hope it’s really an improvement. But the problem really is more fundamental than the command structure.

Andy Sheehan, “Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Makes Leadership Changes In Response To Police’s Handling Of Protests,” KDKA, August 21, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/08/21/pittsburgh-mayor-bill-peduto-police-changes/

  1. [1]Andy Sheehan, “Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Makes Leadership Changes In Response To Police’s Handling Of Protests,” KDKA, August 21, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/08/21/pittsburgh-mayor-bill-peduto-police-changes/↩
  2. [2]Megan Guza And Abby Mackey, “Police disperse overnight protesters at Peduto’s house, mayor decries neighborhood harassment,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 19, 2020, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/police-disperse-overnight-protesters-at-pedutos-house-mayor-decries-neighborhood-harassment/↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “On police,” Not Housebroken, August 12, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/08/10/on-police/↩
  4. [4]Bill Peduto, quoted in Andy Sheehan, “Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Makes Leadership Changes In Response To Police’s Handling Of Protests,” KDKA, August 21, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/08/21/pittsburgh-mayor-bill-peduto-police-changes/↩
  5. [5]Andy Sheehan, “Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Makes Leadership Changes In Response To Police’s Handling Of Protests,” KDKA, August 21, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/08/21/pittsburgh-mayor-bill-peduto-police-changes/↩