Month: March 2025

What, oh what, could go wrong.

Do we understand now that this is a Kremlin project to completely destroy America’s science and technology leadership?

NBC 6 South Florida:

I asked him if it seemed callous.

“Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it, no personal authorization, just this form letter that doesn’t have anything to do with our individual performance, in my case, I just had a review that said I was exceeding expectations and doing a great job,” Hazelton said. 

Kerri Englert is featured in a video on the NOAA website. She is, or was, a hurricane hunter, the crew member who gathers data during those daring flights into the eye of the storm, until she got the pink slip yesterday. 

“I think that I was initially in a state of shock, as well as perhaps a bit of denial, I think I still am to some extent,” Englert said. 

I asked her if, considering she and her crewmates risk their lives for the American public, she now feels betrayed by the federal government. 

“Oh absolutely,” Engler responded. “I do feel an anger and a frustration and to some extent, I will say a devastation simply because this isn’t just a job to me.”

The two ugliest meetings I’ve been to in regard to siting solar energy were in Cohocta and Conway townships, in Southeast Michigan.
In Cohocta, residents stood on their chairs and shouted down local officials. One protester had a side arm strapped to his waist. Not sure what he had in mind for that at a public meeting, and didn’t want to find out.
In Conway, one of my colleagues had to be escorted out by local police after officers heard chatter in the crowd about a plan to “jump him” when he left the meeting.

Nearby Howell, Michigan has long been known as a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan, and Cohocta was home at one time to the local Grand Dragon.

No connection, I’m sure.

Lansing State Journal:

Many historians believe Klan membership was commonplace among automotive union workers throughout the state for decades, Castanier said.

That suspected link was confirmed by one of the group’s most notorious leaders, Robert Miles, in 1991.

Continue reading “Solar Protest in Cradle of KKK”

Description:

What astronaut Ron Garan saw in space changed his life forever – here’s what it taught him.

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A personal account of the “Overview Effect”.
Astronauts describe a new awareness of the unity of all life on planet Earth.
Great stuff, but time is short, and it’s not practical to shoot every one into space. Looking for suggestions.

And every other kind of attack.

Cui Bono?

Guardian:

The Trump administration has publicly and privately signaled that it does not believe Russia represents a cyber threat against US national security or critical infrastructure, marking a radical departure from longstanding intelligence assessments.

The shift in policy could make the US vulnerable to hacking attacks by Russia, experts warned, and appeared to reflect the warming of relations between Donald Trump and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

Two recent incidents indicate the US is no longer characterizing Russia as a cybersecurity threat.

Liesyl Franz, deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity at the state department, said in a speech last week before a United Nations working group on cybersecurity that the US was concerned by threats perpetrated by some states but only named China and Iran, with no mention of Russia in her remarks. Franz also did not mention the Russia-based LockBit ransomware group, which the US has previously said is the most prolific ransomware group in the world and has been called out in UN forums in the past. The treasury last year said LockBit operates on a ransomeware-as-service model, in which the group licenses its ransomware software to criminals in exchange for a portion of the paid ransoms.

Continue reading “Trump Drops Defenses Against Russian Cyber Attack”

Dry start to the year brings high risk to Carolinas, including areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Based on recent events, looks like the southeast, besides being a high risk area for storms and flooding, is emerging as a wild fire risk area as well.

Lots of pine forests, wildlife urban interfaces, and Trump voters.

Below, local news reporter hears from resident:
“You always watch these things on TV, like in California, and you never think it’s going to happen to you.”

Continue reading “Wildfire Emergency in South Carolina”

It’s been a damn week.
But nevertheless we need you. So please accept this offering, get some sleep tonight, and be ready tomorrow.

The Trump administration and its fossil fuel funders do NOT want you to know what is happening in the atmosphere.

According to Mathew Cappucci below, more than 50 percent of National Weather service offices were already understaffed. Now more cuts, big cuts, coming.
For Project 2025, what happens to farmers, coastal cities, or air travelers is just collateral damage, an “externality”.

So who cares?

Associated Press:

 Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.

Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country.

Cuts at NOAA appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist who said he got the information from someone with first-hand knowledge. That’s about 10% of NOAA’s workforce. 

The first round of cuts were probationary employees, McLean said. There are about 375 probationary employees in the National Weather Service — where day-to-day forecasting and hazard warning is done.

The firings come amid efforts by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees across the government have already been fired.

Continue reading “DOGE Targets National Weather Service – What Could Go Wrong?”