SeniorJunior

"Day Zero" - When the Water Dries Up ... OK, way over in South Africa. BUT... ...This book - and several others - predicts huge water shortages are coming in the many places on earth - and in the United States - where long term droughts plus exploding population size will bring more Day Zeros .  The 2011 Book That Predicted Capetown's Water Crisis [I lOVE this book. It's scary, but fascinating. It's a history book with the past viewed through the lens of water. Brilliantly annotated, it is credible beyond reasonable question. Comforting, that.] "Day Zero" is actually here, over there Tonight's PBS report on Capetown skirting the edges of "Day Zero." Talk about an INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGE! How Should America respond to the parching of its Western one third?  There is a lot water (many floods, even) in its Eastern third; what would it take to move some of the excess water to the west? Some kind of big time infrastructu

No "Breaking News," No Dramatic Events, No Tweets... Just relentless, grinding reality.  Hard to cover in today's news environment. Drought Expands Across Southwestern US   -  By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press Water, water, never where * Drought is tightening its grip across a wide swath of the American Southwest as farmers, ranchers and water managers throughout the region brace for what's expected to be more warm and dry weather through the spring. The federal drought map released Thursday shows dry conditions intensifying across northern New Mexico and into southwestern Arizona. On the southern high plains, Oklahoma is ground zero right now for the worst drought conditions in the United States. Federal agriculture officials say crop conditions in some areas are declining. In New Mexico, about three-quarters of the winter wheat crop is in poor to very poor condition as meaningful moisture has been scarce. Along the Rio Grande in southe

29 Seconds of Guilt-Free Pride I did a short vid to send to my sons, and thought 'Why not on the blog?' Note the clean cuts in the concrete pavers. Cuts were made with a 4" diamond blade on a hand grinder spinning like a bat outa Heck. Lots of dust.   The gray and red pavers are of different thickness. Engineering by Eyeball, LLC. The snow just melted. WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO HERE CAST: Dog #1-Gunnar; Dog #2 -Ali; Dog #3- Yoko; Narrator/photographer -Olde Scooter

The London Guardian Does It Again... Super inside story, But WHERE'S THE RUSSIAN ANGLE? Another insider spills more beans , again to a Guardian reporter. These guys think THEY WON THE ELECTION FOR TRUMP. (Read all about it here ) Cambridge Analytica snuck out with all that Facebook data (like how much toilet paper you use per sitting; which country singer you just love; how many times you "like" what; what kind of comments you leave on a gnarly Facebook quote, what kind of tweets you retweet... on and on) from maybe 50 million of us, MAYBE MORE when everything is counted. Read This Without Gasping (They used)...data modelling and performance-optimising algorithms  to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election. The ads were viewed billions of times. 10,000 different ads!?  BILLIONS of viewings?! Holy brain bending, Batman! ...And they had a polygraph on us all through the campaign, mea

This Is the Mother Lode Story on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Stories are trickling out, but they all come from this brilliant bit of journalism Wylie: My 'Look into the distance' look, because Bad Lighting The Guardian is one kick-ass newspaper! * Pix credit

In Nafta Talks, U.S. Tries to Limit Junk Food Warning Labels * Friends in the Self Deception Club Urged on by big American food and soft-drink companies, the Trump administration is using the trade talks with Mexico and Canada to try to limit the ability of the pact’s three members — including the United States — to warn consumers about the dangers of junk food, according to confidential documents outlining the American position. I've been wondering what the "Worst deal ever signed" specifics were. Now we see one specific... warning labels on junk food... a clear intrusion on the LIB'TY our fast food, junk food corporations have to deceive the public!   I JUST CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR MORE DETAILS ON WHAT THE TRUMPSTERS ARE TRYING TO CHANGE IN THE NAFTA ACCORDS!   *Cartoon credit

Consultants for Trump Misused Facebook Data of Millions By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and CAROLE CADWALLADR   * Cambridge Analytica bought private information harvested from more than 50 million users to develop techniques that were later used in the Trump campaign. [ NY Times March 17, 2018] OK, this is a minor gloat.   Because I've been beating this drum for almost a year, but stories aren't "real" until the NYTimes says so. For the joy of historical perspective, here are (some of) my posts on this ultimate political dirty trick: April, 2017 August, 2017 September, 2017 Stay ahead of the news.  Subscribe to SeniorJunior signed,  Your Pal, Olde Scooter * graphic credit

Vlad Rattled Some Sabers , But It's China Moving Fastest in Weaponry Meanwhile Americans are paying close attention to our "reality TV" president Mutual Assured Destruction "MAD" is baaaack. OK, I'm a generic hypersonic weapon. Live with it. ...But I'm spending the big bucks on weapons I'm bad and I'm scary... Informed, enlightening, podcast from knowledgeable folks who sound scared. These are the military, weaponry and technology editors of Aviation Week and Space Technology , pulling no punches on how the Russians and the Chinese are trying to lap America in war fighting tech. As you can see from these links to other SeniorJunior posts, this has worried the poo out of me for some time. Other  "Worried about China Skunking the U.S."  posts: Science Leadership Deep space  communications Electric  Cars Quantum  communications Jet passenger  planes Robots Hypersonic  weapons A.I.   So

“ How can we create a news ecosyst em ... that values and promotes truth?” ** Huge Study Says "Tell Me What I Want to Hear" ... is where a lot of us are right now. Huge Study, reported in Flipboard Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment— fake news about politics regularly does best. * And politics becomes lies. There's a lot of good reporting on our new(est) culture of lying. In VOX , there is a great line: How do politicians get so comfortable with lying? One theory: practice. The unscrupulous politician wi

Think 180 Degrees From Truth Exact Opposite! Look! Over there! * TRUTH 180 DEGREES OUT: "No Collusion. No Collusion! No Collusion!!!   TRUTH 180 DEGREES OUT: "No chaos, only great energy!" Not just untruthful, exactly the OPPOSITE of the truth.   Then... Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat ... the age old "Big Lie" technique . Combine the two and   That makes it a       Sup er Lie ....Able to leap tall incredulity with its super propaganda power!! More powerful that the slow train of actual truth!! Super lies are becoming much more common in politics all over the world. When you examine the statement and say to yourself "That's the exact opposite of the truth," like when Bashar al Assad says reports of horrible cruelty in his merciless siege of Eastern Ghouta are "fake news" and "terrorist propaganda" and "not true," when we are all seeing daily video of the actual

What's Totally Wrong With the Russian Influence Numbers from Facebook and Twitter? They don't count the number of Americans sucked into repeating Russian Lies. Boy, did we fall for that one! * LOOK HOW WRONG THEY WERE ON  THE REDDIT REPORT   But their CEO just told the truth and it's scary. According to (Reddit CEO) Steve Huffman, the most troubling activity on Reddit from known and suspected Russian operatives wasn’t in the form of ads or accounts run by trolls, but rather from actual Reddit users who were amplifying troll-made content of their own volition. One known Internet Research Agecny account on Twitter, @TEN_GOP, which posed as the account for the Republican Party of Tennessee, had its tweets “amplified by thousands of Reddit users,” according to Huffman, adding, “sadly, from everything we can tell, these users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda.” I KNEW THIS WAS HAPPENING. I COULD SEE IT NOT ONLY ON R

The Great Winter Drought 2017/2018,  New Mexico Us Mountain Folks talking fire prep Fear of Fire is the Local News Angle There was a community meeting on fire preparation and planning in our area. The local NBC affiliate in Albuquerque decided to do a "package" to go with their live report from the meeting.  Somehow we were selected as the subject. A competent young reporter and her cameraman came to the house out here in the country, and they interviewed us for a good 45 minutes. I knew it would become a 2 1/2 min piece and was curious what parts they would use.  They found a story in all the palaver and here 'tis, for your dining and dancing pleasure:   (You have to watch a 20 second commercial first.) ​ http://www.kob.com/ albuquerque-news/east- mountains-wildfire-season/ 4808501/?cat=504 ​ I don't know how long they leave links active.