July 27, 2023

Would high temps in Europe and elsewhere influence your future vacations plans?

"Forget wildfires in Greece and Italy. Enjoy your holiday, say tourism chiefs"
"Italy may be frying, but the country’s tourism board says visitors ‘will find a climate suitable for the summer season.’"

"Only 7 percent of European travelers surveyed in March said that extreme weather was their biggest vacation-related concern, according to a study carried out by the European Travel Commission. And while 82 percent of those questioned in a 2021 Eurobarometer survey said they’d be prepared to change their travel and tourism habits to be more sustainable, environmental factors were among the least important metrics by which holidaymakers chose their destination."

"Politicians have a message for tourists who might be freaked out over roasting temperatures and hellish landscapes of roaring forest fires: Swallow your fears and keep enjoying your holiday."

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-heat-wave-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-tourism-holiday-greece-italy-airports-sustainability/

*I can't afford to fly anywhere to go on a vacation (including the US) and if I spent a ton of hard earned savings to only subjected to travel delays, super hot temps, severe rain and fires I would be really pissed off at myself.

Greece and Italy are encouraging tourism and downplaying the extremes.

July 25, 2023

Russia's new Covid numbers are increasing and is very odd.....

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/russia/

I check out Worldometers and today I noticed that Russia has had a strange shift in new Covid cases and I wonder what is causing it while other countries, except for S Korea, which has matching numbers, and the US (the US is still seeing some increases but not very much).

In Russia...
On May 14th there were 2996 new cases, on May 23 (1 week later) there were 17,118 new cases.
A 15,000 increase in 1 month!

On May 15th there were 26 deaths, on May 23 (1 week later) there were 183 new deaths.

What would explain this?

July 25, 2023

Switzerland was hit by a tornado, lots of damage

Climate change is here and we are witnessing it.

July 15, 2023

Bastille Day "History of the World, Part One"

Cloris Leachman is so funny!

July 14, 2023

Can Stone, Bannon and Flynn still be charged by Smith

Or were all of the pardons permanent? I have no idea what the laws are and how they apply to these co-conspirators currently.

July 12, 2023

Where do most GOPers get their info from these days?

Since I don't know any GOPers I can't ask them if they get their info from Fux Ruse, social media, Right Wing radio, Twitter, Facebook, etc?

July 8, 2023

Gov Newsom will not appeal ruling allowing release of Manson follower

Leslie Van Houton.

https://abc7.com/manson-family-gavin-newsom-follower-released-leslie-van-houten/13475336/

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he won't ask the state Supreme Court to block parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, paving the way for her release after serving 53 years in prison for two infamous murders.Newsom's office had blocked Van Houten's parole three times before, but was overturned this time by an appeals court."

"In a brief statement, the governor's office said an appeal was unlikely to succeed at the state Supreme Court. Newsom is disappointed, the statement said."

"More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal killings, the victims' families still feel the impact," the statement said. Van Houten, now in her 70s, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other followers in the 1969 killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. Van Houten could be freed in about two weeks after the parole board reviews her record and processes paperwork for her release from the California Institution for Women in Corona, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said. She was recommended for parole five times since 2016, but Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown rejected all those recommendations."


*I finished rereading Helter Skelter a few weeks ago and I think she should stay in jail. She actually enjoyed stabbing the LaBiancas and thought it was a great time, fun-fun. She should be glad she didn't get the original sentence...death. The state of CA outlawed the death penalty a few years after she was sentenced.

July 6, 2023

"7 year old claims he was in 9/11 plane crash"

I am starting to think this is legit. I hope I do not get reincarnated. One life is enough for me. In fact, the past 7 years seems like 7 lifetimes.

June 26, 2023

Have you ever seen the films Grey Gardens and That Summer?

They are documentaries that were very popular in the 1970s. It is a sad and strange story about an odd mother /daughter relationship as well as insanity. 0 It left me speechless at times as I tried to absorb what I was seeing and hearing.

That Summer is on You Tube for free but I can't post the link.

The wreckage left by Gatsbyesque frivolity is plumbed to desperate depths in Albert and David Maysles’s 1975 documentary, about a formerly wealthy mother and daughter, erst­while luminaries of the society pages, living in squalid chaos in their once glorious East Hampton estate. Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (born in 1895), called Big Edie, was Jackie Onassis’s aunt; her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, Little Edie (born in 1917), was Onassis’s cousin. Before the filming started, Onassis came to their rescue, getting their pest-infested, garbage-filled home cleaned up to save it from condemnation by the health authorities, but the Maysleses catch the Beales on the downturn again. Performing flamboyantly for the filmmakers and hungrily seeking their approval, mother and daughter spill their lifelong recriminations over circumstances that led to their isolation, poverty, and folie à deux. The pathos is heightened by Big Edie’s bedridden singing of classic show tunes: she’s a graceful master of timing and tone, a nearly great artist who squandered her chances and her life. Little Edie, still clinging to vestiges of youth and inflamed with desire, nearly raves for David Maysles as she performs majorette routines from her junior-college days. Rarely have high spirits and theatrical energy seemed like such a tragic waste; an era and its myths seem to be dying on-screen in real time. Directed by the Maysles brothers, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer.

— Richard Brody

https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/grey-gardens