It's no secret that we need rain in several American regions. Of course, many of us have lived through drought cycles in the past (half my youth was spent being told, If it's yellow, let it mellow) but this drought cycle feels different. Because it is. First-ever water cuts declared for Colorado River in historic drought. "Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US by volume, has drained at an alarming rate this year. At around 1,067 feet above sea level and 35% full, the Colorado River reservoir is at its lowest since the lake was filled after the Hoover Dam was completed in the 1930s."
+ Extreme conditions lead to extreme ideas. SF Chronicle: San Francisco Bay's tides are going to rise. Should we dam the Golden Gate first? "Researchers in the past have dismissed this seemingly straightforward concept on environmental grounds. Engineers are skeptical, too. But the enormity of the challenge has some Bay Area leaders saying it should at least be studied." (I still like my idea of using ocean tides for pasta water.)
+ New Zealand announces it's locking down the entire country ... over one Covid case. Meanwhile, many US governors are fighting for the right to send your kids to school maskless.
3
THE FIGHTING WAS ON THE WALL
A president makes a decision, admits there were errors in its execution, and sticks by and fully owns the decision. That sure beats: A president randomly tweets a decision, pretends it was a perfect decision, lies and says the decision is a hoax, and then suggests injecting Lysol into it. But the Afghanistan story is less about whether we left and more about how we left. NYT: Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse. (This part of the story just seemed so wildly obvious.)
+ "While the coming months and years will reveal what the U.S. government did and didn't know about the state of Afghan security forces prior to U.S. withdrawal, the speed of the collapse was predictable. That the U.S. government could not foresee — or, perhaps, refused to admit — that beleaguered Afghan forces would continue a long-standing practice of cutting deals with the Taliban illustrates precisely the same naivete with which America has prosecuted the Afghanistan war for years." Politico: Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms.
"And yet my contact was certain — or 'like 85 percent sure' — that the thief was a particular person, a man who had worked in New York publishing for a decade. He was an outsider in the industry with a reputation for becoming pushy when he didn't get what he wanted. He seemed to conduct his business almost entirely over email. Even more intriguing: Someone, I was told, had proof." The Spine Collector. For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?
7
DEEP IN THE PI HOLE
"Using a computer, their approximation beat the previous world record of 50tn decimal places, and was calculated 3.5 times as quickly. It's an impressive and time-consuming feat that begs the question: why?" New mathematical record: what's the point of calculating pi?
"One email about a $15 million gift, suspected of phishing, sat unopened for a month. Several others about a $20 million pledge went ignored by an assistant, who thought the nondescript sender was fake. The recipient of another memo, promising millions more, turned to their lawyer, who said it was likely a scam." Bloomberg: MacKenzie Scott's Money Bombs Are Single Handedly Reshaping America.
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