Critters, Home Building and Evil

Greeting Earthlings?  How go your days consumed by avoiding other people?  We're crabby.  It's 105 degrees and the sky is pretty much obscured by smoke from California.  I feel so bad for those people, it's a mystery to me how they keep getting back up again from fires followed by mud slides.  Fire season used to start in October, but here we are in August with the state burning.

I took this yesterday, notice how the prickly pear is still happy from the recent rains.  There may not be anymore.  It keeps going into New Mexico.

Here's a gratuitous photo of the backyard palm trees.

I know you all wonder about construction techniques in Arizona.  It's a little weird.  First the house is framed, then oriented strand board is nailed to the outside.  It's not particularly precise work, sunlight can be seen between the boards.  Then the entire structure is covered in styrofoam.  I know!  From wikipedia we learn: "Styrofoam is a trademarked brand of closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam (XPS), commonly called "Blue Board", manufactured as foam continuous building insulation board used in walls, roofs, and foundations as thermal insulation and water barrier." Once that is up, the structure is encased in chicken wire.

 Here is a larger picture of the chicken wire.  Once that is done the structure will be sprayed with stucco.  I'm not sure if it's actually stucco or gunnite.  Whatever it is, the entire house is coated with it.  Eventually it will develop cracks, providing the home owner with hours of entertainment, caulking and painting them.  Houses built in the 1960s have brick exteriors, and many have brick interior (a different layer of brick) walls as well.  I guess brick got too expensive.

We had two road runners in the yard this morning.  It's the first time I've seen two traveling together.
He's hot, you can't tell but he's panting a little.

Look at the base of the Buddha.  That's one of the squirrels that visits us.

Who watched the RNC last night?  I made it through 3 minutes and 2 lies told by Nikki Haley and switched over to Food Network.  Below is Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Junior's new squeeze.  She used to be married to California Governor Newsom.  Anyway, she had a pre-recorded speech during which she was yelling.  I really was waiting for her to shout "Let's Get Ready to Rumble."  A short clip of her interminable six minute speech can be found here.  The question that has been repeatedly asked is why didn't the people running the convention ask her to do it again and tone it down a little?

Does she look possessed or what?

HuffPost had a good article up about Robert Duncan, the Republican operative who brought us Louis DeJoy, the spawn of Satan.  Duncan has been involved in Republican efforts to suppress the vote since 2002.  He's evil.  Biden's problem will be that the Board of Directors can only be fired for cause.  I wonder if destruction of government property will be enough cause to get rid of the lot of them.


The head of the FDA has backtracked on the remarks he made at the orange wombat's presser on the game changer that is convalescent plasma.  According to Dr. Hahn:

“What that means is -- and if the data continue to pan out -- 100 people who are sick with Covid-19, 35 would have been saved because of the administration of plasma,” Hahn said. Hahn’s remarks followed similar comments by Trump, who said that the therapy is “proven to reduce mortality by 35%,” and by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

The data showed a difference in mortality between 11% and 8% (I'm rounding because I don't remember the exact numbers) without and with the plasma.  That is the 35% improvement.  It's not a 35% reduction in mortality.  Dr. Hahn showed his complete and total lack of understanding statistics among other things.  Bloomberg did a good article on it.

Yet another young Black man has been shot in the back by the police.  Jacob Blake was shot point blank seven times in the back as he was getting into his car.  He survived, but is paralyzed below the waist.  How many more must there be?

There is so much more evil to report on but I think I'll give it a rest.