Utilities and World Events

Well, even longer for the no write.  Ukraine, the murdering bastard Putin and the republicans' perfidy and malfeasance have been occupying my head; living there rent free, as it were.  I'm also filled with rage at the fact that the west will not help Ukraine enough to END THIS, before they are all dead, and there is nothing left to save.  Ukraine should have been a NATO member long before this.  

In the June 7, 2021 issue of the New Yorker, there was a short piece about the dedication of the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library phase one remodel completion.  Chris Owens, son of Major Owens (who got his start in politics as a Brooklyn librarian) read from his father's poetry.  "Human history is a long, ugly tale/ Tragedy guided by the frail monster male."  That right there is Vladimir Putin.

In the neighborhood we have been observing utility work.  It's spring, the ground is not frozen, so they're out with power tools.

This is sewer repair.  In order to work on the sewer lines, one must dig.  These two were friendly and did not mind having their picture taken.

Look at the pile of dirt and the size of the hole.  It's amazing how dirt expands when you remove it from its previous location.

New poles were installed while we weren't looking.  I guess these are for more neighborhood safety.  We already have round abouts at most intersections, so I'm not clear on why we needed more traffic calming measures.

The fiber people have been in the area as well.  They will be in ours at some point.  They will take fiber underground, up the street, and then tunnel to junction boxes in people's front yards.  After that, one must sign up for service before they bring it into your house.  We're on the fence about fiber.  For one thing, it is impossible to know how much it will cost.  The first year is full of discounts and one year free for this that and the other, and then it goes up.  Their speeds are higher than Xfinity speeds, but honestly Xfinity is fast enough.  When we lived in the RV and stayed in Issaquah, we would get DSL at 7 meg/sec and it was fine.  I think fiber speeds would be wasted on us.  Here is one of their machines.  I believe that's what they call the missile, that pushes conduit through the earth.

We've been out in the yard.  We took out a large uwanamus, that had an amazingly large root system.  Parts of the roots required saws to get them out.  The deer ate the front half all winter, it grows all over the ground so weeding is difficult, and then it drips leaves into a window well.  It had to go.  We replaced it and the horrible looking rose bush with box woods.  The deer don't eat them.  It was hard, we're still kind of sore from the effort.  Yesterday we deployed bags of rocks in the areas that were thin.  Today I'm not doing any of those kinds of activities.

It's been an interesting week.  During the confirmation hearings, there was the Airing of Grievances on the part of Lindsey Graham; that's a Seinfeld reference, go here for Festivus if you're curious.  Twice he went off on a rant about things not related to Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination.  After the rant was done, he grabbed his drink and stormed out of the room.  Ted Cruz attempted to appear all lawyerly in his interrogation, until he was forced to admit he had the wrong case that he was using to try to make a point.  Then there was Josh Hawley.  Just look at this face.  There is a lot of venom behind that expression.

The media made much of KBJ's ability to remain calm, not roll her eyes, and absorb the lies told about her sentencing record.  Not too much was said about why did she have to endure this?  Why are a bunch of white guys allowed to speak to her like that in the first place?  Why did Cruz get to talk over her repeatedly, and then accuse her of filibustering instead of answering?  Then there was Marsha Blackburn, asking her to define "woman."  It was a weak, failing effort to get her to discuss trans rights.  KBJ was not having it.  Jalyn Radziminski on twitter posted "Don’t get me wrong- the nomination of Judge KBJ is a historic moment. But why are we normalizing a Black woman being verbally & emotionally abused by a committee for the public to see? Why are we applauding composure during abuse? Why must Black women suffer to make history?"  Racism and misogyny run deep in the republican party.

Then the 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas (wife of Supreme Court justice, Clarence) and Mark Meadows were revealed.  She was strongly urging Meadows to not let the orange ectoplasm concede, because they were going to overturn the election.  This is sedition, she's the wife of a justice.  She claims Clarence didn't know what she was doing.  She was organizing a insurrection, which she did attend until she got too cold.  NPR has a piece on it with no pay wall.  WAPO has the original story, but they paywall. Clarence Thomas was the lone dissent in the SCOTUS’s January order rejecting orange guy's bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel.  He should be impeached.  Mark Meadows should be arrested for voting fraud after registering to vote at an address where he never lived.  North Carolina takes a dim view of this.

Ukraine rolls on, they're holding their own, but Mariupol is paying a terrible price.  Most of the city is gone, and the survivors are starving at this point.  Russia refuses to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered.  They need more weapons, more javelins, stingers and drones.  One man did this.  The only bright side (this is dark humor) is that the Russians are starting to run over their commanding officers.  The conscripts are not highly motivated to do this thing.

This was Mariupol before.