TORONTO – Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has led the Blue Jays to a 2-0 series lead over the New York Yankees, proving that it actually is possible for a Toronto athlete to perform well in the playoffs despite fan pressure and the media asking him questions. “Before now I thought it was absolutely impossible for a […]
In brief: Invest 95L in the Atlantic is a ways from developing yet, and it currently looks to track north of the islands later this week. Still, we expect development eventually. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Priscilla in the Pacific is worth watching in about a week or so for potential heavy rain in the Southwest.
Invest 95L
The Atlantic seems to be settling a little bit. That said, we have one very clearly defined system to watch this week. It is now known as Invest 95L.
Invest 95L looking a little disheveled for the time being in the eastern Atlantic. (Cyclonicwx.com)
From here, 95L will be slow to organize, but it should eventually hit a tipping point in a few days and probably form a tropical depression. From there, it will continue off to the west and west-northwest.
Model agreement is modest on actual development, but it’s in fairly strong agreement on track, taking it west-northwest toward the islands. (Polarwx.com/Tomer Burg)
Model agreement on this general theme is actually strong; there’s a little less uncertainty with this system than there has been with various systems of late. At this point, it seems likely that Invest 95L is going to turn north into the Atlantic before it gets to the Caribbean islands, but interests in the northeast Caribbean from Puerto Rico to about Martinique should continue to at least follow the progress of 95L this week. You can see from Google’s AI ensemble that over 90 percent of model forecast tracks stay north of the islands by Thursday night, but there are 1 or 2 that stay fairly close.
While one or two ensemble members track into the islands, at least on Google’s AI ensemble, the vast majority pass comfortably northeast of the islands later this week. (Weathernerds.org)
One other note: Unlike some other systems this year, this one is going to be booking it west northwest, and its closest pass to the islands should occur by Thursday.
So, at this point, there’s not a whole lot to worry about with 95L, but it remains an item to monitor this week as it tracks off to the west-northwest.
Pacific Priscilla impacts on the Southwest?
One other item we’ll be tracking through the week is the potential that Tropical Storm Priscilla in the Eastern Pacific could direct a bunch of moisture into the Southwest U.S. sometime next weekend or so. While Priscilla itself should not be a huge concern for land, the remnant moisture and all that comes with it will be what is watched. Current track forecasts for Priscilla keep it comfortably off the coast of Mexico as it strengthens into a hurricane this week. Once northward, it will begin to weaken, but it may also bend back to the northeast some.
Priscilla’s track density from Google’s DeepMind ensemble shows that it may bend back toward northwest Mexico and northern Baja toward the U.S. Southwest in a week or so as a remnant low. (Polarwx.com/Tomer Burg)
If this does happen, we could see it merge with an incoming trough of low pressure in the upper atmosphere around next week in the Rockies. That would draw most of the remnant moisture north and into the Southwest bringing some potential for locally heavy rain. This is highlighted on the Climate Prediction Center’s 8 to 14 day hazards outlook from Saturday.
(NOAA/CPC)
Not something to worry over or anything, but it’s something on our radar to watch for the next 7 to 10 days. We’ll keep it updated!
TORONTO – Toronto Police announced a bold new initiative aimed at streamlining emergency response and reducing delays due to 911 hold times. The public is now encouraged to call 911 several days in advance to reserve a police response. Like many cities, Toronto has been plagued by long 911 hold times that are preventing police […]
According to new polling data, nearly 80 percent of Americans support extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of this year—and are at the center of a funding dispute that led to a shutdown of the federal government this week.
The poll, conducted by KFF and released Friday, found that 78 percent of Americans want the tax credits extended, including 92 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Republicans—and even a majority (57 percent) of Republicans who identify as Donald Trump-aligned MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters.
A separate analysis published by KFF earlier this week found that if the credits are not extended, monthly premiums for ACA Marketplace plans would more than double on average. Specifically, the current average premium of $888 would jump to $1,904 in 2026, a 114 percent increase.
Lumafield has released the results of a new study of
lithium-ion batteries that “reveals an enormous gap in quality
between brand-name batteries and low-cost cells” that are readily
available through online stores including Amazon and Temu. The
company used its computed tomography (CT) scanners, capable
of peering inside objects in 3D using X-rays, to analyze over
1,000 lithium-ion batteries. It found dangerous manufacturing
defects in low-cost and counterfeit batteries that could
potentially lead to fires and explosions.
My gut feeling has long been that cheap battery packs and cheap products with integrated batteries (like all the junk Temu sells) are dangerous. This analysis basically proves it. (I’d have linked directly to Lumafield’s report, but it’s only available by submitting your name and email address, so Liszewski’s summary at The Verge is a better quick read.)
Watch as a swarm of AI agents attempt to build a city and a website. They do a pretty good job, but are quite sloppy. This is using anthropics new Claude Code update, which includes the new model claude 4.5 sonnet and the ability to spin up sub-agents for sub-tasks.
The US economy is on the brink. Trump's illegal clawbacks of federal spending (waved through by a supine Congress), combined with his illegal tariffs and his government shutdown have sucked billions out of the economy, which was already much-weakened by proliferating crypto scams and AI stock swindles.
Every day sees more irreparable harm done. People who are pushed out of the workforce stand a good chance of never rejoining it, becoming "discouraged workers" (the economist's term for a worker who can no longer find employment thanks to bosses' prejudice against hiring people who don't already have a job). The businesses those people used to patronize are next in line for the mortuary.
Farms are failing at rates not seen in generations, even as Trump sends billions to prop up the Argentinian madman Javier Milei, whose Trumpalike policies have wrecked the Argentine economy. Milei repaid the US for its bailout by sending soybeans to China to replace the US crops that China blocked in response to Trump's trade war:
Long-running scientific experiments that might represent the cure for the cancer you'll contract next year, or a way to improve solar output and save you from the wildfires and floods that have your town's name on them, or a vaccine for the next pandemic, have had the plug pulled and may never restart. Research groups at universities are falling apart, their grants illegally canceled, the teams scattered to the four winds, never to reform.
Families, illegally deprived of food assistance, are having to choose between rent and groceries. Parents skip medication to feed their kids. Kids go hungry. All of this has permanent effects – on learning, on health, and on growth. Literally: my grandfather, a refugee who suffered from malnutrition in his boyhood, was a head shorter than his Canadian-born children.
Solar and wind projects are being shut down just as they near completion, squandering billions in public money – and a renewable future. Trump has stolen billions intended for Chicago public transit:
Many Americans have pinned their hopes on federalism, the devolution of power to the states. When I became a US citizen, the hardest question on the exam was untangling the tortured syntax of the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In a nutshell: the states have total power over their affairs, except where the Constitution says otherwise.
Lawsuits by state attorneys general have thus far done little to stanch the bleeding. Lawsuits are slow, and they rely on judges upholding the law, a task the Supreme Court has abandoned with sadistic glee.
The people need money, not legal briefs.
The editorial collective of Money on the Left offers a way to get money into the peoples' hands, right now, to allow us the material security we need if we are to organize to overthrow fascism and rekindle American Democracy. Their solution is "Blue Bonds," billed as "A Fiscal Strategy for Overcoming Trump 2.0":
What's a Blue Bond? It's a municipal or state bond, issued to replace the funds that Trump has illegally impounded. Blue states and cities can issue these bonds and use them to fund all the research, subsidies, programs and projects that Trump is trying to murder:
Dollars for housing and rental assistance, infrastructure and construction projects, rural energy and development, public health programs, veterans’ services, K-12 schools, colleges and universities, arts and culture: all public money previously authorized by congressional procedures should be reinstated in compliance with the Constitution.
Blue Bonds wouldn't just be backed by the states and cities that issue them, either. The Fed can swap them, one-for-one, with T-bills, the federal Treasury bonds that are considered "risk-free debt."
Blue Bonds don't have to be bonds, either; states can issue lots of different kinds of debt instruments, like "Tax Anticipation Notes" (TANs) and "Revenue Anticipation Notes" (RANs). These have different maturities and interest rates, and can be combined to hedge against liquidity traps.
These are legal. As the authors write, "Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act permits the Central Bank to purchase debt in any amount 'in unusual and exigent circumstances,' such as during financial crises." Trump destroying the US economy is unquestionably "a crisis." The Fed used Special Purpose Vehicles to bail out the economy during other recent crises, including the 2008 crash and covid. The difference here is that this is a people's bailout, going to fund the programs that people – not bankers or investors – rely on.
This is within the Fed's means. Thanks to those earlier bailouts, the Fed holds $7T worth of assets, and has "repeatedly emphasized [that] it can continue to do so without limit":
But – as the authors point out – this isn't just about bridging state and local financing through the Trump years. This is a fundamental restructuring of public spending, a way out of neoliberalism's violent allergy to the fiscal spending that expands the economy and lifts up the population. It's been nearly a century since the New Deal and Americans are still basking in its benefits (where they survive). It is time to renew those benefits:
Austerity can't get us out of a collapsing economy. It is precisely when the private sector withers that the state must step in, providing the income that people need to do the purchasing that makes the private sector possible. After all, money ultimately comes from the government (try making your US dollars and see how far you get). It's only through government spending (and government authorized lending through banks) that money enters our economy. When governments stop spending, money – the economy's lubricant – dries up, and the economy grinds to a halt.
Public debt issuance isn't "borrowing" in the sense that you or I might borrow. Governments are not households or businesses. Governments aren't money users, they are money creators. Governments don't need to "borrow" to create money any more than Starbucks needs to "borrow" to create gift cards redeemable for future mochalattafrappacheenaspressae.
Private debt is a drag on the debtor. State debt is generative. It creates the roads, the hospitals, the schools, the educated and healthy populace, needed for the private sector.
To issue Blue Bonds, states – which cannot be forced into bankruptcy – must repeal their disastrous "balanced budget" rules and rules requiring supermajorities to raise taxes. From Money on the Left: "public deficits are healthy, so long as they support communities and take care of our planet. What is debt but a promise to bring about a desired outcome in the future?"
Trump has destroyed investor confidence in the US economy. The only paths to returns today are flushing your money into the crypto casino or backing giga-mergers that only go through if the companies involved throw sufficient bribes at the tip jar on the Resolute Desk. Blue Bonds are a safe place for institutional investors seeking a safe haven from kleptocratic chaos.
As the authors say, this is "the true Abundance agenda" – not the "diet Reaganism" of deregulation and sacrifices to the market gods being peddled by the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. A true Abundance agenda "builds robust public systems, including newly chartered public banks, that put people over profits."
Blue Bonds are the good version of Trump's beloved shitcoins. Rather than wildcat money created by and for speculators, Blue Bonds are a source of public prosperity, backed by a present or future Fed under democratic control, accountable to the people. Trump and his fascist pals are all-in on creating as many forms of "money" as there are memes on the internet. Here, at last, is a form of novel money creation that builds a human, shared future.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
― Oscar Wilde
Raychael Stine, “Time Passages (the universe she is beautiful beautiful beautiful),” 2025, acrylic and oil on canvas
Because our world is rife with animus, political violence, and innumerable deeds of intolerance and hate, one can feel weighed down by the sheer stupidity of human action.
It was while in one such malaise over our agitated civic situation that I was happily jolted into pleasure by encountering recent paintings by Raychael Stine. Hers is an art of unabashed joy that is as sophisticated as it is playfully infectious. Wild smushes of paint abut softly rendered gradations that loosely describe human forms, dog parts, and botanicals — not dissimilar to a kaleidoscope’s fractal flowering. While walking the gallery, I was lured into each artwork on display, but found myself fixated on Time Passages (the universe she is beautiful beautiful beautiful) (2025).
This complicated vortex of a painting is a spirited puzzle of alternate spaces, differently scaled shapes, and jocular references. Childlike hearts encircle fragments of striated greens that make up both the contours of a walking dog and a window to beyond. Amid the central green dog are floating flowers, painted as if they were cut collages from a 1960s hippie shower curtain, and two smaller profiles of dog heads are filled with glowing stars and striped paint. One also spies rainbow bits hovering, or triangulating, as cast light is projected through a prism. A small tear falls below the main dog head, rendered as a trompe l’oeil droplet floating on the surface.
Stine seems to relish the making of her cosmic canine paintings as locales to display the variety of possible paint applications available, and also as emblems meant to illustrate the underlying beauty within the matrix of life. These densely layered paintings seem like what might emerge within the mind of Carl Sagan if he were walking his dog while waxing lyrical about the terrestrial and the celestial.
Perhaps the main source of Stine’s strength as an artist is the incredible dexterity in her paint application; it makes viewing her exuberant paintings a welcome indulgence. She adroitly slows our examination by layering thick impasto and then speeds our looking with myriad fuzzy lines flowing down the canvas like waterfalls.
While the colors in this particular painting are mostly night shades set in deep tones, the top of the painting reads like the bending of bright light along the stratosphere before an astronaut enters orbit. That’s how Stine balances it all; she depicts the stuff of our lives like our companion dogs or our delight in beautiful flowers and then cracks our vision open into the eternity of materials that make up the firmament above and within.
Raychael Stine’s Falls and Springs and Stardust Things is on view through October 25,2025, at Cris Worley Fine Arts in Dallas.
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – The government of Israel reports that it has intercepted a flotilla of boats, containing among others Greta Thunberg, which was in fact en route for a long-scheduled sleepover party. “We are very optimistic about this wholly enjoyable sleepover which will not violate any of the Geneva Conventions,” stated Prime Minister Benjamin […]
A note for a common argument in the comments: yes Walmart is selling "the wrong ones..." but that's the problem! Average folks who stop by the automotive section because they have a tail light out might see "LED" as an upgrade, and unless they've gone down the enthusiast rabbit holes you or I might have, they won't have a reason to suspect Walmart (or other retailers) would be selling a *downgrade* (let alone a not-street-legal downgrade) and might very well pop them into their car.
Well howdy-do Cowboy Slim! And howdy to all the little partners at home! Ooo-weee we sure are excited because of course as you know little partners at home, we don't often get extra special guest down at the corral. And well, this ones not quite a cowboy, but still he's pretty good! #CowboyWho
“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. See past “This and That” posts here. – Ed.
Today: Ladders to the sky
Billi Thanner, “ladder to heaven,” 2021, neon. Installed at St. Stephans Cathedral Vienna, Austria
Martin Puryear, “Ladder for Booker T. Washington,” 1996. An installation view at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Cai Guo-Qiang, “Sky Ladder,” 2015. Realized at Huiyu Island Harbour, Quanzhou, Fujian, June 15, 2015, at 4:49 am, approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Photo: Lin Yi, courtesy Cai Studio
*************
No matter how original, innovative or crazy your idea, someone else is also working on that idea. Furthermore, they are using notation very similar to yours. – Bruce J. MacLennan
OTTAWA – The ongoing Canada Post strike has impacted the ability of grandmothers across the nation to send you “a few dollars” on your birthday, which has been discovered to be a crucial cornerstone of the Canadian economy. Amidst the US trade war, rising unemployment, and skyrocketing cost of living, leading economists say the mail […]
President Trump had another successful week of what is already the greatest presidency of all time, and yet, the woke leftist mob continues to deliberately foment violence by labeling our administration as “fascist.” Donald Trump deserves nothing but praise, and I, Stephen Miller, will not stand idly by while the radical left tries to sow chaos by painting President Trump as some sort of self-obsessed, jingoistic nationalist.
Calling the president, or any member of this administration, a fascist is tantamount to inciting violence. We are not fascists, and if you call us fascists, we will throw you in jail.
I have been quick to condemn the Democrats’ pathetic attempts to put a target on our backs. Every time you call someone a fascist, you are signing their death warrant.
Predictably, as soon as I said that, the cancel-culture-loving, terminally online leftist lunatics dug up numerous instances in the past where IcalledDemocratsfascists as proof that I’m a hypocrite. But they’re ignoring the obvious difference, which is that, every time I said it, I was joking. I’m famous for my sense of humor. Ask anyone at the White House. When people think of Stephen Miller, they think “Guy with a great sense of humor."
That said, there is nothing funny about calling me or Donald Trump a fascist, and if you do, we will ship you to Guantanamo.
Nobody in the history of this country has experienced more discrimination or been subjected to more abuse than MAGA Republicans. Just look at the endless barrage of harassment our administration has endured from California Governor Gavin Newsom. His tweets are hateful, crass, and unbefitting of a man of his stature. His press office calls the tweets a “parody,” but Donald Trump sounds nothing like that, and he never stoops to such lows.
If the governor doesn’t get his act together, we’ll toss him in a federal supermax faster than he can say “Newsom ’28.”
The left keeps trying to twist President Trump’s actions to prove he’s a fascist. That’s why, when he and Peter Hegseth gathered America’s military leaders for a totally routine briefing/press-op, they tried to paint it as some sort of drum-beating display of strength.
Unlike Trump and Hegseth, fascist leaders are fanatically militaristic. And there is nothing fanatical about throwing a military parade, renaming the “Department of Defense” the “Department of War,” or purging non-MAGA generals. The latter two are simply common sense, and a giant military parade is just a fun, wholesome way to celebrate the birthday of America’s commander in chief.
Claim otherwise, and we’ll be forced to send the National Guard to your city until you wise up.
Sadly, the Democratic Party is no longer interested in governing and has become hell-bent on destroying America, which is why Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and the other domestic extremists in Congress have ground the government to a halt. No doubt Chuck Schumer and the head of Antifa (whose name escapes me at the moment) were in cahoots to shut down the government so that they can turn America’s national parks into training grounds for leftist guerrillas. Just because I can’t name the head of Antifa (or any other prominent member of Antifa) off the top of my head doesn’t mean they aren’t a highly coordinated terrorist organization.
In fact, calling us fascists is classic Antifa behavior, and we’ll need to keep you at a CIA black site until we can make sure you’re not plotting any attacks.
Fascist regimes have classic, telltale traits, like vilifying immigrants, adopting patriotic symbolism of their nation’s glorious past, embracing a narrow definition of masculinity and family values, and striving for economic and diplomatic self-sufficiency. But just because we also do all of those things does not make us fascists. That the unhinged left insists otherwise is proof that we’re really the victims in all of this. Which is why we must apprehend and silence our critics in self-defense.
Yes, we may be more hardcore than the most hardcore gangbangers, but we are also innocent lambs who are being slandered by enemies of the state. If you can’t see how both of those are true, you deserve to rot in a cell.
And it’s not just calling us fascists—any defamatory language, like saying we’re “bigots,” or “scumbags,” or “walking sacks of bile who decided to make their self-loathing everyone else’s problem” should earn you a life sentence. Republicans don’t engage in that sort of behavior, and the only way to restore our country to order is to punish those who do.
So, stop claiming that we want to deny you freedom of expression; otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to take that freedom away.
ALT