Doug Merson @Micromineral@qoto.org

#ThisIsTheWay

I us3d to make fun of Butte Falls, being the hot, gritty steppingstone to the more beautiful Prospect, OR…but they have some real talent on hand in this tiny town that also delivers drinking water to 60,000+ people in the valley below.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09072023/in-oregon-timber-country-a-town-buys-the-surrounding-forests-to-confront-climate-driven-wildfires/

Nicely done, Butte Falls. Your safety and our climate will be the reward.

#ClimateChange #Oregon

A two frame composite of the Milky Way and my kitty "Ding" waiting for me to join him in the freezing cold tent. Ding loved to go camping with me. I sure do miss Schrödinger, the Kampin' Kitty . (Photo: Massacre Rim, International Dark Sky Sanctuary, Nevada (5/23/2020).)

#AstroPhotography #MilkyWay #Astronomy #Camping #CatsOfMastodon #Photography #LinuxPhotography #Darktable #GIMP

Throwback to hanging out at one of the most famous fault locations in the world - Wallace Creek.

The 1st image is of me standing near the current location of the creek on the downstream side of the fault. The 2nd image is a lidar image from OpenTopography of the fault with the location where I’m standing in the 1st image marked by an .

#sanandreasfault #earthquake #wallacecreek #geology #lidar

Fantastic Wulfenite From Red Cloud Mine, Silver District, Trigo Mts., La Paz Co., #Arizona, #USA.
Photo Copyright @qileisi1987/IG

The kids are going to be alright. They're fighting like hell for their future. Will you join them?

Orange County valedictorian calls on school board members to resign at graduation

“Our teachers get paid virtually nothing, yet they protect their student body to the highest standard possible. What do they get in return? They’re called groomers by parents on Facebook. Instead of our school board backing these teachers, they buy into the narrative and concern themselves more with depriving students of their basic freedoms, releasing policies to take away Black history and forcibly outing students who are not heterosexual,” Mthethwa said, calling on the immediate resignation of three members of the Orange County School Board."

https://dailyprogress.com/community/orangenews/orange-county-valedictorian-calls-on-school-board-members-to-resign-at-graduation/article_a1cbcf70-f9af-11ed-9eff-ff57adb96e35.html

#Antifa #Education #News

Terrible news for the environment today. Sadly though, not unexpected news.

Small and "isolated" wetlands have connections in the groundwater system and treating these isolated wetlands as something that can be plowed under or build over is going to have serious environmental issues.

But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/supreme-court-wetlands-authority-epa/index.html

The US Supreme Court Clean Water Act decision could be disastrous for wetland protection - and therefore for our nation's flood risks and water quality. The continuous surface test ignores the physical / hydrologic realities of wetlands.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1178150234/supreme-court-epa-clean-water-act

#CleanWaterAct #WOTUS #Water #SupremeCourt #Wetlands #WetlandProtection

My shorthand for the approach we most need in election coberage is this:

"Not the odds, but the stakes."

How does this work in practice? Margaret Sullivan answers that in The Guardian today. "Now’s the time to think about just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/25/ron-desantis-florida-record-presidential-campaign?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Not how DeSantis plans to outwit Trump and then succeed in "the general" (itself an insidery phrase...) but what life would be like if he took power.

Not the odds, but the stakes.

#uspol #journalism

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore - or are we?

While much of the state is flat or punctuated by rolling hills, Kansas features some unique geological sights, including Monument Rocks in the western part of the state. Part of a series of badlands with notable fossil deposits, the outcrops are carved out of limestone that was deposited when the area was covered by an inland sea during the Cretaceous. The formations rise 21 m (70 ft) above the landscape.

#Photography #Kansas #Geology

Pro-Tip: Anytime you see a headline about a bill dying/passing "in Congress," always think to yourself:

That’s a Both Sides framing.

The ERA bill did not fail in the Senate today, it was filibustered by the Republicans. The Framing that it failed in the Senate is a way to distribute the failure to Both Sides.

The hostage note that K-Mac passed today is another one; not one Democrat voted for it, so the Republicans passed that bill, not The House.

/Rant
#FailedPress

#BothSidesDont

Amongst other fun on a family visit to Boston this week, we visited the Bunker Hill Monument, which it turns out is not on Bunker Hill, because neither was the Battle of Bunker Hill (a pyrrhic victory for the British in the Revolutionary War) that it commemorates.

The monument is built of granite: I didn’t see any on the monument itself, but the curbstones on the walkway around it had some very nice pegmatite veins. #geology #rocks

Today Jim Jordan is holding a Judiciary Committee hearing in NYC to attack Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for prosecuting Trump. Yet Jordan will NOT hold a hearing to investigate Clarence Thomas's obvious misconduct. This is what WEAPONIZATION of the govt looks like! My new CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/17/opinions/jim-jordan-clarence-thomas-judiciary-committee-obeidallah/index.html

Here’s a simple idea: If you’re going to have ‘news’ in the name of your company, report actual news. Don’t just make stuff up because your audience doesn’t want to hear the truth.