9/3/23

 September 3, 2023

In bed at 9:3-, up at 5:06, regretting friendships I let lapse.  71°, high of 90°, sunny day ahead, AQI=37, wind WSW at 11 mph, 11-14/25.  DPs 58-64😓.  Sunrise at 6:17, sunset at 7:23, 13+5.

😄Forget your troubles, come on get happy. 😄  (1) From Maureen Dowd in NYT:  Anxiety in the Age of Barbie  -"Adolescent despair has been copiously analyzed in recent years: the harm from social media, microtargeting algorithms that inflame envy and conflict and divisive politics, unending school shootings, Covid sequestration, a planet devoured by flames and floods, a “never enough” achievement and consumer culture, anxious adults creating a jittery atmosphere, a digitally connected yet emotionally disjointed and spiritually unmoored society.  “Young people are taking in a lot of alarming information, and due to digital devices, they — like many of us — are taking the information in all day, every day,” Lisa Damour, the author of “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,” told me. . . It goes beyond the young. The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story on “The Booming Business of American Anxiety” that began: “A search for ‘anxiety relief’ on Google pulls up links for supplements in the form of pills, patches, gummies and mouth sprays."  

(2)  America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow - "Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of America into some of the world’s most bountiful farmland, are being severely depleted.  These declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole.  The investigation reveals how America’s life-giving resource is being exhausted in much of the country, and in many cases it won’t come back.  Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all.  “There is no way to get that back,” Don Cline, the associate director for water resources at the United States Geological Survey, said of disappearing groundwater. “There’s almost no way to convey how important it is.”  In the same online edition, Big Farms and Flawless Fries Are Gulping Water in the Land of 10,000 Lakes: When Minnesota farmers cranked up their wells in a drought, they blew through state limits. Thirsty crops included corn, soybeans and perfect, fry-friendly potatoes.  Another guilt-inducing complicity: McDonald's french fries.😰

(3) From Ukraine: The Never-Ending Nightmare of Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam Disaster - "On June 6, seismic meters hundreds of miles away detected an enormous explosion at the Kakhovka dam along the Dnipro River.  The reinforced concrete walls, more than 60 feet high and as much as 100 feet thick, crumbled, and 4.8 trillion gallons of water gushed out.  Scientific evidence indicates that the dam was blown up from the inside, almost certainly by the Russian forces occupying it. In one stroke, they unleashed epic floods on Ukraine and an ensuing drought that, taken together, brought a stunning level of destruction to the environment, the economy and the lives of civilians already enduring the hardships of war."  Consider the terror that has been visited on Ukrainian civilians by their 'fellow, brotherly Russians' over the last 1 & 1/2 years with no end in sight.  Eastern and southern Ukraine planted with landmines, cluster munitions fired by both Russians and Ukrainians, now supplied by the U.S.  What's next?

Mickey the Mope. Semi-blue day, useless.