The Soft Apocalypse is Coming to Hurricane Country

From Mary Geddry's excellent Substack newsletter on Sunday . 

"And while all of this unfolded, assassination, war, economic sabotage, and political theater, yet another quietly catastrophic story slipped into view. The Trump administration fumbled NOAA’s contract renewal for the Saildrone hurricane forecasting fleet, eliminating a key tool used to predict storm intensity just as the U.S. heads into what could be a record hurricane season.

Because of bureaucratic delay and staff cuts, these drone boats, which had provided real-time, in-storm ocean-level data for four years, won’t be deployed. NOAA scientists are scrambling to replace them with airborne tools, but they admit: nothing else gives the same surface-level, loitering data that helps sharpen evacuation warnings and save lives. The kakistocracy fails again!"

Quietly catastrophic, indeed. 

There's more details about the sail drones and the contract not being renewed in this article.

There was a science fiction novel that came out a decade or so ago that reminds me of what's going on now, Soft Apocalypse by Wil McIntosh. The apocalypse it envisions is very much like what we're going through now. The title seems prescient, except that the apocalypse won't be soft for those in hurricane country.

Featured Links - June 16, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A bearded iris in our garden

Imperial ouroboros. "Andor's second season is a powerful look at the fragility of oppressive ideologies." This is the best article I've read about the series and reveals just how remarkable an achievement it was. There's a master's thesis waiting for someone who wants to explore the revolutionary themes in Andor, The Expanse, and Babylon 5. 

This 1999 email from a tech pioneer helped me think about Apple’s WWDC. "Jef Raskin instigated the Mac project in 1979. Twenty years later, he was dismayed with the state of personal computing. What would he think today?"

RIP to the almost future of computing: Apple just turned the iPad into a Mac. "We didn’t need 15 years to get back to where we started." I will probably not use the new interface on my iPad Mini, but may on the bigger iPad Air. 

Teachers Are Not OK. 'AI, ChatGPT, and LLMs "have absolutely blown up what I try to accomplish with my teaching."'

432 Chinese robots moved an entire 7,500-ton neighborhood before returning it to its original spot to build a subway. Metrolinx, are you paying attention to what's going on elsewhere in the world?

50 Rare Vintage Pictures Showing The Everyday Grit Of Working Class Americans Back In The Day. This is a fascinating collection. I wonder what an equivalent series of photos would show today.

Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How. "A new study suggests our prehistoric cousins likely traveled through the Ural Mountains and southern Siberia."

The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered. "By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math."

What It Took to Build the Death Star. "We know so much about the theft of its plans, and its final destruction over the Yavin system—but building the Death Star was a project decades in the making." Taking Star Wars seriously. 

20 hidden features in Apple’s upcoming 26-branded software. "Everything from iOS 26 to watchOS 26 is getting fun new features." I'm looking forward to trying out the new iPadOS later this year.

The semicolon defended by its advocates. I remember arguments about semicolons in my university English classes more than 50 years ago. 

Cart Cartoon Network Trolls Homophobes Hard For Melting Down Over Pride Month Fan Art. "The cable channel's Instagram account share oon Network Trolls Homophobes Hard For Melting Down Over Pride Month Fan Art. "The cable channel's Instagram account shared several pieces of fan art depicting characters from beloved shows to celebrate Pride Month—and trolled several homophobes who sounded off in the comments." Good. 

What the Fastest-Growing Christian Group Reveals About America. (archive link) "Instead of killing off faith, modernity has supercharged some of its most dramatic manifestations."

Photo of the Week - June 15, 2025

The full moon this week is apparently known as the "Strawberry Moon", probably more because it's the beginning of strawberry season than for the colour. This picture shows the moon a day or two past full with a distinctly orange cast due to the wildfire smoke in the air from the Canadian wildfires. I took this through a screen window so the quality isn't as good as it could have been, but it turned out pretty well. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro and cropped and enhanced slightly in Google Photos. 

The Strawberry moon

 

Saturday Sounds - Riverson

Riverson are a group from Montreal who released only one album in 1973 and disappeared from sight. I had not heard of them until earlier this week when they were played and mentioned on the CBC. One of the members was originally in the group Mashmakhan, who had a big hit in Canada with "As the Years Go By" and who opened for Chicago when I saw them in university. 

Riverson's album is pleasant early 70's pop/rock, very reminiscent of artists like Crosby Stills and Nash, Neil Young, and similar California acts of the day. It's too bad that they didn't go on to have more success, but I'm glad I got to hear it. 

A Warning and a Call to Action

Here's a long article from historian Timothy Snyder focusing on Trump's recent speech to the troops at Fort Bragg and what his rhetoric implies. The speech has been criminally underreported in the US media, probably because of the coverage of the protests in LA (which is exactly what he wants). 

This article is a warning, and coming from Snyder, who is one of the preeminent scholars of authoritarianism and fascism, it should be taken seriously. 

It's also a call to action at a time when the future of democracy is in flux and may be determined by our actions.

In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals' awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday -- military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.

Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people. Join them if you can. No Kings Day is June 14th.

As an aside, I'm getting the same vibes from the current situation that I did before January 6. I hope I'm wrong.  

Dispatches from the War on Science

One of the things I find most upsetting about the current US regime is their concerted attack on science and education. That alone, is going to have generational consequences, and the dismantling of organizations like the EPA, CDC and NOAA will affect not just the United States, but the whole world.

The NASA budget proposed for 2026 is the smallest since 1961

Here are a few dispatches from the war.

• Nobody Expected the MAGA Inquisition from Paul Krugman. "American scientific leadership and the prestige of our research universities are key pillars of U.S. power and prosperity. Corporate America certainly understands that our scientific and educational institutions contribute to its bottom line. So you might have expected even MAGA enthusiasts to be a bit cautious about killing this particular golden-egg-laying goose. You would have been wrong. Everything points to an effort to effectively destroy U.S. science — not gradually as part of a long-term plan, but over the next year or two."
• RFK Jr. guts the U.S. vaccine policy committee from Your Local Epidimilologist. "In an unprecedented and deeply alarming move, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed every single member of the nation’s vaccine policy committee—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—and announced plans to handpick their replacements. In other words, someone with an established track record of ignoring reality made the unilateral, ideological decision to gut one of the most trusted and effective pillars of America’s vaccine infrastructure. A system that helped eliminate smallpox, drastically reduce childhood diseases, safeguard schools, expand insurance coverage, and save millions of lives. A system that empowered 90% of Americans to protect their children and families confidently."
• Standing Up for Science by Phil Plait. "As I’ve written, the Trump budget request for NASA absolutely slaughters the science done by the space agency. He has also slashed budgets to all the science agencies, severely curtailing or even totally destroying their ability to do their important research. This includes climate research (because of course) but also a lot of critical health research. This is also leading to a huge brain drain as scientists look to other places to do their work, a loss that may take decades, if ever, to recover from. And then, late Monday afternoon, word came that RFK Jr., the crackpot quack anti-vaxxer whom Trump put in charge of the department of health and Human Services, fired every single member of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice (ACIP), the group of experts that advises the CDC on vaccines. This is a grotesque action, clearly meant to cut off any real science advise the CDC can get when it comes to vaccines… a medical procedure that is one of the most successful and safe efforts for human health in history."
  
• NOAA’s Climate Website May Soon Shut Down. "Climate.gov, NOAA’s portal to the work of their Climate Program Office, will likely soon shut down as most of the staff charged with maintaining it were fired on 31 May, according to The Guardian. The site is funded through a large NOAA contract that also includes other programs. A NOAA manager told now-former employees of a directive “from above” demanding that the contract remove funding for the 10-person climate.gov team. “It was a very deliberate, targeted attack,” Rebecca Lindsey, the former program manager for climate.gov, told The Guardian. Lindsey was fired in February as part of the government’s purge of probationary employees. She said that the fate of the website had been under debate for months, with political appointees arguing for its removal and career staffers defending it."
• Loss and Degradation of NOAA Sea Ice and Glacier data. "On May 6, 2025 NOAA/NCEI announced the retroactive termination of funding for keystone sea ice products. These are the products that I use for much of the sea ice analysis and information I present in this newsletter and in many other venues. This data helps inform decisions by people and businesses in Alaska and beyond."
• NASA's disastrous 2026 budget proposal in seven charts. "That's enough for now. There's lots more but I don't have the stomach for it. "The White House's fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget proposal for NASA represents a historic threat to the space agency. That's not hyperbole: we have the data to prove it. It's the smallest budget proposed for NASA since 1961."

That's it for now. I don't have the stomach for more.

2024 Nebula Award Winners

Over the weekend, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announced the winners of the 2024 Nebula Awards. The awards are voted on by SFWA members and are one of the major awards in the science fiction and fantasy field.

These are some of the winners. 

• Novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
• Novella:  The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui
• Novelette: “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being“, A.W. Prihandita
• Short Story: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole“, Isabel J. Kim

Back in April, I said that I would be disappointed if “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole“ didn't win the Short Story Hugo Award. It may yet and I'm not at all surprised that it won the Nebula Award. It's a remarkable story that works on many levels. 

Featured Links - June 9, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Wildfire smoke in Toronto

• Some of the coolest ways Unreal Engine is being used in and outside of gaming. "Electric vehicles and performance-capture and Star Wars, oh my!"
• Inventing the Renaissance: Ada Palmer. "A fun conversation about history." A conversation between Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman and historian and author Ada Palmer.
• Scientists stunned by dramatic new behavior in Arctic predators: 'Neither he nor I had any idea of what was coming'. "The relationship between the snowshoe hare and the Canada lynx is a fascinating natural cycle that's been studied for decades. Now, advances in technology are revealing new passages in this ancient story. According to Mongabay, that story is also changing — and both human activity and our shifting environment may be playing a significant role."
• Why Bell Labs Worked. "Why Bell Labs worked so well, and could innovate so much, while today’s innovation, in spite of the huge private funding, goes in hype-and-fizzle cycles that leave relatively little behind, is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot in the past years. And I think that the author of this article has hit the nail on its head on most of the reasons - but he didn’t take the last step in identifying the root cause." And of course, the Bell Labs building is one of the key sets in Serverance.
• ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom. "Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald Trump."
• The Essential Terry Pratchett. "The prolific fantasy author, best known for his Discworld series, infused his writing with empathy and humor. Here’s where to start."
• What I’m learning from MAHA. "And why public health needs to catch up with the curiosity-driven movement." As a former technical writer, what I found interesting was the importance of good communication.
• You should use these 10 personal safety features on your Pixel phone (before it's too late). "Keep your data and physical safety protected with just a few taps on your Pixel phone. Here's how, and why they work." An important article if you have a Pixel phone.
• Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’. "Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body."
• Expect a long summer of wildfire smoke for North America. "Fire danger is increasing as the climate warms, drying out forests." Toronto is seeing high levels of smoke already. See the picture on last Friday's post. 
• These stunning photos show how nature came back after the world’s largest dam removal project. "Four dams and three large reservoirs were removed from the Klamath River in a project that finished last year—and acres of native wildflowers are now in bloom along the river’s edge."
• On Tyranny free resources. "To use and to share, now or any time," From historian Timothy Synder. 
• Remembering the lost father of American science fiction – and his Scottish roots. "Robert Duncan Milne was an astonishingly prescient pioneer of science fiction who published over 60 stories in the late 19th century. Yet hardly anyone knows his name or how he influenced other leading lights in the early days of the genre." I had not heard of him until seeing this article.

Photo of the Week - June 8, 2025

Our neighbours have a large maple tree and right now it's dropping seeds all over our backyard. I'm going to have to go out later today and sweep off the patio, rake the grass, and try to get as many as I can out of the garden. This is a picture of one of our hanging flower baskets that managed to snare a couple of seeds. Taken with my Pixel  8 Pro. 

Flowers with maple seeds

Saturday Sounds - Tedeschi Trucks Band - Live at the Beacon Theatre - 2025/05/24

This week's musical treat is a full concert from the Tedeschi Trucks Band recorded at the Beacon Theater in New York on May 24th, 2025. No source info is given for this, but given the video and sound quality, I'm guessing it's from an official webcast. In any case, it's a great performance from one of the best bands now touring. Enjoy. 

 

Why We're Toast

Wildfire smoke over the 401 in Toronto

I've been publishing an ongoing series of posts titled "We're Toast" with links to articles that underscore my conviction that our technological civilization is doomed. The reasons are pretty obvious if you look around: climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, species extinction, rising authoritarianism and religious fanaticism, and so on. 

But if you want a detailed overview, with receipts, of why we're in trouble, then read "Understanding Our Collapsing World" on the Itsovershoot blog. The article looks at the various reasons why we're in the current mess and then examines what we can do about it (not much, unfortunately). Here's just one small sample:

We grew from 1 billion people in 1800 to over 8 billion today, and at the same time, our average energy consumption increased more than twentyfold. From about 2,000-2,500 calories per day (just enough to stay alive) to over 50,000 calories per day when you include the fossil fuels, electricity, and industrial processes that we rely on (that’s the global average). That means our total thermodynamic footprint is now equivalent to more than 160 billion Homo Sapiens roaming the Earth.

It's a long article but very readable. You might want to have a stiff drink at hand while you read it. 

 

Featured Links - June 3, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Springtime at the marina

• What are ultra-processed foods, really? "We dug into the research and answered your questions."
• The MAHA Report Is a Health Hoax: RFK Jr. Just Cited Studies That Don’t Exist. "America’s top health official tabled a report filled with fake science, dead links, and ChatGPT hallucinations. This isn’t policy—it’s malpractice by executive order."
• Predicting and Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease. "With all the advances in both the science of aging and artificial intelligence (AI), we are in a propitious position to accurately and precisely determine who is at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease years before signs of even mild cognitive deficit."
• 5,000-Year-Old Bread Recipe Recreated in Turkey—and Locals Can’t Get Enough. "A bread made from ancient grains is rising again in Turkey, and it's a big hit." Not only does it taste good, but it's made from drought-resistant plants.
• HellCaptcha: Accessibility Theater at Its Worst. "hCaptcha's "Accessibility" Mode Is a Fucking Cookie. And it's wrapped in a maze of broken promises, bad design, and outright user hostility."
• Massive security blunder: Russian nuclear site blueprints exposed in public procurement database. "Russia is modernizing its nuclear weapon sites, including underground missile silos and support infrastructure. Data, including building plans, diagrams, equipment, and other schematics, is accessible to anyone in the public procurement database."
• Changing of the guard and Best laid plans. "What does a change in ownership for the genre's legacy short fiction magazines mean for the SF/F community?" The science fiction magazines, especially Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, were my gateway into the genre.
• The Radical Development of an Entirely New Painkiller. "The opioid crisis has made it even more urgent to come up with novel approaches to treating suffering." Finally there’s something effective." This article gives real insight into the complexity of developing a new drug.
• ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom. "Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald Trump."

Movie and TV Reviews - May 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in May. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. Now that baseball season has started, there will probably be fewer items here.

Movies

• Working Man. Another Jason Stratham cookie-cutter action flick. This was a Saturday night popcorn movie for us; perfectly fine if you don't want anything more. (Amazon Prime)
• Star Wars: Rogue One. We decided to watch this as it's a direct sequel to Andor. I think it may be my favourite of all the Star Wars movies. 

TV Shows

• Doctor Who (season 15): The second season with Ncuti Gatwa. as The Fifteenth Doctor. I like him but most of the episodes so far haven't really grabbed me. The season finale two-parter was pretty awful. 
• Harry Wild (seasons 2-4): Another mystery, set in Ireland and starring Jane Seymour, which are probably the only two reasons to watch it. Otherwise, a standard cozy mystery. (Acon TV)
• Antiques Road Trip (season 8): Our tour of the the wilds of the UK in search of treasures continues. (PBS)
• Andor (season 2): Certainly the best of all of Disney's Star Wars series but there are still too many B-movie elements and tropes from the movies. It did get better in the second half of the season. (Disney+)

Photo of the Week - June 1, 2025

I haven't been getting out for as many walks as I'd like because the weather has been uncooperative. This is the best of the pictures I took Friday, when it was relatively warm and sunny for a change. We have been hearing a lot of birds in the trees but this swan is the only bird I saw down by the lake. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro. 

Lunch time for swans