Lawrence Culver

Yes, and one of the problems many regions around the world will have to adapt to is shifting from water infrastructure designed to collect, store, and transport snow melt to water infrastructure designed for increasingly erratic rainfall.

As an example, here’s some historical perspective on winter 2025-2026 snowfall in Salt Lake City—a place that’s supposed to be hosting the Winter Olympics eight years from now:

Their homes burned in the LA wildfires. A year later, thousands still can’t return Seven in 10 residents who were forced to leave have not returned, with many living in temporary housing in other cities or even countries

Over a year after the fires, “more than 7 in 10 residents in Altadena and Pacific Palisades have not yet returned home. And among those who plan to rebuild their homes, only one in seven have actually started the process.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’m happy to—thanks to you for all your excellent reporting on water and climate in California and the West!

This story of small struggling water companies in Altadena is a great example of how, as in so many things, Southern California relies on a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes competing entities, often small, usually underfunded, and incapable of coping with the scale of 21st century disasters.

Personally I was thinking Bluesky was more like the Algonquin Table, but a slightly shabby but still elegant European hotel would be ok I guess

Lockheed Martin, PG&E, Salesforce and Wells Fargo team up to help battle wildfires The companies announced a new venture on Monday to help firefighters prevent, detect and respond more quickly to wildfires.

“Emberpoint” could use tech to detect & combat fires? Great!

But a utility responsible for starting megafires, AI tech supercharging climate change, a defense contractor and a giant mortgage lender all eyeing big wildfire profits? Disaster capitalism at its finest!

www.latimes.com/business/sto...

“Melania review - Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest”

Can’t wait to never see it.

In the unending ouroboros of dumb academic administrators making dumb choices with other people’s money (but always managing to screw faculty and staff), this is definitely right up there.

Oh, and they also cut the number of funded grad students the same day they hired this bloviating goober.

Father of Our Country George Washington loves his new suburban McMansion, but the HOA is even more repressive than King George III—and the Stamp Acts were reasonable compared to getting constantly ripped off by all this nickel and dime neighborhood fees shit

Map of the Arid Region of the United States, in John Wesley Powell’s Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, 1878.

Western US Drainage Basin Snow Water Equivalent, Jan 27th, 2026, USDA.

As Colorado River Basin states squabble over water yet again, it’s almost like John Wesley Powell was onto something way back in 1878 when he warned how important it would be to carefully plan homesteading, agriculture, and development in the arid US West.

‘Shameful’: Trump’s EPA accused of prioritizing big business over public health A year into Trump’s second term, critics say the EPA is rolling back dozens of protections and giving a leg up to polluters

“The EPA said that it would no longer consider the cost to human health from two common air pollutants – but still weigh the cost paid by industry for regulatory compliance.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

California's iconic Highway 1 is fighting a losing battle against climate change. Can it survive? Landslides closed Highway 1 for three years. No one expects this will be the end of its battle with the forces of nature.

Climate change poses threats to infrastructure worldwide. California’s iconic Highway 1 is a spectacularly scenic—and spectacularly expensive—example, testing the limits of preserving existing infrastructure in the face of shifting topography and climate conditions.

www.latimes.com/california/s...

Utah State University’s library has these too.

‘Delays, lowballs, outright denials’: how the LA wildfires have exposed the US’s broken insurance industry Insurance practices in an age of climate volatility raise troubling questions about home ownership and housing affordability – the bedrock of the American middle class

“We’re at a real breaking point … it’s consuming all our time … and it’s exhausting, having to fight for what should be a relatively straightforward transaction. The way they are treating people who have lost everything is literally inhuman.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The French Embassy in DC renaming itself “the embassy for people currently experiencing Frenchness” in response was c’est magnifique

Wide Awake Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians * Winner of the Lincoln Forum Book Prize * Finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln P…

There’s a good new book on it:

www.bloomsbury.com/us/wide-awak...

“The promises of lower electric bills, good jobs, and climate responsibility, she said, remind her of cigarette ads she saw decades ago touting the health benefits of smoking.”

The vast need for water & energy, the costs of air pollution, power bills, and destroyed landscapes—the tech industry once promoted itself as green, but no longer makes any pretense about its destructiveness, or the fact that local residents are irrelevant, mere nuisances slowing the path to profit.

Trump Pushes A.I. Data Centers, but the G.O.P. Is Cool to One in Alabama

Gift article.

My Rustbelt-in-the-Sunbelt hometown of Birmingham and its suburb Bessemer have declined for decades. AL bent over backwards for developers and ignored environmental concerns. But even here, a data center the size of 18 Walmarts gives politicians pause.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/u...

How the National Park Service Is Deleting American History

Gift article.

George Washington owned slaves?
Labor in the textile mills of New England was hard?
Climate change is real?

The National Park Service doesn’t think Americans can handle historical reality. Seems dubious. But the people running the NPS certainly can’t.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/c...

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 - September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings, as well as his 1866 book Snow-Bound. John Greenleaf Whittier en.wikipedia.org

This is who the Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis is named for

Rain, not snow: Extraordinary warmth leaves mountains less snowy across the West The snowpack this winter is smaller than average in California's Sierra Nevada as well as the Rocky Mountains. The lack of snow reflects record warmth.

“There has been very little snow in low-elevation and mid-elevation areas this winter — a symptom of climate change, as warmer temperatures push average snowlines higher….’That is the classic global warming mountain snowpack signature.’”

www.latimes.com/environment/...

“Research published last year found that the stretching of the polar vortex…is contributing to extreme weather in the US and that global heating, counterintuitively, could be playing a role in accelerating this process.”

In Altadena, the Palisades, and other recent fire disasters, there was one thing many fire victims had in common: they were unable to drive themselves out. In Katrina, there was no plan to help people without cars evacuate. With planning, public transit can literally be a lifesaver.

In addition to the photo below, the Philadelphia Inquirer article linked in this post link includes all the removed historical information panels:

bsky.app/profile/loga...

bsky.app/profile/loga...

Let’s hope it actually happens, and doesn’t replace the rail connection to LAX as the thing Angelenos will be awaiting completion of until the heat death of the universe

Information about George Washington and slavery removed at the President’s House Site, Philadelphia.

Washington profited from slavery, but also worried about it, and what it portended for the future survival of the US.

**A slaveowner** could think about it more complexly than these people can.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh