I am in Austin.
Yeah itās fuckinā hot alright.
We are waiting for ERCOT to start the rolling blackouts any day now.
Here we are 560 and raining cats and dogs. The rain is nice, but does it have to come with chilly? (I know, yes, yes it does. Stillā¦)
That heat dome is mostly over Mexico, a country that has not caused anywhere near the level of climate damage that would justify this situation. Once again, they need protection from US, not the other way around.
Wow thatās ambiguous. Iām guessing āthey need to be protected from the USā, as opposed to āthey need to be protected by the USā.
Oh, darn, I meant the us/U.S. duopoly, but didnāt mean for it to sound like we would come to their rescue. Because, letās face it, we wouldnāt.
Thanks for catching that.
So glad Iām right at the edge of it. Itās warm, but not that warm in Tijuana right now.
Oh gods, I didnāt even notice the āusā vs āUSā ambiguity.
How does anyone ever communicate anything in English?
Yep. Tho it looks like the storm rolling in will knock the heat index back to 104-106 for the rest of the week.
I started the Ministry for the Future. Iām not sure Iāll be able to finish reading it this summer.
I listened to the audiobook last year.
While housepainting.
Itās prescient but poses a lot more questions than answers, and I say that as a fan of āStan.ā
In this survey of historical extreme wet bulb temperatures, the āred zonesā where it gets really bad are in Mexico and southwestern Asia
Itās within armās reach right now and Iāve started reading it maybe six or seven times over the past couple of months, butā¦
I donāt know why that is. So far it feels like the remix of a song I know but the intro goes on forever.
I started it at a bad time. Not a good book for me to begin when I felt unmoored. I havenāt picked it up again and might not during our awful Texas summer, when climate despair is more common for me.
Yeah, this is not the book to distract you from summertime Texas.
It gets better. It actually offers some ideasā¦ keep at itā¦
Post-lockdown, the drivers around here are out of their minds. 50% over the speed limit in the right hand lane, weaving in and out of traffic, multiple lane changes at a time. Iāve seen more accidents and had more close calls in the last year than in the 30 years before. Insanity.
To be fair, as someone who is both pedestrian and driver, Iāve noticed that a lot of pedestrians have no clue how to cross a street. If you walk out in the middle of the block without looking either direction because youāre face down looking at your phone, well, Iāll stop of course because I donāt want to hit your dumb ass, but I can imagine that a driver looking at a different spot on the road (or their own phone) might not see you in time.
(General you, not you-you)
Iāve noticed what appears to be way more pedestrian deaths on the highways around Austin. I donāt have stats, so I canāt say for sure that the increase is real and not only my perception. The city put up a whole load of tall barriers between sides through the areas seeing the most fatalities but itās happened other places too and the suburbs. Areas where a way to cross safely, with pedestrian bridges or under/over passes arenāt that far away. I donāt understand attempting to cross a feeway with an 80mph speed limit at 5 in the morning. Saw three children crossing the highway from a charter school after school. Some nice houseless guy escorted them across the second half at great personal risk. I hope he chewed them out too.
I almost hit a guy the other day. He was looking both ways and I guess just decided everyone would slow down or stop. He stepped onto a 4 lane rd with a speed limit of 40, which a lot of people ignore, less than a half a block from the weird 4 way stop on that road. Fucking idiot was lucky none of the drivers of the 8 cars he jogged in front of were distracted.
All that said- I suspect most of the deaths are from too many trucks and SUVs, distracted and speeding drivers, and our pedestrian hostile road infrastructure.
