A miracle of god ...

 Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Religion is a means of control, especially if it's in lockstep with government, something readily seen by Patriarch Kirill, Putin's spiritual leader giving Putin essential cover by supporting Russia's war with Ukraine.

Today, Kirill stands apart not merely from Francis, but from much of the world. The leader of about 100 million faithful, Kirill, 75, has staked the fortunes of his branch of Orthodox Christianity on a close and mutually beneficial alliance with Mr. Putin, offering him spiritual cover while his church — and possibly he himself — receives vast resources in return from the Kremlin, allowing him to extend his influence in the Orthodox world.

To his critics, the arrangement has made Kirill far more than another apparatchik, oligarch or enabler of Mr. Putin, but an essential part of the nationalist ideology at the heart of the Kremlin’s expansionist designs.

Kirill has called Mr. Putin’s long tenure “a miracle of God,” and has characterized the war as a just defense against liberal conspiracies to infiltrate Ukraine with “gay parades.”

Patriarch Kirill I with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2018 in Moscow’s Red Square.Credit...Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Again, it's all about the money, always has been, always will be. 

A good 1st step

The Gelderse Poort flood plain in the Netherlands has been rewilded with horses, cattle, beavers and more — with the help of brick-making companies. Credit: Ger Beekes/Alamy Stock Photo

Rewild the world, the key for man to survive on planet earth, is finally happening  ...

Back in the 1980s, the Dutch were having problems with their famous “dikes and dams” approach to delta management. The landscape was boring; waterways were lifeless; people faced ever-more-regular and costly summer floods. A local foundation offered a prize for innovative solutions. The winning entry, Plan Stork, was inspired by the radical new idea that nature could be an ally for development. It might sound odd, but key to the plan was clay mining.

Two not-for-profits — WWF-Netherlands and ARK Nature — got two brick companies to help restore the flood plain of the Gelderse Poort. Over 25 years they bought up farmland and removed the valuable silts and clays that had built up over the decades between the dikes, in the process restoring and repairing the historic system of braids and pools.

The result was a true win-win. Houses were built, money was made and flood risks were reduced. ARK Nature brought in free-roaming horses and cattle to graze the land, and reintroduced beavers, otters and sturgeon. Dunes came back, and water filtering through the sands created surprising new ecosystems. The Gelderse Poort became an asset for nature and people and a source of regional pride.

This is a great example of “pragmatic rewilding,” an idea now entering mainstream discussions about how to reverse nature’s decline, especially in Western Europe. The idea is to “reset” damaged ecosystems, to allow nature to recover in ways that offer new economic opportunities along with solutions to social and environmental challenges. It harnesses private money for ecosystem repair with benefits for all.

As David Attenborough knows, nature recovers if we let her. :)

79 lbs ...

Tech is not designed to be repaired, only replaced though Apple now has a Self-Service policy in place to allow US customers fix broken screens, batteries, and cameras on the latest iPhones using Apple’s own parts and tools for the first time ever. In responding to Sean Hollister's request to replace a battery in his iPhone mini, a 79 lb two package set comes to Sean's door enabling him to do the deed on a svelt device one puts in a pocket to remain connected to the world. The process to replace said battery channels Rube Goldberg to the max.

Step one of opening an iPhone is, basically, using a hefty machine to suck the screen off the top. Here, I wasn’t microwaving a jelly-filled sock to loosen the Apple goop holding my screen down! Apple lets you rent an industrial-grade heat station that looks like a piece of lab equipment, right down to the big red safety dial you twist to release the emergency-off button and the suction-cup-tipped mechanical lifting arm. It looks pretty cool.

Hot pocket! Photo by Thomas Blythe / The Verge

I slip my phone in a perfectly sized “heating pocket” that clamps a ring of copper around the iPhone’s band to evenly distribute the heat and melt the seal around the screen, realize in horror that I’ve invited the “Hot Pockets!” jingle to live in my head rent-free, then spin a dial to raise the arm that separates the iPhone’s screen from its body.

Or, that’s how it’s supposed to work, anyhow. The heating machine threw an error code partway through my first attempt, and Apple’s manual didn’t explain what to do if that happens after you’ve stuck your phone inside. So I wound up heating it twice in a row. And yet, that still wasn’t quite enough for my screen to “immediately” pop up when the suction cup arm began to lift the glass. The manual did cover that situation, making me spin a second hidden knob to put more pressure on the suction cup, but I started freaking out when I saw what looked like cracks spider across the screen. (It turned out it was just suction cup residue.)

The adventure continues to where the guts of the phone are finally revealed to enable replacing the iPhone Mini's battery.

Still photos don’t do it justice — particularly not mine. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Sean does the deed ...

But I wasn’t done yet. The single most frustrating part of this process, after using Apple’s genuine parts and Apple’s genuine tools, was that my iPhone didn’t recognize the genuine battery as genuine. “Unknown Part,” flashed a warning. Apparently, that’s the case for almost all of these parts: you’re expected to dial up Apple’s third-party logistics company after the repair so they can validate the part for you. That’s a process that involves having an entirely separate computer and a Wi-Fi connection since you have to reboot your iPhone into diagnostics mode and give the company remote control. Which, of course, defeats a bunch of the reasons you’d repair your own device at home!

And, if I’m telling you the truth, the second most frustrating part didn’t occur during the repair either. If it were just me, I’d have aborted the entire process before Apple ever shipped 79 pounds of equipment to my home.

I rest my case. 

Addendum ...

Yeah, none of that surprised me. What surprised me was the price tag.

• $69 for a new battery — the same price the Apple Store charges for a battery replacement, except here I get to do all the work and assume all the risk.
• $49 to rent Apple’s tools for a week, more than wiping out any refund I might get for returning the old used part.
• A $1,200 credit card hold for the toolkit, which I would forfeit if the tools weren’t returned within seven days of delivery.

A repair station in a box — or two. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Read Sean's article in its entirety to see how designed to be replaced
is the mantra of digital tech circa 2022. :)

A Rube Goldberg machine

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931). Soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past toucan (E). Toucan jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and ignites lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M), allowing pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.

Gilead beckons ...

Illustration by Juvana Mugosa

The Handmaid's Tale for real looms, thanks to the worst SC in history, a catastrophe similar, in indirect fashion to GW, as we did it to ourselves. As Margaret Atwood so eloquently states, What kind of country do you want to live in? says it all in terms of what it will mean for 50% of the population in America.

This summer, Roe v. Wade will fall. It should be dangerous to write such an emphatic prediction about a decision the Supreme Court won’t issue for at least a month, if not longer; at this point, we should still be allowed the solace, however slight, of entertaining more than one plausible future. But on an otherwise quiet evening in early May, in an unprecedented move, Politico published a leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case that has been poised to determine Roe’s fate. Written by Samuel Alito, the sweeping opinion announced in no uncertain terms that the much-feared end of Roe was upon us. Roe’s “weak” reasoning had inflicted “damaging consequences,” Alito wrote with discernible glee; in point of fact, it “was egregiously wrong from the start.” To be sure, draft opinions frequently get revised. But unless Chief Justice John Roberts can soon persuade a colleague to change his or her mind, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will, in late June or early July, upend a constitutional protection we’ve relied on for nearly 50 years, and unleash a torrent of laws in red states that will further circumscribe or even deny the right to end a pregnancy.

Read Emily Cooke's powerful piece in its entirety to see why this decision will adversely impact America in ways most devastating to the welfare of the country as we move further into the 21st century.

Wise Guys & then some

Dropping water levels in Lake Mead, below the Hoover Dam, revealed human remains that have probably been hidden for decades.Credit...Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

Now that GW's going full tilt while Lake Mead goes dry, secrets of the body kind are showing up as the water drains away in the year of our lord 2022.

It’s the mob guy who went missing after skimming from the Stardust casino. No, it’s the lake resort manager hunted down by the Chicago Outfit. Could it be the work of a biker gang muscling in on Mafia turf? Or maybe someone just fell off a boat after one too many.

Ever since the bodies started turning up this month in Lake Mead — the first in a barrel, the next half-buried in sand, both exposed by plunging water levels — theories in Las Vegas are flourishing about who they are, how they wound up in the country’s largest man-made reservoir, and what might surface next.

Lake Mead is in desperate shape. Along with Lake Powell, upstream on the Colorado River, Mead is the key to prosperity for the booming cities, suburbs and farms of the desert Southwest – Arizona, Southern California, and, of course, Las Vegas. In addition to the unfortunate guy in the barrel, decades of overuse capped off by several years of brutal, climate-driven drought has exposed an intake pipe for Southern Nevada’s 2.2 million people.

They’re running out of water. Putting megacities like Phoenix and Vegas in a desert was never a good idea. They were always destined to run out of water, some day. But the rampant growth and a years-long, killer drought have made the crisis immediate.

And with the corpse-in-a-barrel story, we have one more link between climate and popular culture: The Sopranos meets fossil fuels.

It hardly made a wave, thereby joining the long rap sheet for climate change’s impact on our culture. Mostly, it’s things we’re losing.

And it's not just humans ...

The somber findings come amid the Southwest’s driest two decades in more than a thousand years, as drought-starved bodies of water yield one surprise after another.

At Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico, a bachelor party stumbled across a fossilized mastodon skull that is millions of years old. In Utah last year, the receding waters of Lake Powell revealed a car that had plunged 600 feet off a cliff, killing the driver. And as Lake Powell dries up, archaeologists are getting a chance to study newly emerged Indigenous dwellings.

Buying property in the Southwest is rather dubious, is it not?

Now just 30 percent full, Lake Mead has already fallen to its lowest level since it was filled during the Great Depression, raising fears in places such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., that also draw water from the reservoir below the Hoover Dam.

Federal authorities announced this month that they would delay releases from the Colorado River into Lake Mead, about 30 miles east of Las Vegas, dwindling it even more.

Remember, GW's just warming up, right?

Carry Me Home

It doesn't get any better than this. :)

But these days, Staples’ strongest memory of her dear friend Levon Helm is from the last time the two ever performed together. Back in June of 2011, Mavis Staples and her band arrived at Helm’s Woodstock home for a very special edition of Helm’s regular Midnight Ramble concerts, the series of shows Helm began holding at his barn-turned-performance-space in 2004. The two friends spent five or so days together, goofing around, rehashing old memories, and putting together the freewheeling set list for their Saturday night concert. 

Eleven years later, and almost a decade after Helm’s death in 2012, that show is finally being released as a live album, Carry Me Home — out May 20 — which marks the last-ever recording of a full set from the two musical legends.

Stellar

Divination

 

Photo by jasper benning on Unsplash

Ah, magic, from conjuring up the dead to disappearing rabbits, magic has been around since the beginning of time, both as a source of entertainment as well as a source of illicit profit, especially when it comes to card games connected to gambling. This sleight of hand also applies to religion as religion is also a way to make money and gain power, something done since the beginning of time.

Americans are fascinated by magic. TV shows like “WandaVision” and “The Witcher,” books like the Harry Potter series, plus comics, movies and games about people with powers that can’t be explained by God, science or technology, have all been wildly popular for years. Modern pop culture is a testament to how enchanted people are by the thought of gaining special control over an uncertain world.

“Magic” is often defined in the West as evil or separate from “civilized” religions like Christianity and also from the scientific observation and study of the world. But the irony is that magic was integral to the development of Christianity and other religions – and it informed the evolution of the sciences, too.

In early Christian stories, the magician Simon uses magic immorally

to try and gain power and influence. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Celsus argued that the miracles of Jesus were no different from the magic performed by marketplace sorcerers. Origen agreed the two shared superficial similarities, but claimed they were fundamentally different because magicians cavorted with demons while Jesus’ wonders led to moral reformation. Like the story of Simon the magician, Origen’s disagreement with Celsus was a means of teaching his audience how to tell the difference between morally suspect magicians who sought personal gain and miracle workers who acted for the benefit of others.

Ancient authors invented the idea that the miracles of Christians possessed inherent moral superiority over non-Christian magic because ancient audiences were as enticed by magic as modern ones. But in elevating Christianity above magic, these writers created false distinctions that linger even today.

The Sting

Awesome movie, the card sharp scene, a classic to the max. :)

Into the night/rev V

Street Light

Corridor

Dead Calm

Night Sky/rev 1

Equipoise

Shadows

Of ramps & angles ...

A dark age looms/rev V

If Roe is overturned, states in blue will restrict or eliminate a woman's right to choose. 

Next up, prohibit contraception and eliminate the right to privacy. 

As stated before, a dark age looms ...

Identical in every way ...

The EHT Collaboration created a flurry of images of Sagittarius A*, using ray tracing, a technique that visualizes the properties of the black hole based on data collected with the radio telescope array and predictions made by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The images shown here were created by UArizona's Chi-kwan Chan. Ben Prather/EHT Theory Working Group/Chi-Kwan Chan

Einstein's right yet again. Black holes scale in universal fashion thanks to Sagittarius A* black hole proving to be identical to M87*s monster.

Figure 4. Top: three example models of some of the best-fitting snapshots from the image library of GRMHD simulations for April 11 corresponding to different spin parameters and accretion flows. Bottom: the same theoretical models, processed through a VLBI simulation pipeline with the same schedule, telescope characteristics, and weather parameters as in the April 11 run and imaged in the same way as Figure 3. Note that although the fit to the observations is equally good in the three cases,they refer to radically different physical scenarios; this highlights that a single good fit does not imply that a model is preferred over others (see Paper)

One of the leading scientists behind the new breakthrough, Dimitrios Psaltis, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Arizona, has revealed how the new image proved one of Einstein's predictions from his theory of gravity.

It's all down to the striking similarity between Sgr A* and MH7*, despite their massive difference in size — Sgr A*, which has a mass 4 million times greater than that of our Sun, is more than one thousand times smaller than M87*.

The new image of Sgr A* has proved one of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity, Psaltis explained in a statement from the University of Arizona. Namely, the new data proves that the image of a black hole scales only with its mass. So, in other words, a black hole 1,000 times smaller in mass will look very similar; the only really discernible difference will be the size. 

Scale invarience rules.