Open Thread WE 19 JUL 23 ~ hitchen'
Sissy Hankshaw is a woman born with a mutation (she would not call it a defect) giving her
enormously large thumbs. Sissy makes the most of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker.
It's sort of going hand in hand with the hospitality exchange movement.
People will participate because it's ecological, others because of the economical aspects.
Hitchhiking is still legal in 44 out of the 50 states of the US.
It means, according to the law, it is illegal to walk or stand on the roadway but it is not illegal to stand
or walk on the sidewalk, shoulder, or at ramp entrances of the roadway.
However, law enforcement officers’ behavior towards hitchhikers varies from state to state.
The surge of anti-hitchhiking sentiment in the mid to late 1970s was not the product of any escalated threat,
but instead a targeted campaign by the FBI and local law enforcement agencies.
https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/hitchhike-across-united-states/
“Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in ‘Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.’
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Just a silly little theme to go with the OT today. Let us know what is on your mind
today, all topics welcome.
Comments
Islamic New Year
The Islamic New Year — also known as the Arabic New Year or Hijri New Year — is the first day of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar. The first year of this calendar began in Gregorian CE 622 when the Prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina with his companions. In the Islamic calendar, days begin at sunset. The event falls on a different day every year because the Islamic year is 11 to 12 days shorter. As rituals and prayers mark the occasion, Muharram is known as the month of remembrance and is sacred to Muslims across the world. The word Hijri is derived from Hijra meaning migration. The starting point of Islamic calendar is migration of Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD.
Also on this day in history
532 - Start of Dionysian Pascal Cycle
1324 - Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, arrives in Cairo on his way to Mecca,
with a procession of 600,000 men, 12,000 slaves and 80 camels carrying
136 kg (300 pounds) of gold each -- that is a lot of gold!
1595 - Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe while teaching in Graz
1692 - 5 more people are hanged for witchcraft (19 in all) in Salem, Massachusetts
1848 - 1st US women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls NY, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
2009 - The Wesley Impact: black spot the size of Earth discovered on Jupiter after unknown object crashed onto the planet
It's still early
Good morning...
Been busy today. Put a car in the shop, a new fan belt on the tractor, harvested tomatoes, and killed lots of jap beetles in my soapy water bucket. Now off to change the oil in the 60 yo tractor and do a little mowing. How did I ever have time to go to work in a real job?
IRS whistleblowers to testify about the Biden's millions of dollars and dozens of shell companies today. Only Faux news is covering it. MSM can ignore it but the walls are closing in on the Biden crime syndicate...I think, but certainly never has with the Clinton Crime Foundation. Similarly the MSM isn't reporting the devastating Russian onslaught in Ukraine.
Thumb stuck out as I go
I'm just travelin' up the road
Maps don't do much for me, friend
I follow the weather and the wind
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
Got what I can carry and my song
I'm a rolling stone just rolling on
Catch me now 'cause tomorrow, I'll be gone
Family man gives me a ride
Got his pregnant Sally at his side
Yes indeed, sir, children are a gift
Thank you kindly for the lift
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
Trucker gears his engine down
Says, "Climb on up, son, I'm highway-bound"
Dashboard picture of a pretty girl
I'm ridin' high on top of the world
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
Gearhead in a souped-up '72
Wants to show a kid just what this thing'll do
Telephone poles and trees go whizzin' by
Thank you, pal, she sure can fly
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
I'm hitch hikin' all day long
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Long Dark Road
Hey buddy, going my way?
How about a lift.
good luck with the tractor
off to make a mahogany seat
for an outdoor shower ..
Do we have all the time we need? I would say yes.
Enjoy the times we have, all. People are dying left and right. I may make sense to just stay here a little longer.
more than enough time
gotta love some Louis
back atcha -
Thankfully none of my dawgs have ever done this
.
Ya gotta love them no matter what!
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
that's hilarious
guess the dawggies just wanted a puddle to play in
Check your Bingo cards.
the Afghanis should know the cost of war
after 20 years of US military occupation
do duh'mericans understand?
The MSM relies on the fact that people have short memories.
I can hardly wait to see how they will spin this to suit their purposes.
And so
it begins.
Board and confiscate first, and then just put 'em on the bottom if that takes too long.
I was wondering how long they'd wait before taking this step. Next step, of course, is to begin splashing all those cargo aircraft full of materiel as well, as they enter Ukranian airspace. If they don't have a commercial paint job, down they go. Or maybe even if they do- you know, fog of war and all that. (Iran Air Flight 655 has entered the chat)...
This could be stopped at any time, you know. But there is no will to stop it, because money is being made. So down the spiral we will all go...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
not one of the NATO 'alliance' wants to take
on that challenge, so the evil empire will need to come up with
a different approach to smuggle arms for humanitarian aid
Been wondering why they haven't been doing the
stop and search routine all alone, they have a right to do so. Alleged justification for IA 655 was, however, other, veeerry other, as in other-worldly.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
So humans caused climate change ehh?
.
Ahh well we should just recycle harder even though all trash ends up at the same place in the dump. Boy I can’t believe how long it took me to wake up to this.
Also Kerry tried to deny that he had a private jet and he got busted when Massey pulled out the receipt for when he sold his family’s jet. Ole John has come a long way from his days at the winter soldier hearings on the worthlessness of the Vietnam war.
How do you ask a man to die for nothing?
Paraphrased.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
climate change and CO2
Hi all, Hey SD! Hope its all good out there!
Just a quickie comment on this. Well it was going to be when I started. First of all, Kerry is an idiot I have little to no respect for. He has no business being a climate czar as shown by how he has not done anything but show and tell dog and pony shows, from his private jet.
My big question is why is it never discussed or even mentioned, that man has removed probably near half the trees on the planet? The planet's (energy free!) CO2 filter has been removed. As if it were an un-needed appendage. And we are so ecologically and climatalogically ignorant it means nothing? All other things being the equal, this act alone could increase our CO2 levels by perhaps 50%.
The questioner wants to quote 200 million years of CO2 levels, whilst man has only been here about a percent or two of that. Industrial man a hundredth of a percent of that. To argue it was higher 98% of history when man was not here, before we cut half the trees down, before we went industrial, is BS for those with little scientific awareness or knowledge. In other words most people. It does make for great BS talking points.
Yes corporate is BS'ing about what they are doing (nothing actually), and all their responses and solutions will be profit driven. Greenwashing like recycling as mostly run, is rampant, and as currently done, is likely only making this worse by putting off real action on real actual solutions. Like stopping consumaholism. But which Madison Ave. and Wall St. nixed.
There is climate change, which includes global warming, worse droughts and worse floods, worse fires, and so on. And certainly man is a huge driver of it. There used to be enough trees to naturally eat that CO2 the geological processes naturally generated. Then man got here and there are not now. Then we began spewing ungodly amounts of CO2 and Methane just to name two, into the atmosphere. Or sure that has no effects. How would that not change the atmosphere ergo environment?
Besides rampant deforestation, we cut down a million date palms in Iraq. A million olive trees have been cut down on Palestinian lands. And on and on. Yes those were acts of economic warfare, but again, two million energy free CO2 filters have been removed as well. There are hundreds of millions more where those came from. Homo ignoramus, stupidicus, and idiotica.
A song for the theme today... something I used to do a bit of locally in my youth...
edited to tidy up a bit...
Be well all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Excellent point
And now with the current droughts everywhere people are ripping out their lawns and putting in gravel which will just make the heat more unbearable. And of course home builders don’t put in quality insulation like they used to do 50 years ago. My house stays pretty warm during winter because it was built with thick walls that the electrician called…darn the word just flew out of my brain. I’m hoping to update my windows soon and that should help with more insulation.
Pluto has reported that China is planting a million trees. And let’s not forget what they have done to the Amazon! That was a huge crime.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Heartfelt thanks for your tree information.
Where do I go to find more detail on that? My new neighbors got a 100+ year old Willow cut down, nervous that a piece if it might fall on their son. Now they can park their two cars, on trucked in gravel.
It was a psychic and true living shelter next door to me for me for forty-five years.
I was able to grab a couple of 4-5" branches, and now one has surprised me by starting to put out new leaves.
As soon as I'm stronger I'm going to take my collection of nifty old cat-toys, and the body of a big squirrel I found in the gutter near Seattle Audubon and have kept in the freezer, and will bury them in the hole with the branch.
So many seem to be afraid of "germs" but not in the apall of what they brought with that vaster cutting.
tree loss
Hi Creosote, good to 'see' you! And I love your namesake bush. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the deserts, so became quite fond of Creosote. Those fluffy seed balls are one of the most-used items that birds line their nests with. Before we figured out what those Creosote rings were, we looked and them wondered what the heck was going on. Now we know. Some are thousands of years in the making.
Here are some links about deforestation. But which does not account for all tree loss, only forest loss.
According to Global Forest Watch we lost 12% of forests since 2000. In 20 years. So, that would extrapolate to 50% in the last century. A bazillion (I counted) trees have been lost that were not in forests.
On average it seems they are calling it about a third of the worlds forests have been lost. Again, that is forests, not all trees. Europe went from 80% to 30% forested since modern man times.
Another thing to consider is that although we tend to think of forests as carbon sinks, they are not the only ones. Tall grass prairie may be as effective as a forest at removing CO2. 90% of the U.S. tall grass prairie no longer exists.
So it is not just tree cutting being the problem. Many such habitats besides forests are being destroyed that are just as valuable as carbon sinks. Wetlands, mangroves, tall, or, short-grass prairie, and so on.
I would estimate at least half of the world's carbon sink potential has been removed, via habitat loss of all manner and sorts.
And we just keep spewing more carbon, as we remove them, one tree, prairie, and wetland at a time.
Here is a snippet and some links:
This possibly came from wiki, it was at the top of search results: About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.
Deforestation and Forest Loss
https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
===
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/
From 2001 to 2022, there was a total of 459Mha of tree cover loss globally, equivalent to a 12% decrease in tree cover since 2000
===
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deforestation/
Deforestation has greatly altered landscapes around the world. About 2,000 years ago, 80 percent of western Europe was forested; today the figure is 34 percent. In North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for timber and agriculture. China has lost great expanses of its forests over the past 4,000 years and now just over 20 percent of it is forested. Much of Earth’s farmland was once forests.
====
https://www.fao.org/state-of-forests/en/
Forests cover 31 percent of the global land area. Approximately half the forest area is relatively intact, and more than one-third is primary forest (i.e. naturally regenerated forests of native species, where there are no visible indications of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed).
===
Forest Pulse: The Latest on the World’s Forests
https://research.wri.org/gfr/latest-analysis-deforestation-trends
Hope that helps! Be well!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Good morning QMS, et y'all. The garlic I harvested last
month cured up nicely and is now distributed between a couple of mesh bags and hanging in the closet we use for wine storage, which is the closest thing we have to a "cool dry place", which I now know I have to play.
I'm still dealing with my leg and have contacted my service provider, though I'm in no big rush. It is getting better by itself to the extent that I can get around without a stick if I'm cautious about stairs and uneven terrain and wear knee brace. I do move slow and a bit awkwardly, like some beat-up old fart, but hey, now that i think about it ... .
One reason we switched to slushboxes for our vehicles was that my back, at times, made clutches a mother. Since this is my left leg I can theoretically drive, assuming I can hoist myself into the pick-up. We plan to give it a try sometime today. I might need a stick for getting in and out of the P-U, but that's liveable.
meanwhile, as promised:
And, I guess, something topical
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
sorry to hear about your leg giving way
hope it doesn't get worse
slushbox must be a west coast
term for auto trannies?
perhaps you have found the last
cool dry place on earth
wine and garlic play well together
cheers!
Thanks. Slush = automatic, si, as opposed to Stick,
learned in the fifties and/or sixties, so may be west cost or era, or both.
Wine and garlic, yes, very much.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
What the heck George Clooney. Africa you say?
Saw a strange headlined about Hillary supporter George Clooney wanting action against Russia's Wagner paramilitary group.
George Clooney calls for ‘dismantling’ of Wagner PMC Two American celebrity activists have urged Western nations to use their experience of Al-Qaeda to tackle the Russian group
Where did this come from? Oh wait:
Nearly 50 African states to attend summit in Russia – FM About half of the countries will be represented by heads of state or government, according to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow
Looks like the way to win the hearts and minds of countries in Africa is to basically start moving militarily against Russia. On the great geopolitical stage, Africa is building strong relationships with China as they are doing like infrastructure projects--no secret military bases. As far as I can tell, Russia has a very good image in Africa due to the Soviet days when the Soviet Union aided nearly every anti-colonial liberation group in Africa.
With Hollywood against Russia, Putin has no chance of winning anything.
Hollywood = US empire propaganda
Putin does stand a chance with African states,
as does China, since they deal above-board
unlike shady USAID programs and CIA operations
IMO
It's tragic to see an intelligent person who is in
...the flow of information, speak from their ignorance with a complete void there historical context should be. I think this apparent back-out of knowledge and thinking is especially horrifying to behold, because here you have a sophisticated , well-intentioned, and influential person who has been isolated and denied the knowledge of reality by the state, and state media.
So, the celebrity simply stumbled into an intellectual pot hole, where he displayed a shallow cluelessness while completely confident in his wit and relevance.. The tragedy is that these influencial figures possess the potential to lead their felllow countrymen out of the numbing stupor of misinformation and blind prejudice. But the mental impairment caused by state abuse of the facts leaves them betrayed and denatured. Very few pubic figures who have had their gullibility exploited by the state, can find their way back to credibility. They realize they are protected by the state only so long as they publicly embrace their delusion.
What a waste.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Hitchhiking ≠ Vagabonding
Back in the very early 1970s, I ran into a book that affected my viewpoint on life. It affected me as much as did Kerouac's The Dharma Bums - and that one affected me a lot.
The book was titled Vagabonding in America, by Ed Buryn.
While this book was, on the surface, about hitchhiking across the USA, it was more about a way of thinking of life, of seeing the things others looked past, of treating those of different opinions and/or live experiences with respect and valuing all. The author explained early in the book that there were huge differences between vagabonds, drifters, bums, migrants, pilgrims, etc. Hitchhiking is, of course, simply a means of travel, but the author took it far beyond that. Much was about attitude, as you might imagine.
While I was personally never much of hitcher, I did participate by regularly giving rides to those hitching. I probably still would, but I see much less of it these days. It used to be quite common, but seems to have vanished concurrent with the riding of the rails. Both still happen, but nothing like fifty years ago.
My copy of Vagabonding in America was likely lost in a long ago divorce (I haven't seen it for ages), but I often think of it. Any discussion of hitchhiking certainly brings it to mind. It's no doubt long out of print, but worth picking up if one were to chance into it.
memories twinkling
I remember that book! It was one of the few non-scholastic reading ventures
I partook of in the early 70's. Thanks for bringing it up fellow traveler.
Back in the 50-60s
when I was a kid, we traversed Route66 multiple times. And my Dad, an Army veteran, never failed to stop for a hitchhiking GI with an duffle bag.
I continued that tradition even today.
They just wanna get home.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I am headed to Amarillo in a month or so.
I typically go to Palo Duro Canyon, but intend to do the Rte. 66 through the city. A trendy, touristy part of of town.
I think the trip is in September.
Take care of you and wifey, friend!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981