→

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: August 29, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment

Good Afternoon!!

Midday, by Xi Pan

The disastrous floods in Nepal have been dominating the news for the past few days. This is a tragic story that has implications for all of us, because of what it tells us about the effects of global warming. Meanwhile, Trump promotes fossil fuels and tries to stop the development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.

Britt Clennett, Karson Yiu, and Ivan Pereira ABC News: ‘It stood like a serpent right there staring at us’: American who survived deadly Nepal flood tells her story.

KATHMANDU, NEPAL — Anjana Raja had long dreamed of traveling to Nepal as part of a spiritual journey to Mount Kailash ever since she was a teenager, she said.

When she and her husband finally got to make that dream a reality this month, the California mom of two told ABC News she could not have imagined that trip would force them into survival mode as they found themselves nearly swept up in the deadly landslide flood that hit the region Wednesday.

Raja recalled sitting on a bus with her husband traveling to the Chinese border on Wednesday when, all of a sudden, the driver and front passengers fled the bus and she saw the landslide coming toward their vehicle.

“It was water mixed with the mud that was a good 50 to 60 feet high. It stood like a serpent right there staring at us,” Raja told ABC News. “Like a cobra’s head staring at you.”

Raja said she didn’t hesitate and grabbed her sling bag and turned to her husband, Pattabiraman Venkatesan.

“I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, ‘Run, we need to go right now,'” she said.

“I didn’t even give time to act. I just said, ‘Leave the bus right away or we’re gonna die,'” Raja added….

Faced with the huge wall of water and mud, the couple and other bus passengers ran to a camp right next to the bus and made their way to higher ground as the water hit and completely flooded the streets, she said.

“We just blindly…climbed. We didn’t even know what direction … There was no guide for us, there was nobody, we were just frantically running. Running, literally running. It was slushy, it was muddy, we were climbing rocks, which was slippery. We just ran for our life,” she said.

“When we reached the second level … I saw the water come up to the slope and move our bus. I told my husband ‘That’s it, we’re gone. We’re going to die,'” she said.

They ultimately made their way up to the third level of the camp and they watched in shock as the wall of water rushed past them.

From their point they could see vehicles, objects and even people be taken in by the water’s power, although the water never reached their level.

“It just came like a roar, it sucked a bunch of buses, SUVs, people, the basecamp, everything — took it in, turned it, turned it all upside down and dumped it into the ground,” Raja said.

That’s a vivid and terrifying description. There’s more at the ABC link.

Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Gourav Pokharel at The Guardian: ‘Their whole village has disappeared’: frantic hunt for survivors in Kathmandu hospital.

Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peaking out from behind a door.

These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet.

Woman with a cat, by Lina Rivo

So far, Nepal has recovered 669 bodies, but many remote areas have only been accessed by army helicopters on the hunt for survivors. Rescuers said it was too difficult to assess how many more people might be buried beneath the mud….

The task of identifying the dead is also gargantuan.

In the Nepalese city of Chitwan, the morgues have been overrun by the sheer number of bodies and a makeshift building has been set up to house the dead.

Some of the bodies were carried so far down the river by the force of the floods, they were recovered in neighbouring India.

At Tribhuvan University teaching hospital in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, desperate relatives gathered in the hope of news. Four days on since the disaster struck, people continued to crowd round the police desk to register the names of missing family members. Hundreds of the injured are recovering in the hospital’s wards and people were frantically checking lists of patients, desperate to find a sign that their loved ones were still alive.

In the absence of information and with affected areas almost completely cut off, many families have resorted to making posters to appeal for information. Yavraj Lama said his sister, her husband and their two children were missing after their village of Jaydada, in Rusawa district, had been entirely washed away.

His eyes filled with tears as he glued a photo of one-year-old Sijan Tawang, a baby in the arms of his mother, to the hospital wall. A picture of 12-year-old Sahil, his brother, hung next to it.

“We are numb, we don’t have words to say how sad and distraught we are,” said Lama. “Our main focus is trying to find baby Sijan. He was so sweet and innocent; it’s impossible for us to think he is not with us any more.

“But their whole village has disappeared,” he added, “so we have no hope left that any of them survived.”

What caused this terrible tragedy? Stuti Mishra & Maryam Zakir-Hussain at The Independent: What triggered Nepal flash floods? And why are experts worried a second flood is ‘imminent’?

The Himalayan flash floods that killed at least 675 people and left over 3,000 missing across Nepal and Tibet were not triggered by an earthquake, contrary to initial reports, but by a glacier collapse so violent that it produced its own seismic signal, the United States Geological Survey said.

The agency initially recorded a magnitude 4.4 earthquake along the Nepal-China border, north of Kathmandu, at about 8.37am local time on Wednesday, before revising its assessment in a statement issued that evening.

It said the seismic signal had come from “a glacial collapse and debris flow” rather than a tectonic quake, and that the collapse alone had caused the catastrophic flooding downstream. Once reclassified, the event registered at magnitude 5.2, a measure of the force of the ice and rock striking the valley floor rather than of any movement underground.

An initial study of satellite imagery from Planet Labs showed a large section of the lower end of a glacier breaking away at an altitude of about 5,200m and falling roughly 1,200m onto the valley floor, gathering rock and debris as it went.

By Bobbie Russon, British artist

The resulting avalanche struck the Lhende river in Tibet, about 20km northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing with Nepal, temporarily damming the water before the barrier gave way and released a powerful flood downstream.

The surge fed into the Bhote Koshi river and crossed into Nepal at around 9am local time, then continued into the Trishuli river, where water levels rose by as much as nine metres in just half an hour.

Officials were caught off guard because there had been no rain, according to local news reports, and some residents ignored early warnings from neighbours precisely because the danger did not resemble the monsoon flooding they were used to.

On fears it could happen again:

Why are experts worried a second flood is coming?

Both Nepal and China have issued warnings about fresh flooding in the Himalayas as two lakes that have developed on either side of their border threaten to burst.

Experts were assessing whether debris from the flood had temporarily blocked Nepal’s Trishuli river at a narrow section, forming a landslide dam, the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said.

Such a blockage can create a secondary hazard if impounded water is suddenly released.

“With a blockage still lodged upstream on the Nepal-China border, authorities warn a second flood is imminent,” Qianggong Zhang, head of climate and environmental risks at ICIMOD, said.

He added that evacuation orders were in place for Jilong Port along the border based on the risk of a second wave of flooding.

Let’s face it. We are not doing enough to deal with climate change. Nicholas Riccardi, Jennifer McDermott, and Leah Willingham at AP: The Earth is sizzling, but climate isn’t a hot topic for Democrats in this year’s campaigns.

BOSTON (AP) — Climate change has been the backdrop to Charles Hughes’ entire life, from kindergarten lessons about disappearing habitats to wildfire smoke billowing through the air he breathed while growing up in Colorado. But now that he’s a college student in Massachusetts, he said global warming is rarely a top issue.

“Honestly, it doesn’t come up as much,” said Hughes, who chairs the state’s chapter of the College Democrats.

What a difference six years makes.

Willem den Ouden (NL 1928) Ferry with cat, 1964

During President Donald Trump’s first term and especially during the Democratic primaries to determine who would run against him in 2020, Democrats spoke constantly about climate change. They used it to rally young voters such as Hughes, fueling protests and sweeping demands to remake the economy with proposals like the Green New Deal.

But there has been a national shift in the conversation that is sharp enough for some researchers to coin the term “climate hushing” to describe it. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, urged the party to stop mentioning climate change because it is not a priority for voters. The Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that pushed global warming as a top issue for young people, switched its mission last fall to a broader mandate of fighting the Republican president.

The shift is encapsulated by the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts on Tuesday as the incumbent, Ed Markey, 80, tries to fend off a challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, 47. Although Markey still talks about sponsoring the Green New Deal, his campaign is more focused on other issues to burnish his left-wing bona fides and prove to voters that he is not too old for the job.

It is the latest example of how climate change has been eclipsed by issues such as affordability, U.S. support for Israel and, above all, how to confront Trump.

“Six years ago, Green New Deal was every phrase out of Ed Markey’s mouth every chance he got. That is not the case now,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic strategist in Massachusetts. “It’s about who’s best to fight. Period, full stop. Everything falls under that.”

Because we’re stuck with an insane authoritarian thug in the White House and that’s a more immediate emergency. There’s more at the link.

Our focus lately has been on Trump and the damage he is doing to democracy as well as his obsessive efforts to remake Washington DC in his own image.

Thanks to JJ for a heads up on this truly tragic story by Rick Maese at The Washington Post (gift link): Trees are coming down by the dozen as Trump’s D.C. golf makeover nears.

Across East Potomac Golf Links, amid golfers squeezing in late-summer rounds and wondering what will become of the beloved D.C. course, newly cut stumps and bare patches of dirt mark the places where dozens of trees recently stood.

The Trump administration’s promised overhaul of the course has not officially begun. The trees, however, have been coming down for weeks.

Woman and Cat Stretching, after Edouard Manet’s Woman With A Cat of 1880, Holly Frean

President Donald Trump said June 28 that work on the historical public golf facility would begin Sept. 1, but days before that date, his administration has released no final design, construction schedule or estimated cost. Officials have not said whether the course will close next week, what work might begin, or what golfers and other visitors to the national parkland should expect.

An informal count Thursday found that more than 60 trees appeared to have been removed in recent weeks. Many were around the perimeter and parking lot, but others had been removed from playing corridors on the Blue, Red and White courses.

Among the most conspicuous was a cherry tree near the 14th green of the Blue Course, one of East Potomac’s most picturesque holes, framed by cherry trees near the southern end of Hains Point. Nearby, two large sycamores had been removed around the fourth hole.

Tree removal is common in major golf course renovations, often to widen playing corridors, improve sight lines, and allow more sunlight and air to reach the turf. But the Interior Department characterized the activity as routine maintenance and did not connect it to the proposed redesign, nor did it answer questions about whether notice of the work had been provided to the federal court overseeing a legal challenge to the administration’s plans.

Naturally, Trump just ignored instructions from the judge in the case.

During a May hearing in the lawsuit, brought by preservationists seeking to block the course overhaul, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes declined to stop the government from performing necessary maintenance but warned administration lawyers against presenting the court with a fait accompli. She said she wanted advance notice before the government removed more than 10 trees or brought equipment larger than a sedan onto the property.

That direction was delivered orally and was not included in a formal written order. A person familiar with the legal proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said the government has not notified the plaintiffs or the court about the recent tree work.

Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.

And then there’s Trump’s ugly ballroom construction. Naturally, he lied to the Supreme Court justices about it.

Sarah Blaskey, Jonathan O’Connell, Dan Diamond, and Jarrett Ley at The Washington Post: The White House says its ballroom is 65% complete. Its documents suggest otherwise.

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court two weeks ago that construction of a new White House East Wing was “65% finished,” part of its argument that the work was too far along for the court to halt.

But by the White House’s own standard for measuring the project’s progress, established in a confidential agreement with contractor Clark Construction that was reviewed by The Washington Post, work on the controversial project was far less complete.

Barbara Perrine Chu

The agreement, finalized before Clark began demolition last October, stipulates that payments to the contractor be proportional to the amount of work completed, and that work cannot begin until the government approves spending for it. Based on that, if 65 percent of the work has been done, then the government should already have paid 65 percent of the total cost of the project.

Publicly available appropriations data shows that as of the end of July, the White House budget office had approved $144 million in spending from an account used to pay for the East Wing and other White House projects. Even if that entire amount were spent on the East Wing, it would come to only about 24 percent of the $600 million estimated construction cost that Clark provided the White House in March. The Post has previously reported that cost estimate.

In the same mid-August court filing in which the administration claimed 65 percent of the project was done, it said that it had already spent “around $200 million.”

If the government had spent $200 million on the East Wing project, the work would be just 33 percent complete, based on the $600 million budget estimate….

The 65 percent claim was made in a sworn declarationby Joshua Fisher, the director for White House Management and Administration, who is overseeing the construction project. In the declaration, Fisher did not explain how the percentage was calculated but said, “Work has progressed too far to go back to the drawing board.”

His assertion came as the administration asked the Supreme Court to allow work on the ballroom to continue after lower courts ruled that the project was probably illegal without congressional approval and that construction must stop. The administration argued in part that stopping work while courts considered the merits of the case brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation would cause “chaos in service of nothing” because the project had already progressed “beyond the point of judicial intervention.”

Just looking at photos of the mess Trump has made at the White House, it sure doesn’t look like the project is 65 percent done. Trump lied. So what else is new?

An then there’s the Trump arch. At NOTUS, Marissa Martinez reports: National Park Service Green-Lights Trump’s Arch.

The National Park Service released a report Friday in support of President Donald Trump’s proposed arch, while acknowledging the adverse effects the new monument could have on the district’s most iconic memorials and landmarks.

The arch project is part of Trump’s push to reshape D.C. in his image by leaving a visible mark on the nation’s capital. Critics of the arch and Trump’s other beautification initiatives have argued that the renovations obstruct the district’s sightline — concerns validated throughout the agency’s report — while Democratic lawmakers say the president is bypassing necessary congressional approval to proceed with construction.

NPS’ review was mandated by the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires agencies to evaluate how proposed new construction could directly or adversely affect any nearby landmarks and provide solutions to minimize future harm.

The proposed 250-foot arch will be located at Memorial Circle, near Arlington National Cemetery, and the agency analyzed the surrounding 3.5-mile radius as part of its study. The 133-page report says its construction will likely disturb dozens of historic sites in the area, including the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall.

The monument will adversely affect six out of 31 National Historic Landmarks in the proposed area, including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon — though the effects will mostly stem from altered sightlines and plans to light the area at night, rather than physical damage, the report noted.

While the panel acknowledged the “sensitive” nature of building an arch in the Memorial Circle landscape, the area’s significance makes it an “historically appropriate location” to build, the agency wrote.

This is all so sickening. Trump is acting like a tin-pot dictator. And here’s more proof. Normal presidents don’t kidnap a country’s leader and then strong-arm the new government into giving up the country’s natural resources.

Rebecca F. Elliott, Simon Romero, and Edward Wong at the New York Times (gift link): Trump Says U.S. Has Deal for Control of Large Share of Venezuela’s Oil.

President Trump said late Friday that the United States had struck a deal to take majority control of a huge portion of Venezuela’s oil reserves, pointing to a sweeping effort to assert U.S. dominance over energy in the Western Hemisphere.

Gertie Young, Hanging About

The agreement amounts to a highly unusual foray into another country’s oil fields through a partnership with a private company, the State Department said through a U.S. official.

That firm is affiliated with a Venezuelan businessman, Alejandro Betancourt López, according to two people familiar with the partnership.

The deal would give the United States control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, Mr. Trump said in a social media post. That is almost as much as all of the proven reserves in the United States, which is the world’s biggest oil producer.

Venezuela’s president, Delcy Rodríguez, said the “historic” agreement would involve developing 17 oil fields and have a “significant impact on our nation’s revival.”

The aim of the deal, Ms. Rodríguez said, is “putting our immense reserves at the service of national development.” It would draw more than $100 billion of investment, she said, and generate an estimated $209 billion for Venezuela’s strapped government, which has been struggling to improve living conditions after earthquakes in June left more than 6,500 people dead.

Details were sparse, however, and the text of the agreement was not immediately available. Mr. Betancourt did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the State Department did not respond to questions about Mr. Betancourt’s potential role in the arrangement.

Inside Venezuela, Mr. Betancourt is often called a “bolichico” or “Bolivarian boy” — a term used to refer to Venezuelan businessman who are favored by the government, and who have profited immensely during the country’s socialist revolution. (The government named the revolution for the country’s independence hero Simón Bolivar.)

A bit more:

Previous U.S. leaders often shied away from any suggestion that gaining sway over another country’s natural resources was a primary objective of U.S. military and foreign policy, wary of the international backlash, doubts over the legality of doing so and the potential for such moves to generate security threats against the United States.

But Mr. Trump and some of his top advisers have made it clear that oil is an important part of their foray into Venezuela.

Even before the removal of Mr. Maduro, American officials bluntly claimed that the United States had created Venezuela’s oil industry and that the country’s government had effectively stolen U.S. oil fields through nationalizations.

Trump is a gangster and a thug. We have to get rid of him.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What are your thoughts? What else is on your mind?

One Comment on “Lazy Caturday Reads”

  1. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    August 29, 2026 at 12:28 pm

    Have a great weekend, everyone!

    Reply

What do you think? Join the conversation. Leave a Reply:

→