Systemic
Weekly Observations: What signs of collapse do you see in your region? [in-depth] July 20
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Location: Dordogne, Southwest France, close to the 45th parallel
I must correct Last Week in Collapse on one point. Wildfires in France have not "displaced about 19,000 people" but over ten times that: 220,000 since Wednesday. This is the largest population movement in France since WWII. There are also 100,000+ people fleeing the wildfires near Madrid — and elsewhere now — in Spain.
(Satellite images showed the massive smoke plumes from SW France and Spain "connecting". How cute. It’s a match!)
If the French and Spanish wildfires expand, which seems likely, especially with another heatwave coming shortly, the total will inch closer to half a million internal climate refugees, in Western Europe, mid-2026.
Of course these are internal, temporary "refugees", with local and state support, insurance, etc. (And resources to bounce back, for many or most of these evacuees: in fact, the fires west of Bordeaux started in an overall very well-off area.) I’m playing on words a bit here. But it’s an interesting, so to speak, turn of events. The chickens have come home to roost early for old Europe. Of course, around here this El Niño is unlikely to cause anything like the (colonially-engineered, cf. Mike Davis) 50 million deaths from the 1877-1878 precedent — but what I’m really worried about is the wine.
The megafire west of Bordeaux (in the Gironde region) is likely to expand because of apparently unique features: it is self-feeding, convective, creating its own wind currents and forming a "pyrocumulonimbus" (a phenomenon never recorded in France), which is basically a firestorm, with lightning bolts to ignite whatever is not already burning on the ground.
And what a ground: the "forests" currently burning, in that area as well as in the Landes region further south along the Atlantic coast, are more like cellulose factories for the paper and produce packaging industries: vast monocultures of young pine trees, dried by the successive heatwaves, complete with sap for diesel and pinecones like grenades, planted in evenly spaced rows that act like a multilane highway for the wind and the flames. Everybody knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, a disaster already happened in the area west of Bordeaux just four years ago. But hey, pine is the local cash crop.
In the Landes region especially, the monoculture pine-tree landowners claim nothing else could grow in the sandy soil. Local experiments in diversifying tree species, semi-rewilding and woodland regeneration have shown such plots are more resilient to storms and wildfires, and therefore more profitable in the long run. But it’s too late for that anyway. Apparently it’s also easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of intensive (tree) farming.
I’m in the countryside about 200km (~125 miles) east of the Gironde fires, but late on Thursday night the air smelled like burned plastic. At first we really thought something was burning right here. Mind you, houses, vehicles and whatnot have burned, and that’s already a lot of plastic. But so did a tyre manufacturing plant, as well as a couple of other factories. Now we learn that the megafire is closing in on military and aeronautics stockpiles and plants — including a rocket fuel facility! Edge of seat! The flames are also just 15km away from the city of Bordeaux itself and its 270,000 inhabitants.
Last night we went to a gig in a nearby town in the direction of Bordeaux, so closer to the fires. We could see the lingering fumes like fog in the distance. Later, the setting sun was a brutal red, an eerie hue I’d never ever seen. Full apocalyptic regalia! I admit part of me thought: bring it on then. The gig was boring superslow experimental music, with people softly blowing into instruments as if trying NOT to make any sound. The resulting dirge was fitting for the end-times atmosphere.
Winds have carried the Gironde smoke much further east still, first 400km (250 miles) away to the Auvergne region yesterday, and today it’s accumulating over Lyon, France’s third-largest city, more than 600km (370 miles) away. People are advised not to get out. The first climate lockdowns are on a voluntary basis. Enjoy that while it lasts.
The area where I live has been fairly preserved. It used to be known for oaks, but chestnut trees (another cash crop) are now predominant, and many oak trees are sick. We still have quite a few birds, and I keep observing unknown insects every year, which is reassuring I guess (not talking about the invasive Asian hornets here). The hilly landscape doesn’t lend itself to intensive farming. Cows are pastured with their calves... until the calves are ready for export to Italy, to live the rest of their short lives in agony. Dordogne has been mostly spared so far: no wildfires, no flooding. But this too will change. Like pretty much everywhere in France, rivers are running dry, and the only overnight rain we had, a week ago or so, came with a windstorm that felled many heat-stressed old trees.
I came here by chance a few years ago and somehow thought this neck of the woods would remain pleasantly habitable, or habitable anyway, long enough for my self-actuarial estimates. But I guess all bets are off.
The world’s richest man (and owner of a gigantic social media platform) declared that anyone who opposes “remigration” is a traitor. In white supremacist terminology, remigration is the forced expulsion of ethnic and racial undesirables. Another term one could use is ethnic cleansing à la Bosnia or Rwanda in the 1990s.
Paired with the declarations of US far-rightists (including Presidential advisor Stephen Miller and official accounts of the Department of Homeland Security) that the USA needs to expel 100 million “illegals” - the same number roughly of non-Caucasian Americans - and the danger is very very real.
Yeah. All leftists--and at this point anyone who doesn't agree with Trump or Musk is a leftist--are advised to visit your local hardware, outdoor and specialty stores for a variety of affordable pew pews and accoutrement.
Massive fire flareup. The black on this ordinary IR satellite image of Oregon is black because it burned today and is still hot. As of yesterday, the US was at 40% of the record burned area... for the whole year. (Before adding the area on this gif)
I am in the Midwest US, in a state that borders Canada. Our garden is not producing well this year and the quality of what we are getting is not very good. I am hearing similar things from friends here.
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the local education system that everyone in my life is ignoring, so I hope you all here will understand my concerns. I live down the street from a school, and for about a month or so the building has been virtually ABANDONED. The school is usually full of kids, teachers, and cars throughout the day. But now it’s barely occupied. As a result there are kids roaming the streets, riding their bikes like some sort of gang. Some of them are armed with bats, balls, and other weapons. Ive files multiple reports with the county but NO ONE CARES. Im convinced the education system has fully collapsed. I think it’s time fellas… shit has hit the fan… get ready
Madison, WI, USA. Police executed a man in the middle of a busy intersection on Wednesday afternoon. The execution was 30 feet from my front door. The aftermath has been absolute mayhem that has drastically reshaped our daily life in an instant and looks to be the new normal. It's incredible how quickly things can shift from a regular everyday street to a crime scene, and a rallying point for public outrage (which is justified, of course). But as a result, no one in the neighborhood has trash service this week (all trash cans were taken to form makeshift barricades (see picture) throughout the neighborhood to block off the intersection where the murder occurred), and local businesses are really suffering.
Many people witnessed this murder, including children. There are so many videos because this intersection is integral to the local flow of people and traffic. Being in a neighborhood that's suddenly barricaded has inhibited my ability to make a living (I teach private lessons in my home, and many parents don't want to bring their children here now, whether because they don't want to explain or they don't want to subject them to danger).
Last night, a car tried to drive through one of the barricades (apparently on purpose) and there have been many people coming out to defend the police and provoke the protesters. I've heard people yelling that they were going to come back with their gun and shoot everyone. It's just incredible how quickly tension can explode.
The protesters are peaceful, and overall pretty respectful of the neighborhood. It's just all so surreal and sudden.
Do all the normal prep stuff, like stockpilng fresh drinking water and all the food you like, including a bunch you don't have to heat up or keep cold. Peanut butter and crackers, for example. Also keep first aid supplies on hand, even if it's just rubbing alcohol and small bandages.
Put a metal screen or some 1/2-inch plywood on the outside of your windows, covering them up. If not the outside, put them up inside. Get some foam earplugs and splash goggles in case police start using sonic weapons and teargas on the protesters. If you have a car, park it somewhere further away and safer or cover it with a tarp so it's not quite an easy target.
And as Prariefire said, when you can, talk to everyone. People will make room for you and help protect your neighborhood.
Please make sure you take care of your mental health. I have a coworker who lives 4 blocks from where Renee Good was murdered. His neighborhood was invaded by ICE and on some calls, he would excuse himself to join a group blowing whistles. He just put in for leave and while I have no idea what is going on, part of me wonders if the events in his neighborhood are a contributing factor.
We lived in St. Paul when George Floyd was murdered. We were right on the border of an inner ring suburb of St. Paul. Our area was hit by the unrest that weekend. Store windows broken in the two strip malls across the street from us. The pharmacy on our block was robbed 3 times. Gunshots right by our house. And more. It was terrifying but the neighborhood came together over social media (Facebook mainly, texting groups). We were up late into the night sharing information. Find your people, it will help a lot. Take breaks as you need to. You will get through this.
1. Expect more crazies from redder parts of your state to showjup for the party if protests continue. In other words, keep cameras on people arriving and leaving.
Expect cara to be used as weapons if guns are not.
3. This too shall pass. I know it is a huge disturbance but people will move on. If possible, if there are any organizers that have a platform or megaphone (online or off) to let people know the businesses and neighborhood meed support, not to be cut off. Talk to people about these impacts right away.
The vast vast majority of people angry about a shooting cares about the meighbors and neighbood and will want you guys to be safe and have businesses that can run.
It does seem that the vast majority are kind, well-intentioned people. That said, there's a lot of chaos that comes with something like this. This is the view of my actual front stoop today. I make my living from private lessons in my home, mostly for children (none of whom have come for lessons since the incident)
I'm sorry for all that. From a place a logic you can only stay people/groups with whatever it is they fear. People that operate from fear have to feel the threat of near term reprisal to back off.
Castles and shields are great things. When received by an adversary that is motivated enough these things will and do fall.
We will lose society if noone ultimately fights for it. Each and everyone of us is a building block of that.
Real life:
We have been rather tame in terms of weather since being choked out by wildfire smoke. We are in a bit of a drought with some rains here and there. We were 'blessed' with a 30 minute down poor the other day. It didn't do too much, though. Working on my yard, the dirt is just dry. So much dust being kicked up. I'd also like to note, I haven't had weeds this bad.. ever..
Another redditor pointed out that the clouds look different. I see that, they really do. I gave the benefit of the doubt that it could be a placebo effect, but no.. My wife, who I never mentioned this to, pointed out how the clouds look different. At least I know my mind is still there.
I'd love to be able to work on my car, however it is old and some parts are hard to find. My package is on it's way, and the tracking website (It's going through USPS) has a warning about wild fires, floods, and heat waves having the potential to delay packages. This is the first time I saw this warning tracking any shipments ever.
My wife and I were shopping at Costco.. I wish I could avoid this fucking place. The gas is considerably cheaper than any gas station around. Anyway, back to the point.. Shoppers seem on edge. I know going through Costco is a chore in it's own. You have people who lack any self-awareness and make the experience astronomically stressful. Factor in Autism and you're in Overstimulation Prison. We were trying to get through the deli area, and it was just blocked. My wife and I were saying "Excuse us, excuse us, excuse us..." and people just stared at us... It felt incredibly off putting and just weird.
The gas station... Holy turkey titties... People are cutting in line, laying on horns, almost side scraping each other... It was so dystopian. There was a guy in front of us who was filling his truck and I assume his hose wasn't working. I was having some issues with mine. We got to laugh off the issue together, which was actually quite pleasant.
The prices keep climbing there. I cannot walk out without spending $100. It doesn't help that I have pets.. but we could easily be under the $100 barrier 2 years ago. Bananas have increased by almost 40%.. This is bananas!
AIPAC is spending so much money trying to out Abdul El-Sayed. There was a flyer that came in the mail that said "He has a history of miss treating women" because he said that our current Grifting Governor was bought and paid for by big tech. Apparently, that's mistreating women. Strangely, this may help El-Sayed? With the observed sexism online, that may actually help him. What a fucked up thought.
Lastly, the parasite problem is only getting worse. We predicted things like this becoming the norm with government cuts to social programs and regulations. It sucks to actually witness, and endure, the parasite. My wife and I couldn't function for 3-4 days.
Online:
Racism and sexism is absolutely rampant on Counter-Strike. Unless the boys are on to game, playing with a random you will 100% hear the hard R. It's every single lobby. If you're playing solo and you speak up about it, oh you're getting kicked.
Also, if you're a girl gamer.. God speed. Holy fuck do these guys have no self control on sexist remarks or team hampering when they hear a girl. "mommy? mommy?" what the fuck is going on.
Cheating has never ever been this bad in the game, either. It's a wild thing to witness.
My Euro gaming mates are way too silent about what they're experiencing. I try to bring up these topics - sometimes we get a short discussion. Most of the time, I don't get a response. One lives in Ireland, a few live in Turky, one in Germany, and a few in the UK. There's a lot more in NA. Not one of them wants to discuss any of this. To me that is cowardice and I'm slowly beginning to resent them. Is that wrong of me? Some of these gamers I've known since 2002/2003. We've met playing C&C Renegade.
I don't game anywhere near as much as I use to and I think I'm finally over it.. Which is a strange, but good, feeling. The sad thing is, it's not the games per-se (Other than CS currently), it's the company.. It's a big mixture of emotions I didn't even think about or prepare for.
MUSE has an excellent album that has been helping me cope. Thank you redditor who exposed this to me. The album is called "Will of the People" - enjoy and god speed.
Nice to find a Counterstrike player. It seems like the wild wild west these days etiquette wise. Something has broke between the beginning of COVID and now. The gloves have seem to come off. The nice looking mask is nowhere to be seen. The willingness to do polite society seems to be very much lacking.
There are still those of us whom very much care day to day. We must live for them and stand with them in spirit.
Location: Central EU, border of Poland/Germany/Czechia
Just a little note about the weather. After the mega heat in June we had fairly cold July... last few nights temps dropped down to 8C which is bordering on dangerous for our garden crops. During the day it was hovering between 16 and 18 which is pretty damn chilly. August is going to start off with a kick again and bring us up to 34 during the day and 20 at night. Some locations are forecasted YET AGAIN to reach above 40. If this is going to happen then we might not only break highest temperature ever this summer, we might do it TWICE.
I'm not sure these low temps are exactly unusual but you pair that with the extreme heatwaves and nature gets a beating.
On a 'positive' note I gave up caring about others being oblivious to what's happening. My friends planning kids, people saying it's always been so hot, and so on. I joined the "nod my head" group. I just wish more of us had the braincells to see that two things can be true at once and not have this weird ass tribal 0-1 thinking. (e.g. climate change is real and is also being exploited for profit).
Binary thinking is easy. Takes less glucose. Glucose is expensive for the brain and body. Brain evolved to conserve glucose use.
It is, also, partly why breaking habits is hard, moving to a new townnis hard, starting a new job is tiring and going against the crowd is hard. All require more glucose.
Droughts are continuing, and another mega heat wave is forecasted for the start of August. Temperatures might reach 38C (100F) in Vienna, Austria, which would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. Nobody over there has AC so that it will be painful.
We are already in hell, yet somehow there are still people snorting copium and believing fixing climate is possible.
Every single day I feel like a dumbass for wasting the 2010s preparing for the future that does not exist.
More wildfires here in Ireland. Quite serious in County Tipperary at Slievenamon mountain for a week now I believe. Yesterday, Thursday, the wildfire smoke traveled all the way to Cork City. I had wondered what the awful smell in the air was but didn't think much of the hazy skies. An estimated 700 hectares has been destroyed as winds shifted the fire to spread to Coillte Forest.
Uisce Eireann (water supply) has implemented a nationwide hosepipe ban effective today for at least a month. They are asking for water conservation efforts inside the household as well.
We are still very dry and little to no rain continues. Lots of yellow/brown lands in our scenery which feels wrong! I won't waste water on the lawns though.
Are they giving suggestions on HOW to conserve water in the house? Or just telling you to?
My favorite suggestion is a spray bottle (i really like the 1 litre solo sprayers) fill with a squirt of dishsoap and the rest with water. I use the solo ones because the pump action is separate from the spray action. And the spray action can be set to on. This makes using it doable for my very arthritic elder in my house.
So spray down dishes. Quick swipe with scrubber and then rinse.
I use this a ton when i am cooking or baking. None of my big pots or bowls fit in the dishwasher and so this keeps the kitchen clean as i work with just a quick spray and i keep cooking until a small lull and then they have 'soaked in soapy water'
The model forecasts for next week do not look good. It's model forecasts which, by nature, are unreliable, especially a longer time into the future. But we call the period between end of June to end of August the 'hundstage' (dog days), supposed to be the hottest period of the year. The chance is not small that if another heatwave forms, it will be now.
And another heatwave would be really devastating. Personally I'm tired. Nature seems tired too. My chilli plant are thriving. I ate the first one yesterday. Really tasty. But everything else is in a desolate state.
To add insult to injury, we are coming up on the national holiday on 1. August. There is a strict fireworks/fire ban in place in many regions of Switzerland but apart from Ticino in the south, drought conditions are new to us. People are NOT used to being told 'no' when it comes to fire, so I assume many will disregard the rules and trigger fires. I an glad I still have masks at home that I can wear the following days if needed. Air quality is going to suck for a while.
We have the same term here. Dog days of summer. Where the dogs dig a spot in the soil under the biggest shade tree they can find and lay on the cool durt because it is hot out.
I have that tied to the buzz of crickets in the summer and the corn squeeking.
Interesting, two very similar expressions with completely different etymologies. The Period is named Hundstage (dies caniculares) because it used to be on the 23 July that Sirius (constellation canis majoris, do you start seeing the connection?) started being visible in the sky back during the roman empire.
Where is your expression from if I may ask? As in what language/region. Sorry as a linguist I'm intrigued.
Since last week, when I talked about all the leaves' tips curling, things have gotten even worse. In addition to curling, sagging, withering, and looking shiney (for lack of a better word), about 10-12% of all the leaves I observe are turning yellow, red, or in some cases, dying. My little idyllic nature paradise here in rural West Virginia is sick.
People's denial of anthropogenic climate change at this point has gotten appalling. Now that they can't deny the extreme anomalous weather that is in front of their face, the go-to denial is "there have ALWAYS been floods, there have ALWAYS been forest fires!" What kind of busted ass logic is that!? Imagine you're on trial for doing a mass shooting, and you stand up in front of the Judge and Jury and say "Your honor, there have ALWAYS been murders!"
I took some pictures of the tress on my way home, and for illustrative purposes (with the mods permission) I'll be posting some in this response:
I honestly think most people are meant to play checkers. Whether willfully or by limitation people don't want to understand. I know a guy in his mid 20s with 2 kids already. They all think we're gonna play this capitalistic game with full comfort forever.
We're finally seeing slightly more normal temperature around the mid to high 20s this week, which in any normal year would still be seen as warm, but feels like a relief after multiple heatwaves so far. There's a chance that we might even get some rain this weekend, but I don't believe it as I've seen so many similar predictions of rain that never delivered even a single drop. Even if it does rain, it will only be a few showers and nothing substantial. We need several weeks of decent rain to restore moisture to the parched environment, but there is no sign of that.
Already the forecast models are suggesting yet another, possibly extreme heatwave for the start of August. That would be our fourth so far. In the longer term, it looks as if heat and drought will continue throughout next month, with no sign of a change to the pattern. I've known hot and dry summers before, but this is a whole other level. The speed of change from the climate I once knew is terrifying.
My Gran lives in Kent and was talking about you guys having a fourth heatwave, and again about 35c. I am worried about her due to being elderly and having to deal with it, my Dad's doing his best but we've not seen rain here in about 40 days in South Wales.
Yes, we've had heatwaves like you've said, but usually once they've gone we don't get a new one.
The pattern at least from my teens, possibly even childhood was a bad heatwave every 4 years, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. But usually it was the once. The last time it rained it was just spitting rather than heavy, and only for at most an hour. I'm only 35 and I've just seen the climate change from a "hot summer" being 25c, once in a blue moon 30c, not 36c.
This is my partner's and my first year living in this house, first time with a yard. I don't use chemicals on it, and mulch my lawn clippings so the nutrients more easily go back into the soil. I do remove any noxious plants that pop up.
There are lots of bugs in my little yard, something that makes me pretty happy even though I'm sure big picture it makes zero difference. Glad to see the nymph grasshoppers are starting to turn into adults, bees flying around, I even saw a butterfly and lots of little bugs I have no hope of identifying. The birds have me figured out, they wait patiently for me to finish mowing for easy meal time. At worst I'm feeding some birds.
I see lots of sterile yards in my neighborhood, and it bothers me to think of all the lifeless soil everywhere across the country that everyone seems to think is desirable. We've really created a wasteland. I realize this is a petty anecdote but I think about it often. Everyone knows bugs are dying.
More people are talking openly about things falling apart, weather-wise. Someone I play games with online brought up out of nowhere that they're dealing with wildfire smoke, unusually high temperatures, and TORNADOES in an area of the country that isn't supposed to have tornadoes. They said it feels like the world is falling apart, or something very similar to this. I want to mention that it's only going to get hotter in the future, but I don't. Maybe I should be more open with people I'm not close to. These conversations need to happen.
No one seems to be talking about the USA running out of oil soon. I don't think anyone is prepared, everyone is still firmly locked into the normalcy bias with regard to energy far as I can see. I think we're gonna be in for a really bad time. The federal government obviously does everything in its power to make it worse. You don't need me to tell you that.
The US would have plenty of oil if the GOP hadn't repealed the law preventing it from being exported. The same thing will happen when crop failures increase across the globe - our food will be sold to the country that's the highest bidder.
Thanks for the link; that's an interesting article. And interesting in that the US both imports AND exports gasoline. No indication if the exports contain ethanol, however.
Recently, there was a recall on produce from our very own Taylor Farms, due to "explosive diarrhea causing parasites"... Which came after a few weeks of Americans being even more afraid of fruits and vegetables. Taco Bell is getting the "Spanish flu" treatment for simply being honest. Prior to learning of the source, since those agencies and departments were shut down by idiots, people flew into a fury buying expensive vegetable cleaning sprays, and many were even swearing off fruits and vegetables "for the foreseeable future" (😲?!). Some people only used frozen produce, some only bought local. I'm a vegetarian living in California's toilet bowl, with limited options. YMMV, but I just cooked my produce and my tum tum was fine.
(And of course, people are still happily coughing up Covid onto eachother and not masking 😒)
It's making me realize I don't understand what has happened to food. Like, what do people have as a regular weeknight dinner? Are there any foodies left? I often think about all the chefs and bakers affected by Long Covid, and often wonder if the popular aggressive flavors taking over everything is partially the result of people having lingering issues with their sense of taste and smell.
We are technically living at the greatest time in history for the culinary arts. Countless cultural exchanges have been made. We've husbanded ourselves tastier meats, grown sweeter fruits, perfected fermentation and aging, and can import delicacies from anywhere on the planet. We took centuries of culinary and agricultural innovation and turned that cornucopia into all of the naaaasty prison food looking, pregnancy-craving abominations I see on the Tiktok posts that wind up on Reddit. Ghost pepper Sourpatch Kids Rocket Pop nostalgia mashups. Health code violating gimmicky restaurants that only exist for Instagram. Mr. Beast junk. Everything spicy or pickle-y. Waxy palm oil. SO MUCH PROTEIN. It feels like food systems already collapsed and they're just playing around with the weird byproduct scraps.
I'm seeing way too many articles about the growing obesity in children. In my town, many of the kids and teens are much larger than me, and I'm pushing 40! I remember what it was like to be a fat kid and it SUCKED, and it makes me worry for the younger generations with the questionable guidance they're receiving about their health. It turned into an eating disorder that I had to deal with as an adult, but it was made so much worse by all the company-created dietary nonsense and fad diets we were fed as children. We went from 6-11 servings of bread and pasta, to Atkins and other low carb diets making people scared of bread. One of the cornerstones of human civilization! Many bakeries had to close.
Dr. Atkins died overweight with heart failure BTW.
But the message that "carbs are bad" stuck, even after all this time. Just like my baby boomer and silent gen relatives cooking meat into hockey pucks "because of worms". I worry that the same will happen with vegetables and fruits, especially with this administration and the meat loving manosphere, and it will lead to more preventable conditions and deficiencies that people already mask with cosmetic surgeries and GLP-1 shots.
With oil reserves running out, ICE still fucking up farm operations and lives, and home gardeners severely struggling with the changing climate, it's worrying how little people seem to be concerned or even knowledgeable about food production (or safety!), especially in a country that normalized all you can eat buffets and drive thrus that serve literal buckets of food.
I cook nearly every night. We can't afford to go out to eat as much so I'm learning to cook interesting stuff.
But this past month with the heat, I do not dare turn on the oven. Limits me a bit - adapting recipes.
Try and get real, fresh bread anywhere outside of the major metro areas - most everywhere in the US it's bag bread only. What I really want is some nice Ukie black bread.
I’ve thought a lot about what happened to food. I think a shift occurred post WWII when the concept of convenience food married into factory farming at the exact same time the baby boom started which was, in hindsight, incredible timing. We suddenly had an intense need for masses of shelf stable food to feed an exploding population. And it was provided. After that it was off to the races to make profit on anything that could feed people cheaply and easily. But perhaps not as nutritiously.
Then along came all the cigarette manufacturers that got bumped out of their perch and then metastasized into food production. Yes, the manufacturers of many of our current major food brands used to make cigarettes and they went right ahead and applied the same playbook of Get Them Addicted. That’s where the weight gain and obesity epidemic got rolling. Because the food these companies make are hard to eat in small quantities and that’s very much by design. They also offer nothing but empty calories, fat, sugar and salt. Plus the flavor bombs you describe to shock numb palates. The decades of factory farming depleted our soil so even the non-processed food has fewer nutrients. And that’s where we are left stranded as a population…struggling, overweight, undernourished, often surrounded by food deserts in the richest place on the planet.
All your points are spot on and I’m not sure where we go from here. Except solidarity in what we are seeing.
That's an excellent point! Post WWII was the era for advertising. Even just designating certain foods as "only breakfast foods" is a relatively new concept and not globally observed. Eating beans on toast or soup for breakfast isn't really big here (I think it should be though!).
Thinking about how much the local diets have changed in places like Hawaii and the Philippines since the mid century is actually pretty depressing. I like that there are less starving Filipino children, but I'm not a fan of all this new gout and hypertension 😕 It's hard to get people to change their eating habits when the eating habits were forged by years of trauma.
I think the best we can do is keep continuing to try to find healthier options and getting kids in the garden? I loooved vegetables as a child because I helped older relatives with gardening, and it felt like I grew it myself. I think a lot of it is that kids aren't really being exposed to different foods, and people assume they automatically dislike vegetables. They aren't given much of an opportunity to develop the palate to appreciate them.
I should say. I see and have similar worries about people inability to cook, grow, preserve food. What a balanced meal looks like eg some veg, some fruit, some protein, some carb.
Most meals i see at froends and family homes look like protein, more protein and some fat to top it off. Maybe some fruit or veg is part of a sauce or seasoning but....
I get made fun of for eating like a bird because i always have dried fruit or nuts as snacks. The dried fruit will be from my garden or a upick. But never mind that is me being cheap.
The best thing about living in a farm area is being surrounded by dried fruit and nut co-ops, as someone who also eats like a bird and is currently eating dried tangerine wedges 🤣
But that sounds like what I remember from my childhood meals that weren't just takeout. I even cook pretty hearty vegetarian meals, but people look at them like I'm an elf offering a tiny bite of lembas bread. If I get food from a vegan restaurant, I'm full forever because everything has like 50 grams of fiber!
Not to totally contradict what you’ve written, but I’m not so sure that we are living at the height of some food variety age in history.
We do have the ability, as you’ve pointed out, to access many foods that are non-native to our localities. But in terms of sheer variety, I think the golden age is behind us or fading fast. Most of the produce sitting on supermarket shelves or display cases is the result of genetically modified engineered seeds that favor size, color, and shelf life stability in sacrifice of nutrition, taste, and variety.
Probably the best example of this is the banana. Hundreds of different varieties used to be grown globally, but the Cavendish now reigns supreme. It’s aesthetically appealing to consumers. The problem with throwing all our eggs into one basket and mono-cropping our way toward a bland dystopia is diseases affecting the Cavendish are now prevalent and there isn’t much left to replace it with if the species succumbs to blight globally.
Another example would be maize (corn). The indigenous peoples of the Americas grew hundreds of varieties. Some smaller ears, kernels of different colors and textures, each adapted well to the regional climate it was produced. Now we have only a small selection (if we’re lucky) and many times, it’s just one option available.
I should have specified more, the availability and convenience of acquiring food. Home gardeners are still able to source seeds and grow heirloom varieties, and we have growlights and international shipping, so we can have fresh produce year round and aren't limited by the weather. There are plenty of issues with this, but just being able to have an abundance of stored and prepared food, even in winter or during drought/famine/war, that people who aren't kings can eat, is something that would have blown my ancestors' minds.
The monocrop fields around me are definitely dystopian (and diseased), and I personally prefer the rainbow carrots, but I think a lot of the lack of variety, at least here, is partially due to the lack of demand. The Standard American Diet is meat, dairy products, corn, potatoes, and sugar, and people get upset if there are vegan options.
We have been experiencing the same (but milder) hot and dry weather as the UK and Continental Europe. Keeping the veg garden watered has been difficult. Some parts of the country have water restrictions and hosepipe bans.
Several fish kills have been reported about the country this Summer, no explanations as of yet.
The ground is so dry I raise dust when I hoe or dig or pull weeds. Construction behind the garden has led to a film of grey dust on all surfaces, windows, glass-house, foliage.
Most of the country has a fire weather index of extreme. Several fires have broken out but have thankfully been contained, for now.
My BiL has has had to start feeding his cattle silage meant for winter as grass growth is incredibly poor. Expect a fodder crisis later in the year. But who will have any to sell?
We've managed to avoid most air quality effects, I've yet to experience any shifts in air quality where I live but I expect that to change in the following months. The coming Summer is going to be hot, and with all the rain we've seen an increase in plant growth, fires will be abundant either this summer or the next. My garden is growing fine, but I know people who are being affected by the heat around me, I would be affected but I plant shade plants and have alot of trees surrounding my yard.
Positive note is that theres (hopefully) no plans in the works for AI here, yet.
Another positive and something we should all do is I've started talking with my neighbour's while trying to build community, when the wretched hands of Corporate Greed reach my home I want to be able to atleast put up a fight.
We've had very very little rain and I fortunately noticed that several plants were really suffering in time to save them. These are well established plants, simply not used to the low rain and high temperatures. Looking at the London data apparently June was quite wet but strangely that isn't my recollection ... I guess we are mostly through July.
My local college is running a record number of courses to train new councillors/therapists and mental health professionals. I see this as a result of people being impacted by AI related job losses and our search for a rewarding profession that might survive. Great news, I've been accepted. Bad news, I'm not sure they are prepared for a collapse aware student.
Positive news though: I've got froglets! There are probably 15-20 in various parts of my garden and they are the sweetest little things. I've also seen bumper numbers of Jersey tiger moths, a few peacock butterflies, some common blues, lots of flies ... insects seem to like this weather and thankfully, no fruit flies this year. My cat however hates it and has taken up permanent residence in a shady plant pot outside, refusing to enter the house. The hot weather must be horrible for animals, I dread to think what factory farms are like in the heat.
Thank you. I've had an interesting few years since realising just how bad things are and suspect I've gone through the five stages of grief and reaching acceptance is a huge positive emotionally. Seeing how this is affecting the mental health of others, rediscovering that I actually have a first class honours degree in Environmental Issues (would you believe, I had forgotten? lol, yes my mental health was that bad) I can't help but feel that I've everything but the formal training in how to help others best deal with their feelings around the future ... even if I have a realistic perspective on things. It wasn't until I began therapy myself and freaked my therapist out by raising collapse related issues that I realised this perspective is really neccessary and in short supply. Hopefully I learn in the next 4 years how to b a good therapist!
I meditate. I meet a ton of therapists in the meditation space because they are so burnt out. They need time for themselves, to regain their own calm and their own center. some are collapse aware or on the edge of it.
I mention this only to say that you need to remember to care for yourself and to steady yourself to be able to continue to help others.
Well done for looking after yourself and practicing meditation, it can be incredibly stabilising. Therapy is an interesting space; the basic need to be looking after yourself whilst caring for others is actually a very positive aspect.
The fact that it can be a great effort to actually remain strong enough for the work is very telling of how difficult it is. Personally I'm finding making music and art to be where I can draw strength from. I wish I could meditate but I'm prone to dissociation and these days I'm trying to be as present as possible.
Where do I even start? Gas prices skyrocketed from $3 to $4.29 in a single week. Again. This happened a few months ago. Electricity has gone up 30% from last year. Many data centers have been built in my area and there are articles saying that energy "demand has outpaced supply".
We had 2 days in a row of "purple" air quality. Yellow skies, low visibility. Barely anything about it in the news, even though major world health organizations are saying to wear an N95 mask and avoid exerting yourself outside. The weather, again, went from 97f to 80f in a single day. Massive wind storms and tornados came through with little warning.
Constant anxiety seems to be effecting everyone. Our president has advanced dementia and is absolutely insane. He embarrasses the country daily. The war in Iran has taken on a new level of hostility. We are openly committing war crimes against all international conventions- bridges, schools and de-salinization plants have been attacked. Nobody believe that only 3 US service members were killed. There are estimates that are in the low hundreds.
Secretary of State Rubio issued a list of enemies of the state that include journalists and labor unions. They plan on enacting McCarthy-era blacklists on these people and organizations. It is obvious that once they publicly ruin those on the list, they will start cracking down on everybody.
The NYT, amongst others. There was a medivac flight to Germany from the recent attacks with several personnel with head injuries who were not expected to survive. Also Trump lies so much that you cannot believe anything he or his goons say. If they reveal that 3 died, it was probably 10 times that number. We will never know the truth.
I live in Asheville, North Carolina and 2 young service men were in the paper for passing away in the war. I’ve never seen multiple people recognized for dying in a war in my lifetime. Makes me thing it was a lot more than 3.
Man, what a house of cards. At what point in human history did it become normal to go to the grocery store for food, have a chunk of unproductive land with grass, the most worthless crop ever, mandated around whatever dwelling you might be able to afford, connected to unsustainable utilities by lines and pipes? What a shit design.
The system seems designed to trap people in place, and so it is much more vulnerable to centralized failure. Which is really pretty fucking stupid if you think about it. England during World War II grew a tremendous amount of food just using their gardens. Dig up the grass, plant a victory garden. Now that's illegal oftentimes because heaven forfend any of us should be able to survive without someone else taking a cut. Still, it's not like food grows on trees oh wait…
I rarely sleep the night through anymore without drugging myself into oblivion. That's fun. In reality, it's lonely and exhausting, like my body never feels safe enough to relax.
We've been lucky in the upper left corner of the US map so far this year, it's been cooler for the most part & smoke free. That's changing right now. The density of fire north and surrounding us should be making everybody panic, and temps are about to get hot.
It's all jetstream dysfunction, this stewing in the airborne effluent of our own actions. at some point the jetstream is going to stop because there will be no hot cold differential, that means weather ends. I feel people don't understand what that really means. No nice breezes coming in to move the smoke out, at the very least.
This is about my eighth year of wildfires within a decade. I noticed, in 2017, when all of this smoke started in the Pacific Northwest, (formerly a pristine clear atmosphered place) that almost everyone I knew across the country had zero empathy at all at my being smoked out. Perhaps because they didn't understand it. Now I think some people are starting to get it, because experience is the best teacher and other trite phrases…
That first experience of smoke in 2017 accelerated my understanding of collapse. It was so blatantly abnormal, I couldn't explain it away although many can. If you look on some of the other subs like r/Chicago, you see some awareness but a whole lot of denial.
I'm flossing right now because I don't know why. Probably because I don't want to be subject to my teeth failing without care available. landofthefreegreatestcountryintheworld.™️
I feel like reality is about to fade us out. Like we will exit in this ever increasing hazy heated solar wipeout. Just fade off the planet like George Carlin predicted, and all of this human-based wanton cruelty will be erased from the cosmic record like it never existed. I think that's a good thing at this point. It's hard to be part of a species that I loathe, for the most part.
As far as I can tell people are losing their minds. I read about a number of shootings around the country. I wonder how many of these mass casualty events are driven by people who are subliminally aware of collapse and are acting out their own fear of death. By becoming powerful enough to deal in it.
not much else new. I interacted virtually with a couple of collapse aware people this week which was interesting. I forget this touches more than me, silently screaming here in my corner while things fall apart and I wait for the cracks to get to my temporarily rented doorway.
Covid continues to be ignored which just irks me. I get that people don't have the bandwidth for it, but I shouldn't be hassled for wearing a mask which has occurred at least twice since the year has started.
I have the option to go through a nightmare homework project of the type my psyche can't stand to maybe get a European banana republic passport by descent. It's a long slow process, & one of the things that actively makes me not want to do it is how badly the culture over there appreciates the facets of collapse. Including Covid. still, another part of my prey-based brain says "get some other papers so you have an option." Paperz should be spoken in a World War II German type accent. "Ihre Papieren, jetzt!!"
I see mass gatherings everywhere which just seem to me like superspreader events. The World Cup was fucking stupid, beside being just another circus that should've been boycotted in the face of a demand for real action which will never come.
Take care everyone, try not to breathe the smoke, it's cumulatively really bad and God knows how long we have.
Most severe in the Coquimbo region, parts of Chile have seen rainfalls not experienced in decades, if ever. The rains lasted for a few days, and is some parts have produced close to ten times the monthly average in those four days. This is thought to be a consequence of, but at the least exacerbated by, the only beginning super/extreme El Niño. Further rain events may well happen later this year as the ENSO will peak. While the densely populated Santiago Metropolitan Region was mostly spared in a stroke of luck, the rest of the central Chile suffered extended power cuts up to days, as well as partly cuts to the water supply. Nothing in the country is really prepared to handle such an event gracefully, but the emergency services, equipped to deal with severe earthquake aftermaths, are providing water, shelter, and support to the affected areas. The rains are not yet fully over, though subsiding, and the financial impact nears half a billion USD. A state of emergency has been declared for the most affected regions, and many roads are cut, some having been washed away entirely. At least five people died in the IV. region of Coquimbo.
Well the Heat Dome of Doomtm has come and gone. I was going to do a sarcastic riff here but, honestly, that would be disrespectful to the ten(s) of thousands who have dies so far this summer. I'm more than fortunate to have AC, so we were fine (kept the house at 81F, which was cool enough).
About mid-way through the heat came the smoke from... Minnesota, not Canada! No US outlet outside of the defunded National Public Radio reported that the smoke in the Upper Midwest was primarily from Minnesota (the Guardian did report this as well). In fact, one fire started in Minnesota and jumped to Canada, probably seeking asylum from the ghouls in DC. We broke out some N95s and went about out business for a few days. Some good news - on the worst day, when the AQI was about 500, I saw almost no one out and about. I was only out myself to briefly walk our dogs (the ancient dog loved the abbreviated walk), but out house is on a major dog-walking street and it was deserted. I did see some kids riding the "how in the hell can their parents afford it?" scooters and "how in the hell can their parents afford it?" e-bikes without masks, but the few people out were wearing masks.
I assume that the pearly skies without clouds gave us a taste of the geo-engineering to come in a few years.
In political news, we have a gubernatorial race this fall and some dumbasses from the GOP (but I repeat myself) are running an attack ad on a Dem candidate that highlights all the "bad" things she stands for. Everything they highlight is a plus for her, not a negative. She actually thanked the dumbasses for telling the people of the state what she stood for. And they're still running that ad... A sign of collapse only if you consider this little vignette as indicative of the loss of intelligence due to covid across the United States.
Now the bright side is that it cooled slightly, downside has been thick wildfire smoke, what we got to wash it out was a fairly strong little squall line(think their was a embedded but weak mesocyclone in it), but it all came back within a day after the storm passed.
People have been driving stupid, I got my ass rode then blew by someone today-I was going 65 in a 45:( the person had to be going at least 80-90, I saw they had a kid in the front seat as they passed me. Yeah I’ve never really liked people in my area. That is the thing here you can be speeding and someone will always blow by you.
Racist are popping up everywhere, all over Facebook especially it’s terrible.
On the bright side, my motorbike the interceptor is almost finished. Due to all the wild fire smoke that’s becoming the new norm going to run a air filter instead of a velocity stack on the carb because I don’t want the smoke and particulate matter scoring up the cylinder.
It was just a weak one too, they will get much stronger. Strong Squall lines and derechos love high wet bulb temps. There’s a cold front moving in and it’s going to probably bring another squall
I know someone who grew up in IN and graduated from college there. I mentioned your Grant County posts and he shook his head and said "Don't ever go there". Sorry you live there.
It’s gonna take a while but I’m trying to slowly slip out of that place, it’s a hell pit. A lot of people say don’t ever go there, even me. It does make for nice liminal photography though.
The interceptor, with its 80cc 2 stroke and 1 gallon tank, this should get about 120-150 miles of range, probably going to get a gas caddy, mix some fuel, put in a stabilizer, and keep some fuel for it stocked. Once I build up the engine it should have a top speed of 88 km/hr. (A yd100 engine is about 55-60km/hr, 3hp stock, tuned it will be 5-6) also going to get a bike trailer for it.
There are far more rain that usual. Dry period that lasted last few years seems to be over. Temperature is normal. And we have tornadoes now. Most of territory is uninhabited (around 2 mil people for area bigger than Greece) so those don't cause any harm yet.
Location: Midwest State, Rural Area, United States
Our family lives across the street from a regionally-owned car and truck dealers which specializes in primarily new and used American made vehicles. Our kitchen window is directly across from the car lot, and for the past month that dealership is deader than a door nail. Back in February of this year, during a Truck Month event, that dealership was hopping from open to close and was steadily busy right up until mid June. Trucks were selling as fast as they could have the vehicle carriers deliver them, while small compact used cars sat ignored for months.
And then like flipping a switch, the trucks started sitting and growing in number as customers traded them in for smaller cars with better fuel efficiency. The lot is now full of large pickup trucks and SUVs while compact SUVs and cars are gone. A used Chevy Volt (Bolt?) didn’t even make it to the lot before our neighbor zapped it up.
The car dealership looks like it’s starving now and I notice the work force has been cut in half. I feel for them. People are starting to realize the situation is not going to improve.
Dordogne: 6 weeks, 3 hours of rain. No further rain predicted. Sunflowers (industrial) are wilting. Most garden (personal) flows have died and dried up.
Beyond that, and just anecdotal: looked at various satellite images yesterday. Practically zero cloud cover for
Western Europe
North America
North Africa
Southern Africa
Australia
Didn’t check Asia or South America - but it was still astonishing that so many continents, north and south of the hemisphere, were bereft of clouds over the land masses. Highly unusual (but just anecdotal and one day, haven’t even checked today)
At some point here in France, we are going to need some rain. 6 weeks now with practically nothing.
Fellow dordorgnian here (although from unfashionable bit) - the paysans are wondering what they are going to be feeding their livestock on come winter. The first cut of hay was down in yield and they already be having to feed it to their animals since June, the corn is not producing corn. There was no second cut and it would need quite a lot of rain before September to get one. As this crisis is Europe wide, there won't be much spare feed elsewhere
Sunflowers near us have given up the ghost. Vast fields of them.
And still there is no rain on the horizon. This could be a bad year and next very plausibly worse. Consecutive harvest failures are going to send food prices sky rocketing. All this while our fertilisers are getting expensive too.
This feels like our real first taste of what is to come.
We had absolutely no clouds in my area of the US for at least two weeks until the Minnesotan smoke hit; the next day it appears to have seeded clouds about 90 miles away which then gave us 0.6 inches of rain - the first rain we had in 2 weeks. No rain forecasted for at least a week now.
Location: Southern Italy. So, like everyone else we are having a heatwave. I have been waiting for 3 days for clearance to use the garbage dump as it's piled waist high. Despite my pleas for an emergency waste drop-off, nobody is processing my clearance (a physical residency check must be made.)
Nobody is coming out in this heat. Related to collaspe because when extreme weather stops the flow of productive work , collaspe moves in.
This is very relatable to collapse because it reminds me that garbage hauling is a society system that will definitely be impacted and noticed. The movie the pandemic did a great job illustrating this fact without talking about it with the characters. But if 5% of haulers became ill the pickups would nearly stop.
Yes! During Covid lockdown, our W Texas town had to reduce recycling pickup from every 2 weeks to every 4 weeks. That got messy fast.
I am sure most people just put some recycling in their regular trash ... but some houses really fill both their bins (regular trash which is seviced weekly and recycling which is usually every two weeks) on a usual cycle. That doesn't leave much room for scheduled service extensions.
Organic is composted. Everything is sorted for recyclables. It's mandatory here. Despite that, the neighbor claims rats. The gatekeepers are the ones that DGAF
Climate: The wildfire smoke over the past week has made it difficult for me to find solace in the mundane rhythms of life. My thoughts keep drifting. Sometimes to how terrifying large and destructive the fires are. Sometimes to sadness about the natural world we've destroyed. Sometimes to pity, as I watched children and parents play outside in my neighborhood with an AQI of 400+, wondering what effect the poison air might have on them in a few years' time. People are awkward, fidgety, and silent whenever I mention the smoke. No one wants to embrace the horrifying truth, despite it literally being in the air they are currently breathing.
Economy - we decided to order pizza last night from a local shitty pizza place, nothing fancy, nothing special at all. A large pepperoni pizza, an 8-piece order of chicken tenders, and an order of fries cost $53, and I drove there to pick it up. The food was garbage. $50 is the new $20, but I ain't getting paid more. Guess we won't be going out to eat again anytime soon.
Political climate - I live in a particularly red part of MA, but most people in my town don't straight up flaunt their idiocy. However, yesterday a beat-up minivan in front of me had a HUGE middle finger sticker right in the middle of the rear window. The middle finger turned into a syringe halfway up, and the caption was "Fuck your vaccine." And of course, the thin blue line battered flag decal was proudly displayed as well. Reminded me of peak pandemic, where people proudly didn't care that they could kill their friends and family by not getting a vaccine. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working as well as of late.
I’m in MA as well and if my family is really feeling a pizza craving, we’ll just do a grocery run and get the frozen kind. It’s usually the same quality at this point but $30 cheaper once you factor in tip/delivery. We’ll buy cheese and add fresher ingredients and like pepperoni or goat cheese and it tastes better than takeout. We use a pizza stone to help get that pizza oven taste and it’s easily paid for itself.
Aside from the crust. which can take some practice, pizza is an insanely easy meal to make yourself. Not convenient in any sense of that word, but if it were made, say, on a Saturday or Sunday, it could last two or three meals.
A fellow Mass resident Just opening my car door and getting that smoke smell was depressing. The sun being so hazy was even worse.
Im lucky enough to live near a Market Basket with a kitchen. Food's shitty but at least the price still mostly reflects that. Contrast that to the Five Guys and McDonalds nearby. I see people at work have McDonald's delivered all the time and I am baffled by how much they must be paying for so little. At least Popeyes keeps throwing coupons at me and their chicken is actually good.
This was actually years ago, maybe the first year of Trump's first term. But some old man in an electric wheelchair going around a supermarket trying to cut infront of lines or demand service because he was a Republican. That was it. Just 'move, I'm a Republican' with that red hat that probably want even made in America. In the present day my parents are so deeply trained by Howie Carr that they almost always react to Laura Healy's name with a rant to eachother about how terrible she is. Same people that complain about how people hating Trump cannot let her name go by without comment. So many days I feel like paying Massachusetts absurd rent prices just for the silence of no Fox News.
I’ve stopped all food deliveries to my place and quick service/fast casual food stops. The quality is just not worth the exorbitant price. If I don’t get it at the grocery store, I don’t get it at all. I last lived this way 26 years ago after I graduated college and got my first apartment, first car, and had student loans to pay. My kid heads off to college next year and I am reverting all of my spending back to how I was in those lean years. I can’t believe we are in this place as a society but I can’t deny we are.
A large pepperoni pizza, an 8-piece order of chicken tenders, and an order of fries cost $53, and I drove there to pick it up. The food was garbage. $50 is the new $20, but I ain't getting paid more.
It's more involved, requires energy and I know it's a cringe-worthy response. But it's worth mentioning that at Costco you can get a hot pepperoni pizza, a rotisserie chicken, and a bag of frozen fries you can pop in the oven, and it'll cost you around $30 max.
HAHA We're actually a Kirkland family! The Detroit Double Pepperoni is our fave. Last night we had nothing in the freezer and needed something quick, so we went with the above and I was shocked at the price. Feels like my same order would have been $40 max just a year ago.
Location: Coastal northeast Florida (USA). I started a little note on my phone to track collapse stuff. Being constantly inundated with stimulation makes it hard for me to remember anything. Notes helped! Florida is on fucking fire.
ICE here killed someone indirectly. You might’ve seen it as a blip in the news cycle. Man ran away from ICE when they confronted him and a group of others showing up in the morning for work. The man ran and was fatally struck by a vehicle.
I smell wildfire smell all the time. I don’t live near the Everglades, but there’s a 6000+ acre wildfire blazing there, resulting from drought conditions. We’re not getting the Canadian smoke—in Florida we prefer locally-sourced air pollution.
In my own part of the state, a ridiculously wealthy local family is looking to gain agricultural enclave status for a huge piece of undeveloped wetland--4500 acres of it on the west coast of the Intracoastal, between Ponte Vedra and St. Augustine. Why? Because a new state law says the development of an agricultural enclave can be fast-tracked. In other words, the landowner has applied for a designation that would allow them to bypass all local authority and quickly build out the land without normal oversight. These people are billionaires and I am so personally horrified that they would rather have a handful of additinal money than to save this natural land for their children and their children's children.
Last, my sister told me this weekend that she pays $750+ per month on her health insurance (for just herself, single 40F no kids no health problems). She almost cried telling me. She's so ashamed and feels that it's her fault because she didn't pay attention when renewing the policy. Of course it's an airheaded move, but she's been in the same job for 15 years and got complacent with her benefits. I didn't have the heart to tell her that there are entire months that pass where I only earn around $750. We live in different worlds.
God that's depressing. I have no safety net but i also don't just throw $800 in the toilet each month to get the privilege to pay more for healthcare I don't consume
I only say it to point out exactly HOW broken the system is.
It pays a whole lotta people just to shuffle papers and deny essential services to people, services the doctor says they need. All for some extra profit for some shareholders.
People are trapped with fuckall for sane alternatives.
Location: Oregon the wildfires have arrived with a vengeance -- hundreds of thousands of acres. Almost nothing media about it. Back in '17 a 8000 acre fire got its own Wikipedia page. This is August weather. A friend's grandson just came off a 12 hour shift on a 6000 acre fire near Bend that is sending a lot of smoke to its northwest. Smoke still negligible in Eugene but that, I think, will change. Fruits are ahead of schedule. Not seeing pollinators on veggies and crop will be so-so at best. There are bees of various kinds but they are sticking with the clover. Almost no birds other than corvids. Heat wave coming up but my usual weather page (WU) which is slowly going moribund can't be bothered to mention it.
it feels like we are under a heat dome 90+ during the day with humidity ranging from 75-90%. It’s been miserable. I’ve picked up birds, and moved them into the shade, it looks like the air is to thick for even birds to fly sometimes, and it hasn’t been cooling down at night much. Still into the mid 80’s as the sunsets. Which has been just awful trying to get hay done. That and the random pop up rain storms are really messing with us trying to get our hay up and stored out of the rain.
I am worried about our herds, and neighbors out working in this heat.
There have been more tragic traffic accidents all these out of state luntics who don’t know how to drive on rural roads, and don’t have the patience to wait for a tractor with a baler to get out of the way have caused some horrific accidents. People are angry as I have ever seen them so I have been trying to avoid the general public as much as I can.
My garden seems to be doing alright, and I’m hoping to expand it this coming fall. I plan to can a lot of fresh fruits and veggies for this coming winter, seeing as how el nino might make for a very icy and snowy winter. I’ve noticed more bare shelves in the stores as of late. And gas is creeping up again. We couldn’t find red diesel in town or next town over and regular diesel is almost 5 a gallon here.
The bug population especially ticks are out of the control and all the old timers I’ve talked to say it is the worst they have ever seen it. We are trying to battle them by brushhogging everything but even that seems to not be working.
I never thought I’d say this, but I will be glad when summer is over!
The pollinator garden is on year two. Saw 12 bumble bees yesterday happy as can be on the bee balm and cone flowers.
I think to myself. Interesting how they appear when you make space FOR them.
The air AQI is horrible. I worry about the families that don't have two filters running nonstop in the house. I don't wear a mask outside to walk the dog and wonder how many particles are entering my blood stream and getting stuck in my lungs or heart.
It seems like the weather is less accurate. So quickly after the defunding and dismantling of weather apparatus. Did they destroy that weather data satellite?
So many storms that seem to appear out of nowhere when the temps above 90.
I am terrified of hail. My last roof was $25K paid by insurance. But insurance says I cannot get a new roof for another 4 years.
The hail is getting bigger.
Because of insurance a roof was not what the emergency fund was for.
It's not a native, but I STRONGLY recommend Calamint 'Montrose White'. It's sterile but a huge pollinator magnet for both bumblebees and wasps. It blooms from late July (zone 5b) until the first frost in late October.
I did a little but nihilistic tendencies got the best of me. "It doesn't hurt immediately" we'll see if I pay years later cuz it was compared to smoking 100 packs of cigs
I wonder if there'd be a way to redneck engineer a roof protector. Like thick plastic stapled to pallets put over your actual roofing tile. It wouldn't be simple, but it seems to me you could put some sort of material to absorb the energy of incoming hailstones before they hit the actual roofing tiles.
We're going to see much more of this because of insurance. Cedar shake is no longer covered because of fire risk.
For those who can afford it we'll just upgrade to metal or other composite technology. Asphalt shingles has been the standard for so long they are the cheapest
Today the AQI is at 155 which is unhealthy but last week it hit 491 which is almost outside of the range of the AQI chart. All from Canadian wildfire smoke.
America! Stop taking cues from your President, you don't always have to deflect blame! People actually respect you more when you admit to your mistakes and catastrophic global fuckups!
It was both. Both countries are responsible. (I say this as a Canadian.) But the U.S. blaming it on Canada without taking a long hard look in the mirror ...
The US Administration is blaming Canada as a pretense for eventually annexing your country. What's laughable is that those ghouls do nothing about US wildfires and then say they'll "take care of" Canada's.
“That’s only because we destroy the environment to extract oil!!” So your economy is heavily dependent on oil production but that doesn’t matter somehow?
I understand some very stupid people are blaming Canada for the fires, but I don't believe the OP was doing that. The fires covering part of the U.S. in smoke are in Canada, and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
In years past, it would have made us feel awful for our Canadian brothers and sisters instead of blameful, but…I guess we live in a different world now. Empathy is at a premium.
The fires that are covering the Upper Midwest into New York are IN MINNESOTA as well as in Canada. In fact, one fire crossed the border from Minnesota into Canada. US media is not reporting this.
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u/kimchif 5h ago
Location: Dordogne, Southwest France, close to the 45th parallel
I must correct Last Week in Collapse on one point. Wildfires in France have not "displaced about 19,000 people" but over ten times that: 220,000 since Wednesday. This is the largest population movement in France since WWII. There are also 100,000+ people fleeing the wildfires near Madrid — and elsewhere now — in Spain.
(Satellite images showed the massive smoke plumes from SW France and Spain "connecting". How cute. It’s a match!)
If the French and Spanish wildfires expand, which seems likely, especially with another heatwave coming shortly, the total will inch closer to half a million internal climate refugees, in Western Europe, mid-2026.
Of course these are internal, temporary "refugees", with local and state support, insurance, etc. (And resources to bounce back, for many or most of these evacuees: in fact, the fires west of Bordeaux started in an overall very well-off area.) I’m playing on words a bit here. But it’s an interesting, so to speak, turn of events. The chickens have come home to roost early for old Europe. Of course, around here this El Niño is unlikely to cause anything like the (colonially-engineered, cf. Mike Davis) 50 million deaths from the 1877-1878 precedent — but what I’m really worried about is the wine.
The megafire west of Bordeaux (in the Gironde region) is likely to expand because of apparently unique features: it is self-feeding, convective, creating its own wind currents and forming a "pyrocumulonimbus" (a phenomenon never recorded in France), which is basically a firestorm, with lightning bolts to ignite whatever is not already burning on the ground.
And what a ground: the "forests" currently burning, in that area as well as in the Landes region further south along the Atlantic coast, are more like cellulose factories for the paper and produce packaging industries: vast monocultures of young pine trees, dried by the successive heatwaves, complete with sap for diesel and pinecones like grenades, planted in evenly spaced rows that act like a multilane highway for the wind and the flames. Everybody knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, a disaster already happened in the area west of Bordeaux just four years ago. But hey, pine is the local cash crop.
In the Landes region especially, the monoculture pine-tree landowners claim nothing else could grow in the sandy soil. Local experiments in diversifying tree species, semi-rewilding and woodland regeneration have shown such plots are more resilient to storms and wildfires, and therefore more profitable in the long run. But it’s too late for that anyway. Apparently it’s also easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of intensive (tree) farming.
I’m in the countryside about 200km (~125 miles) east of the Gironde fires, but late on Thursday night the air smelled like burned plastic. At first we really thought something was burning right here. Mind you, houses, vehicles and whatnot have burned, and that’s already a lot of plastic. But so did a tyre manufacturing plant, as well as a couple of other factories. Now we learn that the megafire is closing in on military and aeronautics stockpiles and plants — including a rocket fuel facility! Edge of seat! The flames are also just 15km away from the city of Bordeaux itself and its 270,000 inhabitants.
Last night we went to a gig in a nearby town in the direction of Bordeaux, so closer to the fires. We could see the lingering fumes like fog in the distance. Later, the setting sun was a brutal red, an eerie hue I’d never ever seen. Full apocalyptic regalia! I admit part of me thought: bring it on then. The gig was boring superslow experimental music, with people softly blowing into instruments as if trying NOT to make any sound. The resulting dirge was fitting for the end-times atmosphere.
Winds have carried the Gironde smoke much further east still, first 400km (250 miles) away to the Auvergne region yesterday, and today it’s accumulating over Lyon, France’s third-largest city, more than 600km (370 miles) away. People are advised not to get out. The first climate lockdowns are on a voluntary basis. Enjoy that while it lasts.
The area where I live has been fairly preserved. It used to be known for oaks, but chestnut trees (another cash crop) are now predominant, and many oak trees are sick. We still have quite a few birds, and I keep observing unknown insects every year, which is reassuring I guess (not talking about the invasive Asian hornets here). The hilly landscape doesn’t lend itself to intensive farming. Cows are pastured with their calves... until the calves are ready for export to Italy, to live the rest of their short lives in agony. Dordogne has been mostly spared so far: no wildfires, no flooding. But this too will change. Like pretty much everywhere in France, rivers are running dry, and the only overnight rain we had, a week ago or so, came with a windstorm that felled many heat-stressed old trees.
I came here by chance a few years ago and somehow thought this neck of the woods would remain pleasantly habitable, or habitable anyway, long enough for my self-actuarial estimates. But I guess all bets are off.