Little Madeline sees a train for the first time! So precious! 😊

Adam Schiff was just elected to a six year term in the Senate. It explains a lot about California voters, doesn't it?

It makes no sense to plow ahead with High-Speed Rail just because we've already spent billions on it. This is exactly why we need to kill the project. If the first $30 billion got us nowhere in 15 years, what good will another $100 billion do?

Update from NASA: There's a 2.4% chance an asteroid will hit Earth in 2032, up from 2.2% yesterday

Let’s talk about “Cloud Seeding”, since it appears to be trending. In short, it’s an attempt to make existing clouds let go of moisture over a specific area, in the form of rain or snow. It can’t create the clouds. It can’t add moisture to the clouds. We’re not sure it even works & it’s not all that widespread a practice. Cloud seeding can trace its roots back to around 1946, though the theory goes as far back as the 1890’s. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1946 that scientists actually began to attempt to modify clouds. They first did so in deep-freezers, making clouds & then either attempting to change the “heat budget” of the clouds or introducing crystalline structures around which water droplets can condense. In some applications, they tried using it to dissipate fog or prevent hail damage, but the primary goal is always increasing precipitation in a specific area. They’ve continued to experiment since, though in the last decade or so budgets for these programs have been decreasing. That’s due, in part, to the fact that high-quality research indicates that there does not appear to be a significant effect from the practice. As with all things science, you’ll find plenty of papers that claim appreciable increases in rainfall…but the research is often shoddy, over a short period & researchers appear to be at least somewhat compromised by their funding sources. China is maybe the biggest practitioner, usually using rockets. It famously attempted to prevent rain for the Olympics in Beijing. They seem to think it works & it’s even caused conflict when one province claims another is “stealing water”. Israel ran a program, but stopped when they concluded it doesn’t work. The UAE does cloud seeding in one of the bigger current programs. They got a lot of attention not long ago when hit by a significant monsoon flood; some claimed it was the result of cloud seeding, but the UAE had not been seeding for several days at the time of the storm. The US made several attempts at it & still has some small programs, usually run through a University, though some ski resorts pay for it too. The military attempted to use it to make it rain more in Vietnam & tried to defuse hurricanes. Silver iodide (a form of salt) was the most common crystalline for cloud seeding, though dry ice was often used as well. In recent years regular table salt has become popular. None of these compounds is terribly harmful, but yeah – if you dumped a bunch of table salt in your mouth, you’re probably going to need some medical attention. The most common method of delivery is small aircraft; things like Cessnas or occasionally business jets. Other programs use rockets that explode inside the clouds, spreading the chosen material. That’s the key: you have to fly into the existing clouds…you can’t make the clouds, and you can’t add moisture to them. These are clouds that are already formed and are likely to rain somewhere, you just want them to rain or snow in a specific place instead of passing you by and eventually raining someplace else. On aircraft, they equip a series of flares, often mounted to the wing or sometimes the body. Once the airplane enters the target clouds, they light the flares, dispersing the particulate. They do so in a series, making many passes. You can’t see them because they are in the clouds. Jet contrails are sometimes pointed to as some evidence of these programs, but they are completely unrelated. As far as cloud seeding being used as “weather modification” or “geo-engineering”…sure, I suppose you can call it that. It’s extremely localized, though, and if it does work (I’m very skeptical) it only affects precipitation. It can’t make it hotter or colder or windier or whatever. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like a witch doctor doing a rain dance. If it doesn’t rain, you just didn’t dance hard enough. If it does rain, it’s proof that the dancing works; the witch doctor has a study to prove it & is asking for more funding.

Mexico on Tuesday deployed 10,000 troops to its northern border with the U.S. – appearing to make good on a vow President Claudia Sheinbaum made a day earlier to President Trump to bolster border security in exchange for Trump pausing a 25% tariff on Mexican goods. The deployment, titled "Operativo Frontera Norte," has Mexican soldiers going to the border towns of Juárez and Chihuahua. Sheinbaum also intends to send troops to border towns Matamoros, Mexicali, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Tijuana. Trump triggered the tariffs – along with ones on Canada and China – in an attempt to force the curtailment and end illegal migration and drug trafficking, particularly the flow of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.