FirstCircle

On DVD of course. Fans of Rutger Hauer seem to think it's one of his best, and no, it's not that SciFi one (which is one of my favorite films of all time). I got it on inter-library loan from a library on the other side of the state. Now I have three weeks to watch it, though I could of course rip it and just watch whenever.

Today I got a bunch of laundry and food shopping done. At the grocery store I asked for cash back and the magnitude of the ask seemed to surprise the cashier a little. I got two $50s, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me, so maybe it was just having to handle currency that caused her a momentary bout of confusion?

A few days ago I took a long drive to a small city (a college town) where I recalled there being a cool used bookstore. I turned out it was still there though the Main St. as I recall it (from several years ago) had changed quite a bit - small indie coffee shops taken over by big chains &etc. Things were very quiet in the summer off-season. I browsed for maybe an hour, chatted with the elderly shopkeeper, and scored three deals on books, one a hefty hardcover (with perfect dust-jacket) by a famous Soviet-era writer that would easily sell, on eBay, for 5x what I paid.

I asked the shopkeeper for one of their bookmarks and I received one. Nice, but it's of lower quality than their earlier versions - this one is flimsy and made of uncoated paper and only about 5" long - not of the necessary bookmark length for large hardcover tomes. It was free though.

Today I also mowed the lawn with the battery-powered mower. I say "lawn", but there's been little rain so it's just a smattering of tall, resilient weeds that got mowed. I'm still impressed by how much the mower can do on a single charge with just one battery.

A construction contractor declined to bid on my house re-siding job because I wouldn't accept a "time & materials" so-called "bid" and wouldn't pay $anything in advance of the work being done. These guys are all snakes. I may just have to paint over the crummy siding or learn how to do the work myself which would honestly be a good thing (for me - learning) though that's probably too interesting to talk about here.

The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.

Mayor Lisa Brown issued a 9:30 p.m. curfew, the first such measure since protestors in 2020 marched to support George Floyd.

“Everyone must abide by this curfew. Limited exceptions apply, including law enforcement, emergency personnel, media, people leaving the soccer game at the Podium, residents living in the area, and people going to and from work,” Brown’s directive read.

She made the call in response to hundreds of demonstrators blocked federal agents in Spokane Wednesday evening from leaving a downtown immigration office reportedly with refugees who were detained at court hearings earlier in the day.

The protestors, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, gathered outside the facility on West Cataldo Avenue in the afternoon just north of Riverfront Park to prevent a bus with the young men from departing to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

A second protest at Riverfront Park broke out hours after the Stuckart-led event and riot-clad officers began shooting tear gas and making arrests.

Protestors in the park were joined by City Councilman Paul Dillon as officers began deploying gas and pushing against the participants.

At the earlier protest on Cataldo, some protesters deflated the bus’s tires and blocked law enforcement from leaving in patrol cars on the opposite side of the building.

A Spokane Police Department officer spoke over the regional SWAT car speaker system at 7:13 p.m. and ordered everyone present to disperse. The officer gave the demonstrators five minutes to do so. Few left the scene when police warned at 7:22 p.m. that they would use force if the crowd did not leave.

The fracas is arguably the most extreme local showing of resistance, among others in Los Angeles and across the country, to President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdowns since he took office for the second time in January.

The Cataldo crowd included several prominent politicians, activists and community leaders, including Spokane County Democratic Party Chair Naida Spencer; state Rep. Timm Orsmby; Spokane City Council candidate Sarah Dixit; union advocate and a former Democratic candidate for local, state and federal offices Ted Cummings; Thrive International Director Mark Finney and Latinos en Spokane Director Jennyfer Mesa.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray grilled Collins about a lack of transparency under his leadership, including a new policy that prevented her from meeting with veterans and health care providers at the Seattle VA hospital in April. She also questioned his goal of cutting 15% of the department’s workforce while accelerating the rollout of the electronic health record system that has hamstrung Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center since it became the testing ground at the end of the first Trump administration.

“As you know, fixing EHR and getting it right for our veterans is about patient safety,” Murray said, using the acronym for the system. “Did you ask these VA clinicians and hospitals about how those cuts would affect future EHR deployments?”

Collins replied that the planned layoffs and the computer system’s accelerated rollout “are separate,” brushing aside concerns about cutting staff and terminating support contracts while more aggressively deploying a system that has contributed to thousands of cases of patient harm, according to the VA’s own internal data.

Ken Kizer, who ran the Veterans Health Administration during the 1990s and oversaw the last major overhaul of VA health care, has said it would be “lunacy” to ramp up the system’s rollout while conducting mass layoffs.

Some twenty armed federal agents busted into an Oklahoma City home and seized the laptops, phones, and life savings of the family living there, even though their names did not match those of the suspects listed on the officers’ search warrant; and ICE agents raided the house of an Irvine, California, couple whose son has been accused of doxxing agents, but had moved to New York months ago.

a man who had been rescued from Mount Fuji after suffering from altitude sickness was rescued a second time after returning to the mountain in search of his phone;

the U.S. president posted an AI-generated photo of himself as the pope.

The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told Americans it was their “patriotic duty” to save on medical costs by not getting sick

the U.S. Naval Academy canceled a philosopher’s lecture about wisdom after he refused to refrain from discussing the 381 books the school banned from their library

in Mississippi, the Commission on School Accreditation voted to remove a requirement that graduating students pass a United States history test

A man driving in Indonesia followed Google Maps directions off an unfinished bridge

It will soon be illegal in Spokane for an employer to ask a prospective employee if they’re homeless or reject their application solely because they do not have a permanent address.

The Spokane City Council voted 6-1 Monday in favor of the law, titled “Ban the Address” as a riff on “Ban the box” laws that prohibit inquiries about an applicant’s prior convictions. Councilman Jonathan Bingle was the sole vote against.

City officials believe Spokane is the first in the nation to pass such a law.

“Housing status should never define someone’s potential,” Councilman Paul Dillon said. “Employment really is a critical way we have to reduce homelessness and help people get back on their feet.”

“They can assume that everybody is armed,” Seth Stoke, chairman of the St. Maries School Board said in an interview Monday night after the board voted 4-0 to finalize a policy that will allow permitted staff to carry concealed firearms inside the district’s public schools.

The board developed the policy during the last school year in response to decades of school shootings across the nation, Stoke said.

Parents also won’t be allowed to appeal if they have specific concerns about a specific staff member’s decision to arm themselves in the classroom.

“The whole idea is not knowing who is carrying,” Stoke said, adding that parents always have the right to remove their child from the school.

Staff members who are approved to bring a gun to their school job must have an Idaho concealed carry license, which requires a national background check. Employees must use their personal firearms; guns will not be provided by the school district.

As fascism always does, today’s Armageddon complex crosses class lines, bonding billionaires to the Maga base. Thanks to decades of deepening economic stresses, alongside ceaseless and skillful messaging pitting workers against one another, a great many people understandably feel unable to protect themselves from the disintegration that surrounds them (no matter how many months of ready-to-eat meals they buy). But there are emotional compensations on offer: you can cheer the end of affirmative action and DEI, glorify mass deportation, enjoy the denial of gender-affirming care to trans people, villainize educators and health workers who think they know better than you, and applaud the demise of economic and environmental regulations as a way to own the libs. End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy.

It’s also a self-reinforcing downward spiral: Trump’s furious attacks on every structure designed to protect the public from diseases, dangerous foods and disasters – even to tell the public when disasters are headed their way – strengthen the case for prepperism at both the high and low ends, all while creating myriad new opportunities for privatization and profiteering by the oligarchs powering this rapid-fire unmaking of the social and regulatory state.

Oyer has since told various media outlets that her firing came shortly after she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a supporter of President Donald Trump. She is one of several Justice Department officials slated to testify on Monday afternoon before a hearing organized by Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate about the Trump administration's treatment of the Justice Department and law firms who act in cases disliked by the Republican president.

Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff of California called the mobilization of the Marshals to deliver a letter an effort to "intimidate and silence" Oyer, while U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland compared it to a move "ripped straight from the gangster playbook."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, although battered by Trump administration attempts to impose massive staff and budget cuts on the agency, nevertheless continues to publish critical climate information, including some dire drought warnings in the spring outlook published March 20 by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

About 40% of the contiguous 48 states are currently in some stage of drought or abnormally dry conditions, and those are expected to persist in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to the March 20 bulletin.

In the past two weeks, water officials in the West warned that, despite near-average snowpack in some parts of the Colorado River’s mountain watershed, the river’s flows are expected to drop below normal, exacerbating tensions between water users in the region. In New Mexico, water experts said the Rio Grande is likely to dry up completely in Albuquerque as early as June. A 2024 study explained how global warming drives a cycle that leads to measured flows in Western rivers and streams being consistently lower than predictions based solely on snowpack measurements.

Other recent research suggests drought risks in North America have been widely underestimated by major climate reports, as rising global temperatures bake the moisture out of plants and out of the soil itself. Annual cycles of decreasing winter snow followed by extreme heat are pushing “a global transition to flash droughts under climate change,” a 2023 study concluded.

The continuing budget resolution passed by Congress March 14 reduces NOAA’s operations, research and facilities budget by 11% from the previous year, and according to congressional sources, it stripped away some of Congress’s budgetary oversight privileges. That could enable the Trump administration to zero out budgets for programs and offices within NOAA and use its ocean and climate budgets as a slush fund.