Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

  Most of us know that embracing diversity in human-to-human relationships is vital, and leads to better results in terms of overall justice, fairness, and group achievement. But diversity in many other areas is also important. Such as, diversity in your yard! Today I'm thinking about my neighbor's support of "No Mow May," where the idea is to allow flowers in what used to be your grassy lawn, in order to help important insects and other small animals. Golf course-style lawns are useless monocrops which hurt the planet. If you can't/won't just "not mow" (and I can't do that, due to HOA rules), then why not set your mower deck much higher, which will allow low flowers like clover, chamomile, and dandelions to flourish? And while you're at it, maybe stop wasting money on inorganic fertiizers and pesticides (which are poisonous killers)? Your planet will thank you. We should all be striving for diversity in our yards. Have a happy, diverse day! ...

Let's talk about why none of us really needs a traditional bank. 1. Today, most banks are really screwing their customers by paying near-zero interest on deposits, while the bank earns 5% or so on mortgages and car loans. That is a far greater spread for the bank than was the case historically. In contract, the larger/safer investment funds like Vanguard or Fidelity are paying about 5% on money markets and short-term bond funds. That's where most of our cash kitty needs to be. The pure greed of the big banks is the reason why none of us should be using them. Otherwise, it's like we are masochistic and enjoy being abused. The banks do not treat us like customers--they treat us like resources to be stolen from. 2.  First Republic Bank is down 50% today, as depositors pull out their money: On the one hand, the bank was greedy and got upside down on stupidly-unhedged long-term T-bill purchases--purchases which proved too risky as interest rates rose, and any high school economi...

 How does this relate to the blog's topic of justice and sustainability? Because growing native grapes is much easier on the planet than growing Euopean grapes here, which need frequest sprays that can kill off beneficial insects and soil organisms, and they need tractor fuel, to apply those sprays, which pollutes the air. I've written a book on Modern (hybrid) grapes and why more grapegrowers should be growing them: Modern Grapes for the Pacific Northwest.  I hosted a winetasting that featured Mission wines (see below) and six mostly-award-winning Muscadine wines from a North Carolina winery (made from Noble, Magnolia, and Carlos grapes). My ancestors moved from Scotland to North Carolina and fought the British there in the Rev War, and later they fought the North from Tennessee in the Civil War, and I went to school and met my spouse in Tennessee, and then we lived in Texas, so aside from certain current political issues, I am a South-loving person and I love to ...

  Thesis: Any time you see a mass layoff ( hello, McDonalds HQ !), it means upper management did a horrible job running its business. Senior officials of huge companies have access to the best planning and forecasting tools/consultants/data, and if there is need for a downsizing (which there shouldn't be for McD's, as its earnings are strong now), that can usually be accommodated via natural attrition and slowed-down hiring, with maybe a few targeted terminations for poor performance, but never a mass layoff. And it would be nice to see more companies demonstrate some loyalty to the poeple who work hard to help the company succeed. Shame. It is therefore the most-senior management who should be terminated, because it is they who have failed.

  Mercury in tuna: Got interested in this last week, and did some research (I'm not a trained nutritionist; do your own research). Here is an interesting piece in Consumer Reports, which I summarize here, with some other reading results: ***Eating too much mercury can wreck your nervous system and damage your brain. Some tuna have dangerously high mercury levels. But low-mercury tuna has very healthy fats in it, and should be eaten (unless you're vegetarian). 1. These brands of "Chunk Light" tuna, in water, are all OK (low-enough mercury to be considered safe, and everyone except pregnant women can eat up to 3 cans per week without a mercury concern): Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, and Starkist. These are smaller fish which have less mercury in them. ("Light tuna" is mostly Skipjack tuna, which is best for having low mercury, but "light tuna" may also include yellowfin or Bigeye tuna, which are bad, and this is why individual cans of tuna can var...

Honor to the defenders and supporters of Ukraine. In such a major geopolitical struggle, it's wise to ask: Are we seeing it correctly; is our media presenting it fairly? Kruschev's daughter, who lives in the US and keeps in touch with Russian sentiment, says that Russians don't want the war; they see the body bags coming back but are told not to talk about it; they are imprisoned if they complain about the war, so they have to outwardly support it; but they also see the war as "Putin v Biden"--a political dispute--with both of them at fault. What we see is naked aggression and war crimes committed by a dictator desperate to become a Russian hero leaving a great legacy. That he invented a false narrative to justify his mass killing. That he will fail, if the US and Europe remain committed to Ukraine's defense. An entire city administration in Karkhiv has been moved to a big basement, where mostly middle-aged and older women run everything (as most of the men an...

 The Great Salt Lake is within five years of completely disappearing (cities and farms have been taking almost all the water that used to flow into the lake). This will likely become an ecological disaster, with likelihood of toxic metals blowing (in sandstorms off the lakebed) into the cities, which already have very bad air quality due to terrain-based inversions made worse by human air pollution, and the possible loss of entire species of birds. We must change the way we live, or maybe move tens of millions of people out of the desert areas, if they cannot adapt properly to care for their area. NPR article here .