She referred to a report from the Circular Action Alliance, the state-sanctioned group established to represent and oversee the implementation of the law on behalf of the plastic and packaging industry. It finds the law will increase the cost of disposal between six and 14 times for common products, such as Windex bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate.

“If the producers don’t successfully sue to stop the fees, this will certainly add to product inflation for CA consumers,” she said in an email. “Californians already have to pay exorbitantly high curbside collection fees for trash, recycling, and organics … so, starting in 2027, our groceries will cost a LOT more but we won’t see a reduction in our waste bills.”

Right, I forgot about those Windex Chocolates that I buy every week.

It sure would be nice to see some reporting touch on important aspects that are less obvious, such as where does TetraPak fit in? I think it’s a plasticky cardboard that is currently somehow partially recyclable into shingles, and I believe it’s the only sterile milk container alternative to HDPE currently in common use.

I don’t remember back in the day when stuff like milk and Coke came is glass bottles that were returned in an orderly fashion, washed, sterilized, and reused with new disposable metal or cardboard lids, but I’ve heard that was common. Is there a particular scaling problem with that kind of infrastructure? Did it get outlawed due to falsified safety concerns lobbied by plastics manufacturers, or simply become too expensive next to single use plastics?

I’m not going to be very happy voting for Big Oil Beccera but it seems like the best way to avoid the Republican Runoff.

The solution to this stupid problem is implementing Ranked Choice Voting for statewide offices but that’s a future fight, no good for the present.

It’s increasingly seeming like the old billionaire white guy may be the best choice. What the hell is this timeline?

Of course, the best choice is actually whichever Dem is polling the highest before the election deadline, since a general election with a choice between Bianco and Hilton would be a comic tragedy.

The measure would have prevented owners of 50 or more single-family rental properties from using a tax break, which allows for gains from selling a property used for a trade or business to be deferred if a taxpayer acquires another property of a “like-kind.”

It’s not even about something serious like repealing prop 13 tax assessment increase protection for large corporate landlords. It’s just a measly 1031 exchange hit. Do it right and take away their prop 13.

I’m not sure if I’ve made my peace with it, but my despair was something of a phase. Everything unfolding is too big for me to stop it, so I’m just along for the ride now. I think a lot of people haven’t really seen it coming yet, so there’s going to be a lot of wailing and public gnashing of teeth (and blaming Democrats) in the relatively near future.

But I don’t think the opposite of hope os necessarily despair. The despair is still present if I want to go looking for it, but I compartmentalize it most of the time, and focus on the things I need to do in the near-term. I still have plenty of responsibilities to execute. One foot in front of the other.

Enjoy what you can when you can. Be thankful for what you have.

In hard times, it’s overwhelming to live only in the present.

Incorrect as a general rule. I find the present plenty overwhelming, but it’s precisely because of the overall societal trajectory into the future.

There is some minor to moderate difficulty right now in dealing with high inflation, but that’s not the overwhelming part. What’s overwhelming is the obvious worldwide collective descent into madness and the terrible future in store for billions of people as we blow past old climate goals.

Even if we all somehow manage to rein in the fascism that’s not serving the interests of the majority and is spreading across the world, we’re hurtling towards:

• worsening natural disasters
• collapse of insurance markets
• collapse of mortgage markets
• collapse of food supplies
• dwindling fresh water supplies, both rivers and aquifers
• worldwide refugee crisis from unlivable equatorial regions
• martial law to suppress food riots and refugees
• likely development of autonomous robot soldiers that removes any possible balance for front line morality
• likely accelerating and compounding climate impacts through tipping points
• collapse of the AMOC
• melting permafrost methane release
• sea level rise inundation

That all seems fairly well baked in at this point, but none of it has really come to pass yet. The future bad effects are not yet actually part of the present, but the feelings of overwhelmedness that they induce are very real for anyone paying attention.

Mindfulness in the present is a good escape from the future.

Ok that’s kinda cool but this land sailing thing looks way more awesome than puttering around on the flat in my SUV. Still wouldn’t want to own one though.

Right, I’ll just pull over and get my landyacht out of the back of my truck. OP, is there a rental place for these in Primm?

Current Cox monopoly service area customer here, and I don’t love them, but this sounds like a recipe to make things even worse.

Water supply is dire. The Colorado river is oversubscribed and most of the aquifers are being sucked dry for unsustainable agriculture. For the west coast (California) to break away it needs to take most of the Colorado river watershed with it. That means Utah, Colorado, and Arizona are critical.

Take some Yin Yoga classes. It’s a much slower pace than other yoga (holding poses for 3-5 minutes each), and a proper Yin class also focuses on mindfulness during the activity. The goal is to clear your thoughts and bring your focus only to your body and your breath. Different instructors will approach it differently, of course, and not all studios even offer Yin. Forgive yourself for a wandering mind, just observe it when it happens and then recenter your focus on your breath.

It’s also probably the best stretching you’ll ever do.

Ever since I first saw it, this one has given me a feeling of ye olde Burning Man. I think it does have to do with the human form broken down into blocky robot shapes iterating across the page, but also the fire ring rollercoaster of Sauron in the desert with mountain backdrop. I don’t know, I just like it.

It was also relatively narrow, applying solely to California. The administration is expected to appeal, and the judge placed his injunction on hold for 10 days.

The Justice Department, which defended the Trump administration in the lawsuit, is expected to appeal the decision and could receive more favorable consideration from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The judge also found that the 300 remaining troops on the federalized deployment could stay in Los Angeles, but essentially limited them to guarding federal property.

The flyer I got says it was paid for by “Protect Voters First, sponsored by Hold Politicians Accountable” and that the top funder was Republican Charles T. Munger, Jr. He’s the son of Warren Buffett’s (late) billionaire right-hand man, and he was one of the top donors for the 2008 prop 11 which created the California citizens’ redistricting commission for the state legislative districts. He was also the principal behind 2010 prop 20 which made the commission also be in charge of California’s federal congressional districts.

So he’s understandably mad that Gavin Newsom is trying to override everything to mess with Texas.

“From the moment we submitted our bid, LA28 committed to reimagining what’s possible for the Games,” Wasserman said. “These groundbreaking partnerships with Comcast and Honda, along with additional partners to come, will not only generate critical revenue for LA28 but will introduce a new commercial model to benefit the entire Movement. We’re grateful to the IOC for making this transformation possible.”

Imagine if it was possible not to have embedded advertising crammed up your eyeballs at every turn. This is a tradition that doesn’t need to be “reimagined”. I doubt that much if any of that revenue will go towards the chronic funding gap that exists for most US Olympic athletes.

What terrible framing by MendoFever. Dam removal is great news.

That’s great in the summer when you want to be cooling the air inside your house, but not so great in the winter when you want you want to be heating it. I’m hoping some water heater manufacturer figures this out someday and builds a unit capable of switching air sources for the heat, such that the cold output air could be circulated directly into the living space or ducted in a loop to the outside (or attic).

That’s great to hear. I only have experience with a few finishes, but a little reading tells me your combo is popular for wooden food contact surfaces. What else do you like about it?

It’s oak (Q. agrifolia), pruned from an old tree on private land in a mature forest. It’s a struggle to find branches of an appropriate thickness and length that are generally straight enough, at least when considering only what actually needs pruning. So that one isn’t the best shape for a walking stick, but I had slim pickings and was motivated to find a piece to work with. It’s strong enough to be a serviceable walking stick and hold weight while flexing only slightly.

I like the look of keeping most of the bark on, though I hit all the smaller branch points with the belt sander. I only stripped bark in the area where it’s likely to be held, and sanded only lightly. The apparent striations aren’t perceivable by touch as grooves - they’re filled with inner bark that was incompletely scraped, and the color contrast is accentuated by the finish. I put multiple coats of tung oil over the entire stick, including saturating some moss on the outer bark. It cures to a nice finish, although I’ve never seen any instructions that suggest using it on rough bark.

I might see shrinkage and bark separation from the wood over time, but I’m hopeful it will last several years without substantial deterioration. I think the stick dried for over a year before I finished it.