Mushroom Clusters

Hello Friends,

Back in 2005 and since I've often looked for interesting mushroom shots, and El Dorado Park in Long Beach, California has been a good source for them. On Wednesday after playing old man softball there these presented themselves to me while I was walking my dog Whiskey. I didn't have my 3D cameras with me, but cellphone shots work just fine, just shoot, slide over a little and shoot. I auto-aligned the images in StereoPhoto Maker and converted them to phantograms in Photoshop.

Welcome to the new era of strong anti-(Trump and Maga) majorities. About time, huh? I'd love to paint a rosy picture of what'll happen next, but it won't be easy dealing with the extensive wreckage Trump and his people have done to our society. Trump will still have his office for 2+ years, and having cut taxes for the wealthy, dumped huge amounts into bully-boy immigration enforcement and the military, cut spending in food and healthcare aid, and effectively skyrocketed the federal deficit, it's going to be hard to find the money to fix the myriad of problems he's created.

I could go on and on about sweet deals passed on to his sons, and Trump having bought stock in companies that his actions brought up (i.e. $5M in Nvidia stock before revoking rules that limited Nvidia's ability to sell chips to China), but clearly rules and common decency that apply to every government employee and all past presidents don't apply to him, and won't be met with any resistance from republicans in congress.

At least there'll be tons and tons of stuff for the next congress to investigate, so we can look forward to that. I'd finished writing this yesterday afternoon, but reality intervened.

Yesterday around 4pm eastern time the FAA's communication system controlling all our flights collapsed, causing the first "ground stop order" since 911. Approximately 4-1/2 hours later our Homeland Security Secretary Mullins and Transportation Secretary Duffy did a press conference about the event, as 1.5 million travelers across the country waited to learn what would happen. Mullins and Duffy offered it (probably) wasn't caused by hacking, but instead because older technology became overwhelmed with data after new technology was introduced. Three days ago a new air traffic management tool, known as Smart (which employs AI) was activated at all 22 air route traffic control centers in the US.

Mullins and Duffy appeared much like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, demanding that congress needs to give them 50 billion dollars to replace the outdated system. Repeatedly claiming Trump to be "a builder" and "the greatest president of all time", Mullins strangely commenting "This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like." Trump himself stayed oddly silent about the crisis.

Wishing for better,

Barry Rothstein

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