It's been pretty clear for a while nowhere in this country is properly prepared for any type of major disaster. Obviously having a sane president and functioning federal government would have helped a lot during covid, but our healthcare system was a complete shitshow before that. And our infrastructure has been falling apart for decades. And good luck getting the people who cried about having to wear a mask to do anything reasonable or selfless during a natural disaster, especially when Trump goes on Tucker Carlson and tells them earthquakes and tsunamis are a liberal hoax.

If that were a viable option I absolutely would

good clouds today anyway

Maybe Bill Gates could make insulin and Gavin Newsome could rule South Dakota.

at least we have that in our favor, comrade sloggers!

Newsom/Pritzker 2024!
it’s time to let the kids take over.

I'm an old guy and my belief is that the phrase "them's da breaks" predates Kurtis Blow by several decades at least. I think it refers to the inherent randomness of "breaking" (taking the first shot that breaks up the racked balls) in pool or billiards.

holy shit former Japanese Prime Minister Abe was just shot.

@2:

Go count more bullet-riddled dead bodies you worthless fuck.

Yes there were LOTS of Blue Jays fan at the Mariners game tonight. And the Canadian fans were unfailingly polite.
Most of them I talked to recognize he screwed up our country is right now.

@1 Brent Gumbo: If the RepubliKKKans don't do us in, Nature certainly will. She's rightfully pissed and deserves to be. Human-made climate change is REAL, deniers! Environmental activist Greta Thunberg warned us.
I can see it now: All life on Earth is destroyed simultaneously by multiple natural disasters: a record cold snap of snow and ice covers Europe and the Middle East extending through Russia across the Bering Strait into Alaska, while bringing Vladimir Putin's senseless war on the Ukraine to an end also brings world trade to a screeching halt; a Category 4 typhoon desecrates Asia; the entire African continent becomes one big Sahara Desert; India, Australia, New Zealand, Island Nations, Hawaii, the Caribbean, South America, and Antarctica all sink into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Southern Ocean and Drake Passage from all the polar ice melt; a 9.5 earthquake and consequential tsunami wipe out the entire West Coast; an epic Stephen King-esque Perfect Storm, combined with a particularly wicked Nor'easter does in the East Coast, Northeastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and finally, a record heat wave, generated largely from the Orange Turd's filthy, putrid farts after porking down his last lethal Big Mac ignites and effectively char-blackens the Midwestern Corn-and-Bible Belt, Ozarks, Appalachia, and deep Southern-fried Red States of Confusion into a hollowed out shell where the last words are: "Wait.............WHAT?!!!? B-b-but----"

I wonder how many in the UK are glad to see Boris Johnson go. Bo-Jo was born in New York City, NY, USA. He's a Yankee fer christsakes! How on Earth did he manage to ever become Prime Minister of the UK? Did he steal the election like George W. Bush-Dickhead Cheney in 2000 and Orange Turd-Mike "Lord of the Flies" Pence did in 2016 here in the Deeply Divided Neofascist Police States?

@7 fluxum: Provided we MAKE it to 2024.

@11 pat L: I'm glad you and visiting Toronto Blue Jays fans enjoyed a good Mariners game. Canadians are indeed quite courteous by nature. It sounds like there was a good turnout.

Seattle and Vancouver both are in trouble in a 7.5 earthquake. I’ve only experienced one that large once, and you are so panicked while it’s happening you might not even think tsunami as a consequence as one might if something that powerful happened, say, on the Washington coast where your first instinct would be to get to higher ground fast. My fear in Seattle would be my multi-floor building “pancaking” on top of me.

Boeing in Seattle is such a sad tale with probably an unhappy ending. It used to be a source of pride (about a hundred years ago). A Boeing employee used to have a certain prestige, but Boeing hasn’t treated its employees very well since maybe the 60s after which the brass there started resenting offering attractive benefits to their people. Boeing reminds me of a super lousy baseball team who insists on a new billion dollar stadium or they are leaving town. The rest of us are torn – who cares on the one hand, and gee, it sure is going to be a drag not having any baseball games to go to on the other. And after the 737 Max disasters/fiasco, I don’t think they’ll ever get their reputation back.

Doesn’t matter how much you make if you still can’t afford housing.

Charles, you and I are on the same page about Vancouver. I fell so effervescent there – like my blood is half Koala Springs Kiwi, Lime, and Grapefruit only without the benzene and about a quarter of the sugar. So pretty and so much fun. I would go there often to take a break from America, but now the USA is starting to rub off on Canada. Random senseless shootings and gang violence is not uncommon these days. Makes me kind of sad. After all, we Americans are used to it, but Canadians are still struggling with the heartlessness.

Glad train service is resuming, but why is it taking it so long? In the fall? Is this a track issue or a pandemic issue or both? Yeah, I’m glad Quick Shuttle exists, but getting across the border on it can turn a three-hour trip into half a day – seriously, five or six hours is not unheard of.

I though the Dakatos were in desperate need of talent. No one is willing to just move there. It has to come with a chauffeur and a penthouse. The only way to get me to North Dakota is through deep and heavy hypnosis. You’d have to tell me that those huge snow drifts are really sand dunes and that Devil’s Lake is the Mediterranean. And you know what else? Fuck North and South Dakota. The family farm died about 30 years ago. Now, it’s ConAgra, ADM, and Cargill. And why are there two states? Why do they get four senators with a population of about 1.5 million? And Kristi Noem is not only mean. She's certifiable. But I know how to punish her thoroughly. Take away her Maybelline.

Good riddance to Boris. I don’t expect or want my politicians to be perfect human beings, but I don’t want them having multiple character flaws either. Sad for the UK though. They are in for a rough time. The pound is down to $1.19 USD. Recession with inflation is not a happy place – and everything is so expensive there. I wish them well. And as a pretty devout Anglophile, I say get well soon.

“So much for gun control” in a nation with a population of more than 127 million people and a gun homicide rate of 0.02 per 100,000 people.

US gun homicide rate: 6.1 per 100,000

For some perspective, which our resident mentally deranged gun trolling dipshit sock puppet is incapable, there were a total of 3 gun related deaths in 2019 in all of Japan.

Yes. So much for gun control. You fucking twisted moron.

And probably just a few SPD will still be around when the big one hits.

You guys are really going to love it when all the active volcanoes you think are mountains around here go. Trigger events like 7.5 rips frequently make them go.

It's not the hot lava, it's the scurf (hot boiling mud filled with molten and non-molten rocks) and the debris (hot rocks the size of golf balls or larger falling at speed as they are ejected).

Think Vesuvius. Which is also still an active volcano.

Mount Rainier entered it's peak eruption period back in around 2004. Just because it hasn't gone doesn't mean it won't go - in fact, it means a higher chance it will go. Pressure builds.

@14 Bauhaus I: My guess concerning the hesitancy of reopening international Amtrak service north of Seattle to and from Vancouver, B.C. in September 2022 or any time soon might have to do with Warren Buffet, the gluttonous fossil fuel industry profiteering owner of the Burlington Northern-Sante Fe Railroad.
Why transport human passengers by rail and get people off traffic choked I-5 when he can rake in senseless billions instead, threatening all life along the Puget Sound region with rolling uncovered, environmentally hazardous coal cars and dangerous oil bomb trains no-one else of sound mind wants? We would never recover from a the equivalent of a July 6, 2013 Lac Megantic, Alberta, Canada-sized derailment. Buffet knows this but like so many of his greedy fellow billionaire ilk couldn't care less. If Nature doesn't wipe us out, RepubliKKKans certainly will.

Agreed, too, about Boris Johnson's welcome departure. I feel sorry for citizens of the UK, though, who now have to deal with their terrible economic situation, largely from Johnson's bumbling and scandalous efforts at being Prime Minister.

@19 Will in Seattle: I'm still amazed over the power of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. We were lucky that even with millions of dollars in damage up and down the I-5 corridor, and volcanic ash spewing eastbound and encircling the globe it wasn't worse back then. A 7.5 earthquake and tsunami through the greater Puget Sound region any time soon would make that look like child's play. We're about 320 years overdue for a major natural disaster.

@14 Bauhaus I: That is my biggest fear in a 7.5 earthquake--getting pancaked in the apartment building where I live. I'm the ground floor of a five floor building over 100 years old. If volcanically active Mount Baker blows my beloved and I are toast.