It seems Seattle Weather Blog's reasoning power has entered the funhouse of a delirium. We can blame this recent development on the alternation of cloudy and autumn-cool weekends and very hot and cloudless weekdays. That sort of vacillation can break even the strongest of minds. And so we find Seattle Weather Blog tweeting this about today, which is dry, practically windless, and in the mid-80s: "Tuesday spectacular!" But just yesterday, when the weather was almost fine, but not as fine as it was over the weekend, Seattle Weather Blog expressed nothing but exasperation at this long-roasting summer:

Seattle Weather Blog also has on its profile the image of a winter scene: a snow covered Gas Works Park. Can someone check on SWB to see how they are doing? We need to look out for each other in these trying (mind-frying) times. 

"Green deterrents" are now popping in Ballard. In that leafy neighborhood with Scandinavian roots, residents "are taking back their street" by "using heavy planters to keep RVs and campers" away for good. Maybe SDOT will eventually replace them with protected bike lanes. "This is how we do it" in progressive cities. Ours is a hatred for the poor that's consistent with our enlightened values.

Vulcan has still nothing to say about "the future of the Cinerama." Will it ever open again? Is it closed forever? It has been "closed since before the start of the pandemic." Like thousands of people in this city, Marc Stiles of the Puget Sound Business Journal wanted some answers to these pressing questions. The Cinerama is an important cultural institution. Give us some hope. Please. Anything. "[N]o news to share at this time," said a spokesperson for Vulcan Inc.. Marc Stiles: "It was the second time in nine months that Vulcan said there was no news to share..."

A reminder that some forms of inflation generate positive press. And some forms of deflation generate negative press. The Seattle Times: "Seattle-area home prices log first monthly decline since 2019," and "Home-price growth in the U.S. decelerated in June as the sales slowdown gripped the market," and "the U.S. Goldman Sachs economists said Tuesday in a note that price growth will likely slow sharply over the coming quarters." Why are rising gas prices as bad as cooling housing markets?

Know that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is raising rates not to cool inflation (the hated kind), which as all post-Keynesians know is a matter of distribution rather than lots of money chasing a small amount of goods, but to cool the labor market, the strong growth of which naturally transfers power from the employer to the worker. This point was understood by the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, who wrote this in 1943:

The maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. The ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow…. ‘Discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more appreciated than profits by business leaders.

CNN today:

The Fed is firmly resolved to bring down inflation and to 'keep at it until the job is done,' Powell said. But that plan — which involves a series of hefty interest rate hikes — will bring 'some pain to households and businesses,' he acknowledged.

The question you must ask is how much pain is the man talking about? He must mean a hell of a lot because,  as the New York Times reported today, the labor market "remains hot" because "employers are still eager to hire." And this is happening as "the Fed [is] raising interest rates" for the benefit of the masters of the universe. In July, job openings in the US rose to 11.2 million from 11 million in June. Biden might have to pull a Trump on Powell. 

The long-predicted racial and class character of climate change is already asserting itself. The rich countries refuse to make the needed changes to slow the liberation of carbon. And poor and developing ones can do nothing but enter the catastrophe that will, at this pace, end in our extinction. 

Edie Brickell famously proposed that religion is the smile on a dog. But what is philosophy? Certainly not "the talk on a cereal box." Please give the old art of constructing concepts more credit than that. What it is instead is this dog at the point where the sea meets the land. Philosophy is always in the frothy zone where the unknown (and maybe unknowable) rises up to the known and leaves clues of other ontological and epistemological possibilities as it recedes. In the case of Michel Foucault, it may even erase "the face drawn in sand." The waves, the beach, the clouds in the distance. "What I am is [not] what I am." This dog is clearly philosophizing. 

Goodnight, Михаил Горбачев. The 1980s were something else. You certainly helped (or were forced to) bring the 20th century to an end. 

What am I doing tonight? Well, I plan to sing "Wandering Star" by Portishead during karaoke at Lottie's Lounge.