The transcripts are out …

… from Trump's conversations with Piña-Nieto of Mexico and Turnbull of Australia shortly after taking office. They discussed building the border wall* and taking refugees from Australia as per an agreement Obama had made with Turnbull.

They're about as bad as I expected soooo, there you go, Donald, you "meet expectations".

He's shallow, ignorant, thinks he's "the greatest person in the world" and is fanatically concerned with his image. He's very worried about looking weak, stupid, like a dope. I suspect that he's had a lifetime of enablers to cover up for his idiocy and he expects the same from everyone. We all thought it was an act. Ehhhh, not so much.

It's the rest of Americans who look like dopes for letting you represent us to the world.

Piña-Nieto and Turnbull must be laughing their asses off right about now.

* A wall can keep people out or keep people in. This fact is lost on many Trump supporters who don't seem to realize that they might have reason to want to flee the country someday and might not be able to get around it.

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Cool.

I have no idea what components they're mapping here because I haven't read the paper yet but it looks like our ancestors really were unique. Looks like we have a giant occipital lobe. Sight maybe?

Stride: Deja vu

Stroll: American Devolution

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Nothing about the Trump era is normal. But unlike Ezra Klein of Vox in his latest podcast interview with Harvard lecturer Yasha Mounk, the tribalism, extreme partisanship, carelessness and ruthlessness of the modern Republican Party doesn't surprise me at all. It has been fed the most outrageous demagoguery for a couple of decades now, if not longer. Newt Gingrich, who has been around for a long time, and unlike a lot of men, has not gotten more distinguished looking over time, wrote the pamphlet on how to use language as a weapon against you opponent. Check out Language: a key mechanism of control that he wrote for GOPAC back in the 90s if you want to see how it started.

What is surprising, as they discuss, is our passive acceptance of it. We may never be able to vote this mob out of office.

Also worth a listen, 538's podcast episode on the White House in Chaos for the data analysts' take on this week's news.

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The Climate Scientists at The Conversation discuss the physics of aerodynamics in hot weather. It includes pictures. 😉 Hot air is less dense. No surprise there. Unfortunately, that means less lift. Check it out, it's probably something many of us haven't thought about.

But should.