Extreme heat

These little birds are in the bird bath after I put ice in it. 

“ D.C. hits record 104 amid most intense heat stretch since Dust Bowl”

I asked a woman about her son’s voting intentions. He turned 18. He will vote. His friends will vote. Environment, social issues, and white supremacy are his issues. 

One of the US presidential candidates selected his running mate, the man who would be his Vice President, the man who would become president if something were to happen to him. The man he picked opposes all military support for Ukraine. He said we can’t respond to every tragedy in the world, but he’s also said the thing we need to prevent more than anything is China invading Taiwan. I guess this isn’t good news technically, but in a twisted way it might be, because the new VP has said inflammatory things against Trump that can now be used in ads for the next three months non-stop. These include calling him a “moral disaster” and “America’s Hitler.” 

The Baltic countries have told Russia and Belarus that they will exit a 2001 agreement that has connected them to an electricity transmission system controlled by Moscow. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania already stopped buying electricity from Russia after the re-invasion. Still, they are physically connected to a grid in which the electricity frequency is controlled by Moscow. The Baltic countries plan to synchronize with the continental European system on Feb. 9, 2025. They were already going to do this but the process was sped up because of the invasion. 


Ukraine has received the first 50,000 rounds of heavy ammunition as part of a Czech-led initiative. The Czech Republic initiated and coordinated an international effort to garner hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds for Ukraine. Defense Minister Jana Cernochova said a total of 500,000 heavy ammunition rounds will be shipped.