February 14, 2021 - SYSKA (Stuff You Should Know About)

California Donut Bar, San Diego

OK.  This is a conservation blog, but today is Valentine's Day and for some reason my thoughts turned to love donuts.  So, today you get conservation and donuts.

51 Sites for your empty calorie fix:

"There's one thing that's really great about waking up early," the comedian Kathy Griffin apparently once said, "and it's not jogging or greeting the day – it's just that that's when they make doughnuts."

Today, doughnuts have become a kind of blank canvas for creative bakers, and are likely to be topped or filled with everything from bacon to jalapeños to foie gras. They’re even sometimes repurposed to serve as burger or sandwich buns – like the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joes served at the Virginia State Fair. 

Personally, I would have voted for this "best" list to be population adjusted.  I can think of two equally great donut purveyors within minutes of my house - VGs in Solano Beach and Danny's in Vista.

California has always set the nation's trends:

That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.

Now we Californians can take credit for blowing up real estate markets all across the nation.  Our housing shortage is soon to be yours.  You're welcome.

Trump Doesn't Believe Native American Religions Are Important

In its final days the Trump administration pushed through a controversial land transfer agreement that would give a 2,234 acre parcel of Arizona land to the mining group called Resolution Copper.  The whole process was rigged to insure that the incoming Biden Administration couldn't undo the transfer.  The losers are more than a dozen Native American tribes.  A federal court just ruled that the Apaches have to give up the site.

Called Chi’chil Bildagoteel in Apache, Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its spiritual and cultural significance to at least a dozen south-west Native American tribes. It contains hundreds of Indigenous archaeological sites dating back 1,500 years.

Oak Flat also sits atop one of the largest untapped copper deposits in the world, estimated to be worth more than $1bn. The mining operation will consume 11 sq miles (17 sq km), including Apache burial grounds, sacred sites, petroglyphs and medicinal plants.

“The immediate burden is total desecration of our religion,” said Wendsler Nosie in response to Logan’s decision. Nosie is a member of the San Carlos Apache tribe and leader of Apache Stronghold. He has been camping at Oak Flat for more than a year in protest against the mine. “After March 11, Chi’chil Bildagoteel will become private property and I will be subject to illegal trespassing for praying on my sacred homeland.”

Climate Change, Bats and the Pandemic(s)

"We estimate that, over the past century, climate change caused a significant increase in the number of bat species in the location where SARS-CoV-2 likely originated," study lead author and University of Cambridge researcher Dr. Robert Beyer told CBS News. "This increase suggests a possible mechanism for how climate change could have played a role in the origin of the pandemic."

Scientists think that the bat-borne viruses behind both SARS and COVID-19 emerged in China's southern Yunnan province as well as parts of countries immediately to the south. The researchers discovered that vegetation changes in this area over the last 100 years had led to the introduction of 40 new bat species and, with them, 100 new types of bat-borne coronaviruses, a University of Cambridge press release explained.

 

Will Wyoming Face the Future?

In Wyoming, a top fossil fuel energy producing state — much of which is done on federal lands — the executive order was met by fierce opposition from Wyoming leadership. All three members of Wyoming’s federal delegation have publicly condemned the executive orders and indicated that they will fight as hard as possible to push back through newly introduced legislation. Much is on the line — the jobs that support entire communities and most of the state’s tax revenues. As a laid-off Gillette coal worker stated to Reveal News in 2017: “This community is all rooted in coal, all the way down to the fast food. Everybody relies on the miners.”

However, there is also a growing number in Wyoming who recognize that the energy transition has arrived permanently, and that the best course forward is to plot out a new future. Louise Carter-King, the mayor of Gillette — Wyoming’s coal-producing epicenter — acknowledged as much and stated her desire to work with President Biden to help bring jobs to the community saying: “for one thing, he did say during his campaign ‘I will work with the blue states and the red states.’ Well, we are one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states in the nation. We are ready to talk.”