The ground beneath their feet

 Climate campaigners like Al Gore are trying to head off the Willow development in Alaska, where Conoco-Phillips plans to drill into the tundra of the Arctic coast and extract 180,000 barrels of oil per day.  That is, once they re-freeze the ground to support their equipment.  Alaska is experiencing near-record heat, forcing Iditarod competitors and their poor dogs to trek a thousand miles.  It seems like both these events should have been cancelled, but that would mean accepting reality.

Baseball players have long complained that artificial turf adds to the discomfort of playing in summer heat and increases the chance of injury from sliding or falling, but it could be worse.  Since it contains "forever chemicals" (PFAS) it has now been implicated in the deaths of six Philadelphia Phillies players with the team from 1972 to 2003, from a rare form of brain cancer.  

In a dispute between a divorced man and woman, Fairfax County Judge Richard Gardiner ruled that frozen embryos are "chattels" which can be bought and sold under Virginia law.  That particular law concerned enslaved persons but as long as it's still on the books, why not?  You may think chattel slavery could never return, but Arkansas has a brand-new law that makes it easier to employ children under sixteen without interference by the pesky gubmint.  Everything seems to be on the table.

When I was a pup the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) was popularly known as "Delay, Linger and Wait."  We need a nickname for the Norfolk Southern, which derailed yet another train in Calhoun County, Alabama.  The accident occurred as its CEO was testifying about last month's disaster in Ohio.  "Not Safe" is a little on the nose.  "Nobody Sickened'? 

 US employers added 311,000 jobs in February.  Not to worry, says the New York Times, hourly earnings rose more slowly.  Always look for the lead lining when Democrats do well.  Hey!  Big bank failure!

If you've got a gap on your bookshelf and $99 to spare, Trump's bringing out a book of letters he got from famous people.  I hear the ones from Kim Jong-un are XXX.  Anyway, we know why he stole all that material from the National Archive.

Tennessee again.  They rushed through a bill cutting the membership of the Nashville City Council by half when it refused to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, clearly a case of what Margie Greene would call "municipal communism."  It's like "corporate communism" but comes in a range of colors and styles. 

If your credit card was cloned or skimmed prior to 2017 there's a good chance George Santos was involved, according to his former roomie Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, who has since been convicted of fraud and deported to Brazil.  Shocking.