As Hope Evaporates

As we drove through th East Bay hills on the way to my appointment at a clinic in Orinda, we passed houses with multi-million-dollar views; those views now consist only of white smoke. Off in the distance to the west, you see nothing.

I was on my way to get a Covid test prior to my second eye operation next Tuesday; you have to be Covid-free to get the operation.

Since I am at the halfway point in this two-operation process, I've developed a theory -- that my "new" eyes need to get used to each other. Until then, I close first one, then the other, in an attempt to see. It doesn't help that the world has turned bright white.

Be that as it may, my daughter and I are stunned at how many others are out and about. The traffic is pretty heavy. Ours, obviously, is a voyage of necessity -- the Orinda urgent care clinic is the closest one that could administer my test.

But is everyone else on a similar mission? That seems doubtful.

As I enter the treatment area of the clinic, everyone masked and gloved and swathed in disposable clothing, including paper shoes, my daughter sits in the waiting room.

A man with three small children arrives. One of his kids has symptoms and their pediatrician says he needs a Covid test. They send him around to the other entrance to the clinic -- the children's entrance.

Heading home again, wearing my wraparound sunglasses against the searing white glare, I ponder how we got in this condition For a half century I have lived the California Dream, my version of it. A boy from small Midwestern towns, child of immigrants, with no expectation of anything but plenty of curiosity, experienced a world of creativity, art, achievement and encounters with fellow travelers in a place that seemed like paradise.

Now it seems more like hell.

No matter how evocative our descriptions of what our state has become, and every writer is trying, you have to actually be here to comprehend it, I fear. And I do not recommend you come. In a year when we used to think that the novel coronavirus was the story, or the cataclysmic confrontation of two political visions, it is climate change that is in fact what 2020 is all about.

As our dreams go up in smoke, so do those of America.

***

*  As dangers rise, many fear their California Dream is fading -- The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this. (Houston Chronicle)

* Biden makes plans to combat pandemic if he wins -- The Democratic presidential nominee has created a war cabinet-in-waiting on the coronavirus, with public health experts from the Obama, Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations devising plans for a coordinated and muscular federal response. (WashPo)

* The fires raging out West are unprecedented. They're also a mere preview of what climate change has in store -- Entire towns have been burned to the ground.Thousands have been forced to flee their homes.And apocalyptic scenes played out in San Francisco, as the city was blanketed in smoke so thick it blocked out the sun. The scale of the fires burning in the Western US right now are unprecedented. (CNN)

* President Trump has leveled scathing law-and-order attacks on Biden for weeks. But a new poll shows Mr. Biden ahead in three states Mr. Trump hopes to pick up, and maintaining a lead in Wisconsin. (NYT)

* Trump isn’t talking about the wildfires -- The president’s relative silence on the West’s wildfire crisis matches up with his relative silence on three other issues: the struggles of Democratic-led states, climate change and crises that require empathy. (WashPo)

* Worldwide, the population facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity is expected to double, to more than a quarter of a billion people. (NYT)

* California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen -- Plumes have reached 55,000 feet in height with embedded thunderstorms, lightning and tornadoes. WashPo)

* Hospitals prepare for ‘nightmare’ scenario of flu and coronavirus striking at same time (WashPo)

* San Francisco may soon lower the voting age to 16. (ABC)

* ‘Transsexual Satanist anarchist’ whose slogan is ‘f*** the police’ wins GOP nomination for New Hampshire county sheriff (U.S. Sun)

* Las Vegas is a ghost town where even the strippers put up signs­ saying, 'Sorry, we're clothed' (The Mail Online)

* Conspiracy theory QAnon spreads across globe, shadowing COVID-19 (The Hill) "They like me," says Trump.

* Mexican water wars: Dam seized, troops deployed, at least 1 killed in protests about sharing with US (HM Media)

***

And are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell

With no kinda chance for the flag or the liberty bell?
Wish a Ford and a Chevy
Would still last ten years like they should
Is the best of the free life behind us now

And are the good times really over for good -- Merle Haggard

 major American cit

y may soon allow 16-year-olds to vote — and others could follow suit

If the proposition passes, San Francisco would become the first large city to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in l

A major American city may soon allow 16-year-olds to vote — and others could follow suit

If the proposition passes, San Francisco would become the first large city to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in local elections.

Ecology's Revenge

 

Thursday's white-out yielded to a Friday with dry milky air, a suffocating haze. As people in the West stumble about, trying to grasp what appears to be our new reality, a kind of collective insanity is beginning to settle in.

Is this all really happening?

Virtually no one anticipated a pandemic save for the doomsayers. You could be forgiven now for saying they were right.

Until the Trump administration, almost no one predicted a presidency based on destroying our most precious freedoms, save the most paranoid of leftists. You could be forgiven for now saying they were right.

A substantial number of environmentalists predicted drastic climate change including devastating forest fires if we didn't heed the science and adjust our ways. We will never be forgiven for not listening to them.

The desperate reality of climate change became apparent to those paying attention to the science as early as 1974. Certain ecologists and science fiction authors had foreseen it earlier than that -- I'd read about it in books from the 50s. But all of the evidence was rejected by apologists for the fossil fuel industry and others with a stake in its destructive trajectory.

Some progress has been made in the intervening four-and-a-half decades to develop alternative, sustainable energy industries, but the entrenched special interests have fought it every inch of the way. Now it is too late to avoid some of the horrors that might have been prevented had we listened to the scientists who predicted this fate.

Now the only option remaining is mitigation and adaptation, and even those may prove inadequate to save the vitality of the planet for our grandchildren's generation.

I've never felt pessimistic about Covid-19. A treatment and a vaccine will ultimately be found, I'm sure.

I've never felt pessimistic about political change. Voters will do the right thing this November, I'm sure.

But I am not optimistic about our ability to avoid climate change. We waited too long, did too little, and held on to our self-destructive lifestyles too greedily.

The future has arrived. It is staring at us from a blood-red sky.

***

Perhaps there is solace in today's news? Good luck with that one. Although I do end this summary with a wonderful item about book-buying in Britain.

* I’ve Never Seen the American West in Such Deep Distress By Timothy Egan -- We’re choking on smoke and staring out at Martian-red skies in a world becoming uninhabitable. (NYT)

* GOP worries rise as Trump campaign pulls back from TV ads to save money (WashPo)

* If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians fleeing wildfires and smothered in a blanket of smoke, the worst year of fires on record. (NYT)

* There’s evidence that President Trump’s frequent warnings about mail voting are persuading members of his party to avoid it. But that could make it more difficult for those voters to cast ballots. (WashPo)

* Trump is destroying the Republican Party. Why won’t any of his peers speak up? (WashPo)

* By Thursday evening, the number of Oregon residents evacuated statewide because of fires had climbed to an estimated 10% of the state’s 4.2 million population. (AP)

((NYT* Court blocks Trump’s order to exclude undocumented immigrants from census count (WashPo* A Line of Fire South of Portland and a Yearslong Recovery Ahead (NYT)* Bob Woodward reports that Americans probably didn’t realize how close the country was to a war in 2017, courtesy of President Donald Trump’s Twitter behavior and missile testing. (HuffPost)

* In one of the nation’s sharpest clashes over school reopening, officials in Des Moines say Iowa’s Republican governor is pushing them to risk public safety.(NYT)

* Democrats build big edge in early voting -- Far more Democrats than Republicans are requesting mail ballots in key battleground states, including voters who didn't participate in 2016.(Politico)

* Trump keeps bragging about imaginary auto plants in swing states (Houston Chronicle)

* Biden is favored to win the election -- "We simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often. The sample of 100 outcomes below gives you a good idea of the range of scenarios our model thinks is possible.  Biden 75%, Trump 25%." (538)

* Booksellers up and down the UK are reporting a boom in sales since readers returned to bookshops after the lockdown, with the first avalanche of Christmas titles giving them their best first week of September since records began. (The Guardian)

***

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
And can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

--Barry McGuire

-30-

Beating Hearts

Orange Wednesday yielded to White Thursday, as smoky air filled the region. If anything, visibility was somewhat worse, though it was much lighter and felt less like the end of time.

Journalism during this pandemic is more important than ever, yet very difficult to do well. That's because journalists, like the rest of us, are stuck at home and cannot interview people in person, attend meetings or go to the scene of the crime.

When they are able to go out on a story, they are taught to use all of their senses to describe to us what they encounter. They are often called our "eyes and ears" but they also bring back the smells, tastes and touch sensations relevant to each story.

During this wildfire outbreak, unprecedented in recorded history, it is especially critical that we understand just how hot it feels to be affected by one of these blazes, how they smell and what the roar of burning vegetation sounds like. The photos are critical components of coverage, but sometimes it is the ability to summon an emotional moment that really brings the piece home.

This struck me earlier in the week when I was listening to NPR's Steve Inskeep interview a volunteer fire marshall in a small town in California, where many structures were destroyed, including a vacation cabin that had been in an elderly woman's family for generations.

The fire official had to inform her that her homes lost. She cried and spoke of gathering pine combs in the surrounding woods when she was a little girl. 

When we are young we are too busy making memories to know we are doing that.

When we are old, we treasure those moments when we were far more care-free. Then, time seemed long, stretching into an unknowable future.

Now, time feels short but memory seems long.

I don't know Steven Inskeep, though we overlapped in our public media careers. But he (and his producer) did more to help me understand the tragedy of wildfire by including that one elderly woman's story than all of the statistics, photographs, and official statements combined.

It's the stories from the heart that touch us as long as ours' keep beating.

***

* Benjamin Ginsburg, a veteran election law attorney and longtime fixture of the GOP’s legal team, has written a searing op-ed blasting Trump for his harmful rhetoric about electoral fraud. Jones Day, the firm where Ginsburg was employed until he retired last month, works for Trump’s 2020 campaign. That makes the attorney’s Washington Post op-edall the more striking, since it tore into the president and Republicans for baselessly sowing doubt about the integrity of the U.S. election system. [HuffPost]

* You can get a robot to keep your lonely grandparents company. Should you? (Vox)

* Experts say that climate change is driving the severity of the fires — how big they get, how quickly they spread, and how difficult it is to fight them as they bear down on communities. (NYT)

* The orange skies around San Francisco and in much of Oregon and Washington are the result of ash and smoke from fires, rising high and spread widely by strong winds. The smoke particles tend to scatter blue light from the sun, while allowing yellow-orange-red light to reach the surface, causing skies to look orange. (NYT)

* Despite cries for athletes to “stick to sports,” particularly from conservative pundits and politicians, a 62 percent majority of Americans say that professional athletes should use their platforms to express their views on national issues. (WashPo)

* Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain announced new coronavirus restrictions, banning gatherings larger than six people, referring to it as the “Rule of Six.” (NYT)

* The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday that it is sanctioning a Ukrainian lawmaker with ties to President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of being a Russian spy involved in Moscow's interference efforts in the 2020 election. to weaken Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. (CNN)

* Trump heads to Michigan; Biden seizes on virus revelations -- President Trump planned to hold a rally in a key battleground state in the Rust Belt, a day after Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, delivered a scathing rebuke of his economic stewardship from a union hall there. (WashPo)

***

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another." - - Studs Terkel

Day Without Light

 

All over the Bay Area and beyond, we woke up Wednesday morning to the strangest sky I have ever seen, even during hurricanes and tornadoes.

It was shockingly, uniformly, suffocatingly pale dull orange, coating everything like a giant blanket stretching north to south, east to west. From under that blanket, we peered out, blinked, and huddled together like dinosaurs after a meteor strike.

The air quality index was a tad better than on some recent mornings, so there was not so much of a smoky smell, according to my granddaughters. But outside everything was coated with ash.

Over Twitter, novelist Amy Tan captured the scene by video from her place in Marin. My granddaughters checked the baby quail, Puffball. It seemed fine, surviving best as it can in its post-apocalypse universe out back.

There was no sunrise. The dawn yielded to night. We proceeded as if it were day, but gingerly.  I don't wish to sound cynical but I did speak out loud to myself: 

"Great. Just as I get my eyesight back, there is nothing left to see."

For one day at least, the world disappeared.

***

Alas, the news did not disappear, just coated the world with ash.

* Gov. Newsom said that 7,606 fires have burned 2.3 million acres in California this year. That’s a record in modern history. This time last year, just 118,000 acres had burned in 4,027 fires. (NYT)

* Sturgis Motorcycle Rally could account for 266,000 coronavirus cases, study says (WashPo) * 20 Years Later, ‘Almost Famous’ Is The Best Kind Of Feel-Good Movie -- Cameron Crowe’s ode to ‘70s rock, starring Patrick Fugit and Kate Hudson, remains as smart as it is sentimental. (HuffPost) I love this movie. (DW) * Gov. Cuomo: Trump is actively trying to kill New York City (CNN) * More than half of households in 4 largest U.S. cities struggled financially during pandemic, poll shows (The Week) * Amazon currently has 33,000 job openings for corporate and tech roles and says it will share "thousands of additional hourly roles in Amazon's Operations network" soon. All of the new employees for these roles will be paid at least minimum wage at $15 per hour with up to 20 weeks of parental leave. The employees who fill the corporate and tech roles will receive an average pay of $150,000, including salary, stock-based compensation and benefits, an Amazon spokesperson said.  (CNN)  *** Night and day, you are the one Only you beneath the moon and under the sun Whether near me or far It's no matter, darling, where you are I think of you night and day, day and night -- Cole Porter -30-

PenPals

Do today's kids know what a Pen Pal is? When I was young, it was intriguing that you might find someone on the other side of the world, or at least the other side of the country, to exchange letters with.

Ah, written letters. What a quaint concept!

Maybe today Facebook Messenger fills that function. Or the Comments section. 

Every day that I publish, I hear back from people, through those two channels or a variety of others. To me, it feels like we're exchanging bits of our lives as we go about the business of living separately.

Every now and again we discover that we are living parallel experiences, that we have a new thought or feeling in common.

If I am right, my role is that of  a convenor -- the one who gets the conversation going. That suits me; it's consistent with my training and experience as a journalist.

Anyway, everyone could use a pen pal. Even dictators. Clearly, President Trump is always at his happiest when he's gotten another love letter from Kimmy Jong-Un or Vlady Putin.

***

 In my other role as aggregator, here it goes:

* Right-wing activists gather near Portland for pro-Trump ‘cruise rally’ -- More than 1,000 supporters of President Trump, including some aligned with white nationalist extremist groups, gathered in a show of force against left-wing protesters. (WashPo)

* At the traditional, post-Labor Day start of the fall campaign, we are zeroing in on eight critical battlegrounds where the 2020 election will be won or lost: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Politico)

* The Electoral College Will Destroy America -- And no, New York and California would not dominate a popular vote. (NYT)

* Most Americans won’t be allowed to get a vaccine immediately -- The most likely scenario is that the FDA would grant initial approval to vaccinate front-line health workers, those older than 65 and those with underlying medical conditions, two industry experts say. (WashPo)

* Early this year, Michigan advanced a bipartisan measure to let election officials take absentee ballots out of their mailing envelopes — but not to unseal the ballots or count them — the day before Election Day. It was the kind of small, bureaucratic switch that could make the difference between timely results in this fall’s presidential election and chaos. Then, Trump made it clear that he preferred chaos. “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” he tweeted in May. Since then, the bill has barely budged. [HuffPost]

* Manhattan’s Office Buildings Are Empty. But for How Long? -- As they grow accustomed to working from home, many businesses are delaying signing new leases until rents drop and the pandemic passes. (NYT)

* White supremacy is 'most lethal threat' to the US, DHS draft assessment says (CNN)

* Wildfires have burned a record 2 million acres in California this year, and the danger for more destruction is so high the U.S. Forest Service on Monday said it was closing all eight national forests in the southern half of the state. Two of the three largest fires in state history are burning in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than 14,000 firefighters are battling those fires and dozens of others. A three-day heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures to much of the state during Labor Day weekend. But right behind it was a weather system with dry winds that could fan fires. One major blaze was ignited during a gender reveal party Saturday, and iconic landmarks are looking apocalyptic as fires approach.(AP)

* On Monday, rounding out a Labor Day weekend of record-breaking heat and stress on the state’s already strained power grid, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, San Bernardino and San Diego Counties due to fires driven by climate change, (NYT).

* The Valley Fire in San Diego County continued to chew through rugged terrain on Monday afternoon, making it difficult for firefighters to work. [The San Diego Union-Tribune] * Evacuations prompted by the El Dorado Fire have spread into Riverside County. [The Riverside Press-Enterprise] * The recent Dome Fire left behind mass Joshua tree carnage. It’s a dark signal about the plant’s odds of survival in a climate-change-ravaged future. [The Desert Sun] * Amid West Coast wildfire outbreak, Calif. winds raise threat further -- Blazes have destroyed a Washington town and closed national forests, with red-flag warnings extending from the Canada border to San Diego. (WashPo) * ‘You Couldn’t See Anything’: Harrowing Helicopter Rescues as California Wildfires Rage (NYT)

***

You gotta go where you want to go
Do what you want to do
With whoever you want to do it with

You don't understand
That a girl like me can love just one man
Three thousand miles, that's how far you'll go
And you said to me please don't follow

-- Mamas and Papas

Together Beyond the Bend

When a Facebook friend passes away, our grief is somehow more nuanced when their page lives on. So it was when Gail Sheehy recently passed away. She influenced me as she influenced so many others, with her book "Passages"... and now she has gone off on the ultimate passage herself. 

May she travel in peace.

The other day, Facebook informed me it was the the birthday of my old and very close friend Raul Ramirez, who died seven years ago. Before he passed away, he established the Raul Ramirez Diversity Internship at San Francisco State University.

A few days before he died, I promised him I would help choose the diversity interns in my capacity as a senior editor at our mutual employer, KQED.

The very first intern we selected in Raul's memory was Ericka Guevarra . As fate would have it, she has the same birthday as Raul! He would have loved her and also would be, as I am, so proud of her accomplishments as a journalist.

Last month, via Facebook, we acknowledged the six-month anniversary of the death of another dear friend and colleague, Pat Yollin, who also was very close to both Raul and Ericka.

Pat was a copy editor beyond compare and a wonderful writer as well. She and I worked to perfect the stories that appeared on KQED's online news service  every day for over six years.

Facebook unites these friends first in life and then in death with us. Whatever else you can say about this social network, it allows us to continue connecting with each other well beyond the physical boundaries of  age, sex, race, orientation, location, or affiliation. And yes -- even beyond eternity,

***

Love is eternal; the news is mundane.

* The pandemic has opened up a stark divide between the haves and have-nots of home ownership, according to USA Today. While as many as 40 million people face the prospect of eviction due to the pandemic's economic devastation, others are upgrading their lives. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 42% of renter households that earn less than $35,000 a year have little or no confidence in their ability to pay September rent. At the same time, home buys and home improvements are booming for others. (LinkedIn)

* Over 100,000 Protest Belarus’s President in Minsk -- Demonstrators in Belarus defied government warnings to rally in the capital, Minsk. It was the latest in weeks of mass protests that followed President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s claim of an election victory on Aug. 9. (AP, Reuters)

* Belarus Protest Leader Vanishes Amid Reports of Masked Abductors -- With large-scale demonstrations showing little sign of winding down, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s security forces appear to have shifted from mass repression to more targeted disappearances (NYT)

* Thousands of officers flooded the streets in Hong Kong on Sunday, stifling attempts of demonstrators to protest the postponement of legislative elections and China’s enactment of a sweeping national security law. (Reuters)

* The police in Melbourne, Australia, arrested 17 protesters and fined more than 160 others on Saturday at a rally against strict coronavirus lockdown measures. (Reuters)

* Miracle? The harvest of the much-extolled, but long-lost Judean dates was something of a scientific miracle. The fruit sprouted from seeds 2,000 years old. (NYT)

* More Than Ever, Trump Casts Himself as the Defender of White America -- Presenting himself as a warrior against identity politics, the president has increasingly made appeals to the grievances of white supporters a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. (NYT)

* Long before the president’s views of the military would emerge as a flash point in his 2020 reelection campaign, Trump had an extensive track record of incendiary and disparaging remarks about veterans and military service. (WashPo)

* Biden is favored to win the election -- We simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often. The sample of 100 outcomes below gives you a good idea of the range of scenarios our model thinks is possible. Biden 71% Trump 28% (538)

* Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right -- Among German conspiracy theorists, ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, the American president is surfacing as a rallying cry, or even as a potential “liberator.” (NYT)

***

Back in the East Bay after spending the weekend in San Jose. I like moving around again and want to take some more trips soon.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

-- Nine Inch Nails (and) Johnny Cash

-30-

Rings of Fire

This heat is enervating. The air is still. The temperature comes in waves -- you can see the air shining and undulating even with no breeze. All the birds fall silent.

Here, we reached 110 degrees.The pets lie limp. The children don't smile as much; too much effort. In L.A. County, it got up to 121. Streetlights fail; power outages roll through the West. Smoke is everywhere. Our world is burning up.

Your clothes stick to your body. If you have a beard, you start to regret it.

It's too hot to cook and almost too hot to eat. We ordered Thai food -- spicy dishes like curry are the best way to deal with heat, which is the wisdom of the tropics.

And just keep drinking water. Lots of water.

You can't sleep.

All this holiday weekend, I've been worrying a bit about those I know out in the fire zones. My daughter and her family packed up their car with camping and fishing gear and headed north on Friday.

That same evening, a reporter friend of mine who lives in the Central Valley called me as she headed out for a holiday camping trip.

Unwittingly, they all drove into a ring of fire. We've heard from my daughter; they've been driving all over the north and staying at hotels. Nowhere to camp but at least they are safe. 

My friend is safe too and true to form, she is headed straight to the fire zone to cover the story. When you are a reporter, and nature strikes, there's no such thing as a day off.

An admission: I miss that. When the news is your industry, you always feel the itch,

***

Even the news is hot.

* A brush fire in the Sierra National Forest exploded Saturday, consuming more than 36,000 acres, threatening local communities and trapping 150 near a popular reservoir. The fast-moving Creek fire cut off evacuation routes to Mammoth Pool Reservoir, according the Madera County sheriff’s office. All of the people were reported safe but 10 of them suffered some type of injury, the sheriff’s office said. (SFGate) 

* How Trump Draws on Campaign Funds to Pay Legal Bills (New York Times)

* Since finding the first crater in 2014, Russian scientists have documented 16 more explosions in the Arctic caused by gas trapped in thawing permafrost. (New York Times)

* Trump fixates on promise of a vaccine — real or not — as key to reelection bid (Washington Post)

* Fox News colleagues defend reporter after Trump Twitter attack over confirmation of Atlantic reporting (Washington Post)

* According to Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, Trump disparaged Latinos and Blacks as “too stupid” to vote for him, and admired the way Vladimir Putin runs Russia.(Washington Post)

* Economists have begun to sound alarm bells that economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic may only widen the gaps between different industries and segments of society, CNBC reports. In such a "K-shaped" recovery, we'd see ever-growing divergences between businesses that have thrived amid the pandemic (tech, big box retail) and those that have floundered (small business, airlines, hospitality) and between the individuals whose economic livelihoods are tied up with these different parts of the economy. Such a recovery could exacerbate the problems associated with growing wealth inequality the U.S. faced prior to the pandemic. (CNBC)

* A new study shows a record number of young adults are now living with their parents, "surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era,"according to Pew Research Center. Its analysis of monthly Census Bureau data found that 52% of young adults 18 to 29 resided with one or both of their parents in July, up from 47% in February. That translates to 26.6 million young adults, up 2.6 million from February. (LinkedIn)

* The pandemic made many travelers rethink their summer vacation plans, with many hitting the road instead of flying. The New York Times says road trips reminiscent of the "summer of 1965" have become trendy, with people forgoing "splashy international experiences for humbler ones close to home" — except with Google maps, masks and curbside pickup these days. And for those looking to sneak in a slice, a number of new pizza farms have popped up around the country. The Times singled out five popular farms that are bringing farmers and pizza lovers together in socially-distanced settings. (New York Times)

* Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and MIT joined forces to test out the use of robotic dogs to take COVID-19 patients' vitals, Fast Company reports. The remote-controlled robot pups, which were developed by Boston Dynamics, were equipped with four different types of cameras that can take a patient's temperature, monitor their breathing and determine pulse rate and blood oxygen levels. Such tech can increase separation between the infected and medical professionals, which can help reduce the risk of exposure and spread. And, as an added benefit, patients seem to react positively to the canine-like bots. (Fast Company)

* Hong Kong Police Make Sweeping Arrests as Protests Return (Bloomberg)  Hong Kong protesters defy national security law, return to streets to oppose election delay -- Thousands marched in defiance of the law, which was written to put a decisive end to exactly this kind of protest. Police arrested nearly 300 people. (Washington Post)

* Typhoon Haishen: Millions asked to evacuate as Japan braces for storm (BBC)

***

Love is a burning thing
And it makers a firery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire

-- Johnny Cash