DeepBlueSouth

he makes a big people statement threatening to blow something up if it all doesn't stop, then quietly calls up his special friend in the east and suddenly the drones go away. /sarcasm no, not the kind of guns most americans like to play 1930's gangster with or whatever the feck it is they do with them... [someone is shooting one of them off outside here in the valley right now, maybe they saw a drone flying in all this foggy rain] perhaps we can use dart guns loaded with some sort of bleach to inject the drones.... that'll definitely do something, right...? he did keep us safe from that one balloon, kinda I guess [kidding that wasn't him] bolas snares, haha. and best of all, they can be fired from something quite similar.... to a GUN!! [cos that's the whole point of life in this country, ooh shiny long thing that go boom boom YAY]. just be mindful of Venus. all of my life I said, "there's no way an educated person could ever confuse the Evening Star with a craft, it just seems beyond the pale". fast forward to me quitting smoking in October and having nicotine withdrawal psychosis: "hmm... one of those rich kids must be flying a drone up on the mountain. that thing must be HUGE." [45 minutes later] "OMG I have been staring at the planet Venus for almost an hour.... it DOES happen!"

my point is america's embracing of small-c christianity, love of crooked capitalism, and welcoming interference from rogue states got the US here. as I said, I can't comment on the rest of the world, I only live in this one part of it.

I was born in '84 and raised catholic in New Orleans.... the connecting thread of all of this "anti-establishmentism" in the US during my lifetime seems to be [though I may well be biased here between upbringing and geographic handicaps] the various collective of christian churches [particularly of note, the catholic, southern baptist, evangelical, and so-called nondenominational churches are likely most to blame here in america]. though I lost my faith as a child, I kept up with the church for a lot of reasons, most of them social. if something is not done with or through the churches here in the southeast, they vote to defund it so that only the churches and tax-dodger businesses can offer assistance with it. the only thing most locals ask me more than where I go [went] to church is my race/nationality [it's human/american, and yes I get asked this more than anything since I came here]. I am a third degree yadda yadda yadda and was quite visible in my parish as a volunteer for many years; from mowing lawns to handing out misselletes [church flyers]. friends who knew me from work or social interactions or even old school mates [my church life was quite separate from my secular one by design; the duality of me removing my tie out in the parking lot and lighting up a cannabis cigarette before leaving services {to complete MY sunday meditation, rest, and worship} would have been far too much for my fellow parishioners to handle] EVERYONE, was always perplexed by literally all of this, given my attendance to leftist causes and progressive political action and by the fact that I was a jovial, fun-loving service industry worker more or less known locally as a liberal, freespirited, longhaired bartender from New Orleans.... I guess people change. I made it to the pandemic. they had been calling Francis I "the socialist pope". they believed Obama was literally the antichrist.... [until after the election, of course] they celebrated white nationalism openly. they celebrated violence by sharing war videos during mass on their phones [yes, I speak of adults with school aged children, not the schoolchildren]. they hated the Latino parishioners unless they spoke english, then they were okay. they refused calls from the clergy to stop openly idolizing trump. then, they refused to mask. they refused vaccines. I got every vaccine [and maintain a great collection of face masks for every mood, outfit, and football playoff scenario!], but also COVID twice. I am a caretaker. she is more important than... them. then after losing my sense of taste and smell for almost three months [the second time], I finally had to admit something.... I knew I wasn't going to see these people ever again after I died [even if they were right about the faith], and I was very happy of this fact. then I realized I didn't want to see any of them half of every damned week anymore either. however.... I still remain a jovial, fun-loving service industry worker more or less known locally as a liberal, freespirited guy who could use a shave and a haircut by most local americans' standards. the fact of the matter is, america has not changed as much as we like to claim we ever have. the idea that the minority orthodox religions group who moved Britain to civil war in the 16th century, found themselves regulated by the [surviving] crown after it was over... only to claim unfair subjugation after their rebellious deeds had literally seen an overthrow of the government.... COMPLETELY explains modern america in a microcosm, for our part in this thread. for those who are lucky enough to not know, during the holiday of Thanksgiving here, we present a very fractured take on how the Plymouth Colony came to be; particularly those of us raised under a christian tradition [which, sadly, does permeate much of public education throughout the US]. giving credit to "the bad actors": russia's attendance as something of a "christian nation" [?] along with putin's inexplicable catholicism has led to american [and canadian] christian circles openly encouraging that governments like russia's are "more free" as they ban the openness of the LGBTQIA+ communities [which literally terrify christians, I do not remember a time when most white straight men around me didn't say things like "I don't hate gay men but they better not be doing any of that around ME!" as if whatever gay and/or trans people were doing in public was legitimately an open threat to passersby]; "promote christian values" [likely a nod to their Calvinistic beliefs that authoritarianism equates to freedom and godliness, and that no person can ever truly self-discipline]; and because such governments are openly fighting birth control in all its forms [which the vatican, for one, formally established opinions on around 60 years ago, give or take, so about as classically traditionalist as the Woodstock Music and Arts festival], "the feminism", and any other ideology or groups or people which promote healthy, happy childfree lifestyles [see also the minority in this forum who simply won't leave that idea alone]. also, I'll just say the word "racism" and go no farther, because that part of this is definitely present; yet its machinations [even here in america] are far more nuanced than I care to indulge at the moment; particularly as they pertain to the rest of the global community writ large. and of course the most to blame which, while not being specifically a policy of any church I know of, it is a policy championed by the only political party in the US that any church will cosign [every damned election]: austerity. as the veritable crocodilian christian pleas of "won't someone PLEASE think of the children!?" won't sway young atheists or agnostics [nor the apolitical]; since I was young, they have employed poverty as a weapon against all others as well. so now, they've even hijacked populist politics to take advantage of the most gullible among us, yet again. I never thought I would live to see the day where personal liberty, checks & balances, or sound economic philosophy has all been reduced to "ya know, the hollywood elites run all the banks too" or "only the richest men are honest enough to save us all!" or "oh no! now 'the liberals' are trying to [one of several things that international intelligence communities have warned for almost a decade that the russian and chinese governments have been attempting, what an amazing coincidence]". some of the only people I know who would have refused to vote republican refused to vote democratic this year as well; because their sole voting issue was healthcare, and true: the democrats in 2024 made not so much as a specific stated promise to even take a look at fixing medicare or medicaid; and certainly nothing to provide healthcare to the vast majority of americans who do not have it or gave up on privately funded do-nothing policies years ago. I have been my own doctor and dentist with few exceptions since the age of 18; and I owe more in medical debt than I do in student loans. god.... bless america. actually.... ya know what, I am lying. when I was talking to an analyst for the first time as a kid in the early 1990's, I told her: "I am concerned about the thread of anti-intellectualism in this country leading us to a point where people decry medicine and science as heresy against god; push bogus theories like flat earth concepts again; and move to elect a dangerous, ignorant bully as president because they equate popularity with experience and intellect." [I have nothing to gain here by lying, I did indeed say this all of this back then] so... yea, I guess I did always know this would happen, I.... just didn't think I would live to see it, I guess. oh, and in case anyone was wondering, she laughed and replied "you're just too young to understand how the world works." I hope she got vaccinated, COVID was way worse on NOLA's people than even The Storm in 2005 was.

as a former abused and neglected child, I wholeheartedly disagree. not everyone is equipped to raise children, and many of them don't even want to. those [alleged] adults who act like spoiled children and insist that their feelings should dictate all the rest of our lives should really check their behavior and focus on their own lives, PARTICULARLY once they have children of their own.

I hate to sound like more of a cryptid kook than usual, but this all feels like some sort of distraction, even if it is some kind of domestic pezzonovante corporate officers or light foreign interference [not saying it can't or won't lead to HEAVY foreign interference {even if it is americans doing this}, but that's too much speculation for this early in the day]. from an espionage perspective, stingers do not necessarily need drones to convey them NOR would they have nav lights on, as @TheVat pointed out. if the goal was to shut down airports, Korea has developed anti-drone directed-energy weapons*, we [by which I refer to the various US defense communities and er... their contractors as a collective; hopefully never just random people with guns] would be either shooting these down or better yet, catching them in some sort of net snares, which as an Cajun, I do not know why we have yet to use against drones. we [and they] used trip lines on dirigibles through both world wars, time to make them into nets which can be hoisted and lowered on demand, in full view of the towers, then if necessary electrify them like a big bug zapper... we sometimes hire people to cull large birds at airports, and we use underwater tech like that to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence seaway. this all feels too obvious. "if it flies and ya can't shoot at it, use nets or bolas snares, I mean...." as for the abundance of coverage... well, even in a 24 hour world, nobody really needs 24 hours of news. like mainstream religion, the mainstream media needs more attention and thus more money than most established businesses and other public oriented groups as people have been switching off more and more over the decades [thank merciful heavens]. if this were late summer in a year without a lot of tropical cyclones, I feel all they'd be talking about is the "unusual number of sharks gathering near the coast" [gathering in ways which sharks just tend to gather regularly that time of year but most laypeople and that one president all shout "omg shark"] so they bring it up only in summers without much other news to report, also so that they know that people will be watching on standby for when "a thing" happens. [that is to say, ANYTHING that might happen, this could just be leon tusk's latest mid-life crisis hobby for all we know] the first year the "slow news shark" bit occurred in my memory was the summer of 2001, which [before the second week in september that year] had even been dubbed by the media as "summer of the shark". drones are feeling like the new sharks, yet I do respect the potential foreign and domestic yadda yadda yadda for various outcomes here [to wildly speculate, it smells like NK and RUS, particularly when one reads international headlines to this subject in the past year]. Stephen Hawking once said that he doubted extraterrestrial life had ever contacted humanity simply because if they had, the governments would know about it, and if they had kept that secret, they were better at keeping secrets than anything else. I legitimately believe that he was right about at least part of this: the governments are not good at much of anything besides keeping secrets, they're really good at that somehow.

correct. outside of the above sentiment, I don't really have much to say to boosters of either side anymore, because they're BOTH presently living under some delusion that only people who work for an hour or two a day, making phone calls at an empty desk the size of a small coupe in an office the size of an average american home... are equipped to make radical financial decisions for the working class, and whoever's leftover of the middle class since reagan and his "business advisors" began the charge to send the western economies down this rabbit hole to Perdition. the democrats are also cheerfully surrendering to this same school of thought, it is why recruiting voters has literally never gotten easier. I have been trying to engage others in the political process for 25 years.... I have media savvy and experience, but I am no joe rogaine [yet proud of this fact]. I finally gave up this year- finally. the alleged "left" haven't done anything for us in this part of the country in generations either. this is why the educated working class sits the elections out along with the young. we have simply given up the faith that america has ever been or ever will be for us. I voted for Harris and Walz, yet 93% of my county did not. also I was forced to remove my face mask by an elderly poll watcher who accused me of using it to conceal my identity. I just can't afford for these antivaxxers to get me sick yet again. when pressed, I used to say "democratic socialist"; now I just say "socialist". I don't really care how we get there anymore. unless things change soon, I do not expect to ever comb white hairs. the 70 year old I care for is currently in better health than me at the moment, and they have healthcare. I haven't for 22 years. healthcare is not free, nor affordable. I worked in politics for years. I believe stalin said it best when it comes to the voters and the votes, blatant and reported russian propaganda from the mouths of our senators and congresspeople notwithstanding [the Lolita loving senator from florida didn't just retire suddenly instead of taking AG because of his sexual proclivities and love of Dionysian lifestyles, see also the bloggers and podcasters who were paid millions by kremlin assets running LLC's here in the US]. I mean.... I feel as if our courts tried, convicted, and executed the Rosenberg's for less than this. I am no authoritarian, but the ruling class needs to be made to worry about the rule of law here in the united states again, or the soon to be moribund economy [see Ben Stein's lecture in Ferris Bueller's Day off for how well those tariffs are gonna work... yet again] and the hopeless rabble of untapped and/or underemployed workers will likely make them remember their history books. [see also the one shooting in NYC this week that these sort of folks actually care about]. america is anyone's for the taking right now. the business cosplayers had their bite at the apple. we need actual leaders, not people who pretend to lead companies as "autodidactic genius visionaries" or whatever kind of insipid self-talk they use to sleep at night between their carousels of remedies. [I have worked as a personal assistant to "corporate officers". I know who does all of their work for them.] [off the rails, sorry] also to weigh in on the subject of dc/marvel and other traditional comic book media, I find it hilarious that 80-90 years ago the kids loved the free-spirited, progressive superheros who championed equality [Superman fought the klan {welll.... an obvious facsimile of it} on syndicated radio in 1949, after they targeted the families of immigrant scientists, no less] and they loathed the card-stock, gangster-like villains only concerned with money and greed.... now they root for the businessmen who resemble 20th century gangsters just as much as the early DC comic adversaries. also the Joker.... what is up with THAT...? well, likely the same reason I see so many insignias of the wehrmacht carved into mens' room stalls around here.... though I suppose they're more appropriate there than anywhere else we might see them. -le sigh-

"Poproszę trochę kokainy." from a very old English-Polish book: "A Trip to the Dentist" [sorry if I misread the thread, this is simply the most useless phrase I remember from any language learning of my own!]

given my extensive training at the Crescent School of [Gaming and] Bartering, I posit that to make dry gin wet, the most popular method would be putting it into a martini with a copious helping of [sweet] vermouth and a lemon twist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail) [I learned that a dry martini always has dry vermouth, but we were literally told by our professor that a wet martini calls for sweet vermouth. I'll add that many of the things I learned there were regional, if not completely unique to New Orleans and or Delta Southern serving tradition.]

this is precisely why I am here. thank you, and I love your profile pfp, kinda perfect for a mod trying to shake that particular label, haha

Salutations, mes amis! [I probably conjugated that wrong, sorry]. My name is Hank, my pronouns are "he/they", I was born in New Orleans in the 20th century, and I am quite unsure whether I am qualified to be here [I'll stick to my lanes like psychology, history, anthropology, music, language learning, communications, poli, earth sciences, etc. oh, the humanities] I tell people who inform me that I'm intelligent that "the best thing we can know about ourselves is that we know nothing. none of us will ever be fully educated, so we must face every day as a new learning experience.... even if we just veg out and watch something fun or meet up with friends or new folks!" I started college at a very young age, waayyy too young, I went in for communications and my field has been decimated by Sincl- er... a big media company with deep pockets and lucrative government connections which swallowed the FCC whole shortly after I graduated. I have worked in various fields since school, but never lost my lust for learning about the world and everything in it. my biggest barriers were socioeconomic, [major, major] family issues, and serious problems with autism, dyslexia, and particularly with mathematics. word problems and geometry...? YES. Algebra.... er, please no. Trig.... wh-what is that, exactly...? [no seriously, I wanna know!!] my flexes are being the inaugural president of my school's first communications honor's society, sigma cum laude, Eagle Scout [Boy Scouts of America], and I have lived through a LOT of stuff that gave me... heaps of survivor's remorse. think of me as an allegedly highly intelligent Acadian [Cajun] Creole who passes for a normal southerner when I have to. ANYWAY, I am caretaking for my mother at the moment, who was a registered nurse for over 40 years, retiring in the first wave of the SARS COV-2 pandemic in 2020. because I am an american living in a region which enshrines anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, nondenominational small "c" christianity, unfounded conspiracy theories which would make Charles Fort blush, and good ol' white nationalism [weapons grade sarcasm]; it has always been difficult for me to be myself, and even moreso to engage the more academic leanings of my personality and interests. while I have worked a lot of white collar jobs in positions ranging from academia to media production to politics [but not for HIMself]; most of my life experience during and after college lies in blue collar work. if salaries were better around here for college grads, I would 10/10 find a way to go back to school but.... I can make just as much as a bartender than I could as a civil engineer. also madre has a nice home here, and the region is currently experiencing rapid growth, so even if I don't live here forever, my current plans mostly involve getting used to being in the 40 and older set in this exurbanish suburb. so far so good. like most in my demographics, I have never married and have no children. I am pretty open minded [sometimes to a fault], and although I can be silly, I always attempt to remain serious when it comes to academia, tolerance, and mutual respect of my peers; whomever they are that day, be it somewhere like this among academics, a romantic date, or a music festival. I spent far too much time cloistered as a child [I... still do] but I love interacting with people. IRL, one will usually find me working a counter, a bar, a front desk, a kitchen, the floor, the stage, or, well.... here. on my rare sojourns out; expect me in a bohemian lounge somewhere between East Tennessee, North Georgia, or North 'bama; a foreign family owned restaurant [or hookah joint]; or a hike in the woods [I come for the exercise, but stay for the botany, wildlife, and geology. I was born on an alluvial plain, the Delta... the geology around here, omg.... I literally find tiny fossils in my yard here, haha! the local mountains do not guard their secrets in this geologic age.] among other personal interests are acting, comedy [I am not above doing standup], light video gaming [I am NOT a gamer, the gamers would quite agree with this sentiment], culinary arts, rescuing pets, medical discoveries, psychology, music, and [fiction] writing. I am published, but my latest is gonna be a lot MORE fun to write! I'll stop now, but I am glad to be here!!

[apologies {to everyone}, I did not expect this to be my first post... but for once; between education and experience, I do actually feel well in hand to weigh in here....] having been born and raised in New Orleans, tropical cyclones have always been of particular cultural and personal significance for me. that being said, OP, your hypothesis has been speculated upon in the past, the results of which nearly led to a [quite rare] lawsuit against the US military for the first known attempt at tropical system modification in late 1947: now I am not familiar with any specific concrete measure of how each degree of sea level surface temperature may impact a storm's wind speed in tens of miles per hour [presumably you mean measured as Celsius, this being a science forum...? those suggested numbers mentioned seem pretty bold otherwise.] however you are correct in the statement about the sunlight reflectivity of high cloud as well as its surface heat retention in the evening hours impacting the temperature in a specific region, on land leastways. I am unsure how this phenomena repeats over large bodies of water, much less "the Gulf" or the Atlantic. it is not uncommon for both of these regions to be populated by a great deal of high barometric pressure in summer and early meteorological autumn, which does indeed lead to calm, clear, sunny, and [during these seasons in these regions] HOT weather; veritable proving grounds for tropical cyclones over open water. a side note about the measure of tropical cyclone strength here: the NOAA; as well as other private and government entities studying and warning folks of major weather events; are working towards moving away from the historic bellwether of the Saffir-Simpson Scale; which heavily relied upon wind speed as measure of a storm's potential. most damage and fatalities of any system are caused primarily by storm surge and rainfall induced flooding. [the more well known Fujita scale for tornadic cyclone strength measurement has also been similarly updated to the Enhanced Fujita scale, hence F3 or F1 in the 20th century being worked into EF3 or EF1 tornadic cyclones, etc.] many factors beyond just ambient air or sea level surface temperatures impact the formation and cultivation of tropical cyclones; sometimes their paths, storm surge heights, rainfall totals, speed of motions, and of course peak wind speeds [sustained and gusts] can be impacted by variables which are not considered at time of forecasts. in the case of the misbegotten Project Cirrus, an unreported pressure gradient recorded at sea was cited as scientific evidence [in court, no less] of the natural forces which contributed the storm's turn into the Savannah, GA region. also such an event had happened before, and thus likely could in the future, direct human interaction notwithstanding. Swansont is also correct here, storm strength intensification, including the most feared RAPID intensification, is quite common even at night. high sea level surface temperatures, lack of wind shear, and ambient humidity itself are the three legs of a hypothetical stool upon which a strong tropical cyclone must rest. take away one of these, and the storm will most certainly weaken [or cease to intensify before landfall leastways]. thanks for the citation, TheVat! I look forward to reading that later on tonight. there has been much speculation [keyword... speculation] over the years about what other methods might be employed to control them [or simply weaken or dissipate them], ranging from scientists' proposals to those of military leaders and even that one president; with varying degrees of ridiculousness, so I will not mention them here. HOWEVER, they're a fun read if atmospheric sciences are of interest! the best thing to do to avoid the impact of hurricanes is to do what I did, hard as it seems, I just moved inland, away from ANY water which could rise to dangerous levels. if my property floods, we're ALL in a lot of trouble, my losses would be pointless to consider. without the formation of glacial lakes upon local plateaus, the nearby creek nor the Tennessee River herself couldn't ever flood their banks this much, even during the worst rain events possible [I have witnessed both of these in under 20 years here, as well as both worst droughts, several tornadoes {including a direct strike from an EF0} and yes, even several tropical cyclones this far inland. something something human induced climate something] [*oho, my Fortean side makes an appearance, tread carefully] Fidel Castro felt that Project Stormfury was an attempt to steer hurricanes [presumably into Cuba], although he cited no evidence. many fellow Gulf Coast refugees I have known over the years argue tooth and nail that the [US] government has been "creating and controlling hurricanes" for many years now, though their evidence is presumably of the same source as Fidel Castro's. most of them have told me they feel the motive for using them against the mainland US is "for the insurance money". I woefully inform them that I am unsure whether they're less acquainted with how our atmosphere works, or how property insurance works [particularly after a major hurricane]. Michio Kaku, among other accomplished scientifically-literate futurists [e.g real, actual scientists; not autodidactic corporate officers who never show their work], have made it abundantly clear that we are more likely some 1000 years away from generating even a small thunderstorm, much less creating and controlling something as tremendously powerful as a major tropical cyclone.