Richard Michael Blaberhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/01/snowmelt-american-west. Why the Hell would it "stun" any of them? Have none of them heard of #climatechange? It seems to me the #climate #emergency is a #phenomenon that has been consistently underestimated, & those of us who have been warning of the #dangers have all been told we're "alarmists" & "doom-mongers", only to be proved RIGHT, @DoomsdaysCW!
DoomsdaysCW@rmblaber1956 I saw that story today. Yup. I really wish I had been proven wrong about a lot of this stuff.
Violet MadderMy dad told me a few weeks ago, our local ski resort used to regularly have 24 feet of snowpack when he was a kid.
This winter, it barely had 24 INCHES.
I can stand on our porch and look at that mountain in the summer, and not only does it look so NAKED, brown dirt exposed all the way to the top, even from twenty miles away it's mighty obvious the big glacier on its northeastern flank is maybe HALF the size it used to be. Glaciers like that aren't supposed to fucking shrink visibly on a human timescale!!
I was maybe 10 when we went for one of our regular hikes up around the alpine lakes and the frogs were just GONE. A place that always used to have so many thousands the whole edge of the water was black with tadpoles in a band at least 3' all the way around the lake, and so many adult frogs it was impossible to walk without stepping on some-- gone. I've seen this coming my whole life, any actual scientists who study anything related to this for a living and somehow still manage to be surprised have been living with their heads jammed WAY up their own asses.
Aeáro, a SeaWyrm 
@violetmadder @DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956
I think the "stuns scientists" is, you know, a headline. Not a true statement. Maybe "stunned" in the sense that seeing the reality of it is still terrible, even if it was expected, but I doubt many climatologists are surprised by this as such.
Or as the end of the article puts it,
"'It is heartbreaking to see it all playing out as we have predicted for so long,' [a climatologist] said. 'The changes we have teed up for ourselves are going to be catastrophic.'”
Kinene⭐🐻@aearo @violetmadder @DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956 I'm tired of pointing out that "The Limits to Growth" predicted this, in 1972.
Arrrgh.
But have you read EarthForAll @c_merriweather ? There is some hope... Degrowth, Giant Leap, etc. It does look bleak, but there is hope... @aearo @violetmadder @rmblaber1956
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder Hope, may I gently remind you, was the last - & deadliest - gift in Pandora's Box?
Actually, it was a jar, and the story was changed to demonize Pandora (whose name means, "Giver of All Gifts.") @rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder Yes, it was a jar, & Pandora's name does mean "All gifts". She was the wife of Epimetheus ("Afterthought"), the brother of Prometheus ("Forethought") - & it was Epimetheus's fault for opening the box, or jar, which was the wedding present of the Olympian gods.
It's really just a version of "Adam and Eve" -- meant to punish curiosity and questioning orders, imho. Pandora was allegedly the first "woman". @rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder How does that fit with Prometheus creating humans from clay & breathing life into them, then teaching them about agriculture, etc., following that up by stealing fire for them from the gods - with the outcome we all know about? Interestingly, there are other Prometheus-like figures in world mythology.
Yes, and Prometheus was punished by the gods -- chained to a mountain while getting eaten alive (!!!). Wisdom and knowledge is punished by Zeus (patriarchal father-figure and king of the gods). Sound familiar? @rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder
I would argue that Zeus / Yahweh / whoever the ChristoFascists worship are all the same deity, @rmblaber1956 .
Ighostrider@DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder as some of 'em'd say 'Yah way', then again that might just go over their heads...
@Ighostrider @DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo
Eh, different day, same eagles...
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder They are both mountain gods, & Yahweh was syncretistically identified with the Canaanite god El (meaning "god"), who was a sky god. They are all seen as storm gods, having full control over the weather.
So, I came across this article... You were right about the jar containing miseries (including 'hope'). However, the analogy between Pandora and Eve is definitely there -- ways to blame women for everything that's wrong with the world, and punishment for having curiosity.
https://www.olympusestate.com/the-perfect-trap-why-pandora-is-the-true-victim-of-the-myth/
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder Indeed so. Raven was turned from a white bird into a black one - because he got burned - in the mythology of the Native Americans of the Pacific NW - because he stole fire (or the Sun) for the people.
Hey, so I wasn't imagining that there were matriarchal interpretations of Pandora... I remember learning about that in a class about amphora art.
"Jane Ellen Harrison also turned to the repertory of vase-painters to shed light on aspects of myth that were left unaddressed or disguised in literature. On a fifth-century amphora in the Ashmolean Museum (her fig.71) the half-figure of Pandora emerges from the ground, her arms upraised in the epiphany gesture, to greet Epimetheus. A winged ker with a fillet hovers overhead: "Pandora rises from the earth; she is the Earth, giver of all gifts," Harrison observes. Over time this "all-giving" goddess somehow devolved into an "all-gifted" mortal woman. A. H. Smith, however, noted that in Hesiod's account Athena and the Seasons brought wreaths of grass and spring flowers to Pandora, indicating that Hesiod was conscious of Pandora's original "all-giving" function. For Harrison, therefore, Hesiod's story provides "evidence of a shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in Greek culture. "
Oh, and then there's Aristophane's "The Birds" (a play I worked on translating in college)...
"The Hesiodic myth did not, however, completely obliterate the memory of the all-giving goddess Pandora. A scholium to line 971 of Aristophanes' The Birds mentions a cult 'to Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora
@rmblaber1956 @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder
@DoomsdaysCW @c_merriweather @aearo @violetmadder As per Robert Graves's book, "The White Goddess", or Mary Renault's "The King Must Die". I'm reminded that Prometheus also warned Deukalion & Pyrrha of the impending Flood sent by the gods.