More notable reporting on the flood tragedy in Texas, this time in Wired. (Thanks to @macosken for pointing me there.) Wired spoke to meteorologists Chris Vagasky and Matt Lanza.

Wired reports:

Meteorologists say that the NWS did send out adequate warnings as it got updated information. By Thursday afternoon, it had issued a flood watch for the area, and a flash flood warning was in effect by 1am Friday. The agency had issued a flash flood emergency alert by 4:30am.

“The Weather Service was on the ball,” Vagasky says. “They were getting the message out.”

But as local outlet KXAN first reported, it appears that the first flood warnings posted from safety officials to the public were sent out on Facebook at 5am, hours after the NWS issued its warning.

“Clearly there was a breakdown between when the warning was issued and how people got it, and I think that’s really what has to be talked about,” Lanza says.

https://www.wired.com/story/meteorologists-say-the-national-weather-service-did-its-job-in-texas/ or https://archive.vn/jSGWZ

#Texas #flood #TXwx #NWS

Timelapse view of the July 2025 flash flood that swelled the Guadalupe River

This timelapse shows the Guadalupe River during the July 4th, 2025 flash flood that caused immense damage and many fatalities, including at Camp Mystic. 

https://www.nwprogressive.org/microblog/2025/07/timelapse-view-of-the-july-2025-flash-flood-that-swelled-the-guadalupe-river/

#DisasterRecovery #EmergencyPreparedness

‘We’ve been ghosted by FEMA’: Officials across country say they can’t get answers on critical funding

"As hurricane season bears down, a new layer of uncertainty is spreading through the disaster response system: a wall of silence from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that’s leaving officials from across the country scrambling for answers," CNN reports.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/microblog/2025/07/weve-been-ghosted-by-fema-officials-across-country-say-they-cant-get-answers-on-critical-funding/

#DisasterRecovery #EmergencyPreparedness

imagine a slightly different universe, one where everything happens just as it does in this one, but without money as such: money is not an exchange or store of value, but a decision point token in a vast board game

wherever people here express a desire for money, they instead express a desire for what they'll do with it: eat regular meals, live indoors, see a doctor, feel safe, control the labor of thousands of other people under threat of homelessness, starvation, and ill health

zoom out a bit and see that world completely engaged with a near universal project to give decision power and material well-being to a relative few people and by their choices to poison the land, sea, and air; to change the climate to destroy the ecosystem on which everyone depends for life; to make most lives precarious and ignorant enough that they dare not challenge the decisions of the powerful

what are those billions of people even doing? there are so many more of them! why do they give all their power away?

the purpose here is to separate the two questions of: "what shall we do?" and "what will be profitable?" by filtering out the second and make clear that we're never not answering the first, never excused from the consequences of choosing poorly, and that asking the second is subsumed under the first

it is the nature of the capitalist system of profits to entwine these questions and give all priority to the second, such that we do what we would not otherwise choose, and don't do what we would choose (assuming we would embody to a golden rule mindset)

the system of financial capital and profits distorts decision making for the purpose of generating more profits and accumulating more capital in the hands of a few people

but again think of capital not as money or shares or land or tools or machinery, but simply as the ability to make and distort more and larger decisions

but also the ability to make and distort more and *smaller* decisions, until life itself is a subscription always steering you to support the creation of more profits and capital in fewer hands

the subscription is paid, not with money as we know it, but nothing more substantial than complicity

have we not fought wars and revolutions to be free of the divine right of royalty to decide our fates? is quantifying royalness really the best we can do? can we really not shift away from pure obedience to the ledger of decision points and decide to do different? do we need to fight for permission or just begin to more fully exercise the right to cooperate for mutual benefit?

#capitalism #socialism #socialistsunday #marxism #oil #pollution #healthcare #economics #roughdraft #climatechange #showerthoughts #xr #gamedev #mutualaid

If you're wondering where FEMA's funding is going, it's going to fund prison camps.

"...A: Yes, the immigrant detention facility in Florida, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” is being “funded largely” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program..."

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/07/a-dedicated-fema-fund-will-pay-for-alligator-alcatraz/

#FEMA #prisoncamps #disasters