The Upside of All That Rain: Less Drought

There's an upside to all the rainy, dreary weather we've been getting. After now 12 atmospheric rivers this season (again, normally 1-2 are enough to make news headlines for a few days) we're well past normal seasonal rainfalls in California. Reservoirs are filling up. A few are even discharging for the first time in a few years. We're gaining at least a one-year respite from drought.

I compiled a time series of charts from the U.S. Drought Monitor to show improvement in drought conditions over the past 6 months:



This is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words. Just a few words I'll add in case you're not sure what you're seeing:

• California has gone from being 100% in drought conditions, with significant areas deemed at Extreme or Exceptional levels of drought, to more than half the state being out of drought.


• The major population centers on the coast are out of drought, as is the agricultural San Joaquin Valley.


• The agricultural Sacramento River Valley remains in moderate drought.

...And the rain season's not even over yet. The weather forecast shows another storm coming through mid-next week.

What is "Woke"? Ask an Idiot!

Several days ago I wrote about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservatives blaming the failure of banks like SVB on them being too "woke". So what is "woke"? you might ask. The term has actually been bandied about quite a bit on the political right. The recent failure of a few banks was hardly the first time conservative political leaders and pundits have used it. They've actually been railing against "woke" this and "woke" that steadily for two years. It's pretty clear it's something conservative leaders want their followers to hate, but what is it?

Briahna Joy Gray, a streaming interviewer with news outlet The Hill, popped that question to conservative author Bethany Mandel on her streaming show. In a moment that went viral Mandel stumbled over the definition. Watch the first 1:45 of this video retrospective by Gray, or watch the whole thing for greater context:

Watch on YouTube

Ironically Mandel herself says, "This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral," as she gets stumped trying to define the term.

Note, this was not "gotcha" journalism. This was not a journalist ambushing a minor politician with a question about, say, issues causing political unrest in a tiny nation 10,000 miles away. Mandel co-authored the 2023 book, "Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation". It's all about the alleged sinister perils of woke-ism. In that book Mandel wrote an entire chapter defining what "woke" is. She is clearly an expert on the topic. Yet when asked to give a concise definition she stumbles and says it's not possible.

BTW, after Mandel's inability to define "woke", a term she co-wrote an entire book about and speaks about frequently in interviews with sycophantic media, went viral she posted multiple times rejecting the question as completely unreasonable and basically had a meltdown about The Left was "attacking" her.

So, what is "woke"? I'll act like I am getting interviewed and offer an extemporaneous answer— not researched, not checked against a dictionary, not even wordsmithed. This is basically off the top of my head:

Woke, adj.: a state of awareness that centuries of systemic oppression against minorities create inequalities that persist today and must be addressed to create a fair society.

See? That wasn't so hard.

Again, I wrote this in one pass, no editing, no research, not even consulting a dictionary. How did I do? Followup coming soon; share your thoughts now in the comments.