Lawrence Culver

Ding ding ding! I wish you weren’t probably right, but it’s the Utah legislature we’re talking about.

Can’t wait to run my next article draft through the William Faulkner/Cormac McCarthy AI machine to “doom it up a little.”

Womp womp.

At least their reign of afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable is over for another year. Or at least until a special session.

Surfers in Munich (Yes, Munich) Just Want Their Wave Back

The surfing area was closed after a tragic recent accident, but I hope it can be safely reopened. It’s proof of how an environmental hazard can be made safer and even become a recreational amenity, a model for the LA River and many other places. Gift article. (4/4)

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/w...

Surfers waiting their turn on the endless wave.

Malibu in Munich!

One of these channels became an improbable but hugely popular surfing spot. When I lived in Munich, I always enjoyed watching the surfers, all patiently waiting in line for their turn, a highly organized German version of California or Hawaii, improbably airdropped into Bavaria. (3/4)

Aerial view of the park, with the river visible. Multiple channels carry part of its waters through the park, once a dangerous floodplain.

It’s also a remarkable example of flood control. Located north of the Alps, Munich experienced spring floods when snows melted. The vast park is part of the flood plain of the Isar River, with multiple channels carrying water through the park, turning a hazard into a recreational amenity. (2/4)

Cathedral towers and other historic landmarks of central Munich, seen from the English Garden.

An aerial view of the southern end of the English Garden looking north, with the Isar River visible on the right side of the park. The river, fed by snow melt from the Alps south of the city, had a history of flooding.

(Gift article below.)

Munich’s Englischer Garten, one of the world’s largest urban parks, larger than NYC’s Central Park, is one of the great achievements of landscape architecture, filled with trails, vistas, lakes, and Biergartens, all in the English style of landscape design. (1/4)

“Hard choices are ahead. At some point we must stop subsidizing wealthy people rebuilding in risky areas... We may need to require insurers to cover all risks and all homeowners or leave the market... We may need to create national risk pools that compete and possibly replace private insurers.”

“The extremely rapid loss of the snow that fell during the late Feb storm cycle, which in many cases dropped multiple feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada over just a couple of days, is genuinely remarkable.”

“Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before…with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors. . .
The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth’s temperature in 1880.”

I scrolled down the replies looking for this 😂

Already fash, but pre-fishmouth

She’s like a walking portrait of Dorian Gray, but for politicians

Hope she remembered her blankie

I’m not trying to make a glib or superficial comparison, but this phone message is a grim premonition of what awaits Americans the next time there’s a big natural disaster in the US. Planning for the safety of ordinary people is not something the federal government does anymore, at home or abroad.

The destruction of the federal environmental state, now with some Mazzy Star

Sea Levels Are Higher Than Many Scientists Think, New Study Shows

A new study “found that the vast majority of scientific studies that calculate coastal sea level have underestimated how high the water already is…on average, eight inches to a foot higher than these scientific studies and maps indicate worldwide.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/c...

‘Excellence’: Smithsonian exhibit celebrates HBCUs amid attacks on Black history The Smithsonian’s African American history museum has partnered with HBCUs to display archival materials

“At a time when museums and colleges are facing uncertainty and there is a push to limit the acknowledgment of Black history”…visitors can see “primary source material that speaks to the excellence of education and activity that has been nurtured” by HBCUs.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

“How do you not notice the melted demon crawling out of the wall before you hit publish?” 😂

“8 companies had bought 76 properties in Altadena, about a quarter of all Altadena properties sold in the first year since the fire.”

“Families who can’t afford to rebuild are being replaced by investors who can. That is not recovery. That is displacement dressed up as a real estate transaction.”

“In a rapidly warming world, and in an industry dominated by two huge and growing conglomerates that are crushing the competition, every run feels fleeting.
These days, managing a small ski business is like trying to keep a mom-and-pop general store afloat after Walmart comes to town.”

“Extreme warmth across the West this winter has meant more precipitation falling as rain, not snow — a symptom of global warming, which in recent years has been pushing average snow lines higher in the mountains and changing the timing of runoff.”

Yep. It’s crazy. Friday afternoon I hiked up City Creek Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains behind SLC in shorts and a T-shirt, on the next to last day of February.

Record Warmest Winter In Much Of West, Preliminary Data Shows | Weather.com Meteorological winter 2026-2026 has ended, and it officially tops the list for the warmest winter on record across much of the West.

The US West just had its warmest winter ever. The warmest in 152 years of weather records in Salt Lake City, in 130 years in Tucson, and record winter highs in San Francisco and SoCal. In Phoenix, it was 3° warmer than the previous record warmest winter . . . last year.

weather.com/news/weather...

A Crisis in the Alps: Airbnb, Climate Change and Americans

“There is a lot of pressure to upgrade and reassure ourselves as we get closer to ‘last resort’ skiing,” referring to the idea that climate change will soon make skiing impossible at some existing resorts…”there’s an increasing scarcity of snow in large resorts.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/t...

Welcome to Wyoming, the Frontier of America’s New Gilded Age

Gift article.

Many ski towns are unaffordable, but Jackson Hole is a premonition of the future, a feudal town in a feudal state controlled by billionaires who don’t pay taxes and don’t even bother to provide housing for their servants like the robber barons of old.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/u...

Proof of an unaffordable housing market? California homeownership, like generational wealth and genetics, is increasingly an inherited condition.

“Rental housing recovery has been slow in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, with limited sales, listings, or rebuilding activity one year later. One year after the fire, about 74 percent of all rental units within the fire perimeter were on properties with no publicly observable recovery action.”

Winter getting shorter in 80% of major US cities, new data shows Researchers find that across 195 US cities, winters are on average nine days shorter than they were in 1970-1997

Shorter winters and warmer temps means “reduced water supply, decreased summer crop yields and worsening allergy seasons . . . substantial changes to ecosystems, the health of our natural community and our water resources,” and “challenges for local economies.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Wildfire Seasons Are Starting to Overlap. That Spells Trouble for Firefighting.

“Extreme weather conditions that stoke wildfires around the world are happening on more days each year, causing fire seasons in different regions to overlap . . . it will shrink the window of opportunity to help each other in terms of firefighting.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/c...

Lil’ Sweaty Marco gets named Acting Shah in 3, 2, 1 . . .