I have always been fascinated by doomsday cults.  There are so many of them, even in modern America.   They have always been wrong, every single time, yet they persist.  From London Review of Books.

Apocalypse Now and Then

We have seen the low lake levels in the western US.  Seems it is happening in lots of places and causing a drop in hydroelectric power generation.  From MIT Review.

Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower.

I was thinking about the infamous Louisiana gubernatorial election of my youth between White Supremacist David Duke (R) and the ethically challenged Edwin Edwards (D).  Somehow I thought it was in the early 1980s but it was in fact in 1991.  I suppose I wasn’t so much young as naive.

When Donald Trump first began his run for the presidency, I remarked to a friend that he was Edwin Edwards all over again.  I was only half right, he was an uncanny (or perhaps canny) combination of Edwards and Duke.   Somehow he had combined the worst parts of both and attracted a large following.

Duke never won another election, but remained on the fringes of politics, less a cautionary tale than a low water mark.  Edwards spent much of his senior years in jail. He was looking at starring in a reality TV show after his release from prison but it never materialized.  Wiki has most of the facts from that historic contest.

1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election

I supposedly have a good memory, at least for things that happened a long time ago.  So my family and old friends tell me.  Ask me what I had for lunch yesterday and it’s a different story.  From Lit Hub.

The Man Who Remembered Everything—and Thought It Was Normal