It could be a science fiction movie. Aliens come to Earth but find the atmosphere just too full of oxygen and freshness. So they begin the long slow process of converting the Earth’s atmosphere to their preferred, much higher CO2 levels with a desertified landscape. It takes a while, so they hide among the locals. They use a tiny fraction of their alien technology to become ridiculously, obscenely rich so they have control.

Over time, they discover that power plants are fundamental to their goal of increasing the CO2 levels. The problem is, once they provide enough power for all of the houses and business, it looks too suspicious to keep adding capacity. It’ll still work, so long as they can focus on coal and natural gas, but it will take too long. The aliens need an excuse.

Enter data centers. These bad boys gobble up energy like small towns. Perfect. Now, alien Bezos announces that his company, Amazon, is going to build a 35-turbine, 7.6 GW natural gas power plant to service a Texas data center. It will be the largest CO2 emitter in the US, twice as bad as the next plant. With the added benefit that the data centers use massive amounts of fresh water, Texas, where this alien is building his climate-destroying machine called a data center, stands to dry up, too.

Really, it’s perfect AND it’s the conflation of BOTH of my bets as to what wipes out humanity first, climate change or Artificial Intelligence (AI). The data centers, you see, are being built, so the story goes, in support of surging AI demands. The aliens get to waste all of that water and dump all of that CO2 into the air and the masses aren’t rising up in revolt. In fact, the masses are begging for it. “Ooh, this AI is so much fun.” “How neato.” “Hey, strip that girl from math class.” “Give us more!”

It’ll be a hard movie to watch. The movie is a warning and doesn’t have a feel-good ending. Billions die rather horrible deaths. There doesn’t seem to be a hero out there, steadily working to defend the planet from the alien invaders. The Justice League was going to come out, but they’ve been bought off and now they defend the aliens. The X-men are all looking at their screens and making funny AI videos to post online. (What could be more important?) Angel just WILL NOT stop “nudifying” Marvel Girl.

I wish someone would – could – write a better ending to this thing. We go to the movies to escape the darkness of our real lives, if only for a while…

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I’ve been saying, the climate has a huge advantage in the goal of wiping out humanity, and it’s pressing in right now. We all know about dwindling water supplies and lost crops. Now we’re learning about migrating toxic insects and illnesses. A recent entry? Flesh eating bacteria. Yuck! Louisiana has confirmed NINE cases of flesh eating bacteria this year. All nine required hospitalization. Five died. For comparison, over the previous decade, Louisiana had seen an average of seven cases and one death.

It comes from a bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus. One gets it from seawater, when you go swimming in warm, brackish water. It enters the body through breaks in the skin, cuts or even just scrapes. It can kill in three days. It ain’t messin’ around. Because the Vibrio virus likes warmer water, most infections are reported from May to October, and most happen in states along the Gulf coast.

But now, thanks to climate change, the oceans are warming. That means the Vibrio bacteria family, including Vibrio vulnificus, is moving northward. Each year, the number of cases has been rising and the northernmost case of infection moves north by about thirty miles. That’s a clever trap Mother Nature has devised. The temperatures keep going up. We get hotter so we go jump in the ocean – where we contract flesh eating virus through a shaving cut or some such – and die…

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Hey, sorry about all of this. I’m not feeling nearly as dark as these two bits, so far, might indicate. Those were just two stories that caught my eye, this morning. So let’s laugh at a dumbass for a minute. 47 tried to take on a Senate candidate from Michigan. His name is Abdul El-Sayed. Well, that’s the name he uses. His actual, full name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. As far as 47 is concerned, that, alone, is enough to disqualify El-Sayed from running.

So you can just bet that 47 will never, ever, mention the guy without the FULL name. It sounds so, so, Muslim. Recently, 47 decided his best course of action in attacking Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was to attack his marriage. I just don’t get that. If there’s one topic that dumbass should keep his dumbass mouth shut about, it’s other people’s marriages. Donny has never been in any marriage he didn’t defile. I guess maybe he’s trying to turn his weakness into a strength?

Among all of the myriad, countless things 47 absolutely sucks at, marriage is right at the top of the list! To that end, 47 posted a meme that showed two photos. One, possibly Photoshopped, showed 47 and Melanomia standing together, smiling, at some formal function. The other showed the dangerous Muslim and his wife, Jukaku, out for a meal at what looks like a “family style” restaurant. 47 titled his post, “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s” (sic. HE put the apostrophe there, not me.)

Like nearly everyone, El-Sayed is FAR smarter than 47. His response to Donny’s baby-like taunt? “Yeah, he’s right.” Then he highlighted the differences in the two marriages. “One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you – or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things.”

It says something to me about MAGA that 47 knows he can simply pronounce the man’s full name and many of his base will freak out. Also, El-Sayed uses “inshallah” more than they would like, which is not at all. Inshallah is an Arabic word. It means, ‘God willing.’ Yeah, what a horrible thought to express. So, El-Sayed has a scary name. He’s a Muslim. He says scary words. Sadly, all of that actually WILL make it harder for him to get elected.

As to his policies? FAR Too many Americans will just stop at ‘scary words from the scary man with the scary name.’ “Argh! Dark skin! Crap your panties! RUN!!!” I liked it better when America was the home of the brave…