In 2011, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania went bankrupt. Municipally bankrupt. The city is broke, tapped, in penury, scraping by on nada. Personal bankruptcy is tragic, and corporate bankruptcy is financially significant, but there is something especially pitiful about municipal bankruptcies. An entire city of thousands, whose leadership has failed them. It's like watching a scrappy but flailing football team losing in a particularly bloody way.

On February 19 of this year, there was an avalanche in the Tunnel Creek drainage area of Washington's Stevens Pass ski area. Three skiers were killed. Tragic, but not extraordinary: over the past decade, an average of 25 people per year have been killed in the US in avalanches. In 2011, the death count was 34.

It only took a handful of freak killer storms devastating our economic and cultural capitals for Americans to get real about the perils of global warming. You know who is the most interested in figuring out exactly how bad global warming will be? The people with all the money, who have the most to lose. That is a good reason to tremble in fear at this new World Bank forecast.

Let's all give a hand to New York's MTA, for their work after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Really. They had to get an entire system back on line, despite extensive damage and heavy public pressure, and they did it. Let's just take a moment to acknowledge the hard work of all those workers who got down in dark, flooded tunnels and fixed that whole mess so this city could get moving again. We salute you all. This moment in time represents the most public good will the notoriously poorly managed MTA has had in many years.

For New Yorkers:

All of the news on CNN this morning was about Hurricane Isaac. On NBC, too. And Fox News, for the most part. Yes, the storm has already screwed the Republican convention in so very many ways. But here today, in (sunny!) Tampa, as journalists stream into our media holding pen like so many wayward Katrina refugees, comes the final indignity: this pseudoevent threatens to be completely upstaged by a real event.

This drought is bad for weed but good for wine. What a bourgeois drought.

Try not to let this devastating drought and historic heat wave get you down; soon, we'll have a succession of hurricanes to cool us all off.

A pickup truck—not a van, or a semi truck, or a panel truck, but a pickup truck—ran off the road and crashed into roadside trees in Goliad County, Texas Sunday night. The death toll from this single wreck: 14 people. Fourteen dead people, in one crash.

We already know the U.S is in a drought. But who gives a shit, right? Well, based on our insatiable desire for meat/cheese-based everything, a whole lot of us will start caring soon: dairy and meat prices are about to go way up.

For centuries, Americans have strutted about boldly as masters of our natural domains. Forest? Clear it. River? Dam it. Lake? Drain it. Endangered species? See if it is tasty when covered in Cheez™. We have comported ourselves as gods, and expected that the rest of the world would bow to our haughty demands. So this summer, as your lawn withers and your faucets run dry and your neighbors arm themselves for the coming Water Wars, rest assured: we deserve this drought.

A three-alarm fire broke out at South Street Seaport on Pier 17 this afternoon.

Sure, it's true, cities and counties from Alabama to California have given up and declared bankruptcy due to this ongoing Recesssion of Doom. Hell, San Bernardino just declared bankruptcy yesterday. But those cities are quitters. They've taken themselves out of contention, the losers. For an American city that is still trying to survive financially, and failing miserably, there is no better example than Scranton, PA—the jewel of Lackawanna County.

No matter how terrible the Colorado fires sound, a firsthand account is even more harrowing.

Several states are reporting deaths, power outages, and record-breaking temperatures as summer storms ravage the Mid-Atlantic area of the country.

The recent New York Times article about how a different random Swede mans Sweden's official Twitter account every week filled us with wonder: Imagine a country where ordinary citizens can be trusted to represent the entire nation on the world stage! So, we loaded up @Sweden this morning to check out this wonderful experiment in democratic public relations and... oh. She's talking about Jews.

Earlier tonight, there were reports of a yacht explosion off the coast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey: 21 passengers, 9 of them badly burned, had apparently escaped into life boats.

The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire has burned 241,701 acres of the Gila National Forest, making it the largest fire in New Mexico history. It's also been incredibly difficult to fight against, but firefighters are now reporting that it is 17 percent contained.

Yet another earthquake hit the Emilia Romagna region of Italy on Tuesday morning, killing at least ten people around Modena and burying several others in rubble. Last Sunday, a 6.0 magnitude quake killed seven and destroyed 300,000 wheels of cheese; several historic buildings in Cavezzo and other towns have since collapsed.

It's been more than a year since the Japanese tusnami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the clean-up continues. But a bit of background radiation has not stopped a crew of Japanese hipsters from doing their hip business in the area. They've formed the "Gamma Watch Squadron," the world's coolest nuclear watchdogs.