It’s Fat Bear Week!

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Bear 747- 2022 Fat Bear Week Champion – Photo courtesy of L. Law

Fat Bear Week – Katmai National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

How it works

Rangers create a tournament style bracket pitting individual bears against each other. The public then votes to see who will advance each round. Voting takes place over several days on www.fatbearweek.org. People may vote using any criteria they see fit. In the end, one bear will reign supreme.

2023 Fat Bear Week

This year, Fat Bear Week starts on October 4 and concludes on Fat Bear Tuesday, October 10. In addition to voting during this week-long tournament, there will be a series of online chats on explore.org featuring Mike Fitz, explore.org’s resident naturalist, and rangers from Katmai. These chats focus on both the individual bears and Katmai’s healthy ecosystem. Throughout the season, you can also tune in to the explore.org bear cams, which offer unprecedented access to the lives of the bears of Brooks River. There are also special live events on a variety of topics hosted weekly throughout the season.

Who’s who in the bracket? We will reveal the bracket live here at 3 PM AKDT/7 PM EDT on October 2.

More photos can be found on Katmai’s Flickr site.

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44 thoughts on “It’s Fat Bear Week!”

  1. starts slow but gets more lively

    What is Fat Bear Week? We’re here to tell you. Get the scoop on everything Fat Bear Week as we gear up for the big tournament with Mike Fitz and Brian Byrd. – Fat Bear Week Dates – How and when to vote – Fat Bear Week history – Upcoming Fat Bear Week live events

  2. wiki:

    The Bare Necessities” is a jazz song, written by Terry Gilkyson, from Disney’s 1967 animated feature film The Jungle Book, sung by Phil Harris as Baloo and Bruce Reitherman as Mowgli.
    Originally, it was written for an earlier draft of the movie that was never produced.     The Sherman Brothers, who wrote the other songs of the film, kept this as the only song used from the previous version. A reprise of the song was sung by Sebastian Cabot as Bagheera and Phil Harris as Baloo at the end of the film. Van Dyke Parks worked on the arrangement. The song was also sung by Louis Armstrong. In 1967, “The Bare Necessities” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost to “Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Dolittle. A hip-hop version of the song performed by Lou Rawls was used as the theme song for Jungle Cubs.

  3. bare necessities addressed in other news this morning

    the guardian on ukraine

    EU foreign ministers will consider Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace plan at a historic meeting in Kyiv this morning.
    The ministers, who rarely meet outside the confines of the territory of the EU, takes place amid concerns over cracks in US funding for the war and after a pro-Russian populist party won the most votes in an election in Slovakia on Saturday.
    Speaking on the way into the summit, the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, did not mention either issue but underlined the importance of solidarity in Europe.
    “It is about [the] stability and predictability of the world. Because this war is having deep consequences for the whole world. But for us Europeans, it’s an existential threat. Maybe it’s not being seen like this for everybody around the world. But for us, Europeans, allow me to repeat it. It’s an existential threat,” he said.
    Sources say the meeting will focus on all aspects of “EU support to Ukraine, with particular focus on continued military assistance, peace efforts and EU accession”.
    Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan has been discussed by national security representatives twice in the past year, but not at this level.
    Joe Biden vowed to stand by Ukraine after the passing of a stopgap bill on Saturday. The bill extended government funding for 45 days in order to avert a US government shutdown, but did not include aid for Kyiv.

    The Guardian on loser guy

    Just a few miles south of Trump Tower in New York City, a judge on Monday will hear allegations of fraud within the Trump Organization in a trial that could see Donald Trump and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and that has already threatened to end his business career in the city where it started.
    [continues]

  4. Matt Gaetz is no Joe McCarthy, but he's trying | Bill Cotterell

     

    Matt Gaetz says he will attempt to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership this week | CNN Politics

    Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” the Florida Republican said he intends to file a motion to vacate this week, which would force a vote on whether McCarthy will keep his job.
    “Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January, and since then he’s been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement,” Gaetz said Sunday. “This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we set up is a last straw.”
    He added, “I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that will be trustworthy.”
    […]
    McCarthy’s response to Gaetz later Sunday was straightforward, telling the Floridian to “bring it on.”
    “That’s nothing new,” McCarthy said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
    [continues]

  8. craig, you may have been voting on the fat bear Jr contest which I think closed last week.  can’t imagine they would close 2023 main contest down before it even started unless they were jumping the gun because of the expected gov. shutdown.

  9. That was it, Pat. Will check further. Getting ready for Pumpkin’s trial. He wrote his opening statement after midnight:

    Donald J. Trump

    @realDonaldTrump

    Oct 02, 2023, 12:50 AM

    Judge Engoron’s Valuation of Mar-a-Lago, the most spectacular property in Palm Beach, Florida, IS FRAUDULENT! He states a value of 18 Million Dollars, knowing full well that it is worth, perhaps, 50 to 100 times that amount. Engoron is working diligently to misrepresent me, and my net worth, which is substantially MORE than is shown on my fully “disclaimed” Financial Statements. I have not even included my most valuable asset – BRAND! He should resign from the “Bench” and be sanctioned by the Courts for his abuse of power, and his intentional and criminal interference with the Presidential Election of 2024, of which I am leading all candidates, both Republican & Democrat, by significant margins. Likewise, Letitia James should resign for purposeful and criminal Election Interference. She is fully aware that Mar-a-Lago, and other assets, are worth much more than what she is claiming. Both of these Democrat Operatives are a disgrace to New York, and to the United States of America!

  12. mal an ego prop assesm’t according to the good judge as reported in newsweek:

    He wrote that while the Palm Beach County assessor had appraised Mar-a-Lago’s market value to be between $18 million and $27.6 million,…

    question is will they now raise the prop taxes on it if it’s worth as much as loser guy claims.

  14. It’s great, this judge is gonna be fun…

    NEW YORK (AP) — He’s driven a taxi cab, played in a band and protested the Vietnam War. As a New York City judge, Arthur Engoron has resolved hundreds of disputes, deciding everything from zoning and free speech issues to a custody fight over a dog named “Stevie.”

    Now, in the twilight of a distinguished two-decade career on the bench, the erudite, Ivy League-educated judge is presiding over his biggest case yet: deciding the future of former President Donald Trump’s real estate empire.

     

  15. Fat Bear Week – I didn’t realize it had already come back around. Note to self – Autumnal Equinox – Fat bear week.
    Oh, and Dumbass’ comments on the good Judge’s evaluation of his FL property – It was the fucking low end of of the Palm Beach County assessor’s value of it, which as I understand it has almost nothing to do with the finding of summary judgment rendered last week (or was it week before last –  I lose track).  In WV Assessment value is based on fair market value x .6. In FL it is .98. Let’s see if the PBC Assessor believes him and adjusts the assessment to the lower value of 50 x $18M.  (BTW, if the property enjoys the homestead exemption he or she can’t).  At least Dumbass can rest easy – he’ll get the senior deduction.

  18. I LOVE bears…  except when they take down my bird feeders.  But that’s usually because I was tempting fate in early spring and was too lazy to start taking them into my garage at night.
     
    Bluebronc…  hope you feel better very soon.
     
    oh yeah… and this fight as to who gets to be (or remain) speaker….    DELICIOUS!

  22. Looks as though every hair is not necessarily in place.  
    But I’d like to know his tailor.   

  26. jamie, thanks for that link.  seems the newest newbie in critterville hits all the bases  and according to that story she’s conveniently already in the neighborhood so can start work immediately:

    “As the first Black lesbian to represent California in the United States Senate, Laphonza brings a compelling voice for abortion rights, the labor movement and civil rights into Congress. Her leadership is a testament to the legacy of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s strong record of pro-LGBTQ+ support,” Robinson said.
    Butler’s professional career has been rooted in California, where she led SEIU Local 2015, the largest union in the state. She has also been a longtime ally of Vice President Kamala Harris, a member of the University of California Board of Regents and the director of public policy and campaigns in North America for Airbnb.
    Butler currently lives in Maryland, but, the governor’s office said, she owns a home in California and will switch her voter registration.

  27. a bit of grumping on the butler pick

    sacbee:

    Butler, a longtime California resident and homeowner, currently lives in Maryland. The U.S. Constitution requires those elected to the Senate to live in the state they represent. The governor’s office said Butler, who still owns a home in California, will switch her voter registration before she is sworn in. While some groups cheered the governor’s selection, others blasted Newsom for appointing “Maryland’s 3rd US Senator.”

    “Out of 40 million California residents, Gavin Newsom seriously couldn’t find one to serve in the Senate?” California Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher said in a statement. “Californians deserve real representation, not a political favor for a well-connected campaign operative who doesn’t even live here.”

  28. John Kelly just dropped a bomb on his former boss via Jake Tapper:

    “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

    “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

    “There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

  30. So,  was Delulu Donald’s  rant about his upcoming day stating that  he actually grossly undervalued Mar-a-Ego to avoid property tax?    (It was overvalued, of course, but his argument creates another scenario for tax fraud.)

    ps – I do believe that smirking, d-bag of an attorney sitting next to Orange Adolf  got his money up front.

    pps – I think Donny must be worried about an actual weigh-in when he’s found guilty and processed in Georgia; his face looks less fat.

  31. What has happened to the evening news?   Stories that would barely make the local news are not newsworthy nationally.  Half of the newscast is just weather videos, weird stuff caught on doorbell cameras,  and reminders to play Powerball.  

  32. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/world/annular-solar-eclipse-october-2023-preview-scn/index.html

    October 14th:

    “The annular solar eclipse will begin in the United States at 9:13 a.m. PT (12:13 p.m. ET) and pass from the Oregon coast to Texas’ Gulf Coast, appearing in Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas. The lunar shadow will also be visible in parts of California, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona. The eclipse will end in the US at 12:03 p.m. CT (1:03 p.m. ET).”

  33. BID : the one thing these days I agree with Bill Maher is the evening newscasts are worthless. I don’t see how these big anchors earn their keep. 

  35. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/04/trump-rewriting-gop-rules-00109842

    And yet, the dumbass who stared directly at a solar eclipse will be the GOP nominee.

    “He who controls the rules controls the process. You control process, you win,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, a longtime political operative steeped in convention and party procedures. “We’re basically guarding our flanks. We’re stopping any monkey business if they want to do it like Cruz did in 2016.”

    “…the executive committee of the California GOP overwhelmingly adopted rules that Trump’s team supported — awarding all of the state’s delegates to the candidate who secures more than half of the statewide vote, which Trump campaign aides believe he will do.”

    “Cuccinelli, who helped orchestrate the Cruz 2016 convention effort, says he might have seen this coming. When he served in the Trump administration, he recalled, the president would rib him about how he leveraged state party rules to yield delegates for Cruz in states Trump had won.
    “Where the hell are my delegates? Cuccinelli took them from me!” Trump would joke.

    “In Louisiana, they’ve bound delegates to support the state’s nominee for two ballots at the convention, a policy they’re also pushing in Massachusetts and Colorado — the latter of which will vote on the rules this weekend.”

    “In Idaho and Nevada, they persuaded Republicans to ditch the states’ primary systems in favor of caucuses, which tend to advantage candidates (like Trump) who have the most support from hardcore base activists.”

  36. Ivy – The big eclipse comes in April – map in link.

    https://www.planetary.org/articles/tips-for-2024-total-solar-eclipse

    “THE PATH OF TOTALITY The total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 begins in the Pacific Ocean and crosses through Mexico, the United States, and Canada before ending in the Atlantic Ocean. In the U.S., the path of totality — the portion of the eclipse that will see the darkest part of the Moon’s shadow — is a ribbon approximately 185 kilometers (115 miles) wide, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.”

  38. Ivy – Yeah, David Muir at ABC always sounds like his hair is on fire when he lists the night’s stories at the top of the show.  
     
    LATE NIGHT IS BACK TONIGHT!  Those shows actually do a better job of covering what’s actually going on in the world. 

  39. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/how-matt-gaetz-used-daddys-money-to-become-trumps-favorite-congressman/

    Baby Gaetz – LOL

    “How Matt Gaetz Used Daddy’s Money to Become Trump’s Favorite Congressman
    Like the president, the Florida Republican rode family connections, unorthodox real estate deals, and trolling to political fame.”

    “Matt Gaetz is living proof that Veep was less parody and more prophecy,” says Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican political strategist and a Trump critic. “To some degree, he’s a character in the grandest reality show of all. He exists at the hinge of reality and alternate reality.”

    “The Gaetzes were conservative and religious, as was the surrounding community. (Two abortion doctors were murdered in the area during Gaetz’s childhood.) Matt’s mom suffered life-threatening complications while pregnant with his younger sister but opted not to have an abortion and was partially paralyzed as a result.”

    “…Matt is known in his district as Baby Gaetz. “Matt would be an assistant manager at Walmart if it weren’t for his father,” says Steven Specht, a Democrat who ran against Gaetz for Congress in 2016.

    “In the late 1970s, his father co-founded a nonprofit hospice company that successfully lobbied Congress to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover its services. Once the public money started flowing, the nonprofit became a for-profit corporation, Vitas, that grew into the country’s largest hospice care provider.”

    “In 2004, Don Gaetz and his partners cashed in, selling the hospice company to the parent company of the plumbing behemoth Roto-Rooter for $400 million. When he ran for state Senate two years later, Don had a net worth of $25 million. In 2013, the Justice Department sued Vitas, alleging that between 2002 and 2013, the company had defrauded Medicare by filing false claims for services never provided or for patients who weren’t terminally ill.”

    Another family that seems to be fraudsters and grifters; shady deals and questionable campaign finance transactions. Oh, yeah, and Matty likes ‘em young.

  40. Two of Dumbass’ lawyers stuck with $187K in fees for bringing meritless suit on behalf of Dumbass told by SCOTUS to fuck off. Pity.

  41. the guardian:

    Two people and their dog have been killed in a rare grizzly bear attack in Canada’s Banff national park, and the bear was later killed by park rangers.
    […]
    Experts say bears typically leave the area after a “defensive” attack, including when they are startled by humans. But when the Parks Canada team arrived, they found the bear still with the victims. Predatory attacks are exceedingly rare.
    Biologists will conduct a necropsy of the bear and then Parks Canada will complete a forensic investigation of the site to determine what might have happened to the victims.
    Kim Titchener, a friend of the victims’ family and the founder of Bear Safety and More, said that in the autumn, bears enter a state known as “hyperphagia” and have an increased appetite ahead of the winter hibernation. The heavy feeding by bears, popularized by “Fat Bear Week” is their final attempt to amass enough fat before winter.
    […]
    Titchener said while the seasons can play a role in bear behaviour, the “sheer number” of people heading outdoors is by far the biggest factor of an increase in human-bear encounters.
    “There are only 60 grizzly bears in Banff and less than 1,000 in Alberta. They’re a threatened species. People say we have too many bears. No – we have too many people,” said Titchener, adding that the majority of those headed into the backcountry don’t take bear safety courses.
    “Half the time when people get attacked by carnivores, they’re doing something that’s risky or they don’t have the right gear. But at times, and I suspect this was the case, you have something tragic where it’s the wrong place, wrong time.”

  42. And Matt Gaetz tries to tell Kev to fuck off. Be interesting to see what my guys (& gals) in the HoR do. If it was me I’d be torn – screw Kev or make Matt look like the asshole he is. That second option would be very tempting and satisfying, but in the end we’d end up with Kev. That’s not so satisfying. 

  43. Maybe the Repugz who voted to not shut down the government would like some relative normalcy and be willing to vote for a Dem.  Yeah, that puts all of them in the chopping block for their next election, but if they care about our country at all, they would do it and rebrand themselves as the real Republicans.  They need to distance themselves from Putz Gaetz and the rest of the free-dumb caca who are nothing more than fascist asshats. 

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