Just an #EasternPhoebe being tiny at Beechwood Farm Nature Reserve #birds #pittsburgh

A few mornings ago I got to hang out with this #RedTailedHawk hunter, mistook this #AmericanGoldenPlover for a sandpiper, and had this #BlueJay pose for me, all in one walk #birds #Pittsburgh

I hung out in the park with this absolute stunner a few days ago #RedTailedHawk #AlleghenyRiver

Check out the paint job on this dragonfly!

This groundhog looks like me every time I watch the news

Double-Crested Cormorants under the Highland Park Bridge #birds

I think I found a Northern Flicker nest #birds

So I’m photographing this Great Blue Heron in the water and then I turn around to find another one looming in a treetop far above me. I jumped!

The Refaat Alareer Camp - by The Sameer Project chuffed.org/project/1133.... Please give generously.

There is only one good surveillance app and it’s the Merlin bird app.

I saw this Red-Tailed hawk twice yesterday. The Red-Winged Blackbirds were dive-bombing him relentlessly #birds #pittsburgh #aspinwall

I’ve been off social media lately for the sake of my mental health, but I finally saw (not just heard) a rose-breasted grosbeak and a wood thrush in the same trip to the dog park, and I needed to let you all know. It was cool. #TouchingGrass #birds

It’s a gorgeous warm May evening at the height of migration season in our corner of Appalachia, and all sorts of #birds are passing through #AlleghenyRiver #FlightWeek

A severe thunderstorm blasted through WPA Tuesday, leaving damaged buildings, felled trees and powerlines, and causing the deaths of at least 2 individuals. While it took just minutes for the storm to rage here, it may take up to a week for utility service to be fully restored for many residents.

Great blue herons! #birds #birbs

Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play... Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. poets.org/poem/septemb...

Been getting into #birds as a way of coping with (gestures broadly) all this and wow, do binoculars ever make a difference. Life list is up to 71 species! New this week: 3 kinds of sparrows and a wild turkey. Dog loves the extra walks. He’ll be smelling some scent trail while I look up.

Tonight I made a stained-glass suncatcher at @pghglasscenter.bsky.social! Bought the class way back on Black Friday as a present for Future Sarah. It was great—hoping to take the 8wk course someday. They do great work over there and are so welcoming. #GlassArt #Pittsburgh #Joymaxing

I had a joke about Theseus, but that ship has sailed

"Hundreds of military children who are students at Defense Department schools across the globe walked out of class to protest book bans, curriculum changes and restrictions on extracurricular activities that have resulted from Trump's crackdown on diversity." www.military.com/daily-news/2...

You know who we’re talking about here.

Withholding gender-affirming care is illegal in Pittsburgh, if we're still doing that whole rule-of-law thing #ProtectTransKids

About that #fencing transphobe…

I wrote about this a bit in my last book but it really shakes me that a defining feature of this catastrophic era is that we just keep going to work. We work through pandemics, we work through natural disasters, we work through economic calamity, we work through coups, we work, we work, we work.

What a summary of the anti-trans movement: March 23rd: female fencer competes in mixed-gender event, beating several male competitors, finishing 8th March 30th: same fencer films herself telling trans competitor “I am refusing to fence you, because I am a woman and you are a man,” collects $5000

The 2025 Terzani Prize was awarded in memory of the 210 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza. The award declaration: “Never in history has the toll paid by journalism been so heavy, in flagrant violation of humanitarian law and freedom of the press”. 🇮🇹🇵🇸

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 96: Nothing you write is ever wasted. It’s all part of your training. That’s why you should never feel bad about the work you cut, or the hours you spend on work that stays unpublished. Every part of the process makes you a stronger writer.

"why is any of this happening" is a question largely answered by my book btw!!!! in case you were wondering!!! bookshop.org/p/books/wild...

I know high profile political targets On Here aren't beating down my door for advice necessarily, but if you are for any reason potentially on the radar of the MAGA or other far right as a dissident, consider a Eufy door camera and door chain, if you can afford it.

New Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff 🇫🇷 Margaret talks with Allison Raskin about the antifascist asylum in France that armed partisans and reinvented psychiatry. @margaret.bsky.social @whysophiewhy.bsky.social www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...

BREAKING — The family abducted by ICE is returning home, per email from Sackets Harbor Superintendent:

An extraordinary separate dissent from Justice Jackson accuses the majority of trying to pass off its dirty work under the cover of the shadow docket and explicitly invokes Korematsu, the Japanese internment case. Wow. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

How can we describe the politics of the Trump regime? What does Trump’s track record tell us about how his administration might develop? Drawing on the far-right histories of Mussolini and Hitler in the 1920s and 30s, @davidkr.bsky.social provides an in-depth analysis. revsoc21.uk/2025/04/07/t...

"When we say Musk is a fascist, we’re saying we won’t let the cruelty return. Let fascism stay locked up in the past. We won’t let Musk, or Trump, take us back." livesrunning.wordpress.com/2025/04/05/s...

This is bad or whatever, but we need to lead every discussion on this with the fact that it doesn’t matter what you do, you shouldn’t be sent to a foreign gulag from where you can never return by the US government!

Some days you just gotta photograph, trace, and digitally watercolor the neighborhood flowers #joymaxing #copingskills

Everyone raised on the AP Style Guide is having a moment with this one, thank you @ellecordova.bsky.social

Excellent turnout for “Hands Off” Heard and McDonald Islands!

God bless scrappy little low-budget high-school theater productions. They save lives. (And yes, I absolutely will pay $12 to come see your kid’s performance as Townsperson #2.)

This fencing event was the cherry blossom open that takes place every year in Maryland. It’s an OPEN, meaning folks fence off against everyone of all ages and it’s not divided by gender. My brother made a grown woman cry at this event one year when he fenced her.

A harrowing story of a USAID employee who was stranded in the the Democratic Republic of the Congo: “Carol feels a sense of deep betrayal, loss and anger. Our own government has treated her and the entire USAID workforce as if they were criminals.” www.thebulwark.com/p/abandoned-...

Trans rights are human rights and you shouldn’t ever “moderate” on people’s right to exist.

One by one www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

“Starting in the early 1600s, [LANDOWNERS] in the United States began bringing [UNPAID INTERNS] from [THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN], to work on their farms.” The interns “[WERE GIVEN FOOD, LODGING, AND VALUABLE JOB EXPERIENCE THAT WOULD LOOK GREAT ON THEIR RÉSUMÉS].”

One of many moments in Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” that will stop you in your tracks.

This report should break something in all of us. 15,613 children. The first 27 pages of the report list children whose ages are 0. 26% were under the age of 5

Post a warning

without encouraging any theorizing beyond the evidence available this is a story people should keep an eye on

We saw the #Polkamaniacs! They were indeed zany to the max. And they gave us all birthday cake! #joymaxing #livemusic #blawnox #pittsburgh #yinzers

This is so evil www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/u...