Puschkinia scilloides Blooming through the snow in the middle of summer. West Azerbaijan, Iran Yesterday Elevation 2350

I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial. OK, old enough to be yelling “200 beers for 200 years!” but anyway. It’s so sad. 1976 America had its flaws, plenty of flaws, but now? It’s breaking my heart. I just hope to live long enough to see the decency and optimism we felt in, eg, ‘76, ‘92, ‘08.

The saving grace of this era of fascism is that most of the fascists are shit-smearingly incompetent.

What to do with the freshly torn-down letters from the Kennedy Center? Give them to artists who can then melt them down and make...[the floor is open]

If these scaffold guys are drawing union scale overtime for milling around while DOJ keeps trying to stall tearing that stupid name off the Kennedy Center, yay for the scaffold guys

From my "Pebbles in Cracks" collection - taken in Sept 2022 on the magnificent Djúpalónssandur beach on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in west #Iceland. The pebbles are forced tightly into gaps between the eroded basalt rocks by the endless force of the tides. #GeologyRocks #Geology #AwesomeFoursome

My grandmother, b. 1902, was an old maid at 27. Her worried father gave her a duplex so she could support her unmarried self. She later did marry and her husband now owned the duplex. He immediately sold it. She spoke bitterly about that until her dying day. 65 yrs of rage that never faded. 1/2

Map Lichens (Rhizocarpon geographicum), each with their own territory and boundaries, on this piece of hillside stone. County Donegal, Ireland. Cormacscoast.com walking tours

Here's an interesting river otter sighting for #WorldOtterDay. A mother otter with her piebald pup. Photo by Susan Asaturian.

Joseph George Strutt's Sylva Britannica (1822), a 19th-century exploration in etchings and words of British trees “distinguished for their antiquity, magnitude, or beauty” — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sylva-britannica

Olive Orchard - June 1889 https://botfrens.com/collections/46/contents/3109373

Can't pass up an opportunity to post Kate Beaton:

If you thought hiding under a rock would protect you from interplanetary robots with f'ing lasers on their heads, think again.

My god. I guess evisceration of US govt includes Secret Service. Compare to videos of Reagan, Ford in danger. Once I saw Clinton’s detail on a hill above a prívate residence. It looked like some kind of weird athletic competition: many men each absolutely alert, scanning, and poised to move fast.

Out on my morning walk pointing at Red Winged Blackbirds like they're roadside cows

So yes, there's a little bit of Baltimore and a little bit of half-billion-year old hydrothermal vent in The Starry Night.

Pairing this stone and leaf. #green #textures #spring

I got a ride after minor surgery from “my cousin the cab driver” Nurses rolled their eyes but didn’t stop me. I mean, too bad about your liability risk but I’m a grown adult arranging my transportation and here’s a plausible deniability bone for you, BYE. So sick of ins. cos. messing with our lives.

Protect old hollow trees.

Sunset at the suburban park pond with geese and jumping fish. A lightning storm is incoming. I saw some baby geese but they‘re still mostly eggs on that island, safe from the resident coyote pack. I also saw the resident white heron fly up into a tree, going to bed early I guess.

I was just talking to a friend today about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - new books every month, totally for free, for kids ages 1-5. My son was part of the program - this is a copy of the letter that came with his last book, right after his 5th birthday.

Back before Shazam there were DJs in radio studios, spinning disks and answering the phone! I’ve called DJs for: Radar Love, Home Is In My Head, Sinnerman, Fast Car, Fisherman’s Blues

I just don’t get authors who spent a year or a decade writing a book then consent to their audiobook narrated by a kid reading a book report or a wannabe actor orating Shakespeare on an unmiked stage. So frustrating. I want to listen to your book! Vet your narrators! bc most publishers sure don’t.

Today’s view of bison crossing Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park.

To mark the birthday of Vincent van Gogh—iconic modern artist born today in 1853—a thread of some of my favorite, relatively lesser known works by him. First up, the stunning multi-colored variegation of his Tree Trunks in the Grass, made in last months of his life krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-v...

I cannot stress enough how these are PTA moms and soccer coach dads and I can best describe the vibe as “festively bloodthirsty”

Search your camera roll for “hell”

A coastal Burren wall - built to stop cattle but to allow wind to pass through. You only rebuild walls, knocked by strong Atlantic storms, so many times before you start adapting. County Clare, Ireland. Cormacscoast.com walking tours

First Iditarod team! 🦮

Suburban park at sunset with RAIN incoming! Ducks, geese, red-winged blackbirds (my favorite) and… an ice cream truck. Spring incoming! Oh, and the almond trees are blooming. Yay spring.

i’m usually the first to pour cold lone star on democrats dream of a purple texas, but send money y’all. these assholes are on the run

Human banner! I was right in the center of the “I.” It was a beautiful experience being among other people who care. Love San Francisco. #AbolishICE Gift link www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/h...

Yep. He’s at rock bottom in polling. Those Crazy 27%(tm) will never budge.

Lifecycle. Speulderbos, Netherlands. Nov 2021.

Things I’ve been paid for: - Grate cheese - Go through yr photos at the photofinishing kiosk - Giftwrap knives - Hang at the medical library looking for weird case histories - Mop my mom’s kitchen - Kick a computer to get it started (It worked! Cracked me up every time “Gonna boot yr computer now”)

Protesters chanting "We're not cold, we're not afraid, Minne[apolis/sota] taught us to be brave" in Boston tonight outside Government Center station.

We have citizen patrols checking empty cars like this for children and animals that were left behind in the negative temps because that’s where we are at as a society.

would love to get a thread going of historical analogues to this incredibly strange temporality, i.e. the feeling of a centuries old social structure or set of them just dissolving in front of your eyes, on a minute to minute basis?

“Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively.”

A 12 yo Hmong child in Fresno made this quilt panel for a school project. The quilt was sold at auction, was undated, and most of the panels were, well, 7th-graders… but this one, man. I had to frame it.

I also saw two archosaurs respecting each other in the Everglades

Unleash the lobstahs of war

Notable decades get names, eg the Roaring 20s, The Me Decade. Halfway Into this notable decade we have the winner: The Unsustainably Bananas 20s

Remember everybody, charge your burner phone, make sure there isnt a SIM card in it, enable the PIN, and rig your pictures and videos to save in a folder hidden under an entire gigabyte of dating app dick pics provided by your lady friends. Tomorrow, we scamper forth

It’s the time of year when photographers take stock of what they made during the past 365 days. Here are some of my favorites.

From our archive ~ Abraham Werner's wonderful 19C book Nomenclature of Colours gives swatches of all colour tones, & where to find them in nature. So, for example, Bluish Green is the colour of thrush’s egg, underside of rose leaves, & the mineral beryl mymodernmet.com/werner-nomen...

You literally can't guarantee shit under this administration, friend. She looks like she could be from Antifastan. If she mouths offered a little bit, might as well hem her up and haul her into a detention center for a check. And it'll probably be a brown ICE agent to boot.

CEO of We Make Stuff Corp: “We have just about eliminated labor costs. My stock options are flying! My neighbors are soooo jealous!” Later: “Wait, how come nobody‘s buying our stock? What? Well then how come nobody‘s buying our stuff? Buh?” Later: (Jumps out highrise window like it’s 1929)

Nearly a quarter-century ago, Dick Cheney personally meddled in a govt report finding that Klamath Basin fish actually need, y’know, water—an act that led directly to the catastrophic salmon die-off in 2002 and thus paved dam removal’s way. Now Dick’s dead and the Klamath lives. Makes ya think.

Aside from everything else, RAIN INCOMING! That’s an event to celebrate here in usually-parched California. It was a lovely day to be out cloudwatching. It was even nicer to get home, crack a beer, and check out election returns. Good job, American voters. Sanity incoming!