This Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna) looks pretty, but it's the only flower I can see in any direction! In less infested areas of the same park, there are 6-8 species of native wildflowers visible, and that's just the ones that are already blooming. 🌿 🌱

Judgy Tufted Titmouse says “what the hell are you humans even doing?” #birds #TitmouseTuesday 🌿

So much policy is aimed at "addressing AI fears" rather than mitigating its harms because painting the aversion to those harms as irrational is far cheaper that doing anything

I have now gotten my family in on this year's watching of Jesus Christ Superstar, which of course means we are starting over.

Three important bits of context: 1. White mainliners are generally considered more conservative than their clergy, which is why Trump has often won them by small-ish margins. 2. Per PRRI, white mainliners/non-evangelicals are just as large as white evangelicals at 13% — so softening here matters…

I still want to know who is going to tell the Blessed Virgin she is unqualified to offer the body and blood of Christ she offered to the world.

Male evening grosbeak on the hop 🪶

The universe is a glorious, stunningly beautiful place, and it’s offensive & gross when people produce or share fake space imagery. There’s a video floating around on here pretending to be the night sky viewed from Mars. It’s extremely fake, has been polluting the internet for years. Don’t share it

Montezuma Oropendulas are another amazing bird species we saw in Costa Rica. The male makes a unique gurgling sound and dips down and back up while holding onto the branch, which I did not manage to capture, much to my chagrin. 🪶

For all half-dozen of you following along at home, I am working my way through the 2018 live Jesus Christ Superstar in preparation for Holy Week and Easter. I am now prepared to face Simon Zelotes, who takes some explaining. "Zelotes" is just a transliteration of the Greek, which means "zealot".

And the more recent “smarter” models are getting worse at telling the truth, because the testing systems rate getting a question completely wrong the same as saying “don’t know” (i.e. zero). On average, the Ai model gets better scores by guessing, and it’s trained to optimise its scores.

Evening Coopuccino, keeping an eye on the current shit-starting pigeon #pigeonSky

Hey, #Lutherans, it's almost Holy Week, WHAT HAPPENED TO LENT?!?! ANYWAY, this means it's time for me to listen to my Lent and Holy Week playlist, which consists entirely of the 2018 live version of Jesus Christ Superstar, the one with John Legend.

Hooded Crow / Nebelkrähe (Villasimius, Sardinia) #birdoftheday #grounded #corvids #crows #birds #vögel #krähen

"I haven't used GenAI for writing but it is so embedded in my workflow that, unless I am writing it by hand, I can't promise it hasn't influenced my words." Imagine typing that sentence and then *not* deleting Chat GPT immediately and forever.

You have two choices when marginalized groups inform you of harmful language. You can listen, learn, and adjust yourself to be less harmful. Or, You can say "nuh-uh" and keep harming people. Which one you choose reflects what type of person you are.

I can't. Here are some #birds.

The claim that AI software is inevitable so we may as well embrace it seems to be at odds with the fact that I keep getting ads frantically telling me how good it is and I really need to buy it, NOW, approximately every 45 seconds.

Why are we still illustrating dinosaurs without their feathers? The scientist that led the discovery literally called this thing a Hell Heron.

CIDRAP Op-Ed: The FDA refused to review a flu vaccine, contrary to evidence. Now the agency reversed itself @jakescottMD The latest reversal is welcome, but the episode of first denying Moderna review of its mRNA flu vaccine deserves close examination Photo: Gary Lee/Flickr cc

Jay of the day #birds

A fluffy Long-tailed Tit brightening up a chilly winter morning. #birds

Hey fam, it’s us! “…Defend Public Health filed an amicus brief, arguing that the changes to the vaccine schedule…did not follow best practices for vaccine policy and that HHS’s statements that the changes would increase trust in vaccines and its comparisons to peer nations were faulty”.

!FRACAS! I don't know what was going on here but they really were at it hammer and tongs! Even the chick joined in! Talk about #fail to get along with the neighbours Rockhopper #Penguin being #DramaQueens #BirdOfTheDay #Birds #BirdsSeenIn2026 #FalklandIslands #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #FebruArty2026

More like “forced” into, when AI is added to our existing software, email, spell check, web browsers and operating systems. It is extremely difficult to disable. It’s also who we are forced to talk to when reaching out to customer service or, increasingly, even our own local government.

because I need to heal, here's the very touching moment when ilia malinin congratulated mikhail shaidorov on winning gold seconds after his own dream was crushed #MilanoCortina2026 #figureskating

🪶 Good advice from an Anna's Hummingbird.

I very seldom see canvasbacks, and when I do, they’re typically far away. But this guy inexplicably decided to grant me a close look a few weeks back. #birds #🪶 #nature #ducks #birding #birdphotography #wildlifephotography

Seeing negativity about Lindsey Vonn that she shouldn’t have competed due to her age and it was hubris and she shouldn’t have been skiing on an injury, but: - that’s ableist and ageist - she was medically cleared - she hooked the gate, extremely common error and totally unrelated to her ACL or age

#BirdOfTheDay theme for today from @robcrank68.bsky.social is #StareDown, and the alt theme is #Gulls. Here's a disgruntled Grackle who was a clear winner in the stare down contest #Birds #Grackle #WetlandBirds

I have yet to see any evidence that there is a market for AI-generated books outside of people being tricked into thinking they are not AI-generated books. AKA, it is a project of scamming and deceiving people, and really should be treated as fraud

We have some great birds in #Shropshire at the moment: the Crudgington Moor floods host the largest group of Russian White-fronted Geese in the county in more than 40 years; on the "Leighton Loops" were five Barnacle Geese. Both species are county rarities. And it didn't rain! #ShropshireBirding

This gorgeous Lark Bunting flew all the way from, like, southern Texas to north-central Ohio because, idk, maybe she's had it up to here with other Lark Buntings? I assume it's the bird equivalent to when I say I'm moving to Mars to get away from people. #birds 🪶

Maybe a good time for this as well with norovirus making headlines. I made this for our bathroom and a few “lucky” friends also got one as a gift. As I’ve said before, it’s astonishing that I even have any friends at all.

Coo coo

I promised Graham @oldmanrambling.bsky.social I would post a Robin a day for a week in memory of his beloved wife, Janet. As she loved Roberto who is their little garden visitor. So for the third day #WinterRobin #ForJanet #birds #EastCoastKin

À propos of nothing in particular, one of the reasons that verbal and emotional bullying is difficult to stop in schools is that bullies are really good at twisting language, so that if the victim reports it to the teacher, it sounds like they are overreacting to something innocuous.

Greenland is Inuit Land. US & Europe playing tug of war with Kalaallit Nunaat, it will be Indigenous people who suffer most. Colonization is not a distant history. Under a colonial system built on white supremacy violence never disappears it only reiterates itself, sometimes dressed up differently.

Blue buttons jellies float at the oceans surface, like little animal flowers, living between sea and sky. There are millions of them out there right now, and most will live their whole lives without even being seen by a human. Despite the hard things, the world is still wondrous.

Family history of cancer linked to increased risk of long COVID Pre-existing conditions, genetic susceptibility, immune dysregulation, or environmental exposures may play a role. www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...

Welp, it's certainly morning. 🪶

In olden days people saw Heron as some of the saddest, wretched, depressed creatures. Perhaps they just saw themselves reflected? Today people who stop to watch describe us as meditating, thoughtful, wise, and seeing the world better than most. Again, reflections. 💙 (1804)

The only thing I will say about the slip-and-fall video is that expecting the dark pavement to be easier to walk on than the frosty-looking pavement is a rookie mistake.

This juxtaposition of scary news (flu, AI) with my pal @nickantonson.bsky.social’s woodpecker research is cracking me up It’s an excellent representation of how my brain is constantly balancing the horrors with awesome bird facts

I 💛 sandwich terns #birdoftheday #birds

Guess it feels counter-intuitive to some people to copy text of any text in an image into alt text but a blind person and those with poor vision actually need that information to appreciate fully what you are posting. Just putting "photo of a sign" is not doing what you think it's doing lolsob

Good morning! 🪶

On pavements and in parks, the feral pigeon (Columba livia domestica) reigns supreme, many of the birds having descended from the refugees from abandoned dovecotes of the past. 🤎 #BirdOfTheDay #Grounded #pigeons #photography #EastCoastKin

Good article by Julia, but I would add, don’t just let us be, HELP. Wear a mask in places where high risk people have to be, so you aren’t *contributing* to their risk. This is ground zero of a you’re either helping or hurting situation.