Daily Vanilla watching the Oscars

Started/going

Want to go visit the national parks this year? Sorry. The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Considering how awful this flu season is…well the first Trump administration didn’t want to test for COVID because the numbers would go up if we did.

If there’s a Disease X outbreak in the next four (or more?) years we literally will be flying blind, we just fired the people who would have tracked it

Wow, we’re having a great night of aurora so far here in Fairbanks! Awesome formations in the sky… these photos were captured just a few minutes ago!

Impact of NIH cut starting to sink in Here's Sen. Katie Britt urging "a smart, targeted approach" in order to protect important research at UA-Birmingham, a top NIH recipient Also, as article notes, the state's largest employer www.al.com/news/2025/02...

Quintessential Vanilla morning

free course on navigating the power and shortcomings of LLMs

Texas confirms measles outbreak as Georgia reports more cases Also, the CDC today said it has received reports of 14 cases so far this year from 5 jurisdictions. www.cidrap.umn.edu/m...

Timeline cleanse/your moment of Zen: This is from a few years ago when we had more snow than we do right now. It was the first time Lucy had ever seen more than a dusting, and she was *overjoyed*. (Video features a large fluffy black/tan husky mix rolling around happily in about 4in. of snow.)

Landmark studies track source of Indo-European languages spoken by 40% of world 🧬 news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

He’s mad that the dog is allowed to go out all the time but not him

An enchanting Squirrel of the Day for February 5, 2025 #sqrlpix

BREAKING | The universe could undergo a 'catastrophic change' that could alter absolutely everything, quantum machine shows

Interested in how ants navigate? Have a look at our new review in Current Biology! This piece has resulted from a collaboration with Tom Collett, Paul Graham. Open access: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F... @ercresearch.bsky.social @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social

Good morning Albuquerque, New Mexico!

Are the next 4 years really going to be logging on everyday to sentences like "a 19 year old doge intern called Big Balls has your social security number" because I'm already at capacity for this sort of thing

It's kind of fun that the three main varieties of kale represent the three types of surface geometry (negatively curved, positively curved, and flat).

This amounts to the most significant data leak in cyber history. Private individuals in the data business now have access to your Social Security information. This violates privacy laws in every state. Hopefully, state AGs will file suit & pursue criminal charges. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/u...

Red state alcohol is currently being removed at B.C. Liquor store in Victoria. #bcpoli

Waiting for my computer to update before doing some work so I posted a “Find Vanilla” picture from earlier today.

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

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Daily Vanilla (sniffing the snowy lawn at sunrise)

Loads of spelling mistakes in this.

Funny I’m at Brigham and Women’s and it is so incredibly busy. For whatever reason all the years I worked here I never spent much time in the admitting or lobby in the middle of the day.

lack of qualifications include numerous reports of him being often falling down drunk including at work events?

Good morning

Daily Vanilla

Daily Vanilla

I guess I’m at that point in my career where I’m purposefully assigning out of print earlier editions rather than the newest edition of textbooks because they’re “better.”

Vanilla loves the cold. It’s 28 degrees.

It’s funny how all anti-aging skin products are just slowly dissolving your skin

Looks like Texas-Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.

Manhattan out the window

Last week

Remarkable images taken by automatic cameras in the Brazilian rainforest reveal an isolated community that appears to be thriving despite pressure from ranchers and illegal encroachment into the Amazon 🇧🇷 www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I was taking nice portrait mode shots of parm and he attacked

Learned the other day there are at least a half dozen celebrity/influencer meme coin rug pulls like this. Never been easier to scam people out of their money

Sad music night: (add yours) youtu.be/9RTe2ptJlsg?...

A mom just came in SO EXCITED to find a map store bc her son would LOVE it. She tries to be coy. "My son is... Really into maps. Real special kid." I'm like, ma'am, this is a map store. Half my customers are on the spectrum. I have a trains and transit section. You're among friends.

37 years ago today I joined the staff of Nature. Since then we've had hobbits, fish with legs, dinosaurs with feathers, Neanderthals with DNA, and more than 5,000 exoplanets when before there were none. I do not believe there is a causal relationship between any of these things.

The old, mature bald cypress trees in Caddo Lake are roughly 600 years old, meaning they were big, mature trees when the Alamo fell. But bald cypress trees can live much longer --- 2600+ years. Shown here: bald cypress trees in Caddo Lake. One of my own photos, taken in 2010.

Oh my goodness that’s a lot of posters!!!