Thomas Jefferson on the gospels: “We find [in the gospels] . . matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas . . .” (From a letter to John Adams)

This bird flu investigation is well worth your time. I got a little peek behind the curtain into the data analysis and it's truly impressive work from @natlash.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/bird...

A very good piece of environmental justice reporting about a very bad problem. (Gift link)

Africa has the highest fertility rates in the world — the continent’s human population has more than tripled since 1979, to around 1.5 billion today, and is projected to more than double again by 2070. This is bad news for elephants, very large-bodied mammals that require vast tracts of wilderness.

“The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.” Yup. The Sierra Club officially sucks now. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

The Executive is laying taxes without the consent of Congress. The Executive is spending money without the consent of Congress. Other than that, everything is totes normal.

If the Democratic Party were a functional, reasonable party, Trump never could have won. It’s not sufficient to say, “The voters are just bad.” A country doesn’t elect a demagogue like Trump without major preexisting dysfunction, and the Democratic Party is part of the problem.

One of the most important stories of this fire season -- how USFS repeatedly dragged it's feet every step of the way to prevent prescribed burning in the Teakettle Forest, which as a result burned to a crisp in the Garnet fire. An avoidable tragedy. 🌎 fresnoland.org/2025/10/14/g...

Shout out to @motherjones.com for republishing this and adding the alt title. Trump Team’s Plans to Exploit Public Lands Follow the Blueprint of Reagan’s Interior Secretary. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

“The earth has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called ‘man.’” — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

I see that the trans cult still dominates this platform. One reason I spend little time here. Get a grip.

Congrats to the folks who say that AI is just a tool.

Forests collapsing, bats dying, apes infected—the planet is running a fever. Habitat loss and climate change are creating a perfect storm of pathogens. Like COVID, humanity will treat it as fiction until it becomes the headline. www.thecanary.co/global/world...

“Jesus in the gospels is neither pure historiography nor pure mythography. Even if the Christ of the gospels is pure myth, Jesus may still have existed — or at least his existence is the most plausible hypothesis to explain the gospels as literary products.” —M. David Litwa 🧵 1/n

“[Jesus was] a fool, a madman, a wretched fanatic, and a miserable scoundrel.” —Jean Meslier, an active Catholic priest, died 1729. ************* (Meslier left this in a written manifesto, notarized, directed to his parishioners and the public, to be released upon his death.)

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t a contest between perfect good and metaphysical evil: it is a contest between deeply flawed (Israel) and utterly unacceptable (Palestinian culture). That isn’t a difficult choice for me.

What are the children of Gaza taught to believe? They are taught to believe this: ⬇️

It’s October 7th, and I want to say for the record that when it come to the conflict between Israel and Gaza, I am firmly on the side of Israel. As a rule of thumb, I’ll never side with Islamists. I don’t have to overlook Israel’s faults to make this choice.

“Theology . . . induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe.” — Bertrand Russell, “A History of Western Philosophy”

We’re keeping the gates open while the foundations crumble. National parks look “normal,” but ecosystems, science, stewardship & staff are being gutted. It’s the same story everywhere: we sacrifice both nature and our health for profit. apple.news/AlHfxyGInRKu...

As you say Lyle, >95% of western larch forests have been lost, and nobody around now has much of an idea what they were like before logging. But we know the species is very long lived, at least up to 1,000 yrs old and growing over 9' diameter. Just a few exemplars of their real potential remain.

Old-growth western larch (tamarack) is among the rarest forests in North America. Once scattered across Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and into BC, nearly all were logged for their durable wood. What remains are scattered relics.

horrible

Who sees how bad this polling question is? Raise your hand if you understand the problem. This is from Gallup. Widely quoted, highly respected, worse than useless. 🧵 1/n

As between Coates and Klein, I’ll take “neither.” Thanks.

“‘[N]obody would have the balls’ to write The Satanic Verses today. More precisely, nobody would publish it, because sensitivity readers would notice the theological delicacy of the book’s title and plot. The ayatollahs have trained them well . . .” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I do get bored quickly with discussions that amount to, “Where’s my stuff, and why does it cost so much?” There’s a bigger picture:

One of the only groups to benefit from Trump's international aid cuts: wildlife traffickers.

"Gosar's bills mark a new low in his career of servicing industry's interests over the public's," said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director with the Center for Biological Diversity. via @pmingram.tucsonsentinel.com, @tucsonsentinel.com www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report...

My professional assessment is that Ezra Klein is a moron @jezebeldotcom.bsky.social

"Protecting old forests worldwide is the single best thing we can do to slow the meteoric rate of climate change, but [USFS] is racing to clear-cut these forests, claiming that it needs to log so far in the backcountry in order to protect communities against wildfire." 🌍 www.hcn.org/issues/57-9/...

X is a cesspool, because humanity is a cesspool, and it is worsened by the algorithm and the man at the top. Bluesky is an echo chamber, and a cesspool of a different type. That’s where we are.

Ezra Klein paved the path for Trump: “If you take global poverty seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit even up to the up to a level of open borders.” youtu.be/vf-k6qOfXz0?...

Ezra Klein is why Trump won in 2016 and 2024. Not just Ezra Klein, but, yes, Ezra Klein. I don’t want to hear from Ezra Klein.

share.google/CvL5cXxwbOGE... When did this come out? So, we knew this June 2020? 😱 Coronavirus Linked to Stroke in Otherwise Healthy Young People Preliminary observations suggest a high incidence of COVID-19 in stroke patients, including younger patients who were otherwise healthy.

I repeat: This is WILDLY illegal. Trump is just outright, explicitly, egregiously ignoring the law. The fact that NONE of these words in the Times post say so is a failure of journalism.

"We will never know what diseases might have been cured or what advances in technology might have been invented had the lights not gone out in the labs." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

1. I've no time for Tommy Robinson 2. These people have every right to protest as citizens of the UK whether I approve of them or not. 3. These aren't your bloody streets.

“They” didn’t kill Charlie Kirk. One lunatic did. That is true regardless of the killer’s politics. (If someone else is shown to have aided the act, they would share responsibility; so far, there is no evidence of that.)

How people outside of Bluesky see Bluesky:

1/ Everything is seen through the lens of spiritual warfare (see following skeet), and this event will further amplify the idea: “She said the struggle he had been dedicated to was not political, but ‘above all it is spiritual. Spiritual warfare is palpable.’” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Political violence is bad. It feels stupid to even say something so obvious, but apparently it still needs to be said.

People are displacing wild nature so thoroughly that they are extinguishing numerous species: people are degrading ecosystems so thoroughly that future human generations likely will have a hard time living decent lives. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"This helps clear the way towards new consideration of the disastrous Ambler industrial mining road boondoggle, putting America’s largest national park landscape in the crosshairs.” -NPCA's Jim Adams

I’ve been an atheist for almost 30 years. Never once in that time have I believed that our universe “came from nothing.” I’m just convinced that fundamental reality isn’t a “person,” i.e., a “God.” The “came from nothing” rhetoric is nonsense.

This @latimes.com @nohaggerty.bsky.social column is blaming John Muir for out of control wildfires? But doesn't mention the words climate change or drought? The 10am policy predates the Wilderness Act by decades, motivated by preserving timber to cut it down later. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Every generation accepts the world they inherit as “normal.” That’s shifting baseline syndrome. We forget how much has been lost—just like we accept our own aging bodies as the new normal compared to a few years ago. 1/7

When I was young and religious, something about the austerity of desert landscapes spoke to me in terms I interpreted spiritually. Evidence and logic turned me into an atheist, and “spiritual” is not a word I use comfortably anymore. But deserts still speak to me.

Myth #1: Economic laws are universal and timeless Reality: Economic theory was shaped by fossil abundance Implication: Old models misled us in a world of systems and limits