Crabgrass Frontier (perhaps oddly, the most self-radicalizing book I've yet read), and Mason & Dixon (carefully delineating the bounds of my pretentiousness).

#BirdOfTheDay themes of #paddling and #yellow birds, here in one picture - Lesser Goldfinch male, bathing. 🪶

@alan678.bsky.social 's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #LunchTime Here's a Fairy Pitta bringing lunch back to its nest! 🪶 Taiwan, near Budai.

I'm ready for my #CloseUp, #BirdOfTheDay! A Greater Antillean Grackle from Puerto Rico. #birds

Day is almost up, but I can still join the #BirdOfTheDay theme - #rock. So how about two Rock Partridges standing on rocks! 🪶 Gantrisch, Switzerland

Post a bird announcing that Dick Cheney is dead. 🪶

Today's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #Hiding . This Eurasian Bittern did a pretty good job of it - at Katzensee, Switzerland. 🪶

Today's #Birdoftheday are birds at #OddAngles #birdphotography #birds A Prothonotary Warbler whose world has turned upside-down (literally and metaphorically - it's in California, where it shouldn't be)

AVCX, the world’s finest puzzles and games service, and an independent media venture, has done some really cool stuff this year! A thread to brag (and to hype our mini subscription drive) …

Today's #BirdOfTheDay is "Pairs of the Same Birds", from @robcrank68.bsky.social . How about a pair of Eurasian Jackdaws in Bern, Switzerland? 🪶

See a pigeon, post a pigeon. #birds (Band-tailed Pigeon, the remaining native pigeon in (most of) the US.)

Sure thing @aba.org! Not a lifer lifer, but an ABA region lifer - Sharp-tailed Sandpiper at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary in Alameda, California. An Asian species, rare in CA. Found by Deborah Crooks two days ago, still here today! (ABA #691) 🪶

Supreme Court: of course states can regulate, and restrict access to, medical procedures if there’s a compelling public interest Colorado: (bans conversion therapy for minors) Supreme Court: no not like that, we only meant abortion

So exhausting..

We are spoiled here in California to share our space with these gorgeous creatures - Red-shouldered Hawk 🪶. The form in California is particularly elegant - so much so it's been considered a possible split as Elegant Hawk (Buteo elegans). This one was especially unconcerned with my presence.

Zohran Mamdani's team is outstanding. What a brilliant idea. "Until It’s Done" is new series about New Yorkers, past and present, who refused to accept that a worthy goal was impossible." First one is on how Nellie Bly changed treatment of mentally ill people by exposing terrible practices.

We keep wanting things to be true that just aren't true. We keep saying incorrect things, like, "People get more conservative as they get older!"🤡 When the truth is that US racism is so extreme that it kills off most of the Black Americans before they have a chance to get older.

Sea stars—26 species—have been dying by the billions from Mexico to Alaska, their arms tearing off, their bodies dissolving, w/huge consequences for the sea. Experts finally figured out why— and gave @biographic.bsky.social exclusive access. Can we save them? www.biographic.com/unmasking-th...

Ada Loveland, Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton are the patron saints of programming for good reason. Hamilton also coined the term "software engineering"; she got told off for it by (male) hardware engineers as they felt it was "inflating her work's importance".

Pete Hegseth back on his shit I see

It's OK if you used to love Harry Potter. There are serious problems with the series, AND there are genuinely meaningful and magical things in it that shaped a lot of us. It's OK to mourn it and not think it always sucked. But not a dime to that woman EVER again. You HAVE to love trans people more.

"I took my girlfriend Betsy to Van Cortlandt Lake to see aquatic birds. She couldn’t stand the mallards. She said that a person ought not to look at things like that all day. I didn’t know she’d feel this way about wild ducks." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/tax...

RFK Jr. is speaking to a specific slice of parents (mostly) who believe their autistic child is not like the autistic people who, for example, post on this app. Those parents are committed to a diagnosis of "profound" autism. They are wrong. Please read this from me and @juststimming.bsky.social

This is high art

you cannot bend on trans rights because maybe you're next, but also you cannot bend on trans rights because they are human beings with dignity and inherent value and throwing them or anyone else to the wolves is abhorent

I need y'all to sit with this headline and understand what is being done to our community. They're trying to criminalize our very existence. This is a campaign of eradication. www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/rcna...

some helpful reminders: -not all jews support israel -criticizing israel is not the same as being antisemitic -being pro-palestine does not equal being pro-hamas -arresting someone for being pro-palestine is a violation of the first amendment -violating someone’s first amendment rights is bad

NYC artists catching up to London now

But even if transphobia didn't veer into anti-Black racism, I'd still fight against it. Because transphobia is wrong. And because I don't care what "the majority of Americans" think about a topic. I care what I think about a topic. And if 160 million of you gang up on 17 kids? I'm with the kids.

And it happens again! SEVERAL Republicans cross the aisle, vote against a bill that would remove trans kids from their parents. They do so even after another Republican threatens them with primaries. 29 Republicans flip this time!

Wallcreeper in Switzerland. Best #bird in Europe? I think so! Been dreaming of this bird for decades, finally had the privilege of seeing one. 🪶

It occurred to me that many Americans are experiencing for the first time a feeling that Black, brown, and Indigenous people have had since forever. Fear and distrust of this government. Not a “gotcha” statement; it’s my observation. I hope you have community to lean into. All of us.

We can all make good news by acting locally. substack.com/home/post/p-...

I'll join in! An Ornate Bella Moth (Utetheisa ornatrix) for #MothMonday

Why would I disagree? Team White-crowned Sparrow unite! A "Nuttall's" WCSP singing its heart out on territory in SF, CA - we're lucky to have them year-round here. 🪶

This Canada Jay in Mendocino, CA (California, not Canada!) was my first in 24 years. @alvarosadventures.bsky.social calls these "re-lifers", and I love that term. 🪶

I am nonbinary. The gender that no longer officially exists in the United States. I was offered the chance to change my gender designation to "X" on my passport and driver's license in 2023. I decided not to and here's why.

Blogged about pumping at the ballpark and whether sexism is more like a feeling or more like a brick wall. open.substack.com/pub/somehard...

An executive order issued Wednesday by President Donald Trump will not stop California public schools from teaching LGBTQ curriculum, the state education office told the @bayareareporter.bsky.social ... www.ebar.com/story.php?ch...

I'm happy to announce The Gnomon: a new variety cryptic crosswords outlet launching June 2025, with free previews coming February and April. www.gnomoncryptics.com

The DOJ’s report on the Tulsa Race Massacre confirms what survivors and descendants have always known: it wasn’t just mob violence, but a systematic, coordinated attack. A century later, no prosecutions, no reparations—just the truth laid bare. Justice delayed is still justice denied.

White-tailed Kite on the San Francisco CBC 🪶 - first perched, then flying overhead with prey in its talons.

You're telling me that Margo Martindale and Wayne Knight were once partners on a team of character actors who moonlit as private investigators to supplement film/tv income by busting bad guys with their acting skills and this has never been adapted into the longest-running show on NBC?

"You'll be visited by three spirits." The three spirits:

LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK AUTISM ISN'T A DISEASE IT DOESN'T NEED A "CURE"

Age yourself with your first game console.

Bill Clinton pardoned George Clinton, after the coup that allowed him to take over Parliament, and we said nothing

The only #BlackFriday I celebrate: here's a Great-tailed Grackle 🪶 in display (a highly underrated bird!)

Rav Hisda also said that Eve was “mighty mighty, just lettin it all hang out”