Our wildflower meadow still attracts pollinators in October. Here's hoping the first frost doesn't come soon.

Shirley Jackson’s short story from 1948, which inspired the most mail The New Yorker had ever received in response to a work of fiction—and caused some readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Cat in a skylight. That is all.

Reposting this as long as he keeps killing civilians by bombing them from the sky. The war on drugs is a metaphor, not a justification for cold blooded murder.

While cleaning up the spent annuals in our pollinator oasis of a backyard, I spotted this happy lady sunning herself on the fence. It's only the second praying mantis I've seen in our yard in more than 25 years. She looks ready to lay some eggs. No sign of decapitated males around, though.

These are troubled times that demand we raise our voices in defense of our most cherished freedoms.

A dog starv'd at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. – William Blake

What's the over/under on how many days it will be before Trump has his paramilitary forces seize a judge who rules against him? Clearly, any adverse rulings are a threat to national security. Any odds-makers out there?

"Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too." Read Gisela Salim-Peyer: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Well this will surely lower housing costs. Derp.

Exactly.

Thank you for making a positive difference for freedom of expression, ACLU!

Trump is ordering the premeditated killing of civilians not engaged in hostilities — because, he says, they are drug smugglers. There’s no death penalty for drug trafficking. There’s no due process when the military blows a boat out of the water. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

It's only the best damned season of the year.

Democracy Now! is an important independent source for news. I support it. If you value news without corporate bias, consider chipping in.

Actions speak louder than words. Live by Fred Rogers's example: Treat people with kindness and understanding when you can. Build community. Know and respect your neighbors.

Pay attention to how Megyn is promoting intolerance. Read Jason Stanley's book How Fascism Works. She is using broad pronouns to create an in-group and an out-group. It's a classic technique of Fascist/Nazi regimes. Invent a glorious mythic national past, a Garden of Eden.

I'm starting to doubt everything I learned in Constitutional Law back in 1997.

I wrote a thing.

"I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds."

Words aren't violence. But they are powerful. When used irresponsibly, they sure can lead there.

This advice is approximately 200 years old. But it still pertains today. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It was 40 years ago today that Frank Zappa, Dee Snider, and John Denver testified in the Senate against censorship.

Do the free-speech antagonists getting people fired for comments about Charlie Kirk realize they're just making Trump's employment numbers look even worse?

Empathy leads to solidarity. Solidarity is how communities become stronger than the individuals composing them. What is the Golden Rule if not a shorthand way to remind ourselves to practice empathy, to cut one another some slack, to navigate differences of viewpoint?

Oh, McSweeney's. I wish I knew how to quit you.

Work that First Amendment before they suspend the Constitution.

This administration does not respect the rule of law. Whether hate speech is protected by the First Amendment or not--it is--is of no moment to the head of our national law-enforcement agency. We are beyond the law: Here there be tygers.

Rental pets are usually safe. Unleased pets, however, may fall into the canyon.

Today I realized it's possibly been more than 40 years since I last thought about cap guns. What haven't you thought about lately?

"A literary vortex so thick with debris that not even satire can escape its singularity."

This is the way. Question authority. Call out its excesses and abuses. If the government censors you, vindicate your rights in the courts and vote the abusive officials out of office. Of course this requires due process and respect for judicial orders, which authority sometimes chooses to ignore.

This is what the decline of the USA's university system looks like. Once an engine of scientific progress, the system is struggling. Well funded universities in other countries have taken the crown.

"I know that my life makes you nervous But I tell you I can't live in service"

Words.

Cuddly baby goats at the Bowers Chili Pepper Food Festival!

Don't forget that people are animals. And some of us are quite angry animals.

It's a mistake to think that we cannot design a fair system of cooperation better than that the Founders implemented, which ignored women's rights and allowed for the ownership of human beings.

Slack. Frank Zappa used to say that we all need to cut each other more slack. We shouldn't try to optimize every single thing and person on the planet to conform with some metric or another. We're animals. We need slack.

I'm shattered.

Saw an amazing segment of rainbow in Ann Arbor yesterday evening. It was so vibrant and vivid, almost hallucinatory.

It's been great hanging out in Ann Arbor with my elder daughter. What a great time for a brief break from things.

This is the way.