"Rare microbial taxa (species present in low numbers) contribute disproportionately to nutrient cycling and other ecosystem functions on leaf surfaces... community diversity matters beyond total counts; preserving these specialists is essential because they carry outsized functional weight."

saw the photo of Kid Rock at the Pentagon in my feed and momentarily thought "man generative AI images really are getting quite good" but then discovered it wasn't AI it's real it's real first as tragedy, then as farce, then as farts

MAHA went ballistic over Trump’s glyphosate order. “There is a level of anger and frustration like I’ve never witnessed before,” said a conservative wellness influencer. Imagine their reaction when they learn that Roundup is being sprayed heavily in America’s forests.

In a couple of weeks we will be helping helm this event in collaboration with one of our partner orgs, La Paz Chattanooga, everyone is welcome to participate- we encourage everyone to bring plants and seeds to share but it's not a requirement to participate, should be plenty for everyone!

New zine! "Flowers Will Bloom From The Desert" is a short collection of interviews and writings from Sudanese Anarchists.

The year is 2031. Pope Leo holds a solemn weeks long council with First Comrade Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hazret-i Zohran. They emerge having sworn to prosecute an unrelenting Crusade against Capitalism, with a vast array of indulgences to distribute to the woke warriors of the revolution

We were wrong: it is not the Islamic Caliphate that Hazrat-i Zohran is restoring, but Orthodox Byzantium

Tragic update: everyone except for one girl minifigure (from a Jurassic World set apparently) died during an exchange of atomic bombs

beached a kayak on a shelly sandbar off the gulf coast this morning and looked out onto the water. To my right, an osprey mother and chicks atop a channel marker nest; ahead of us, a gentle pod of dolphins at play.

My son just announced that the Lego minifigures are organizing themselves so as to prosecute "Gender War II," I have no idea what that constitutes or what happened in the First Gender War, will report back

Hearing that another someone tried to shoot the guy yet again and I just don't feel anything in regard to it, it's like ok sure who cares, maybe it makes him crazier, maybe not, doesn't really seem to matter a whole lot one way or another

crazy like count lol

Solidarity requires caring for our neighbor. @mattpolprof.bsky.social, professor of Political Science at Spelman College, sat with @crbernasol.bsky.social to talk about his piece “The Faith Imperative of #Socialism.” Full interview on YouTube soon! Order Issue 1 at our pinned post on our profile.

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I think 2020 (including but not limited to Covid and all of its knock-on effects) was less a trauma event- Covid itself just wasn't that traumatic for the majority of people, here or anywhere else it seems- and more a catalytic moment, a breaking point, that radiated out into every facet of life

U.S. military’s secretive Special Operations Command is creating its first-ever center for AI-driven missions including targeted assassinations.

In this week's Arabic reading group we began working through SBB Wetzstein II 1743, a copy of a manāqib of ʿAdī ibn Musāfir- except that at some point it was reworked into a manāqib of Aḥmad ibn al-Rifāʿī through strategic erasure and rewriting. Lots going on in the title page:

New essay today, taking a stab at making sense of our historical and political context as scholars of Islamicate history and deeply involved in digital humanities- with all of the fraught implications that involvement carries:

All the modern popes have been antiwar; all the modern U.S. presidents have ignored them. Historically, neither side has wanted to heighten the contradictions for American Catholics by forcing the question — but that entente seems to be falling apart. In this article I try to explain why.

one of my cats was clearly doing a prostration earlier today even though Lent is over

Yes, Israel is destroying Lebanon's breadbasket. This is why I have been saying that Israel's goal is to destroy Lebanon itself.

It’s probably a sign that I am both soft-headed and soft-hearted that I continue to find this guy (Dreher) oddly fascinating. I can’t help but think that he could have been a pretty interesting journalist and memoirist if he had been allowed to go slowly, reflect and stay out of the public eye. 1/

With every passing year I feel like my having failed to secure a tenure track academic job was one of the greatest blessings in disguise of my life, I was bitter for a while about the whole situation but not anymore

Bishop Barron would have absolutely refused to condemn the Nazis (while perhaps maintaining some private misgivings) and would have gone out of his way to support the Spanish and Italian fascists, that's not a pejorative statement but mere fact

Man this is just so good, whatever you're doing today please take a moment to listen to a track or two from this recording, you won't regret it

A wonderful array of paratextual features are on fine display in this massive (526 folios) 1642 Ottoman Turkish mecmū'a that encompassed an array of genres and authors, the joint work of the münādī Aḥmed Ibn Mūsā and the kātib Muṣṭafā Ibn Aḥmed (SBB Ms. or. quart. 1988):

Among those murdered by security forces on this day- Bright Monday in 1914- at Ludlow was the Greek Orthodox labor leader Louis Tikas, who had spent much of the day working to ensure the safety of the many women and children in the strikers' camp; he was bludgeoned and shot in the back.

This is what Israel has done to Bint Jbeil, my hometown in southern Lebanon

My wife and I built this literally the evening before, main specifications were whether the disassembled components could all fit in our Prius (they fit, with room to spare for one child lol). You may not believe it but it was the only bamboo and coffee sack tent at the event

#April17 marks the international day of peasant struggle, this year global peasant movement Via Campesina is calling for unity against imperialism, neocolonialism, criminalization of peasant struggles, and the dispossesion of people from their territories viacampesina.org/en/2026/03/a...

A few scenes from this week in the community food forests and gardens of Chattanooga- it's been hot and dry but as of the moment pretty much everything is thriving nonetheless!

Two pages of fantastic little mushrooms by Anselmus Boetius de Boodt (1550-1632), from a sprawling natural history album he completed around 1600, it's chock-full of wonderful imagery of living things from across the planet (Rijksmuseum RP-T-BR-2017-1-11-66)

Some steps towards agroecological home landscapes and more connected neighbors- looking for folks to do some "trial runs" of an eventual network of home garden/ecological landscape mutual support:

While the Persianate chahar bagh style of gardening is a bit more formal than the way in which I tend to garden- a mix of the formal and the semi-wild- part of me can definitely imagine one day building something like Babur's garden here, perhaps with a more permeable wall:

Ben Salmon, pray for us.

NC State's Agroecology Education Farm 🌱 is training future food system leaders through hands-on agroecological & permacultural farming — a living model of biodiversity, soil health & resilience! 🌿🐝 agroecologymap.org/l/400 #Agroecology #Permaculture #SustainableAgriculture

Update: ag extension fellow gave a talk at our local garden club this evening and led with "I just wanted to show y'all the price of some things [urea etc] thanks to Donald Trump's war on Iran" and I don't know that I've heard Trump's name uttered with so much scorn lol

First in a series of posts exploring a Persian translation of an Arabic work by a Safavid scholar (born in the Ottoman Empire) and contained within a South Asian compilation by an initiate of the Shaṭṭārīyah sufi lineage, whew:

More great stuff from Pope Leo today — on democracy and international order.

I live in a rural county in northwest Georgia (albeit right across the line from the city of Chattanooga). The last Trump sign of which I knew is gone as of today. By contrast there are still Shawn Harris (the Democrat who ran to replace MTG) signs in front of many houses- real vibe shift feel.

Newly digitised Greek papyri from the Bodleian reveal the lives of ancient Egyptian gravediggers, including working as carers and taking part in legal affairs. 📜 [1/7]

Opening page of a gorgeous bilingual translation of the Gospels of St. Matthew & St. Mark (probably had the rest at some point, is now fragmentary), Ottoman Turkish in an elegant nastaʿliq hand on the left, in Latin on the right, copied in 1660 somewhere in the Ottoman world (SBB Ms. or. oct. 3960):

Going back in time and trying to explain to Professor Tolkien that in the future the Gates of Argonath he described in his writings would be used, vis-a-vis the cinematic imagination of a New Zealander, as propaganda imagery in an Iranian war with an American president who styled himself a deity

My new piece for @liberalcurrents.com on the origins of the right's anti-intellectualism www.liberalcurrents.com/the-right-wa...

If you've ever wondered- and I mean who hasn't really- what it would have been like if Pope Gregory and Henry IV had had social media during their epic clash of personalities well you don't have to wonder anymore

When the Lord sends you a plenitude of bamboo you gotta start getting creative with it (so far my creativity has been very hedge/low fence oriented but I've got some additional ideas)

We did our multi-language Gospel reading this year during Agape Vespers instead of the Paschal Liturgy, I chanted it- somewhat successfully- in Ottoman Turkish (using a 19th c. translation of so-so literary quality), suspect it was the only Ottoman Turkish Gospel reading in America today lol

Before heading out for Pascha last night my daughter and I watched some YouTube videos of Paschal celebrations around the world and one thing that she noticed was how people are able to do cool long processions on streets elsewhere that we can't because our built world is so dominated by cars...

🌱 #SundayYellow Not a Wisley tulip but one of mine growing in my tiny garden! I will definitely buy more of these in the autumn. Off to Wisley’s Hilltop this morning.