← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Looks like the LLMs have come for grandpa. My dad, age 90, a longtime tech enthusiast who uses an #Amazon Echo to check the weather and baseball statistics, reports to me that the Echo has started asking him personal, intrusive questions, including whether he lives in an assisted living facility. I witnessed this yesterday — he asked for a pollen count and it tried to start a chat about his favorite methods for coping with ragweed allergies. They’re trying to sell old people drugs. 1/2

• View post

  Coyote v. Acme, the movie, did not disappoint.

• View post

  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org I’ve been playing with the idea of enhancement number 4 as well, but I’m not sure it would be worth the expense.

• View post

  Rebecca Solnit takes aim at the cynical defeatists in our lives, and nails it as usual. I am tempted to send this to my relative who, despite the fact that she knows I hate it, is constantly “joking” about how “we are all gonna die soon, so go ahead and order the French fries.” #ClimateCrisis https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/cynicism-and-naivete-in-the-summer-of-a-thousand-fires/?ref=meditations-in-an-emergency-newsletter

• View post

  Somewhere out there beyond the edge of the solar system, Voyager is trying to communicate with a Deep Space Network antenna that just got swept away by a wildfire. #ClimateDiary https://mastodon.social/@MatWright/116976971392661721

• View post

  I picked up a super-cheap IKEA air quality monitor last winter, to monitor CO2. It also measures PM 2.5, but that wasn’t even on my mind until recently, when the wildfire smoke blew in. I decided to try to get one for each of my children’s households, but I was SURE they would be sold out here, given the air quality. Nope. Went to IKEA yesterday. There were plenty on the shelf. I’m not sure people have registered that this is not just a one-off event. #ClimateDiary #WildfireSmoke #airQuality

• View post

  @bellegraylane@universeodon.com IKEA. Very cheap, but adequate. I got it for the CO2 meter but I’m also enjoying the particulate sensor! I’m not sure it’s terribly well calibrated but it’s perfectly fine for seeing trends and getting a rough idea of what’s happening. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-smart-70609396/

• View post

  If you need to go out in the heat anyway, this is the message you need right now. I say this as someone who hates YouTube and does NOT watch YouTube without an extremely compelling reason. Except Sarah Taber. I will actually watch to the end of a video of @sarahtaber@mastodon.online, because she is funny and smart and actually cares about keeping people from dying. And an actual farmer. #Heatwaves https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/116907540433115065

• View post

  Behold the Venus’ Fly Trap in bloom! #Botany

• View post

  @LilPecan@mastodon.social @xris@ecoevo.social What if some of us are so mundane that we actually like to hear it?

• View post

  I went to a talk last night about Piedmont savannah remnants — tiny pockets of land where pre-colonial plant communities persist, despite most of the land around them being lost to the plow and agriculture. The speaker pointed out that land like this, once disturbed, tends to stay disturbed, probably for many centuries. On the drive home I remembered this old meme. Isn’t that Tom Holland? #NativePlants

• View post

  I know what I forgot to do today: Show you my beautiful volunteer Wild Comfrey, Andersonglossum virginianum. Just look at those big furry leaves and stem! Just look at the sweet little flower! This plant checks all my boxes, and it came to live in my yard unbidden. Am I lucky or what? @PhoenixSerenity , you can probably see where it’s in the Borage family. #NativePlants

• View post

  Here is a thoroughly depressing article pre-print. It supports my growing unease with the idea that planting more trees, any old trees, is a one-stop shop for sequestering carbon and supporting biodiversity. Turns out it’s neither, according to these models. #Biodiversity #ClimateCrisis #TreesAndForests #CarbonOffsets https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kl4hnooefcqzweb6gep7bkqk/post/3mdfxzaospk2l

• View post

  Holy cow. https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116414649410356293 #virginia #vapol

• View post

  @DoomsdaysCW , another little something for #SolarPunkSunday ? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/nyregion/alpha-gal-meat-allergy-deaths.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WlA.Ey6k.NdPOVygFw5VF&smid=nytcore-ios-share

• View post

  #NoKings3

• View post

  Public Service Announcement for the mid-Atlantic: Pollen season has begun. Maple, hazelnut, alder. #NativePlants

• View post

  Nothing says #MarshMadness like wild rice in full bloom.

• View post

  #MarshMadness, day 2.

• View post

  Even though I really want to win this mug, I want this fundraiser to be a success even more. https://mastodon.social/@potterybyosa/116161618515860591

• View post

  It’s like there’s no one driving. There are mixed messages coming from different parts of the US State Department. Could be deliberate, or could be because there’s nobody in that department any more — they all got DOGEed. I’d recommend checking in with Canada, which had a clear, easy-to-find DO NOT GO message almost immediately after it started. #uspol #iran #GulfStates https://sfba.social/@jeridansky/116164062982537585

• View post

  Day 3 of #MarshMadness: a visit to Audubon’s Beidler Forest boardwalk, in #SouthCarolina. Check out the Packera species — some sort of Ragwort? — blooming amid the knobby Bald-cypress roots. Trust me, this is really a marsh!

• View post

  Let’s get this party started. #MarshMadness

• View post

  In a world that astonishes every day, today I am astonished to learn that an #ICE guy told the neighbors he was a botanist. #botany #NativePlants

• View post

  @PhoenixSerenity@beige.party You have an eye for these things, don’t you?