This popped up on my FB feed, unfortunately without photo credit. But aahhh-worthy.
It looks like we could use a fresh thread and I’m busy avoiding work. It will be almost 60 degrees when I take Bixby out for his lunchtime walk. I’m tying up loose ends and wasting time until then.
This is from one of my favorite Colorado photographers. Lars Leber (used with his permission) Check out his website for some stunning Colorado nature pix.
This has been your afternoon pick-me-up (though it’s only 10:30-ish here). Consider this an open thread.
ETA: Thanks to sharp-eyed commenters (including Punchy), looking closely at the kerning, borders and layers, another Obama forgery has been uncovered. Our owls appear to be faked. Thanks to The Golux and Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism, we know the origin of this fake is here. Carry on.
Applejinx
Ooooh, owlets! My little sister’s very into owls.
Agenda for the day: some more coding work, and going back to bed to rest and hopefully continue shaking the death flu. Not necessarily in that order ;)
jacy
The house I grew up in has a lovely view of Garden of the Gods. And Lars Leiber does absolutely wonderful photography of Colorado — his pictures popping up in my Facebook feed always make me homesick.
Gin & Tonic
Dan Ballard is another great Colorado-based nature photographer.
Keith G
Had a blood lab rendezvous (fasting) scheduled at ten-thirty. Breakfast, truly a breaking of a fast, is at my favorite Cajun stop: Shrimp gumbo, oyster poboy, and a stout. Then back to work.
Jerzy Russian
I love the scenery in Colorado. Now I have to waste the morning looking at Mr. Leber’s pictures. Thanks Obama!
kindness
Those owlets are too cute. Makes me wish I had a couple mice to feed ’em.
Punchy
Real question — are those real birds, or stuffed animals in a tree? The eyes appear so disproportionately out of whack large for the body size to be reals…
dr. bloor
Nothing to do with owls, but in case it wasn’t noted in an earlier thread, the incomparable Buddy Cianci is dead.
My money is on boner pill overdose.
The Golux
I think there’s a strong possibility that the owlets were Photoshopped. In particular, the twigs they’re sitting on don’t appear to be part of the tree.
ETA: @Punchy – Or stuffed, as you say.
raven
Check this owl in the snow, insane.
Germy
@Punchy: They appear to be stuffed. What are those horizontal sticks under their feet, but over the branch?
schrodinger's cat
@Keith G: Your lunch sounds delicious. Want!
Immanentize
Must be stuffed — no owl allows snow to gather on its head.
Betty Cracker
@Punchy: I wondered the same. A little too “Big Eyes” to be real. ETA: Cute nonetheless, though!
TaMara (BHF)
@jacy:
This one of the Wolf Moon last week really captured the romantic in me.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Golux: Good catch.
The Golux
The reveal.
Keith G
@schrodinger’s cat: If only my heart and my liver could deal with this everyday. It truly was an amazingly tasty snack.
Germy
30 years ago, the Disaster
The thing that got me teary-eyed thirty years ago was seeing footage of one of the astronauts’ old parents. They watch the takeoff with joy, and then after the explosion, the mother understands immediately something has gone wrong, but the old man doesn’t. He keeps smiling with pride while the expression on the mother’s face turns grief-stricken. Then he realizes what has happened. Heartbreaking.
Germy
@dr. bloor: colon cancer.
TaMara (BHF)
@Punchy: The background looks fake as well – like a wall in a diorama.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I love finding sh!t like that.
catclub
Did anyone else hear the NPR bit on advertising for a large format photographer for the National Park Service
(format is large, photographer need not be). It is the job that Ansel Adams held.
They got a lot of applicants.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
The original of the image
Jim Kakalios
If you listen closely, you can hear them:
“I love to sing-a!
About the moon-a and the June-a and Spring-a!
Oh, I love-a to, I love-a to sing!”
Tim C.
So I know Slate is a mixed bag and William Saletan is very much the epitome of that Slate “Mixed Bagness”. However, this is a pretty good piece on what he refers to as the “Failed State” nature of the GOP at the moment. It’s a pretty epic takedown.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/the_gop_is_a_failed_state_donald_trump_is_its_warlord.html
On the other hand the word that he never uses is “Gerrymandering” I think a huge difference between the Pre-2010 GOP and what’s happened since then, is not the change in governing philosophy, but the simple fact that map is so rigged at the moment, that even if Cruz gets the nomination, and even if he alienates every singe non-hardcore GOP voter in the country, it’s still impossible for the Democrats to take the house. We might win the national House vote by a historic margin and still not have a GOP controlled chamber.
TL, DR: Gerrymandering is killing out democracy more than anything else.
TaMara (BHF)
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Updated to reflect the clear owl fakery uncovered. Thanks Obama.
FlyingToaster
@Applejinx: I’m getting over something which is horribly like a 12-hour bout of norovirus (sans fever) plus 4 days of gastroenteritis. Yesterday was the first day I was able to sit in front of a computer and just forward e-mails to the relevant parties. Today I can actually read blogs, and make a comment without having to run for the bathroom.
My abdomen still hurts like hell. Not funny, whoever at my PCP’s office gave it to me (timing maps to picking it up at the doctors’ office). At least the minimal snow is almost gone, so there’s no shoveling in my immediate future.
Hope you feel better, too.
Germy
@Jim Kakalios: Thank you for that blast from the past.
And yes, the resemblance is uncanny.
Hillary Rettig
@Germy: yes. a truly awful and sad moment in our history.
TaMara (BHF)
@catclub: I have a friend who is both a large format photographer and large format. He has some amazing photos from an African trip years ago.
Gravenstone
@Germy: I was at my parent’s home during January break from college. I remember the news breaking into regular programming. We’d become so jaded by then (well, the networks) that covering the launch live wasn’t even a thing. Even for such a momentous occasion as the inclusion of a non-astronaut in the crew (Christa McAuliffe) whose focus was to raise interest and awareness of space exploration in the young.
TaMara (BHF)
I just cooked up a batch of black rice (forbidden rice) for lunch and tomorrow’s recipe exchange and realized it’s going to be bitch to try and photograph well. But it sure does taste good.
Fair Economist
@Tim C.:
This isn’t true. We would need a swing of about 7% from 2012 to take the House. The net racist anti-black vote has been estimate at about 3%, and there’s about a 2% swing from demographics. So we need only a 2% gain over expectations to get the House. That’s not easy, but it’s certainly not impossible. I actually think Cruz or Rubio could actually give it to us based on their nutty pro-rapist abortion stands.
Tim C.
@Fair Economist:
:D Hope is kindled……..
Germy
@Gravenstone: I was working second-shift at the time, and my daytime was free to hang around the apartment and listen to music. I had the tv on in the background when it happened. I remember standing in front of the tv, staring in disbelief.
RaflW
Marco Rubio now being compared to Tim Pawlenty on Twitter.
As a Minnesotan, I find this delicious. Y’all carry on with your carrying on.
dexwood
@Gravenstone:
I was teaching in a high school that day. I made it to the teacher’s lounge just in time to watch the launch. I’ll never forget the stunned silence, the shock, and the tears that fell.
hueyplong
“Who will Hillary throw under the bus?”
Why wouldn’t she just have him/her killed? An uncharitable person might say you need to step up your game.
Svensker
@srv:
Arguably, that is the single most genius sentence in commenting history. Really polished. Kudos!
Felonius Monk
@srv: You’re like ants at a picnic.
Anoniminous
@Tim C.:
Too soon to give up on taking the House. The extreme gerrymandering the GOP undertook is going statistically wonky on them in 2016. Any GOP House seat won with 3% or less is vulnerable and any with 5% is a possible, depending on the Democratic challenger.
Circumstances favor the GOP keeping the House. If we do nothing “favor” turns to “certainty.”
Tracy Ratcliff
@Tim C.: Saletan’s article was my afternoon dose of schadenfreude. He’s got to to the despair-and-anger phase, realizing all those nice moderate Republicans that he says Pres. Obama needs to reach out to are imaginary. I expect in a couple of weeks he’ll move on to acceptance, and do Slate-pitches about how fascism isn’t really that bad.
Anoniminous
Pinkocommie DFH propaganda Trigger Warning
After I Lived in Norway, America Felt Backward. Here’s Why.
Germy
A Party That Lets Arpaio Be A Power Broker Deserves Trump As A Presidential Candidate
Applejinx
@FlyingToaster: Yay! I’m really pleased you’re feeling better. I’m gonna nap, and pretty much abandon any hope of keeping to a predictable schedule: my body can’t sleep or rest predictably right now, I’ll be sick and sleepless and then randomly crash for nine hours.
If I need another one of those (probably should, being willing to mix it up in a political thread is a clear sign I ain’t right) I should grab it when I can.
@srv: I’d rather see government do basic income than a Silicon Valley investment firm, though I can actually see why they would. I think they’re of the opinion that giving everyone seed money will make the whole economy wealthy, and they’re right plus their location, California, is in crisis due to extreme wealth inequality so it’s an appropriate place to try it.
Since right now I’m grappling with Social Security trying to claw back Disability money when I was in a plan specifically for the purpose of getting me off Disability which WORKED, I am real pleased to see anybody talking about the ‘no strings attached’. You start means testing stuff and immediately you produce these situations where it damages you to do too well, forces your attention away from what it is you’ve got to do to succeed (and I’ve run for about eight years on the business I made with the PASS plan, though it’s had to constantly change and evolve: self-support as a tiny small business is hard!) and then when you get claw-back happening, odds are they’re going to demand two thousand dollars all at once when you are only making $900 a month and depending on a Section 8 voucher and various subsidies to even continue to exist.
This is not only dumb and mean but costs a huge amount in bureaucratic overhead. Better to work out how much you want to help, do it no strings attached, and hope it worked more often than it didn’t.
The funniest thing is that these months where I had more than $2000 in resources weren’t about milking the program and sitting back with a T-Bone and a big screen TV. They were the foundation of a small business that has gone on to make more than $200,000 over the years, much of which has been overseas sales bringing money into the country from places like the EU and Scandinavia, and those would have been the times when I was scrambling like mad to develop new stuff and had no time to pay attention to anything but my work.
I’m looking at a similar time now, but at least now I’m not getting off Disability. I’m still autistic but I’ve been off Disability for years, and though the business has dwindled so has everybody else’s, and I’ve out-survived some companies in my market sector and am hanging in there against other ones who are doing a sort of Wal-Mart/Amazon ‘cut off the air supply’ thing to their whole industry.
Bring on basic income. It’d give my customers money enough to buy the occasional thing.
Anoniminous
@Tim C.:
Saletan is a waste of space/time. Pew Research is the place to go.
maurinsky
I just have to share with the world that my older daughter is pregnant and she and her husband found out yesterday they are having twins.
maurinsky
@dr. bloor:
I met Buddy a couple of times when I worked at Cox Communications….you could smell his cologne from a mile away, I think to cover up the colossal but often appealing bullshit coming out of his mouth!
Germy
In a new film called “Nine Lives” Kevin Spacey plays a wealthy businessman who is turned into a cat by Christopher Walken.
schrodinger's cat
@maurinsky: Exciting news. Congratulations!
Germy
Brachiator
@Tim C.:
The “national house vote” is, I guess, some kind of statistical reference point, but otherwise meaningless. The presidential election, Cruz becoming the GOP nominee vs Rubio, would not have much direct impact on Congressional outcomes.
Gerrymandering, on the other hand, has much more impact, and the GOP have been experts at carving out districts to their benefit.
HeartlandLiberal
Someone took two little owl brooches and posed the picture. You can search images.google.com, first right mouse to view image, get the URL of just the picture, paste it into images.google.com, search, and voila.
Shell
Clinton says she’d consider appointing Obama to the Supreme Court. That means we’ll have years to say “Thanks, Obama!”
Germy
@Shell: I read an interview with Obama where he said he wasn’t interested in an appointment to the supreme court. He said he’d rather teach law. He says he likes working with young people, that the court would be too isolating.
Julie
Since folks here have been following the Malheur occupation… I got a kick out of this:
WaterGirl
@Germy: I read that, too, but I came away with the thought that he said he is not interested FOR NOW. I wonder if that was wishful thinking on my part?
Miss Bianca
Colorado is lousy with great photographers. I dunno, maybe something about our surroundings just inspires ’em…