More great shots from professional garden planner Dan B:
Bonus fauna!
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: (Premature) Spring in the Pacific NorthwestPost + Comments (28)
Archives for 2024
Saturday Night Open Thread
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.
In all seriousness, a bunch of stuff came up and I have been busy, but I will do a proper update tomorrow.
War for Ukraine Day 738: President Zelenskyy’s Patience Begins To Wane as the Butcher’s Bill in Odesa Comes Due
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
The Russians opened up on Odesa again over night.
Body of three-month-old Tymofyi was found under the rubble. We can't just hate; we need to make Russia pay for every child, every woman, every men they murdered.
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 2, 2024
The butcher’s bill includes a mother and her three month old.
WARNING!! WARNING!! GRAPHIC IMAGERY!! WARNING!! WARNING!!
https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1763966256091107350
https://twitter.com/PatronDsns/status/1764010547836600644
There is a Patriot battery in Odesa. You’ll recall that it was being used to excellent effect back in November, December, and January to protect the city and the region around it from Russian bombardment. As I wrote about back in January, it now appears to be either out of ammunition or there is so little that it is being rationed to try to make it last. Which, of course, makes the battery functionally useless.
President Zelenskyy’s patience with the US’s and its EU and NATO allies and partners inability to keep their promises and resupply the Ukrainians is beginning to wear thin. Here is his address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
Pop Culture Open Thread: Lily Gladstone Has Earned Her Moment
Lily Gladstone found a bonus benefit to winning the lead actress SAG Award: backstage bicep curls. pic.twitter.com/UiH7rwm4MG
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) February 25, 2024
Read this story for the subject (linguistics fascinate me!) and the writing (@karinbrulliard = brilliant) Lily Gladstone made history. The Blackfeet Nation found a champion. https://t.co/TVL81zyKj0
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) January 27, 2024
Representation matters. From the Washington Post, “Lily Gladstone made history. The Blackfeet Nation found a champion”:
BROWNING, Mont. — Rence Champ stayed up late to watch the glittery Hollywood ceremony, a world away from the frigid, rural landscape where the tousle-haired third-grader lives. He was rewarded with something astonishing: a woman in sparkling jewels and a strapless gown, clutching a trophy and speaking a language he’d never heard on television — a language he studies at school, a language he understands.
The boy proudly translated for his mother the words that Lily Gladstone spoke after becoming the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, announcing to all that she hailed from the Blackfeet Nation here, where sprawling prairies meet jagged mountains known commonly as the crown of the continent and to the tribe as the backbone of the earth…
Nowhere is the Gladstone effect felt more deeply than in Browning Public Schools, which in recent years has pushed to revitalize the endangered Blackfoot language using a novel writing system. Words from her acceptance speech — “this is for every little rez kid” — are written on a whiteboard in a high school classroom. First-graders at Bullshoe Elementary made a TikTok video thanking her for her bravery. Photos of Gladstone adorn a bulletin board in the office of Blackfeet Native American studies director Robert Hall, who grew up in Browning and has been hailed locally since the actress told reporters he was a “good friend” who had taught her Blackfoot words.
“Lily Gladstone speaking Blackfoot up on that stage is a victory. It’s saying: I’m still alive,” said Hall, now busy fielding inquiries about the language from newly interested students and teachers. “This isn’t just a symbolic action. This is something that is tangible and has created change.”
Pop Culture Open Thread: Lily Gladstone Has Earned Her MomentPost + Comments (32)
Climate Solutions: Good People Doing Good Things
This is will be a quick hit, but I wanted to keep going on sharing good people working on climate solutions. There will be a couple more videos on regenerative farming practices from the Carbon Cowboys series and a few other videos on other topics.
I will branch out to other technology going forward, but I didn’t have time this week to do the serious dive into other topics. Batteries are my next idea for a post – some big steps this year already.
A reminder that all these post can be found here: Positive Climate News
Here are parts 3 and 4 of Carbon Cowboys (see all the videos here)
Husband and wife ranchers Emry Birdwell and Deborah Clark have been going against the grain of North Texas ranching for decades – hiding their ability to raise many, many more cattle per acre than any of their neighbors. They are a fiery couple, prone to snips as they get their field work done – they are in their 60s, and run the 14,000 acre place on their own, sometimes with one extra hand. Filmed in Henrietta, Texas
Don Jackson wanted to change his grazing methods, and he called Allen Williams, a top U.S. expert on regenerative agriculture for help. Allen helped Don transition from continuous grazing to AMP (Adaptive Multi-Paddock) grazing. This film captures Don’s first 6 months of the transition – in Don’s 1st growing season. Don (and his son Patrick) can see huge changes already, especially in the amount of forage they can produce, the improved health of their cattle, and the increase in beneficial insects. Filmed in Ware Shoals, South Carolina
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It was a toss-up between this great story and an amazing rancher/educator in Chihuahua Mexico, Alejandro Carrillo. The happy couple won today and next post will feature Alejandro. Tina and Orion Weldon have a great story. Let’s start with the video:
Climate Solutions: Good People Doing Good ThingsPost + Comments (129)
Turkey Day (Open Thread)
I was walking Badger up our crappy dirt road early this morning, which dawned still and humid and overcast but tolerably cool. We hadn’t progressed much past our property line when a very large wild turkey burst through the brush at the edge of the road. It startled the dog and me, and the turkey was surprised by our presence too. We all stopped for half a beat and stared at one another.
The turkey recovered its wits and began running up the road ahead of us, with Badger straining at the leash to give chase and sort of dragging me along behind him. You might not think a 22 lb. dog could drag an adult human, but trust me, it is possible.
A short way up the road and to the right, the turkey veered into a lot where there’s a big pile of sand with stakes and marker tape that presumably outlines the dimensions of whatever the owner intends to build there. The turkey ran straight into the marker tape at a high rate of speed and became entangled.
Badger was barking his head off, and as we approached the sandpile, I wondered if I’d have to tie Badger’s leash to a tree and go help the turkey get free. It wasn’t making much progress getting loose but instead frantically entangling itself in the tape even more.
I had a Shingrix shot yesterday, so my left arm is kind of useless, and I’ve been under the weather for weeks, so I’m not sure I’m in good enough shape to wrangle a large, angry turkey. Luckily for us all, our approach galvanized the turkey, who broke through the entanglement and skedaddled into the underbrush, trailing a length of pink tape. Phew!
Hopefully, that concludes today’s excitement. Open thread!
Saturday Morning Repub Cartoon Villains Open Thread
Here's how Hunter Biden rebutted the allegations that his father was involved in his business, in his own words.
No paywall, so even members of Congress have no excuse not to read it. https://t.co/R5gr4wcg32— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 1, 2024
Philip Block, at the Washington Post, gives us all another free chance to catch up on the D-R-A-M-A — “Hunter Biden’s point-by-point rebuttal of allegations against his father”:
It has been abundantly clear for months that the House Republican case suggesting that President Biden was corruptly involved in his son Hunter’s business engagements was a function of frenzied cherry-picking. When Hunter Biden came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to answer questions from legislators and investigators working on the impeachment inquiry targeting his father, he was presented with a number of those assertions.
In each case, he offered credible responses. You can read them below, in his own words.
What emerges when reading the transcript of the interview is how dependent the Republican effort is on three tactics. You’ll see those play out in the rebuttals Hunter Biden offered, but it’s useful to articulate them specifically.
First and most obvious is that cherry-picking. Republicans have gained access to countless financial and personal documents involving the Bidens and business associates of Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s brother. Sifting through that material like amateur internet sleuths, they’ve picked out a dozen or so things that might be framed as suspicious. This is how all investigations work, of course, with a few clues scattered among a lot of distractions. But when the allegations include such things as Joe Biden showing up at a dinner involving his son and a business partner, the frequency of his joining his son for dinner matters.
This is the second point: Republicans are trying to weaponize the schmoozing that politicians do. The allegations of Joe Biden meeting Hunter Biden’s partners centers on things like shaking hands at a reception or Hunter Biden’s associates being invited to White House events.
Third, the allegations center on two key conflations. The first and better known is using “the Biden family” as a proxy for “Hunter and James Biden.” Claiming that Hunter Biden’s income was going to “the Biden family” is a way to loop in the president unfairly. The same thing happens with “payments.”…
There were other issues presented to Hunter Biden, but those didn’t centrally allege wrongdoing by his father. This was the intent of the hearing after all — and as Biden and his attorney had to remind Republicans at times — not to tear down Hunter Biden but to show how Joe Biden allegedly benefited from these business deals.
Now more than ever, there’s no evidence he did.
If you read the whole thing, it’s obvious how frantically the GOP is scrabbling around, digging through the bottom of the barrel and deep into the Russian-fostered swamp muck, looking for a Magic Weapon that simply doesn’t exist.
Saturday Morning Repub Cartoon Villains Open ThreadPost + Comments (217)