Let’s see if I can embed a Bluesky post with video:
Each evening this time of year, flocks of ibises fly west in the morning and east in the evening. If you’re in the river and they fly low over and around the boat, the sound of their wings seems to fill up the world. #birds
— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Looks like it might work?
There’s a SpaceX launch soon, and Bill is outside to watch it. I can’t even. The Bond Villain ruined rocket launches for this Floridian, which is quite a feat. One of my early memories is seeing an Apollo launch with my father — lucky 13, I think.
Anyhoo, fuck that fuck-squib. (Musk, not my father.)
Open thread!
Miki
Beautiful.
But also sounds like an engine might/maybe need to be rebuilt.
ETA frist!
KatKapCC
For me, Bluesky videos don’t play in the embed. If I click on it, it opens the post (what do we call posts on Bluesky?) in a new tab. But thank you for sharing it! I love watching birds in flight.
FlyingToaster
Yay!
Like KatKapCC@2, it pipes me into a second tab (logged into bsky) and plays there. But that is very likely my arcane security settings.
Love it!
frosty
@Miki: I agree. Tappets? Piston slap? No! Hole in the exhaust; cheapest thing to fix!
Beautiful video, BC. You are lucky to live in the swamp. We’re wandering around Florida for two months and I finally realized that Ibises are the only white birds that fly together like that.
Jackie
So enjoyable watching. Here – far, far away from Florida, there’s a huge pine tree that a murder of crows head to every evening at sunset. Normally I hate crows, but in this instance it’s mesmerizing and comforting to watch them tucking in for the night.
SiubhanDuinne
That’s spectacular! Both seeing them and hearing them.
But an odd thing happened: When the video ended, my phone began playing the audiobook I was listening to last night. That was a bit disconcerting, I must say!
Scout211
We’ve got ourselves a big storm today in NorCal. The wind gusts are up to 50mph with lots of rain. All the songbirds in the area seem to be hanging out on our front porch to shelter from the storm right now. Lots of bird songs now and lots of bird poop to clean up tomorrow.
Nice video, Betty. Beautiful scenery in your back yard.
ETA: Fixed typos.
Betty Cracker
@Miki: & @frosty: We have an outboard we call “the ancient Mariner” — 1985 vintage motor from my dad’s dive shop fleet. Bill can keep just about anything running indefinitely, which is a great comfort, let me tell you!
Starfish (she/her)
@KatKapCC: Sometimes, things that can’t actually support video do this. The embed is just an image with a play button on top, and it takes you through to where you can actually play the video.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Beautiful scenery, BC.
Doc Sardonic
Whelp, you know shit is getting real on the avian flu, soon to be upgraded to the Great Egg Apocalypse, Waffle House has announced a 50¢ per egg avian flu surcharge.
ETA: Forgot link.. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/02/04/waffle-house-egg-surcharge-bird-flu/78213184007/
barbequebob
@Doc Sardonic:
Funny how now, with the election behind us, everyone seems to understand that avian flu is responsible for the egg prices.
Jackie
@Doc Sardonic: As long as only MAGAts order the eggs… who cares? ;D
PersistentIllusion
No birds here at the mo. But while walking the dog this am, watched a coyote walk on the other side of a relatively busy street, not far from mid city COS. I’ve seen bald eagles and lesser blue herons in this neighbor, but the ‘yote was a first.
ETA: beautiful animal, young female. Neighbors had better be watching their chickens tonight.
Quinerly
I have to think this has been posted and discussed here. I somehow missed this until I just heard the audio. Chilling.
“Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
“These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”
Later, Ramaswamy — who briefly co-led Musk’s White House DOGE project — said, “I think it’s possible now, it’s actually possible” thanks to Trump’s second term and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
Musk replied, “If it’s not possible now, it’ll never be possible. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”
“Now or never,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ramaswamy agreed. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke on the call.
HuffPost reporting; MSNBC had the audio
https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-suggests-getting-rid-212557557.html
Doc Sardonic
@barbequebob: Yeah….it is. I can’t find the article I saw over the weekend that the egg farmers are starting to get worried that they aren’t going to be able to beat this.
realbtl
I was floating in a tube in the CA delta. Great Blue Herons make a hellofa racket and are huge from water level.
Scout211
Today?!
Geminid
@Doc Sardonic: Yesterday evening I went to the Ruckersville Walmart for a big shop. The egg case was virtually empty, down to four boxes of 36 large eggs each. While I stared a couple grabbed one of the four boxes, and then they were down to three.
Jackie
Black Market eggs coming soon…
Doc Sardonic
@Geminid: Was in Costco on Monday, the only eggs they had were quail eggs, not a chicken egg in sight, but they had an entire pallet of the quail eggs. Takes a bunch of quail eggs to make an omelette, not even considering the fact that they are colossal pain in the ass to crack.
TBone
OT Another revisit to pronatalist fluffing in the WaPoo today. Meet the Collinses of Pennsylvania (again!):
I HOPE SHE DOES. Grrrrrrrr
Brood mare’s husband:
GTFOH with your enabling bullshit Malcolm, you sick fuck.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2025/02/01/malcolm-and-simone-collins-pronatalism/
The photos 😳
sab
Spanish moss is so beautiful hanging from trees, but I can’t help thinking about chiggers, those nasty little mites that allegedly live in it.
TBone
@sab: those things are from hell! UGH and GAH!
TBone
@Jackie: we are still mobbed up here in the PA hinterlands. Hideaways abound.
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook had a Florida news item:
Beesides private plane rides on chartered jets, the spending involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in fat salaries and hiring bonuses paid to new hires including Sasse’s former Senate staffers.
From the Gator:
Sasse is still employed as a professor, and the auditors questioned Sasse’s continued annual salary of (I think) one million dollars, the same as his salary as UF President.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: This state is so corrupt it makes Louisiana blush. 😳 I mean seriously, they all have their snouts in the trough, and voters don’t seem to care. Kudos to the Independent Florida Alligator, UF’s student-run newspaper that went indie in the 1970s so they could post info about abortion providers.
catclub
@Quinerly: aviation and worker safety regulations are written in blood.
Also food safety, building safety, etc etc.
lldoty
This is so beautiful. Thank you.
frosty
@Quinerly: Regulations are why I had a career. Stormwater NPDES. When it started in the 80s I raised my hand to the EPA rep and said “In my County we don’t have any idea where our outfalls are. Or where our pipes are.”
A little over five years later, with the help of interns digging through all our drawing files (ink on linen) we had a map, picked the outfalls to sample, and complied. When the mapping was done and I QC’d it, about 1/3 of the pencil mapping was in my handwriting. We had a fun week or two at the end driving around the County verifying the inlets we’d drawn.
After that, when I went to a private firm, my clients were counties in Maryland and Virginia, and we helped them with their reporting to MDE and VDE. Like I said, me and thousands like me, owe our career to regulations. Without them, fewer careers, richer developers, and no improvements in streams, rivers, harbors, or the Chesapeake Bay.
Regulations don’t destroy jobs, they create them. Fuck these assholes.
catclub
I remember the great Canadian maple syrup heist,
probably as far back as 2015. That was a robbery from the strategic maple syrup reserve.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Magical event! Thanks for sharing Betty.
Quinerly
@Betty Cracker:
Well…..since Louisiana has been invoked. One of my favorite quotes.
“The only way I can lose is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” Gov Edwin Edwards 1983
catclub
@Geminid: eggs had been missing other days at my grocery store. Today was well stocked.
catclub
@Quinerly: also when the nazi was running for Guv:
“Vote for the crook, its important.”
lost, innocent days.
Quinerly
Watching this Netanyahu/Trump presser. Netanyahu says Trump is the greatest friend to Israel in history. Quite the tongue bath.
Trump doing a lot of slamming of Biden.
And, sounds like these 2 have cooked up a little plan to relocate Palestinians and “rebuild” Gaza. Make it “beautiful.”
Quinerly
Trump: “US will take over the Gaza Strip.”
“Long term ownership interest”
“Riviera of the Middle East”
Trump/Netanyahu presse
https://apnews.com/article/trump-netanyahu-washington-ceasefire-1c8deec4dd46177e08e07d669d595ed3
Quinerly
@catclub:
😁 there was a lizard vs wizard slogan in that race too. I need to look it up.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: Ohio has joined the corruption train.
Wherever there are Republicans in power, there is corruption.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Watching Hal Sparks watch the presser now. Hal has some choice f-bombs, which is why I watch this stuff thru his youtube channel.
MagdaInBlack
Thank you for that gorgeous clip, Betty, I needed that.
(god I miss living in the sticks. god i hate the suburbs)
Trivia Man
@Quinerly: Regulations are written in blood. Daily Kos had a fantastic series of How Regulations Came to Be. It told stories like the Coconut Grove fire or the Radium girls… and told about the specific regulations created from that learning.
Bad choices lead to experience, that experience leads to good choices.
Geminid
@Quinerly: After Trump floated this proposal two weekends ago, the Times of Israel reported that it was made in order to give Netanyahu a bone to throw to restive coalition partner Bezalel Smotrich. Now it seems to have taken on a life of its own.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere though. The Arab countries adamantly oppose it, and the Saudis and Emiratis swing a lot of weight with Trump. Trump doesn’t much like Netanyahu, and he doesn’t trust him. No one who has dealt with Benjamin Netanyahu trusts him.
Quinerly
@Geminid:
“America is acting as a rogue state at this point.”
Rula Jebreal is lit
BellaPea
@TBone: I am so sick of these pronatalists MFs and their constant need for attention via breeding. It’s all just a show. The Duggars were the worst of the bunch. Stupid, backwards bunch of Jethros.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack:
I actually had taken a break from most of it today. OK, sorta was dipping in and out while I was working in the yard here. But not dialed into every little thing like I have been for days. Came in and that presser was just starting. My jaw dropped. Yes, he has been hinting/saying this kinda stuff off handedly. But standing there behind the presidential seal with Netanyahu….well, I am in shock.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Take a stroll thru “tradfemsnark” on reddit. Bring a barf bag.
TBone
@BellaPea: the scary part is that they’re very fucking serious about it. Especially now that their pronatalist heroes (Elno, Thiel, Vance, et al.) are all now at the helm – they’re going to change our culture if they can. The Duggars were simply there to soften us up before their web of clubby networks come in for the kill, so to speak. They literally have secret networks and some not so secret.
ColoradoGuy
We are in a Bond movie and James Bond isn’t coming.
Suburban Mom
@catclub: The alternative Edwards vs. Duke slogan was “vote for the lizard, not the wizard.”
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: By “population decline” of course they mean WHITE population decline.
( I’m very good at stating the obvious =-)
Suburban Mom
@Quinerly: I just posted that a minute ago. I’m glad someone else remembered that one.
Geminid
@Quinerly: Have they said anything about Phase Two of the ceasefire? That’s the key issue here. No one’s developing anything until they actually end this war, and in a way that precludes another one.
Anyway, Trump can say what he wants about developing the Gaza Strip, but it’s the Saudis and Emiratis who will pay for it and they will do it their way, not Donald Trump’s. They know Trump’s an idiot, and they know how to handle him.
TBone
@ColoradoGuy: I’m counting on Octopussy to step in. Or should I have said Octomom?
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: yup, thanks though, some of those in the back may not have got that implication yet!
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Trivia Man: We need to drop the term “regulations” in these discullsions and call them what they were enacted as “protections””
Quinerly
@Suburban Mom:
All this outdated political (mostly Southern) trivia bouncing around in my 63 yo head.
WTFGhost
I’m sorry, but I’m hearing
“Wiiiings… over water! A fire in the sky!”
Only – I’m hearing it as Weird Al did it as a polka medley. Worse: I don’t remember *which one*. Oh, you… didn’t really care which one. That’s fine, I’ll just wander of here like my feelings ain’t hurt, which they AIN’T.
Betty
@Quinerly: Ernst and Lee are worse than the two goons. They have sworn an oath to protect the country.
NotMax
@catclub
See The Sticky on Prime video, a highly fictionalized account based on that.
Quinerly
@Geminid: nothing about phase 2.
Trump flat out said US will OWN Gaza.
Level it and build back the Riviera of the Middle East.
“It will be beautiful.”
Betsy
I watch the launches from here in NC with my space-nerd friend. We can see both the Virginia launches and (if the trajectory is up the east coast or north by northeast) the Florida launches from canaveral as well. Tonight’s show was an 8 out of 10.
We saw the boosters separate and fire and fly back to the landing zone, dimly through low haze; and we had a great view of the fairings coming off the main rocket.
We could see the parabolic cone shape with waves of rocket exhaust plume coming off the back of the main rocket for about four minutes.
It was an 8 out of 10 because of fairly clear visibility, no clouds; decent booster show; fairings seen; and (biggest factor) it was about 30 minutes after sunset here, so the plume was visible in sunlight in the high atmosphere, against a reasonably dark blue background. That gives good conditions for “jellyfish” effects (ribbons of brightly lit wiggly exhaust trails showing against a deep dark blue sky)
Not a bad show for 800 miles away.
Nevertheless, we have to turn off part of our brains to view any SpaceX launch.
it’s long past time to launch musk on a one-way mars mission, like he’s always wanted.
Quinerly
@Betty: we now long for the days when we mocked her for “bread bags” over her shoes. Remember that?
mrmoshpotato
@Scout211:
That sounds awesome. Loves me a crazy storm.
Suburban Mom
@Quinerly: Me too. I lived in New Orleans for a few years in the early 80’s. It was enlightening.
Old School
@Jackie:
So they are looking for…
<removes sunglasses>
… egg poachers.
TBone
@Quinerly: when I was a kid in the very late 60s, we saved our Stroehmann’s Bread bags to wear between our socks and snowboots so we could stay out sledding longer with dry feet. Rubber bands held them up.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Yup, did the same.
TBone
@Old School: hahahahahahahahahaha
Did I break the margin laughing because
You nailed it. We have so many square miles and so few State Troopers!
When my cabin was broken into and seriously vandalized, they didn’t know where my village was and I had to meet them at a local town market so they could follow me back to the scene of the crime!
Quinerly
@Suburban Mom:
A city like no other. I truly love NOLA. I was in St. Louis almost 40 years. 690 miles to Cafe du Monde. Straight shot. In NOLA, at least 3 times a year. 20 year run in attendance at NOLA Jazz and Heritage Fest.
Might be my favorite American city. I miss it.
Suburban Mom
@Quinerly: I love it too. We get back every few years, often for Jazz Fest.
Quinerly
@Suburban Mom:
My last Jazz Fest was 2010. Miss it. My peeps who still go have adjusted to all the changes, crowds, commercialization. I am not sure I would.
My best years were when 40-50 of us were all urban camping in one of those grody campgrounds on Chef. The Fabulous ’90’s!!!!
Geminid
@Quinerly: No mention of Phase Two? That could be because Netanyahu wanted it that way. One of his coalition partners says he’ll bolt if the war isn’t restarted after Phase One is completed, and the PM wouldn’t want to admit publically that Phase Two is still on.
Reporting going into this visit was that Trump wants this war over with, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff has made that clear. Suleiman Masuweidah, diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s KANN News, reported:
These reports are consistent with reporting from Axios’s Barak Ravid and others. It’s possible “Bibi” persuaded Trump differently today but that seems unlikely.
SiubhanDuinne
@TBone:
Photos, hell. What about the names they gave the kids? Titan Invictus, Industry Americus, Torsten Savage, and Octavian George. What a country
Gloria DryGarden
@Betsy: one way…
how soon? //s
@TBone: just pussy. Though it’s not my favorite word. Pussy power. Pussy hats. All the pro choice women, and our allies. I wish.
For an example of a country with hardly any government, there’s Somalia. Im trying to feel good about what my country could be, could have been…
What is a country with little soft power, little trust, trashed infrastructure, forced births, and some dictators on a team, controlling major swaths of data, and money? What is that? What will trump and Elon and thiel and Vance etc, have, with what they are uncreating?
I see there are lawsuits going forth. Some small hope.
sorry im just in a state of shattered astonishment
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: I hope that they all have as many grandchildren as I have children (I am childless). It does seem to be a self-correcting problem though, at least judging by the Catholic experience (lots of parentification of the elder daughters, lots of neglect = they don’t marry or have children). Mr. Rudbek knew a family with 11 kids back in the 1990s, some were his high school classmates, and very few of them had children at all, from what he said no more than three for any one of the 11. There was also a huge family of around 10-11 that went through my private Catholic high school, but I don’t see their name popping up much in the alumni newsletter for the alumni and students that would be their children or grandchildren. So either that large family didn’t have many children of their own, or they were priced out of attending that high school.
tokyokie
@frosty: When elmo says regulations are costly, he means that they cost HIM money. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether anybody else is harmed. In fact, the more people who suffer from his greed, the better he feels.