AI-driven nature apps are changing how people engage with wildlife on their hikes.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 28, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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I can remember when fans could barely interest even local media into covering the biggest pop-cult conventions…
Comic-Con Africa has drawn tens of thousands of fans to Johannesburg.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 31, 2025 at 2:00 AM
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Exactly. Whatever the problem is – and every state, red and blue, has plenty of problems – dictatorship is not the answer.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 11:39 AM
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Honestly Trump being too old & sick to talk to reporters serves my purposes almost as well as him kicking it. "What if Trump was president & it wasn't any fun" is a pretty good summary of why the press hated COVID & I am very happy to bring that back
— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 10:36 PM
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In Donald Trump's America consumers have fewer choices at higher prices thanks to increased taxes on imported goods. www.nbcnews.com/business/bus…
— Adam J Schmidt (@adamjschmidt.bsky.social) August 29, 2025 at 11:03 AM
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University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index was 74.0 in December, now 58.2 in August. Conference Board’s consumer confidence index was 104.7, now 97.4. Government officials shouldn’t go on TV and blatantly lie like this.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 11:36 AM
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Pope Leo XIV denounced the “pandemic of arms, large and small,” as he prayed publicly for the victims of the shooting during a Catholic school Mass in the United States.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
On The Road – Albatrossity – The Future is Still Now
Baud
There’s zero political cost to Republicans lying.
Baud
I tried the Merlin app, but it kept asking for my email address and wouldn’t accept it. No birds for me.
Princess
@Baud: yeah, it’s not like the media will ever call them on it (I do realize there has been some in the moment civilized pushback. But not the full court press “why are the Democrats lying?” Stories we’d get if Dems were blatantly lying about numbers and firing the people who could tell the truth.)
patrick II
Trump ran his business by bullying. He would make a deal, then not pay up, get sued, and since he had bigger pockets force his contractor to take less in mediation. He got sued over 4,000 times and forced bad deals for most of them. Bullying is the only thing he knows but its not going to work on the world stage. He-may he finding out that foreign leaders are not plumbing contractors and they also know how to combine their efforts. Bullying is the only thing he knows but its not going to work on the world stage.
Baud
@Princess:
Or rounding to the wrong decimal point.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Good morning.
Princess
@patrick II: well, frankly, the US market is large and valuable enough that most of the world is accommodating the tariffs to some extent. They don’t have much choice. But ending the de minimis exemption… he expects them to collect and remit the tariffs on those goods and why should they? Even so, Canada Post is arranging to do it but they’re using a third party and it’s going to cost shippers and buyers a fortune. I expect other countries to come round with similar solutions but a lot of sellers will still refuse to ship. One shipper I know said the cost would be an extra 39%. How many Americans will want to pay that premium?
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Indeed. And they’re quite often assisted (whether deliberately or through sheer journalistic malpractice) by the supposedly liberal media.
For example, there is a tweet from Jessica Riedl that says:
I see very little pushback from most of the media on these lies.
And it’s similar down here in BFE, MS. Gov. Tate Reeves is frequently shouting about “record private investment”, “high-paying jobs”, “Mississippi momentum”, etc, while refusing to provide verifiable evidence and, with only a few exceptions, most of the media outlets in MS are just acting as stenographers.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
What email address were you trying to use? [email protected]?
;>)
prostratedragon
In retrospect?! I hope that’s just a poorly applied habit of speaking because why ever else would he have done it?
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Maybe not use your scam university email address? Even we know pantsless dot edu isn’t accredited.
Nukular Biskits
@mrmoshpotato:
What degree programs
todo they have there?ETA: I swear the keyboard is in a conspiracy with the monitor …
mrmoshpotato
@Nukular Biskits: Pantsless ones I suppose.
Nukular Biskits
Normally, on weekdays, I get up at 0400, have some coffee, do my 45 minute walk before heading to work.
Today, I slept in and now I’m trying to decide if I should do my walk or just blow it off until tomorrow.
Splitting Image
As eager as I am to read Trump’s obituary, I will be happy to delay the pleasure of it if it means I get to watch him suffer for longer.
prostratedragon
A fine Labor Day poster:
prostratedragon
@Splitting Image: Life is one trafeoff after another.
catclub
@prostratedragon: I have to respect the evil creativity of getting bribes by suing someone, then the people sued settle the case in your favor with a bribe.
catclub
@Splitting Image:
Depends who else also suffers.
lowtechcyclist
A pandemic of arms – that’s what we’ve got, alright. Pope Leo nails it.
Nukular Biskits
@catclub:
Well, unfortunately, we all do.
Betty Cracker
I’ve mentioned before that one thing I hate about living in a right-wing kleptocracy is the necessity of trying to figure out what the corrupt and depraved people in charge will do next. It would be great to not think about the sick fucks who are running the country, but since their actions affect me and mine, I feel like I have to pay some attention.
Right now, I’m trying to figure out if Trump will successfully bully the craven GOP justices on the SCOTUS into overturning the appeals court ruling on tariffs. Will they let him run a planned economy like he’s Nikita Khrushchev? Even though the “emergency” claims his dumb tariffs are based on are 100% bogus, and the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives the power to levy tariffs to Congress?
My guess is yes, they will cave. I’m no economist or lawyer, but it seems that either way, the SCOTUS decision will land like a bombshell. Tick, tick, tick.
eclare
@prostratedragon:
That is a great poster and sentiment. Thanks for linking.
artem1s
@Splitting Image: I’ve been wondering if having all those vax deniers around means he’s getting exposed and caught COVID a couple more times. During the early days of the pandemic even the most vocal GQP Congresscritters and MSM deniers were secretly getting two shots and boosters and taking some isolation cautions to keep from getting infected. Even if they are keeping him vaxxed up, given the nutball running HHS, his daily exposure to COVID and god knows what else has got to have gone nuclear. Repeated infections could also explain the escalating vascular, edema, and dementia problems.
Irony may be on it’s deathbed in this timeline but if Brain Worm Boy’s number one notch in his gun belt death toll turns out to be the nations biggest germaphobe that would be the chef’s kiss of being hoisted on your own petard.
Geo Wilcox
@Princess: It is already costing people. A lady wrote about purchasing a $99 dress for her daughter from overseas. She got a bill from DHL a few days later for over $300.
Albatrossity
@Baud: You do need a free account at the Cornell lab to use Merlin, so unless you set one up, it won’t work for you. The account is easy to create, and does not require a credit card or anything like that. Once it is set up, the next time you open Merlin on your phone you log in with that email and password, and you’re all set.
Albatrossity
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, SCOTUS probably will cave; that’s always been a winning bet. But Perhaps they value their stock portfolios more than anything else, and can see the damage that tariffs are doing and would continue to do to the economy. They might vote with their wallets and not their cold squinched hearts.
Suzanne
That’s a beautiful way to phrase this. I don’t really get a say, but I like this Pope so far.
I hope he pisses off Rod Dreher and the tradcaths. Thiel, Vance, etc.
Nukular Biskits
@Albatrossity:
My only problem w/ Cornell is that, once you’ve set up your account, they spam* you with requests for financial support.
I really can’t fault them, though: The app is very good and I think it’s a worthy cause.
And there’s always the truism:
*”spam” being in the eye of the beholder, of course.
Scout211
I think that is on most of our minds. But grocery prices and how the public responds to the price increases will probably be the only thing that moves Trump to pull back on tariffs.
What I am wondering about is how Trump’s newly proposed EOs will get push back. The EO that requires “voter ID for every vote” and the other one banning mail-in voting are supposedly going to be announced soon. I can see the courts pushing back on that. But the SCOTUS six?
lowtechcyclist
@Splitting Image:
Thinking of Trump’s possible death while in office, I can’t help but think on the final scene of The Graduate. After Elaine and Ben elude their pursuers by getting on a bus, their elation fades as they think: what next? And with JD, we really don’t know what next. We know he’s Peter Thiel’s puppet, we know he’s ruthless and amoral but of dubious competence, and we don’t know to what extent the MAGAts will rally behind him.
I’m rooting for an extended period where Trump is barely conscious enough to sign his name to a statement saying he has no inability to carry out his duties, forestalling any 25th Amendment move, and meanwhile all the insiders (Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, etc.) jockey for control and try to tear each other down while we root for injuries.
Jeffg166
@Nukular Biskits:
I have a junk mail account on yahoo I give to anyone who wants an email from me. I have gmail account for people I actually want to hear from.
Nukular Biskits
@Jeffg166:
Same here but for some stuff, I just go ahead and sign in with the gmail account associated with my phone.
I will say Google does a fair job of directing what I consider spam into the “promotions” folder.
Suzanne
@Geo Wilcox: I’m just curious….. when you buy something from the internet that may come from overseas, do you get any sort of warning telling you about the bill for the tariff you’re gonna get?
The economy is in this deeply weird, Baumol’s-cost-disease-y place where consumer goods have been so cheap, and yet housing, education, and transportation are incredibly expensive. For the life of me, I don’t know why any politician would want to couple tariffs on consumer goods without doing something to aggressively cut costs on the other stuff. (I vote for raising taxes sharply on single-family homes over one, and banning AirBNB.)
Scout211
I don’t get the spam emails. I wonder if there is a way you can unsubscribe? I don’t even remember if I ever got one of those emails, but if I did, I unsubscribed immediately.
Baud
@Albatrossity:
I thought I did that. I’ll try. Thanks.
Nukular Biskits
@Scout211:
Good question. If I weren’t so lazy, I’d go look and see if that was an option.
mappy!
I’m waiting for the appearance of Maggie’s puff pieces about J. Divan’s on-the-job acquired negotiating skills… Countdown…
Nukular Biskits
@mappy!:
She’s probably saving it for her book … in 5 years.
oldgold
@Betty Cracker: I think your guess is correct.
It is particularly galling that these black robed corrupt pols once self-identified as being textual originalists. Yet, now are more than willing to orange up the Constitution.
JML
@lowtechcyclist: looking at how various MAGA Acolytes have tried to replicate the Orange Idiot’s playbook and have never been able to hold attention and generate the same levels of support makes it unlikely that someone like Vance can just declare himself the heir and keep things from fracturing. Add in the fact that Vance lacks any human instincts and is a relative unknown to a broad swath of people, I’d say it’s much more likely it’s open season. Factor in the large number of grifters in MAGA World and how thirsty so many of the MAGA Elected are for more more more…everyone tearing into each other seems like a more likely result.
We can only hope, I guess.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
IANAL, I’m not sure how it even gets to court. Absent any federal laws superseding state laws, voting is a matter that states have jurisdiction over. All they have to do AFAICT is just ignore Trump’s EOs and handle voting the same way they were going to do anyway.
I suppose Trump’s DOJ could seek an injunction blocking states from making mail-in ballots available, but they’d have to have a law to hang that on, and they don’t. And as much power over the Federal government as the Supine Six have handed Trump, elevating his personal decrees over state laws would be a huge leap beyond that: at that point, we really would have a dictator.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
But how much would that really matter, other than at election time? He still would hold all those ‘unitary executive’ powers that the Supine Six have granted Trump, and if anything, he’d be even more ruthless about using them.
Princess
Someone from Pfizer got to Trump today and showed him how many lives the Covid vaccines have saved and he’s completely astounded and can’t figure out why Pfizer never told anyone about this before.
He’s also complaining about the US Canada Mexico trade deal that he signed and how Canada and Mexico are taking advantage of it, and you can’t blame them, but he’s going to impose 25% tariffs on them next week which, if so, goodbye Canada but also goodbye Michigan, Indiana, Ohio….
My only consolation is that the people who work for him, though they’re no doubt making money hand over fist, their jobs are completely miserable.
artem1s
MAGAts will be in the same in the same “what’s next” state. Maybe more so. The MSM will treat it like the JFK assassination – 24/7 coverage. And the usual suspects will demand a comparable funeral so they can maximize the grift. Hate to say it but I expect a Lincolnesque laying in state in multiple cities across the union. Complete with gilded funeral train with a baggage car full of “Trump” banded crap that the Traitor Tots will hawk at every stop. :P
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: In the world of spamming for contributions, Cornell is at the back of the pack. One a week maybe?
Princess
On SCOTUS and tariffs – it’s not caving if they’re doing what they want to do anyway. I think their goal is an all-powerful executive so every diminishment of the power of Congress is a win for them.
SCOTUS isn’t supine ; they’re activists, building the America they want to see.
Geminid
I ran across a story in Rudaw English worth sharing. Below the headline is a photo of a woman in a blue dress and scarve. She is sitting in a wheelchair, on a city sidewalk, and next to her are four books propped against a treewell with some handicrafts displayed on blanket in front of them.
The headline:
frosty
But would he really? He’s only one lawsuit (and several appeals) away from having the Supine Six hand down a decision based on who knows what that it only applied to FFOTUS.
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
Yeah, it ain’t much. In fact, I just checked my email and I haven’t received one in a while.
Quantum man
Went grocery shopping yesterday. Only got 25 items. $225. Items barely covered bottom of cart.
Rusty
@frosty: The project to take ove the court by the Federalist Society and implement such things as absolute executive power have been 40 years in the making. Trump has been the right wing unicorn in ways, but the project was never about him. They aren’t going to change lanes at the death of Trump, especially when they feel so close to winning.
Albatrossity
@Scout211: Yeah, I don’t get many spam emails from Cornell Lab of O either. Of course, I have been a member, subscribed to the magazine, and was a member of an eBird citizens advisory group long ago when it was just getting started. I am also currently an eBird reviewer. So maybe they just figure they don’t need to constantly remind me of their existence. Dunno. But it is a good cause, and I suspect that fundraising emails will get more frequent as NSF grants (which have supported eBird for many years) go the way of the dodo…
different-church-lady
This mashup of Mein Kampf and Nineteen Eighty Four really sucks.
Professor Bigfoot
THIS.
The ENTIRE Republican Party apparatus is behind Trump on this.
They are indeed “building the America they want to see,” a white supremacist neo-apartheid America, where everyone knows their place.
catclub
ON AI identifiers and birdwatching:
Richard Feynmann’s father pointed out to him that knowing the name of the bird
is no big deal, while knowing some of its behavior and characteristics is useful knowledge.
catclub
@Quantum man: 22 lobsters,two packages of Fois gras, and saffron?
catclub
Only if the president is a Republican. They had no problem stopping that unitary executive when Biden was president.
2liberal
@Baud:
Try creating a new gmail or yahoo account if you haven’t already. I just installed it and all it needed was my email, no phone number or any other identification, not even a password , also power your phone off and then on again before installing (FYI I’ve supported phone apps professionally and i’ve seen a phone reboot fix a lot of weird issues **especially for iPhones**)
Another Scott
@catclub: +1
Plus, they have set themselves up to be ultimate judge of what is an “official act”. So, in addition to setting themselves up as unelected, lifetime appointed, super legislators, they also set themselves up to be final second-guessers of everything the executive does. And, via the “emergency docket” they’re abusing, they don’t have to tell us how they voted or explain their reasoning. And they think that the other two branches will never do anything about it.
Our three branches of government are temporarily controlled by people who think they are characters in a Lewis Carroll novel. (At least we’re working to make it temporary…)
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: If one were truly conspiratorially minded, one might conclude that the entire GOP is very little more than a racketeer influenced corrupt organization.
One that owes too many favors (and too much money) to the wrong people.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Personally, I would go for a steep vacancy tax on second and third and fourth homes, and if not outright banning STRs, putting a ban on turning a newly-purchased property into a STR until you had owned it for at least five years.
That might help address the housing shortage inmy neck of the woods, but I don’t think it would ever pass.
CaseyL
@Professor Bigfoot:
It’s worth noting that, among other organized crime organizations, the good old Mafia spent multiple generations working its way into legitimate enterprises – corporate, political, etc. – with the intent of redirecting those enterprises toward profit for the Families. Mobsters sit on Boards, in C Suites, and in Congress… and now, in the Oval Office and Executive Branch.
The Trump family was and is a Mob family.
The US Mob will make common cause with the Russian mob for as long as it’s convenient and profitable. Which it has been, beyond their wildest dreams, since the mid-80s (when Congress deregulated the finance industry).
The US government is now, literally, an organized crime operation aimed at transferring the nation’s collective wealth into their own pockets. Nothing but mobsters and grifters the whole way down.
Professor Bigfoot
@CaseyL: Plus the odd foreign agent, yep, that’s them all right.
Uncle Cosmo
@catclub: Buy ridiculously expensive niche items, b*tch about the high prices… yeah, sounds about right for the level of culinary snobbery this blog is awash with.
NobodySpecial
@Uncle Cosmo: In fairness, there are locations in the US with high cost of living where something like a decent sized roast for a family gathering is $60-80, and it’s a holiday weekend. I find a lot of people are reflexively thinking that prices are the same as they were even two or three years ago, and they’re stupidly higher for a lot of items.
Professor Bigfoot
@NobodySpecial: Yeah, there’s that— I was at Sam’s Club yesterday and just surveyed the meat case— three (admittedly gorgeous) big ribeyes that I swear I could get for 30 bucks or so not that long ago, are now in the 50-60 dollar range.
I did that occasionally- get the three pack, have one, vacuum seal and freeze the other two… but yeah, between my cardiologist and the prices, I can live without. ;^)
2liberal
@Baud:
Hey, I posted downthread with a couple of suggestions for the Merlin app, did you actually see that ?
Paul in KY
@artem1s: We can only hope…