Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Let’s use this as a mostly open thread (even politics is fine, as long as it’s good news).
Don’t forget to click on the individual pics below to see them in their full glory at the highest resolution. The same is true for the daily pics in the sidebar.
Taking a Break from the News (Respite Open Thread)Post + Comments (49)
Students in need were paid $500 a month to stay in school. It worked.
www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/…— Beverly Mann (@beverlymann19.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Who could’ve guessed?… the best cure for poverty is money. From the Washington Post, “Students in need were paid $500 a month to stay in school. It worked.”:
Some of the students at Mayfield High School found it hard to believe.
They were in a conference room, setting up their own bank accounts. And as long as they stayed in school, did all their homework and went to tutoring, they could soon begin receiving monthly $500 deposits, their school leaders had explained…
A real chance to get money that could help the students afford transportation, pay their families’ bills and mitigate the myriad ways homelessness has interfered with their educations. And a real chance, educators believe, for the teens to get their grades up and eventually walk across the graduation stage.
The Mayfield students are among about 330 New Mexico high-schoolers set to join a newly launched state pilot program offering monthly $500 payments to teens experiencing housing insecurity and other issues, conditioned on meeting certain goals. The students are in varying situations but may share others’ homes, live without their parents or have substandard housing.
The initiative aims to help remove barriers that keep the teens from attending school — most often, a lack of transportation, utilities, food, clothing or health care.
“I do put a lot of effort into school, with or without the money,” said Dai, a 16-year-old junior at Mayfield who lives with her grandmother. But the new payments offer further incentive — and relief. “It makes me feel really happy because I know I’m not going to be having struggles.”
For Dai, whom The Washington Post is identifying by her first name because she is a minor, the money will mean being able to buy the food she and her grandmother can’t always afford, along with clothing and toiletries. She’s looking forward to purchasing chicken and vegetables so she can get more nutrition for cross-country and track practice.
Sharon and Andy Longhurst’s kitchen opens onto what they call “the ICU”: a garage filled with heated incubators, microscopes and hedgehogs fighting for their lives.
For the past three years, they have turned their home into a hospital, taking in more than 622 hedgehogs. https://wapo.st/48aTBtV— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) November 22, 2025 at 10:00 PM
“This couple has saved hundreds of hedgehogs at their home turned hospital” [gift link]:
Sharon and Andy Longhurst’s kitchen opens onto what they call “the ICU”: a garage filled with heated incubators, microscopes and 12 hedgehogs fighting for their lives.
“Never in a million years did we expect to do this,” said Andy Longhurst.
For the past three years, the couple have transformed their home in Fife, Scotland, into a hedgehog hospital, taking in more than 622 hedgehogs, most of which have been in critical condition. The couple both have jobs — she as a school crossing guard and he as a bus driver — but once they began helping the little nocturnal creatures, they felt a sense of responsibility to them…
West European hedgehogs, native to Britain, make their homes in gardens and wooded areas. But urban development has left them “near-threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, as the population has decreased by more than 30 percent in 10 years…
The Longhursts first found themselves helping a hedgehog in 2022, when they stumbled upon one that was clearly ailing on the side of the road. They called the Scottish SPCA and were told no one could come get it. They ended up taking the animal to the SPCA wildlife center, a 50-mile round trip.
Two weeks later, they found another ill hedgehog. Once again, they brought it to the wildlife center.
“That started us thinking: People aren’t going to do this,” Sharon Longhurst said. “People aren’t going to make that journey.”…
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Goddess Bless the Wildlife RehabilitatorsPost + Comments (104)
I know we are having some trouble with a Cloudflare outage, which seems, for now, to have fixed itself, but I thought I’d post a not-too-important open thread while things settle down.
Some news makes my entire day brighter, this was a story that did just that:
“camp AMP” is the story of Eric Czaja and his family’s quest to bring regenerative grazing to U.S. Department of Defense bases around the country. The pilot program is at Camp Luis Obispo (on the California coast) – where the current grazing lease holder, Mark Simonin, has agreed to let Eric change the way his cattle are being grazed, adopting regenerative methods. Even in the first year, the base’s land is more resilient to drought and flood, both wildfire risk & cost of land maintenance are greatly reduced, and of highest priority to the base, there is an increase of warfighter readiness – the regeneratively grazed land is cleared and ready for training. As the base commander Col. Brian Wintzer says, “It’s a win, win, win, win.”
I posted some Thanksgiving recipes here (including the popular Cranberry Upside-Down Cake)
A little musical interlude (Anne Laurie might have posted this originally a while ago) that makes me super happy
Now that the government is back in action, NASA will be doing a live broadcast on 3I/Atlas and sharing the photos they have compiled. It’s an interesting object, for sure. Here’s the video link, it may or may not start on time later today: tomorrow.
The dogs were living their best life with the estate sale this weekend – so many people, soooo many children, so many pets and scritches. Note the sign in the upper right.
Totally open thread, but would love to hear any good news you may have.
Late Morning Open Thread: Things That Make Me SmilePost + Comments (98)
A wildlife photographer captured a dramatic encounter on video between a harbor seal and a pod of killer whales.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) November 14, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Sometimes you just gotta look for a boat…
A wildlife photographer out on a whale watching trip in waters off Seattle captured dramatic video and photos of a pod of killer whales hunting a seal that survived only by clambering onto the stern of her boat.
Charvet Drucker was on a rented 20-foot (6-meter) boat near her home on an island in the Salish Sea about 40 miles northwest of Seattle when she spotted a pod of at least eight killer whales, also known as orcas.
The orcas’ coordinated movements and tail slaps suggested they were hunting. Drucker used the zoom lens on her camera to spot a harbor seal that was trying to flee from the pod. One of her shots showed the seal flying through the air above the scrum of orcas frothing the water, and she assumed she was witnessing the seal’s last moments alive.
But as the orcas got closer to the boat, Drucker and her group realized the pod was still chasing the seal. In line with wildlife boating regulations, they had cut the engine to prevent any injury to the whales. The seal clambered out of the water and onto a swimming platform at the stern of the boat near the motor — claiming it as a life raft of sorts…
“You poor thing,” Drucker can be heard saying, as the seal looks up at her. “You’re good, just stay, buddy.”
The orcas did not give up immediately, but instead appeared to team up to rock the boat and make the seal fall off. Drucker’s cellphone video shows the orcas lining up and moving in on the boat with staggered dives to create waves. The “wave-washing” technique has been documented since by scientists since at least the 1980s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The seal on Drucker’s boat slid off at least once, but managed to climb back on, and the orcas swam away after about 15 minutes…
“I’m definitely Team Orca, all day, every day. But once that seal was on the boat, I kind of turned (into) Team Seal,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
In the morning thread, Jackal Tobie pointed out that Google does not offer an AI answer for a search asking if Trump has dementia, while generating a reply if one asks about, say Bruce Willis.*
So…what should one do?
Well, if you have my somewhat unfortunate turn of mind, you might ask Chat GPT to generate an internal monologue for a Trump posited to be in the grips of cognitive decline. To its credit, I’d say, that generator of frequency distributions of strings of words declined to do so, explaining that would be too close to offering a diagnosis of a living person.
Being a helpful sack of words+algorithms, however, the LLM offered to write up what a fictional politician in such straits might be thinking. My first try was a bust–I fed back the word “politician” in the prompt and got a notional senator’s musings. I tried again with a cleaned up ask, and this is what I got:
Prompt: Write an internal monologue of a fictional American president who is confused, grandiose, or erratic.
Here’s an internal monologue of a completely fictional American president—President Alderidge “A.J.” Mapleson—who is confused, grandiose, and erratic. No real person is being portrayed.
Internal Monologue of President Alderidge “A.J.” Mapleson
Where’s my nuclear football? They told me it’s always nearby, but I don’t see anything shaped like a football. Maybe it’s an actual football. Maybe they’ve been hiding it from me because they’re worried I’ll try to punt it down the hallway again. That only happened twice. People overreact.
Focus, A.J., focus. You’re the president. The President of the United States—the biggest job in the world. Or is it the second biggest? I think the CEO of MegaMart technically has more employees. I should call him. Maybe he can give me leadership tips. Or coupons.
What’s on the schedule? Something about a security briefing? Or a briefing about the briefing? Why do they brief me so much? I already know everything. I’ve read so many files, some of them twice. I could brief them if I wanted. But I won’t. Wouldn’t want to make them insecure.
Is that the Secretary of Defense coming toward me? I hope he doesn’t want an update on the “Mapleson Doctrine.” I don’t remember inventing it, but everyone keeps referencing it like I wrote it in stone tablets. Should I ask him what it is? No—no, play it cool. I’ll nod sagely. Nodding solves many problems.
I need a strong line for the speech today. Something presidential. “My fellow Americans…” Yes, good start. Then something inspiring. Maybe trees? Americans like trees. Or space. Space trees? I’ll circle back to that.
Wait—am I supposed to be in the Oval Office right now? This hallway doesn’t look oval. It looks rectangle. That’s troubling. Maybe they moved the office again. They keep rearranging things. I know they do it to keep me sharp. Or to keep me confused. Hard to tell these days.
I should announce a new initiative. Presidents announce things. “Operation… something.” Operation Lighthouse, maybe? Or Operation Lightning Shark. Yes. That sounds powerful. Dramatic. Cinematic. I’ll figure out what it actually does later, once the polls come in.
Smile, A.J. Smile with gravitas. Think majestic thoughts. Think commander-in-chief energy. Think… wait… where was I going?
Ah yes.
To lead the nation. Boldly. Confidently. And with absolutely no idea what meeting I’m walking into right now.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m feeling that the veil of fiction is pretty damn thin.
Have fun in the comments, jackatariat; this thread is as open as the presidential mind is welded shut.
PS: I am not an AI-involved guy, at least not yet. As you might expect, the question of how the ready availability of LLMs affects higher ed is a pretty constant topic at my workplace. But I’ve been too much involved in immediate crises to get much of a handle on what actual use such models might be, and how (if at all) to keep their use from wrecking humanistic education. I suspect I will not be permitted such blissful ignorances for much longer.
*To be fair: Google also declines to provide an AI summary for the same search asked of other politicians. I tried it on Joe Biden and Mike Johnson and each time it went “nope.”
Image: Hans Memling, X-radiograph of the painting, Portrait of an Old Man, c. 1475
Quiet week! (okay, not really)
You will see that Thurston is gracing the sidebar for us today.
For a bit of levity, can we caption this photograph?
Thurston Howl clearly has something to say. What is it?
