"The law has not caught up to the reality of what is happening"

-Dana Zartner, Int'l Envt'l lawyer from the Univ of San Francisco

Science News article, The Dark Side of Light: A plan to redirect the Sun's rays has astronomers in an uproar by Lisa Grossman

"In March, The American Astronomical Society  petitioned the FCC to deny Reflect Orbital's request to operate the test satellite."

Trump's FCC granted approval for the company, Reflect Orbital, in July.

"...DarkSky [Int'l] asked the agency to reverse its decision."

"Reflect Orbital, based near Los Angeles, hopes its satellite and others like it some day offer 'sunlight on demand,' illuminating distaster areas for search and rescue efforts, lighting up nighttime events and festivals and allowing solar farms to run all hours of the day."

The only word I can think of is horrifying * Choice words from scientists

Space, AI...It's time to catch up to technology and start drawing up REGULATIONS.

It's our planet, our universe, too.

Simple Halloween Spell

to cease mouldering love

 

Good tidings

Tarot, Cool Bachelorette pad and Mermaid!

 

Serious question

 

Do you own your biome?

Do you pridefully embrace its uniqueness
and call it your own?
Was it you that put it there?
Luck that the crust broke and sailed away,
landing on a latitude and longitude,
angled just so
only thing like it on this planet
a floristic province

maybe you owned it after all




response to learning about the Caatinga in Brazil

Let them be damned

Abortion is not Govt Business

vote to never vote on abortion ever again
make it illegal to make abortion political

Look at the dirty water, look at him

The United States Coast Guard escorted a historic ship from New York Harbor Saturday morning, after it appeared for the July 4 Parade of Ships bearing political messages.

The historic sloop Clearwater which had to leave the parade Saturday had appeared in a similar pageant for the country's bicentennial in 1976 and has a history of being tied to activism.

The Clearwater had two banners attached to its main sail. On one side, it read “Save the Clean Water Act,” while the other said, “Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions," per photos shared on social media.

“The owner of the sloop Clearwater was contacted and requested to remove the message being displayed or be removed from the parade of sail," they told the outlet. "They declined to remove it. So, the Coast Guard enforced the agreement on behalf of Sail4th removing the vessel from the parade.”

Those on the sloop said that no such communication had taken place. Toman told The Current he understood there was only a ban on promotional materials hanging from the boats taking part.

The Clearwater is a 106-foot replica of a traditional Hudson River sloop, built to resemble the cargo vessels that once dominated the river in the 18th and 19th centuries. The idea emerged during a period when the Hudson was heavily polluted by industrial waste and sewage.

American folk singer Pete Seeger believed that if people could experience the river firsthand, they would be more motivated to protect it. The slogan was essentially to "build a boat to save the river."

Clearwater played an important role in the modern environmental movement in New York. The organization became a leading advocate for cleaning up the Hudson River...

 Read the full article here 

Mother of Exiles

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883

Documenting

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/27/800061362/community/kitchen-table-kibitzing-the-rolling-coup/

We believe that in the United States of America today we are in the middle of a “rolling coup.” 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/30/800063103/courts/supreme-courts-leader-doesnt-care-about-the-constitution/

In Trump v. Slaughter, the conservative supermajority allowed Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, without cause, from the Federal Trade Commission. The ruling overturned a 91-year-old precedent, Humphrey’s Executor, which had held that the president could not remove members of the FTC without cause. But the Slaughter ruling isn’t limited to the FTC, but now covers all independent agency members, commissioners, heads, and chairs. Well, except for the Federal Reserve, of course. 

 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rachel-maddow-dire-warning-supreme-court-ruling-expanding-presidential-power_n_6a4396a7e4b0f4826b480d53?origin=home-whats-happening-unit

“Today, nevertheless, is going to be remembered at the court for what it told Trump he can do,” Maddow said Monday during a lengthy monologue. “In dissent, liberal [Supreme Court] Justice Sonia Sotomayor called today’s ruling, quote, ‘profoundly destabilizing.’”

The “Rachel Maddow Show” host continued, “She said the majority ruling in the Slaughter case today, quote, ‘gives the president a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once co-equal branches.’”

Happy Father's Day Summer Solstice

Celebrate the Masculine, the Expansiveness this Midsummer!

Helios, heel

We need relics

The 1,200-year-old Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is believed to have died after it didn’t sprout leaves this spring, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said Thursday.

I'm sick, St. Oak!

“The truth is, it’s very hard right now to talk to AI companies, whether it’s Altman and OpenAI, or anybody else, because they have a gun at our heads.”

WHY?  

from this article and I like this Bernie Sanders proposal.  Tax payers should always benefit and have a say in things we funded.  AI wouldn't be doing what it's doing if it wasn't for taxpayer money.  I wish Bernie explained it like this.

Langston Hughes

I, too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed,—

I, too, am America.

First sightings: Bat edition

 I'm sure I could've seen them earlier if I had timed it right??

Elon uses taxpayers, Wall Street should have faith in the Govt/Us

Article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/13/business/musk-trillionaire-government-tesla-spacex

Innards of article that I'm posting as a PSA:

The federal government awarded SpaceX more than $500 million worth of grants in its early years. And that $500 million is just a fraction of what Tesla received from government grants, loans, contracts and regulatory policies.

That’s not to say SpaceX’s success and Tesla’s roughly $1.5 trillion valuation are entirely due to federal spending, but both companies teetered as startups before receiving taxpayer subsidies.

SpaceX’s first major windfall was a $278 million grant from NASA in 2006 to develop the Falcon rocket system and Dragon space capsule. The Space Shuttle program was ending, and the US needed a new way to get astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.

It was the first of more than $500 million in grants SpaceX would receive, according to data from PitchBook, which tracks the valuation of private companies.

“That was about half of their capital that they raised to that point,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a public interest group advocating space flight, said ahead of the SpaceX IPO. “This was a substantial commitment that NASA provided.”

And while NASA has enjoyed the benefits of SpaceX’s success, with dozens of humans ferried to the space station aboard the company’s rockets, it didn’t benefit like those private investors.

Wall Street’s faith in Musk is the main reason his wealth has reached previously unimaginable heights — at least for the moment, as long as his companies’ share prices remain near where they are. But that faith comes because at the start of his businesses, when he needed financial assistance the most, it was the US government — not Wall Street — that provided the needed help.

WHERE'S OUR CUT?

image from here

Oogum Boogum castin your spell on me!

 

Trace your meridians

 

Tshirtss! Tshirts, here!

 

First hearings: Cicada edition

 Excitement is in the air!!!!!

Toots!

Do-do-dooo!
Announcing, the one and only!
Tap-dancing maniac
Musical brainiac
Whomping hilariac
Fun-loving friend
Eleven years back, you came to us,
Always at my side
Now it's time to grow and grow and grow!
Cheers for tomorrow!
Cheers for today!

mija

Groovy, girl

Not on the backs of the wealthy, but the backs of We

Much of the progress this country has made over the past 75 years was achieved with the help of government money for research. As the federally funded National Science Foundation touts on its website, “Next time you talk on a cell phone, hear a weather report, search the web, or get an MRI, remember the U.S. National Science Foundation helped make that all possible, and more.” To name just a few examples of what the “more” includes: the development of artificial intelligence, along with the semiconductors and supercomputers that run AI technologies, research into AI’s effect on the U.S. workforce and research on the social and ethical guardrails needed to rein in AI. 

Historically, federal agencies have supported research not in the spirit of an investor looking to make a quick profit, but rather in the spirit of a benefactor looking to do real good in the world. That beneficence, in turn, is necessary for progress because good science is slow and deliberate, and its payoff is never guaranteed. Getting to headline-worthy developments takes far more time than private investors are typically willing to wait for a return on their capital, and far more money than private investors are typically willing to risk. And if the outcome was certain, there would be no need to do the research at all.

from here

And then the billionaires who were propped up by us, don't pay us back
AND act like they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps
They just take, take, take. 
TAX them, Regulate them
They are getting everything and we are getting nothing
Ridem cowpoke, yee-yaw!

what a black and blue bird

what a loon, a loon

getting reemed

In fact, the White House was designed with Ionic columns precisely because they are considered to be less ostentatious. Their purpose was to reinforce the notion that the White House is the “People’s House.”

from this article

and another thing..

He has also announced plans to rip out a fixture installed by President Thomas Jefferson, saying he would install in its place a "beautiful, black granite" installation to replace the Tennessee Flagstone pavers on the West Wing Colonnade. Trump said he would pay for the installation himself and send the Jeffersonian originals to a nursery for safekeeping.

Greenman

 

brawny

Oo de lally!
May is the final full month of increasing daylight
Today is light 14.5hrs from sunrise to sunset
On your fourteenth Earth year orbit around the Sun
A Green man, 
new and fresh
Always so sonny

Oo de lally!  Oo de lally!
Golly what a day!

Greenland

 

Maybe Trump wants to gift it to Putin

First sightings: lightning bug edition

 Seemed super early, but I will have to look at my other lightning bug observations logged on here.

Never forget that Trump is unprecedented

Despite the mounting calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, it is highly unlikely Trump would be removed through that mechanism, which has never been used to end a presidency in U.S. history.

from this MSNOW article

“Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East while violating Congressional war powers, aggressively insults the Pope of the Catholic Church and sends out artistic renderings on-line likening himself to Jesus Christ,” Raskin said in a statement.

Come on Rep. Jamie Raskin!
Get it!!

Not what they're paid for

 

Artemis 2, looky there (we have a madman on this planet)

Hello GOP,

This is what you want?  You want to destroy yourself with the rest of us?
How do we protect ourselves against you?  Who do we call?
Remove the madman from top post. 
To put it mildly, Trump is unraveling, he is unfit for office. 
What is your goal?
FoxNews?  Ellison? 
What is your goal?
Mark Levin?  Meta?  Jeffrey Bezos? Anyone?  Anyone?
What is your goal?
MAGA?
What is your goal?

Brick wall

 

wishes

Tracker, an escape

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis-ii/arow/