Greetings!

 

Somethings brewing

 

I like Julius T. Csotonyi's artistic depiction of the Parviraptor estesi

 

intact braincase

brainpan, braincase

Brilliant Brazilian scientists found an intact braincase of a snake fossil called, Tametara mirim.

Betelgeuse may have a buddy

These are the things you learn when you read Science News!!

You can enjoy reading headlines, like these!

Ape Cuddles Might Prevent Conflicts
Finding eco-friendly toilet paper is harder than it seems

Learn about drought and extreme heat in the October 2026 issue.
Including that horrifying article already mentioned on this blog about Reflect Orbital, the company using mirrors in space to direct made to order sunlight on the globe.  All I can think about it is James Bond Die Another Day.  Melt the ice and flood the world.

Your month wouldn't be complete without this incredible painting by Maria Sibylia Merian on the Curiosities page:

This issue even introduced me to Brueghel the Elder's painting, "Air"!

Go Science News!

The Allegory of Air by Jan Brueghel the Elder

Light as a feather, stiff as a board

How to play:

At least 5 people
One to lie supine (on their back) and at least 4 flanking the body (head, feet and sides)
Perform in the dark. Around or close to midnight, wee hours or the witching hour is preferred.
Robes or costumery, offerings for the dead (a feather?) and a lit candle are optional to create mood.

As the person lying down rests with eyes closed and in the customary arms crossed upon the breast position, each person surrounding them should plainly say, 

"She/he/they are dead"

It is best if each person says it in different, dramatic intonations, in order to try to crack up the participants

Once it is established that the person is dead, the others should place their four fingers, two on each hand (horizontal "live long and prosper"), under the dead.
The others should then chant in a hushed, low, shadowy, almost holy tone,

"Light as a feather, stiff as a board"

Do this as many times necessary to create a certain vibratory atmosphere
Then, when the timing is right, the person at the head of the body will nod and the others will try to levitate the dead

forsooth (please)

 

Pushing Precedents

 Yesterday, Monday, October 27, one the federal prosecutors, John Borchert, filed an amended complaint, adding a new charge of obstruction of Congress to the rap sheet of the two defendants.

But in an extraordinary break from standard legal practice, the prosecutors issued the new complaint without first seeking judicial approval, effectively asserting that they could accuse the defendants of additional crimes without the traditional checks and balances.

I don’t get the sense these unusual legal maneuvers are mere incompetence through inexperience. They’re attempting to establish a kind of prosecutorial precedent, using WH political punishment on agents to leverage getting the courts to sign off on being the DOJ’s de facto HR department. Luckily, the judge hearing the case, Zia Faruqui, wasn’t having it, generating the pithy remark that became this essay’s title, when Mr. Borchert had to acknowledge the unusual nature of the amended complaint.

from this article

emphasis mine

The Black Art

 

Holy Wounds

 

Mermaid!

 

A very Myrna Loy Halloween

 

Treason season again and again and again

Good and terrible read.  Article by Sabrina Haake in Daily Kos:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/21/800115299/community/whats-that-word-again-for-aiding-and-comforting-the-enemy/?__vfz=medium%3Dstandalone_top_pages

"Why" link from the end of the article above^:

 https://www.newyorker.com/news/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-trump-kompromat

Trump is a wild animal trying to save his hide

We are forced to watch it:

The horror

"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!!!!!