next up from the newsletter: one of my favorite new york city wildlife stories, about a salamander species in an out-of-the-way manhattan park that has twice disappeared for decades. 🧪 ryanmandelbirder.substack.com/p/the-major-...
Holy shit, New York!
Here’s the full view.
#NoKings #50501Movement
Zowie!
Two semicircles of cake on a table, each with chocolate frosting, one decorated with pecan halves and the other decorated with walnut halves and a lit candle. Also on the table are glasses, plates, forks, knives, and a teapot. The people about to eat the cake have been cropped out of the photo, but some knees and hands are visible.
Friends came over to help eat the cake, and one is allergic to walnuts, so I made half with walnuts and half with pecans. (You can't tell from the photo, but the cake layers have chopped nuts in them--one half-cake has pecans and the other has walnuts.)
And now for Smokey Robinson in what I have identified as the high point of American culture: his U Really Got A Hold of Me on Sesame Street.
I cannot overstate: this is our finest 3 minutes.
This seems somehow symbolic.
Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault on our democracy and rule of law. After openly defying a Supreme Court order, calling for judges to be impeached, and bullying and belittling judges when he doesn’t like their decisions, today the FBI took the extreme and dangerous step arresting a judge.
A collection of press passes carried by the feminist journalist Karen Durbin, who died on 15 April.
Just heard that my old friend Karen Durbin, a great feminist writer and film critic and the last editor of NYC's Village Voice before it became a free sheet, died at 80 on 15th April. Sadly, she had alzheimers for her final seven years. Once upon a time we had such fun both sides of the Ditch.
A white wading bird stands in the shallow water of a pond in a park. There are steps leading down to the pond in the foreground and trees and buildings in the background.
Harlem Meer egret.
I'm looking forward to the Murderbot TV series. But actor Kevin R. Free @kevinrfree.bsky.social did such an amazing job reading the audiobooks that I wonder whether I'll be able to believe in the character with someone else inhabiting it.
I'm not complaining. I'm explaining that the pups are not dire wolves. Their DNA is almost entirely gray wolf DNA, with 14 to 20 dire wolf genes stuck in. That does not produce dire wolves. If you took an orangutan and stuck in 20 human genes, you would not have a human.
No, that's not what they're claiming they did. They're claiming they took gray wolf DNA and edited in 15 dire wolf genes and 5 genes that are shared by gray wolves and dire wolves. The overwhelming majority of the pups' DNA is from gray wolves.
in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list
No we haven't. We've got gray wolves with a few dire-wolf genes stuck in.
No, they did not bring back dire wolves from extinction. They used gene editing to insert a (very) few dire-wolf genes into a gray wolves, which are not even the closest living relatives of dire wolves. If you stick 15-20 human genes into an orangutan, you don't get a human.
Decades ago, @lowdudgeon.bsky.social & I were looking for something that had vanished in the clutter under the kitchen sink. One of us said, "It's under the chicken." Since then we refer to that area or any clutter situation as "under the chicken"
People jogging on the Central Park bridle path, one with a dog, in the middle ground, with the Guggenheim Museum in the background and blossoming trees in the foreground.
Central Park is pretty right now.
I miss the Village Voice.
The police clearly have different friends on social media than I do or they would have known that everyone was going to be there.
"NY Attorney General Letitia James today co-led a coalition of 20 other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of three federal agencies that provide services and funding supporting public libraries and museums, workers, and minority-owned businesses nationwide"
Protests aren’t the only tool in the anti-authoritarian toolkit, but they’re incredibly important. Protests help us see each other; they make it feel safer to refuse to obey the dictator, and make it more possible for us to organize mass non-cooperation.
It’s an essential step in the process.
Huge crowd of protesters on NYC's Fifth Avenue. Some of the signs say: No King in America, Hands off Medicaid, A King of Fools is a Danger to Us All, Resist, Defund the Rich.
The march in NYC went on and on and on and on and on.
I asked the one high ranking policeman I saw on 5th Ave why there were so few police. He said “We did not expect anything like this. Don’t tell anyone but I’ve only got 44 officers out here — and it’s a great crowd, great event, no incidents.”
Do you find Jamaica Kincaid's An Autobiography of My Mother too depressing? It fits your criteria otherwise.
How to leak to a journalist!
featuring a bunch of good advice from those who know: @marisakabas.bsky.social @amandabecker.bsky.social @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social @rmac.bsky.social @swin24.bsky.social @juliaangwin.com @benmullin.bsky.social & @maxtani.bsky.social
Thank you, Senator!
Good morning. Monday morning. In a rank choice voting system you need to rank five good apples for mayor in addition to NOT ranking Cuomo and NOT ranking Adams.
Please help spread the word! Share share share!!!! Copy and redo in your own words if you prefer!
A spot on a wall where something was once glued on. The traces of glue are flowing shapes.
Accidental Matisse?
if you've had an NIH grant terminated, I want to hear about it. Signal: katherinejwu.12
@kathyhochul.bsky.social Thanks for refusing to hand over the doctor. Now please fire the mayor.
