The headlines keep getting better: “Alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave and is seeking attention…”

The headlines keep getting better:

“Alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave and is seeking attention, authorities say”

#wtf #SpyWhale

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/02/authorities-alleged-russian-spy-whale-is-refusing-leave-seeking-norwegians-devotion/

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Re: “at least it’s not a sea lion” – @BrionV

Now that you mention it….

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-baby-sea-lion-on-busy-san-francisco-highway-20190501-story.html

It’s almost as though cruelty and neglect can affect people’s mental health….

gorogues:

eusouomar:

gorogues:

It’s almost as though cruelty and neglect can affect people’s mental health.  

Everyone gives Batman shit over the state of Arkham but no one ever talks about Iron Heights.

There was a bit of criticism for Iron Heights within the Flash book, such as when Ashley Zolomon called the prison “the Rogue Factory” (which she said was a widespread nickname) and accused Wolfe of having no compassion for its prisoners.  It seems quite likely that the mistreatment there has made some of the prisoners worse, with I think Roscoe as one of the prime examples.  And as awful as Arkham is, at least they make some attempt to treat their inmates; we’ve seen that Iron Heights leaves theirs barefoot in straitjackets and isolated in filthy cells.  So it’s no surprise that they end up even more mentally ill and anti-social, which is almost certainly what Ashley was alluding to.

Wally and Wolfe clashed on a number of occasions over the treatment of prisoners there, once Wally found out about it. But Wally had no authority there, he was just a vigilante super-hero, and Wolfe kept running things the way he wanted to. The one win I remember was that Wally was able to get Fallout an actual, comfortable room that absorbed his radiation instead of leaving him hooked up to tubes like he was before.

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The milky-way-like blob from exhaust and exploding missile debris…

KelsonV shared a status by brion@mastodon.technology

The milky-way-like blob from exhaust and exploding missile debris makes for lovely formations in the fading high-altitude sunlight, which were quite the rorschach test for my friends.

I recall I thought one photo looked like the starship Enterprise; the lady at the photo shop (before good digital cameras!) said it looked like an angel; my classmate said it looked like a dog. 🙂

@brion I might actually have a copy of at least one of those pictures. I’ll take a look.

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@brion I found this one. No EXIF, and the text file only notes that you took it, but the files are timestamped Oct. 4, 2003.

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@brion And now it’s even more distributed!

I’ll email you the original(?) file, since Mastodon seems to have resampled it even though it didn’t need to resize it.

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I installed Instagram on a Chromebook to see if I could.

I can.

Um, now what?

When I first used Instagram, I really wanted to be able to upload photos from my camera & type captions with a real keyboard. But it’s been built around uploading from phones since the beginning, and it just doesn’t lend itself to any other use case, even when you can get it to run on another form factor.

Plus phone photos are a lot better now, & it’s just as easy to transfer pics from the camera to the phone.

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@brion In the specific case of Instagram, the website doesn’t offer full functionality: you can browse & update your bio, but you can’t add new photos.

I haven’t tried any game apps yet, partly because I just got an underpowered one to use as a second laptop. (I figure if I get nice hardware, I want a real OS.) It’ll be interesting to use touch apps w/a trackpad…

But I’ve had success with utility apps for Dropbox, KeePass & a VPN.

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@brion I was surprised that the Android layer was thorough enough for a VPN app to work, but after looking around the Chrome app store a bit, I think Google decided it was better to leverage the more mature ecosystem than try to push something that never really took off.

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Finally spotted the plant whose spiky seeds keep puncturing bike tires. It’s a low, creeping …

Finally spotted the plant whose spiky seeds keep puncturing bike tires. It’s a low, creeping mat that can grow right next to the path and spread onto it, and the seeds grow in clusters. The dried seeds’ spikes punch straight through, sometimes to the inner tube.

Unfortunately I have no idea what it is, since it doesn’t match my previous guess (sand burr / sand spur) from what I can tell.

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@abetterjulie Yes, that looks like it. Thanks!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulus_terrestris

And damn, puncture vine is an accurate name…

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On iNaturalist (later)

We have book clubs at booktoot.club!

@stefanhayden @andeluuu @Mastodon We have book clubs at https://booktoot.club ! #sffbookclub, #nfbookclub, #storyclub & a few others.

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@andeluuu @stefanhayden @Mastodon Just check out the hashtags to see what people are reading. There’s a master list at https://fediverse-reads.dreamwidth.org

Joining the specific instance isn’t required, since hashtag columns will federate.

On Wandering.shop

@andeluuu @stefanhayden @Mastodon I mean each server will be able to see tagged posts from others, so you don’t have to move to a specific one to participate in a conversation around a hashtag.

On Wandering.shop

Flashback to last summer: a red panda (sometimes called a fire fox)…

Flashback to last summer: a red panda (sometimes called a fire fox) at the San Diego Zoo. I made a point to look for them and the penguins on that trip. For reasons. 😉

#photography #photos #redpanda #firefox

On Photog.Social

Sadly I didn’t get to see them doing much. There were several in the enclosure, maybe three or four, but the rest were either hiding in the tree or sleeping. This one was just sort of perched up there, looking around.

On Photog.Social

I remember doing a bunch of experimenting when the camera was new…

@kemonine I remember doing a bunch of experimenting when the camera was new & settled on some best-for-most-cases settings. White balance is only available in some modes – it usually does a decent job on that, but I think it must have just detected the wrong type of light in this case.

Thanks for the tip on turning digital zoom off completely. I don’t use it very much, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to have available for when I do. Maybe it is?

On Photog.Social

I guess I should do a new round of experiments with this camera & see what I can convince it to do!

On Photog.Social

Yeah, I rarely have reason to use the digital zoom with that lens!

I used to figure if I needed to zoom past what the optics can do, I’d just crop it smaller. In most cases it’s still better than screen resolution anyway. But I’ve found that digital zoom has one advantage over cropping after the fact: the camera bases any automatic settings like exposure on the actual image you intend to take, not the wider view.

But yeah, might as well turn it off the rest of the time.

On Photog.Social

@brion I think that got started because quantity is so much easier to measure than …

@brion I think that got started because quantity is so much easier to measure than quality. But ultimately it’s like the joke about looking for your keys where the light’s better instead of looking where you dropped them.

On Mastodon.social

@brion Actually I think a *lot* of problems are the result of measuring what’s easy to measure instead of what’s useful to measure, including economics and politics.

On Mastodon.social

truxillogical2: So, remember those Wanted Posters from awhile back?

eighteenbelow:

truxillogical2:

So, remember those Wanted Posters from awhile back?  Yeeeeah, and then I forgot to actually post the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.

I’m in a book!

A new volume of Tellos, in memory of the late Mike Wieringo. Over 200 artists worked on this, and I mean, there are some BIG names.  You can see some of them here, but that’s just, like a smattering (like, I’m pretty sure George Perez is on the roster for at least one page).

All the proceeds go to the ASPCA, so hey.  You get to help puppies while getting a cool book!  Or just spread the word!

I’m just so stoked to have had a chance to be a part of this.  I’ve loved Ringo’s work since I first got my grubby little mitts on an Impulse book, and Tellos is such an icon.

Plus, I got to draw several pages of a snarky fox and an adorable dopey bear.  So.  That was fun too!

The books are only going to be available for pre-order, like, right now.  So if you want a copy, now’s the time!

That is super-cool!!  Congrats on becoming part of this 😀

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That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water. Correction: it’s an information kiosk.

That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water. Correction: it’s an information kiosk. Same style of roof as the picnic shelters, but not as tall. #flooded

Photo taken at: Polliwog Park

That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water.

On Tumblr

Correction: it’s an information kiosk. Same style of roof as the picnic shelters, but not as tall. #flooded

eighteenbelow says:
Oh geez, that seems pretty extreme! I’d heard you guys got a lot of rain and flooding, but I hope it’s a good thing in the long run and helps alleviate the drought.

Thanks, I hope so too. Our part of town did pretty well. We had an inch of water in our garage, but it only went halfway back (apparently it’s not level) and the only things that seem to have any damage are an old suitcase that might dry out ok, and some empty boxes. Power only went out for about a minute before it came back on, and we drove through some flooded roads yesterday before holing up at home.

This park is a basin in the hills, and apparently used to be part of the same seasonal marsh system as the preserve I’ve posted photos from. It’s all playground areas, benches, and picnic shelters. A friend who used to live here says flooded during heavy rain when she was here, so I imagine it’ll be fine when it dries out. Muddy, but the area near the pond is usually covered in duck and goose dropping anyway. Not my favorite part of the park, let me tell you.

The local paper reported one death a few miles away, believed to be the same person who went missing during a rescue from a flooding homeless camp. Lots of mudslides, flooded garages and damaged stuff, but not much structural damage. A retaining wall a few blocks from us collapsed and crushed an empty car.

Other parts of the LA area fared a lot worse, especially near the mountains, and especially areas downhill from last year’s fires, but we’re ok here.

On Tumblr

Notes: Flickr album with more photos, other commentary and pics here.

Some of the trees at the marsh are covered in what looks like thick spider webs, just in time for Halloween.

Some of the trees at the marsh are covered in what looks like thick spider webs, just in time for Halloween.

Photo taken at: Madrona Marsh Preserve and Nature Center

Some of the trees at the marsh are covered in what looks like thick spider webs, just in time for Halloween.

Visited last weekend.

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On iNaturalist

eighteenbelow says:
Interesting. Some kind of cottonwood-like fluff? Southern Ontario gets these horrible tent caterpillars in late summer/early fall and they leave their gross webbing everywhere, but it doesn’t look like this.

Someone else thought it might be some kind of moss. If I’d been thinking, I would have asked about it at the visitor center afterward.

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It’s been a banner spring for a lot of other flowering trees and bushes, but the jacarandas are just getting started.

It’s been a banner spring for a lot of other flowering trees and bushes, but the jacarandas are just getting started.

It’s been a banner spring for a lot of other flowering trees and bushes, but the jacarandas are just getting started.

#jacaranda

On Tumblr

eighteenbelow says:
These are lovely. Our flowering trees have a loooong way to catch up because of our chilly spring. Great shot!

Thanks! The last few years have been really dry – since I moved to the area, actually – that this year’s half-normal rainfall seems to have kicked all the perennials into high gear. Most of the flowers are winding down (or being trimmed off) now that the rain is done, and I’d started wondering if I’d missed the jacarandas or if the change this year had meant they hadn’t flowered. And there was my answer: A tree with leaves, flowers, and buds forming. I hadn’t missed them after all, they just run on another schedule than everything else around.

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Yeah, the trees vary a lot depending on which microclimate…

eighteenbelow:

kelsonv:

eighteenbelow:

kelsonv:

6 new photo(s) on Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/

Great photos!  I think I should visit California in winter at some point, because I thought it would look really different.  

Thanks!

The ponds are unusual, actually – the whole area’s been built up so much that only a few fragments of the marsh habitat are left, and remaining open space near LA is mostly in the hills and mountains. Those tend toward sparse forest, chaparral, and seasonal grasslands. The taller mountains usually get snow each winter, but the lowlands don’t.

The overall climate is hot and dry in the summer and mild and wet in winter, so January and February are when the hills start turning green. In wet years there’s usually a lot of wildflowers in spring, and then the grass turns golden brown in summer as the weather heats up and the rains stop.

Every year there are a few wildfires somewhere around the state too, usually in the mountains and canyons. That used to be mainly in fall, but the last few years it’s stretched out to year-round.

Further inland the deserts are are another totally different experience, with wider temperature extremes on both ends, fascinating geology, and their own ecosystems.

I’d definitely recommend visiting when you get a chance. Out of curiosity, what were you expecting?

I didn’t expect there to be so many deciduous trees that would lose their leaves.  This looks just like Ontario in late fall or early spring, and I guess I was thinking it’d look a little more sub-tropical or desert-like.  I know northern California is more temperate, but since you live in the southern part I assumed this would be different.  So now I’ve learned something new, and thanks for the explanation!

And yeah, I really would like to visit someday.  Probably not in the heat of summer because my spouse hates those kinds of temperatures, but I’d like to see it at any time of year.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, the trees vary a lot depending on which microclimate and whether they’re landscaped or wild. Most of the trees used for landscaping either don’t drop their leaves in winter or only thin out. Palm trees, eucalyptus and pine are popular. And it doesn’t get cold enough for a lot of trees that would drop their leaves in other climates, at least if they’re getting enough water. Driving around the neighborhood I’d say only about 10% of the trees have gone totally dormant.

I suspect one of the reasons so many of the trees in the marsh drop their leaves is the seasonal water access. I went up into the mountains a few weeks ago and mostly there were either small bushes and trees that were green or taller evergreen trees.

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