K Morrell

why is the world inundated with garbage news today? 😭

yeah, definitely crazy stuff!

among other things, Zizians

Bunny at the side of a fire road. Silly rabbit, it let me walk right by without running into the brush.

Morning hike - Hawk family at 1 mile was getting fed (I think) on my way up, having flying lessons when I saw them again on the way down. Another young hawk awkwardly crossing my path ❤️ with noisy encouragement.

The hawk at 2 miles was back in his tree, awaiting unwary 🐇 I guess.

A hawk (red shouldered? red tailed?) on a branch among greenery close beside a trail. Just prior to this, it flapped across the trail a few feet in front of me, gained this branch and then sat there while I walked past & stopped to take photos. July 22

A hawk (likely same one) high in a dead tree beside the trail, watching me go by. July 29 It's hanging out in same area that I saw it a week ago and a few days ago, as is the other set of hawks a mile away.

as a counter to everything dismaying, maybe I should dwell more on what I love

There are two sets of fledgling hawks on my ritual-hike. They are awkward and floofy and I love them. This one flapped across the trail then sat watching me. I expect they will soon explore further away.

Fears that falling birth rates in US could lead to population collapse are based on faulty assumptions While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated.

My coauthors @lesja.bsky.social @karenguzzo.bsky.social & I have a new piece in @theconversation.com , which offers insights into why most demographers do NOT think there is a current fertility crisis and the panic about population decline is unwarranted.
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theconversation.com/fears-that-f...

Is there a field biologist in the Portland, Oregon, area who wouldn't mind being in a bear suit for an hour in the woods on August 4. For science. DM me.

unfortunately, increased fear is a feature, not a bug, in eyes of gun industry (and also authoritarians in govt)

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

🚨 This woman tries to call the family of the man being disappeared and ICE will not allow her to get a phone number. One of the “undercover” mobsters nearly backed into her.

seems bad 😬

A protestor in white t shirt is seen gesturing toward a Humvee gesturing for it to stop

The protestor stands bolt upright in front of the Humvee that has to stop

ICE RAID UPDATE:

One protestor stands in front of an advancing US military vehicle to try and stop it.

Remind you of anything?

Yikes! Thought it was probably something like that. Just awful

Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest Mobile network anomalies consistent with cell phone surveillance were detected at a July 4 protest at an ICE field office in Washington state.

IMSI catcher probably detected at ICE protest in Washington state, town near Seattle.
san.com/cc/exclusive...

I didn’t know that they were getting behind him and it is good to hear!

Fake NYTimes headline: Mamdani Accepted iTunes Terms and Conditions Without Reading

😂 Fun stuff mamdanitimes.com

Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in Americans’ lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this article, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and use them to create a new measure of local political conflict. We validate this new approach using sentiment analysis and structural topic modeling. We then document consistent results: conflict in school board meetings occurs at some point for most boards and has become more common since 2020, but the most intense conflicts are concentrated in a small number of districts; this conflict often centers cultural issues like racial diversity and gender identity. We then show that conflict, particularly cultural conflict, is most likely to occur in larger school districts in cities and suburbs and in places with more White students.

In “Measuring Conflict in Local Politics” we set out to provide new data to examine how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. We use school board meetings, collecting 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and using them to create a new measure of conflict in local politics.

☹️ but also, huh? WTH happened at that pool for two adults to be in critical condition too.

Shooting our videos is a little bit different now.

5:41 86° *5061% Log In Commissioners' Court Regular Session 06/27/16 COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was. And I keep hearing these reports of the old, old system, and I know we're not going to deal with that though. Expect that to be gone where the Jones call the Smiths, and the Smiths call Camp Rio Vista, and Rio Vista blah, blah, blah, along down the line. But it's still there and it still works. The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all. COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think -- I think this and that's what the committee is going to look at and how to do it. I think the going in position is that we don't need to change anything, and is there a need to improve what we have. And if there's a need to improve how much is improved. And what the options for doing that and what it would cost. And I think the first thing to do is say why change anything. It worked this long and maybe we don't need to do a thing. And then it gets into

I would like the press to talk to this man.

From the texas community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the texas community

In areas hit by Texas floods, officials were sent over $5 million in federal ARPA funds in 2021.

They didn't want to spend it on flood warning systems due to their disdain for Biden - and didn't send it BACK because it might go to a blue state, and "values that we in Kerr county don't agree with."

odds that Pirro was the scammed donor?

The GOAT public editor!

YouTube video by Degenerate Art by Andrea Pitzer What you can do to oppose Trump and his camps

What you can do to oppose Trump and his camps

This video has been sucked into some algoritihim and you'll be shocked to learn it makes MAGA :(

Good to share! Super useful.

Texas officials appeared to be almost entirely issuing vital emergency alerts about the deadly Kerr County flooding via Facebook and Twitter/X.

Utter malpractice to restrict these alerts to social media platforms that huge numbers of people don’t use anymore.

Quote from Kurzweil included in Becker’s book, “More Everything Forever” Kurzweil says, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century - it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.”

Think maybe we’ll have an Anti-Singularity this century. Where everything gets infinitely dumber.

This is a block where multiple vendors set up and feed hundreds of folks a day. It's a key part of the community.

Last night, I drove by and wondered why no one had set up.

www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles...

Landing in Chicago on July 4

What a 💩 show

I read the transcript of his statement for June 18 and that doesn’t appear to be what was said. See for yourself: www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/...

Was this written by an AI? The category of error makes me suspect that 🧐