B. Ricardo Brown, PhD

Photo of Pleasant Grove church on fire.

Photo of Pleasant Grove church on fire.

Photo of Pleasant Grove church before the fire. The extension on the left side was built by my Dad and my Uncle's construction/ church renovation company.

Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, Darlington, S.C.
That it might have been arson is particular disturbing, if not very surprising. It was organized during Reconstruction on August 18, 1869. #SouthCarolina #BlackSky
www.facebook.com/share/v/1A83...

Hey US weather folks...this is a big deal. Go follow @nws.noaa.gov

cc @faineg.bsky.social

How DREAM Became Andrew Cuomo's Nightmare And other links to begin your Wednesday.

The verdict is FINALLY in: The DREAM (Don't Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor) strategy looks like it worked. A whopping 54 percent of voters didn't put Cuomo on their ballots in the first place.

And other links to start your day!

hellgatenyc.com/how-dream-be...

Magritte reportedly considered legal action due to the logo's resemblance to his painting.

CBS subsequently removed the cloud imagery from the logo, though the eye itself remained.

bsky.app/profile/dian...

This single effort has made it easier to find and download biology articles and books from the 1700s and 1800s than from the 1900s... (many of the latter are still under copyright)

A red flower on a green stem withe the words: BHL Call for support now open overlayed.

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

We don't have a NWS app thanks to the lobbying of Accuweather.

SEMAFOR: @nytimes.com published the hit piece on Zohran to not get scooped by… Chris Rufo🤔 (CRT fear peddler who offered $5K for proof of Haitians eating cats)

“people are really upset” inside NYT.

Again: the story itself is the scandal.
www.semafor.com/article/07/0...

Project with salvaged parts and glass. From the first weeks of the 2020 COVID lockdown in NYC. 2020 Lockdown Project © 2020 by BRBIII/SummerClub/NODE801 is... SummerClub/NODE801: Lockdown Project - Mechanism

SummerClub/NODE801: Lockdown Project - Mechanism www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb6V...

These are not the dots that connect it. Those are the other dots.

Ives, Bernstein and Adorno on the Crisis/Crises of the 20th Century, part I. We are going to take a piece of music (Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question) and look at how Bernstein and Adorno used it as a means to delve deeply into the meaning of crisis and the expressions of social transformation. As a preliminary to that discussion, in part one we are going to review a few examples of the varieties of expression and experiences of Bernstein's "crisis of ambiguity". Can music be expressive of a time and place, and if so, what is the meaning of these expressions? Is Pierre Boulez correct when he says that: “An idea does not exist until we realize how it may be used. In musical terms, there is no such thing as an idea in itself, it is a reaction to our whole cultural environment." – Pierre Boulez. “Idea, Realization, Craft.” Music Lessons: Lectures at the College de France. This recording was prepared for the course SS.235, Sociology of Music/Sound/Noise, Spring 2020.

Ives, Bernstein and Adorno on the Crisis/Crises of the 20th Century, part I.
“[T]here is no such thing as an idea in itself, it is a reaction to our whole cultural environment" – Pierre Boulez
#CriticalTheory #Adorno #CulturalStudies
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuvD...

Adorno's self-portrait in mirror taken in his office, c. 1967.

Theodor Adorno: "...reflecting on society, is the simplest and perhaps the most compelling of the motivations which induced me to take up sociology"
Introduction to Sociology, Lecture XIV, July 2, 1968.
#CriticalTheory #Adorno #sociology
node801.blogspot.com/2013/11/

David Todd · Most Handsome and Best: ‘Enlightenment Biopolitics’ How can we account for France’s historical wavering on race, between an extraordinary openness to assimilation and...

Most Handsome and Best
David Todd
review of Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens
by William Max Nelson
#HistSTM #HistSci
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Exploring the urban soundscape
"Take a walk through the city and contribute to research at the same time...CitySoundscapes... is looking for curious citizens willing to explore their city in a new way"
#Soundscapes #SoundscapeEcology #Biodiversity #SoundWalks
www.tum.de/en/news-and-...

Abstract What is universal about music, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethnographic text on musical behavior from a representative sample of the world’s societies, as well as a discography of audio recordings. The ethnographic corpus reveals that music (including songs with words) appears in every society observed; that music varies along three dimensions (formality, arousal, religiosity), more within societies than across them; and that music is associated with certain behavioral contexts such as infant care, healing, dance, and love. The discography—analyzed through machine summaries, amateur and expert listener ratings, and manual transcriptions—reveals that acoustic features of songs predict their primary behavioral context; that tonality is widespread, perhaps universal; that music varies in rhythmic and melodic complexity; and that elements of melodies and rhythms found worldwide follow power laws.

Universality and diversity in human song
#Music #Soundscapes
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Darras, K.F.A. review of Bryan C. Pijanowski: Principles of soundscape ecology: discovering our sonic world. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY (2025).
#Soundscapes #SoundscapeEcology #Biodiversity
doi.org/10.1007/s429...

A Century Later: A Renewed Open Letter Against the Return of Fascism
"As in 1925, we scientists, philosophers, writers, artists and citizens of the world, have a responsibility to denounce and resist the resurgence of fascism in all its forms"
via Manifesto di Londra.
stopreturnfascism.org/english/

Please consider supporting the Biodiversity Heritage Library! #envhist #envhum

Defense Department will stop providing crucial satellite weather data Hurricane forecasters and scientists rely on weather data collected and processed by Department of Defense satellites. The Navy has decided to stop sharing the data.

"The U.S. Department of Defense will no longer provide satellite weather data, leaving hurricane forecasters without crucial information about storms as peak hurricane season looms in the Atlantic..."
#Climate_Change #NOAA #NWS
www.npr.org/2025/06/28/n...

Historical illustration depicting a sloth prominently positioned on the right, clinging to a tree branch with long curved claws and thick fur. Surrounding it are three other primate-like creatures in various poses: one sitting and holding a branch, one climbing with raised arms, and one with a tail, all with elongated limbs. Two snakes with distinct patterns slither across the center. The background includes sparse vegetation and branches with green leaves, emphasizing a natural environment. The image combines detailed animal studies typical of 18th-century natural history prints.

🦥 Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio, et iconibus artificiosissimis expressio, per universam physices historiam: .
Amstelaedami: Apud J. Wetstenium, & Gul. Smith, & Janssonio-Waesbergios, 1734-1765..

[Source]

CALL FOR SUPPORT: Secure the Future of BHL
Following the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to conclude its long-standing role as BHL’s host on 1 January 2026.
#HistSTM #HistSci #Biodiversity #Ecology #EnvHist #NatHist #EnvironmentalStudies
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

The skeleton in my closet has moved out to the garden.

John Cage: A Year From Monday - New Lectures And Writings #PDF monoskop.org/log/?p=2165 #book www.amazon.com/gp/product/0...

Image of the cover of the blu-ray for the movie "Brazil," showing a government bureaucrat imagining himself as winged knight leaping gloriously from the door of an open drawer amid an infinitely receding wall of filing cabinets.

Feeling especially dystopian today? The new 4K HD edition of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and all other in-stock Criterion Collection movies are now on sale for 50% off through July 27th: 🧐 📽️ www.barnesandnoble.com/b/the-criter...

Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) Spotted Lanternfly from Hudson Heights, New York, NY, USA on July 1, 2025 at 11:02 AM by Ric Brown

Spotted Lanternfly Lycorma delicatula
Observer: ricbrown2
Three nymphs lined up facing towards a Tree of Heaven that was about 8 inches away.
#FtTryonParkNYCbiodiversity #NYC #WaHi
www.inaturalist.org/observations...
via Fort Tryon Park: #Biodiversity and Ecology #iNaturalist Project.

I am humbled by the support of more than 545,000 New Yorkers in last week's primary.

This is just the beginning of our expanding coalition to make New York City affordable. And we will do it together.

An aerial view of a man in a yellow vest with one hand on a huge cherry tree. He is looking up at the camera. Copyright Tom Kimmerer

I have spent most of my life among the largest and oldest organisms on Earth. One gift of this work is a sense of optimism. With the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York (where I am from), perhaps we can finally begin to restore civil society after the disease of neoliberalism. Let's go!

This article is free to access for two weeks! Download now!
👇🌎🧪

For 6 months, Dem leaders have downplayed or refused to frontally address many of Trump's worst abuses by saying those are "distractions" from the Dems focusing on economic issues. But as Trump's tax bill is being voted on, Jeffries is attacking a Dem ...over a phrase that Dem doesn't even use.