She's Awesome

Thanks to a donation from fuzzyred, you can now read the rest of "In the Heart of the Hidden Garden."  Lawrence gives Stan a tour of two more buildings and two more gardens -- and then explains why.

Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.  Robins are foraging in the short grass that my partner Doug mowed yesterday in the house yard.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I watered the old picnic table, new picnic table, and telephone pole gardens.

Fireflies are out.  Cicadas are singing.





.
 

New study backs up 'sleeping on it,' suggesting naps promote creative problem-solving

All groups improved in the dot-sorting test after their nap, but 85.7% of those who achieved the first deeper sleep phase — called N2 sleep — had the breakthrough.

Killer whales attempt to feed people in first-ever sightings: 'Represents altruism'

Among their own whale circles, they have long shared their prey with one another, but in a new study, recorded over the course of the last two decades, wild orcas were spotted trying to share their food with human beings.

These wild whales, on 34 occasions, across four oceans, were documented approaching humans on their own, dropping a fresh kill in front of the people, and waiting for a response.


The polite thing to do is accept it, and if you have anything suitable, swap something back. Cetaceans love the hell out of human item drops. A sturdy beach toy should go over well.  Treat this as a first-contact situation; be cautious but aware that you are dealing with a sophont of another species.

Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup orange juice
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1 banana
1/2 cup Great Value Mixed Fruit (pineapple, sliced strawberries, mango, peaches)
1/2 cup ice

The result is slightly thick, a pale peach color, with a nice orange-tropical flavor -- almost reminds me of a dreamsicle.  It'd be good with some coconut; there's another tropical mix with that but it's not what we have at the moment.

Sunshine Revival Challenge #1: Light

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.



( Read more... )

Today is mostly sunny and warm, nicer than it has been recently.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, plus a pair of cardinals that flew away when I went outside.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I refilled the hopper feeder.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the old picnic table and the patio plants.  Despite recent rains, things were wilting. :/

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the new picnic table and septic garden.

I've seen a grackle and a robin.

I picked a 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and seedlings in the savanna.

Fireflies are coming out.

I am done for the night. 

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED.  Thank you for your time and attention.  Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Weaponized Incompetence and Malicious Compliance!" I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for activists, rebels, traitors, exes, abuse survivors, refugees, runaway youth, slaves or other captives, slavers, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, leaders, bosses, employees, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, other people who get into untenable situations, protesting, dragging your feet, breaking things, causing problems because you were told to, planning, throwing in the towel, escaping, running like someone left the gate open, adventuring, hitchhiking, quitting school, divorcing, disowning, betraying, teaching, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, slave ships, slave quarters, abusive homes, trails, sailing ships, campervans or RVs, distant lands, the forest primeval, prehistory, liminal zones, schools, residential school-concentration camps, homeless shelters, hotels, churches, sharehouses, campfires, laboratories, supervillain lairs, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where the intolerable happens, unhappy relationships, crappy jobs, educational abuse, responsibility without authority is abuse, protest rallies, slavery or captivity, locks or chains, travel mishaps, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Western Bingo Card 7-1-25

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

Weaponized incompetence has two modes:
* One is shirking a fair share of work by pretending to be bad at it: for instance, copper-digging men who try to con women into doing all the emotional labor. (Take care to distinguish this from people who don't know how to do things because they were never taught, or people who are genuinely bad at a category of thing.)
* The other is a form of activism, and indeed, one of the leading forms of resistance in slavery: doing work slowly, sloppily, breaking tools, playing dumb, etc. It's exactly how black people got a reputation for being stupid and lazy, because their ancestors were unwilling to be exploited and fought back in subtle ways.

Malicious compliance is following an order to the letter, expecting that to cause problems. It is a form of protest most often used when pointing out a flaw or proposing a better solution would be ignored or even punished.


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture after rebelling against the Galactic Arms.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, touching on slavery and rebellion.

Not Quite Kansas includes demons, who are masters of malicious compliance.

The Ocracies has a wide variety of countries crammed together, each with a totally different government. Sometimes people leave their homeland to find something they like better.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks after quitting as the God of Evili.

Peculiar Obligations mixes Quakers and pirates, among other things. It's another setting where people strive against slavery.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. The supervillains are the most likely to practice weaponized incompetence and malicious compliance. Among the more relevant threads are Danso and Family, Dr. Infanta, Fortressa, Iron Horses, Shiv, and Trichromatic Attachments.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

( Read more... )

Fighting fire with fire: How prescribed burns reduce wildfire damage and pollution

Wildfires are becoming more intense and dangerous, but a new Stanford-led study offers hope: prescribed burns—intentionally set, controlled fires—can significantly lessen their impact. By analyzing satellite data and smoke emissions, researchers found that areas treated with prescribed burns saw wildfire severity drop by 16% and smoke pollution fall by 14%. Even more striking, the smoke from prescribed burns was just a fraction of what wildfires would have produced in the same areas.


And how long did it take white people to figure out what tribal folks have been doing for, oh, 20,000+ years?