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paulnance.bsky.social
Student of the flora of Albany's Pine Bush and of the tallgrass prairie, photography, language, music, the Horn and the history of "this Antient and respectable City of Albany."
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Listen to the clip just to hear the deeply unqualified Pete Hegseth sneeringly dismiss a woman who’s a Georgetown law professor, rudely calling her by her first name and saying he’s never heard of her.

Dream Catcher

#timelinecleanse, #nativeplants Its Saturday. If you see this, post your walk in the woods! Or maybe your local monadnock.

Six years ago today 🌿 Hesperocallis undulata, our Desert Lily, blooming at Anza-Borrego #nativeplants 😎

Penstemon whippleanus, our Whipple’s Penstemon, blooming above Black Powder Pass #nativeplants 🌿

Another way to put this: Musk and his twerps have exposed us to pandemics, broken science, stolen all your data, endangered the U.S. payments system, threatened air traffic control, and cut off HIV medication to 20m people in order to save ::checks notes:: 2/10th of a percent of the federal budget.

EO: "restablishes the longstanding norm that only the Prez or AG can speak for the US when stating an opinion as to what the law is" I'm a constitutional scholar. This is not how it work. Fuck you.

“As a result, she said, just three full-time employees remain in both the Yellowstone and Bozeman ranger districts to manage 19 rental cabins, 60 bathrooms, 21 campgrounds and other infrastructure spread across 1 million acres.” www.bozemandailychronicle.com/townnews/wor...

Reddit user u/onestonewithlichen 's Mum has brought some of the Luttrell Psalters' marginalia monsters to life via the medium of wool-felt.

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general. If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.

Hey @JDVance, and @elonmusk, and @realDonaldTrump it looks like the Auschwitz Memorial wants to educate you. STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

who else are we fighting for? hygroscopic earthstars clinging to pine needles like ectomycorrhizal gymnasts or frightened sea stars #astraeus

Been doing a bit of embedded posts about the creation and preservation of government documents in the early US. Here's a story from the revolution, recently detailed in _Newport History_. When the British took the town of Newport in late 1776 they immediately seized the town's records... 1/

To an oligarch all kyndenesse doth looke lyke waste

Let's resurrect one of my favorite threads: Chess! A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in al-Andalus. El Libro de los Juegos, 13th century.

@ibogost.bsky.social and @cwarzel.bsky.social: “Elon Musk’s unceasing attempts to access the data and information systems of the federal government range so widely, and are so unprecedented and unpredictable, that government computing experts believe the effort has spun out of control.”

Tulip tree in the foreground; kentucky coffee tree in the middle; Hill's oak sneaking in from the left. Sunset behind them all. The Morton Arboretum this evening.

This isn't a game—we rely on NOAA to monitor extreme weather events. The prediction work NOAA scientists & staff do helps us protect billions in property and literally save lives. These proposed staffing cuts will make America less safe when the next disaster strikes. www.cbsnews.com/news/democra...

I wonder why Musk is focused on the federal civilian workforce (4% of the budget) and not federal contractors, which account for 3x more annual spending and are more prone to waste, fraud, and abuse?

President Trump is imposing tariffs while his company creates a "Made in America" ETF President Trump is deregulating the energy industry while his company creates a "Energy Independence" ETF President Trump is promoting the crypto currency industry while his company creates a "Bitcoin" ETF

Good morning, “there’s no going back” (gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...)

I can’t find any archival evidence that that the Langston Hughes poem circulating here today is authentic so here is a sourced Hughes poem, Beaumont to Detroit, 1943, published that year in the magazine Common Ground, in which he compares Hitler and Mussolini to American Jim Crow and the KKK

On 7 April 1933, the German government issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which excluded Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions. One provision aimed to remove personnel deemed unreliable due to their political beliefs.

eastern shadbush, painted by deborah griscom passmore, 1909

Basidiolichen, Lichenomphalia umbellifera + Labrador tea, Polytrichum moss and, in the background, Cladonia lichen. A few summers ago. Yellowknife, NT, Canada. #mushroom #lichen #moss #fungifriends

Geum triflorum, our Prairie Smoke seed heads, at Rabbit Ears Pass #nativeplants #FallBackFlowers #FallBack to July 27 🌿 (meant to post this a few days ago)

Erythranthe eastwoodiae, our rare Eastwood's Monkeyflower, blooming in Escalante Canyon. Named for our most famous Colorado botanist Alice Eastwood. These #nativeplants hang off a sandstone wall where an impermeable layer causes water to seep out of the face. #FallBackFlowers #FallBack to July 30 🌿

final what now

NEW: My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night's federal funding freeze. This is a blatant attempt to rip away health care from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.

Proud of my AG.

A jaunty splotch of shield lichen on the side of a Japanese cherry tree with bright pops of candleflame lichen and a sneaky bit of some sort of beard lichen for variety. #Lichen #LichenSubscribe #Nature #PNW #Photography #Trees #GoOutside #FocusOnTheGood

Honestly this is so embarrassing. How many people in the White House don’t know how to spell Colombia?

#lichen best buds hanging out on a lakeside #graffiti paint chip. Northwest Territories, Canada. #fungi #fungifriends

The New York Times has rejected a paid advertisement by the American Friends Service Committee calling for a ceasefire in Gaza because it included the word “genocide.”

Aquilegia coerulea var. ochroleuca, our White Colorado Columbine, blooming above Crested Butte. That area’s the best place to find this all white variety, the blooms can be nearly as wide as a coffee cup. #nativeplants #FallBackFlowers #FallBack to July 23 🌿

BREAKING, via The Seattle Times: Trump's executive order to restrict birthright citizenship is blocked for at least the next two weeks by a Reagan appointee in Seattle who eviscerated the Trump lawyers present defending the order. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Asserts in one sentence that birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment - which has been interpreted the same way for 156 years - doesn't mean what you think it means because the President said so. I'm no lawyer but this is totally bonkers.

The chances of Trump’s executive order of surviving legal challenges are extremely slim — even with a Supreme Court stacked with conservative justices.

In today's Muster, Brook Thomas explores the legacy of Ulysses S. Grant's Ku Klux Klan pardons www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2025/01/the-...

Ipomopsis aggregata ssp. aggregata, our Scarlet Gilia, blooming above Crested Butte #nativeplants #FallBackFlowers #FallBack to July 20 🌿

Berry cousins. Pink and black crowberry living in the same neighbourhood. Along with Cladonia #lichen and a few other critters. #Newfoundland Canada

Epiphytic lichens play an important role in stemming the flow of water and nutrients from riparian ecosystems. They capture stemflow before it can be absorbed by tree roots . Water absorption by lichens is immediate, but release is much slower (hours or days). #scottishlichens #riverwoods #lichens