oldguy52 - resist, live, love

@oldguy52@techhub.social
665 Followers
755 Following
610 Posts

He/him - keeping the pronouns, Dump can shove it. (311.5). Professor Emeritus of structural geology, interested in Photography, application of GIS to Environmental problems, Climate Crisis, environmental stewardship and giving back as a Volunteer.

I support the rights of the #LGBTQ+ community and #WomensRights to make their own choices and control their own bodies. GQP Fascists, and religious nutballs, keep your hands off!!

Donated to my local PBS station because fuck this administration

https://www.pbs.org/
PBS: Public Broadcasting Service

Watch full episodes of your favorite PBS dramas, find in-depth news analysis and explore documentaries on history, science, art and more!

A slow day today. Worked too hard in the heat yesterday and got a bit overheated (again). Guess I have not learned my lesson yet. Need a day to fully recover before any outdoor work. The old geezers sometimes get caught up in finishing the job rather than stopping early because of the heat.

Another Vireo for the morning. This was a tough one. I had to ask one of the main Audubon folks (Terry) for help with the ID and verification. Luckily we have several that are quite active and willing to help. An infrequent visitor, this is a Philadelphia Vireo. The short tail and call are the give-away.

Not engaging much with the political filth, garbage, muck, slime, putrescence ... for my own sanity these days.

#BirdsOfMastodon #BirdPhotography #PhildadelphiaVireo #500mm #DarkTable

Don't let #Republicans pretend like they didn't enable a Pedophile rapist to become their President.

They are all responsible and should be labeled as the Pedophile network.
#Corporate
#RPN
#NoKings !
#election2026
#2026election

Speaker #MikeJohnson is leader of the pedophile caucus.
#119Congress

Have a nice weekend! Here's your Friday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the 7th lowest on record (JAXA data)...

• about 160,000 km² below the 2010s mean
• about 1,110,000 km² below the 2000s mean
• about 1,820,000 km² below the 1990s mean
• about 2,640,000 km² below the 1980s mean

More graphs: https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/

Temperature anomalies averaged over the last month (left), 3 months (center), and 12 months (right) across the Northern Hemisphere...

Data from @CopernicusECMWF ERA5 reanalysis.

Effectively the entire #Arctic Ocean has observed thinning sea ice over the last 4 decades during the month of July (especially in the East Siberian Sea)...

Data simulated by PIOMAS at http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/data/model_grid. For more information: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0436.1

One thing that will become increasingly clear as DHS starts spending the billions they got in the Big Ugly is that a lot of this will go to pay off favored contracts. @hunterw.bsky.social lays out how Florida did that here. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/contrac...

Contracts Show Millions of Dol...
Hunter Walker (@hunterw.bsky.social)

Investigative Reporter @ TPM | Author | Words In: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Send me a secure message on Signal: hunter.07 https://linktr.ee/hunter_walker

Bluesky Social

Good for them

Via Kyle Griffin:

Breaking on MSNBC:

Senate Judiciary Democrats just walked out as the Committee was voting on Emil Bove's judicial nomination.

Republicans interrupted Sen. Cory Booker as he was speaking to begin the vote. Booker continued to speak despite the interruption.

#ClusterFox

Via Democracy Docket:

BREAKING: Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advance former Fox News host and election denier Jeanine Pirro’s nomination as U.S. Attorney for D.C. to the Senate floor after Democrats walked out in protest of Bove’s nomination.

×

This headline is ridiculous. The US is currently cracking down on the people who harvest US tomatoes and sending them to a swamp concentration camp with no representation and due process, and publicly hoping people get eaten by alligators.

#politics

@ai6yr

meanwhile California's tomato harvest rots bc they've raided the fields....

I feel like screaming

@cynthiarose @ai6yr

I kind of wonder if the Trump regime is taking lessons from Netanyahu about how to starve a population.

(It is slightly more correct to refer to both governments by using the same type of name)

@alienghic @cynthiarose @ai6yr Israel and Russia.

Thanks. the three of you for the reminder of what Deadly Exchange looks like.

https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/deadly-exchange

#FediAntisemitism

@Avitus @alienghic @cynthiarose @ai6yr

Deadly Exchange | #TranslateHate

Translate Hate was created by American Jewish Committee (AJC) to explain antisemitism. This glossary aims to improve media literacy on antisemitism and hate, especially in the digital realm. See when Deadly Exchange is antisemitic.

AJC

@serge

It's not anti-semitic to describe that the various international right wing movements cooperate and learn from each other.

And it's not like Netanyahu and his coalition invented intentionally causing a famine to kill off a local population. There's plenty of other examples throughout history.

There is plenty of documentation that there is a famine in Gaza, and that factions of Israel are the ones intentionally maintaining the blockade of food and critical supplies from reaching Gaza that are causing this famine.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165383

It is pessimistic of me to think that Stephan Miller hates Hispanics so badly he would trigger widespread hunger in Los Angeles. But kidnapping farm workers and deploying troops does look like a first step of an occupation.

So maybe it'd be less Gaza and more Sarajevo, but that 1992 event has been long forgotten by most.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo

No fuel, no aid, no escape: UN agencies warn of looming collapse in Gaza

The fuel crisis in Gaza has reached a breaking point, threatening to bring all humanitarian operations to a halt and endangering the lives of everyone reliant on aid inside the enclave, UN agencies warned in a powerful joint statement on Saturday.

UN News

@serge @Avitus @alienghic @cynthiarose @ai6yr
That page makes no sense. It takes multiple different claims, and somehow concludes that they are all the same and ergo antisemitic:

1) Israeli training is responsible for US police brutality. (This is a gross mischaracterization of statements made by Jewish Voice for Peace. And obviously US cops don't need any help when it comes to being racist or brutal.)

2) US-Israeli joint military training makes both countries more racist and fascist. (How is this statement antisemitic? Fascists encourage each other, as always.)

3) Accusing Israel of murdering children is antisemitic. (It's a statement of fact that Israel indiscriminately kills massive amounts of Palestinian children and is in the midst of deliberately starving the rest.)

4) It's scapegoating to accuse Israel of complicity in US cops murdering Black people. (Well, no it's not scapegoating if the US cops actually doing it are blamed too. And again, this is a very "creative" interpretation of what was actually said by JVP.)

That page is as logically incoherent and full of false equivalencies as the rest of New Antisemitism.

@me_valentijn @serge @Avitus @cynthiarose @ai6yr

It looks to me like right wing leaders do not say words to refer to an external objective reality, they say words purely for their emotional impact.

@alienghic Could be. Yahu would starve Israelis, if it fed into his fantasy. @cynthiarose @ai6yr
@Tooden @alienghic @cynthiarose@sfba.social @ai6yr you're right that Netanyahu would kill Israeli citizens to keep himself in power, he already ordered the military to shoot to kill Israeli hostages
@vaurora And we don't really know how many Israelis were killed by IDF on Oct 7, when they were fleeing the Hamas attack. Anyone is expendable to the coward. @alienghic @ai6yr
@Tooden @vaurora @alienghic @ai6yr https://www.mako.co.il/pzm-soldiers/Article-199bdbb03215b81026.htm Boy do I have some ugly footage for you here. Footage from an Israeli gunner at the rave says a massive number of those civilians killed were killed by "friendly" fire. They just shot at everything running or trying to get in a car and drive on the ground. Basically it's on camera that at least anyone trying to leave that made it into that gunner's sights was exterminated. Hannibal directive stuff. The Palestinians maintained that the objective of the mission had been a military command target (related to the plans to cleanse and seize the strip, already underway) and a hostage taking operation (to get negotiating leverage). It wasn't in their interest to kill the civilians and they said they weren't actually expecting to encounter a rave (ref. all Hamas statements in the weeks following the attack) which fubar'd their whole operation.
טייסים מודים: "כשלנו בלהגן, מרגישים רע מאוד"

הם אמנם התעשתו מהר וזינקו לעוטף עזה, אבל מבינים היטב שלמרות שלחמו בגבורה, במבחן התוצאה כולם נכשלו במשימתם. וגם: הניסיון שכשל להחליף מסוקים בכטב"מים

mako
@somebody I did read a lot of accounts to that effect. The baby-killing was 'propaganda' to get the world riled up, and that the body toll was also greatly exaggerated.
I simply cannot believe anything that comes out of the murderous zionists' mouths. They are liars. @vaurora @alienghic @ai6yr

@Tooden @somebody

It's one reason I try to quote the UN, as I think they're relatively impartially especially when compared to Israel and the US.

@alienghic @cynthiarose @ai6yr oh no, that's silly. He's taking lessons from Pol Pot and Mao.

"It's gonna be a GREAT leap people, THE GREATEST leap ANYONE HAS EVER SEEN! We're going to leap back to when America was great. So many people will cry when they see what we're doing with this country."

@Hex @cynthiarose @ai6yr

Yeah the attacks on universities do remind me of that old time cultural revolution

@cynthiarose @ai6yr
Another reason to shop at the farmer's market.
@Darkphoenix @cynthiarose Alas, the same workers who pick the fruit for farmer's markets are the same ones being whisked away by masked ICE vehicles.
@Darkphoenix @cynthiarose @ai6yr my farmers market hasn't yet had a real tomato crop this summer..
@Darkphoenix @cynthiarose @ai6yr yep, I don't know why why exactly, we've had cherry tomatoes but not the big ones.
@thesquirrelfish @Darkphoenix @cynthiarose Not yet large tomato harvest time in California... need to wait until August at least. Unless they are greenhouse grown.
@ai6yr @thesquirrelfish @cynthiarose We're a few hours south of the Central valley and most of our farmer's market farms are south of here. Large tomatoes are just coming in right now.

@ai6yr
AND
it's f'ing mid July
IT'S TOO LATE NOW TO BOOST PRODUCTION!!!

somebody just wanted to dump their hunts/del monte stock because the stupid is so thick you can stand a spoon up in it.

should have ICE agents go pick vegetables instead of harassing the people that do
@ai6yr a lot of tomatoes are rotting in the fields right now due to short handedness on some farms
@ai6yr @cookiesinheaven They're too disconnected from food production to understand. :/
@ai6yr Gods below, these people know nothing about tomatoes. Cruelty and incompetence.
@ai6yr Yeah good luck to them trying to lure affluent white people into the fields to pick tomatoes for minimum wage (or worse) in brutal conditions all day
@thegardendude @ai6yr In high school my wife and her friends thought picking corn would be a great way to get paid to get a tan. They lasted two weeks.
@chrisod @thegardendude @ai6yr Corn harvesting has been mechanized for decades. If they lasted two weeks that's impressive

@chrisod @thegardendude @ai6yr

My gf's little brother picked tomatoes. He lasted less than a week.

He was good at the beginning:

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=y1dQazDYgag

@Uair @chrisod @thegardendude LOL on that comedy bit. Which is so true. All the people I have ever heard about immigrants taking jobs won't even get off the couch, much less do hard manual labor.
@ai6yr
These fuckers are trying to make me boycott tomatoes
@RnDanger @ai6yr you won't be able to buy any soon so it won't matter
@RnDanger @ai6yr You could grow your own tomatoes. A lot of people do, even in small apartments. And the ones you do grow often taste much better than store-bought ones.
@karlauerbach @RnDanger I grow a lot of tomatoes, but not everyone can do so, and it's not easy, you can't produce nearly as many tomatoes as you eat (particularly in terms of how much we use in sauces, things like ketchup, etc.), and not all year round (etc etc etc)
@ai6yr @karlauerbach
I usually get a glut of tomatoes in late August but i enjoy them all year. I'm afraid I'm gonna need to start growing better

@RnDanger @ai6yr We grow some of our tomatoes as well. I like the Momotaro variety, so I plant seeds in our heated greenhouse around the end of February. I usually get about 35 starts. Then I replant about six to eight of those starts into outdoors beds or greenhouse pots. The remaining starts generally go to a local church where they sell 'em for a couple of dollars each.

We finally get tomatoes in August through October.

If we want super high quality tomatoes of other varieties we can drive about 4 miles to Love Apple Farms.

There's a seed grower if we drive in the other direction

https://www.growbetterveggies.com/

https://www.tomatofest.com/Tomato_Seeds_on_Sale_s/43.htm

@ai6yr they want to starve and bankrupt us
@ai6yr
You can't solve fascism with money.
@athamanatha @ai6yr
Yeah it's like trying to cure Ebola with blood transfusions.

@ai6yr US cuts off chips to China. Chinese government sets a goal to produce them domestically, then develops a plan and supplies the resources to make it happen.

US government plan when faced with a self-created shortage, cut off external supply and hope capitalist forces correct the problem. Any suffering caused waiting for that to happen is a price they are willing to let us pay.

@Fat_Farang @ai6yr What do you mean, “Apple can’t setup an entire supply chain from dirt to iPhone between now and the beginning of August!?” They’re Americans, goddamnit!
@ai6yr
Here's to our government-imposed tomato-free summer.

@ai6yr I truly wonder what this administration is trying to accomplish.

Hanlon’s Razor suggests that the motivation behind these stupid decisions lies somewhere between incompetence and magical thinking, based on nothing more than what plays well on conservative TV and talk circuits.

I think this administration is staffed by deeply racist and ignorant people who have escaped consequences all their lives, and expect to continue to do so no matter their actions.

@drahardja @ai6yr perhaps some of that is going on, but imho Miller and his ilk know exactly what they are doing and are relishing in the cruelty.

@numbercrow @ai6yr I think there are two groups that are actually intentional in their actions: the Steven Miller and Peter Thiel types who want to go back to subjugation and slavery, because they are truly ghouls who want to implement an iron rule of a “superior” few; and the industry titan types who have no values beyond wanting to transfer as much wealth as possible from the public to the industries they occupy while the going is good (I include Elon in this group).

But I also think these groups are TINY compared to the army of middle-managers who have been put into positions where they can actually make decisions and implement rules every day. Those people think they can profit solely through loyalty and proximity; they have no hope of being *actually* part of the groups above. This majority appears to be quite stupid and incompetent, to the point of self-harm, because they think they can outrun reality.

@drahardja it is my conviction that this has always been true of the vast majority of middle managers - a basically useless layer of bad mayo between the meat and the bread.
@drahardja @numbercrow @ai6yr basically this. You have clearly nazis, who want to do ethnic cleansing, tech bros who just want to use access to reprogram everything, your regular old nazis that still want racism via law, and tons, tons of dumb opportunists who most likely start to wonder if they have made a deal with devil they can't walk away from.
None of them are smart, but they don't need to be - they enjoy being ruthless, cruel and country struggling to respond.
@ai6yr The tomatoes that *can* be harvested mechanically are what we used to affectionately call "Davis square tomatoes" up north—unpalatable fruit suitable for processing into red paste. Watch for TV adverts touting new tomato paste and ketchup brands sporting the American flag. 🍝🇺🇲

@ai6yr

Considering just how obviously destructive DOGE has been, I am convinced that this dismantling of the agricultural system is also intentional. They want rotting crops. They know they can afford the price inflation; this is all to crush the rest of us.