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Orange-breasted Green Pigeon (Treron bicinctus), BERRY TIME!!!, family Columbidae, Udawalawe National Park, Sri Lanka

photograph by Deepal Nishantha

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Respire

Part of my Ashes collection

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An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media

If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.

Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.

At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr home feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.

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2/4/25

Finished! This aquarium is full to the gills of deadly creatures. Be careful what you touch!

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i see posts all the time about how services explicitly offered by u.s. libraries are harmful for u.s. libraries and then people comment like “no i think that’s good and you should use it actually” & everyone starts weighing in and disagreeing so here’s my suggestion:

while i’m someone who generally assumes that using a service offered by my local library is good or at least neutral for my local library,

if you’re unsure how to best support & exploit your local library, you could always ask a librarian at your local library. you could go right up to the counter to talk about it or use the email form on the library’s contact page.

now you may think, “uh oh. this post is encouraging people to go and pester their local librarians. that may be a bad use of the library’s time & resources…”

and the is snake swallowing its tail

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lets glow serenely with mama

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what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?

would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?

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Sharing for US followers: 5 Calls is a great website that makes calling your reps easy. Put in your city or zipcode and it will generate a short list of your representatives and senators with both DC and local numbers.

There are several short scripts you can copy verbatim, whether you are passionate about a certain billionaire's overreach, dismantling of US agencies, reproductive rights, trans/LGBT rights, immigration protection, etc.

(If you have phone anxiety, I just did my five calls and got nothing but voicemail. Took me less than ten minutes. Fill their inboxes!!!)

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Anonymous, Lesbian Ethics, Volume 3 No. 3, (1989), Guerilla Feminism

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You've gotta love Jews more than you hate Nazis.

You've gotta love trans folks more than you hate TERFs.

You've gotta love your unhoused neighbors more than you hate the billionaires.

You've gotta love immigrants more than you hate ICE.

You've gotta love queer kids more than you hate christian fundamentalists.

You've gotta love fat people more than you hate the diet industry.

You've gotta love disabled people more than you hate the insurance companies.

You've gotta love your fellow humans more than you hate the worst that humanity has to offer. You don't have to like every person you're fighting for, and you sure as hell don't have to give up your righteous anger, but hate is ultimately corrosive.

You've gotta love.

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Listen, I'm having fun playing with the ultra patriotic voice, but after a couple years in blue-collar landscaping jobs, you really do need to phrase things like that.

"I'm pretty sure that fella ain't here legally."

"Well, that ain't your business Chip, it's his."

They hate being preached to. If you pull out words like 'gender wage gap' they'll tell you you're brainwashed by the far left media.

"He's one of them transgenders."

"He got freedoms too, Jimmy."

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I love you PBS I love you NPR I love you public libraries I love you wikipedia I love you project gutenberg I love you librivox I love you libby I love you hoopla I love you openlibrary I love you internet archive I love you resources that make information free and accessible to the public

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Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

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If you're an American and you're bothered by the current events with Elon Musk (or any concern you have for that matter), you can treat a message to your senators / house representative just like you'd share your thoughts to an online book club. You don't have to be eloquent or drawn-out. No matter how small or simple your message, let them know what you're thinking!

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Expressing my lifelong love of sharks by painting a sweet little nurse shark

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Firefox Extensions I like

UBlock Origin - Adblocking

Chameleon - IP and random agent spoofing

TrackMeNot - Floods web search engines with false queries at a settable interval

Location Guard - Obfuscates precise location

Privacy Possum - Blocks and falsifies information collected by tracking

ClearURLs - Removes tracking elements from URLs

LocalCDN - Prevents third party requests

CanvassBlocker - Prevents fingerprinting

UnPaywall - Circumvents paywalls for research papers

Sci-Hub - Adds a Sci-Hub link to academic papers

ChromeMask - Disguises Firefox as Chrome for Chrome-only websites

FlagFox - Adds a flag next to the URL indicating its origin

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday told hospitals that they would be violating state law if they stop offering gender-affirming care for people under age 19 in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump aimed at curtailing federal funding for such treatments.

In a letter, James, a Democrat, told health care facilities that refusing to provide the treatments would violate New York’s anti-discrimination laws.

“Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligations to comply with New York State laws,” her letter reads.

Everyone say thank you to NY Attorney General Letitia James!!!