It's unfortunate that lawyer-client privilege extends even to discussions where a lawyer declines to take a case, because I would bet that a lot of lawyers turned down the sheriffs who wanted to file this lawsuit.
I love independent horror shorts. They all hit differently from different directions. There is some great creativity going on with very limited resources. But I immediately lose sympathy with a protagonist who leaves doors/windows unsecured after being spooked.
The best horror shorts are the ones that literally gives me a weird tingly feeling. Fight/flight. But I plow through it and tip my hat to people who can illicit that sort of response. And I don't have to spend two hours to get there.
Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos, house finches in Mexico and song thrushes in New Zealand have all developed a curious habit: They put cigarette butts in their nests. Some songbirds in Britain are even nesting in outdoor ashtrays.
A new study adds evidence for why urban birds have picked up this preference, at least in one species: The toxins in tobacco may keep parasites at bay in the nests of blue tits, colorful birds that are found across Europe...
A team of researchers at the University of Lodz in Poland studied blue tits in urban parkland and forest near the university. They monitored the health of 99 birds hatched in three different types of nest boxes. Some standard nest boxes acted as a control. A second group received a nest with an interior of sterilized artificial moss and cotton wool. Placed into the third group of nests were two used cigarette butts.
Using bellows to smoke the cigarettes mechanically “was the most challenging part of the experiment,” said Michal Gladalski, an evolutionary ecologist who led the study. He is not a smoker and wanted to avoid hurting his lungs or anyone else’s.
Thirteen days after hatching, three babies per brood were measured and had blood drawn. Bloodwork indicated that nestlings in both the sterile nests and those with the cigarette butts were healthier than those in the untreated nests.
Constantino Macías García is an ecologist at the Autonomous National University of Mexico and part of a team that has studied bird cigarette use for over a decade. That the team in Poland found any effect was remarkable, he said.
That’s because while the Polish experiment placed intact cigarette butts into nests, finches and sparrows in Mexico City “dismember the cigarette,” he said. When birds spread fibers from cigarette filters, the repellents have more contact with chicks. The modest effect found in the new study, he also suggested, might be a result of using only two butts.
In contrast, in Mexico City, a team led by Monserrat Suárez-Rodriguez, a colleague of Dr. Macías García, found that house sparrows and house finches incorporated an average of eight to 10 cigarette butts into their nests. A follow-up experiment demonstrated that when researchers added more live ticks to nests, house finch females responded by adding more cigarette butts...
Dr. Gladalski hopes there is one clear takeaway from his team’s study.
My mom told me that birds would take cig butts to their nests. They usually shredded them. This was many, many years ago. She thought it was because it made the nest softer.
Well happy Friyay (and payyay!) to all. This week I've been in a little tiff with the leadership of the needle exchange. You see, a few months ago we were forced to stop giving out pipes and other glassware as it's not covered by our state harm reduction act. The organization leadership decided that we would hand out pipes at the static drop where people could pick them up. We decided, as a driver group, not to hand them out because we knew that if we did, participants would grumble about how only certain people had pipes.
That was all fine and good, but then leadership decided that drivers could hand out pipes but that if they do, the organization does not want to be implicated in doing so, thus, we do not include the organization flyer in them. That, to me, did not sound like a risk I don't want to take--handing out illegal materials without the support of the organization, so I, and a few others, aren't handing them out. We'll, Just as expected, now every time I drive up, someone asks me for glass and when I tell them I don't have any, they fucking whine, "Well, so and so has it," and it's FUCKING RUDE.
So the tiff is about participants being rude to me as a result of the policy, really, and I raised it with leadership who are going to the board to see what can be decided. I told them that I wasn't willing to hand out glass as an individual not working with the organization (i.e., if I get stopped, the organization lawyers are going to say the organization is not involved if we get dragged to court, which is not good policy), and that I'm definitely not going to volunteer my time if people are going to continue to be rude.
It has turned into exactly what I expected to happen when I said we all need to do the same thing to begin with--participants are being divisive and trying to play us against each other to get what they want. Some of the younger, less socially adept volunteers ARE NOT GETTING what I am saying, are persisting with giving out glass. -_-
Anyway, I put in my announcement to participants (that I send out when I start the delivery route): 🚨I DO NOT HAVE GLASS, IF YOU ASK ME FOR GLASS, I WILL ROLL UP MY WINDOW AND DRIVE OFF.🚨 Sure enough, some people asked me for glass, though none said, "So-n-so had lit last week" but one of the participants did a brilliant and hilarious imitation of someone saying it. It brought me real joy!
Using addicts are manipulative. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Using addicts are ungrateful.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Using addicts are rude, undeserving poor.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Jesus never promised that anyone would say thank you. He promised that you would store up treasure in heaven, because where your treasure is, there your heart would be also.
Yes, I have been beaten, robbed, ripped off, snd manipulated. Surprise, surprise, surprise. On behalf of Mother Theresa, Jesus, and me, thank you and keep up the good work.
That's basically what I said. I don't think supplying someone with items and saying "Your on your own to hand them out" removes them from liability. The first thing a prosecutor is going to ask is "Who gave you this stuff to hand out?" A volunteer shouldn't be forced into that position.
Right wing loons have taken a break, from imagining Churchill being replaced with a water vole on our currency, to pivot to a little Islamaphobia. Here is, son of Prue Leith, Daniel Kruger railing against Muslims praying, and breaking their Ramadan fast, in Trafalgar Square (home to the UK's most phallic statue).
For some unaccountable reason they don't mind Christians, or "small groups" of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims, using public spaces, or Druids gathering at Stonehenge 🧐, but this seems to be too much.
TIL that Lord Nelson’s column is the most phallic statue. Was that in honor of Lady Hamilton, or Captain Thomas Hardy?(Famous last words: “Kiss me, Hardy.”—Lord Nelson. 1805 LGBTQIA+)
A few of our sites at the work place are some original Baptist churches, like OG. So I've had to do a fair bit of research and hit upon a little gem penned by a former pastor of a few of them (they would break away from each other on a dime...but often share the same pastor. Tis a baptist thing) and he was detailing how the Anglican church would jail- even beat- baptists for the crime of being baptist, and how the positions in both the church and the local government were stacked with the same rich landowner gentry types.
The little bit in there about how often times the juries, made up of the not so rich fucks, would often fuck with cases and release people just to get back at the rich fucks.
The amusing part comes in reading about how once, and it was not that long ago, Baptists were SUPER proud of helping to spearhead the entire separation of Church and State thing.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Emerson.
Besides, Sally Hemmings looked just like Martha. Chocolate love was illegal in VA until 1967 and the Loving decision by the Warren Court. (Greatest name for a famous case ever.). Only way Thomas and Sally could be together was if he owned her.
I mean, a power imbalance in a relationship isn’t something I endorse, but maybe, just maybe, Sally had some tender feelings for Thomas? He freed her children in his will.
Is there evidence that they were in love before they had sex? Do we know their respective ages at that time? And is there is a greater "power imbalance" than between a slave owner and a slave?
We'll likely never know how it actually played out (seeing as there were a couple hundred years of denial before truths started showing up). Maybe they were hopelessly, romantically in love, maybe she made the best of the situation, whatever. But the facts are that from day one, he could sell her, sell her kids out from under her, make her breed with some other slave, etc.
So yeah, I'll still say rape. Could she say "no"? No, she had no right to disobey her owner. That little ol' power imbalance.
Count me as rather skeptical that they were star-crossed lovers.
lolz, my co worker and boss man are both Proud Virginians, even though boss man originally comes from New Jersey, the carpet bagging dork, and often tsk at me for Judging People By Today's Standards
So I remind them, very gently, how there were most certainly abolitionists during TJ's time and that means I can judge him by those standards, since they are contemporary
I was going to share one of the Guardian's ongoing pieces on AI - about a woman who asked AI to help her understand her mother, and thought she was writing a piece on how helpful it is, but actually wrote about how selfish and myopic she is that she needed a machine to understand other people - but when I went looking for it I saw this.
'Meta AI agent's instruction causes large sensitive data leak to employees.'
An employee asked AI how to do something, AI randomly gave them the instruction to make private info public, and they fucking just did it, because idiots.
A person did, they just did so because they followed AI generated instructions without thinking. Which is a bigger problem than the data breach, to my mind.
These people are looking towards a silicon god for direction. We're gonna start seeing cults form (officially) soon that follow their preferred 'all knowing' AI deity.
They already exist. You should HEAR the Lawfare AI podcast. The hosts are fucking nuts in how they talk about the different AIs, and they are smart people.
I like when they turn into goblins, it is hilarious and also reminds me that "we accepted an alpha predator into our homes and pretend we domesticated them"
It's unfortunate that lawyer-client privilege extends even to discussions where a lawyer declines to take a case, because I would bet that a lot of lawyers turned down the sheriffs who wanted to file this lawsuit.
why is he called "afroman"?
DOJ is trying to drop remaining charges in the MURDER of Breonna Taylor
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/politics/breonna-taylor-officer-charges.html
OT Your Daily Report of Bad Shit Happening Today.
Not all of it, just some of it.
"Iran pressed ahead with attacks on Gulf Arab states even after Israel signaled it would stop targeting the Islamic Republic’s energy infrastructure,"
First we're gonna buy Iranian oil. And now this?
Is this any way to run a railroad I mean war ?
"Iran Leaves an Isolated Trump Grappling With Historic Oil Crisis" ---Bloomberg.
Ya gotta love Bloomberg. They make the most glaring shit on the sidewalk story
into a Pulitzer like reporting scoop of the year. Get it? Scoop shit? 😁😁😁
Now the usual.
All the indexes are down, playing out last nights futures, between a half and almost 2 points.
Gawd help you if you retire in the next 3-5 years. Unless you voted for Trump. Then may you
be hoisted by your own petard. Whatever the fuk a petard is.
Oil is, of course, up, as is the immediate trend. Cozying up to the Century Mark at 98 Smackadoodles as of now.
J the P Man peed on the idea of lower rates anytime soon. So watch your credit card
rates and shit. Or not. Your call.
That's enough for now I think.
Happy Spring e'rybody!
Celebrate the wins, people.
“I was gonna get replaced by AI, but then I got high…”
I love independent horror shorts. They all hit differently from different directions. There is some great creativity going on with very limited resources. But I immediately lose sympathy with a protagonist who leaves doors/windows unsecured after being spooked.
The best horror shorts are the ones that literally gives me a weird tingly feeling. Fight/flight. But I plow through it and tip my hat to people who can illicit that sort of response. And I don't have to spend two hours to get there.
Try Josh Sautter’s blindfolded ninja one. Only six minutes.
Scarier than “picture of God.”
And there’s “Don’t Look Away”.
I saw Portrait of God and Don't Look Away. Both very good and completely different from each other.
I could throw tons of names around, but a really good one is "Piggy."
Thanks for the recommendation!
so you don't have to search for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHgh2ajazTw&t=330s&pp=ygUScGlnZ3kgaG9ycm9yIHNob3J0
We got TERBS sign!!
Here's a random one. I don't normally post music videos or even music, really.
This is Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
It's a good song, I like it, might not be your thing.
What makes this is the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmrfgj0MZI
Single shot steadycam through LA. Half the people aren't extras; they just fucking live there.
Great singer, great song! Thank you for introducing me to Massive Attack.
A pay phone! I remember doing deals using those. Secure from wire taps for $0.25.
Now anyone with a radio receiver can listen to your cell phone without a warrant. They call that progress.
"I've never heard Massive Attack"
"Yes, you have."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7K72X4eo_s
This sounds like I don't think ME is together anymore. The song that got me into them was a Wonker. The song is Angel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbe3CQamF8k&pp=ygUUbWFzc2l2ZSBhdHRhY2sgYW5nbGU%3D
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗖𝗶𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁
Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos, house finches in Mexico and song thrushes in New Zealand have all developed a curious habit: They put cigarette butts in their nests. Some songbirds in Britain are even nesting in outdoor ashtrays.
A new study adds evidence for why urban birds have picked up this preference, at least in one species: The toxins in tobacco may keep parasites at bay in the nests of blue tits, colorful birds that are found across Europe...
A team of researchers at the University of Lodz in Poland studied blue tits in urban parkland and forest near the university. They monitored the health of 99 birds hatched in three different types of nest boxes. Some standard nest boxes acted as a control. A second group received a nest with an interior of sterilized artificial moss and cotton wool. Placed into the third group of nests were two used cigarette butts.
Using bellows to smoke the cigarettes mechanically “was the most challenging part of the experiment,” said Michal Gladalski, an evolutionary ecologist who led the study. He is not a smoker and wanted to avoid hurting his lungs or anyone else’s.
Thirteen days after hatching, three babies per brood were measured and had blood drawn. Bloodwork indicated that nestlings in both the sterile nests and those with the cigarette butts were healthier than those in the untreated nests.
Constantino Macías García is an ecologist at the Autonomous National University of Mexico and part of a team that has studied bird cigarette use for over a decade. That the team in Poland found any effect was remarkable, he said.
That’s because while the Polish experiment placed intact cigarette butts into nests, finches and sparrows in Mexico City “dismember the cigarette,” he said. When birds spread fibers from cigarette filters, the repellents have more contact with chicks. The modest effect found in the new study, he also suggested, might be a result of using only two butts.
In contrast, in Mexico City, a team led by Monserrat Suárez-Rodriguez, a colleague of Dr. Macías García, found that house sparrows and house finches incorporated an average of eight to 10 cigarette butts into their nests. A follow-up experiment demonstrated that when researchers added more live ticks to nests, house finch females responded by adding more cigarette butts...
Dr. Gladalski hopes there is one clear takeaway from his team’s study.
“Birds are smart,” he said.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/science/bird-nests-cigarettes.html
The dinosaurs would have outevolved us if not for the meteor!
Birds are evolved dinosaurs
Why didn't they just pick some butts up off the ground, they are literally everywhere.
My mom told me that birds would take cig butts to their nests. They usually shredded them. This was many, many years ago. She thought it was because it made the nest softer.
I've seen it too and I just figured Birbs Like Nesting Material.
Kinda cool that they recognized the things keep out the buggies. But then, some plants are selected for that property so that makes sense.
And since birds can't smell, it's rather perfect for them
Blue tits?
Say no more, Squire!
I knew someone would go there
(bows)
Well happy Friyay (and payyay!) to all. This week I've been in a little tiff with the leadership of the needle exchange. You see, a few months ago we were forced to stop giving out pipes and other glassware as it's not covered by our state harm reduction act. The organization leadership decided that we would hand out pipes at the static drop where people could pick them up. We decided, as a driver group, not to hand them out because we knew that if we did, participants would grumble about how only certain people had pipes.
That was all fine and good, but then leadership decided that drivers could hand out pipes but that if they do, the organization does not want to be implicated in doing so, thus, we do not include the organization flyer in them. That, to me, did not sound like a risk I don't want to take--handing out illegal materials without the support of the organization, so I, and a few others, aren't handing them out. We'll, Just as expected, now every time I drive up, someone asks me for glass and when I tell them I don't have any, they fucking whine, "Well, so and so has it," and it's FUCKING RUDE.
So the tiff is about participants being rude to me as a result of the policy, really, and I raised it with leadership who are going to the board to see what can be decided. I told them that I wasn't willing to hand out glass as an individual not working with the organization (i.e., if I get stopped, the organization lawyers are going to say the organization is not involved if we get dragged to court, which is not good policy), and that I'm definitely not going to volunteer my time if people are going to continue to be rude.
It has turned into exactly what I expected to happen when I said we all need to do the same thing to begin with--participants are being divisive and trying to play us against each other to get what they want. Some of the younger, less socially adept volunteers ARE NOT GETTING what I am saying, are persisting with giving out glass. -_-
Anyway, I put in my announcement to participants (that I send out when I start the delivery route): 🚨I DO NOT HAVE GLASS, IF YOU ASK ME FOR GLASS, I WILL ROLL UP MY WINDOW AND DRIVE OFF.🚨 Sure enough, some people asked me for glass, though none said, "So-n-so had lit last week" but one of the participants did a brilliant and hilarious imitation of someone saying it. It brought me real joy!
Using addicts are manipulative. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Using addicts are ungrateful.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Using addicts are rude, undeserving poor.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Jesus never promised that anyone would say thank you. He promised that you would store up treasure in heaven, because where your treasure is, there your heart would be also.
Yes, I have been beaten, robbed, ripped off, snd manipulated. Surprise, surprise, surprise. On behalf of Mother Theresa, Jesus, and me, thank you and keep up the good work.
It looks like the leadership needs to set a clear policy, and make sure that everyone knows it.
That's basically what I said. I don't think supplying someone with items and saying "Your on your own to hand them out" removes them from liability. The first thing a prosecutor is going to ask is "Who gave you this stuff to hand out?" A volunteer shouldn't be forced into that position.
Nor an employee. Management is abdicating its responsibility and foisting it on volunteers.
Right wing loons have taken a break, from imagining Churchill being replaced with a water vole on our currency, to pivot to a little Islamaphobia. Here is, son of Prue Leith, Daniel Kruger railing against Muslims praying, and breaking their Ramadan fast, in Trafalgar Square (home to the UK's most phallic statue).
For some unaccountable reason they don't mind Christians, or "small groups" of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims, using public spaces, or Druids gathering at Stonehenge 🧐, but this seems to be too much.
======
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3mhiaavmsp22q
TIL that Lord Nelson’s column is the most phallic statue. Was that in honor of Lady Hamilton, or Captain Thomas Hardy?(Famous last words: “Kiss me, Hardy.”—Lord Nelson. 1805 LGBTQIA+)
Church of England is Protestant for a reason, you stupid fuck, Danny boy.
His Majesty is “Defender of Faiths”, not “Defender of the Faith.” (He has Mommy and Daddy issues.)
A few of our sites at the work place are some original Baptist churches, like OG. So I've had to do a fair bit of research and hit upon a little gem penned by a former pastor of a few of them (they would break away from each other on a dime...but often share the same pastor. Tis a baptist thing) and he was detailing how the Anglican church would jail- even beat- baptists for the crime of being baptist, and how the positions in both the church and the local government were stacked with the same rich landowner gentry types.
The little bit in there about how often times the juries, made up of the not so rich fucks, would often fuck with cases and release people just to get back at the rich fucks.
The amusing part comes in reading about how once, and it was not that long ago, Baptists were SUPER proud of helping to spearhead the entire separation of Church and State thing.
Ah, when Baptists were Nonconformists!
Oh, they wouldn't like this wingnut...
https://substack.com/@craignixon/note/c-222078951
We have that in common, at least.
Danbury Baptists got a memorable letter from TJ.
(I guess he composed it between raping slaves)
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Emerson.
Besides, Sally Hemmings looked just like Martha. Chocolate love was illegal in VA until 1967 and the Loving decision by the Warren Court. (Greatest name for a famous case ever.). Only way Thomas and Sally could be together was if he owned her.
I mean, a power imbalance in a relationship isn’t something I endorse, but maybe, just maybe, Sally had some tender feelings for Thomas? He freed her children in his will.
Is there evidence that they were in love before they had sex? Do we know their respective ages at that time? And is there is a greater "power imbalance" than between a slave owner and a slave?
We'll likely never know how it actually played out (seeing as there were a couple hundred years of denial before truths started showing up). Maybe they were hopelessly, romantically in love, maybe she made the best of the situation, whatever. But the facts are that from day one, he could sell her, sell her kids out from under her, make her breed with some other slave, etc.
So yeah, I'll still say rape. Could she say "no"? No, she had no right to disobey her owner. That little ol' power imbalance.
Count me as rather skeptical that they were star-crossed lovers.
lolz, my co worker and boss man are both Proud Virginians, even though boss man originally comes from New Jersey, the carpet bagging dork, and often tsk at me for Judging People By Today's Standards
So I remind them, very gently, how there were most certainly abolitionists during TJ's time and that means I can judge him by those standards, since they are contemporary
Good morning, all, and TGIF! Didn't want to get out of bed, until I reminded myself that you never go full Oblomov.
(celebrates the Sacrament of Coffee)
#Worldle #1519 (20.03.2026) 1/6 (100%)
🔥 Current Win Streak: 7 days
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
🧭⭐📍🚩🧠🗿📜🛡️🔤🗣️👫🪙📐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/share
Good morning.
#Worldle #1519 (20.03.2026) 2/6 (100%)
🔥 Current Win Streak: 2 days
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/share
Yeah, you wind up oblomoverated like an Iranian nucyalur program!
Serious strategery right there.
I was going to share one of the Guardian's ongoing pieces on AI - about a woman who asked AI to help her understand her mother, and thought she was writing a piece on how helpful it is, but actually wrote about how selfish and myopic she is that she needed a machine to understand other people - but when I went looking for it I saw this.
'Meta AI agent's instruction causes large sensitive data leak to employees.'
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/20/meta-ai-agents-instruction-causes-large-sensitive-data-leak-to-employees
An employee asked AI how to do something, AI randomly gave them the instruction to make private info public, and they fucking just did it, because idiots.
I love Meta's excuse that a person could have done this, too. But a person DIDN'T.
A person did, they just did so because they followed AI generated instructions without thinking. Which is a bigger problem than the data breach, to my mind.
Exactly. The employee surely didn't follow testing or decision-making protocols
Yeah, I got a special Google alert about this.
These people are looking towards a silicon god for direction. We're gonna start seeing cults form (officially) soon that follow their preferred 'all knowing' AI deity.
They already exist. You should HEAR the Lawfare AI podcast. The hosts are fucking nuts in how they talk about the different AIs, and they are smart people.
The singularity is here! Keep your dogs handy and move to the Mexican Mountains.
Going back to bed to watch TV with The Crew. Li'l Feller does not play with Featherstick often, but when he does, he goes all in.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dTK2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fmedia_upload%2Fcomment%2Fa6b9b3b0-de47-4726-b250-149486023038%2Fd2bd0bd5-0aac-4b10-8e49-55a5542bfad1.jpeg
JEEBY CREEZY! Feller can get scary!
GOBLIN!
I like when they turn into goblins, it is hilarious and also reminds me that "we accepted an alpha predator into our homes and pretend we domesticated them"
He can be a shocking sight to behold when he does his metamorphosis.
Heh. Frankly, I was shocked. He always looks sooo innocent.😇👼 I want LF on my side in a war.
He could slice a main battle tank in half with his monomolecular claws.
Tabbies are tough! Mine has trained me to give her kitty crackers on demand. (Hey, she knows where I sleep.)
😁