Greenfinches from Charly:
When the birds finally stood still, the wind moved the whole tree. The females seemed more cautious and and even less likely to pose for a picture than males. Overall are these little buggers restless and they come by only for a short time every day in a flock of ~10 individuals.
Beautiful little dinosaurs! Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Eurasian Collared Dove, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
We’re being happy and excitable this year. First up, this exquisite piece of swarf, used by Rick as a wrapping decoration, and it wins best wrapping deco ever.
Isn’t that gorgeous? Then, more art supplies, and beautiful, intoxicating paper for me, from Rick. A new easel, too, in its own case! There are never enough art supplies. Can’t wait to start using these. :D
Then, for Rick, more sharp and shiny. He’s been wanting a second machete, and this one is considerably heavier than the first one, and can be used one or two-handed. Specs after the photos:
Specifications: Condor Discord Machete:
Overall Length: 27 inches.
Blade Length: 18 inches.
Blade Thickness: 3mm.
Blade Material: 1075.
Handle Material: Micarta®.
Sheath: Hand Crafted Wetted Leather.
Weight: 2.6 pounds.
Country of Origin: El Salvador.
I think there might be a roll or two of very dusty wrapping paper, somewhere in the house. I’ll confess to a love of wrapping paper with creative design, but it’s quite a waste. So I got out the cheapshit markers. As You can see, I have a ways to go, so best back to it. :D
© C. Ford.
The prompt includes a drop-down menu that lists platforms including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. | Getty.
NEW YORK — The U.S. government quietly began requesting that select foreign visitors provide their Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts upon arriving in the country, a move designed to spot potential terrorist threats that drew months of opposition from tech giants and privacy hawks alike.
Since Tuesday, foreign travelers arriving in the United States on the visa waiver program have been presented with an “optional” request to “enter information associated with your online presence,” a government official confirmed Thursday. The prompt includes a drop-down menu that lists platforms including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as a space for users to input their account names on those sites.
The new policy comes as Washington tries to improve its ability to spot and deny entry to individuals who have ties to terrorist groups like the Islamic State. But the government has faced a barrage of criticism since it first floated the idea last summer. The Internet Association, which represents companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter, at the time joined with consumer advocates to argue the draft policy threatened free expression and posed new privacy and security risks to foreigners.
Now that it is final, those opponents are furious the Obama administration ignored their concerns.
[…]
After the policy changed, Nathan White, the senior legislative manager of Access Now, again blasted it as a threat to human rights.
“The choice to hand over this information is technically voluntary,” he said. “But the process to enter the U.S. is confusing, and it’s likely that most visitors will fill out the card completely rather than risk additional questions from intimidating, uniformed officers — the same officers who will decide which of your jokes are funny and which ones make you a security risk.”
Okay, yes, this did make me laugh. Details at The Creators Project.
Some more of rq’s fabulous art work! In this particular case, lab cats:
The story behind this is three black cats who visit the lab on a regular basis – they’re not quite strays but they don’t seem to have an actual home, and they’re our unofficial mascots.)
Sketch, line-drawing, painting, finishing touches. Plus a detail shot of mah favrit kitty.
Click for full size. I would be over the moon to have such gifts. My fave is the center bottom, that’s just wicked.
© rq, all rights reserved.
Hairy Woodpecker, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Have a very merry whatever, everyone, even if this is nothing more than a few days off – enjoy them. Here’s hoping we can usher in the next year with a renewed spirit of resistance, and a firm commitment to be caring and compassionate towards people. Right at this moment, I’m feeling distinctly burnt out, so I’ll be gone for a couple of days. We’re finally going to sit down and watch the second season of Agents of Shield, how’s that for exciting times? :D
The Daily Bird will be up, and I have some lovely stuff from rq, which will probably find it’s way on the blog over the next couple of days, and there might be some giftie showing off, but that’s about it. I’ve had it with nothing but bad and ugly news, and more than anything, I want to pretend it isn’t so for a day or two. So, I’ll sorta see you all over the very merry whatever.
Remember, the endless thread is always open, if you want to talk, or need to vent, be silly, or anything else. As always, I’m reachable via email (on the sidebar), and if I’m needed in any way, send me an electronic holler, so to speak. I won’t be far. All my love to those of you who have made this blogging venture a viable one for me.
© C. Ford. Yes, we made them several years ago.
When asked if these are his actual comments in @artvoice article, @CarlPaladino says, "Of course they are." pic.twitter.com/smpMyLjgAC
— 7 Eyewitness News (@WKBW) December 23, 2016
Carl Paladino, who co-chaired Donald Trump’s New York campaign, and is a school board member, wrote out his wishlist for 2017:
1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.
2. Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.
3. Someone with a brain, a set of balls and a lack of fear who has enough money so as to not owe anyone anything once elected and who believes in a market economy.
4. We need a $50 million dollar train station as much as we need parasitic people like Lou Ciminelli, 80% of the school board and the dizziness of socialistic progressive politicians who never signed the front of a paycheck. At best 400 people a day take a train. They are not complaining about exchange or Depew. We are already the laughingstock of America for having the dumbest elected leaders ever. Why add to it.
How sweet. Perhaps the good people of Buffalo will take a look, and decide this person really shouldn’t be on the school board, for more than one reason. Going by Mr. Paladino’s lack of grammar, and general ignorance, he wouldn’t pass a standard high school test.
Via Raw Story.
Yesterday, the president-elect appointed private space advocate and businessman Charles Miller to the NASA transition team.
[…]
Last year, Miller led research that concluded private and international partnerships could make it 90 percent cheaper for NASA to set up a permanent, crewed base on the moon. The lunar base could theoretically be used to mine water from the moon’s craters and split it into hydrogen and oxygen—rocket fuel—to sell to private companies. By turning the moon into a gas station, there are hopes that these mines could make space exploration cheaper and easier.
Oh, there’s an idea, let’s get busy destroying the moon while we finish killing our earth. Yep, that’s bound to work. The colonial mindset, it never dies. Like mindless termites, gnawing and chewing through everything, with destructive glee. I have nothing outside a gigantic, near-fatal eyeroll.
Via Raw Story.
Yesterday, Trump tweeted about how more nuclear weapons are needed, making a lot of people tense and unhappy. Your worries have just doubled down, because Trump has not had a single thought about this, just ran right into things with his brain shut and mouth wide open: now we need an arms race! Gosh, won’t that be fun.
On Friday, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough said President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a nuclear arms race during a brief phone conversation they had with him earlier that morning.
“Mika asked the president-elect when we had the opportunity what his position was on — trying to clarify the tweet yesterday regarding the nuclear arsenal,” Scarborough said, referring to a tweet Trump published on Thursday calling for the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
“And the president-elect told you what?” Scarborough said to Brzezinski.
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass,” she replied. “And outlast them all.”
Trump’s statement directly contradicts the spin spokesman Jason Miller offered Thursday afternoon in an effort to downplay Thursday’s tweet — spin that interpreted Trump’s comments as merely warning about “the threat of nuclear proliferation.”
[…]
Trump’s comments Friday indicate Miller had it wrong. The president-elect is actually endorsing a nuclear arms race, not warning about the dangers of one, because he’s confident the United States would somehow always win.
Trump’s position represents a break from the nonproliferation efforts the United States has led for decades. As ThinkProgress detailed last spring, international nonproliferation agreements reduced the number of operational warheads in the world from a high of 64,452 in 1986 to 10,315 in 2015. The president-elect’s statements suggest that downward trend will come to an end.
Friday is far from the first time Trump said reckless things about nuclear weapons. During an interview last March with Chris Matthews, Trump said he was open to using nukes if the situation called for it and questioned why we’d make them if we never intended to use them. During a Fox News interview the next day, Trump wouldn’t even rule out the possibility of using nukes in Europe.
“Europe is a big place,” Trump said. “I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability.”
“Europe is a big place.” The sheer idiocy of this man makes me despair. Trump is the compleat ignoramus, an Ignoramus’s Ignoramus. No attention span. No knowledge. No ability to think. No mindfulness. He doesn’t read, at all. No books, no newspapers, nothing. He “skims, glances”. Christ, we are so fucked.
In response to a subsequent question about what steps might stand in the way of Trump using nukes if he becomes president, Hayden said, “The system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”
That’s reassuring. (For the sarcasm impaired: heavy sarcasm.)
Via Think Progress.