Friend M. Wells

Producer of things in the built and digital world; film, museums, attractions, etc. @[email protected] CS: @friend.wells

[Trash Panda 🗑️🐼 @rduran]

@madrid_mike Entirely possible Pratt closes around the same 23.5% that “Yes on Recall” got in L.A. City proper, standard Republican results in the area.

For all the hype from a couple celebrity C-listers claiming fed-up Dems were crossing party lines, the data suggests the opposite.

[Lord Hanson of Flint Labour Peer & Minister @RTHondavehanson]

In a corner of parliament at the far end of the Royal gallery a box lies permantly open containing sand from all five Normandy beaches -a reminder to both houses of the sacrifice & the cause of freedom fought for by brave service people on DDay June 6 th 1944. #DDay

[Jane @JaneFranklin99]

Normandy veterans Henry Rice and Ken Hay - both 100 - on Sword Beach once more. @ForcesNews #D-Day

[Friend M. Wells @40th_Parallel_W]

@woolyonezeez @HankDonat “A soul for a piece of bread. Misery makes the offer; society accepts.”

- Victor Hugo - Les Miserables

[Team Ossoff @TeamOssoff]

Ossoff: Last September, the President of Kazakhstan calls Donald Trump and says he wants to grant tungsten mining rights to an American company. And the very next month, Eric and Don Jr. get a stake in the American company pursuing the mining deal.

Six days later, six days after Prince Eric and Prince Don get their stake, Kazakhstan announces this company will get, “The largest known undeveloped tungsten resource in the world.” A few more weeks go by, and then the U.S. government, run by their father, sets aside 1.6 billion of your tax dollars to fund and finance their mining project. In Kazakhstan.

All this while you pay more for gas, for groceries, for health care, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

Um, no. No one should be able to obtain your private medical records without your consent. Period.

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @CorpBarnaby]

🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know D-Day Edition: John J. Pinder Jr.

Technician Fifth Grade John J. Pinder Jr. landed on Omaha beach on his birthday. He didn’t make it off.

Born June 6, 1912, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Joe Pinder was the oldest of three children. His father worked in the steel industry.

He graduated as valedictorian of Butler High School in 1931.

Pinder spent the next several years as a right-handed pitcher in the minor leagues.

He played six seasons in the farm systems of the Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Washington Senators, and Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 1941 he won 17 games and was still chasing a shot at the major leagues when the war came.

He entered the Army in January 1942 after Pearl Harbor.

Assigned as a radio operator with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, he fought in North Africa and Sicily.

In Sicily he earned a Bronze Star for staying at an observation post under fire.

On June 6, 1944, Pinder landed with the first waves on Omaha Beach on his birthday.

Communications were shattered. His job was to get a working radio ashore.

He made it off the landing craft. They were 100 yards off the beach.

Then he was hit. A round tore into his face after only a few steps off the boat.

Pinder held the torn flesh of his face together with one hand, carried the radio with the other, and delivered the radio to his unit, while wading thru waste deep water.

That should have been enough. It wasn’t.

Weakened and bleeding, he turned around and went back into the surf and fire three more times to salvage communication equipment.

He even recovered another workable radio.

On the third trip machine gun fire hit him again, this time in the legs.

Still he kept going.

Weakening but exposed on the beach, he helped get the radios working so the men around him could call for support.

While doing so, he was hit for the third time and killed.

Medal of Honor. Posthumous.

It was presented to his father on January 26, 1945.

Pinder was initially buried in Normandy.

In 1947 his family brought him home to Grandview Cemetery in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania.

He was the only professional baseball player awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II.

John Pinder is an American Badass

Thank you, John! 🫡🇺🇸

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

After 8 billion doses (yes 8 BILLION, not a typo) Covid vaccines are at this point one of the most tested medical interventions in history and one of the safest ever

[Friend M. Wells @40th_Parallel_W]

@moorehn Exactly! & they all represent the same failed Dem $$ machine. Axelrod, a former Trib reporter is technically a creature of the Chicago Machine - his first Simon campaign was back when bags of cash were still being passed under the table at Norb Andy’s Tavern in Springfield IL.

[Noble Art Understander @UnderstanderArt]

This is what I meant yesterday about how some people are just tweeting against The Odyssey to go viral. The movie hasn’t had any pre-sales for showings other than IMAX, so how can you possibly comment on those sales?

[Cade Onder @Cade_Onder]

studio that was saying they’d put WB’s movies in theaters like 5 months ago btw

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The shape of your pollinator garden matters more than its size.

Most native bees have small foraging ranges. Peer-reviewed research on solitary bees found female flight distances of just 73 to 121 meters from the nest. A small bee born in your neighbor's yard might not reliably reach a flower patch in the middle of your yard if there's a length of mowed grass between them.

What works is linear pollinator habitat. A strip along a fence line, a corridor along the driveway, or a narrow band of natives running the full length of the property is best.

A 2018 study in the journal Ecography found that the length of linear semi-natural habitat was the single strongest predictor of wild bee species richness and connectivity in agricultural landscapes. Bees track edges.

A 2-foot-wide strip running 50 feet does more ecological work than a 10x10 island in the middle of the lawn. The strip gives pollinators a route to follow, something that guides their movement across the landscape.

The effect multiplies when your neighbors do the same. A strip along your fence meets a strip along theirs, and so on.

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

The intense media focus on Graham Platner is understandable. He is an unknown in a crucial Senate race with a lot of baggage. Less understandable is the lack of coverage of Ken Paxton, whose sins are far worse. That it is “old news” is no excuse. Most voters have no clue.

[Fred Wellman @FPWellman]

Absolute clownery. We are at war. He’s not in the Middle East assuring allies, coordinating operations, or overseeing operations. No. He’s cosplaying as a real warrior. An Infantry officer who didn’t graduate Ranger School so he has to dress up like the actual qualified soldiers that did.

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

“Screwworm monitoring among foreign aid programs killed by Trump” - Agri Pulse, March 2025

[Film The Police LA @FilmThePoliceLA]

There was nothing more predictable than out of state republicans spreading misinformation about California elections.

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[Meriwether Farms @MeriwetherFarms]

Unfortunately you will be seeing these cases pop up like whac-a-moles from here on out, because we currently do not have the number of sterile flies produced to stop this

Only a matter of time until it leaves Texas and spills into other states

[Franklin Leonard @franklinleonard]

In honor of Pride and the NBA Finals, it seems only appropriate to quote Charles Barkley:

If you are gay or transgender, I love you. And if anybody gives you shit, you tell them Charles says “fuck you.”

[alex kershaw @kershaw_alex]

It's D Day. 4,427 Allied soldiers died today so that generations not even born, like mine, could grow up in freedom. See more at https://t.co/EEg00P06y6