Tiffany Arndt

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Earwigs don't crawl into your ears, but they do eat the hell out of aphids. They're some of the most underrated pest control in your yard. If you see an earwig, leave her be. She's on your side.

[Joe Black 🇿🇼 @joeblackzw]

Incorrect. He had a visa. From the US Embassy in Nairobi. It was valid. They vetted him there, and gave him a visa.

Then he landed in Miami, was detained for 11 hours, and deported to Istanbul.

THEN they branded him a terrorist.

A FIFA referee, simply because he’s Somali.

[WTFGOP @doggintrump]

If you ever had a relative, who was on hospice & wanted to die with dignity in their own home, this disgusting administration just made it so much harder
Cruelty is the point with Republicans in Congress

[😱 Scary Larry 😱 🇺🇦✊🏻🇺🇸🗽 @aintscarylarry]

republicans and right-wing media outlets such as CBS News are spreading this lie that Social Security is about to become “insolvent.” That way, when republicans gut it they can say they had no choice. FUCK THEM. THIS IS OUR MONEY. WE’VE BEEN PAYING INTO IT OUR WHOLE LIVES.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

In 2009, dozens of cedar waxwings dropped dead in a Georgia yard. A lab opened them up and found their stomachs packed with one thing: bright red berries picked off the shrub by the porch.

That shrub was nandina, sold all over the South as "heavenly bamboo."

It's not bamboo, but an Asian barberry relative, and its berries contain cyanide compounds. A bird that eats a few is usually fine. But cedar waxwings don't eat a few. They descend in flocks and strip plants bare, and in late winter, when those berries are one of the few foods left hanging, a whole flock can swallow a deadly dose in minutes.

The Georgia birds were found dead beneath the shrubs they had been feeding on. It's happened since, including more cedar waxwings found dead at UNC Chapel Hill.

The berries are also how the plant spreads. Birds eat the fruit and scatter the seeds. Nandina has escaped gardens into woods across much of the South, from Virginia to Texas.

It tolerates deep shade, which means it doesn't stop at the trail edge. It can establish in intact forests and crowd out native plants. State after state lists it as invasive. It's still sitting on the shelf at the big-box nursery.

It's easy to recognize. An upright evergreen shrub three to eight feet tall, with lacy leaves that turn red in cold weather, clusters of white flowers in spring, and bunches of glossy red berries that hang on all winter.

So yank it. Get the roots, because it resprouts. If you can't remove the whole thing this year, at least cut off every berry cluster before the birds find it.

Then plant something that actually feeds them: winterberry, American beautyberry, chokeberry, or native hollies.

The birds deserve better.

[Tiffany Arndt @FarmLady1968]

@fdigitalis @rushicrypto Fellow Gen X here. I am right there with you. WHF are we supposed to do now?

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

So if social security goes into insolvency by 2032 what tf happens to all the money that’s been taken out of my check for the past decade????

[RJM57 @Boudinski]

@SenBillCassidy Why are there $trillions available for wars, climate change and illegals but social security funded by tax payers their whole life is always at risk? Do your damn job.

[Tiffany Arndt @FarmLady1968]

@SenBillCassidy Remove the income cap!

[Tiffany Arndt @FarmLady1968]

@TPChristensen @SenBillCassidy And what do you propose those of us who have paid tens of thousands of dollars into that system do now that we are within 10yr of retirement?

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Trump wants federal control over state voter rolls so he can purge voters and manipulate the outcomes of elections.

This is what rigging an election actually looks like:

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Take thirty seconds and roll up the soccer net in the backyard. It's a quiet killer.

An owl crossing the yard at night doesn't see the netting and hits it at speed. Wildlife rescues find them wrapped up like a burrito, if they're found in time at all. A groundhog turned up tangled in a backyard soccer net just last fall.

Loose garden and fruit netting does the same thing, snagging birds by the leg or wing and leaving them to starve, and groups like the RSPCA get called to it constantly.

The worst offender hides in plain sight every October: fake Halloween cobwebs. Stretched across a bush, that stringy webbing is strong enough to ensnare a screech owl, and it catches hummingbirds, bats, and birds all season.

The fixes are all easy. Roll up or take down sports nets when nobody's using them. Pull any netting you keep up drum-tight, and check it morning and night. And skip the fake cobwebs outdoors, because nothing alive benefits from them.

Loose netting is one of the few backyard hazards that kills for no reason at all. Yours can stop today.

[Democratic Coalition @TheDemCoalition]

That's a great observation.

The right's screaming outrage about DEI is not about qualifications, it's really all about racism

And this is proof positive right here.

#FightTheRight

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Dung beetles save American ranchers $380 million a year by doing a job nobody else will: burying cow shit.

A fresh cow pat is a problem. Cattle won't graze near their own waste, so every pat left sitting kills the grass beneath it and fouls the ground around it. It's also a nursery for the flies and gut worms that torment the herd.

Dung beetles drag the whole mess underground. The grass grows back, the soil gets fed, and the flies and parasites lose their hatchery.

Free fertilizer and free pest control, all run by an insect that most of us think is gross.

[Tiffany Arndt @FarmLady1968]

@Mikecampbelly2k @AZ_Brittney @mmpadellan And what about SS?? Not only does we pay into that program with every paycheck, so do our employers. I've paid since I was 13yr old and obtained my first "real" job. I want my money. It's mine. Full stop.

[Laiken Jordahl @LaikenJordahl]

BREAKING: We're suing the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service over their plan to give away 715 acres of a public wildlife refuge to billionaire corporation Space X.

We shouldn't be sacrificing our cherished public lands to subsidize a company owned by the richest man in the world.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The 'crawdad' in the creek behind your house is the reason it isn't fetid, dead water, and they're racing toward extinction.

Leaves fall in the water and rot, the crayfish shreds them into the bits that feed the bugs, the bugs feed the fish, and on up the line.

One Ozark study found more than 200 kinds of fish, birds, and animals eating crayfish. It's the floor the whole thing stands on. Pull it and the floor drops. Bass, herons, otters, all of it.

The US has nearly 400 kinds of crayfish, more than anywhere on Earth. About half are circling the drain and one has already gone extinct.

The sooty crayfish lived in the creeks around San Francisco Bay and nowhere else in the world. People brought in a bigger, hungrier cousin from up north, the signal crayfish. The sooty crawfish couldn't compete, and it blinked out of existence. That same signal crayfish is now grinding down the Shasta crayfish, which is hanging on in only a single county.

And it keeps happening by accident. A fisher dumps his leftover bait in a new lake, a classroom turns the science-project crayfish loose in a creek, somebody empties an aquarium into a pond: every one of those can introduce a crayfish the local ecosystem evolved without, and sometimes that's enough to unravel species that have been there for millions of years.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Platner: Susan Collins said she would only serve two terms. She's now running for her sixth. She has worked in politics longer than Joe Biden. She hasn't held a town hall since I was in eighth grade. I've held 83 town halls in the past eight months. What are you trying to hide?

[Machine Pun Kelly 🇺🇦 @KellyScaletta]

So Ken Paxton's wife, co-workers, and lawyer all agree you shouldn't vote for the guy.

That's something worth pondering.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

On December 31, 2020, US Rep. Jamie Raskin announced that his 25-year-old son Tommy, a second-year student at Harvard Law School, had died.

Four days later, Raskin posted a tribute that revealed, after a prolonged battle with depression, Tommy had died by suicide.

In a farewell note, the 25-year-old said, "Please forgive me. My illness won today. Look after each other, the animals, and the global poor. All my love, Tommy."

Tommy was buried on January 5, 2021.

The next day, Raskin was in the Capitol with his daughter and son-in-law during the Capitol attack.

Hours later, he started drafting an article of impeachment against Trump, and six days later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Raskin the lead manager of Trump's second impeachment.

Today, Raskin is still one of the loudest critics of the current president, one of the most progressive leaders in Congress, and one of the strongest people — period.

Our current president bullies him on social media weekly.