Rick Smith

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. Plato. “views: my own”

[Rick Smith @Geechie68]

“Obama never touched it"

Nonsense! Obama was the blueprint.

[Martha Lincoln @heavyredaction]

It is possible that no US politician has ever had this level of cultural competence, charisma, and sincere warmth. Obama never touched it and JFK could not have come close

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A bobcat eats hundreds of rats and mice a year, for free, and doesn't bill us for its service.

It won't bother you, either. It's about twice the size of a housecat, wants nothing to do with people, and you'll be lucky to ever lay eyes on one. What it wants is the mice in your yard, that's it.

But here's the sick part: in the mountains around Los Angeles, 88% of bobcats tested positive for rat poison. In one study, 31 of 39 dead bobcats had it in their bodies. They eat poisoned rodents, the anticoagulant tears down their immune system, mange takes hold, and they die slow.

We put poison out to kill rats, and the poison kills the bobcat.

If one turns up in your yard, you don't have a problem. You have the best pest control on the continent, on the house. Put the rodenticide away and let the bobcats cook.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The best mosquito repellent for your patio costs $20 and runs on a wall outlet: a fan.

Mosquitoes are terrible fliers with a top speed of about 1-2 miles an hour, slower than you walk, and they struggle to make headway against even a gentle breeze. Point an oscillating fan at your outdoor seating area and they'll physically struggle to get to you.

It works on two levels too. A mosquito finds you by following the plume of carbon dioxide you exhale, plus the heat and scent rising off your skin. A fan scatters all of it and erases the trail that leads them in. So it knocks them out of the air and helps hide you from their senses at the same time.

This isn't folk wisdom. The CDC notes that fans reduce mosquito landings, and studies have found that using a fan can substantially reduce mosquito bites.

Citronella candles offer only modest protection and are generally much less effective than a fan or EPA-registered repellents. Plug in a fan, aim it at the table, and take your evening back.

[AB @AlannaBennett]

Pro tip: make friends online! Real ones! Nothing bad happens, they just become kin and maybe even marry you?! Speaking from experience as last night I went to the wedding of a close friend I met on here with the husband I met on here, social media good actually!

[Rick Smith @Geechie68]

While reading this post, I kept waiting for it to veer toward the intended topic.

Thrilled to have learned something useful about...wasps? 🤨

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

There are about 18,000 species of wasps in North America. Roughly 20 of them can hurt you.

The wasps people fear are all from one family: Vespidae. They make up less than 1% of wasp species on the continent. They build the visible nests, they defend them aggressively, and they're the ones you remember from a bad encounter.

The other 99% live solitary lives and ignore humans entirely. Many can't sting at all. Many more have stingers but never use them on people because they don't have a nest to defend.

What they do instead is hunt other insects. A single mud dauber stocks her nest with paralyzed spiders, including widows and recluses. A braconid wasp lays eggs in tomato hornworms. An ichneumon wasp parasitizes wood-boring beetles that kill ash trees. A cuckoo wasp infiltrates the nests of other wasps and bees. Some species control aphids; others control caterpillars, beetle grubs, or flies.

Most agricultural pest insects in North America are controlled, in part, by parasitic wasps that almost no human ever sees. There are over 25,000 species of ichneumon wasps alone, and they keep entire orders of insects in check.

The five or so wasp species that ruin a picnic in late August are real. The 17,995 species that are running the pest control infrastructure of an entire continent get almost none.

[Fly Sistah 🪷 @Fly_Sistah]

These bastards tried to steal Dr. Ezra Totton's money. University of Iowa, where Black students are 3%, sued to distribute Dr. Totton's gift differently than his will had specified arguing a recent affirmative action decision let's them unilaterally repurpose private donations.

[Dr. Allison Wiltz @queenie4rmnola]

There's no way a Black shop owner could chase a White or Asian teenager, shoot them in the back and walk free.

[uché blackstock, md @uche_blackstock]

1/ Three Ebola updates I’m watching today, May 30: WHO in DRC, the Kenya quarantine facility debate, and U.S. airport screening.
The thread connecting all three is preparedness, trust, and whether public health systems have what they need to respond.

[Gary Chambers @GaryChambersJr]

Yall gone hear me one day.

Black turnout exceeded white turnout in Louisiana’s May election.

Black voters are 31% of registered voters, but made up 34% of the people who showed up.

I was on here every day telling y’all to vote because this is what happens when Black people participate at higher rates. We influence elections the same way we influence culture.

Jeff Landry lost all 5 constitutional amendments. Even in Republican parishes, voters rejected his agenda.

Never underestimate the power of informed, organized Black voters.

And to be clear, this happened while Black folks are underfunded in this work in Louisiana.

One thing the record will always show is, I did my part.

Share if you care 🦾

[Kevín @KevOnStage]

A 9 year old rapping about 9 year old things.

[Christina Henderson @chenderson]

After the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak Obama’s National Security Council developed a 69-page guidebook based on lessons learned. A playbook for future infectious disease threats.

Wonder if anyone has cracked that open lately? https://t.co/2XgCqzTqK9

[Rick Smith @Geechie68]

This is mind blowing athleticism!

[𝕏 OMO NAIJA 🇨🇦 👑 @Cele__Audu]

Darryana Roberts has determination, talent, and sheer power.🔥 🤯

[Alex Veremeyenko @alex_verem]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Dr. KaNisha L. Hall @DrKanisha]

The same people that don’t believe Black Doctors are qualified also don’t think we should have a directory for those who want to see a Black doctor! Why do they even care? Leave Black People Alone! - HBCU educated Black Doctor with friends.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[Booker G. Washington @BookerGWash]

Boycott ALL public, Power Four colleges in former Confederate states:

Alabama
Arkansas
Auburn
Clemson
Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Houston
LSU
Mississippi State
NC State
Ole Miss
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Texas A&M
Texas Tech
UCF
UNC
UVA
Virginia Tech

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

NAACP President Derrick Johnson: The NAACP is calling on athletes coming out of high school not to attend any state-funded schools of states that have moved to minimize our right to vote. The NAACP will fight in solidarity with the CBC to ensure that we have representation, and if we don't, we will withhold the talent that play on the football field on the basketball court in this moment.

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

1. Number of stories about Trump buying and selling hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in the first three months of 2026:

CBS: 0

CNN: 0

Fox News: 0

NPR: 0

PBS: 0

Politico: 0

Semafor: 0

Business Insider: 0

[Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris]

Georgia, it’s Election Day.

You have the chance to send Miracle Rankin and Jen Jordan to the Georgia Supreme Court. They are extraordinary leaders who will fight to protect your rights and uphold the rule of law.

[uché blackstock, md @uche_blackstock]

*Infectious disease update as of May 17*:

Two international health stories are getting attention right now: hantavirus and Ebola.

First, hantavirus.

The current hantavirus concern is linked to an international cluster associated with the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius.