Dr. Jennifer McMahon

Plant biologist, plant collector, plant poison scholar, professor, parent, and one who dreams in color. She/her #plantbiochemistry #plantdefense

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

If you enjoy my writing please know it came from having excellent teachers and mentors from my early years in the DMV thru to my NYC acting school days when the late, great Thelma Carter told me to read Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry.

My first broadway show was August Wilson’s ‘Fences’ with James Earl Jones. Black excellence has benefited my life in ways I couldn’t begin to measure but would never be so blind as to not recognize. Why does legislative freedom tie into cultural riches?

Because without representation we choke-off opportunity and block out the sunshine of the spirit. An America in which the only elections are those in which Republicans are guaranteed to win is not a great nation but a fool’s folly.

A bloated carcass of incompetence, as we see now in Trump 2.0: ‘The Pilfering’.

We’ve seen this movie before and it sucks.

Having been born 6 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law I cannot wonder what my life would have been like without the rights that so many fought for and of which I, and all of us on the side of progress, benefitted.

If you think of civil rights as an issue that only affects minorities you miss the big picture and brilliant tapestry of a common cause. This is no time for apathy.

Equality is not a convenience that some can remove for political expediency and to dominate and purvey the mendacious mediocrity of MAGA.

Men like Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and the execrable Mike Johnson have always existed in the Deep South (whose malignant, mossy mindset is stretching far North these days ). The KKK was invented to protect such toadstools.

If they think they can bring back Jim Crow era BS without a fight they are wrong.

Their actions and those of POTUS & SCOTUS are reprehensible and despicable. Stand up to this insanity. They are cowards and thieves. Boycott the companies that kiss the ring of the mad king. Fight the Power.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Buttigieg: And my word of warning to my own political party is that we would make a terrible mistake if we thought that our job was to just take power somehow and then put everything back the way it was. That’s not what we’re here to do.

We’re not out to go around and just find all the little bits and pieces of everything that they smashed and tape it together and say, “Here you go, I give you the world as it looked in 2023.” That’s not going to work. It’s not what we need.

So much has changed, and the truth is they are destroying things right and left. They’re destroying a lot of good, important things. They’re destroying some useless things too, because they’re destroying everything. So now we get a chance to put things together on different terms.

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@Mr_Lincoln It’s a holy site to me too. A secular cathedral.

[Rich Condon @RichardPCondon]

Happy Appomattox Day to all who celebrate, and even those who don’t.

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@silverpebble Hello from the US! I always appreciate your posts, so when you have the strength please share your beautiful visions! These are dark times indeed- thanks for sharing some light.

[Gary Koepnick @garykoepnick]

Just going to keep posting this to counter the ridiculous bullshit until someone makes me stop.

The Special Counsel investigation uncovered extensive criminal activity
•The investigation produced 37 indictments; seven guilty pleas or convictions; and compelling evidence that the president obstructed justice on multiple occasions. Mueller also uncovered and referred 14 criminal matters to other components of the Department of Justice.
•Trump associates repeatedly lied to investigators about their contacts with Russians, and President Trump refused to answer questions about his efforts to impede federal proceedings and influence the testimony of witnesses.
•A statement signed by over 1,000 former federal prosecutors concluded that if any other American engaged in the same efforts to impede federal proceedings the way Trump did, they would likely be indicted for multiple charges of obstruction of justice.

Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the U.S. election system in 2016
•Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”[1]
•Major attack avenues included a social media “information warfare” campaign that “favored” candidate Trump[2] and the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks.[3]
•Russia also targeted databases in many states related to administering elections gaining access to information for millions of registered voters.[4]

The investigation “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” and established that the Trump Campaign “showed interest in WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton” 
•In 2015 and 2016, Michael Cohen pursued a hotel/residence project in Moscow on behalf of Trump while he was campaigning for President.[5]Then-candidate Trump personally signed a letter of intent.
•Senior members of the Trump campaign, including Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner took a June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower, New York, after outreach from an intermediary informed Trump, Jr., that the Russians had derogatory information on Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”[6]
•Beginning in June 2016, a Trump associate “forecast to senior [Trump] Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton.”[7] A section of the Report that remains heavily redacted suggests that Roger Stone was this associate and that he had significant contacts with the campaign about Wikileaks.[8]
•The Report described multiple occasions where Trump associates lied to investigators about Trump associate contacts with Russia. Trump associates George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen all admitted that they made false statements to federal investigators or to Congress about their contacts. In addition, Roger Stone faces trial this fall for obstruction of justice, five counts of making false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
•The Report contains no evidence that any Trump campaign official reported their contacts with Russia or WikiLeaks to U.S. law enforcement authorities during the campaign or presidential transition, despite public reports on Russian hacking starting in June 2016 and candidate Trump’s August 2016 intelligence briefing warning him that Russia was seeking to interfere in the election.
•The Report raised questions about why Trump associates and then-candidate Trump repeatedly asserted Trump had no connections to Russia.[9]

[David DeWitt @DC_DeWitt]

A very brief commentary on how the Ohio Capital Journal uses AI in our reporting, news writing, and editing: We don't.

If you want human-produced, fact-based reporting for the people, subscribe to the Ohio Capital Journal today!

https://t.co/4BPqI0PATH

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers.

At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in.

USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford.

Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel.

This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices.

The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years.

The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth.

The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground.

Full analysis in the link.
https://t.co/iFmUcarGdV

[Martin @martycon73]

Good morning 🫖 ☕️ ✌️ ☘️
Happy St Patrick’s Day everyone
The Pogues & The Dubliners
The Irish Rover
☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️

[David DeWitt @DC_DeWitt]

"Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has turned over the voter registration data of nearly 8 million Ohioans to the U.S. Department of Justice." https://t.co/6ZUH7sFN6j

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@SketchesbyBoze @hrcastor I am reading her history of Joan of Arc. Enjoying it greatly!

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

The Ohio EPA released a draft for a new permit that would allow data centers to release untreated wastewater directly into rivers and streams.

The first page of the draft reads: “It has been determined that a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state associated with granting coverage under this permit is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.”

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@SketchesbyBoze I just started listening to the audiobook and I am enchanted. Thank you so much for this recommendation, and this account in general!!

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@Mr_Lincoln Bravo!! Thanks very much!

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@Mr_Lincoln I appreciate your posts- thank you for doing what you do!

[La femme merveilleuse invisible @larwoolf]

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

Jane Goodall Conservationist Dead at 91
RIP
3 April 1934 – 1 October 2025

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@NeilShubin Congratulations!!

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@ExquisiteWill Kale?

[Dr. Jennifer McMahon @JenniferFibug]

@gettysburgmaam I've seen this photo before, but can anyone identify the road from which this photograph was taken?