✨Sparkle sparkle!✨

Not a mongoose.

[Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse]

"Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do."

Thank you, and RIP, Wendell Berry.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

When India accidentally wiped out its vultures, half a million people died in five years.

The bird doing zoomies in this video runs the most extreme digestive system in the animal kingdom. Vulture stomach acid sits near pH 1, strong enough to destroy anthrax, rabies, and botulism in the carcasses they eat. A flock strips a cow to bone in about 45 minutes.

India had 50 million of them. Free sanitation at national scale, in a country where religious custom means most cattle die natural deaths and every dead cow becomes a carcass someone has to deal with.

Then the patent on diclofenac expired in 1994. Farmers started using the cheap painkiller on livestock. Trace amounts left in a carcass cause kidney failure in vultures. Within a decade, 50 million birds fell to a few thousand. The fastest collapse of any bird species since the passenger pigeon.

The carcasses didn't disappear. Feral dogs took the vultures' place and brought rabies with them. Rotting remains leached into waterways. In districts where vultures once thrived, human death rates rose more than 4 percent. Economists at Chicago and Warwick put the toll at 100,000 extra deaths a year and $69 billion in annual damages.

So yes, the goofy bird sprinting down the walkway is adorable. It's also a disease firewall that evolution spent millions of years building and one generic painkiller nearly erased in ten.

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

She proved she'd face torture in her home country. They say they're just enforcing the law, but there's no legal requirement to find a country where this woman has never lived to send her to. They're taking a million unnecessary steps to enforce the law punitively.

[Jack Duval🌊 @jackduval]

the seattle @Mariners are now wearing jimothy jerseys in batting practice and before their games

it is officially jimothy season

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@FionneOrlander Her voice is so sweet. I keep listening over and over. 💕

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

SHOCK NYT REPORT: DHS now admits the man ICE killed in Houston wasn't even their target. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 35-year U.S. resident, was just driving to work when agents — with no body cameras — shot him dead searching for two other men who weren't even in the van.

Gift link in reply.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The US mows roughly 12 million acres of roadside every year. That's larger than the state of Maryland, maintained as mowed grass that feeds almost nothing, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

North Carolina figured out a better use for it in 1985. What started as 12 experimental acres of native wildflowers planted along roadsides has grown to 1,500 managed acres across the state, saving an estimated $200,000 a year in mowing costs while providing habitat for pollinators, birds, and the beneficial insects that control crop pests on nearby farms.

A 2024 BioScience review found something surprising to many: a mown safety strip immediately adjacent to the pavement, with native wildflowers planted in the wider verge beyond it, actually reduces insect mortality by keeping pollinators on one side of the road rather than crossing it.

12 million acres is an enormous amount of potential habitat that currently does almost nothing. The fix isn't complicated. It's mostly just stopping the mower in the right places.

Studies:

Doi 10.1093/biosci/biad111
Doi 10.1007/s10841-018-0051-2

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

All Trump had to do to preside over a fun, non-partisan 250th birthday party for the country was literally nothing but he screwed that up too.

https://t.co/n02cMRmk3X

[The Associated Press @AP]

When something breaks, most of us replace it. At this Brooklyn repair cafe, volunteers are helping neighbors fix everything from lamps and jeans to vintage fans and old smartwatches for free. The events are part of a growing global movement to reduce waste, save money and bring back repair skills that many people say have been lost.

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@OnlyInBOS If I seem a little out of it, sorry.

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

Was waiting for this video to drop ever since I saw the news item about Boston. Garron doesn’t disappoint.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Eureka!! Hope you all are enjoying the World Cup

[Fr. David Paternostro, SJ @DavidPaternostr]

This man is a modern day Alexis de Tocqueville

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@drpankajroyal @DocPriyamMD So what are the options if you have GERD?

[Sarafina El-Badry Nance, PhD @starstrickenSF]

This standing ovation totally brought me to tears.

On Thursday, my dad (stage 4 pancreatic cancer) started a Revolution Medicine trial building upon these results — RMC 5127, which uses the drug celebrated here, Daraxonrasib, with another drug targeting his specific KRAS mutation, G12V.

He’s nearly 2 years into his fight with pancreatic cancer and we have personally felt the impact of this watershed moment. It is a lifeline.

To the incredible, stalwart, brilliant researchers and folks bringing these discoveries to life - thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@missdaisyfdoo It's a little star!

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

'St. Paddy's Day' is usually preferred over 'St. Patty's Day.'

'Paddy' is the shortened form of the original Irish spelling of 'Patrick,' which is 'Pádraig.'

'Patty' is the shortened form of 'Patricia.'

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@benryanwriter @thenewyorker Calvin is very cosmopolitan.

[✨Sparkle sparkle!✨ @nutsy_fagan]

@shannonrwatts Surreal.

[Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast]

The move immediately set off alarms among supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and appeared to put Mr. Kennedy in an awkward position.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, which has been the target of tens of thousands of lawsuits that claim it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2018, as a plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Kennedy helped win a landmark $289 million jury verdict against Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, in a case contending the company knew the weedkiller caused cancer.