One of the plover chicks with a worm, right outside the kitchen window this morning.

Plovers (masked lapwings) have got four chicks in the yard of the vacant house next door. A month after the solstice seems to count as spring for this species.

My partner already complained last week that she'd been swooped right outside our house.

"Tennessee schools bans Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'Roots'"

On grounds of containing "nudity, sexual abuse, sexual content or ‘excessive violence.’ "

I haven't read this book, so I can't guess which category it comes into. It seems like a rule that would ban all books on war, and probably many works of history.

https://www.alternet.org/banned-books-2676900349/

#tennessee #books

The religious mentality continues to mystify me. A man thanks God because he survived when his car crashed into a black cow on the highway. By why did God even make him crash? My partner suggests that it was the Devil that put the cow there, black things are a sign of his work, but this raises more questions. Isn't the Devil only an instrument in God's plan? Or was God only powerful enough to let the man survive, but not powerful enough to prevent the crash entirely?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-17/michael-ferguson-car-crash-midland-highway-black-cow/106578452

Humanity is part of nature, but also a natural force of destruction in its own right, potentially rivalling supervolcanoes and collisions of moderately-sized cosmic bodies. It still falls short of a supernova or a cause of catastrophic climate change of the likes of "Snowball Earth" or whatever happened to Venus.

It seems somebody on Mastodon has already figured this out (@vaurora). Perhaps she could check if my summary is accurate?

USians who want to escape can get a so-called DAFT visa to live in the Netherlands. They just need to start a business and bring starting capital of 4500+ Euro (and complete almost endless amounts of paperwork no doubt, and then figure out how to find housing. Good luck.)

https://nos.nl/artikel/2594484-nederland-populaire-bestemming-onder-amerikanen-die-de-vs-willen-verlaten

I have the impression that despite being embargoed and bombed to hell, Gaza still has a functioning market economy. Gazans with access to food sell it to starving Gazans, and Gazan landlords rent out plots of bare dirt for somebody to pitch a tent on. All at exorbitant prices.

You have to admire the resilience of capitalism, it will probably survive the end of humanity along with the cockroaches.

Looks like David and Michelle O'Byrne (siblings in the Tasmanian parliament) will get to decide whether the Liberal government survives or not.

https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/end-this-madness-gutweins-desperate-plea-to-obyrne-over-no-confidence-vote/

@artemis I think I can kind of understand it as extreme procrastination, but I don't suffer from it.

I can accept that tasks are worth doing. Then getting started is just a matter of taking the first easy steps such as collecting tools and going to the right place (if it's a real physical world task.)

Then doing the task is just a natural continuation of momentum.

It’s up to each of us to help save life on Earth – I love this challenge

Bob Brown

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/09/its-up-to-each-of-us-to-help-save-life-on-earth-i-love-this-challenge

#lutruwita #tasmania #auspol #extinction

Western fascists say they want to protect Western civilisation, while de-funding and censoring arts and science and rejecting the "woke" parts of Christianity. They say that white men deserve to dominate others, due to their inherent intellectual superiority, while being rabidly anti-intellectual.

The only part of Western civilisation that they seem to approve of is the history of invading other places, stealing land, committing genocide, destroying cultures, to "spread civilisation."