Before covid Maui had over 50k+tourists killing the reefs with sunscreen every damn day. I cherished emotional calls from family there as they described seeing crystal clear waters from our childhood reappear. Seeing an ecosystem thrive for the first time in our lives only to have it snatched away 💔

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · 3d ago

I think it also revealed just how quickly a bunch of otherwise very hard problems can be to solve with global collective action. The fuckin Ganga was running clear water for the only time in my lifetime because for 2 weeks nobody threw garbage in it. The canals in Venice had fish.

Big dogs need forever homes. Adopt for free in Oakland this weekend 🐕 oaklandside.org/2026/07/31/d...

Big dogs need forever homes. Adopt for free in Oakland this weekend

Oakland Animal Services is at capacity for big dogs, so the shelter is waiving fees on Aug. 1 and 2. You can view adoptable dogs on their website.

oaklandside.org

This is good, necessary, common sense" www.banfacialrecognition.com/venues/

Ban AI Surveillance at Live Events

Artists and venues take the pledge: no facial recognition at shows.

banfacialrecognition.com

A small aircraft flies across the Buck Moon at 99% illumination above the Mount Diablo skyline in Concord, Calif., on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. #fullmoon #buckmoon #photography #bayarea #nikon

Some difficult news: Fred, the Oakland baby night heron that @nuala.bsky.social and friends rescued in the course of reporting our herons and housing story, passed away. You can read Nuala's obituary here: petobits.coyotemedia.org#fred0729

Kat Ferreira@katferreira.bsky.social · last wk.

Thank you @coyotemedia.org & Nuala Bishari for keeping up with the plight of our heron rookery! 💘 "The kids who asked the city to make the herons the official bird should be able to grow up seeing them in the wilds of Oakland, not just on their library cards." www.coyotemedia.org/herons-or-ho...

The Hugging Face incident was “both notable and alarming,” EFF’s @evacide.bsky.social told @sfexaminer.bsky.social, “not because ‘ooh, the model’s so powerful,’ but because it demonstrates a colossal failure on the part of OpenAI to secure the sandbox in which it was testing its model.”

OpenAI hacking incident highlights AI cyberrisks

Experts take company to task for safety efforts

sfexaminer.com

Thank you @coyotemedia.org & Nuala Bishari for keeping up with the plight of our heron rookery! 💘 "The kids who asked the city to make the herons the official bird should be able to grow up seeing them in the wilds of Oakland, not just on their library cards." www.coyotemedia.org/herons-or-ho...

Herons or Housing: The Battle Over a Vacant Lot

A large affordable housing development is slated for downtown Oakland. It could displace hundreds of black-crowned night herons, the city’s official bird.

coyotemedia.org

Remembering Sinéad O'Connor, who died three years ago, on July 26, 2023. Photo by Andreas Larsson. #sineadoconnor

A year or so ago this street art would have been nearly void of profound meaning. In 2026 Minneapolis? Intensely poignant and political. We had whistles. They had guns. Minneapolis.

Between this and birding getting popular maybe we're going to be all right

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au · 2w ago

Fishing club memberships boom as younger generation picks up the rod

Corpus Christi has a new historical marker honoring the area's Indigenous people. It replaces a 1976 marker describing the "Karankawa Indians" as having "a reputation for savagery" and cannibalism. It also stated falsely that the Karankawa no longer exist. 🗃️ www.caller.com/story/news/l...

Karankawa peoples receive new historical marker in Corpus Christi

The new historical marker is located at the Hans & Pat Suter Wildlife Refuge.

caller.com

An interesting consequence of New York passing a law requiring disclosing when an ad uses AI actors instead of real people.

Amazon cracks down on use of AI images by sellers after New York law

A recently enacted New York law mandates that companies disclose when an ad includes a "synthetic performer" in place of a human actor.

cnbc.com

“The global average TikTok user watches over 100,000 videos annually, and the average American spends 50 hours a week on screens, 16 of those on social media platforms. An American born in 2025 is projected to spend 21 years of their lifetime looking at screens.” Grim stats. This needs to change.

Getting Off with the Luddites | Sarah Thankam Mathews

They see Big Tech as having eroded commonality: the common good, the social fabric, the institutions of collective interest. Luddism, as they conceive of it, is a communal, spiritual, and political pr...

nplusonemag.com

Find an Irish national and tell them the British government wasn't responsible for any deaths when it cut off food aid programmes during the famine.

Emma Evans@trance.bsky.social · 2w ago

Imagine you live in old timey times and your town gets it's supplies by train every quarter. And the winter shipment doesn't come. And you're told yeah no we decided not to send it. There's no time to do jack shit, and winter is here. People will die. is that not murder? We did worse.

There is never any reason to instigate a police chase. But it's especially egregious over a pair of $8.99 shorts.

Alison Cook@alisoncook.bsky.social · 2w ago

So bleak and unnecessary: 15- and 16-year-old girls killed crossing U.S. 59 during Houston police chase over Old Navy shoplifting call www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.

NPR@npr.org · 2w ago

Led by Gen-Z youth across India, the movement has become perhaps the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his 12 years in office n.pr/3TgngOI

If you’re a younger progressive person, I hope you’ll take this as a sign In fact, I DARE YOU 👀 Go to at least one city planning or council or other civic meeting (including virtual) in your community in the next 6 weeks You might be surprised by the impact you can have just by being in the room!

"Roughly 184,000 cans of Amy’s Kitchen soup have been recalled over a manufacturing problem with the pull tabs that seal the cans." 👀

Jennifer Ouellette@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 2w ago

Amy’s Soup Recalled in 27 States Over Spoilage Risk gizmodo.com/amys-soup-re...

Libraries continue to rule

TechCrunch@techcrunch.com · 2w ago

At libraries around the country, "Avoiding AI" workshops have elicited unprecedented demand.

"The Oaklandside sent Houston follow-up questions about how much he paid for the billboards and how long his ads will be up. Houston called the reporter, swore at him, and told him to lose his number." oaklandside.org/2026/07/24/c...

'Son of Oakland' billboard over I-880 in Oakland turns heads

Ken Houston, the District 7 councilmember, says he paid out of pocket for the self-promotional ad. He also voted to approve city contracts with the billboard company.

oaklandside.org

The sudden realization that August is next week.

My favorite part is where she mentions sociology's "obsession with inequality.". Isn't that like criticizing history for its obsession with the past? Sociology does lots of things well but one of the things it does best is decoding inequality, particularly useful in our second Gilded Age

Lisa Wade@lisawade.bsky.social · 2w ago

Sociology is amazing. Our biggest problem is bad-faith actors who maliciously spurn the field because we teach people how societies work and they'd rather we all stay in the dark. Not today, Satan!

Waiting for my orca to offer the wreckage of a yacht and then nodding with approval

Jack Cousteau ⚓️@angrywaterman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Canadian experts found 34 cases of orcas offering prey and other items to people who were on boats, and on shore in four different ocean incl 6 fish, 5 mammals, 3 invertebrates, 2 birds, one reptile, and one seaweed. In almost every case the whales presented the prey and waited for a response.

Short thread dismantling some of the frame coming out of OpenAI’s reputation/crisis management around the Hugging Face hack. ⬇️

Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 2w ago

Seeding the “maybe our model is exhibiting self-awareness?” narrative to obliterate the “OpenAI is a negligent and potentially criminal actor” narrative is a reputation management move exclusive to this industry. Not a stunt, but a desperate need to control the narrative.

Admirable clarity @science.org

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 2w ago

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

Oakland woman arrested by ICE in Denver airport is getting legal help. Chantal Morales Rojas’s lawyers say her arrest at the Denver airport was illegal. ICE says she didn’t have permission to remain in the U.S. oaklandside.org/2026/07/24/c...

Oakland woman taken by ICE in Denver is getting legal help

Chantal Morales Rojas’s lawyers say her arrest at the Denver airport was illegal. ICE says she didn’t have permission to remain in the U.S.

oaklandside.org

Dangerous glitchy AI tools have rolled out in most medical settings, not just Mayo Clinic. One office asked us to fax a referral and the AI tool they use to translate faxes into electronic records hallucinated the referring doctor completely! The human appointment scheduler said it happens often.

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 3w ago

Mayo Clinic is being sued by its former AI compliance lead, who is alleging the hospital network tried to hide its AI tool’s 67% error rate at patients’ expense. /1 futurism.com/health-medic...