anyway, if anyone has a lead on jobs for a science journalist/writer who has been a planetarium director (meaning I can talk to the public), please let me know. I am *awfully* broke.

I live in Ruidoso. How can this writer not mention that this same medevac crash started what is called the Seven Cabins fire in the Capitan mountains, burning 31,000 acres.

"When those lights go out, man, you know you are in big trouble."

It Appears That the US Military Accidentally Killed Everybody on Board a Civilian Medevac Flight in New Mexico

A days-long electronic warfare drill was one of the causes behind the loss of a four-passenger medevac flight.

trib.al

#Wildfire smoke is thick across #Seattle and the NW, and air quality is getting worse this evening in the Puget Sound area as smoke from Eastern Washington spreads west. But there may be a few periods of brief breaks in the smoke this week --> emeraldcityweather.com/wildfire-smo... #wawx

Thick smoke to hang around Seattle area through at least Wednesday…then a break? - Emerald City Weather Blog

(TL;DR / “Too Long; Didn’t Read”: Smoke in general will be around through at least Wednesday if not

emeraldcityweather.com

We had a dryer fire in 2020 (a couple of weeks into the pandemic, so that was fun). We got it out and kept the damage in the laundry room but took in a lot of smoke and fumes in the process, on top of my already-crap respiratory system. I swear I can sense atmospheric smoke now before sensors can.

I'm glad I read this before I saw the film so I could watch it with this framework.

RogerEbert.com@ebertvoices.bsky.social · yesterday

"Nolan’s film is not a misbegotten attempt to modernize a classic—it is a deft and purposeful reflection of America in this moment, seen through the glass of mythological metaphor." Jeff Yang writes about THE ODYSSEY and the “people from the sea.”

It's Day Off Movie Time, so here I am, settling in with an Italian soda and some popcorn to see The Odyssey.

Or as Del Toro put it variety.com/2026/film/ne...

Guillermo del Toro: Saying ‘Art Is Not Important’ Is ‘Always the Prelude to Fascism’

Guillermo del Toro says claiming that 'art is not important' is a 'prelude to fascism.'

variety.com

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

Pope Leo XIV expressed his belief that “Universal health coverage is not merely a technical goal to be achieved; it is primarily a moral imperative for societies that wish to call themselves just,” but also to prevent injustice from becoming a cause of conflict. www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

Pope Leo XIV: Health cannot be a luxury for few - Vatican News

Pope Leo XIV reflects on situations of poverty, loneliness and isolation experienced by many people in Europe today and decries increasing ...

vaticannews.va

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

If this looks almost too perfect to be true then that is because it is. Rather than a full size corset, this is a miniature #1890s version likely used as a sales tool, proving that the commodification of perfection is an age old strategy #FIDMMuseum #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Your daily affirmation: It's hard to feel ok when the world is not ok, so move through the day in your own weird way.

Heat pumps are winning Americans over. In the first quarter they outsold fossil-fuel furnaces by 32%, the fourth year running that manufacturers have shipped more heat pumps than furnaces. Nearly half of new US homes built in 2024 came with one. Grist […]

I’m going to axe Claude a question

videogame history@vghistory.bsky.social · last wk.

illustration, interface age, magazine (1982) archive.org/details/Inte...

Today is the day! Ballots must be dropped off by 8pm today, August 4, 2026. Track your ballot here: voter.votewa.gov/portal2023/l...

This church has also been hosting anti ICE consciousness raising and mini protests, so that may have played into it too

43 years ago today, on August 3, 1983, actress Carolyn Jones aka Morticia Adams died of colon cancer. She was 53 years old. Carolyn was a Texan, of course, having been born and raised in Amarillo, where she graduated from Amarillo High School in 1947. I had such a crush on her as a kid!

extreme income inequality is bad for a lot of reasons but today the one i'm mad at is people having the wealth and power to force me to live inside their delusions

I often come back to the idea that this also stems from an inability or unwillingness to conceive that the counterfactual isn’t that there was no pandemic. It was unmitigated transmission and compounding illness and death. It’s like the gravity was never comprehended or the post-hoc denial too high.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 3d ago

it’s pretty obvious that a lot of people remember that COVID lockdowns were unpleasant and from there just extrapolate that they were therefore bad policy

Haha, I can't believe I'm only now thinking of reading The Odyssey in first grade and my teacher taking me around to read bits of it out loud to the other teachers. I mean, it was a version for kids. But I guess still surprising. /humblebrag

Periodically I see the neighborhood Cybertruck with the two pet carriers in the bed. 1, it makes me twitch a little, and 2, it appears to me it has about the carrying capacity of my Mini Cooper with the back seat folded down.

I don't know when registration opened for Write on the Sound, but sessions are already filling up so I guess I'd better get mine in. It may be a heavily poetry-based weekend for me now, but maybe that's a way to get into a project I've been putting off for too long. And all new connections are good.

Writing headaches #writingmemes #writingsky #booksky #writerslife

I've started writing an unreliable narrator novel Or have I

He's just talking pop-science gibberish. The contemporary Four Humors are just dopamine, cortisone, oxytocin and serotonin. All behavior is explained by too much or too little of one of them lol.

I have no idea what to do with this Covid revisionism. It feels like the bad kind of group therapy where you help each other ignore facts. We don't have to go *that* far back in the social media timelines to prove how fucked up it was. We were so scared we were scrubbing eggs and baking the mail.

I'm so angry on smoke days. And you know what? I get to be. No one can stop me, and there's some freedom in that.

Good morning, Seattle! Here’s a little something for our transit riders to help with your morning commute:

OneRaccoonAway

A pixel-art bus stop scene showing live arrivals and weather.

oneraccoonaway.org

Genuinely, the vast majority of American voters believe that only laziness or criminal intent could be stopping the average immigrant from obtaining US citizenship. The truth is that becoming a US citizen takes years upon years of work and requires navigating a baroque bureaucratic nightmare.

Secretary of Defense Rock@sodrock.bsky.social · 2d ago

I remember a family member of mine saying “isn’t it like going to the DMV?”

Hmm. It's a stumper. Let's see, which countries are the ones where healthcare (a huge factor as you age) is tied to employment in a society with an unstable employment market with layoff threats always looming and where people over 50 are not so subtly pushed out the door? Is it Sweden? No?

Depresh Mode with John Moe@depreshmode.bsky.social · 2d ago

In some countries, depression, loneliness, and memory issues actually improve in middle age. Almost everywhere else, they at least stay steady. And in only ONE country, they get WORSE . I'll give you three guesses and you have to forfeit the first two. maximumfun.org/episodes/dep...