Animals
Cats, big and small, instinctively know how to swim the same way dogs do. Most cats don't seem to like swimming. In this video, a lioness tells the cubs they will swim this afternoon.
Moth family, dragonfly family (such as their family life is), and some lovely clear shots of egrets in Sussex, the corner of England Joan Aiken and Eleanor Farjeon described so poetically.
Censorship
The New York Times needs to feel the burn of people noticing its censorship. Until we get a ban, I'd say never pay for a newspaper in which you've not seen an accurate (not product-friendly) glyphosate story at least on the bottom of page 1A.
Election 2024
Is it racist or sexist, or ageist if you're over age 75, to vote against Mean Girl O'Dowdypants? Not if you're voting against her for the same reasons you would have been voting against the old White man she replaced. Not if you would have seriously considered voting for Condoleezza Rice, or if you plan to vote for Winsome Earle Sears for any position for which she's eligible. There probably are people who would vote against Dowdypants if she'd been part of an historically great administration, rather than an historically bad one, only because she's Black, and/or White, and/or Asian, and/or female, and/or she wears those awful pantsuits, and/or her mouth is bigger than any human mouth ought to be, and/or she's from California, and/or she's the shortest presidential nominee we've seen in this century. There are people who understand that under the Constitution the President is basically a figurehead, so they pick presidential candidates based on the same irrelevant reasons they pick sides to cheer for in a game. Whose home town is closer to theirs. Who looks better on television. But more people, I'm sure, are planning to vote against her simply because she's had every opportunity to make the last four years better, and the last four years have been so bad. (Relatively few people happen to be writers, reporters, politicians, etc., who wanted to say nice things about her in 2016 or 2020 and were snubbed by her...though many writers, reporters, and politicians have had that experience, and that's another valid reason to vote against her. Mean Girl doesn't want to win us over; she wants to censor us.)
But it is racist and/or sexist and/or ageist to vote for Dowdypants if you think that Black and/or Asian and/or White and/or female and/or sixty-year-old Americans can't do a better job than she's done. Tackypants may profit from the bigotry of people who think that, but Heaven help anyone unlucky enough to be their students or employees.
Phenology
Virginia, too, is just starting to see color. It looks like the last week of September now. Leaf peepers are welcome; this weekend should be good.
Relationships
Whew-ee. It's not a story I care to follow, but a 30-year-old woman reportedly broke up with her 50-year-old fiance over her obsessive "sexting" of Candidate Kennedy, in the absence of any evidence that he was participating in or encouraging the "sexting." That sort of thing happens to Kennedys, the way middle school teachers get "love notes" from students. It doesn't even count as a scandal, though the woman's goal was probably to create one. Adams empathized with the 50-year-old man, because hello, you're 50, you're dating someone who's 30, and she's more interested in someone who's 70? I had to say this. That 50-year-old man is lucky. Fifty is not all that old. At 50 a healthy person seems "older" to people who are 30, but not too old to be interesting. I sincerely felt, at 30, that my 50-year-old husband was attractive and fun to be with; I can believe, at 50, that the younger men who occasionally annoy me feel the same way--they just have idiotic ideas about getting Emotionally Involved before they've demonstrated a real talent for geriatric nursing/ At 50 you do think about that, where a younger person might think about how the children would look. But if you're 50 and your 30-year-old hottie is looking past you toward someone who's 70...run don't walk. Block the hottie's phone. Take out a restraining order. If the 70-year-old is not a "celebrity" who might be harmed by a scandal, the other possibility is that that 30-year-old is a professional widow who doesn't want to wait.
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