Thought the group may like this photo of a famous sign at Cape Forchu!

Sunset

Researchers have identified a species of frog Limnonectes phyllofolia completely new to science. The tiny Indonesian amphibian is in the possession …

The world’s smallest ‘fanged’ frog found in Indonesia

An “amazing phenomenon” — that is what Amy Porter, a spokesperson for Democrats Abroad, or DA, calls what’s happened in France over the last week. Since President Joe Biden’s decision to pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, Porter said the organization, which represents the US’ Democrat party globally, has seen a surge in registration of new voters and in volunteers offering to help on the campaign.

Perhaps more remarkably, she told DW, they’ve had “local people, French people, non-US citizens reaching out to us and saying, ‘I would like to help'” get Harris elected. In her decades volunteering with the organization, Porter said she’s only seen this “once in a blue moon.”

Source: ‘Kamala-mania’ also catching on in Europe – DW – 07/27/2024

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced today that the Department of Commerce and NOAA are recommending $575 million in funding across 19 projects to boost climate resilience in the nation’s coastal and Great Lakes states and territories.

As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, NOAA’s Climate Resilience Regional Challenge is a competitive grant program, and awards are made under NOAA’s Climate-Ready Coasts and Communities Initiative and are funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history. President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is driving more than $50 billion to build resilience to the effects of climate change in communities across the country.

(Me: GOP’s Project 2025 and current GOP House members want to drastically cut any investment in NOAA’s climate resilience projects)

Source: Biden-Harris Administration, NOAA Propose $575 Million to Increase Coastal Climate Resilience | U.S. Department of Commerce

2024-07-27 02976-tod-0110415 Canadian Horseweed

NIKON D7100 – ƒ/4 1/100 105mm ISO100 – Mission, MN

Source: Sharpshot Nature .Com 02976-tod-0110415 Canadian Horseweed

Riffelsee has become a magnet for tourists in search of the perfect picture. Andia/Universal Images Group

Edelweiss has not been seen around the Riffelsee for some years.

The Zermatt authorities have decided enough is enough.

Tourists can still come, but now they are shepherded towards the lake on marked paths, with the pastures fenced off.

The aim is not to deter visitors – after all Zermatt’s tourist office advertises the Riffelsee as a photo opportunity on its website – but to educate them about the alpine environment.

Inside the fences an alpine garden – Europe’s highest – has been created; narrow walkways allow visitors to take a closer look at the flowers, with QR codes explaining what they are.

It’s a fascinating glimpse of the biodiversity of the high Alps. Planning the garden, botanists found 148 different plant species.

Many tourists clearly appreciate it, taking time to examine the garden. Others though stream on by towards the lake, their selfie sticks aloft.

Zermatt’s problem is shared by other famous, or uniquely beautiful, parts of Europe.

In Florence there was fury after a tourist posted pictures of herself miming a lewd act with the Roman statue of Bacchus.

The beautiful southern Swiss village of Lavertezzo, famous for the emerald waters of the Verzasca river running through it, was overrun with cars, visitors, and litter after a video comparing it to the Maldives was posted on Facebook.

Meanwhile in the east of the country, Canton Glarus has witnessed a surge of wild campers, driven by Instagram, looking for clickable high mountain shots.

It’s dangerous for them, because many are not experienced hikers or climbers, but it’s worse for the alpine flora and fauna. The tents crush the pastures, the campers leave rubbish and human waste behind them.

Source: Swiss limit tourist access in bid to bring back Edelweiss – Stigmatis News

US vice president Kamala Harris speaks with former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as they endorse her as the Democratic presidential candidate, on 26 July. Photograph: Harris for President campaign/Reuters

…Because misogyny isn’t bad people saying bad things that may hurt your feelings. (Though it might.) And misogyny isn’t about silencing women. (Though it does.)

Misogyny is now one of the deadliest weapons on Earth. Misogyny is a dirty bomb in the heart of our information system. Misogyny is electoral interference. Misogyny is a national security threat so lethal we can’t even see it.

Because misogyny is invisible. It’s never about all women, it’s always just about one particular, disagreeable woman who just happens to not be very likeable. Or competent. Who is loud or “shrill” or annoying or who got the job because she slept with a man. Or because she was a diversity hire. A woman who can’t even run her own house let alone a country. A woman who is “nasty”. A woman who isn’t and cannot be the strong leader a nation needs.

Enjoy the sunshine of the Kamala moment. Breathe in the clean fresh air of facts, of evidence, of information. Of hope. Before the toxic social media chimneys crank up the content. Because shortly, the particulates will arrive, will silently and stealthily and invisibly start clogging our bronchial pathways even as the billionaire bros who own the platforms rake in record profits. It’s not so much surveillance capitalism as disaster capitalism.

It took years for us to learn some of the basic facts of what happened in 2016 and it’s still just a partial view. But we now know: Russia attacked Clinton in exactly the same way that Trumpworld attacked Clinton, in exactly the same way that they are attacking Kamala.

We now know how the Kremlin actually paid in roubles for Facebook to pump those messages out across US social media. We now know that Cambridge Analytica, on behalf of the Trump campaign, created an anonymous Crooked Hillary campaign that it fed into the “bloodstream of the internet”.

But neither invented misogyny. They just used it. These were narratives the bros of the broverse were already spreading, which the invisible hand of the social media algorithms were pumping into people’s feeds. The same zombie narratives that have risen again for Kamala and are already being stoked not just by YouTube edgelords and JD Vance fanboys but Russia and China too.

Soon, we won’t even notice. It’ll just be part of the air that we breathe. A choking toxic misogynistic stew that will silently pour over the culture war trenches like mustard gas. Darkness is coming. This is the world social media created. And we’re much further out than we thought.

Source: This is a misogyny emergency. A huge outpouring is coming in the runup to the US election – Stigmatis

A Dog from every Village. Summer Inventory: As a good businessman should, I conduct inventory twice a year. During this process, I find items I had …

Summer Inventory

A spotted longhorn in a thistle. For Debbie´s Six Words Saturday.

Who is hiding in the flower?

Today’s Book of the Day is The Courage To Create by Rollo May, written in 1994 and published by W. W. Norton & Company. Rollo May was a renowned …

Book of the Day – The Courage To Create