theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
Also in the SMH Dept.: Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron?, by Ismail Muhammad.
Meta has created a vision of life in which, without A.I. aiding his every word, an individual can be left reeling by the simplest of human interactions, unmanned by an ordinary dad joke.
Waste, fraud, or abuse? In this case, I think the answer is clear: The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food, by Hana Kiros.
On a punishingly hot and muggy July day, we returned to a property that we had biolblitzed last summer. I was able to last about 90 minutes out in the gardens and meadow, and about an hour down where the Rush River joins the Thornton, but then I had to crash on our hosts’ porch. I was sucking wind just climbing a small rise.
In the garden, I documented my first Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis). I tried to expand my horizons by looking for leaf miners.
At the rivers, iNaturalist honcho Carrie Seltzer and I found several species of myxomycetes, including the critter that acts like a puffball mushroom, Wolf’s Milk (Lycogala epidendrum). I got a look at a Rappahannock Darter (Etheostoma vexillare) (a Rapp endemic of cool, clean waters) before the rest of the team charged upstream—I just don’t have the footing to follow.
After dinner, activity at the lighted sheets was great. Our big charismatic beetle, Broad-necked Root Borer (Prionus laticollis), settled in at Jeff and Izabella’s setup and stayed all evening. The Scarlet-winged Lichen Moth (Hypoprepia miniata) was shockingly beautiful.
This is National Moth Week. I’m cogitating on getting my own setup for my cubby-hole of a back yard.
Amplifying signal from Maryland Native Plant Society:
With summer officially here, outside activities are on the rise and so too are encounters with ticks. Those who find ticks on themselves or pets are encouraged to donate them to the tick research project run by Dr. Rebekah Taylor at Frostburg State University. This research provides a better understanding about various ticks found in the region and what pathogens they carry, such as the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease. Every donated tick is identified, mapped, and tested. All of the data is uploaded to an open-access website hosted by FieldScope.
Donated ticks should be from the following counties (or areas very close to these counties):
To donate ticks:
I don’t know how else to describe the tumult produced by the MRI, so multiform and powerful that it was paralyzing, preventing me from moving forward and even seeing where I was: a chaotic unfurling of enormous sounds, like an alarm siren, an 18-wheeler’s horn, and a jackhammer all mixed together, alternating with mind-numbing jigsaw solos, monstrous duos for crusher and stamping press, vociferous trios for chain saw, grand organs, and rock drill on a counterpoint of a prehistoric ondes Martenot, the whole thing punctuated by constant and contradictory percussion, without order or relation, as if fourteen deaf, psychopathic drummers were facing off in a rage.
—Jean Echenoz, Command Performance, trans. Mark Polizzotti (2020/2025), ch. 35
Hey-ho, look who got to WaniKani Level 10.
Sunday, more of the same heat. We managed about 3-1/2 hours at Leopold’s Preserve before packing it in. Team leader A.J. did find a few Bar-winged Skimmers (Libellula axilena) for us. We also turned up some puzzling spreadwings; here’s a Lestes in need of a species ID. I still struggle with distinguishing Calico and Halloween Pennants.
I decided to forgo my high boots in the interest of keeping cool, and I brought a couple of American Dog Ticks (Dermacentor variabilis) home with me as a result.
Continuing with his series of workshops on troublesome butterfly ID, Rick Borchelt took us to Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge in Kent County, Maryland on a hot and muggy Saturday. The refuge isn’t that far as the crow flies, but we drivers must either cross the swoopy Bay Bridge, then curl around to Chestertown to get across the Chester River, or take the long way around via Elkton.
Zebra Swallowtails were common to abundant. The headline observation was an Aaron’s Skipper (Poanes aaroni) on the same milkweed inflorescence as a couple Broad-winged Skippers (P. viator). I also got a lucky dorsal view of a Delaware Skipper (Anatrytone logan).
In non-butterfly news, I met the also-common Seaside Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax berenice).
Rick’s wrapup post includes a singularly unflattering picture of me (not that it’s difficult to accomplish) in full anti-solar gear.
Some small research advances in the effort to reduce bird strikes at wind turbines, by Adam Welz.
Jon Merryman for mayor: Retired man takes on nemesis, cleans up 15,000 discarded tires.
Every day is Earth Day for him.
Ride it while it lasts: The D.C. streetcar “system” is set to be phased out.
Overall, fledging success has been good, but we have had direct observations of Black Ratsnakes in three of our sixteen boxes, plus an additional box from which all the eggs removed/consumed by an organism unidentified. From this week’s report:
Snakes alive! Yet more Black Ratsnake activity in the boxes. We checked box #7, which was hatching on 26 May, and estimated 9 fledglings. Box #6 had reports of snake activity in the period of 26 May to 2 June. Nevertheless, we found 9 WODU eggs in the box, but they were not yet being incubated. Box #1 now has 14 eggs incubating, with an estimated hatch date of 4 July. And N. and I. found a snake in Box #3. Too much drama.
So we have four remaining boxes with possible activity: #6, #1, #3, and #60 (estimated hatch 24 June).
Let’s do a work day on Sunday, 6 July to cover those four boxes, 8:30 AM as usual. Again, we won’t need to whole team: let me know whether you can come. We’ll try to keep cool.
A follow-up to my notes on the Lincoln Center Floyd Collins: the new production lightens the tone a bit, and gives Floyd more music. The discordant, clashing music for “I Landed on Him” is shortened, now being just an underscoring of Skeets’ tale. Floyd now has the songs “And She’d Have Blue Eyes” and “It Moves.”
As the drop curtain flies out, the first thing we see is a pair of black patent leather wingtips belonging to Ewen Montagu (Natasha Hodgson, possessor of a righteous growl), arrogantly propped up on a desk. A little over the top, you say? Oh, just wait. This fizzy poly-character musical comedy, based on the true story of a misinformation operation designed to mislead German defenders of Sicily in World War II, hardly gives one time to breathe—the patter songs are that fast, the glitz has glitter all over it, the physical schtick goes to extremes, the character switches flash by in an eyeblink. The show doesn’t just effervesce, it hypervesces.
I’ll call out Jean Leslie’s (Claire-Marie Hall) Beyonce-level song, “All the Ladies,” and Hester Legatt’s (Jak Malone) quiet “Letter to Bill.” Hester is fabricating a letter from home to a British flier (in order to build up the subterfuge), and her heartbroken subtext elicits some snuffles in the audience. Malone also appears as an American pilot, with all the Yankee doodles.
Highly recommended.
See Brian Selbert’s piece for the Times for a peek at the backstage magic.