bigpEE @bigpEE@qoto.org

RT @ridersalliance New Yorkers didn't fight for years to win congestion pricing just for Gov Kathy Hochul to throw it away in a half-baked political stunt.

Rally with us this Sunday, June 9 at Broadway Junction and tell #GridlockKathy NO to DEFUNDING OUR TRANSIT!

RSVP: https://action.ridersalliance.org/cp-rally-6-9-24/

The Jesus Lizard announce first album in 26 years ‘Rack’, and share UK and US tour dates

https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-jesus-lizard-announce-first-album-in-26-years-rack-share-tour-dates-buy-tickets-3763169

#music #JesusLizard

RT @streetsblognyc The family of Zenaido Rosas-Pinzon thinks he'd be alive today if the DOT had finished the Washington Bridge bike lane on schedule instead of six months from now:

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/05/30/family-of-killed-bronx-cyclist-demands-dot-finish-washington-bridge-bike-lane

Texas electrical grid is going to be tight this evening once the sun goes down and solar goes offline.

#ERCOT #Texas

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

Large pro-Palestine, anti-Hartzell group on the UT Austin campus this afternoon. A much smaller pro-Israel group is at the side and mostly getting drowned out.

#UTAustin #Texas #Gaza

service cancellations are all now negotiations with truculent demons

- crap discount offer
- I banish you
- meaningless price change
- I banish you
- major discount offer
- I BANISH YOU
- true form appears, snarling, breaks the contract, disappears in clouds of chatbot

@noelreports
I'm sure that Ukraine would be more than happy to focus on Russian military troops on their own territory... if only someone had the good idea to provide them with the equivalent of 60 billion $ in weapons and ammunition!
I really wonder whom this 60 billion $ military help could come from... any idea, Mr Austin?

Ah ha! It seems the SEC is capable of going after insider trading, so long as it's former minor league baseball players, not billionaires and banks and hedge funds.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/minor-league-baseball-players-insider-traded-del-taco-sec-says

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/18/man-jailed-ramming-motorcyclist-milton-keynes-bridge-extreme-road-rage

If this level of violence was carried out with anything other than a motor vehicle, the perpetrator would be facing a charge of attempted murder. Four years and ten months jail is an insult and even considering allowing this person to ever drive again is a baffling decision.

Yes, yes, we should all dump on the poor Hampton Jitney riders, but messenger aside: private Intercity & regional buses should not be forced to pay to congestion charge.

Doesn't seem like a sane policy decision: these services get cars *off* the road.

Taylor Swift adopted one of Elon Musk's worst moves: launching lawyers at a student who's doing a totally legal (and useful) thing: tracking of her highly polluting private jet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/taylor-swift-jet-tracking-legal-threat/

It's kind of difficult to describe from a still photograph, but when this desert blister beetle (Pleuropasta sp.) walks forward, it looks *exactly* like a red harvester ant dragging a large seed backwards. It's a really tremendous mimic.

Photographed in Anza Borrego.

#Meloidae #Desert #Insects

Whenever the "free fare transit" conversation comes up in US circles, I am always peeved with the big problem of transit in the US: whether from the left or the right, *everyone* agrees "buses are for poor people", so it doesn't get proper funding so anyone using transit ends up waiting an hour at bus stops with no seating or shade next to 6 lanes or traffic and changing three lines to get where they need to, because "poor people's time is cheap and they don't care about quality".

Woho! We are not parasites anymore!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2024/01/01/nejm-reverses-itself-on-research-parasites-as-nih-beefs-up-data-sharing-rules/

New study: bees species that survive in urbanized environments have larger brains.

#Bees #Entomology

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0296

On Marketplace, I explained why those who believe in capitalism should support regulating car bloat:

"For decades, people who buy enormous, heavy cars have been creating societal costs that they aren’t paying for. That’s what’s called a market failure."

https://www.marketplace.org/2024/01/04/the-hefty-costs-of-heavier-cars/

#cars #safety

Inside a leaf nest of Polyrhachis robsoni rattle ants. The big one's the queen.

#Polyrhachis #Ants #Insects

Arthropod Photo of the Week: January 3, 2024
Ant tending treehopper nymphs
Ectatomma tuberculatum
Hymenoptera: Formicidae
By Tom Myers, Kentucky, USA
#arthropodPOTW
#entomology #insects #photography