@Mikal@sfba.social
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Mikal

@Mikal@sfba.social

Interested in All Of The Things, which is probably why I follow you.

Things I do: #LandscapePhotography and #Protest #Photography, #paragliding, #StormChasing, #border and #HumanRights #activism.

Intellectual hobbies I watch from the sidelines: science, security/privacy, online sociality and general internet theorizing. My camera shoots fascists. Photos my own unless noted. Direct sharing photos: yay! Scraping: no.

You can write to me via my website, though Signal gets the quickest response.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Mikal, to Birds
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Spent the last week in Sonora, Mexico, on a remote ranch in one of the sky island mountain ranges helping with a biodiversity survey. The group of Mexican and American biologists collected upwards of 250 plant species alone, in addition to documenting birds, herps (reptiles and amphibians), invertebrates and mammals.

I found one of only two Ditmars' horned lizards, a particular focus of this trip. It was my first Ditmars! (I'm working on a story about these super interesting creatures, so more later.) I was giddy about this, as were the professional herpetologists on the trip and we celebrated with tequila back at the trucks. If you understand this, you may be a genuine bionerd.

Most of the photos I shot are just iPhone record shots to go along with plant and invertebrate specimens, but I did shoot a few birds with my DSLR and then digitally zoomed waaaay in on what would otherwise be tiny bright specs on branches.

Anyway, enjoy a painted redstart Myioborus pictus.

Mikal, to Futurology
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Sinoquipe, Sonora, Mexico, about 30 minutes ago. I'm with a group of Mexican and American biologists en route to a remote mountain range as part of a biological survey of the area. We got stopped by this protest.

A few years ago, there was a massive retention pond spill from the giant copper mine near Cananea. It contaminated the water supply so new wells had to be drilled, but this town pump has been out of service for three weeks. Protesters say the President of the municipio (like an American county), does not listen to them and has been unresponsive to their needs.

They have been without water for three weeks now. To get water, they go to a nearby pig farm that has a well and have to pay for it, filling containers that they take home. People have been getting sick because of lack of sanitation.


1/? Short thread

Mikal, to Bloomscrolling
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Took a little side trip from Slab City today over to Anza Borrego to check out the wildflowers. I'll post more tomorrow.

Mikal,
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More from yesterday's excursion to Anza Borrego State Park.

Mikal,
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What I was really going for here was a lightning strike in the background. There was a teeny tiny chance of lightning yesterday afternoon, but none ever showed up. Chance today as well, but I have to be elsewhere. That's the nice thing about photographing during storms: virtually any scene is made better by dramatic clouds.

Mikal,
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eating a primrose at Anza Borrego State Park yesterday. These caterpillars were everywhere, devouring a range of plants. They are native and this is normal. Pretty soon they will burrow into the ground to pupate, eventually re-emerging as adult moths.

Mikal,
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Last one from Anza Borrego State Park yesterday.

Mikal, to random
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Back in November I wrote a story about a meandering mud spring near Salton Sea, California that ate a railroad line and a highway. I stopped in today to check on it. It hasn't moved too much in the last few months, but the old road is not long for this world.
https://www.mikaljakubal.com/the-meandering-mud-pot/

Photo is from today, link has lots more pics and extensive description.

Mikal, to random
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Listening to "How Infrastructure Works" by @debcha on a road trip today and got to the part about the wind farm near Banning, CA minutes before...driving past the wind farm while eastbound on I-10!

I drive this route semi-regularly, so am familiar with the fields of turbines, but the timing cracked me up.

How Infrastructure Works is a fascinating, engaging book, think: accessible and personal explanation of the material systems that make modern life possible and how we need to change them going into the future, from a feminist perspective.

View through a vehicle windshield driving past a field of large white wind turbines with mountains in the background.

Mikal,
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@debcha

This reminded me of a bit of photovoltaic history. The short version is that in the late '70s, when paraquat was being sprayed on cannabis fields in Mexico, organic weed grown by the hippies of the back-to-the-land movement in rural NorCal suddenly became very valuable. The hippies, who lived off-grid and eschewed fossil fuels when possible, suddenly had money. That meant they could afford what were then very expensive photovoltaic systems for their houses.

Companies like Alternative Energy Engineering and Real Goods sprang up to meet the demand.

This spike in demand allowed factories to jumpstart the chicken-egg problem and scale up production, which then brought price down...increasing demand, etc.

The sales were so significant that company reps from Kyocera came all the way from Japan to try to understand why this remote part of NorCal was buying so much of their product.

The illegal weed is partly responsible for photovoltaics being widely available today.

Mikal, to random
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Oh, look, face eating leopard has arrived.

seachanger, to random
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what’s a headline from a better timeline you’d love to read?

Mikal,
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@seachanger

US dismantles last remaining section of US – Mexico border wall as western hemisphere's Schengen-type open borders agreement takes effect.

Mikal,
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@seachanger

The "Bye Bye Billionaires" Act is signed into law, instituting a 100% tax rate for annual incomes over $50 million and closing most corporate tax loopholes.

kissane, to random
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deeply humiliating how often “I can’t get my thoughts together” just means “clean your office erin”

Mikal,
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@kissane

If I were to clean up the perpetual mess on my work desk, I'm afraid that I would have no thoughts at all.

Mikal, to random
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Just watched 20 Days in Mariupol. It's intense. How they got out with the footage is pretty amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvAyykRvPBo

Mikal, to random
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New blog post about a wild 24 hours at the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Arizona.
https://www.mikaljakubal.com/twenty-four-hours-at-the-wall/

lauren, to random
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Santos says he's running for congress again. He didn't say on what planet.

Mikal,
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@lauren
Or what country. Maybe Russia?

Mikal, to random
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Border wall and asylum seekers a few days ago at sunrise, east of Sasabe, Arizona. These people were mostly from Latin America. They were some of the 50 or so people who were delivered through the wall last night by the human smugglers they paid.

Border Patrol picked everyone up fairly quickly on this morning, though sometimes people have to wait all day or overnight to be brought into the station for the first step of their asylum claim processing.

Every day, volunteers from No More Deaths and Tucson Samaritans offer food, water and first aid to people along the road. They also maintain an aid camp west of where this photo was taken.

NMD is a good group to support if you want to make a difference. https://nomoredeaths.org

As I said in the previous post, we need a radical rethinking of the border and immigration. We need to begin a discussion about how to have formally open borders as a means to stability and security.

Mikal, to random
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Two of about 50 asylum-seeking migrants being picked up by Border Patrol a few days ago along the wall east of Sasabe, Arizona. They were part of a large group of Latin Americans.

Further down the road were four young women from Guinea who had flown into Guatemala and then hitchhiked together to the U.S. border where they paid traffickers to get them across.

Such a risky undertaking is not something anyone does lightly.

This is a long discussion, but the more time I spend at the border, the clearer it becomes that most discourse has been totally framed around fascist talking points. I think we need a radical rethinking of the border and immigration that involves a focus on stability and safety over false notions of security. We need to discuss ways that having an open border will make everyone safer and foster regional stability.

It is a complex topic, but we need to start the discussion.

pluralistic, to random
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Sunrise en route to Long Beach

Mikal,
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@pluralistic

Right. Which is why people who live in upscale gated communities in Orange County commit their financial and other crimes elsewhere.

lzg, to random
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deleted_by_author

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    Mikal,
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    @lzg

    From the CNN story: "IDF spokesperson Daniel Hargari denied there was an IDF strike on the aid convoy. However, he said Israeli tanks had fired warning shots to “cautiously” disperse a crowd after seeing that people were being trampled, "

    If you want to cautiously disperse people, gunning them down from a tank makes perfect sense or am I missing something here?

    Mikal,
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    @lzg

    If they didn't get out of the way of the bullets, can you really blame the people shooting the bullets?

    Mikal, to random
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    I want to go back to worrying and complaining about my data being used for creepy targeted advertising. That is suddenly less concerning than the entire internet being strip-mined and slurried to feed LLMs that are themselves sucking the natural world dry and cooking what's left to death with power consumption.

    I'm so old, I can remember when the internet was fun.

    Mikal, to random
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    Does the Mastodon development team know that on iPhone SE and on iPad in both Safari and Firefox, it's impossible to add much alt text to an image without the "apply" button disappearing off the bottom of the screen? I mentioned this before and it seems to not apply to everyone. It's a pretty big bug for a site that insists on alt text. There's no reason the composition box has to be so narrow. There's plenty of screen space.

    Mikal, to random
    @Mikal@sfba.social avatar

    I got an MMR booster shot today. The original one is over half a century old and happened during the window when some shots were made with inactive virus that turned out to not work well (early-mid-1960s). I don't know whether I got the attenuated or deactivated shot as a little child, so getting an update is cheap insurance, especially given the rise in measles cases lately due to antivax sociopaths.

    Consider looking into it unless you're sure you got the good one. Even then, if you are in a high risk for exposure group, consider asking your doctor about getting a booster. There's really no downside.

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