Free Comes at a Price

A selection of Jean-Luc Picard’s many awards, all props created for Star Trek: Picard and on display at SDCC’s “The First Duty” exhibit.  

A few things of note:

This is why people to your left have been chiding you about the "pedo" panic: now, the government can accuse you of being a "pedo" to justify committing crimes against you.

the recent new mexico case against meta literally went after end-to-end encryption itself (as a design feature) by arguing that the ability to exchange private messages that police can't surveil enables child sexual abuse. court mandates changes include "protecting minors from encrypted communications." as if minors being abused by adults would be helped instead of harmed by having no privacy or means to communicate that isn't recorded permanently. ridiculous.

As the California pipevine plant was displaced from San Francisco by urban sprawl, the California pipevine swallowtail, which relies on the pipevine plant to feed its caterpillars, also disappeared. That is, until a biologist named Tim Wong made it his mission to repopuplate the species in his own backyard.

Armed only with a cutting of California pipevine from the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Tim created a screened in butterfly enclosure in his backyard and began to reproduce California pipevines.

As new butterflies were born, Tim would donate them to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens where their pipevine host plant could still be found.

“At first he brought them in by the hundreds. Now he brings them in by the thousands every few months.”

While most of us don’t have the power to create habitat for endangered rhinos or tigers, anyone with a little bit of outdoor space can help create habitat for endangered insects!

You can:

-plant a pollinator garden with native nectar-producing plants

-plant host plants of local butterfly species

-leave piles of fallen leaves or sticks in your yard as habitat for native bees

-avoid using pesticides (or use them as sparingly as possible) around your home and yard

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.