Hi?

I pointed it out to her and together we regarded the infant screaming.

After she left my coworker came up and informed me there was a bird on her car. I went out to look and lo, the fledgling had scrambled up onto her windshield and was pecking forlornly at its reflection.

It stayed perched there in the hot sun, trying to move higher up the car with no success but too scared to fly down. She was agitated that it was on her car since she didn’t know if it would leave on its own.

“It’s a baby,” I told her, “It’s still learning how to fly.”

“That’s a baby?! It’s so big!”

“Yeah, it’s just a little guy.”

I went out to investigate. The parents began screaming and swooping. I placated them with crackers which they accepted without relenting their screaming. My coworker said she could now see that the creature on her car was indeed a baby with the sleek black parents swooshing angrily around in the air.

We regarded the baby together. After a while I started noticing it was showing signs of fatigue and distress. Mouth gaping but not begging for food, wings drooping. I went back out to check on it.

I was debating moving the baby; the day kept getting hotter and it didn’t have the energy or skill to relocate itself. My coworker also wanted the bird to stop pooping on her car. So eventually I announced, “I’m gonna move the bird.”

“Your gonna grab it? Aren’t you scared?”

I looked at her in bafflement. I grew up around every imaginable kind of fowl. The only bird I’d be scared of would be some of the big flightless ones. Even geese/swans are manageable if you just grab their necks before they really get flapping. The parents were not gonna go for my eyes like magpies and in general crows tend to recognize when you’re trying to help. “It’s just a little baby guy. It’s fine.”

I approached the baby amidst its parents shrieking crow obscenities down upon me. I scooped it gently like the burger.

I cannot begin to convey how soft that baby crow felt. It was the downiest most pleasant tactile thing that I’ve maybe ever held and the experience was only slightly marred by the goober trying ineffectually to bite me. It was stymied by the fact that it ain’t my first rodeo.

I brought it ten feet away to a nice shady tree. I held the baby gently so it could get its feet under it on the branch. It seemed a bit confused at this point but eventually gripped the branch and I stepped back and threw peanuts in self defense while the angry parents swooped showily around at me.

It stayed there pretty much the rest of the day. Its parents both checked in to make sure I hadn’t murdered it then flew back to where we could see a nest. So best theory is that this dingus was the first to start fledging and couldn’t actually return to the nest after launching.

I told my wife afterward and they went, “You. You touched the bird?!” My coworkers husband was also flabbergasted that I’d been brave enough to grab it. My coworker said she was just gonna shove it off her car with a broom.

As if they didn’t know who they married. As if I am not someone who would confidently help a stray cat or wrangle a chicken.

You haven’t seen that meme?

And when that happens, whether it's garbage takes about trans people, or ace people, or nonbinary people, or neopronouns, or he/him lesbians, or bi women with boyfriends, or furries, or *what the fuck ever*- remember-

You do not need to quibble over the details. You do not need verbally spar on every hill that dipshits want to die on.

Just stop and ask- hey, does this fucking matter?

Does it matter if some queer people do _____? Does it cause any actual, measurable, material harm? Is this *actually* a problem? Be specific. Beyond just 'it makes me uncomfortable' and 'but that doesn't make sense' - does it actually *matter*?

Because if the answer is no, then who the fuck cares?

I don't care if something is confusing, or illogical, or weird, or makes you uncomfortable. Does it actually harm anyone? No? Then mind your fucking business.

Its not your responsibility to Lincoln-Douglass debate every overzealous puritan and under-informed tween on the complex nuance and inherent political context of the queer experience. Focus on what matters . Ask them what, if any, harm does ____ actually do, and THAT is all you need to address. (Oh you wanna defend ___ spaces? Which spaces specifically? What are you worried about happening? Oh is ____ normalizing ____? Does it? Does that...matter?)

Because even if other people dont like it, Queer People will continue to be weird, messy, confusing, contradictory, illogical, and strange as we all do our fucking best to be ourselves as best we can be. The way we survive and grow and thrive is by giving each other the grace and space to do so, whether or not we deeply, logically resonate with whatever others have going on.

And we don't talk shit about each other. We don't take pot shots at the queers who are queerer than we are. Throwing other queer people under the bus has never made things better.

So. Circle the wagons, close the ranks, and get comfortable rubbing elbows with people who are, you know, freaks and weirdos.

and for all of yall that are still figuring it out or aren't getting the support you deserve:

"If it sucks, hit da bricks" is for when you realize that you actually definitely can live with the consequences of Not Doing The Thing.

 But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

 Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

 In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

 Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

It's... pretty much what it says on the tin. Some car manufacturers are phasing out AM Radio from their cars so they can replace them with their own streaming services - this bill seeks to make them a mandatory feature.

As somebody whose day job is in radio, I totally agree that the amount of ads and the quality of the ads is ridiculous. Personally, I don't find radio to be an amazing source of political news broadcasting.

But do you know what it is really good at? Providing emergency broadcasts during extreme weather events.

When power and internet is down, radio can be one of the only sources of information, and it's helped provide lifesaving information during these times.

(Plus, at least in my area of the country, emergency weather alerts override and interrupt programming when broadcast - even during pesky ads!)

So if you want to toss your signature in support, you can head on over here.