subject to change without notice

A record die-off of sea stars was followed by something that stunned biologists

The creatures almost went extinct along the West Coast a decade ago. Recently, they have been making a comeback.

Six months ago, Menge’s team published exciting research — five-legged sea stars were undergoing a significant “baby boom.” The tide pools were denser than they had been before the disease, and the juveniles were eating mussels and clearing space for other species. In short, something rare and wonderful was happening on the Oregon Coast: One of the intertidal zone’s most important predators had returned from the brink...

Read more:

This post talks about a new DM feature in youtube. What it fails to mention is that as part of this new feature is that when you send someone a link to a video, and they open it in the youtube app, they will see who sent them the link. Specifically, your channel name.

If your google account name is your real name, so is your channel name by default.

This means the new default behavior is that everyone you send a youtube link to will see your full name if they open it in the mobile app.

To turn this off:

Go to your youtube app settings

Go to Privacy

Turn off "Channel visibility for shared links"

Test subject

If YOU use any RPG Maker engines or are considering using one, YOU should let them know that we don't want decades of RPG Maker support and history taken down. Especially when the intention seems to be discouraging people from using older versions. I personally still use RPG Maker MV because privately made MZ plugins are often made with AI, and the more recent RPG Maker versions they've released are Unity plugins and not their own seperate program, and I'm not interested in Unity at all.

Let them know you want an archive here:

And contact the admins on the new forum:

Kandy G. Lopez R ² - Roscoe and Reggie 2024 Yarn and acrylic paint on hook mesh

While this article is a lot more pro-military than I'd prefer (though unsurprising given the source) it still gives a pretty good summary of the situation.

A snippet:

Boris "professional idiot" Johnson wanted to build an island airport in the immediate area.

it's fucking visible

You weren't kidding they've been trying to get the masts off for 5 years and keep getting foiled because there's probably bombs leaking out of her

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

Sugar cookies by paintedladiespastry decorated to look like a seafood spread.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

The Orchid’s Dream, 2026 , watercolor & gouache

✨ “Not forever on Earth, only a little while here…”

I finally finished this painting that I’ve been working on since 2020. The original watercolor thumbnail I did was done pre-2020, if you can believe it. Sometimes art takes its time, and sometimes it takes time because it’s sitting on my easel neglected while I work on higher priority work for years. I’m going to miss this strange thing looking over me while I work, but I think it deserves a frame and a wall… and perhaps a better view than my greasy, shrimp-mode goblinself working.

This piece was inspired by a dream I had, though the details are buried in some journal which I’ll have to dig up for the full write-up on my process creating this painting. Prints are in the works, I highly recommend my newsletter if that’s something you’re interested in.