Flowering tea is pretty cool: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_tea

We can point fingers at governments and companies all day long, but unless something motivates them to change they’re not going to. Right now the only real mechanisms we have at our disposal are our votes and our wallets. If people throw up their hands and can’t even be arsed to leverage either of those things, nothing will change. Telling ourselves it’s someone else’s fault and doing nothing is the pinnacle of being part of the problem.

How about the statue of confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest on horseback?

It’s ugly on the outside and the inside!

I’m looking forward to your tales of the young upstart bringing a new flavour of chaos to The Council!

No wonder she was scarfing down two cans in one go, she’s eating for multiples! Good luck resisting the temptation to keep a kitten… or two…

Relevant Natural History Short

I shit you not, it is a real thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizz_(birding)

Basically a bird you’ve been trying to see multiple times but it’s eluded you so far. Other useful terms:

• Lifer: A specific species of bird you’ve seen for the first time ever
• Jizz: The bird’s ‘vibe’, if you will. Sometimes you can’t see or hear a bird well enough but you can tell what it is by a combination of factors like the way it flies/moves, its behaviour, location, etc. That’s jizz.
• Little Brown Jobs/Birds (LBJ/Bs): Lots of birds are small, brown and look very alike. It’s hell to tell some of them apart.
• Windfucker: this isn’t an actual useful term, it’s the old english name for a kestrel. I just find it very funny.

Edited to format

Thanks to the ebird map I was able to pinpoint the exact spot I needed and saw a whole family of bearded reedlings last week! It’s truly amazing. A few other things I recommend:

• Merlin app (free) - Shazam for birdsong. Also has helpful photos for ID, and can narrow down birds to the ones most likely to be in your area

• Sibley birds app (paid) - digitalised bird ID book for birds in the Americas. Saves you from having to lug a heavy book around

• Collins bird guide app (paid) - similar to the above but Europe focused

• Birdingplaces website (free) - helpful if you’re looking for recommended spots to find birds. Each entry usually indicates recommended routes.

• Bird journal mobile/desktop app (free) - you have to sideload this one on mobile, and it hasn’t been updated in years. However, I find it’s the easiest to use if you want to make a record of the species you’ve seen.

Edit: I would be remiss if I didn’t also share guidelines for ethical birding:

https://birdlife.org.au/how-to/ethical-birdwatching-guidelines/

Tl/dr: Don’t get too close (especially around nests), don’t make too much noise, don’t mess with their habitat, don’t feed wild birds or use playback to attract them.

Do iiiitttt!! You don’t need expensive equipment, a decent pair of 8×42 binoculars is enough to get started (I like Bushnell’s). It’s a great way to spend time in nature and it can make such a difference for your mental health. That is, until you run into your first nemesis bird. Then there’s only rage…

I knew what this was going to be before I clicked it. Great comic.

Thank you, you were able to put the point I was trying to make much more succinctly and elegantly.

Lesbian here, so maybe not the target audience for this. However this kind of meme and discourse makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Like, really? Pedro Pascal is -the only nice guy- in the world, every other guy is trash? Too often I hear women speak about men as if they’re inherently bad people, rather than victims of the patriarchy just like them. It reeks of “that’s just the way men are” and “boys will be boys”, except now it’s being used to shame and admonish. Shame isn’t going to change mindsets, it’s only going to make people defensive. It’s not as if men are genetically assholes, but these kinds of memes sure make it sound like they are.

It bothers me because I have a son who will grow up to become a man (at least that’s how it’s looking right now). I worry about what he internalises when he hears that people expect he’ll grow up to be a sexist asshole, just because he was born a boy. I have to defend against that just like I defend my daughter when sexism is directed at her, because frankly that’s exactly what it is. If I were told from a young age that the default expectation is I’ll grow up to be trash just because I have a penis, why bother to do better? I’d probably also listen to the Tates and Petersons who make me feel good about myself instead.

I understand why women are angry and frustrated, they have every right to be. I’ve also been on the receiving end of sexist and frankly traumatic shit because I was born a girl. I just don’t feel like it’ll get any better by creating more division, more “us vs them”.

Congrats on coming out and being your true self, that was a very brave thing to do.

Your mother, like many parents, had hopes and dreams about who you would become as a person. She’s now being faced with the prospect that those hopes and dreams are dead, that the person she thought you would become is gone. She’s going to need to grieve and from what you’ve written here it seems that process has started. Shock, denial, bargaining, some level of acceptance. I expect anger and depression might show up at some point. It doesn’t necessarily happen in sequence and can cycle too. She’s going to need some time to process, but what’s positive is she’s not outright rejecting who you are, there’s room for her to grow.

My parents weren’t hostile when I came out as gay, but I heard similar things - it’s just a phase. Are you sure? Was it something we did? Where did we go wrong? What will your life become? Over time they came to accept it and told my extended family (including my very religious Pentecostal grandmother). Everyone is now very welcoming of my wife and my parents are delighted to be grandparents to our kids. I know it’s not the same, but there is hope for things to get better, just keep being authentically you.

Yeah I’m demi and that bit stuck out to me as well. Like, I’ve no interest in this guy, ripped or otherwise, but like I mentioned above, the left version of him seems more approachable. I can envision a scenario where it’s easier to envisage being with a person based on their ‘vibe’ even without having spoken to them. It’s like a foot in the door in a way.

Disclaimer: I’m a lesbian so I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I’m not surprised women vote more for the photo on the left. He just seems friendlier and more approachable, someone you would have fun hanging out with, so I guess that anecdotally gives credence to what the author is saying. The photo on the right looks like someone who’s a bit too intense, and I say this as someone who is also trying to get somewhat ripped. It’s funny because when I’m at the gym almost a lot of times I assume the super ripped dudes working out there are bi or gay, and more often than not I’m right. I know it’s judging a book by its cover, but clearly that aesthetic appeals to other guys (who are also into guys).

I refuse to get a phone without a headphone jack. Mostly because I know I’m inevitably going to lose my headphones, forget to charge them, forget them in my trouser pockets that will go in the wash. The latter has happened at least a couple of times with my current headphones and they still work just fine. Try that with your Bluetooth pair and let me know how it goes.

There was a Starbucks trend where they added olive oil to their coffees and it was giving customers the mega liqui-shits. Does that count?

Coffee mixology is also becoming a thing now. I imagine some crazy combos have or might come out of that.

This bittern erasure will not stand! Not only are they also mostly neck:

They’re also fucking hilarious:

British cooking has a bad reputation, but they make really good comfort food. Sunday roast, yorkshire pudding, steak and ale pies, shepherd’s/cottage pie, full english breakfast, pasties, fish pie, beef wellington, scones! I could go on. Sure it’s mostly brown and beige food but cooked properly all of these dishes are really tasty!