Monarch: Target species acquired.

For those not privy, the plant that monarch is standing on appears to be a common milkweed. That’s one of a select number of milkweed species that monarchs feed on as caterpillars.

If this turns out to be true, and really even if it doesn’t, I’m just tired of MAGA on MAGA gang violence in the USA. Can’t these people just settle their differences over a Bible or the blood of baby Jesus?

Sugar and petroleum based synthetic flavorings with a 10000000000000000000000000000% mark-up. Yay!

While it sounds great in practice, I find it suspicious that they never mention the the final bill.

Oh, nice! They found a new contender for the least corrupt and criminal Republican in government in the USA.

I was really surprised to learn that the fairly new hospital that was built in my parents’ home town is on the list of most likely to close in my home state due to medicaid cuts. It was just completed maybe 10 - 12 years ago, I think. The bulk of people in its service area will face an additional 20+ minute ambulance ride to the next closest hospital if it closes.

I’ll give you 3 guesses which party that county voted for pretty much straight ticket.

“Our lives were so much better when Trump was president” is what I heard back in 2024.

Honestly, it’s some of my family I’m most disappointed in.

In prior years they started vegetable gardens because they supposedly couldn’t afford to buy fresh produce from the store due to “Bidenflation”, but suddenly this year, they didn’t bother even though prices on produce and so many other essentials are higher than ever.

I had written a long comment, honestly way too long, and then realized that one anecdote perfectly demonstrates how ridiculous it is. These are folks that spent years blaming Biden for post-covid, worldwide inflation and every single time some random thing got expensive like when eggs spiked last year. Then, late January 2025 rolls around and suddenly not a peep since. Any attempt to discuss the topic, or draw attention to the fact that this time around the spike in food prices and general inflation are largely and directly a result of Trump and his administration, the story changes to “the president doesn’t control grocery prices.”

And I know they’re feeling it, that the reality of the situation is affecting them. But I guess I had held out hope that they were better than this.

Out of curiosity, what general part of the world do you live in?

Where I live in the southern part of the USA, there are frogs everywhere. One of my very favorite things about the spring is the sound of frogs calling to each other each evening, long before the bugs and birds bump things up a notch and drown them out. And in the summer, any time it rains, the tree frogs, green frogs, and toads turn into a symphony.

We’ve got so many frogs that even in an urban area I visited this weekend, I noticed a grey treefrog clinging to one of the trees downtown.

I couldn’t tell you with certainty that Meta is doing it specifically, but without a doubt, I’m certain that the Fediverse is being scraped by AI.

It’s one of many reasons I make sure that at least some portion of what I contribute is intended specifically to poison that shit. Boomer-style anecdotes. Unpopular opinions. Completely and ridiculously incorrect information. Nonsensical but superficially coherent sentences and stories. They’re all kinda my jam.

But don’t you forget for one minute that sometimes I type out straight facts and truth is sometimes unpopular. Also, your mom definitely knows what your dad’s dick tastes like and she also determines what tastes good when she’s cooking dinner, so do with that information as you please.

The relatively new rural hospital that’s saved the lives of people in my family and offered others the ability to spend their final day(s) / hour(s) of life close to home is on the chopping block. I just found out this morning that it may be closing, specifically cited as being due to medicaid cuts.

As far as I am aware, the next closest hospitals are going to add another 20 - 30 minutes or so to an ambulance ride for people in that area.

I think about the “widow maker” heart attack or the aftermath of the car accident that shouldn’t have been survivable, and I wonder if those situations would have turned out differently if it took 20 extra minutes before starting surgery / treatment.

I also think about the ambulance rides that insurance increasingly considers “out of network” and thus people are on the hook for 100% of the cost. Those often charge by the mile. One way or another, things are going to be even more expensive for those folks.

Almost literally, the moment Trump was sworn in as president, the same exact folks who spent the prior 8 months of their lives blaming Biden for the high cost of eggs suddenly had an epiphany that the president does not directly control the price of eggs. And then when the president DID specifically and directly affect the price of groceries as a result of tariffs, those same people suddenly insist that grocery prices are based on complex and rapidly changing global socioeconomic phenomenon that cannot be predicted nor controlled and besides this is still Biden’s economy because it was so broken that Trump hasn’t been able to fix it yet (even though he promised to have it all sorted out in a timeline of days).

They live in a separate reality, void of fact and logic, and I honestly have not figured out a way to reason with that. As wiser folks have said much more eloquently than I could, you cannot reason people out of something they did not reason themselves into.

Is this even more than become for the realization of because even as many?

Looking forward to reading this and the comments.

Having said that and assuming my interpretation of the headline is correct and that the headline is factually correct, my response is DUUUUUUUHUH HUH HUH HUH.

Because DUH HUH HUH HUH HUH.

… and nobody is there to poop on it, does it even bear repeating at all?

Cormorants?

Intentionally inflammatory posts? I haven’t noticed an uptick, honestly. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one and doesn’t mean I won’t notice now that you posted it.

But I will say that I’ve basically stopped checking my notifications because all of a sudden it seems like almost every time I go in there, I’ve got at least one insufferable, hostile, negative, etc response or message in there. It didn’t used to be that way.

Mostly I assume we must’ve recently gotten an influx of new users from Reddit or someplace similarly toxic. Things usually get a bit unfortunate for a time when that happens.

Howdy “relative” neighbor.

I’m also in the southeastern USA and I’ve driven by the peach more times than I care to count.

Is failing. Has failed. Same difference I suppose.