Michael Smith

Everyone's worried about honeybees, but the American bumblebee has declined by 89% in the last 20 years. Bombus pensylvanicus was once the most common bumblebee in the southern United States. It's now functionally extinct in eight states (Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon) and down 99% in New York. The honeybee, the species most "save the bees" campaigns are organized around, is not native to North America. It was brought over by European colonists in the 1600s as livestock for honey production. It is managed, bred, transported across the country in trucks, and is doing fine. Beekeeping is an agricultural industry, not a conservation effort. The American bumblebee is what we actually have. It pollinates wild plants honeybees can't, including ones with deep flowers and ones that require buzz pollination (a technique honeybees don't perform). Tomatoes, blueberries, eggplants, cranberries, and countless wildflowers depend on it. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list the species as endangered in 2021. The federal review is now in its fifth year. The species is still not protected. Three things help. 1. Plant native flowers, the kind bumblebees evolved with (asters, goldenrod, milkweed, native sunflowers, beebalm, mountain mint). 2. Leave standing dead plant stems through winter, that's where queens overwinter. 3. Stop spraying for mosquitoes, those sprays kill every pollinator they touch. The bees we built an industry to "save" are not the bees that need saving. The ones that do are quietly disappearing while we celebrate the ones that aren't.

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” -C.S. Lewis

Donald Trump ran for office for three reasons: 1) stay out of jail 2) exact revenge on his enemies 3) line his pockets Everything else he says is bullshit.

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” W. Somerset Maugham

Not really his decision is it?

Uhm. Colbert could save PBS. Please have your NEW show on PBS. We will buy all the tote bags. PLEASE.

As a supporter of the Democrats, I freely acknowledge that the Democrats have gotten much worse over the past decade. But the Republicans have gotten worse far faster, and they started off worse to begin with. So you should still be a Democrat. noahpinion.blog/p/are-you-tire…

If you see wild turkeys in your neighborhood, you're seeing one of the biggest conservation wins in American history. They were down to just 30,000 birds in the 1930s. There are now over 6 million across the US. They're excellent natural pest control, eating beetles, snails, mice, and even ticks. A wild turkey in your yard isn't a pest, but a native species that almost disappeared and came back because hunters, biologists, and state wildlife agencies spent 50 years bringing it back.

Um... this administration is just a bunch of monsters? Like serial-killer-level sociopaths? Because trying to take dogs away from people who are already hurting is basically something you go to the lowest level of Hell for nytimes.com/2026/05/22/us/…

If you're worried about ticks, put up an owl box. The animal driving most Lyme disease in the eastern US is the white-footed mouse. Ticks that feed on them are far more likely to come away infected than ticks that feed on other animals. The bigger the local mouse population, the worse the next year's tick year. A single barred owl pair raising chicks can take hundreds of rodents in a breeding season. Owls also don't carry Lyme. The bacterium can't survive their digestive tract, so an owl that eats an infected mouse is a dead end for the disease. Researchers at the Cary Institute, the leading lab on Lyme ecology, have been explicit about this: "Landscapes that support predators have reduced Lyme disease risk." One owl box on its own isn't going to fix a tick year. But a yard with owls, foxes, bobcats, and weasels in it has fewer mice, and a yard with fewer mice has fewer infected ticks. If you have woods or fields nearby, a properly sized barn owl or screech owl box (different species, different boxes) is one of the most useful single things you can do for tick exposure at the landscape scale. Match the box to the owl that lives near you. The mouse is the problem, owls are the solution.

Before people think this Trump surrender in Iran is a one off, remember: Trump negotiated the deal with the Taliban that lead to our shameful withdrawal.

Trump's 2nd term differs greatly from his first in a crucial way -- It is relentlessly MONETIZING the presidency. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/…

@2024dion I’ve been thinking the same. Columbus Park has great potential.

If KC gets a super hot growth wave Columbus Park will gentrify like few other neighborhoods in the city. It has too many advantages to be as underdeveloped as it is.

@MP4zdq @2024dion Do tell …

@2024dion That lower building has a very infamous history…..

Think marijuana is harmless? Think again! (‘80s)

Rain, Rain go away! Idk yall, having a bathtub in your New Orleans style courtyard might be “a vibe”.

R.I.P. CBS News Radio 1927 - 2026

Was it the setting up of an insurrection against America? The Epstein relationship & coverup? Maybe just being so damn corrupt is what cinched it for him. SMH. Pitiful

In 1966 the northern bobwhite was one of the most common birds in the eastern United States. Its two-note call ("bob-WHITE") was the soundtrack of farm country from Texas to Massachusetts. In 1956, hunters harvested 2.5 million quail in Illinois alone. Populations have declined by roughly 81 to 85% across the continent since then. There's no single villain to this story. The cause is the entire shape of how we use land. Fire suppression turned brushy farm edges into closed-canopy forest. Industrial agriculture replaced the messy borders quail need with clean monoculture. Suburbs ate the rest. The places the birds could live disappeared. At this rate, a bird almost everyone's grandparents knew is a bird almost no one's grandchildren will. If you want to fix this, the answer is the same as it always is: messy edges, native grasses, less mowing, less spraying.