The inescapable truth is that generative AI is the future, laid out before us like a swirling, slightly-off carpet of AstroTurf in a dream where it kind of turns into water. In fact, after checking Chat GPT, the survival of which depends on its ubiquity, it assured us everyone is already using it. Late adopters […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inHumboldt Nature
Caution: Construction Ahead
With spring arriving and fruit trees starting to open their buds, it is time to think about pollinators. Among the first to visit my orchard are the mason bees (genus Osmia), often considered the best general pollinators, delivering much more pollen from flower to flower than honey bees. Mason bees are extremely efficient pollinators because […]
Posted inField Notes
’Twas Brillig
“‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’” — Alice’s reaction on reading, in mirror writing, “Jabberwocky” in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass ’Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe. So begins […]
Posted inSeriously?
Prominent Male Figures Who are Not Sexual Predators
A tentatively confirmed list in progress CORRECTION: Following information submitted by a reader, the Journal is compelled to remove Garfield the Cat from its list of Prominent Male Public Figures Who are Not Sexual Predators. In the comic strip called to our attention, Garfield, leaning against a lamppost, says to a female cat, “Hey, Arlene, gimme […]
Posted inGet Out
Redwood Region Logging Conference Branches Out in Ferndale
Under warm, sunny skies, the 88th Redwood Region Logging Conference filled the familiar outdoor spaces of the Humboldt County Fairgrounds in Ferndale from March 19-21 with a shiny array of washed and polished logging trucks, and a noisy mix of old and new equipment demonstrations turning logs into sawdust, shingles, lumber and firewood. Jeannie Fulton, […]
Posted inField Notes
The Five Colors of the Rainbow
“The seven notes of the scale before the return to the octave are analogous to the colors of the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, plus the strangely superfluous indigo which made the number up to seven.” — Ian Bostridge Tenor Ian Bostridge, quoted above, reminds us we are supposed to see […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Ghost in the Abalone Shell
Hi. My name is Able. I was once a magnificent red abalone. Now I’m just a junk bowl on the desk of the dipshit who normally writes this column. I contain some presumably reusable toothpicks, an expired condom, probably a raisin and a smelly glass pipe. And my partner here is a red abalone shell […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Monarch Butterflies Part 2: Tracking in Real Time
Last week, I wrote about the bad news: that monarch butterfly populations have been plummeting since the 1980s. The good news is that a revolutionary new tracking device may help those populations recover. Naturalists have been trying to track monarchs for nearly a century, but mass ID-ing (with tiny stick-on tags) only began in large […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Get to Know Your Tits
Small, round and bouncy, they never fail to draw attention. They’re family Paridae, the vocal and acrobatic passerines that across the pond are known as tits. In North America, of course, they’re our chickadees and titmice, once collectively referred to as tits or titmouses. “Tit” is from Old Norse meaning “small,” while “mose,” which eventually […]
Posted inSeriously?
Asking for an Administration
Thank you for taking the time to complete this brief survey. The questions that follow are purely hypothetical and part of a study you absolutely don’t need to worry about for a think tank focusing on outside-the-box solutions to our political divide. And by “the box,” we mean accountability. Please read the scenarios below — […]
Posted inField Notes
Monarch Butterflies
Part 1: Migration Magic It’s not easy being a monarch butterfly these days. Your caterpillar’s essential milkweed food is no longer abundant; illegal logging and beetle infestations threaten your main winter roosts in Mexico, and climate change is playing havoc with nectar plants on your migration routes. Where hundreds of millions of monarchs roosted annually […]
Posted inHumboldt Nature
The Queen Bee’s Winter Visit
When gardening, you have probably seen large, fuzzy, yellow and black bumble bees zipping from flower to flower, collecting pollen and nectar to bring back to their nests. Perhaps you have also seen them in January or February and wondered what business a bee has flying around in winter. Nearly all the approximately 1,600 bee […]