Alex Wild

@alexwild.bsky.social

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Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin. Photographer.

https://www.alexanderwild.com

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Very quiet in the Atlantic and it’s making me nervous. All that energy out there and nothing obvious forming, I feel like I’m playing “spot the sniper” with this map.

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Alex Wild

Amazing how clearly Vance marks the apotheosis of the Republican party. More than Reagan, GWB, or even Trump, he's a void, an empty vessel helping undertaxed oligarchs consolidate more power while using culture wars to distract. For his patrons, only deference; for the public, grievance and spite.

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Alex Wild

Please, please take a minute to read this. It got around on The Bad Place - but we'll need to do some outreach/education here on Faked and Cruel "nature" photos. www.pbs.org/newshour/sci...

You didn't know that you needed a picture of a tiny frog riding a giant beetle, but now you do.

When whimsical wildlife photography isn't what it seemswww.pbs.org This photo looks cute, but it reveals the cloudy intersection of wildlife photography, animal welfare issues and photojournalism integrity.

Really annoyed at the number of shitty eBay ant dealers selling live queen ants of pest species using my photos.

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Alex Wild

Reply to

hilzoy

Here are crime rates for different groups, by immigration status. Note that the rates for undocumented immigrants are not just lower across the board; they're less than HALF the rates for citizens in every category except traffic violations.

Don't go out and touch grass unless you're sure it's a native grass, sustainably managed without chemical inputs.

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Alex Wild

This is astounding. Over about 10 years the use of the livestock drug diclofenac wiped out nearly 50 million vultures. The result was spread of disease among humans causing an estimated half a million deaths. Just tragic all around. www.science.org/content/arti...

Loss of India’s vultures may have led to deaths of half a million peoplewww.science.org Find could offer lessons for conserving key species in other places

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Alex Wild

Reply to

Nora Reed (they/them ze/hir)

It’s not “heli” and “copter” but “helico” (“spiral”) and “pter” (“wing”)

Arizona, a desert state, cut $300M from water infrastructure so the money could instead be used for rich kids to go to expensive private schools.

Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, has spent so much money paying private schoolers' tuition that it's now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects.

School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.www.propublica.org Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, has spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state program...

People who flood a country with guns and violent propaganda complaining about getting shot at is fucking rich.

Because Threads federates with ActivityPub, I’m still able to follow Jamelle Bouie on Mastodon.

Republican education "reform" is not about education, or reform, but an avenue for corrupt grifters to enrich themselves with public money.

Documents and experts indicate multiple irregularities in the charter school company co-founded and formerly run by Mike Miles, the Houston ISD Superintendent.

Mike Miles Moved Texas School Funds to Colorado Through a Possible Shell Corporation Without a Paper Trailwww.texasobserver.org An Observer investigation has found irregularities in how the Houston ISD superintendent's Colorado charter school nonprofit did business in Texas.

New study: spraying pest ants with pesticides leads not to pest ant elimination, but replacement by other species of pest ants. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Insecticide treatment of invasive ant colonies leads to secondary ant invasions and promotes the spread of invasive ants - Biological Invasionslink.springer.com Invasive ants are among the world’s most damaging invaders and are considered a significant threat to urban, natural, and agricultural habitats worldwide. Populations of invasive ants are notoriously ...

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Alex Wild

My new funny, educational picture book THERE ARE NO ANTS IN THIS BOOK is out today through Tundra, with art by Anna Pirolli. I love this one. I think it's genuinely funny, and it's full of strange real ant species. Thank you to the great @alexwild.bsky.social for reading over an early version.

That was the whole point of vouchers. Wealthy Christianists taking everyone else’s money and establishing themselves as an aristocracy while the rest of society, starved, falls apart.

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Alex Wild

Trump just named as his #2 a guy who called for insurrection charges against a journalist for writing an op-ed & wants to censor academics and seize the assets of nonprofits he opposes. The "free speech" brigades haven't said a goddamn thing. And their benefactor just pledged $150m to elect him.

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Alex Wild

For those who didn’t know, Daily Beast now has a right wing EIC and owners. Enjoy the death of progressive news reporting in America!

Your first look at the now Right Wing Daily Beast, everyone!

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Alex Wild

Are you a fan of all of those guys who are directly responsible for making the internet an unusable dogshit hellhole? Well boy do I have a VP for you.

Not sure the world needs yet more photographs of leafcutter ants carrying leaves, but I thought this one turned out pretty good. Atta cephalotes, from Colombia.

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Alex Wild

Here’s the thing about the Vance pick: it’s probably unhelpful in electoral terms. But, in terms of governance, it’s further evidence that they’re Going For It. Trump 1 was hobbled in his authoritarian attempt by the admin and GOP. Trump 2 will be aided by both. They’re gonna go for it.

It’ll be a “wild plan” up until the point when it happens, while the media that paved the way for this find a way to spin the purges as “bold” and “unusual”

"Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed 'secretary of retribution' is touting a wild plan to arrest politicians, police officers, and journalists he views as disloyal to the former president."

Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemiesnewrepublic.com Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.

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Alex Wild

so apparently Fox was not really doing this, but over on Univision they were interviewing people who couldn't get into the stadium, one guy said his kids were up there by themselves and he couldn't get to them because somebody else had hijacked his own ticket

Dunno what Fox is airing but Univision is doing actual journalism& it is NOT GOOD FOR TICKETMASTER

As an aside to this thread about piracy of small artists, I do spend time enforcing my copyright. One reason is, contacting companies that are illegally using my work has actually led to some later contracting me. Sort of like cold-calling potential clients, who just didn't know better.

I could spend about 30% of my executive function to MAYBE increase my sales due to cutting off piracy by like, what, 2%? I would be much, much better off using that 30% of my executive function to write more books, which would increase my income by 30%.

Kinda seems like the people passing laws to imprison other people just for living their own lives are the ones with "Gender Ideology", not the other way around.

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Alex Wild

Essential reading—I know Josephine Lee and Michelle Pitcher of @texasobserver.org put an incredible amount of time and effort into this deep dive into the history of #Texas prisons, and their close relationship to plantation #slavery:

Texas’ Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded in Secrecywww.texasobserver.org Punishments, injuries, and deaths—including from heat—on TDCJ farms are more hidden than they were in the years following convict leasing.

A Megachile leafcutter bee approaches a sunflower. Austin, Texas.

really hard to unfuck a country with a corrupted judiciary, it just becomes a mafia state

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Alex Wild

Project to replace the ecological function of the extinct Xerces blue butterfly with closely related silvery blue at the Presidio is now into its first butterfly generation 🌿 (Gift link) wapo.st/4bHwV4i

This butterfly went extinct. That’s not the end of the story.wapo.st The Xerces blue butterfly vanished from San Francisco in the 1940s. Scientists just released dozens of butterflies from a related species to take its place.

I have a Wild plan.

The shooter might have killed 20 people in a Walmart had he not opted for a venue with heavy enough security to limit him to three shots. I guess that’s a silver lining?