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hookem2010

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by hookem2010

  1. Happy to humor you!
  2. The baby is 3 weeks old now. Fortunately, I'm not working right now because homeboy does not like to sleep from 1-6 AM. Otherwise, it's been pretty smooth sailing outside of the hospital mistakenly telling us that his newborn screen flagged a potentially serious genetic disease. Turns out they put in the wrong birthday and his labs were perfectly normal. That was a nice 18 hours of terror.
  3. Haha, yea I received it as a gift right after I started birding and was inspired to do my own county-level "big year" after watching it. I got into it in the first place because Houston-area hiking can be rather monotonous and is entirely lacking in megafauna.
  4. I could go on about the plight of birds for a long time. Populations have plummeted in North America by something like 30% in the last 40 years (habitat loss, outdoor cats, window strikes, dramatic decrease in flying insects, climate change, etc.). Hiking and camping are obviously still doable, but the season for it in Texas seems shorter every year and you pretty much have to travel to the Big Bend region or Easter piney woods to get more than a mile or so from a road. The west is on fire more often than not and the remaining protected areas are at risk of losing protection (see Grand-Staircase Escalante/Bears Ears NM, lots of places in Alaska under Trump), while the quality of land around NPs and national forests is constantly being degraded, concentrating outdoor enthusiasts and wildlife in smaller and smaller spaces. Globally, wildlife populations have decreased by 2/3's in the last half-century. The premier wildlife and natural landscapes on every continent are vanishing, whether I make it to those places one day or not. So basically I need to develop some indoor hobbies.
  5. Mango confronting the reason she is no longer the center of the universe face-to-face, and protecting evidence of previous affection like Smaug slumbering on his piles of gold.
  6. I am by no means glued to cable news, print, Twitter or any other source of "news". Some things are difficult to ignore though. That's where I go for my dopamine fix for sure.
  7. Sadly, my hobbies are birding and hiking/camping. Those things are becoming more scarce and difficult to do by the day.
  8. With the country and planet falling apart? I think I've been dysthymic for the last 5-6 years when I realized that despite occasional victories politically, environmentally and even personally, the world was in all likelihood going to become a worse place to live the longer I was around. With climate change already readily apparent and 40% of the country living in an alternate universe, these feelings have only intensified. Do you become more involved, despite the seeming futility? Live it up while you can? Watch the collapse with detached curiosity? Drink? Having just had my first kid, the desire to work to improve things has become greater, yet I also have profound sadness knowing he will grow up in a world more difficult than I did.
  9. Yep, our kids and grandkids are going to hate us. I can't blame them.
  10. Or we could just do nothing, because it would be difficult and hurt O&G people's feelings. Remember how bad you felt for the cigarette marketers and manufacturers when they suffered from greater governmental regulation?
  11. Anybody been watching this last week? The woman on a 5 or 6 day streak hasn't been averaging big money, but has won 3 times by $2, and once won with a total of $401.
  12. Michael Shellenberger, the guy who thinks global warming is actually a good thing. Cool!
  13. The Texas Republican Party is totally not a radical organization
  14. We are the dumbest people
  15. Downplaying the slave trade, letting O&G lobbyists dictate climate discussion. How will Texas fuck up grade school textbooks next?
  16. I believe Humboldt may have commented on it even before then. Wasn't it 1988 or something where Exxon acknowledged human-influenced climate change? Regardless, it's a problem we've ignored for too long that we are going to suffer some pain if we choose to actually address it, and a shit ton more pain with our current approach of constantly sucking O&G dick.
  17. Also, we've had over three decades of knowledge that burning Fossil fuels leads to climate change and we've done jack shit about it. Just like guns, apparently after or during a crisis is not an appropriate time to take any action to limit further harm.
  18. I think everyone here realizes we are pretty dependent on fossil fuels. But maybe, just maybe, the answer is expanding alternative energy sources rather than racing to see how quickly we can burn the world up. I love how the lessons we were taught as children, like needing to sacrifice initially for long-term success and caring about what we leave behind, are thrown out the window as soon as us "grown-ups" face anything resembling hardship.
  19. Mango has been gifted the ottoman as a peace offering while she comes to terms with no longer being the center of attention, now that a human baby has entered the mix.
  20. And to get back on topic, may Hell exist if only for Trump and his cronies to experience eternal retribution.
  21. I think the Plains Tribes may disagree with you a bit on how great a man Sherman was.
  22. Not directly climate-related I guess, but environmental, Tanzania is reportedly violently evicting the Maasai people off their ancestral lands to create a game reserve for the UAE royal family. Because the thing rich assholes need is another place to shoot big animals in order to convince themselves and others that they don't actually have tiny dicks.
  23. Fucking rich people... who's looking forward to the start of this summer being standard?!? I, for one, enjoy not being able to comfortably leave the house after 9 AM for 4 months a year.
  24. We've got some version of the baby Bjorn and my wife just ordered a cloth swaddle-like carrier. I definitely going to invest in those velcro swaddles though.
  25. First night in the house since leaving the hospital. I'm currently alternating between doing laps around the living room to stay awake and rocking him on the couch since he has no interest in sleeping in his bassinet tonight. Swaddle technique needs improvement and my already moderate-heavy caffeine intake will be increasing substantially. He is pretty damn adorable though.
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