Don’t Miss These
(1) “How Much Graham Platner, Maine’s Oyster-Farming Senate Candidate, Is Worth”
(2) “Post-War Oil Trade Could Look Nothing Like It Did Before Hormuz”
(3) “What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks”
(4) “Premium: The Hater’s Guide To The AI Bubble 3.0”
Patient readers, I added some orts and scraps on Platner.
Birdsong of the Day
Moar mimidae:
SOUTH FORK VALLEY; E. KERN CO Kern, California, United States (1951) • I sorted the mimidae in reverse order by date. The old ones are really long! In this one, the mockingbird is a virtuoso, and having a terrific time. It’s very funny.
Politics
Festival of Platner
The locals:
“Graham Platner gets a lift from friendly Maine crowd after week of damage control in Senate campaign” [Associated Press]. “Rahm Emanuel, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate who spent the weekend in neighboring New Hampshire, said the “jury is still out” on whether Platner can beat Collins.” Rahm Emanuel. Please kill me now. More: “ ‘I think people have been frustrated with Susan Collins, so they’re looking for alternatives,’ [Debbi Conley, a 69-year-old retiree from Gorham] said. ‘My concerns with Graham Platner are that he’s talking about change, but sometimes it reminds me of the same talk that Trump had like ‘drain the swamp.’”• Or like Fetterman. Brilliant campaign, worse than useless as a Senator.
“Graham Platner supporters shrug off controversies at Bar Harbor rally” [Bangor Daily News]. “”We need new blood,” Ann Akerson of Bar Harbor said as she waited in line along Cottage Street. She wore a shirt emblazoned with a fist and the words, ‘Grab them by the ballot,’ a play on President Donald Trump’s notoriously vulgar remark about grabbing women in a 2016 Access Hollywood recording. She said she wasn’t concerned about Platner’s private life. ‘What happens between them and their house and their bedroom, that’s their business,’ she said. ‘What can he do for us? That is our business.’” Ro Khanna was at the rally: “Khanna wasn’t shy about addressing the recent controversies, saying no one has led a perfect life and that, ‘We reject misogyny.’ ‘You know who else rejects it? Graham Platner,’ he said. ‘The years he came back [from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan] were not the best years. He’s ashamed of some of the things he did, and then unlike some others, he took accountability for it. And he’s worked to be a better man.’ Khanna said the entire country must heal with ‘grace’ and ‘redemption’ after years of division. ‘If we can find a way to build that redemption through this campaign, through this transition, maybe you would show a way for this country to redeem itself,’ he said.” More: “Mary Swift of Bar Harbor said her daughters had told her that recent news about Platner ‘is making it hard to want to vote for him.’ But she tells them, ‘forget it’ because of where Platner stands on the issues. ‘I don’t like what he’s done, but by comparison to Republicans, it’s absolutely nothing,’ she said.” • Hmm.
“This is Graham Platner’s net worth” [Bangor Daily News]. “Graham Platner has built his insurgent campaign for the U.S. Senate on attacks against the ‘billionaire class’ and the political elite…. [Forbes’ Kyle Khan-Mullins] pegs Platner’s net worth around $300,000, more than half of which is tied up in his home, which like other homes here has seen its value grow since COVID. The remainder of his reported wealth comprises the pension of his wife, Amy Gertner, and his oyster farming equipment.” Couch lint for a billionaire. More: “Platner has his working-class questions over image faced based on his attendance at private schools in Connecticut and Maine, as well as being the grandson of a famous architect and son of a lawyer with deep connections to term-limited Gov. Janet Mills.” • Maine is a very small and deeply networked state. I doubt those “questions” bother voters (or else we’d already have heard about them).
* * * Genevieve McDonald:
“Meet Genevieve McDonald, the former Graham Platner staffer who keeps criticizing him” [Randy Billings, Portland Press Herald]. “As a former high-level campaign staffer, McDonald has unique credibility as a Platner detractor.” Only to people who believe the Democrats would never have planted her. Not that I’n paranoid, but after seeing what happened to Bernie… More: “She resigned amid the publication of the Reddit posts and posted a scathing statement that contradicted his explanation for the tattoo. She went on the record with the New York Times to confirm the existence of the embarrassing text messages.” Betraying the confidence of Amy Gertner, Platner’s wife, who shared them, I might add, even if the Press Herald doesn’t. More: “And on Thursday, McDonald defended a Republican operative and ex-girlfriend of Platner who described how Platner grabbed her during altercations during their two year relationship in Washington, D.C. ‘I believe women,’ she wrote on Facebook.” • Women who are Republican operatives in a critical and close election? Is McDonald a little child of six? Interestingly, amidst the McDonald hagiography, Billings fails to confirm or refute the admittedly single-sourced story broken by Payday Report that at the same time McDonald was fighting AirBnB regulation in Stonington, Maine, she also secretly owned AirBnB properties (Water Cooler June 3).
“This lobster boat captain from Down East quit Platner’s campaign, but hasn’t left it behind” [Boston Globe]. “High-profile Democratic operatives rebuked McDonald for crossing a line by sharing confidential information — one many claimed would be enough to torch her career. But in the extremely small world of Maine politics, McDonald is a well-known entity. Among former colleagues and fellow Democrats, her actions only added to painful intraparty divisions that had been exposed by the bruising fight between Platner and Mills. ‘Genevieve decided this was too messy a campaign for her to be part of so she left,’ wrote state Representative Valli Geiger, a Platner supporter, on Facebook. ‘But she didn’t just leave as a professional would, she left trashing the candidate to the press, to friends, on Facebook and other social media.’ But McDonald still has defenders among Maine Democrats skeptical of Platner’s rise and the allegedly heavy hand the campaign has wielded in defense. State Representative Cassie Julia posted to Facebook that she understood why McDonald did what she did: ‘Maine girlies just don’t put up with that kind of [expletive],’ she said.” Gertner was, in fact, born in Hope, Maine (a little much for those who remember Bill Clinton’s first campaign). I don’t know if that makes her a “Maine girlie,” but she is from Maine. And: “But her departure from the firm last year to work for the populist upstart Platner puzzled some Maine political insiders, both within the labor movement and the business community, given the nature of that lobbying work seemed to conflict with his left-wing politics.” • If you think McDonald was a plant, that’s not puzzling at all.
* * * “How Much Graham Platner, Maine’s Oyster-Farming Senate Candidate, Is Worth” [Forbes]. “June 2024, Graham Platner made a modest purchase with outsize significance. The owner of a half-acre plot of land next to his Sullivan, Maine home had passed away a few years prior. County records show Platner bought it from her estate; real estate listings put the price at $6,000…. For most politicians, an undeveloped parcel—assessed at about $30,000 by the county—would barely register on a balance sheet. That’s certainly true for Susan Collins, the five-term Republican senator Platner is hoping to unseat in November, who declares at least $4.2 million in assets on her financial disclosures. But for Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer married to a former teacher and running a tear-down-the-oligarchy campaign amid a flood of controversies and scandal, that small patch of Maine woods represents about 10% of his estimated net worth today.” • Not gotcha at all, interestingly.
* * * “Maine Has a Graham Platner Problem” [The Atlantic]. “Add to that the revelation that in late 2023, his wife, Amy Gertner, caught him sexting with multiple other women. Notably, it was she who disclosed this to his campaign, not the candidate. Now Gertner is defending her husband in part by pointing out that he sent the texts ‘in the early days of our marriage,’ as if that is somehow a mitigating, not an aggravating, factor.” • Unmentioned, of course, is that the Democrat operative with whom Gertner shared the messages in confidence is the one who leaked them. And I don’t see why it doesn’t “mitigate.” (I’m trying to fit this into the Billary Clinton frame, and it seems to me that one difference is in fact that the issue was worked out between Gertner and Planter first, and that Gertner brought the issue up with the campaign first, both showing a level of honesty the Clintons lacked, with each other and with the party. (Going on my recollections here; it’s been a long time, so please correct me.)
“Graham Platner is a Type of Guy” [John Ganz, Unpopular Front]. Interesting post:
What I find very frustrating about politics is that it forces you to pretend you’re stupid. Case in point: Graham Platner’s Totenkopf tattoo—we’re supposed to believe he didn’t know what it was when he got it. Come the fuck on. First of all, the guy is an edgelordy Reddit autodidact type with a lot of opinions. This is precisely the demographic that knows all about militaria and WWII history. Not only would he know what it was, but he would also be proud to know what it was: such semi-obscure knowledge is the coin of that realm. Second, he was a U.S. Marine. Military guys know what that symbol is. And military guys like to be menacing and outside the norms of civilian society. It’s very edgy, but it’s still not a swastika or SS lightning bolts. It rides the territory on the border of taboo. Perfect!
Do I think Platner is actually a Nazi? No, not really. I think he’s an adventurer type and a bit of a lost soul. Exactly the kind of person who might start in a privileged or, at least, genteel milieu and then seek out more authentic and exciting experiences, like, say, joining the military and going to war. Historically, those kinds of people often became Nazis or fascists, but they could also become any number of other things—Communists, high-flying businessmen, international aid workers, etc.
I’m shocked, shocked to discover that military culture in America has problematic semiotics. More:
it’s why I feel ambivalent about Platner: I don’t think he’s a very serious person. There’s an air of buffoonery about the whole thing. I’ve met many of these private-school Don Juans in my life, and I don’t particularly like them. They are usually real sons of bitches. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: seriousness itself, the sheer givenness of society’s norms, has to be rejected if you are going to be an authentic person who thinks for yourself. But hopefully, then you ethically dedicate your life also to the freedom of others, not just your own. Does Platner give a shit about anybody except Platner? I guess I don’t buy the performance. Can an adventurer be a good guy to have on your side? Sure, at least they are not cowards. But I don’t entirely trust him. Maybe, because he’s certainly lying about the tattoo.
Well, that’s for the people of Maine to decide. And I don’t think “buffoonery” goes over well in Maine town halls, of which Platner has held many.
“Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner rejects new allegations of abusive behavior” [Guardian]. More from the Republican consultant: “Fifield further recalled that Platner would sharpen an axe while watching TV, and left an AR-15 lying around in his Washington apartment.” • Oh come on. Pix or it didn’t happen. Mainers are like dwarves: They all carry axes. It’s the lumberjack thing. The 31-foot statue of Paul Bunyan. I suppose whoever was doing the coaching thought it sounded plausible, indeed memeworthy (amplified by Bill Maher here).
Trump Administration
“CIA puts senior officials on leave over officer arrested with gold bars” [NBC]. “The CIA has put several senior officials on administrative leave over their handling of a high-ranking officer who allegedly had $40 million in gold bars stashed at his home, according to three people familiar with the decisions.” And: “A CIA employee for about 17 years, Rush [the spook with the gold bars] was most recently a liaison to the Defense Department for a sensitive nuclear submarine program, NBC News has reported. He was given that assignment at the request of the Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, with whom Rush had a close professional relationship over the years, according to four people familiar with their relationship. Feinberg founded the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.” • Private equity, eh? Cerburus, eh?
Election 2026
“Debbie Downer” [Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect]. This is such a pleasure. Finally, Wasserman Schultz is being covered as she deserves. Worth reading in full, and I’ll quote just one of the many gems: “The real mystery, [Dale Holness, the former mayor of Broward and an ultra-connected Democratic Party operative in South Florida] claims, is why Wasserman Schultz would choose not to run in the district in which she actually lives, the new 22nd District, which voted for Trump by about nine points in 2024 but by even higher margins in favor of a ballot initiative enshrining the right to an abortion, and swung to Biden by three points in 2020. The answer is likely tied to how longtime Democratic incumbents get hives at the thought of having to work hard to win re-election, and would rather opt for a comfortable laziness, even if it means carpetbagging into a historically Black district just as Black representation is under dire threat.” • Seems like a wild election in a wild state!
Geopolitics
“Post-War Oil Trade Could Look Nothing Like It Did Before Hormuz” [OilPrice.com]. “ ‘The legacy of the crisis will result in the construction of infrastructure to bypass the Strait of Hormuz,’ Hamad Hussain, commodities economist at Capital Economics, told the Wall Street Journal. ‘The genie is out of the bottle given that the longstanding threat of Iran effectively closing the strait has now materialized.’ Many observers seem to believe that even when the war ends, one way or another, the oil landscape will change for good, with exporters investing in what the Wall Street Journal described as ‘an export network with multiple exits’—a real-life demonstration of the principle of distributing eggs to multiple baskets. As summed up by ADNOC’s head and the UAE’s energy minister, Sultan al-Jaber, ‘Energy security is no longer just about your ability to continue to produce. It is about routes, access, storage and redundancy.’ Meanwhile, as warnings about a severe oil supply crunch multiply and get louder, some see relief on the horizon. Kpler, specifically, recently described a scenario in which Venezuelan, Iranian, and Russian oil all return to the market in greater volumes—which is already happening.” • Maybe the Hormuz won’t be a chokepoint forever. That said, I’d like to see some arithmetic done on capacity, and it’s not in this article. The Wall Street Journal is more sanguine—
“China previously jolted the world with its willingness to use its extensive control of the rare-earth supply chain to extract concessions from the U.S. and punish countries such as Japan” [Wall Street Journal Logistics Report]. And China has been squeezed by American export controls on semiconductor technology. The question now becomes what governments will do about their economic pinch points. Reducing the world’s reliance on the energy that transits the Strait of Hormuz, which could be closed again by Iran, will require big investments in new pipelines and export routes. Importers will need to rebuild depleted crude-oil reserves and build stockpiles to prepare for another shock. They may need to consider hefty layouts on renewables and nuclear power to ensure steadier energy supplies ahead of any new disruption. Building that resilience will cost money and take years. The impetus to see it through might fade once the crisis has passed. The challenge highlights the difficulty governments face in overcoming economic vulnerabilities that emerge in a deeply intertwined world.” • Hmm.
“The New Hedging Dilemma” [Global Finance]. “Commodity hedging is no longer a technical exercise buried in the treasury function. As price volatility spreads across energy, metals, and agricultural commodities, CFOs are forced to make explicit, high-stakes bets about the future — locking in costs at today’s elevated levels or staying exposed in the hope that markets turn. What was once a risk management tool has become a strategic decision with direct implications for margins, pricing, and competitive positioning. That shift is showing up in earnings in a range of industries, a reminder that hedging decisions are increasingly tied to financial performance and investor expectations. ‘We are using our hedging to be able to offset against the volatility,’ said Andrew Murray, CFO of Fonterra, a New Zealand farmer-owned cooperative, in the group’s March 2026 earnings call. Others are treating volatility as an opportunity to act. In its latest earnings call, Infinity Natural Resources CEO Zack Arnold said the company had ‘taken this opportunity … to lock in attractive oil hedges,’ stressing how companies are making deliberate market calls rather than waiting for conditions to stabilize. In some cases, the impact is measurable. In Siemens’ most recent earnings call, the global industrial giant’s CFO, Ralf P. Thomas, reported that commodity hedging contributed roughly 100 basis points to its margins, thanks to volatility in copper and silver prices.” • I don’t play the ponies, but my understanding is that speculators like volatility (and Trump is certainly creating it (along with the opportunities for insider trading and front-running)).
“Ex-CIA analyst predicted Iran crisis years ago - so why was Trump surprised?” [Sky News (podcast)]. “In 2012, a former CIA analyst ran a wargame between the US and Iran. One of the first things he found was that Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz after America attacked. From there, his war game spiralled to a grisly end. So why did the Trump administration expect a quick victory?” • Endless war isn’t a bug….
Vaccines
“What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks” [ProPublica]. “The Texas and Utah cases now sit at the center of an unusually technical — and politically fraught — question: whether the United States will lose its measles-free distinction…. To have any chance of keeping the designation, the U.S. will need to make a strong case that measles didn’t spread endemically — from person to person in a continuous chain within the country for more than a year. If the Texas virus, for example, made its way across the Southwest to Utah and continued infecting people there, that would be a problem. But if cases in Utah were instead sparked by a patient who caught measles abroad, that would be a new chain, restarting the clock.” More: “For clues, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is analyzing the full genetic code of measles viruses that infected patients. Last November, the CDC’s leader at the time said preliminary genomic analysis suggested the Utah cases were not directly linked to those in Texas.” But: “ProPublica embarked on its own analysis, reviewing over 1,800 whole genome sequences, including those released as recently as last month, to compare the genetic fingerprints of measles viruses circulating in the U.S. and Canada. This showed that the measles virus still spreading in Utah as of this May is very closely related to the one that sickened Texans over a year ago.” • The CDC was horrid under Biden. It’s worse under Trump.
Long Covid
A very long post on the state of play for Long Covid:
2/ The biggest mistake?
Treating Long COVID as a single disease.
The evidence suggests:
→ Multiple overlapping syndromes
→ Different mechanisms in different patients
This explains why studies—and treatments—often conflict. pic.twitter.com/f9APPU33m1— IntegralAnswers (@IntegralAnswers) May 1, 2026
Business Sentiment
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 42 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 56 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). • Huge drop. The Houthis?
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Unemployment. “Last month, the number of new jobs went up” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • I’d never checked the FAQ for this site. It’s everything I expected, and more.
Business: AI
“Can You Run the Music Industry without Musicians?” [The Honest Broker]. “It’s hard not to be impressed by online label Red Note Records—at least at first glance. The company launched on YouTube in November, and has already released more than two thousand recordings! The company is staunchly committed to the jazz idiom, putting out hundreds of albums in just the last few weeks. But I know a bit about jazz—and I didn’t recognize the names of any of the musicians or bands. As it turns out, none of them are real. ‘Ensemble names and personnel listings in earlier releases function as formal and narrative devices,’ according to the label’s YouTube page, ‘rather than documentation of specific recording sessions or individual performers.’” • That’s so, so AI. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a worse set of sleaze merchants.
“Criticizing the everything machine” [Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic]. “’Gish Gallop’ is the debating term for an opponent who makes so many claims that ‘it’s impossible to address them in the time available’ (it’s named for Creationist Duane Gish, who was notorious for this tactic). I think about the Gish Gallop whenever I’m asked to comment on AI.” More: “I usually start by talking about whether there’s any economic basis for keeping the AI servers running. AI is – by far – the money-losingest venture in human history, and it’s practically impossible to overstate just how bad the AI business is. Not only does AI have terrible unit economics, those unit economics are getting worse over time.” More: “AI’s happiest customers cite cost-benefit calculations that depend on truly unimaginable subsidies from the AI companies, who are basically selling $100 bills for $5 apiece. ” • That works until id doesn’t!
“Premium: The Hater’s Guide To The AI Bubble 3.0” [Where’s Your Ed At?]. “The AI bubble is a psyop, a melodrama, a financial crisis, and a mask-off moment for the Business Idiots that run the vast majority of our economy. It is the largest-scale exploitation of ignorance in history, gnawing at the intellectual weaknesses of society by presenting just enough information or just enough proof to substantiate a trillion-plus dollars of investment and manufactured consent for a technology that, based on how many discuss it, doesn’t actually exist.” More: “And it’s revealed how many rich and powerful people are either (or both) credulous and woefully ignorant.” Crime makes you stupid. And: “AI cannot do the vast majority of jobs, and the only reason that anybody thinks that it can is that the vast majority of CEOs have no actual connection to the work that enriches them, and because AI can do an impression of something that looks like work they choose to believe it can do anything.” • A fun piece. I shudder to think what happens when you open the furnace door of the paywall.
Business: Media
“Elon Musk’s X Is a Freak Show” [Daring Fireball]. “X is still a thing. A lot of people, companies, and organizations still post there — treat it like their blogs — exclusively. I still wind up linking to posts on X because that’s where they are. That’s a whole separate discussion. But anyone who’s trying to ‘compete’ there with subject matter that is even vaguely political has no chance of success unless what they’re posting is what Elon Musk wants to see promoted. It’s not like his thumb is on the scale, it’s like an anvil is on the scale. The conundrum is that there are still a lot interesting people posting interesting things there.” • It would be nice if X didn’t penalize links, although of course there are workarounds…
Photo Book
Big Saul Leiter fan here:
Saul Leiter (1923 ~ 2013) is a master of Color Photography.
“A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”
🖋️ 📷 Saul Leiter pic.twitter.com/bBQUHXYLVp— Lisandru 🫧 (@Alex00762690) April 27, 2020
Climate
“What if seaweed could build its own farm?” [Climate Drift]:
Meet Angus Shaw. He’s building nonlinear CDR: a carbon removal company designed around a species of seaweed that can double its biomass every six days.
Today we’re looking at:
- Why growing seaweed on land (not in the ocean) changes the economics of algae-based CDR.
- How self-scaling infrastructure turns the effect of project finance from linear to exponential
• Big if true.
“As floods get worse, Britain tries a new solution: beavers” [NPR]. “Until two years ago, West London’s Greenford Tube station used to flood whenever it rained heavily. The train tracks are aboveground, but the ticket office would often get inundated. Sandbags still line the corridor. But in October 2023, a new family moved in nearby, determined to halt the water. The family members built their house from scratch with local wood and kept odd hours, sleeping all day and working only at dawn and dusk. They even put their young children to work. The new neighbors were beavers.” And: “Within weeks, the beavers dammed up the creek, creating a pond that holds water and stops it from spilling into the city. They also diverted the creek’s flow into smaller tributaries, creating a wetland that better absorbs heavy rainfall — mitigating the risk of flooding downstream. “They effectively turned this site into a giant sponge that can take heavy rainfall and slowly release water back into the landscape, creating a lot more resilience for flooding,” explains Sean McCormack, a local veterinarian who started the Ealing Beaver Project, named for the London borough of Ealing, where it’s located. Not only has the local Tube station stopped flooding, but the beavers have also coaxed back other species. ‘By felling trees, they’ve also opened up the canopy, and we’ve seen an abundance of biodiversity,’ McCormack says.” • Can’t have biodiversity. Where’s the profit in it?
Class Warfare
“AI cited as top reason for US job cuts for third straight month” [CFO Dive]. “Artificial intelligence was the leading reason cited for U.S. job cuts for the third consecutive month in May, accounting for a record 38,579 announced layoffs, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report Thursday. The figure marks the highest monthly total attributed to AI since the outplacement firm began tracking the category in 2023. AI accounted for 40% of all job cuts announced during the month, up from 26% in April and just 7% in January. ‘The labor market is being reshaped by technology in real time,’ Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at the Chicago-based firm, said in the report. ‘AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is technology.’” • Learn to code. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!
The highest rate of resistance [to data centers] comes from neighborhoods with a median income of between $8,000 and $72,000.“Working class neighborhoods are resisting data centers at 5 times the rate of wealthy ones” [Blood in the Machine]. “Heatmap just published a survey of over 4,000 Americans’ attitudes towards data centers, and whether they would support a project being built near them. The results show that sentiment towards data centers is now wholly and completely underwater. According to the poll, 55% of Americans ‘strongly’ oppose data centers being built in their areas. This is ‘a record low that reveals a staggering shift in public opinion against the facilities powering the artificial intelligence boom.’ Importantly: “The highest rate of resistance comes from neighborhoods with a median income of between $8,000 and $72,000,’ [researcher Geoff Holtzman] notes. ‘The lowest rate of resistance is in neighborhoods where the average household makes between $133k and $250k per year.’ This flies directly in the face of the notion that data center opposition is led by well-off Patagonia-clad NIMBYs; neighborhoods that are poor or working class are pushing back far more frequently than the affluent.” • Crime makes you stupid.
“From panic rooms to bunkers, fear fuels an unusual property trend” [The Telegraph]. “Not so long ago, most of Paul Weldon’s clients wanted protection from home invaders. Now, they are asking about ‘dirty bombs;. The UK-based bunker specialist has spent 16 years designing panic rooms and underground shelters, but he notes that the nature of the fears driving demand has changed dramatically in recent years. One of his clients is investing in a sprawling underground shelter designed to withstand a month of civil unrest. Others want air filtration systems, independent power supplies and protection against potential fallout from conflicts unfolding thousands of miles away.” • Only a month?
News of the Wired
I am not feeling wired today.
Plantidote of the Day
Via TH:
TH writes: “Lichen — not certain what the tree is. (Hope Lichen counts as a plant!) James & Rosemary Nix Nature Center in Laguna Beach, CA.” Lichen totally counts as a plant, and I have updated the blurb accordingly.
Kind readers, I am running short! Send your plantidotes as attachments to lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [AT] protonmail [DOT] com. And if you put “Plant” or “Plantidote” in the subject line, I’ll be less likely to lose it. Gardens are fine. Gardening season approaches, at least in the Northeast! Fungi and lichen are honorary plants.
