Laura Helmuth
@laurahelmuth
Freelance writer, editor, columnist & consultant. Formerly at Scientific American, Washington Post, National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian & Science. Past president of National Association of Science Writers. Birder.
Friends, if you are in the DC area this summer, I urge you to visit the Renwick’s exhibit on state fairs. americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/...
Who should lead the investigation: the kerning police or the apostrophe police?
Is the reason for having a garden to share stuff with friends, or is the reason for having friends to share stuff from the garden? I wish I could give you pocket friends some tomatoes.
Olympic National Park’s newspaper is called the “Bugler” and that’s perfect. (There are elk in the park and elks bugle.)
If you get lost in a forest, just look at the trees because moss grows on the north side oh hell…
Mr. McGregor in the Peter Rabbit books is the most misunderstood character in English literature.
I've been using the No AI version of DuckDuckGo and am impressed with the results. It seems to favor reliable sites and has a clean interface: noai.duckduckgo.com
I love @merriam-webster.com, but they've started adding automated examples of words in sentences and it's not going well.
I’m testing out backpacking gear ahead of a trip this summer & the irregular Therm-a-rest I bought at a steep discount at an REI co-op in 1991 still holds air.
I finally figured out what these Mar-a-Lago faces remind me of. It's marionettes. They look like marionettes. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Every tourist town in West Virginia has a gift shop, cafe, or bar called Almost Heaven.
Spent the night at a lock house on the C&O Canal. Highly recommend!
If you're still using Facebook (no shame, people have Reasons), turn off all the automatically enabled AI titles and summaries they just rolled out.
Those of you in the DC area who work during the week and get to parks only on the weekends have probably never witnessed such a miracle. This is the observation platform on the Maryland side of Great Falls on a beautiful spring day, and it is EMPTY.
I get a kick out of how often North American publishers illustrate an article or book with a European robin when the relevant bird is an American robin (1/n)
I’m not sure if this is the best product for clarifying pond water, but it is definitely the best named.
I don’t see an American Woodcock sitting on a nest. Do you see an American Woodcock sitting on a nest?
The lost & found box at a donut shop near a playground and elementary school is full of little hats & coats & mittens
"Our data show that declines in institutional autonomy are widespread among (former) democracies, and the decline in institutional autonomy in the United States stands out as a case of fast and steep deterioration that warrants comparative analysis." (1/2) academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...
If you want to keep your toast from getting soggy on the bottom, balance it on skewers or chopsticks.
Drive safely if you gotta. This is a screenshot of Google Maps traffic view at 7:30 on a Sunday.