OmegaMom (she/her)

@omegamom

New Mexico, science, climate change, politics, science fiction and fantasy, adoption, Troubles With Young Adult Children, Long Covid. Warning: My timeline is quite full, so I don’t follow back!

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OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 15h

Another lovely 24-hours in cell-phone and data-free northern New Mexico. We were on Mesa Alta, at one of the two spots marked with red arrows, and we had the view in the pic to the right.

Alta Mesa sides and top. Lots of lovely red, pink, cream, and white layers on the cliffs. There are two arrows pointing at different spots on the edge of the top. It was a lovely campsite.

The view from on top of the mesa. There are red rock ridges stretching outward for miles, plus El Pederal (?) Mountain in the background. It was a spectacular view.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 3d

I love monsoon season, where, if you turn on the wind map in your weather app, you see things like this scattered all around the state. Nice illustration of a down air burst! Note that there’s no storm attached to it.

A downward air burst near Jemez Springs/Jemez Pueblo. The wind map makes a starburst effect, with winds blowing in every direction from a center point. Before the area map shows up, when the background is still black, it looks like a purple/pink fireworks show across the state.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 11d

So there are five fires in and around Spokane. (One of the icons is sitting right above another, to the northwest.) This is awful and crazy.

Screenshot from Watch Duty, showing the Old Trails fire (~2400 acres), Fairview fire (~970 acres), Autumn Lane fire (~500 acres) (on top of Meadowview fire, no acreage reported), and the Espanola fire to the west, currently at 1 acre).

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 13d

We have lemon mint blooming (in pots). You may also know it as bergamot/monarda/bee balm. This is what it looks like:

Tall spikes with circular clusters of lavender/purple leaves with bell-shaped lavender/purple flowers in a circle just above the leaves.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 13d

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli. Two! I just had to do two!

Balthazar and his crew making the United Planets gesture, from Galaxy Quest.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 23d

Without saying your age, what’s your favorite movie that came out when you were 18? Well, duh.

Movie poster for the original Star Wars.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 27d

We have lots of boxes on our main table. Finn likes boxes.

Finn, a flame point Siamese mutt, sits in a small box on a wooden table. “I fits, I sits,” he says.

Unsatisfied with the small box, he moves onto a larger box. It isn’t empty, though, so he has to perch on top. The box is on a wood table, with a rounded back wooden chair in front, and too many more boxes of varying sizes scattered about.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· 27d

With alt-text:

NIH & AHRQ Grant Termination
Information Collection Form
Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NIH or AHRQ grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025.
We are tracking these grants to increase transparency, organize affected Pls, and facilitate responses, including via litigation. Please share the form as widely as possible with your networks.
Public information about reported grants - titles, institutions, award amounts retrieved from USAspending.gov, will be shared at grant-witness.us, after we review submissions for errors.
WE WILL NOT DISCLOSE THE IDENTITY OF ANYONE WHO USES THIS FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. We will keep your identity confidential.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jul 7

These two posts were right next to each other in my timeline. Looooooong necks, unite!

First post:

Alex Spahn
@spahn711.bsky.social • 2h
Was photographing this white pelican when a great egret showed up and switched into ~ L ON G ~ mode. #Birds

Pic: A white great egret elongates his neck when facing an equally white pelican, just noodling along doing his thing.

Second post:

Jocelyn Anderson Photography @jocelynanderson.bsky.social • 4h
A Green Heron goes into maximum neck mode to grab a tadpole and then resets into minimum neck mode after the snack was acquired.

Pic 1: A green heron (who happens to be very blue against the very neon green of the water) stretches out his neck in looong mode to catch a tadpole.

Pic 2: The green heron is crouched back on his branch, chowing down onthe tadpole.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jul 2

Greetings from 9,300 feet, the campground at the topof Capilla Peak in the Manzano Mountains. We are right near the peak repeater array, so I actually have internet!

A lone cloud dropping rain to the east of the Estancia Basin (foreground). You may be able to see the turbines of part of the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere, which is now sending electricity to Arizona and California. Not, however, to us.

Cassie the dawg relaxing in front of the bear box.

A gorgeous century flower we saw on our way.

Baby deer backlit by the sun. This was right near our campsite.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 28

I was just about to ask you about it. It’s bad. It looks like it is moving east. 😟 I really hate these explosive fires. Please keep us updated.

Snyder Mesa/Jones fire is at 28,264 acres as per Watch Duty screenshot. The Snyder Mesa Fire was 20 acres at 1:15 pm; The Jones fire was 10 acres at 9:00 am and 1,400 acres at 1 pm. This is a monster.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 27

A box! A box! O blessèd day, A BOX!! #caturday

Finn, a flame point mutt cat, tries to fit into a new shoe box. He curls up and pops all the box joins.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 27

I am The Pope. https://britmonkey.com/2020s-political-compass/

77% Woke, 23% Chud
36% Tech-bro, 64% Neo-Luddite
63% Hopepilled, 37% Doomer
78% Davos, 22% Dubai

Closest Match, Pope Leo

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 25

Temporary Protected Status is at the whim of the President, according to SCOTUS. And there was no racial animus behind the revocation of Haitian TPS. See Elena Kagan’s dissent, a piece of which is below:

Cite as: 609 U.S. (2026) 11

KAGAN, J., dissenting

…respectful.4) So here are some of those statements. Haitians are "eating the dogs.... They're eating the cats.
They're eating-they're eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio]." 2 App. 802; see id., at 644. And:
Haitians are also eating "other things too that they're not supposed to be." Id., at 698-699. And: Haitians in the United States "probably have AIDS." Id., at 698. And:
Haiti is a "shithole country," which is "filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting." Id., at 698-699. And: Haitian immigration is
"like a death wish for our country." Id., at 698. And: Hai-tians, along with some others, are "poisoning the blood" of our country. Id., at 698. And: "Why is it we only take people from shithole countries" like "Haiti [and] Somalia"? "Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?" Id., at 699. The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not "overtly racial," ante, at 21, but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.) The references-of filth, disease, and primitiveness-are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community. No very "sensitive inquiry," of the kind Arlington Heights compels, is needed to see them for what they are, 429 U. S., at 266; judges, as we often say, are "not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free," Department of Commerce,
588 U.S., at 785. The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President's resolve to remove Haitians from this coun-try.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 23

Reposting with alt-text, as it is very British deadpan reporting.

Trump claims 'pictures' show 'vandals' cut a 35oft slit in the reflecting pool floor but declines to show evidence In an entirely predictable development, when Donald Trump was just pressed by reporters to explain the flawed renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, he denied that the contractors he awarded the work to were to blame and instead insisted that
"vandals" had used a knife or box-cutter to cut a 350ft "slit" in the newly applied sealant, which started peeling away from the floor and floating to the surface within days of its application.
"I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up," the president said.
"They went in there with a knife", Trump said, repeating a claim he first made on social media. "Five people are arrested and five people are under investigation right now," the president added, despite the fact that the arrests that have been made appear to be of tourists or curious locals who dipped their hands into the water to collect floating bits of sealant as souvenirs of the failed renovation.
When he was asked, by Ed O'Keefe of CBS News, if he could provide any evidence that vandalism was to blame, Trump first suggested that the parks department could show reporters what he called the long gash in the sealant. Asked if there were photographs or video of vandals in the pool, Trump said "we also have pictures of it"
', but
said they would be revealed in court at a later date.
Trump then claimed that the growth of algae in the pool was also caused by unseen vandals. Attributing his claim to what "somebody said"
', the president told reporters: "They put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water. If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might've put fertilizer, they did something to create the algae."
He went on to say that the water had now been "purified" apparently a reference to the hydrogen peroxide workers were seen pouring into the pool last week, before at least one duckling was found dead in the water.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 20

Warming stripes for Albuquerque.

Yearly average temps for Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 1850 to 2025, based on the average from 1901-2000. Blues = cooler than average, reds = warmer than average. Reds start really accumulating after 1995.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 16

The Platonic ideal:

The “No take” dog meme. Panel one: Pleading dog says “Pls throw??” Panel two: Angry dog says, “No take!!” to a hand reaching for the ball. Third panel: Angry dog says, “Only throw”

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 16

Our pineleaf penstemon is showing off. It provides a blast of glowing red in the garden.

A shrub-like penstemon with needle-like leaves, covered with little bright red trumpets.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 11

Venus and Saturn from our driveway.

A dark night sky (with sky glow down by the horizon) highlights Venus and Saturn about one finger’s width apart, framed by dark pine trees.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 7

But what if you WANT TO DO THAT??? On purpose? Youtube tutorial artists, please DON’T do this! Bah. So very many prescriptivists!

A Youtube thumbnail that says “LEAVES Do this Not that” with two examples.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 6

Have a purty pink cactus flower.

A small pink cactus flower on a knobby little cactus that has more buds.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 6

The other end of the rainbow.

The rainbow was more vivid in this direction, but no Sandias providing a dramatic backdrop.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 6

Pride over the Sandias yesterday.

Dramatic shot of the Sandias from the northwest, a dark, foreboding thunder cloud as a backdrop, some virga (rain that evaporates before it hits the ground) lit by low sun, and a vivid rainbow.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 6

The “spiral fluting” you are focused on is an artifact of your display. When I click on the image and zoom in, it has “standard vertical fluting”, see left image below cropped from original. Wikipedia article has a view of the 15th St. NW facade from the other end, included below on the right.

Closeup of the columns from original photo, showing standard vertical fluting.

A view from the opposite end of the Herbert C. Hoover building facing 15th St. NW., from Wikipedia.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 2

This is a cat check point. Relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone

Black and white tuxedo cat curled up on a cream-colored comforter.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· Jun 1

These people make me so angry. “Oh, goodness, it’s not *our* fault that abruptly and completely cutting billions of dollars in aid money wasn’t covered by other countries!” 😡

A White House official in response said the claim that cuts to U.S. aid have affected the response to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was “ridiculous.”

“You could just as easily say people died because England didn’t give enough money or Canada didn’t give more or China didn’t. Why not blame the other countries who don’t do any foreign aid?” the official added.

The Trump administration has argued that its “America First Foreign Assistance programs” are intertwined with broader foreign policy goals and the national interest.

“The United States has saved more lives, and continues to save more lives, than any other country in the world, and we’re going to continue to do it,” the White House official said in a statement. "We’re not going to continue to pour billions of dollars out the door of American taxpayer funds for programs that don’t work and in some cases were flat-out corrupt."

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· May 30

Repost with your first crush: I had two, simultaneously. (There was also Sean G. and Demetrios, in class. And also Balasz, our upstairs tenant. They all had cheekbones and were intense.)

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· May 29

Reminded of this, for no special reason:

Meme of Lucy pulling the football away with a huge smile as Charlie Brown flips over backwards, screaming “Aaugh!”

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· May 28

If you see this, quote with your blue art.

Blue leaves, red/orange flowers, gold sun and highlights.

OmegaMom (she/her)@omegamom· May 23

Reposting with alt-text because it’s important: