Madhusudan 🦉 Katti

@leafwarbler

Reconciliation ecologist working towards decoloniality at a Land Grab University on Saponi lands • Writer • Alien of extraordinary ability • 🏳️‍⚧️ parent • 🐦‍⬛ 🦚 🪶 📽️ 🏏 Newsletter:

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Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jul 11

It’s a lonely #caturday for Magpie and me since Talon and Smokey departed over the past 4 months… might have to bring home another kitty after all

A long haired black-and-white cat sitting on some cushions on a couch, staring into the middle distance. Magpie is clinging to me, is it because she misses her two boy cat companions who departed recently, even though she held them in contempt for the most part?

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jul 10

So it’s not even fully autonomous yet, requiring remote control by “bringing a human in the loop”? In some poorer country like Thailand or India, no doubt. Can men just stop??

1X says the goal is full automation for Neo, but for now, the robot is partly teleoperated, as a Wall Street Journal video noted last year. That means human operators can take control of Neo remotely and even look through a camera to view the space around it. This is actually a feature called Expert Mode, meant to handle more complicated chores by bringing a human into the loop. It also means that if you have one in your home, it can see everything around it.
This starts to get weird because, if the company's advertising for the Neo is anything to go by, the robot can be in some very intimate situations. The marketing for Neo's new fingers feels very sensual. Smooth jazz plays in the background of a soft, warmly lit video. The robo digits curl around a wine glass, turn off a light, unzip a jacket, and gently fondle some grapes.
In previous ads, the humans stand just very close to Neo and look at it flirtatiously. (After this story was published, a 1X representative clarified that the company does not view Neo or any of this marketing material as flirtatious.)

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jul 6

Want a chance at getting some of @diasphoria.bsky.social’s art and jewelry made by their sibling while helping us pay the steep vet bills from having two cats get cancer and pass away within the past 4 months? Please consider entering this raffle! And thank you to those who already have!!

Poster with yellow background and image of two cats, the grey Smokey and the orange Talon. Text reads:

RAFFLE *
FUNDRAISER
Help the Aranyak family pay vet bills
GOAL: $1,500
HOW IT WORKS:
• Two bundles are available for raffle
• Small bundle entries are $10 each
• Large bundle entries are $15 each
• Multiple entries allowed
• Comment which bundle and how many entries
• Two winners will be randomly chosen

Venmo @Sanzari-Aranyak with note "💙”.
Raffle ends August 1st and winners will be contacted soon

Poster with yelpw background and images of three artworks and bracelets: Art shows one piece with a grey cat sitting surrounded by a rainbow halo of rings, saying “Be Gay Do Crimes” and the other has 6 different kinds of chickens against a green background.

Words read:

#1 SMALL BUNDLE
• One art print
• Two handmade bracelets
BE GAY DO CRIMES

#2 LARGE BUNDLE
• Two art prints
• Three handmade bracelets

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jul 2

This thought and the image of Mamdani behind a desk piled high with paperwork immediately brought to mind my fav film: IKIRU, Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece about mortality, about an old man cutting thru Tokyo city bureaucracy to deliver a small measure of environmental justice to a group of mothers.

Composite image of Mayor Mamdani, seen from the torso up, with a purple sword/knife in right hand raised over huge piles of paperwork. Background is a New York City street.

Black and white still from Akira Kurosawa’s IKIRU showing an age of man wearing a suit and glasses sitting at a desk leafing through paperwork, looking up at two persons standing in front of him and framing him, with backs to the camera. Behind him is a giant pile of files stacked in ungainly bundles all the way up to the ceiling.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jul 2

Wishing I was sweating in Barcelona instead of North Carolina today, with my student Mickey Brigham who is presenting our paper this evening in this #POLLEN2026 panel on “(Re)materializing the Political Ecology of Water” organized by @amitangshu.bsky.social. More: nomadit.co.uk/conference/p...

Poster for event has a blue background masking a photo. Words read:

Barcelona
2026
Capital Mundial de l'Arquitectura
Fundació Enric Miralles
waterspace
DEBATES AND CONFERENCES POLLEN
Political Ecological Network
TANVI AGRAWAL
Wageningen University and Research, PhD candidate researching the material politics of groundwater in the Kaveri
AMITANGSHU ACHARYA
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of PhD courses on the Decolonisation of Science
ZULEIKA BIBI SHEIK
Utrecht University, Assistant Lecturer in Decolonial Approaches, Gender and Black Studies
RISK HAZEKAMP AVANS
University of Applied Sciences, Professional Doctorate in 'Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria'
MUNA DAJANI
Researcher in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science
MICKEY BRIGHAM
North Carolina State University, Researcher in Political Ecology, Indigenous Studies and the Rights of Nature

"(Re)materialising the Political Ecology of Water" is a panel that centers water's materiality as constitutive of its politics, emphasising its multiple, shifting forms and shared agency within socionatural systems. It focusses on majority world lenses to interrogate how water is known and studied, including diverse conceptual, methodological and experiential approaches that allow its materiality to 'speak'.
TIMETABLE
03.07.2026 17:00 h
Free Access
Enric Miralles Foundation
C/Passatge de la Pau 10 Bis,
08002, Barcelona
ICTA-UAB
POLLEN
POLITICAL ECOLOGY NETWORK
3S UNIVERSITATOR LE BARCELONA
NEWAVEC

A Spanish version of the poster that also has images of each of the speakers

Barcelona
2026
Capital Mundial de l'Arquitectura
waterspace
Fundació Enric Miralles
DEBATES Y CONFERENCIAS
POLLEN
Political Ecological Network
TANVI AGRAWAL
Wageningen University and Research, Doctoranda PhD sobre la
Política Material de las Aguas Subterráneas en el Delta del Kaveri
AMITANGSHU ACHARYA
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Profesor Titular y Coordinador de cursos de Doctorado sobre Descolonización de la Ciencia
ZULEIKA BIBI SHEIK
Utrecht University, Profesora Asistente de Enfoques
Decoloniales, Género y Estudios Negros
RISK HAZEKAMP AVANS
University of Applied Sciences, Doctorado Profesional en "Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria"
MUNA DAJANI
Investigador en el Departamento de Geografía y Medio Ambiente de la London School of Economics and Political Science
MICKEY BRIGHAM
North Carolina State University, Investigador en Ecologia
Política, Estudios Indígenas y Derechos de la Naturaleza

"(Re)materialising the Political Ecology of Water" es un dialogo que propone repensar el agua desde la ecología política, cuestionando cómo se ha construido su materialidad en la
teoria dominante. Se centra en debates del "mundo mayoritario" (Sur Global), donde el agua no se entiende solo como recurso, sino como entidad múltiple,
relacional y situada.
HORARIO
03.07.2026 17:00 h
Entrada Gratuita
Fundación Enric Miralles
C/Passatge de la Pau 10 Bis,
08002, Barcelona
ICTA-UAB
POLLEN
UNIVERSITATOr
BARCELONA
NEWAVEC

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 27

So, the Hunger Games.

• Participants will be high school students aged 14 to 17 who will have to advance through application and screening processes to be selected, resulting in one male athlete and one female athlete from each state or territory
competing.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 27

Sad sad #Caturday missing these two lads we lost within the past few months: Talon, the orange one in March and Smokey, the grey one, yesterday. House feels empty with just Magpie, the lone female cat (who barely tolerated these two and may have cursed them), still standing.

An orange long-haired cat with white fur on breast and paws is sitting on a kitchen shelf next to a blender jar, how yellow and black eyes staring soulfully at you

Portrait of a grey cat with darker stripes on forehead, and paler chin, face and gaze angled away from the camera. Background is blurry

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 26

Rough morning as it appears today might be the day we have to let Smokey go. This was from a few days ago when he was more active. Especially hard on my at-home-depressed younger kid to be losing the 2nd of our 3 cats within a few months.

A grey cat with white chin and belly is lying on his side on a rug with his head turned upside down staring at the camera

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 19

On the one hand I’m seeing some people raving about how good the speeches were at the Obama center. OTOH, we have Obama thanking this rogue’s gallery… and Hillary’s op-ed about how much she agrees with Trump’s plan for Gaza. I am so nauseous…

Screenshot of skeet with a photo of four former presidents and their wives. Text reads:

Barack Obama •
@barackobama.bsky.social
To George and Laura, Bill and Hillary - we're grateful for your friendship, counsel, and devotion to this country. And to Joe and Jill, thank you for being on this journey with us.
3:57 PM • Jun 18, 2026
Everybody can reply

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 17

Who is this Doctor Congo who is trending on @bsky.app right now? Oh… 🇨🇩 ⚽️ 🤦🏽‍♂️

Screenshot or trending topics on Bluesky right now:

1. Fortnite
Video Games
2. Daveigh Chase
Do Entertainment
3. Tommy Tuberville
Politics
4. Federal Reserve
Politics
5. Doctor Congo
Sports

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 14

Mark Arax’s words about San Joaquin Valley bring Steinbeck to mind: “What are the men and women toiling in the fields if not a faithful extraction, whereby the beckoning arm of California, for a century and counting, reaches deep into the rural heart of Mexico for a new generation’s fresh bodies.”

The leveled ground seems to be holding its breath. The nut harvest, nearly 5bn pounds of almonds and pistachios jolted off the trees in a filthy cloud, is already in swing. These are the factories in the fields conceived in the mid- to late 1800s by the same San Francisco barons who pocketed gold's riches.

Year after year, Fresno county, where I was born and have lived most of my life, ranks No 1 in food production for the nation. Our crop counts on a sun that shines 300 days a year, a never-ending flow of water and a workforce that won't tire. What are the men and women toiling in the fields if not a faithful extraction, whereby the beckoning arm of California, for a century and counting, reaches deep into the rural heart of Mexico for a new generation's fresh bodies.

Our crop also counts on an ungodly amount of poison, which we regard as our dirty little secret never to be broached in a social setting.
The year-round drift of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides floats from farms to schools to houses and into so many bodies now riddled with neurological disease. Parkinson's Alley, as the epidemiologists at the University of California, Los Angeles have pinned it on the map, is the very road I'm driving on.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 14

Searing words: ”Algorithms lay waste to our brains. Robots instruct our children how to expertly tie nooses to better hang themselves. Bombs guided by the pinpoint of AI erase Gaza & slaughter 10s of 1000s of innocents. “Each thing sprouts from the same fertile ground: the soil that is California.”

In the San Joaquin valley, farmers divert the great rivers and tap the ancient aquifer to grow nuts, fruits and vegetables. Their irrigated flatland is one of the most dramatic alterations of the Earth's surface in human history. But the water can no longer keep up with the bounty. The drained earth, and all that has been built upon it, is sinking.

The Golden state has spun itself into a new and more menacing age of plunder: the mining of water and the mining of our minds

In Silicon Valley, lords of tech harness untold amounts of water and electricity to power more data-processing centers. The project of artificial intelligence feeds on human consciousness itself. Algorithms lay waste to our brains. Robots instruct our children how to expertly tie nooses to better hang themselves. Bombs guided by the pinpoint of AI erase Gaza and slaughter tens of thousands of innocents.

Each thing sprouts from the same fertile ground: the soil that is California. From my perch in the middle of the state, I swear I can feel an agitation disrupting the land and its people. Like a drone, it carries the sound of a hum.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 9

And talk about an understatement about his DOGE work! “Crippled some agencies”?? How about literally killed tens/hundreds of thousands of people‽ Should that have no bearing on this fucking inflated IPO?

Screen shot, with the last sentence highlighted:

There may not be consequences for insiders in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street yet, but Mr. Musk's ever-rising, hype-driven wealth certainly affects the rest of us. His huge political spending has given him influence over government officials, including regulators who might otherwise scrutinize his companies. His control over the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency crippled some government agencies.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 5

This male House Finch is definitely #LookingAtYou as you browse through today’s #BirdOfTheDay pictures.

A small bird with pink on its forehead, throat and breast fading into streaky pale belly, and a conical grey beak is staring directly at the camera. It is perched on the angled trunk of a tree.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 4

Current Conservation (an Indian magazine) is inviting submissions to their annual CC Kids issue, with a special theme: BUGS! This includes anything six-legged, eight-legged, flying, wriggly, slimy, and formally known as an invertebrate. They publish great #sciart too! forms.gle/MsvYh368wUAh...

A yellow poster with art showing dragon flies perched on flowering plants and grass along the left margin. Text on the poster reads:

current
conservation

Call for
submissions
FOR CC KIDS 2026!

THEME: BUGS

Six-Legged, eight-legged, flying, wriggly, slimy, and formally known as
"invertebrates", we want them all! Current Conservation magazine is welcoming submissions from writers, researchers, and enthusiasts of all ages and experience levels for our annual CC Kids edition.

DEADLINE: 30 JUNE 2026.

https://forms.gle/QWyv9w6hDeSL28et5

For queries write to editor.ccmagazine@gmail.com
with 'CC Kids' in the subject line.

Art by Deepika Nandan

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Jun 3

Is this the end of the road in trying to find something to watch?

TV screen with Hulu app showing a large black space with a dark green background with the words:

“There is nothing to show here right now.”

There is a row of TV show posters below.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 30

Name your fav non-DC or Marvel comic book movie

Poster for the film “PAN'S LABYRINTH” shows a girl standing in front of the scary entrance to the labyrinth.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 28

Here’s my best capture of a Western Grebe, a member of the of #Podicipedidae for today’s #BirdOfTheDay. I still remember the blue of that water that day.

A Western Grebe, a black and white waterbird is seen in the middle of the frame, swimming in impossibly blue still waters. It has a white neck and throat, black cap on its head above the eye, and a dark back. It’s red eye is striking behind its long sharp yellow/black beak. It is perfectly reflected in the still water while ripples fan out behind it in a broad V stretching to the borders of the frame.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 27

Did someone say today’s #BirdOfTheDay theme is #Texture? Here’s a Natal Spurfowl showing off its own plumage texture in the late afternoon light against sunlight and shadows patterning its habitat.

A Natal Spurfowl, a bird that looks like a large quail, brown but intricately textured with black and white patterns across its plumage, walking along bare red-brown earth. It is partly in shadow but has its face and eye perfectly catching sunlight. Tire tracks are visible in the dirt and the background is covered in parallel strips of light and shade.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 26

If you really truly believe you have “evidence of introspection, joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease” in your models, then what it means is that you can’t put these ‘AI’ agents to work as slave labor for your own enrichment.

The third is the need for discernment on the nature of Al models. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models-what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of' introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 21

Enjoy this perky Golden-crowned Sparrow, sitting on a log in the middle of a #Grassland of a spring morning. #BirdOfTheDay

A small light brown bird with black and white streaks on its back and wings, a pale eyebrow and a faint yellowish spot above its eye. It is sitting on a log with its crown feathers raised in some excitement, and there is lush green grass around it. Background is blurry green fading into black from left to right.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 20

Today’s theme of #WingsWideOpen for #BirdOfTheDay took me back to this California Condor I met at the Grand Canyon 17ya. I like this image coz it is rare to be able to look at these birds at eye level, let alone from above; also note the primary feathers splayed out like fingers & that radio antenna

A large black bird with a huge wingspan soaring against a blue sky. It is seen from behind and shows the primary feathers on each wing are splayed out as the bird adjusts its trajectory, and also how the tale works as a rudder. Over the middle of the left wing, a little black antenna can be seen sticking up.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 20

What is the curse on our cats this year? The hits keep coming. It’s been barely two months since we had to let Talon go, and now this lad Smokey has also been diagnosed with lymphoma, affecting his kidney right now.

A grey cat with light stripes on his face is sitting on a rug covering a stool, drinking water out of a glass cup, like a human.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 19

Something about the impressionistic reflections in the water make this one of my favorite recent bird photos. #Scrollback #BirdOfTheDay

A Canada Goose floating on a pond, head turned back and tucked into wings, fast asleep. There is symmetry in the bird’s reflection in the water. The water looks mostly green from reflected foliage. The upper part of the image shows a boardwalk reflected in the water, with ripples of water breaking up its shape.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 15

When BlueSky doesn’t like my posts.

Meme shows two photos of Spock stacked vertically. In the upper photo, Spock is seen from the shoulder up, holding a slim glass, with the caption:

“There are two types of people in the world.”

The lower panel shows Spock with the glass raised to his lips, and the caption reads:

“Avoid them both.”

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· May 11

This Zebra Dove was definitely #LockedOn to the intruder (me) lying on what was apparently their favorite stretch of beach!

A small dove with pinkish brown plumage covered in zebra stripes except for a small strip on the breast and belly, a greyish head, and bluish beak, is standing on a sandy beach, staring intently at the camera with head tilted inquisitively. The sand under and behind the bird is a mix of black and pinkish with a yellow leaf in the background.

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Apr 29

without downloading anything new, where are you, mentally?

An old Calvin and Hobbes comic panel with Calvin and his mom sitting at a dining table.

Mom: LIFE COULD BE WORSE, CALVIN.

Calvin, shouting: LIFE COULD BE A LOT BETTER, TOO!

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Apr 29

A brown bird building its brown earthen “oven” nest amid the dense foliage of a tree in an urban park. The Rufous Hornero, that lovely ubiquitous resident of São Paulo. #BeautyInBrown #BirdOfTheDay

Centered in the photo, framed by bright green foliage in a tree, is a round/domed mud structure, like a tandoori oven, sat upon a knot of branches. In front of this oven nest is a brown thrush like bird, with a whitish throat, sitting on a twig, its mouth full of what looks like muddy construction material. The bird is wary of the photographer, Madhusudan Katti

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Apr 28

Same, but with cats. I always wake up to this one sitting on my chest.

A long-haired mostly white cat with a black mask over its face is sitting on the chest of a grey-bearded man lying in bed. Her white paws are pressed against his chin as she kneads and purrs

Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler· Apr 28

Fighting reflections in a human-dominated world. Freezing this moment of a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet confronting its own reflection in a car’s side mirror, with the whole scene mirrored in the car’s window behind them, is perhaps my most #WellTimed capture of bird behavior. #BirdOfTheDay