May 092026
 

Yesterday was David Attenborough’s 100th birthday. The first email I saw about it had the subject line “100 years of David Attenborough” which made me think we had lost him – but, thankfully, we have not. He is so well known and loved. Some years ago I went to a college theater production featuring the three winners of a contest for one-act plays. The one I remember best had three actors – two were visible and were a boy and a girl mayfly. The third, invisible inside a prop TV set was David Attenborough narratibg a program about the life cycle of Mayflies, which you probably know is in the neighborhood of 24 hours. The two Mayfly characters were getting increasingly panicked that they wouldn’t have time to reproduce. It was very funny. (The second was about Philip Glass tring to place a bakery order in the style of his music. That was funny too, but not as funny as the Mayflies. I don’t remember the third at all.)

From Press Watch. Suggestions to more wimpy news media about how to report on the Evil Emperor

From Bowers News Media. Yes, the voters in Virginia overwhelmingly voted for a [temporary) distrct map skewed Democratic – and the Virginia Supreme Court immediatelu struck it down. Bowers News Media is big on sharing things ordinary people can do – some are always not feasible, geographically or physically or budget-wise.

https://www.propublica.org/article/kids-tear-gas-trump-immigration-crackdown
From ProPublica. The war and some other things have kind of pushed this out of the news. It’s not all video – there are just three to scroll down past in order to get to content.

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May 012026
 

Today, in addition to being May Day, is also Law Day in the US.

Yesterday, Joyce Vance made a Substack video with Norm Eisen and April Ryan from The Contrarian, and the subject of James Comey’s new indictment came up. I know almost everyone is still upset with him on account of the 2016 election and “her emails.” But the more time goes by, the less I believe that that remark had anything to do with Hillary’s loss. I think pure misogyny was more than enough to sink her. But I digress. April, who had worked at the FBI when Comey was its Director, said something about him that I didn’t know and you probably don’t either. She said he would take every new hire to the MLK Memorial, and show them the FBI files on Dr. King, and say “This is what overreach looks like.”

From The Conversation. The Panamanian company Congress just authorized to mine the Boundary Waters for copper sulfite may be the most egregious example of this. It doesn’y just pollute the water. It also poisons the air.

As Liza Donnelly points out, Heather Cox Richardson nailed the difference between the two speeches. And Liza goes a bit farther by linking to videos. (This from Borowitz is just a footnote.)

There’s been noise about Rep Chuck Edwards (R-NC) being under ethics investigation, but nothing about why. Unless this is it. Not that this sounds like something Republican would care about. I guess we’ll wait and see.

 

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