A Black Phoebe spotted on my walk to lunch a few days ago, near an office building. It perched there, maybe 10 feet away from me, and actually stayed put while I walked around looking for different angles. Then it flew up into a tree.
Clouds flow over the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles this morning. We’ve had a decent amount of rain this December, and snow in the mountains, leading to hopes for a wet winter and enough water to store for next summer.
Oh, and skiing for those who are into that sort of thing 😁
A bright sundog next to a glass-sided building. The sun is off to the left out of frame. The sundog had a bit more color and more of the spectrum in it as seen through my polarized sunglasses, so I kind of wish I’d taken a shot through one of the lenses, but at least you can see how bright it was.
I haven’t adjusted the color on this image at all -– except for cropping, it’s straight out of my phone.
A 22° sun halo.
Facebook still insists it’s totally OK for them to help politicians lie to you for $$$.
Not just misleading ads, or controversial opinions, or varying interpretations, but outright lies. Totally fine with it!
Facebook says they don’t want to be in the business of fact-checking, but they have policies against false commercial advertising. Truth in advertising is critical because commerce requires trust and informed choices.
SO. DOES. DEMOCRACY.
It’s even more important in politics.
I swear I’m not trying to turn this into a squirrel-themed blog, but here’s another encounter that I thought was worth sharing.
Most of the squirrels I see are really skittish around people. This one, in a city park, walked up to me and posed. I’m not sure what it was doing in the first shot, because it can’t have been trying to psych out a boxing opponent. But a few seconds later, after I’d knelt down with the camera for a better shot, it adjusted its pose into a perfect Oliver Twist, “Please sir? May I have some more?”
Tough Squirrel and Please, sir? on Flickr. Also posted on Pixelfed and on iNaturalist.
I saw an article about open space preservation efforts in Newport Beach, and decided to look up the area on maps’ satellite view. Looking around nearby areas in Newport, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Tustin, Orange, etc, I realized: the timeline of residential development in central Orange County is actually visible.
I don’t know how well it tracks for other areas. I’m less familiar with southern Orange County, for instance, and areas from Santa Ana northward into the LA Basin are much flatter and were largely built-up by the time I started paying attention.
