Hmmm. It seems that the parent has decided the kids have had enough, and gobbles down the biggest fish before they have a chance at it. Of course, it’s as big as they are!

After 5 years, we have a full nest again, and this time it’s on my side of the lake. Here’s the best shot I’ve gotten yet of the biggest of at least three nestlings. They may be small, but their voices are mighty. When they’re hungry, the whole world knows.

I took this video yesterday right after the parent landed. You can hear the immediate calls for instant feeding. The parent, however, is nonplussed, and takes their time coughing up the fish. And yes, I really do mean coughing it up.

The heron is preening after spending most of the day on the nest. I could have cropped the picture much closer than I did but I wanted to show the nest. If you enlarge the pic to the largest size, you can see how intricate it is, and how many little perks there are for the kids. There’s shady spots, and even some strategically placed leaves to give a casual observer the impression of presence where there is none. If you come in really close, you can see at least one very small young heron in the picture. They’re really still too small to photograph coherently, but I know what I’m looking for so I keep at it, hoping for that one magic tiny great blue heron photo.

More to come…I’ve got over 1,000 shots but only a few worth publishing right now.

It has burned through at least 18,000 acres, including Sycamore Canyon and Wood Canyon, which used to have deer, bobcats, butterflies and wildflowers in them. Now I’m sure they’re a charred mess. I don’t even want to know what they look like, to be honest.

I’m pissed that our firefighters didn’t have the resources they needed right out of the gate to get this thing under control before it mushroomed into a habitat-killer. I’m going to be even more pissed if I find out it was arson, which wouldn’t surprise me given that at least two fires have been started near freeways heading uphill — this fire and the one in Chevy Chase canyon in Glendale, not far from where I grew up.

Yeah, I know conventional wisdom is that it’s all about the Santa Ana winds, but we’ve had this weather pattern for at least a year now and this is the first time a bunch of fires have sprung up out of it. I’ve heard someone tossed a lit cigarette out of their window too. Really? Someone is stupid enough to do that right where it would catch an entire canyon on fire on a day when the Santa Anas are howling?

I suspect arson. But even if it was arson, I remember the times where we had enough forestry resources to be pro-active about brush clearance and fire breaks.

Not this time. And it sucks.

If you leave me a reply or include me in a conversation on Twitter, it’s unlikely you will receive a reply from me.

Do not take it personally. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m tired of the constant trolling and gaming of my Twitter interactions. I’m tired of expressing an unpopular opinion or refusing to go with the pack and being labeled a divider.

I’m tired of watching people act as apologists for people who do bad things. Really bad things. Criminally bad things. I am not speaking of interpersonal conflicts. I am talking about the exploitation of children. If that’s who people want to follow and defend, they have every right.

All of these things are perfectly acceptable behaviors online. But to me, they’re toxic, divisive, and an indication of a dying community.

Zach Green said the truth of his efforts would be revealed in the fruit borne of them. Division, dissent, and aggressive, ugly behavior is the fruit I see. But he was right. By their fruit you shall know them.

Enjoy. I have no interest in spending my time inhaling toxic interactivity. Life is too short.

Like I said, it’s me. Not you.

via How to become internet famous for $68 – Quartz

Swallow is a pure product of the Internet: a “speaker and thinker,” who specializes in “re-imagining self in the online age,” an apparent star of the prestigious TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference, and a hit at Austin’s annual art, technology and music event, South By South West (SXSW). His Wikipedia biography explains why: Swallow is “a Mexican-born, American motivational speaker, consultant, educator, and author, whose speeches and publications focus on understanding modern culture in the age of social networking, globally interconnected media, user generated content and the Internet,” who has “dedicated himself to helping others know more about how media and personality can be manipulated in the 21st Century.” Famous for its “neutral point of view,” Wikipedia also reports that Swallow’s opinions are controversial in some quarters, especially his prediction that “the disassociation of self would lead to a revision of the standard definition of Multiple Personality Disorder to include selves that only manifest in the online world.” He can be expected to take up this argument in his book, Self: Imaginary Identities in the Age of The Internet, due out later this year, something that his Wikipedia biography, his official web site (santiagoswallow.com) and his Twitter feed all confirm.

There’s just one thing about Santiago Swallow that you won’t easily find online: I made him up. Everything above is true. He really does have a Twitter feed with tens of thousands of followers, he really does have a Wikipedia biography, and he really does have an official web site. But he has never been to TED or South By South West and is not writing a book. I—or rather he—flat out lied about that. (Editor’s note: Santiago Swallow’s Twitter account was suspended after the publication of this piece.)

Go read the whole thing. For the low price of 68  bucks, thousands of followers and instant celebrity. Follow a few key accounts, and you’re good to go…lots of “cred” to go with the disguise.

Which is why Twitter is useless now.

Just received from a friend:

There is an on going and highly distributed, global attack on WordPress installations at every known web host to crack open admin accounts and inject various malicious scripts.

In a detailed analysis of the attack pattern it was found out that most of the attack was originating from CMSs (mostly wordpress). Further analysis revealed that the “admin” accounts had been compromised (in one form or the other) and malicious scripts were uploaded into the directories.

Today, this attack is happening at a global level and wordpress instances across hosting providers are being targeted. Since the attack is highly distributed in nature (most of the IP’s used are spoofed), it is making it difficult for us to block all malicious data.

This is the reason why some servers have gone down in recent days.

To ensure that your websites are secure and safeguarded from this attack, we recommend the following steps:

Read More…

I’ve heard about sites bending under the load, having admin panels disabled, and/or passwords cracked. Can’t recommend highly enough that anyone with a WordPress blog follow these instructions. At the very least, do a site backup, because I speak from experience when I say that failure to do that will cause you a lot of grief down the road.

Lee Fang’s new book “The Machine” is a must-read for anyone who wants a firm grasp on politics on and off line. I’ve already reviewed it on Crooks and Liars so I won’t rehash that here. 

One of the most compelling chapters in his book concerns the right-wing tactic of dividing the left. Using the public option in the health care debate as an example, Lee goes through the steps taken to make sure the left was battered and divided at the end.

During the financial reform debate, a group emerged called “Stop Too Big To Fail”. They ran ads against the Dodd-Frank legislation, set up a Facebook group, issued press releases, and wrote blog posts on Daily Kos and FireDogLake promoting the idea that the Dodd-Frank legislation didn’t go far enough so it should simply be killed outright.  

Lee writes in his “K Street” chapter:

The group attacked the bill from the left, running $1.6 million worth of ads in Nevada, Virginia and Missouri asking constituents to call Democratic senators and tell them to “vote against this phony ‘financial reform.’ Support real reform, stop ‘too big too fail.’”

[...]

Instead of calling for stricter amendments, the ads simply called for killing the bill….

Complaints that the bill did not do enough to deal with the problem of overly large banking institutions caused great concern for liberals who appeared to have been won over by the Stop Too Big to Fail campaign.” 

Finally, Daily Kos and FDL posters called out the bloggers promoting STBTF on the sites. It was later revealed that the two bloggers were Robert Johnson and Jim Conran, front group lobbyists with large corporate clients all over the country. Conran was paid by Mercury Insurance Group in California to put together a campaign to try and push through a ballot measure to weaken regulations on auto insurers in the state. Other projects include pimping Splenda, and a group called “Consumers for Cable Choice.”

They succeeded, too, on the Dodd-Frank legislation. I still hear sighs about how the banks got away with murder without any attention given to how that goal was accomplished. Johnson and Conran were part of an effort conducted by DCI Group managing director Oliver Wolf. DCI’s most recent high profile campaign was the Pete Peterson “Fix the Debt” campaign.

The Stop Too Big to Fail campaign is but one of many run by K Street lobbyists, the Chamber of Commerce, and right wing operatives. It’s not paranoid to question a campaign that mushrooms from nowhere, suddenly gains a large following and a group of amazingly loyal followers who will not hesitate to shove people out of the way who ask questions. 

These campaigns succeed because they present themselves as someone on our side. Someone who agrees with us but goes out of their way to do harm to meaningful efforts to get some meaningful legislation, however imperfect, through Congress.

I see it online,  I see it on the blogs, I see it in the media, and I see it on social media, particularly Twitter. Characteristics include constant negativity with no affirmative suggestions or ideas for how to fix what they’re complaining about, a near-constant and strident stream of anti-government messages wrapped in the issue of the day. Recent examples include tweets calling the president a traitor for putting chained CPI on the table. He’s not a traitor. He’s just not doing what he said he would do, and what he is doing is bad, bad policy. Positive pressure isn’t calling him a traitor, it’s calling for action to be heard on why we disagree. Respectfully. 

I’m sure there are campaigns afoot now over the gun legislation being debated in the Senate, the immigration bills being prepared for introduction into Congress and of course, the budget. I’m not saying every left-side critic is an astroturf lobbyist by any stretch. But watch for the ad campaigns and see how they dovetail with messaging from so-called lefties.

Beware, and be aware.