Tootfinder

Calamus 13 "Calamus taste"
A celebration of nature in March, an entreaty to enjoy and nurture growth. Both botanical and metaphorical, our personal growth. Some lovely turns of phrase:
Gushes from the throats of birds
Frost-mellowed berries
But I'm here for the gay reading. The erotic is latent in all this burgeoning spring. But it's also more explicit. That first line "Calamus taste" sure is promising if we understand Calamus as a phallic symbol. Then there's the "pinks of love", the "young persons wandering out in the fields", the "love-buds".
It's not porny or anything but it's a little horny. The physical exuberance of springtime.
This poem got edited heavily down in later versions, and perhaps it needed it. But he eliminated one of my favorite lines, "I must change the strain". Gonna drop that in conversation next time I need to change the topic.

Graureiher am Hohenzollernkanal

The risk of famine increases in Gaza
as the Israeli government’s blockade of nearly all aid to Gaza approaches its third month. 
“I felt this almost sense of panic as every day went by without food let in,”
Ash Bohrer, a Chicago-based Jewish activist in the Palestinian solidarity movement,
told me as she outlined how high the stakes are as the genocide continues in Gaza.
“When I first heard it, my initial thought was … if there is some way I can use my body,&quo…

BREAKING: Jewish Leaders in Chicago Embark on Indefinite Hunger Strike
As part of a nationwide mobilization, six members of Jewish Voice for Peace are putting their bodies on the line in solidarity with Gazans suffering from hunger during Israel’s blockade. By engaging in this risky form of protest, the strikers are continuing a long tradition of calculated starvation as a method of forcing a public confrontation with crises.

Thinking about this 1997 Edmund White quote on Fresh Air today, talking about casual gay sex in the 1970s.
Nor did all this sex preclude intimacy. For those who never lived through that period, and most of those who did, are dead, the phrase "anonymous sex" might suggest unfeeling sex, devoid of emotion. And yet, as I can attest, to hole up in a room at the baths with a body, after having opened it up and wrung it dry, to lie, head propped on a guy's stomach just where the tan line bisects it, smoke a cigarette, and talk to him late into the night and early into the morning about your childhood, his unhappiness and love, your money worries, his plans for the future. Well, nothing is more personal, more emotional.
(This is him reading a quote from his novel The Farewell Symphony)

Brazil set to blast 35 km river rock formation for new Amazon shipping route https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/brazil-set-to-blast-35-km-river-rock-formation-for-new-amazon-shipping-route/

Brazil set to blast 35 km river rock formation for new Amazon shipping route
The Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA, approved a license to blast a natural rock barrier on the Tocantins River in Pará state to enable boats to pass during the dry season, as part of wider efforts to build a massive waterway for commodities.

I talk a lot about AK-xolotl and I finally got my Switch to send a video to my phone decently. Maybe I'll post a few more. Think AK-xolotl is on several consoles, it's on Steam, etc. Here's a regular level with some enemies, etc. A blast of a game. Addictive. One more run!
#AKxolotl #TwinStickShooters

Sonnet 043 - XLIII
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made

There is N O T H I N G more irritating than opening an app that has a notification badge, reading all the visible notifications, looking at all the possible tabs, opening any kind of inbox, viewing your profile and settings and all that, and STILL!!! you can't clear that blasted badge.
NOTHING!

So far the Social Security agency’s core functions — like sending monthly checks to 74 million Americans — have remained largely intact.
But under pressure from Musk’s team, nearly half of the Social Security Administration’s 140 senior executives, and thousands of employees overall, have taken buyouts or retired.
As many as 12 percent of staff members, out of a bureaucracy that numbered around 57,000 people, are expected to depart their jobs as part of DOGE’s cost-cutting plan.

Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security
The drama offers a case study in how Elon Musk’s team sought to run a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts — and how longtime employees responded.

Sonnet 043 - XLIII
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made