Bewick's wren, Thryomanes bewickii or Carolina wren, Thryothorus ludovicianus, but I'm not sure. They often visit around my tiny house and porch catching insects and spiders.
“Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays that live around the world’s coral reefs are threatened with extinction with potentially dire knock-on effects for ecosystems.”
‘Extinction crisis’ of sharks and rays to have devastating effect on other species | The Guardian
“Riot police backed by bulldozers removed activists from buildings in the village with only a few left in trees and an underground tunnel by last weekend, but protesters including Thunberg remained.”
German police detain Greta Thunberg in German coal protests | Reuters
The red-bellied woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus. I see and hear these pretty woodpeckers all of the time, one of my favorite neighbors! The male has red from the beak all the way back.
HashPhotos Review
One of those tasks I’ve never been consistent at doing is culling duplicate or near duplicate images from my Photos library. It’s been on my mind recently that I need to tidy up and bring in some older photos stored on a backup drive in my old Lightroom and old Aperture libraries.
HashPhotos was mentioned on a recent episode of the iPadPros podcast and it’s proving to be a fantastic compliment to Apple’s Photos app. I’m not a fan of Adobe’s subscription model so I don’t use Lightroom which many use for this kind of management.
HashPhotos is an ideal tool for finding exact duplicates and very similar, near duplicate images. The app will scan your photos library then present what it found allowing you to browse through with similar images side by side with the option to enlarge them for magnified comparison. It works very well for zooming in both images to the same spot and same magnification at the same time allowing you to determine, for example, which images have the sharpest focus.
HashPhotos can also be used alongside of Photos with it’s own, additional metadata options such as Memo and keywords. Unfortunately this metadata seems somewhat limited in usefulness. The keywords assigned are not written to the photos database so it will only work in HashPhotos. But it is very easy to add keywords to batches and navigating the library with keywords in the app is helpful. I’m not sure what the memo field is useful for.
What is far more useful is batch metadata editing for location and photo date. Perfect for older digital or scanned photos and easy to apply to large numbers of photos at once.
In general the HashPhotos provides a helpful and enjoyable alternative Photos browsing experience. It’s also worth mentioning that the app offers photo editing though I’ve not explored this yet.
What I wanted was an app that would help me work more quickly to find and remove duplicates as well as a way for adding location data and for changing image dates and HashPhotos does exactly this. I’m satisfied!
“Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police”
Climate activists vow to take to streets to stop fossil fuel extraction | The Guardian
“The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business.
Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s | The Guardian
Purple Finch, Haemorhous purpureus
Male
Female
"The Purple Finch prefers nesting in lowland coniferous and mixed forests, avoiding more heavily populated urban areas, but sometimes found in rural residential areas."
If you feel helpless against the fossil fuel destruction, join us in Lützerath from January 12th.
Thousands of people are joining forces: we will block this machine and defeat the coal mafia.
A thread on Mastodon documenting the protests in Lützerath
The northern flicker or common flicker, Colaptes auratus. A beautiful woodpecker and is one of the few woodpecker species that migrate. When I see them, they are often on the ground hunting for insects.
“The COP27 United Nations climate conference held in Egypt in November was a mixed bag (_Nature_ 612, 16–17; 2022). Although countries recommitted to the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement — to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures — they made no commitments to phase out fossil fuels. Some even pushed to abandon the 1.5 °C target, saying it is not realistic on the basis of current trends. Thankfully, they were outnumbered.”
Don’t wait for COP: the end of the fossil-fuel age must start now
“The United Arab Emirates announced Thursday that the head of the state oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the world’s largest oil companies, will lead the COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this year.
The appointment of Sultan al-Jaber as COP28 president-designate provoked a furious backlash from climate activists and civil society groups. Many called on the oil chief to relinquish his role as ADNOC CEO, saying it represents a clear conflict of interest with his COP28 position.”
COP28: UAE sparks backlash by appointing oil chief as president
“Data indicate that the top 2,000 meters gained about 10 zettajoules of heat between 2021 and 2022 — an amount equivalent to about 100 times the world’s electricity generation in 2021.
“The forest is not an object and it is not only the trees that burn. The forest is a composition of living beings that exist in a constant state of exchange, in noisy conversation.”
I only needed to open my window in Brazil to witness the climate crisis | The Guardian
“The plant will produce critical components for solar panels and build complete panels.”
Korean Solar Company Plans to Build $2.5 Billion Plant in Georgia - The New York Times
When Carl Sagan said that we are made of star stuff, well, here's what that looks like on the periodic table of elements and it's fascinating:
Image Credit & License: Wikipedia: Cmglee; Data: Jennifer Johnson (OSU)
“In poorer countries, closer to the equator, the situation is much worse. Increasingly, people cannot return, they cannot adapt. They have to move. In 2023 the issue will become impossible to ignore.”
“Abortion remains a top concern among conservative Republicans and anti-abortion activists alarmed by the backlash to the supreme court decision.”
Republican-controlled House pushes for new abortion restrictions | The Guardian
The moss bell mushroom growing from the moss is really tiny! Probably less than 12 millimeters.
Galerina, Moss Bells
Cladonia, Pixie Cup Lichen
Galerina, Moss Bells
