Ash Ponders is looking for quick photo gigs

My uncle got me a cool flash defuser system for making macro photos on the field. 🥹 But I don’t actually have a field macro lens. 🫠 I use bellows at home in the studio (or in a field studio). I need to raise funds to afford the right lens. So print sale. 🤗 Get a good chunk off with “prouduncle”.

Phởuillon cube

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

Google was really trying to hide its water use figures, to the degree that it got the council to try to keep its water use figures secret. The community finally got the actual numbers and found out Google was using 29 percent of the water in the community. www.wired.com/story/what-t...

NEW: Ingram, Texas, was just rebuilding from a devastating flood when its tiny police department enrolled in ICE’s 287(g) deportation program. Within a year, cops would hand over the equivalent of 10% of the town. with @nytimes.com

They should put something in the vax to help you know it’s working, something like poprocks.

Solving mysteries? Ok maybe dangerous, but whatever. I just think there should be an oversight committee or at the very least a sober adult in the room before three children ducks rewrite history. Their weird drunk trillionaire uncle doesn’t count.

Reminder: a useful gender-neutral term for henchman or henchwoman is Goon.

Give them a C-O-N-T-R-A-C-T: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are unionizing 19thnews.org/2026/10/dall... via @19thnews.org

Confession for apostates.

The police officer who shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley outside a Walmart in Mississippi has resigned from the department

A small grove of historic American chestnut trees has become the site of resistance against an AI data center in West Virginia. @samleecole.bsky.social has more. Read now: www.404media.co/west-virgini...

Hard to believe, but the largest rodents in the world are addicted to coffee. They’re really into capyccinos.

In 2000 the National Writers Union @nwu.org pushed for $1/word for freelance journalists. If it'd worked out, we'd be making $2/word today. But that's not what happened. Freelance worker-organizers did a deep dive into @fspnwu.bsky.social's rates database objectivejournalism.org/2026/09/free...

This is terrifying. A bird flu outbreak has been raging uncontrolled on a mink farm for months. Experts fear it could spark a devastating human pandemic. And officials are refusing to act. What a story from @natlash.bsky.social: www.propublica.org/article/bird...

Big news here in Brazil: Joice Hasselman, a top former ally of the Bolsonaro family and right wing congresswoman, gave an interview today endorsing Lula and calling Flavio Bolsonaro a corrupt gangster who tried to kill her www.brasil247.com/entrevistas/...

This is one of the most holy sh*t stories I’ve ever read in my life. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

Goddamn it, the trickster wood gnomes are back

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

A million North Carolinians have voted in this year’s election. One of them—just one!—cast a ballot from Antarctica. I found him. And I found out how he did it. www.ncrabbithole.com/p/one-person...

@protectparks.bsky.social comes out against #BAAJA: "As written, the bill would weaken the laws that give the public, Tribes and park experts a voice in decisions affecting places from historic sites to Yellowstone’s geysers."

can you guys stop being fucking freaks about adam and lisa now www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUXE...

Remains incredible to me that Vox basically pioneered a whole style of YouTube video now used by the biggest newsrooms in the world, and have kind of totally abandoned it www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk8M...

happy Andy Warpigs day to all who celebrate youtu.be/YO5HCQq5r00?...

Found a manuscript I shelved in 2006. Remembering some @mdbell79.bsky.social advice, I found 26 instances of “thrum” in 213 pages. lol. Maybe this has been in the drawer for a reason.

There's a spooky season version of an early talk. I think this was at Public Works. Clubs are better than hotel ballrooms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl9v...

So much broken stuff this morning. Presumably because the web admins are proactive and smart. Still, painful.

Reading a 1967 article on branding is very grounding. "These guys who are good at graphic design made us some graphics and it makes our business look better and creates a more consistent impression." We've strayed so far from the light. Text: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

New: We found cops who kept using Flock to spy on women after they left the force. One used it for five years after retirement, tracking his wife during a custody battle. Another ran searches while he was suspended (and later fired) after killing a 15-year-old boy. Free to read: wapo.st/3UEwWU7

30 ago I convinced my small circle of primary school almost cools that I wrote an album that’d just come out. “Look, it has my name right on the cover.” —what’s 1977? “My favorite number” —who is the girl from mars? “Laura, but don’t tell her!” —why do you sound weird? “Oh, my mum’s Irish” —cool!

NEW: After wildfires scarred the Sacramento Mountains above Ruidoso, New Mexico, the community was under heightened threat of catastrophic flooding. Officials were aware but continued to promote the town to tourists who were oblivious to the danger.

“There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as before an ancient friend.” — James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

A film by my friend Erin O’Connor.

www.yahoo.com/news/politic...

I gave $1000 because trans journalists need support. We cis people need trans journalists to help us better understand the world! Please join me in supporting the TJA.

Dr Gordon-Reed and I kicked it by the pool while she was in Arizona on family vacation for Cactus League a few months ago.

If you aren't posting on Nextdoor, you aren't where the people are at.

20 on four does fuck all these days.

Powerful work from @reuters.com here: "Reuters consulted with two dozen climate researchers and analyzed temperatures around the globe for every hour of every day since 1960. From those results, we developed a new concept: the “heat storm.”" www.reuters.com/investigates...

Huge follow-up reporting to my scoop: The Guardian confirmed America Next—the conservative nonprofit founded by Bobby Jindal that was offering students $ to disrupt El-Sayed events—paid a firm registered to Tommy Teepell’s dad Timmy $250k for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed.

As the province prepared for the results of the historic vote, Canada’s National Observer's @zoemas0n.bsky.social travelled to Fort McMurray to gauge the appeal of separatism in Alberta’s oilpatch. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/10/19/n...