When In Doubt, Look For The Wonder We're calling this an Earth Day post. (Just go with it.)

The last few weeks have been heavy around here. (Around a lot of places.) But today, I’m looking for the wonder.

#earthday

jasonbittel.substack.com/p/when-in-do...

🐾 oh hey, you dropped this 👑

a duck mascot wearing a purple scarf and a black top Alt: an animatronic duck’s robotic facial expressions appear to be glitching in a creepy yet somehow still adorable fashion

This Earth Day, I’ve been stymied by almost every attempt to interact with normal modern conveniences. Online forms & payments, ATMs (went to three plus a live teller), gas pumps (still have not pumped any gas), and more. Has this planet decided to chaotically dismantle our mess

Rad 🔥

Finally been absorbing this deeply inspiring book. Fitting that I'll finish it today on Earth Day. Covering far more than rivers themselves, it explores what it means to be a living part of our world, and our relationships & responsibilities to the more-than-human collaborators sharing this journey.

“it is well to hear, to become aware of, the operations of water among whose spider lacings by chance we live…”

James Agee in 1941, superb on the life and liveliness of rivers.

A river as a “huge, casual and aloof creature”. That trifecta of adjectives (not to mention the choice of noun)…

Hello—here’s the official trailer for UNDERLAND, based on my book of the same name, dir. by Rob Petit, with a haunting, glittering score by @hannahpeel.bsky.social, & the ‘Storyteller’ voiced by Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest). Hope you like it.

In UK/Irish cinemas 27 March.

Incredible book, and I yearn to catch the film adaptation.I hope we'll see some North American screenings.

🖤🐦‍⬛🖤

Christopher Walken says bugs bunny is one of his favorite actors he told Ben Stiller that "a lot of times i've played roles as if I was bugs bunny... but nobody knew"

dudes rock

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one with the zaniest vibes 🌀🛸🐺

A sleek and slender wasp with all sorts of intimidating angles, sharp wings, long yellow-and-black legs, pictured in yes, the mud.

I guess it's mud dauber season here in my little non-airtight cabin. I don't know whether they've been coming in through the cracks, or whether they're hatching indoors, but I've gotten the chance today to escort several of these pretty kitties to freedom in the great outdoors.

(photo: wikipedia)

🤘🌏🤘

I’m on a quasi-sabbatical, having walked away from the soul-sucking marketing work that’d been paying the bills in favor of bartending and handymanimal stuff, which has freed my brain to focus on more rewarding elective pursuits. And yet I still feel overwhelmingly aimless.

I would read for 6 hours a day; resume my past successful but abandoned fitness routine; learn or perfect new and favorite recipes; attend every live symphony, play/musical, and band within reasonable driving distance; truly relearn to garden; and sleep thru every night like a BOSS.

Celebrating the One Rabbit Year

2026 is the year of One Rabbit [Ce Tochtli] according to the Aztec calendar. The deities celebrating this year are collectively called Centzon Totochtin, or “countless [400] rabbits.” They are gods of pulque (octli), drunkenness, and fertility.

🤠

I did once vomit custard on my grandfather after he insisted I try it and, once I’d started and found it unpalatable, ordered me to finish it. That’ll larn him.

Gotta be honest, I’ve eaten some weird shit, all on purpose: I like to try things. My folks owned a NICE restaurant; growing up, us kids tried everything, but didn’t have to eat things we didn’t like.

Objectively worst food was my grandmother’s earnest attempts at cooking perfectly normal meals.

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

Smelly hard-boiled egg yolk. If that vile sulfury nastiness is on table, I lose my appetite and have to leave.

"I've sometimes been accused of degrading mankind, or insulting human dignity, of making man beastly," he said.
"This surprised me because I like animals and I feel proud to call myself one. I've never looked down upon them, so to call human beings animals is not, to me, degrading."

Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98 Morris, who was also a surrealist painter and broadcaster, was best known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape.

Aw man, just found out Desmond Morris has died today. What a legend.

🐾 Urban wildlife 4 life 🐾

Gonna turn this PDX coyote guy into a silkscreen & start making 4”x6” postcards of him sometime in the next coupla months

Birch themed leshen

What tree should I do next?

A close crop of a digital sketch of a WIP of an anthro bird

Feet pics.

Seagulls won't steal your food if you put googly eyes on your lunchbox

They've tested this in the UK (Cornwall and Devon).
It doesn't seem to work on all seagulls, though, half of them flew away and didn't come back, while the other half didn't care

(paper) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I used to work for A Major Theme Park where we weren’t usu allowed to sit/lie down in costume while performing or on break, but we occasionally did huge overnight filmings where whenever we had a significant break we’d all just stay in costume and nap together in one big platonic cuddle puddle.

I used to work for A Major Theme Park where we weren’t usu allowed to sit/lie down in costume while performing or on break, but we occasionally did huge overnight filmings where whenever we had a significant break we’d all just stay in costume and nap together in one big platonic cuddle puddle.

never underestimate the power of talking to the birds, meeting the birds, loving the birds.

they will love you too