A selection of clips showing types of views of different types of trees taken February 21st, 2026, in Berkeley, CA, silent and stabilized post filming (with the known artefacts).
The spring is bursting fully. On 22nd, it was tee shirt weather and small birds were very active and singing. Heard a hummingbird, saw and heard many small titmouse and sparrow sized birds, even a very small woodpecker, and a hawk and later a pair of probable hawks. And a seagull, which is sort of normal for a seaside city. I think the small birds have a mating season.
Crows, too, seem restless, but that might be them ending their winter. Back in Finland, the local crows (gray and black, not all black as in Berkeley) would form larger flocks and many migrated south during winter. The crows here seem to have some winter flocking behavior, even though they do not migrate.
The bird activity coincides with the swelling of buds and opening of young leaves in many deciduous trees. The earliest fruit trees which began to bloom weeks ago are finishing their season, as are faster magnolias. It is stressing to think of all the seasonal blooming which I am missing instead of photographing it. But there are new trees coming to bloom, though one magnolia that was among the first to start in my neighborhood is still going strong. Weird to think that spring began in February.
Dappled shadows on tree trunk, blooming fruit tree, redwood with creeping ivy.
Magnolia, February 21st, 2026 (not the one I have been following in my neighborhood)
Click the image above to open a free 48-piece jigsaw puzzle made in Jigsaw Explorer
World is changing too fast nowadays. Events that used to be the news of the month are supplanted by greater events or outrages daily. But a story from Zerohedge alerted me to a local event reported by New York Post, namely a crime in Oakland.
Somebody had stolen the SUV of the mayor of Oakland, former Congress Representative Barbara Lee. The vehicle was recovered hours later from Vallejo, which is a smallish city in Solano County, in North Bay. The mayor said in her statement that “no one in Oakland should have to worry about their car being stolen”, a sentiment which I rather agree, but still the people worry and for good reason. While my car is dented and has a stick shift, there are places in Oakland where I would not park because of bippers.
The presence of bippers is easy to detect by checking the sidewalks and gutters next to parking spots – if they are covered with glass grains from broken side windows, it means a bipper was there since the last street sweeping (which in Oakland happens often enough that the city does not stink like San Francisco used to.) If there are multiple spots with glass gravel indicating multiple cars having been hit, I’d find another street or block to park if possible.
But back to Oakland mayor’s SUV, which was recovered, improving the property crime solving numbers. It is easy for a regular citizen to complain about preferential treatment, but apparently this SUV had a tracer which made it easier to track.
What really piqued my interest was the backstory and the circumstances of the theft. The car thief had spent the Presidents Day weekend squatting in the 11th floor of the City Hall, unnoticed by the security firm hired to guard the city government buildings, and had jimmied the lock of the door to mayor’s office, swiping the keys from there. The security firm has connection with the previous mayor Sheng Thao, to whom the aforementioned SUV had been bought. The SUV had been broken into already during her term in a garage near city hall, and other city hall workers have also complained about the lack of safety for their vehicles. But a suspect in at least this car theft has been arrested, this incident being too much for even California.
And to make this post a bit prettier, I added a GIF of magnolia flowers and a bird, and a video of a couple of clips I took on February 21st of clouds and tree branches in wind, but unlike in most of my videos, I kept the sound because it was mostly birdsong.
The tree writhes strangely, the video stabilization after imaging sometimes causes weird effects.
And here is the birdsong. The clouds are also twisting strangely, but this does not indicate a dimensional portal about to open, just another stabilization artefact.
I have been out of synch for a while, but today I realized that it is Shrove Tuesday, AKA Mardi Gras. In Finland, this day is known as laskiaistiistai, and people used to go on laskiainen downhill sledding (alternatively on laskiaissunnuntai, February 15th this year) and eat laskiaispulla which is sweet wheat bun cut like a burger but filled with whipped cream and marzipan or berry jam. Then begins lent and after that it is again Easter.
Being unprepared, did not eat laskiaispulla, and would not have time for a day of downhill sledding, even if Berkeley weather would have allowed it (hint, there is no snow, though it was hailing a bit.) But I have a number of video clips, some maybe presentable, waiting to be processed and their fates decided, and last weekend I discovered an October 19th, 2025 squirrel eating ginkgo fruit that would be fun to post. While not exactly topical to this religious celebration, here it is, anyways.
I was surprised last year that ginkgo fruits are yellow.
Maybe that should not have been surprising, as their autumn leaves are also yellow.
I am still processing current events, which have been shocking, but I think there is now a change occurring. The old era is crumbling and new will emerge – I see similarities between this change and the change from medieval to Renaissance in that the Renaissance was overhyped as Age of Reason (while in fact, superstitions flourished as did witch hunts and religious wars), just like the current age of atheism has led to a proliferation of cults, superstitions and die-hard fanaticism. Whether the emerging civilization will be more civilized than the dying one is debatable, considering the decreasing literacy rates and the fact that people no longer read much. Worse, critical thinking seems to have been discouraged to make people to conform the centrally managed ideologies, and this has been going on long enough to erode educational standards.
In Finland, which was supposed to have one of the best education systems in the world, some education official had recently stated that the schools should focus on learning processes and how to become good people rather than on concrete skills, which I interpreted as capitulation – children will not learn because they are not able to learn, so they must be taught to learn before they can learn. I did not go to the original news to find out exactly how would the educators grade learning of learning processes and what are the metrics for success but I suspect the standards to be lenient enough to process students out of the system regardless of their actual skills, especially the concrete ones.
Anyone who has discussed with a fundamentalist atheist will soon have realized that their faith is as unshakeable as their urge to convert everyone else, and any doubts about non-existence of God will be met with vehement proselytizing, while any vestige of deistic religious practice will incite their wrath. Ironically, as the old religion fades from mainstream culture, it does not lead to new atheistic world but a hodgepodge of cults, including some seemingly irrational ones.
Combined with decreasing literacy rates, apparent disfavor of critical thinking relative to obedience to centrally directed ideologies, the current system seems to be a perfect incubator for superstitions and cults among masses deprived of their traditional (or any other) culture and seeking meaning to their lives.
It has been written that none should present a problem without offering also a solution. My proposal would be to go medieval, that is reintroduce trivium: logic, grammar and rhetoric, that were the classical curriculum to the modern student body.
Logic, i.e., critical thinking wherein facts could be tested according to a system of formalized structures to detect fallacies, would be absolute minimum. Offshoots of logic, especially arithmetic and natural sciences in general, as well as traditional humanities from times before deconstructionism, would also be useful.
Grammar, especially its application in literacy, is crucial for the functioning of society and of individual within a society. Without ability to communicate clearly, in speaking, reading and writing, information transfer between individuals and generations becomes difficult, as does organizing the societies.
Rhetoric is an obvious application of logic and grammar, but the art of communication is difficult. I have read complaints that modern youth cannot communicate. I interpret those complaints as modern youth having been abandoned without teaching them rhetoric. Without an ability to convey one’s needs and wants, and to persuade others, a person is crippled in a society. Maybe the modern youth have their own society where they communicate amongst themselves, but even then, the intergenerational information transfer has been disrupted. Or, the young today no longer hear the teachings of their forefathers.
In any case, before I got distracted, I meant to post a video of a skipper butterfly in a flower, edited from one taken on October 5th, 2025.
October skipper. Skipper butterflies do not like cold weather, so the temperatures had been quite warm. Now, this winter, the fruit trees and magnolias seem to bloom early.
And I also added a jigsaw puzzle via Jigsaw Explorer.
Bubbles mosaic view of a skipper butterfly on plant. Clicking the above image will lead to 110-piece jigsaw puzzle, courtesy of Jigsaw Explorer.
Though it is February, fruit trees are blooming in Berkeley. As are many magnolias. White, pink and purple, I have not seen yellow magnolias yet. Nisperos I saw in flower already before February, and some Vaccinium-type bushes are towards the end of their flowering. Citruses, too, are blooming, though they tend to do it year around.
I expected my Winter Flowers in Berkeley-photos to be scarce but the weather has been clement. It has been a T-shirt weather Saturday and Sunday, monarch butterflies are fluttering again, and hummingbirds are in full swing. As is the spring chorus in general. I think the spring is early this year.
Blooming fruit tree, February 7th, 2026, Berkeley, CA
This week has been very strange, even by 2020s standards.
Sap on a tree trunk, August 22nd, 2025, in evening sun light. Just something pretty.
I have been employed since September, a couple of temp extensions and I got another extension last week. Have been working hard to justify my continued paycheck, so posting has been sparse. It will probably continue to be so, until I get things stabilized.
The inflation is getting out of hand. On Thursday, the gold visited briefly at about 5600$ per troy ounce, silver tested 120+ range before settling below 120$. In the cafeteria, where I often go for lunch, the cheap meal of 2 pieces of chicken, a piece of corn bread and some side was 20$, a bigger meal 35$ and there was an 8-piece 70$ option, too. Then on Friday an incomprehensible double digit collapse of gold and silver prices, some say 8 – 10 sigma event. Also crypto went down, hard. The metal move was some times blamed on nomination of Warsh as the next Chairman of the Fed, but metals don’t move that much for nearly anything, at least they did not used to. People online grumble about market manipulation, but even that does not make sense, unless the economy is very, very fragile. A few years back, I could not imagine an event smaller than WWIII moving metal prices that fast. No, scratch that. A few years back, I could not imagine metal prices to move that fast. Period. However, I doubt the chicken will be cheaper next week.
Greenland forgotten, our troops are amassing near Gulf of Persia. Government is currently under partial shutdown. On the top of the shutdown, the Federal administration is trying to stop disbursements to the states that refuse to investigate various forms of fraud on social services, health care, etc. There is a simmering tension that might flare at any provocation back to armed violence – the states are choosing their sides whether to support the Feds on immigration enforcement or not.
Meanwhile, there is the Moltbook issue. To me, it is unclear if this is a clever community make-believe or whether the AI agents are gaining autonomy or something between. Some in the Internet are screeching about Skynet, but it is the reality of our energy infrastructure that is a kicker. For example, there were over 180k households without electricity in Tennessee after a winter storm, tens of thousands still today, though the repairs are ongoing relatively fast. Even under the best of the weather conditions, many interconnects are under enormous strain between the Green New Leap that has destabilized the grid and the AI server farms which require power of millions of households. If I were a betting person, I would place money on the complexity collapse over the shiny AI future.
So, while charging my phone, I decided to use the time for making a no-context video of clips taken August 22nd, 2025, and then start writing a blog post as a place for that video.
Seed structures fluttering in wind, black ants on a tree (some sap)
Too drained to work on long posts, I’d like to comment that purple magnolias have began to bloom, as have fruit trees (of plum, cherry, etc. variety – nispero blooms I have seen weeks ago, and citruses seem to flower year around.) Maybe I’ll post a photo or two, but here is a gif of sunlight flickering against redwood trunk, December 06th, 2025.
December 6th is the Finnish Independence Day, though they have amended their constitution so that they are members of EU.
Moreover, soon after the war in Ukraine flared up in 2022, and Finland also joined NATO. I don’t know what the current stance of the Finnish government is, but lately the Finnish media seemed to be on Denmark’s side against USA over Greenland despite NATO (US) having full use of Finnish military bases, at least as far as I could tell. The two officers Finland sent to Greenland returned back, mission over. Finnish news feeds are back to Russia and Ukraine, though recent headlines are mentioning possible peace negotiations. Hopefully, there will be peace soon, though I would not quite optimistic yet.
What may have motivated the peace negotiations is the parlous shape of Western economies, meaning our ability to finance wars is becoming limited. I would prefer a peace treaty over total economic collapse as a method for ending that dreadful war, though.
Yes, I know, there has been wars or military action and rumors of those, including Finland participating in something military in Greenland, the metal prices have seen bobbing up and down, though more up, food prices seem to be creeping up, too, but I have been too busy-tired to feel like posting anything.
However, I want to post something that makes me happy, and during past couple of months, one of those things has been sweetgum or Liquidambar trees. There is about a month of bright colors, when their leaves turn, mostly reds or dark oranges with lighter tones and yellows mixed in. Among the leaves that somewhat resemble those of maple, there are green spiky balls, that darken as the seedpods ripen. Winter winds (at least here in Bay Area) tear the leaves down, different trees progressing at different rates leaving dark spiky balls hanging from dark branches.
Here is a short video made of clips taken on January 2nd 2026.
PlanktonPunkt 