2026, August 07, small birds in a bush. The video is a bit dark but at least the closest bird seems like a chickadee and I assume the others are the same (though other tit birds have been known to mingle with other species when feeding.) I kept the sound for bird song, though I cut the clip short when the traffic noises got loud.
Category: Animals
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More Flowers and Insects
A clip from May 9th, 2026. Summer has been blasting hot and busy, and the annual fire season has begun, but here flowers are getting scarce many having gone to seed and dried. I have managed to get more material, but not really processed it, having been preoccupied with getting my Etsy sales channel to EU shape (unless something dramatic happens, over halfway though). However, I have some older clips ready for those times when I need to post something quickly.
Not sure what the purple flowers are but they smell and look kind of like mint. The white flowers are one of the many jasmine smelling species. The big black insect looks like a carpenter bee but I could be wrong.
As for posting, I have also a couple drafts of longer posts that have been waiting for suitable time and reference checks and links, years have taught me not to trust my little bubble brain before publishing. Unless it is listed under Speculative writings or at least Unorthodox Ideas. Wettenhovi-Aspa tag is for deriving meanings from extremely implausible, if not chance associations. Maybe I should one of these days try reductio ad absurdum, but it is very difficult to parody modern world. Which is why I prefer to just do news commentary, as grim as it may from time to time get.
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Small Bird
Just a GIF of a small bird I saw July 23, 2026.

I need better video editing software or a camera with stabilization / gimbal. But I am already usually carrying quite a bit of electronics around.
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July 16th, 2026
Been busy, but managed to get some photography and short video clips, joined three together into a short silent video (standard stabilization artefacts apply), two clips of giant white poppies, probably Romneya or Matilija poppies which are native to California, and one clip of bees foraging in lavender.
I like the floppy petals of the poppies. The lavender and bees seem to be an all year feature – when one lavender bed withers, another seems to begin to bloom somewhere else, if not immediately, then soon.

Not all flowers are showy – here is Plantago (I don’t know the species, but it’s not Plantago major based on the narrow .leaves). I would love to process some day a photo of a Plantago flower from close up, they are quite funky to look at but difficult to photograph so as to show it.
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Skipper Butterfly and Flowers, July 10th, 2026
While walking with intention to snap photos of urban vegetation, I noticed a skipper butterfly within videoing distance. Quickly, a clip before it flies away! It did not. I took a second clip. The butterfly had slightly shifted. I waited and took three more clips in case the butterfly would do something interesting. It id not. It was mostly concentrating on florettes. Eventually, I continued my walk and left the butterfly at it.
A bit of a slow paced video, but maybe somebody will find it ASMR despite the stabilization errors. Maybe I should invest on gimbal, but that would be one extra thing to carry for a rare moment (that will without gimbal be shaky or distorted depending on whether the original or the stabilized clips are used.)
Sucking nectar. Occasionally shifting position.

Some yellow flowers from July 10th, 2026, image cropped and colors adjusted brighter.
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Happy Pentecost!
I don’t have very much topical or important to post as of this morning today, so how about a couple of clips of small woodpecker(s)?
(For those who are interested, here is a link to a selection of topical verses but for TLDR, Pentecost commemorates the event when the Church got upleveled.)
However, a few days earlier (May 22nd), I was walking around looking for pretty plants to photograph, when I heard a racket from the trees, sounded like multiple small birds. I searched for a while and discovered the source of the sound – holes high up in the tree where a small woodpecker was fussing about. A nest of woodpecker chicks plus a parent. Somewhere further away a woodpecker was drumming, as noted by a passerby while I was trying to video.
After some cutting and editing last night, here are the highlights:
This video is silent, commentary removed.
And here is some birdsong. And drumming.
Other than that, I have been selecting and editing photos for POD and tinkering with my writing.
I wonder if I should some day post some of my fiction in this blog? On one hand I am tempted, on the other hand, I am still shy. It took me a long time to start even a blog.

Reddish flowers, May 23rd, 2026, Berkeley, CA
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Polyticks and Tickboxer
I like to follow various conspiracies, adding new and updating old. This spring has seen the surge and updates of the tick conspiracy. I have an impression that already in 1990s there were rumors that new tick borne diseases that caused nasty neurological symptoms and could trigger meat allergies were promoted or even developed by shadowy forces, using polyticks, i.e., multiple bloodsucking parasites as their vector.
Fast forward this spring and we are seeing the anti-meat globalists trying to reduce greenhouse gases by forcing tick-borne alpha-gal sensitivity on masses to stop them from eating meat, leading to natural demand destruction for beef and thus reduction of herd size. Tick-borne diseases are presumed to have been developed in US bioweapons laboratories and then used against US population. An alternative or additional conspiracy rumor is that a biotech company just developed a vaccine against a tick-borne disease and is now looking for a market (probably with government help – who else is going to allow and even support such a marketing campaign, at least if past vaccination manias are considered as a model for government response?)
In this spring, a twist that is novel to me, is the tickboxes; someone(s) are spreading secretly on farms boxes filled with ticks to sicken cattle and/or people. A recent X posting showed a purported tickbox, from which fled a swarm of dark dots said to be ticks, when the presenter nudged the box with his boot. The video was too unclear for me to say whether the dots were polyticks, some other arthropods like ants, or AI-generated fake. The text in the X posting reads like AI generated, the exhortation to share this information sounds like someone is running a psy-op campaign, and there is very little information of the original author (aside from their X profile), so I would take this posting with a couple of lb sized grain of salt.
But if we toy with the idea that there was a bunch of ticks in a box (as in not an invented psy-op lie), even if the horde was of little eight-legged bloodsuckers, they might not originate from government (or globalist) bioweapons laboratory (just spitballing from position of near total ignorance), it could also be that boxes like that are cozy safe havens for ticks against natural predators like opossums and Guinea hens, and scattered to promote the spread and welfare of polyticks, as only safe boxes for the native ticks to nest would need to be provided.
And to continue with the speculation, if there is a government conspiracy to spread boxes of diseased ticks in the rural parts of USA, this means that in addition to myriads of boxtickers, there must be at least one tickboxer employed by the USGOV to package the polyticks for the people.
On a more serious note, how low has trust in government sunk that there is a growing community that believes that government spends money and effort to grow ticks to bring disease and death to its citizens and cattle?
And even if there is a budget for tickboxer + ticks and boxes (and diseases for the ticks), how likely the money would be to reach its intended purpose rather than being whittled away by layers of bureaucracy, AKA the myriads of boxtickers, with the remnants wasted or defrauded by all the well-connected subcontractors, middle-men, and other looters of government coffers? Think of the California High-Speed Rail, or military’s F-35 program.
And considering the sheer incompetence and mendacity of the government organizations, such as FEMA (e.g., 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the 2024 North Carolina winter flood), what would be the odds of success of a tickboxing campaign?
I was thinking about adding a video or a GIF of a cute little velvet mite I saw last summer (not involved in the tick plot), but my internet is acting up again, and I am writing this from a coffee shop. Plus there is no need to besmirch the innocent and harmless little critter with this sordid mess, I think velvet mites are simpatico.
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Itsy Bitsy Spider

Looks like some kind of jumping spider. I like jumping spiders, and running spiders in general, though orb weavers are also cute and useful. This little one went on its way after videos and photography.
Looked around, paused, moved at a lively pace.
Filmed 2026, February 28. I stabilized and rotated the clip by 180 degrees, to give a better view, and muted the coffee shop and street noises. Then I cut the clip shorter and reduced the resolution to shrink its memory requirements.
All in all, a cute and personable thing to encounter. Jumping spiders are reputedly smart for arthropods (an example link), and the behavior of this little runner gave an impression of observation of it’s environment.
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Squirrel Eating Ginkgo Fruit
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.
And Happy Chinese New Year, too!
