As you can see, the chicks are in the nursery now. And even though the turkey is two weeks younger than the chickens, she’s nearly as big already. They’ll be confined full-time for two more weeks, then starting on the 19th they’ll be allowed to roam around the chicken yard during the day and only confined at night. Since they’re faster than the adult hens they can get away from aggressive hens in the daytime, whereas at night the door is closed so they’re cooped up in a small space. But after being near them for seven weeks, the adults generally lose interest, so I don’t have a pecking problem. And despite the turkey being younger, her (?) size will soon protect her.
Posts Tagged ‘animals’
Diary #823
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on April 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Throwback Thursday After Midnight
Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, holidays, language, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, Sunset on April 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Censorship [is] wildly popular among…those who believe the most terrifying fact of the world is that others beside themselves have free will.
– “Ship of Fools”
[In contrast with the] cost…[of] second-rate, weeks-old grocery store eggs…two hours of literally shoveling shit twice a year…begins to seem like a good bargain indeed. – “Diary #665”
“Nonprofit” merely refers to the organization; those who run it often make plenty of profit. – “Schadenfreude (#1425)”
Diary #822
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, Sunset on March 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »
As you can see, Axel and Speck are now friends. I can’t really claim any credit; Speck was the one who made all the overtures and slowly got him used to her presence. I apologize for this being a poorly-composed picture; that lump under the blanket is my leg, so if I’d tried to get up to catch the shot from a different angle, they might’ve moved. Alas, Axel has not stopped being aggressive altogether; a few days ago a stray cat came into the atrium and if I hadn’t called him off it would not have been pretty. But one step at a time; at least he leaves the resident cats alone. He is now down to 50 mg of trazodone per day, in a single dose at bedtime; that’s a lot lower than what he was on when he arrived in late November, but it’s still quite high considering he’s on a typical human dose despite having only about a quarter of a typical human body mass. Even so, I’m going to keep weaning him off of it slowly; since I stopped splitting the dose between afternoon and bedtime I’ve noticed he’s a bit more antsy in the afternoons, so just cutting him off would still be a bad idea. His next reduction will be this coming Sunday, down to 25 mg, so we’ll see how that works out and proceed accordingly.
In chick news, I typically keep them inside for three weeks, so they should’ve gone out into the henhouse nursery on Sunday. However, the turkey chick is two weeks younger than the others, and the predicted low on Sunday night was -4o C, so I held off on putting them outside until today (it was only a one-night cold snap). So watch next week for a video of them in the newly-rebuilt nursery, where they’ll spend the next three weeks before I start letting them out in the daytime to mix with the adult hens.
Throwback Thursday Bites
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, Words, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, fascism, language, law, politicians, psychology, Sunset, Twitter on March 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
There really isn’t an excuse for repeated attempts at social engineering that aren’t even tied to some kind of grift, pork, or fascist collaboration.
– “In the Dark”
Being able to look out a window and see grass and trees and animals…is so much better for my mental and spiritual health then being subjected to a “view” which consists of nothing but concrete, glass, and automobiles.
– “Diary #664”
“Innocence” is merely a fanciful euphemism for “ignorance”. – “Tweetenstein”
For me, no sorrow is ever experienced in isolation; new tears falling into the pool immediately cause it to overflow, and then it’s impossible to tell how much of my anguish is due to the proximate source of the grief, and how much is old pain which has never been fully resolved. – “Pool of Tears“
Diary #821
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on March 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Yellowbird wanted to try turkeys again, and they came in Friday so Chekhov brought them over. Unfortunately, by the next day one of them wasn’t doing too well; she seemed uninterested in the food or water even though the other one went right for them. By Saturday evening she was obviously dying, and before 10 PM she was gone; given that like chickens she was living on her yolk until Thursday, my guess is that she had some disorder that kept her from eating as normal. The other one has joined the other chicks, and though she’s smaller right now last year’s experience demonstrated that won’t be for very long. On Sunday I expanded the enclosure, which will give them more room to run around and should help to keep their water from constantly getting fouled; I was lucky enough to catch them in the act in this video, so you can see how the water needs to be cleaned so often at this stage of development. This coming Sunday they’ll be going out into their nursery in the henhouse; this past Sunday I finished mucking out the floor, bringing in fresh hay, rebuilding the nursery (the old chicken wire had corroded badly in our damp climate), and spreading fresh shavings in there so it will be ready for them this weekend. So tune in next week at this same time for a look at the new nursery and its quickly-growing occupants!
Tweet Germ
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged advertising, Aladdin’s Satellite, animals, artificial stupidity, Barbie, blogging, Bluesky, censorship, cops, cosmetic surgery, dirty, Facebook, games, hysteria, imaginative fiction, Iran, language, New York, Not To Be Taken Internally, politicians, prisons, propaganda, psychology, racism, Twitter, video, yellow journalism on March 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »
So many people still feel the need to wait for some business entity to temporarily carry a show they want to see, typically polluted with commercials, when home video has existed in one form or another for over 40 years and most shows can be permanently purchased for the price of a decent meal.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-15T18:02:27.299Z
Trump really does believe what he sees in movies.Here we see him attempting the Jedi mind trick.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-17T03:04:37.228Z
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" – Upton Sinclair
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-17T19:00:27.452Z
People who do not eat chips could be ‘left behind’, says Frito-Lay’s CEO
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-18T19:55:52.543Z
Funniest thing I've seen this week.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-20T08:52:14.194Z
It's garbage. It's shit. It's noise. It's paint hurled at a canvas. It's an overflowing toilet. It's hated by anyone who knows anything about art. It enriches fascists. It ignores consent and good taste. It's stupid. It's bad. It's a disease. It's random. It reeks. It's unwelcome. It's everywhere.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-21T18:50:08.193Z
Over a decade ago, I was warning young women not to let random people who aren't doctors inject filth into their butts.Now I'm warning young men not to hit themselves in the face with hammers.Really, y'all, plastic surgery is not something you can learn by watching YouTube videos.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T18:24:12.301Z
In traditional scholarship, caring about what other educated people thought about one's ideas was called "peer review", and it was considered intrinsic to the process.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T18:39:40.974Z
Concentration camps. Go on, you can type the words if you try. I believe in you. Just keep repeating the mantra, "I have a backbone, I have a backbone, I have a backbone", and you should be able to either type the words or just copy paste from here: "concentration camps".
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T17:54:59.340Z
Stolen. The word you're looking for is "stolen", not "taken away"; that is a term reserved for parents disciplining their own children, ie "she took away his bb gun until he stopped shooting cats". The term for strangers permanently taking others' possessions is "stealing". They STOLE the crayons.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T17:56:06.044Z
Do history classes in New York teach students about William the Acquirer and the Acquisitions of Genghis Khan?
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-27T18:20:18.610Z
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGK…
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T17:52:47.390Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T19:35:46.602Z
Those of you who weren't adults at the time of the Gulf War may not remember that it, more than any other event, created the 24-hour news cycle which has bedeviled the US ever since. It turned CNN from a low-rating sideline into a high-rating main event, and gave us the nauseating term "scud stud".
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-02T17:39:49.401Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-03T18:01:27.024Z
Honestly, I don't know how you young gals put up with this. In my day (points with cane) all we had to worry about beside cops and bad clients was the puritanical old woman whom the publisher of the Yellow Pages (Barry Co IIRC) allowed to ban certain words in escort service ads.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T08:21:33.548Z
Trump replaces Barbie with Mr. Potato Head.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-05T20:02:33.887Z
Challenge for those who aren't religious fanatics: explain to those who *are* that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that the burden of proof is NOT on those demanding such evidence.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T17:31:04.244Z
This is called a "win-win" scenario.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-08T17:44:05.190Z
If they simply phrased the headline truthfully as "women are falling in love with a fantasy of romance", people would recognize that this is nothing new.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T17:41:07.413Z
How quaint. Those of us who still play real old-fashioned D&D are going to start looking like people who bake all of their own bread instead of buying Wonder Bread.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T17:00:58.084Z
There's illiteracy, and then there's *functional* illiteracy, and then there's…whatever this is.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-11T03:40:34.394Z
People who are terminally online habitually type out bizarre, unpronounceable sequences of letters and symbols which attest to how little of their lives are spent actually speaking to normal people in real life.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-11T19:07:51.122Z
Future history students will refuse to believe it when their professors tell them that one of the factors that precipitated the 21st-century dark age was gambling fanatics intentionally falsifying records for profit. Having taught history, I can hear the adolescent voices already: "That's stupid!"
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-13T17:28:41.148Z
On Bluesky this morning, I'm seeing the usual mixture of political & aesthetic posts.On Twitter, I'm being attacked by incensed Millennials apparently unable to comprehend why a 60-year-old woman who neither has kids nor watches TV doesn't know about a gimmick kid food first sold in the late '90s.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-14T18:22:27.167Z
"Police shoot black man in the back."There, FIFY.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-15T17:24:47.878Z
Boo hoo hoo, his diaper is wet and nobody wants to play with him.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-16T02:40:56.057Z
I think @ryanlcooper.com called it correctly: Trump will go down as one of the Great Idiots of History.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-17T17:24:50.126Z
Deep respect for Tony Moore.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-18T17:14:20.090Z
So THIS is where Big Balls went.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-19T17:41:07.379Z
Après moi, le déluge.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T18:08:32.460Z
People idolize flawed human beings, creating statues of them as though they were pharaohs & literally putting them up on pedestals, only to tear them down again as soon as the flawed human is found to have been flawed.We could save so much time and energy by simply not setting up humans as gods.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-21T07:47:25.342Z
Mama Throwback Thursday
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged activism, animals, blogging, cops, holidays, Lack of Evidence, language, law, politicians, psychology, video on March 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The surest way to lose my cooperation is to accompany the demand with a phrase like “you must”, “you are required to”, “it’s the law”, etc. – “Off the Green”
Some of life’s greatest pleasures are pleasant precisely because they’re so ephemeral; if rainbows were always a feature of the sky, few would ever bother to look up at them in wonderment and appreciation.
– “Diary #663”
Baby-step reforms…are mostly intended to distract activists and hush timid human rights campaigners. – “Lack of Evidence (#1421)”
[Trump] wants to make the US status as the world’s cop official, complete with the cop power to terrorize whoever he likes on a whim without anything resembling consequences. – “Client Kingdoms”
Diary #820
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged animals, disease, Sunset, video on March 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »
If you’ve never had another living creature under your care, you may never have considered how much time and effort is spent dealing with their poop. Babies need to be changed several times a day, and if you’re in a city dogs need to be walked (out in the country they just let us know when they want to go outside); cat boxes need to be cleaned about twice a week, and henhouses need to be “mucked out” twice a year. That means using a shovel to remove all the “poultry litter”, which is merely a concise term for the revolting mixture of decaying hay or shavings, molted feathers, spilled food, and fecal matter which builds up on the floor over time. I generally do it in March before I get the nursery ready, then again in September or early October as it begins to turn cold. But when I did it last autumn it really wore me out (like any shovel work, it’s rather strenuous), so a couple of weeks ago I decided to start filling just one bucket every day (when I go in to check feed & water and collect eggs) and dumping it on the compost heap; that way the work is spread out so as to be less exhausting and less odious. While the chicks are still in the brooder, their poops are generally so tiny it’s no big deal to clean the shavings every week for the three weeks they’re inside; once in a while a chick gets a turd stuck to her butt-feathers, but it’s typically easily removed with fingernails (if you’re a parent you’ve touched worse, and there is such a thing as “soap” when the task is done). But this time one of the chicks arrived with a hardened mass of feces; I’m told this is called “pasty butt” and it can actually kill them if not removed, because their vent gets clogged. And it’s not easy to remove; it’s so hard and baby chicks are so fragile that one can’t simply pull it off, which means filling a basin with warm water and dipping her butt into it to soften the mess before removal. Once I was done I got to see and hear something one doesn’t encounter every day: a chick fart, as she squatted and emptied her chute with an audible “poot”. It has been a week since then and she seems fine now, so I think we’re past the danger. And I’m sure y’all enjoyed this fascinating discussion of literal chickenshit, so it’s a win all around.
Diary #819
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on March 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
It’s chick time again! I used to get my chicks at Tractor Supply, but they do first come, first served and a lot more people are buying chicks in the past few years than there used to be, so now I’m ordering them from the feed store over in the county seat. This year I got four Rhode Island reds; regular readers know I rotate the colors to make it easy to keep track of their ages (because chickens only lay for 2-3 years). Technically, last year should’ve been reds, but at the time I still had two reds and only one white, so I got whites last year (and the last one died a few months ago). Our last red died just recently, so it worked out almost perfectly; next year should be some dark color, though these blacks turned out to be disappointing layers, so I’ll need to do a little research on which dark-colored breeds lay as well as the reds and whites. But one way or the other, chick season always makes me smile every time I go into the bathroom where they live, and sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear their peeping through a closed door and all the way in the living room.
Links #818
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Alabama, animals, artificial stupidity, Believe Them, cops, games, illegal aliens, New Hampshire, North Carolina, racism, sporting events, Tennessee, Texas, video, weaponry on March 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »
[Computer programs do] not understand “stakes” as humans perceive them. – Tong Zhao
When an especially-prolific musician dies, I often choose one of his lesser-known works as a memorial; this Neil Sedaka composition is quite different from the pop songs he’s known for. The links above the video were provided by Matt Welch, Popehat, IncarcerNation (x2), T. Greg Doucette, and Mark Bennett, in that order.
- R.I.P. Neil Sedaka.
- Last week in artificial stupidity.
- Cops murder man for sleeping while black.
- Another triumph for cop suicide assistance.
- They keep demonstrating exactly what they are.
- New York reporter has clearly never seen an actual pig.
From the Archives
- The 1st Amendment has been so eroded it needs state law to give it teeth.
- Garbage responds to women’s deaths by trying to endanger other women.
- It’s only been six years since the UK lost in court the last time it tried this.
- When will the mainstream media admit that pigs in schools are a menace?
- I was fated to be threatened with state violence regardless of career path.
- Both sides in the culture war have completely taken leave of their senses.
- David Johansen, Michelle Trachtenberg, Gene Hackman, and much more.
- Busybodies are most infuriated by affairs that are none of their business.
- Erosion of civil liberties starts with “undesirables”, but never stops there.
- I’m sure “anti-trafficking” crusaders will be going after this any day now.
- Cops try to combine fentanyl hysteria with panicmongering over edibles.
- Hey, female cops; how’s that collaboration with the police state working?
- Give aggressive thugs power over teens; what could possibly go wrong?
- I’ll believe Facebook is going to use encryption when it actually does it.
- Another moronic culture war “monkey see, monkey do” parade begins.
- How “excited delirium” was invented as an excuse for murder by cops.
- Trans people have become another canary in the civil rights coal mine.
- As an LSU MLIS alumna, I am qualified to declare this bat-shit insane.
- Female “youth ministers” aren’t safe either, at least if they’re married.
- Politicians will use any asinine rhetoric to gain control of the internet.
- Cop deals with others as he normally does, and the press is shocked.
- Government persecution now extends far beyond their own borders.
- “Disciplinary action” = asking rapists to “think about what they did”.
- Cops, puritanism, Ricou Browning, Wayne Shorter, and much more.
- Hollywood profits from sex workers while discriminating against us.
- Cops don’t care how many false positives these systems shit out.
- Starting a new D&D campaign for the first time in over a decade.
- Rapist cops are typical and representative of their warped breed.
- This blog has a lot more infrastructure than most people realize.
- Seems like a significant fraction of child porn is spread by cops.
- Fanatics’ crusade to control all human thought is never-ending.
- Montana politicians are trying to reduce all women to serfdom.
- Your “leaders” refer to this mindless brutality as “correction”.
- Cops should not be allowed anywhere near legal minors.
- Fixing a leaky hot tub seal with my own soft little hands.
- By now, the title “youth pastor” should be a big red flag.
- Wannabe preachers are often as bad as the real thing.
- Medical confidentiality has gone the way of the dodo.
- Governments worldwide are emulating China’s evil.
- My two previous posts for Sex Worker Rights Day.
- Another victory for US evangelical prohibitionists.
- Cops, Georgia, Steve Lawrence, and much more.
- The legacy of Operation Choke Point and its ilk.
- Another cop demonstrating exactly what he is.
- It’s nice to see a journalist getting it for once.
- An excerpt from Rikki de la Vega’s new book.
- Black beauties with a calm temperament.
- These thieves have absolutely no shame.
- My three previous posts for Mardi Gras.
- What remains when a loved one dies.
- You can’t keep a bad bill down.
- Good riddance to bad rubbish.
- Throwback Thursday 1980.
- Rapist cop of the week.
- A classic case of “NHI”.
- Ghost of Fridaystein.
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