Kyle Copas

@kylecopas.bsky.social

674 Followers 1262 Following

Head of comms @GBIF.org, writer, poet, communicator, producer, husband, father. 💩posting about literature, music, biodiversity, sustainability, design, #biodiversity. Decolonization begins at home (and abroad), restoring Indigenous roots.

via remote control. The age of reasonable and ordinary politics had proved so effective that the liberals had joined the reactionaries in their enthusiasm for spying, lawfare, and ideological policework and had voted, via their representatives in the allegedly liberal party, to support bombing campaigns, dissident liquidations, and outright invasions of El Salvador, Libya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Grenada, Libya again, Bolivia, Iran, Panama, the Philippines, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan, Afghanistan, Irag again, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan again, Yemen, Iraq for a third time, Pakistan, Somalia again, Iraq for a fourth time, Syria, Yemen again, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia again, Afghanistan again, Somalia again, Yemen again, Venezuela, Ecuador, Gaza, and Iran (again).
Screenshot from Robert A. Caro (1982) The Path to Power, p.22: Sometimes it happened almost before a man's eyes; one afternoon, there would be soil on a hill, soil in which he hoped that next year at least grass would grow and he could graze stock there; then a thunderstorm, and the next morning when he looked at the hill he would see a hill of bare white rock. The steep hills went first, of course, but even shallower slopes washed fairly soon—it all happened so fast. That rock was the reality of the Hill Country. It had taken centuries to disguise it with grass, but it took only a very few years for that disguise to be ripped away. Even on the shallowest slopes, on which grass remained, in a very short time the richness of the land was gone.
Photo of a street sign in the 6th arrondissement in Paris that honors novelist Georges Pérec, a founding member of OuLiPo whose novel La disparition was written without using the letter “e”
Animated GIF of Big Bird from Sesame Street singing, "One of these things is not like the other…"
Image of a sign in Cyrillic script in a restaurant window in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, offering hot dogs
Haudenosaunee flag, purple field with five simple figures in white: square, rectangle, tree, rectangle, square, linked as if in a wampum belt
Screenshot of two adjacent posts in a timeline: the first showing a correction of a New York Times headline to reflect Israel’s lethal attack on Lebanon, the second headline from the Guardian that reads, “Middle East crisis live Red Cross outraged as Israel, strikes Lebanon kill at least 254…”
Cargo bike parked in Copenhagen with an Illinois license plate
Windmills in fallow, February farmland viewed across an interstate highway
I went to Tucson and it gave me a headache. I don't know how. Everyone's a cousin in this world. I drove down a road of enormous houses that encompass many toilets. Down hallways, leaping left or right, you can crap at will. A mile away a dead Mexican child slept out in the desert on the wrong side of a mattress. Jim Harrison, “After Ikkyū: 16”
Indiana’s state dish: breaded tenderloin sandwich, with French fries, condiments and Cincy Light lager
"The one constant in Marco Rubio's career is that he has betrayed every mentor and every principle he's ever had in order to claim power for himself," a political figure in Miami told me.
Open should not be a purity test. The open movement has had incredible success creating global standards, and this has helped make it so successful. But the emphasis on standardization has led us to hyper-focus on definitions, and this focus is distracting us from the bigger picture. What matters is not open versus closed, or even abundance versus scarcity. We need to focus on values, not prescriptions. Open licensing has always been conditional, and it has always been a spectrum. This means we have to accept that there will be gray areas. What we lose in certainty, we will gain in relevance and moral clarity. As Rebecca Solnit says, “Categories are where thoughts go to die.”
Three men standing together in the old Manchester Central train station that now serves as a large meeting space
Two close associates of Jeffrey Epstein—on the right, convicted sex criminal Donald J Trump; on the left, a disgraced pedophile and former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson—enjoy a laugh together in the Oval Office in May 2025. Photograph by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
“There is no shortage of human beings. As with most problems with capitalism, there is only a distribution problem. The same industry that has done so much to undermine our relationships to self and others is pushing Al, in part by ignoring the possibility of other solutions, deeper social changes. It is a problem dressed up as a solution.” Rebecca Solnit
After Ikkyū: 3 by Jim Harrison I've wasted too much moonlight. Breast beating. I'll waste no more moonlight, the moon bullied by clouds drifts west in her imponderable arc, snared for a half hour among the wet leaves in the birdbath.
If in the latter End-which is fairly soon-our way of life goes west And some shall sav So What and some What Matter, Ready under new names to exploit or be exploited. What, though better unsaid, would we have history say Of w who walked in our sleep and died on our Quest? We who always had, but never admitted, a master, Who were expected-and paid-to be ourselves, Conditioned to think freely, how can we Patch up our broken hearts and modes of thought in plaster And glorify in chromium-plated stories Those who shall supersede us and cannot need us— The tight-lipped technocratic Conquistadores? The Individual has died before; Catullus Went down young, gave place to those who were born old And more adaptable and were not even jealous Of his wild life and lyrics. Though our songs Were not so warm as his, our fate is no less cold. Such silence then before us, pinned against the wall, Why need we whine? There is no way out, the birds Will tell us nothing more; we shall vanish first, Yet leave behind us certain frozen words Which some day, though not certainly, may melt And, for a moment or two, accentuate a thirst.
Snow The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various. And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands— There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. —Louis MacNeice
Album cover of Midnight Vultures by Beck
Sunset view toward the south in the harbor basin near Amerika Plads, Copenhagen
In America, captured drug lords face a choice: Snitch or suffer. Under pressure from the Trump administration, Mexico turned over 55 imprisoned cartel leaders to U.S. authorities this year in two airlift operations kept secret until the planes crossed the border. The prisoners represent the top echelons of Mexico's biggest criminal organizations. Rival drug lords who had ordered the killing of thousands of each other's men sat side-by-side during the transfer. U.S. officials expect many of the prisoners will share firsthand knowledge about the operations of Mexico's underworld in the hopes of getting reduced sentences and more comfortable prison conditions.
Pope Leo at the mic
Screenshot of toot by Damian Carrington World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds - Fossil fuel emissions to hit a record high in 2025 - Analyses also show worrying weakening of the planet's natural carbon sinks #COP30 #climatecrisis 个 Guardian World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds
Soneto Quem vê, Senhora, claro e manifesto O lindo ser de vossos olhos belos, Se não perder a vista só em vê-los, Já não paga o que deve a vosso gesto. Este me parecia preço honesto; Mas eu, por de vantagem merecê-los, Dei mais a vida e alma por querê-los, Donde já não me fica mais de resto. Assi que a vida e alma e esperança, E tudo quanto tenho, tudo é vosso, E o proveito disso eu só o levo. Porque é tamanha bem-aventurança O dar-vos quanto tenho e quanto posso, Que, quanto mais vos pago, mais vos devo. —Camões (1524 - 1580) Whoever sees, Lady, clearly and manifestly The beautiful being of your lovely eyes, If they do not lose their sight just by seeing them, They no longer pay what they owe to your gesture. This seemed to me an honest price; But I, to deserve them more, Gave more my life and soul for wanting them, From which nothing more remains to me. Thus, life and soul and hope, And all that I have, all is yours, And the benefit of it I alone take. For it is such great bliss To give you all I have and all I can, That the more I pay you, the more I owe you.
Art print by Melanie Cervantes from 2017 with the headline that reads Ya Basta That’s Enough, above a mother holding a child and pointing defiantly above a caption that reads The U.S. government is abducting children and locking them in cages, while two figures labeled Border Patrol and Police Ice fall into a dumpster labeled Basura or Trash.
Sign for a (Southeast Asian) Indian restaurant in São Paolo, Brazil
…the importance of Saturday for bathing and washing is preserved in its Old Norse name, Laugardagr, which means 'bath day'. It's still there in the word for Saturday in all the languages of the Nordic world: Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, even borrowed into Finnish.
Photo of handwritten note reading next a book by the notewriter: “To Kyle: / With the Compliments / Read it if you like or dont read it if you like. / Absalom, Absalom! / 9/18/89 Sanae”
QUOTE OF THE DAY “‘Thinky think’ before ‘grabby grab’.” Nature has tapped into its global community of readers, writers, friends and colleagues to compile a list of 99 lab tips to help make scientists’ working lives better. One, sent in by a chemist who has been burnt before, is simple: hot things can look cold.
Screenshot of landing page highlighting the more than 3,000 peer-reviewed research articles that use data from the GBIF network. Text reads: "Biodiversity loss and climate change interact in many ways, reflecting two sides of the same problem: humanity’s unsustainable relationship with the natural world. Explore the research relying on data from the GBIF network to understand and assess the growing impact that changing temperatures, precipitation and other climate-related phenomena are having on biodiversity."
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing an unspecified policy. It is unclear how many people mistakenly received the documents.
Two photos of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin beside the Moscow Canal, the first including Nikolai Yezhov, the second with Yezhov erased.
screenshot of pricing tiers for a startup reselling scale-dependent access to open data on biodiversity without acknowledgement or attribution
Screenshot of Breaking News alert notification: A Marco Rubio impostor using Al has contacted three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress
Mr. Conn's book (complete with 24 color reproductions of Sully's portraits) plays down those aspects of Philadelphia that earned it the nickname "Sin City" long before Las Vegas existed. In contrast to its aristocratic exterior, Philadelphia's street life was bawdy and unruly, with taverns and brothels to match. Even so, Mr. Conn's depiction is a welcome rejoinder to historians' recent habit of debunking America's achievements. Sully's Philadelphia added class and style to the nation's birth. Mr. Conn's book will be a useful guide to anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the Liberty Bell during the semiquincentennial. -Mr. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and is the author of "Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant" (2021).
opium poppy seedhead, bread wheat, and a hybrid raspberry-boysenberry
Linnaeus cookies
Northern sky after midnight, 20 June 2025, 59.7 N latitude
British Prime Minister and former prosecutor Keir Starmer kneels to collect papers and abases himself before convicted felon Donald Trump at the G7 meeting in Alberta
Let's also not forget that spirits, and cocktail culture, will be heavily affected by these tariffs, as well. The Washington Post ran a good infographic article the other day, showing which popular cocktails will be most affected by the tariffs. Will companies simply stop importing things like vermouth and amaro? Aperol Spritz and Negroni lovers should be worried. Cocktail-shaped graphics show that an Aperol Spritz consists of 94% liquids from Europe, 67% of a Negroni, and 54% of a Sidecar.
he said it was impossible to go at the time and I suppose he was right, and how could he have known anyhow, how could any of us have known what was going to happen, I suppose other people seemed to know, but I never understood how they were so certain, what I mean is, you could never have imagined it, not in a million years, all that was to hap-pen, and I could never understand those that left, how they could just leave like that, leave everything behind, all that
Actor William Frawley answers a telephone in the role of Fred Mertz on the television sitcom, I Love Lucy.
Delusional gaslighter-in-chief displays map of Hurricane Dorian's projected path that he grafittied.
"Praise Allah, for soon every American city shall be plagued with disaster and hardship," al-Zawahiri said in the video, which includes several minutes of footage of young, masked al-Qaeda militants casually sipping beverages as they thumb through the latest issues of Time and U.S. News And World Report. "The infidels have brought this pain and destruction upon themselves through their arrogance and callousness. Soon, the United States will watch in horror as its bridges crumble, its desperate citizens suffer in want of medicine and paying employment, and its once vast riches are reduced to naught. The righteous warriors among our ranks must now unite, get comfortable, and look on from afar at the calamity unfolding in the West."
But here's what I wonder: do people outside Greenland even realise we are still governed by Denmark? Do they know that our political landscape is primarily socialist, with a few socially liberal voices? Do they understand the values that guide us as a people? One of these is a commitment to generosity and sharing that values collective wellbeing over individual prosperity - such as when a hunter successfully brings back a catch and the food is distributed among the entire community rather than being kept for personal gain. They are principles that stand in contrast to the individualistic and profit-driven ethos often associated with US and western cultures.
Black dog on a dog bed and a pillow atop a dog basket
Black dog on a dog bed and a pillow atop a dog basket
Two framed photos on a laundry room shelf: one of baseball player Orestes “Minnie” Minoso, the other of a dear friend
Writer Amitav Ghosh delivering the presidential address at the 2023 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California, on 11 December 2023.