Daily Journal 1/21/26

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the islands near us serves as a bald eagle breeding ground. We pretty much see them year round, adults and juveniles, hunting and nesting. The only time they ever presented a problem for me personally was back when we were dealing with the feral cat population, and the mommy cats kept having their litters on my property. During that time, I had scarecrows and such to keep the eagles at bay. Otherwise, they are very cool neighbors. Most days, I can look out my office window and see one perched in the tree over our dock, watching the river. And then, if I watch long enough, they’ll suddenly take flight, soar over the water, dive down, and come up with a fish in their talons, which they then take back to the tree to eat, or off to the island to feed to their young.

Anyway, I bring this up because there were two of them perched right outside the house yesterday, talking to one another. I have been lucky enough to have traveled the world and experienced a lot of things, but that eagle conversation ranks among the coolest things I’ve ever heard. I grabbed my phone and headed down to the front porch, hoping to film it, but when I got outside, a car stopped and the driver and his passenger were ooing and ahhing over the eagles, who then got annoyed with the humans and headed out over the water.

So, instead, here’s a house ad from an issue of Tales From the Crypt that I came across while reading last night.

For context, it was 1954 and the comic book industry was under siege by the U.S. government — both Conservatives and Progressives — who were convinced that comic books were ruining the nation’s youth. William Gaines, the then-head of EC Comics (publisher of Tales From the Crypt) had already established a reputation for inserting themes like racism, sexism, inequality, the horrors of war, and other topics into their line of comics. In books like Tales From the Crypt, they were often grim morality plays. In other titles like Mad (which was still comic book sized rather than the magazine it would become) they were delivered as biting, clever satire. With this house ad, he did both — speaking directly to the Red Scare panic in America at the time, and implying that the Republicans and Democrats wanting to ban comic books were the real Communists.

Pretty clever stuff for the era.

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Yesterday, former science-fiction author Patrick Tomlinson became the most blocked account on Bluesky in a 24 hour period, after allegedly using a dead woman’s children to farm outrage engagement on social media, and then comparing and complaining about the results. More users blocked him on the platform than even the official ICE account. In my opinion, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving individual.

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I went looking for an update on the Alcatraz coyote that I wrote about here yesterday, but instead found this story about a sea otter stealing surfboards.

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Not as much of a productive workday yesterday as the day before, due to some family stuff that came up. And today is already getting jammed up because I made the mistake of checking email this morning rather than in the afternoon (which is when I usually open it), so off to work I go.

Have a great day!