February 2026 – Pearl of Civilization

Fingers crossed

Will we make it through 2026 without the publication of a description of some famous creep’s dick

Expansion pack

So if this was your hand in Wingspan, what would you do?

Photo of a Wingspan board game in progress. Three cards have illustrations of birds with the names red-headed woodpecker, dickcissel, and bushtit

Hint

Photo showing a piece of white paper with a card shape cut out of it, a pair of scissors, and several pencil crayons in green, blue, and brown

I made a new bonus card to give points for horny bird names 🤷

Photo of an official bonus card from Wingspan next to a homemade one.

Official card is Anatomist, offering points for birds with body parts in their names.

Homemade card is Hornithologist, offering points for birds with titillating words in their names. Words include tit, dick, cock, pecker, breast, rump, bush

Photo of the back of an official Wingspan bonus card next to a homemade replica. Both have green botanical designs

Because come on.

Photo of four illustrated bird cards from the game Wingspan: bushtit, american woodcock, king rail, and dickcissel

As with all categories, debate is raging about some inclusions and exclusions.

Photo of 3 illustrated bird cards from the game Wingspan: clark's nutcracker, barn swallow, wood duck

Niche problem

Today in niche problems: why are there no good torrents of Bon Cop Bad Cop

What counts as lucky in a polycrisis

Reading up on aftercare for chemical weapons exposure and I can’t decide how to feel about the way it overlaps my existing practices for wildfire smoke season… Take the win, I guess.

It really is a relief when the necessary defenses to different aspects of the polycrisis are not in conflict. I remember dealing with wildfires and a heatwave during early covid lockdowns in 2020. Back then before the PNW heat dome, hardly anyone had a/c so we needed to open the windows to deal with heat, but we needed to keep them closed to keep the smoke out. We couldn’t socialize indoors due to covid and couldn’t socialize outdoors due to smoke.

The Beaverton spoke to my heart:

“Marginalized communities are often hit hardest by situations like this,” says Cablebill, “because they do not have easy access to resources that would enable them to be neither in nor outside.”