Tag: bronx zoo

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Let us start October off on the right foot with an exciting new edition of the Pook-Emu Bee Links.

Oh no, whatever will I do?

1 | Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots (Sarah Perez for TechCrunch. Sep. 30, 2026.)
One may think that your favorite (I hope) feed proponent would be outraged about Reddit discontinuing its RSS feeds. To paraphrase the Reddit community: “Well ackshully….” Why in the world would I want to contaminate my feed collection with Reddit?

2 | Citi Bike user reveals outrageous ‘hidden tax’ slapped onto every e-bike (Aurielle Weiss for the New York Post. Sep. 26, 2026.)
These lunatics are complaining about the speed limit. The fees can’t be high enough.

Kitty

3 | Bronx Zoo welcomes adorable snow leopard cub threatened by extinction (Natalie O’Neill for the New York Post. Sep. 30, 2026.)
I too welcome the new snow leopard.

4 | Workers free kittens from shredder that could have ‘obliterated’ them in purr-fect rescue mission (Steven Vago for the New York Post. Sep. 28, 2026.)
A very timely kitten rescue.

Starcents

5 | Starbucks to close 250 stores: ‘Difficult decision’ (Anders Hagstrom for Fox Business. Sep. 24, 2026.)
I have never been a big burnt coffee fan, but there was once a time when Starbucks was clearing the bar many people

6 | Starbucks Japan releases new Pikachu Honey Cream Latte into the wild for new Pokémon collaboration (Oona McGee for SoraNews24. Sep. 29, 2026.)
I wouldn’t drink it because it looks like a year’s worth of sugar. But Starbucks did a surprisingly decent job of converting the Pikachu aesthetic into a drink.

Self-Hosting

7 | Radiology practices that own their imaging equipment less likely to face closure (Marty Stempniak for Radiology Business. Sep. 30, 2026.)
That checks out.

8 | Self Hosting Passwords (Chuck Carroll. May 20, 2026.)
He uses KeePassXC and Syncthing. He is a smart man. I hubly say that because I too use KeePassXC and Syncthing. With that being said, I would not necessarily recommend our combo to “normies.”

Photograph

9 | Sheep Tree (Jan Ulicki on Lens Culture. May 20, 2025.)
Great photo, baaaa.

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Quoted Penelope, the Bronx Zoo Platypus That “Faked” a Pregnancy and Then Disappeared by Ellen Gutoskey (Mental Floss)
Penelope came to the U.S. from her native Australia in April 1947 with two other platypuses, Cecil (a male) and Betty Hutton (a female). The news made headlines across the nation: It was only the second time any platypus had visited the U.S. (the first had died after about seven weeks in The Bronx in 1922), and the general public was still tickled by the notion that such a Frankensteinian creature—in all its duck-billed, beaver-tailed, egg-laying glory—actually existed. Even New York Zoological Society president Fairfield Osborn called it 'literally the strangest animal.'

I am a fan of the platypus. But I have never seen a platypus in person, for I live in New York City and not Australia. But thanks to a 2023 article in Mental Floss, I now know that New York City’s Bronx Zoo welcomed three platypuses in 1947 and three more in 1958 after the last of the three 1947 platypuses passed away (it previously had a platypus in 1922). All three of the 1958 platypuses died within a year of arriving in the Bronx Zoo, which seems to have caused the Bronx Zoo to give up on its monotreme dreams (see the Mental Floss article for the dramatic details of the Bronx Zoo’s ultimately failed platypus experiments). While I missed out on my chance to see platypuses at the Bronx Zoo due to my not having been born yet, I became aware that the San Diego Zoo, which hosts the only platypuses in America, has an online Platypus Cam.