Olivia Rodrigo has returned with new music two years after dropping her Grammy-winning debut album Sour. The singer marked the beginning of a new musical era with the release of "Vampire."

Carly Rae Jepsen will release her new single, "Shy Boy," next Friday, June 23.

The single follows her recent album, "The Loneliest Time," which was released in October 2022. The single comes ahead of her new tour dates in New York City and Los Angeles.

As some subreddits continue blackouts to protest Reddit's plans to charge high prices for its API, Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces "open and accessible to users."

Edit, there seems to be conflicting reporting on this issue:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

Spend a moment the next time you’re outside to stop and take in what’s around you: the sights, the sounds, from the ground to the sky. There is a likely a wild (pun intended) diversity of life around you just on the street you live. Notice the trees, “weeds,” flowers, insects, birds, mammals and everything in between.

If you’re curious to learn about the flora and fauna of the world you see, there are two fun, accessible smartphone apps that make it super easy.

Seek

(iOS and Android)

This app is a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. It uses astonishingly accurate image recognition to ID mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, plants, trees, fungi, and more in real time with your phone camera. Just point it at your subject and it will start analyzing.

There are fun monthly challenges in the app to earn badges and all of the data is stored locally on your device only unless you choose to share it elsewhere.

Merlin

(iOS and Android)

This app is a product of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is like ‘Shazam’ for birds. It can listen using your phone’s microphone and ID the birds it hears in real time. They’ll pop up in the list and flash as they’re detected. As a big time birdwatcher, this app is extremely helpful in the field.

You can also upload a photo and it will ID from the picture, or answer a short series of questions to get suggestions of what you may have spotted.

Taking it a bit further

If you like lists, data, and a sense of achievement, both of these apps have more robust counterparts that give you even more opportunities to learn and reflect.

iNaturalist

(iOS and Android)

Observations from Seek can be submitted to your iNaturalist.org account. Doing this will allow other users to agree with your ID or suggest one if the app couldn’t identify the species. Their website lets you browse observations from all over the world and you can suggest IDs for other people’s uploads. You’ll get to see your entire record of observations and media making it really fun to look back on.

eBird

(iOS and Android)

Any birds you discover with Merlin can be submitted to eBird.org which will enable you to start building a life list of every bird you’ve seen. The checklists you submit can include photo and audio recordings as well as any notes you’d like. eBird can be used to find local bird ‘Hotspots’ as well as what birds have been reported around you.

Citizen science

Both of these projects are critically-important, crowdsourced citizen science projects that give researchers invaluable information that helps them study the impact of climate change and for all sorts of other great purposes.

This was a "lifer" (the first time I saw a particular species) for me! I saw it at a local park!

This was a lifer for me. Also, apparently #birdsfacingforward is a thing. 🤣

Is anyone aware of FOSS alternatives to Google Tag Manager?

I have a really simple use case where I'm trying to find a solution that can trigger tags based on:

• click class
• click ID
• click text

My tags simply fire javascript events to Plausible Analytics for tracking a few different web conversion scenarios.

In the past, I've tried Scale8 (it seems to have folded). I'm aware of Matomo's tag manager, but I already have an analytics solution, so I'm not really interested in deploying their analytics platform just for the tag manager plugin.

I recently came across RudderStack, but it doesn't seem to meet my simple needs. Or, if it does, its learning curve seems high.

While doing a Climate Watch bird survey this week for National Audubon Society (looking for the Lesser Goldfinch) I got surprised by this adorable Nine-banded Armadillo trotting across the road! Such a treat to see it wandering across a bridge.

This project leverages a BirdNET-Pi station I set up late last year. This digital counter pulls the latest daily count and species heard by the microphone in my backyard.

The most common species to visit and chirp is the House Finch. This bird blows any other species out of the water noise-wise.

I made a write-up on the project and how I programmed everything (and if you want to see a video of it).