Roy Tsao
LightNews LightNews
banner
roytsao.bsky.social
Roy Tsao
@roytsao.bsky.social
3.8K followers 1.1K following 1.7K posts
Teaching political theory/philosophy etc at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Shax & co. at BC/CUNY. bird stalker. tweet tweet. 🏳️‍🌈
Posts Replies Media Videos
roytsao.bsky.social
last lines from a thing I wrote back in April, just published in Ethics, Policy & Environment. Nominally in response to a paper (from last year) on wildlife conservation ethics, but mostly channeling my rage at *all this*

“What is to be Done?”
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GVXJW...
I come back to the question with which I began: who are *we*, in this impasse, and what are we responsible for, in the circumstances? The present U.S. government isn't *us*, and it isn't ours. We can no more rely on the inertial force of decades-old statutes than we can count on past presidents' executive actions. Our endorsement of the government's policies isn't sought, and it's idle to remonstrate. If the ethical duties that weigh in Odenbaugh's analysis have any practical hold on us at all, they converge on a different set of practical questions. How are we to overcome the impotence to which we've been reduced? What will it take to build and to mobilize the power to displace our opponents? I don't claim to know how that might be done, or if it's even possible. But it seems pretty clear that it would be unrealistic to hope for any good whatever to come of political action confined to the scope of what had seemed feasible, in previous years. And if that's true of our situation now, I can't help but wonder if this might have been true all along.
September 9, 2025 at 4:56 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
checks out
NYTimes screenshot (8/26/25): “….Mr Trump echoed his long-held belief that criminals commit crimes because they do not fear the consequences”
August 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Eastern Wood-Pewee

photographed in Central Park (New York), 5-19-25
A small grey and white bird, called an eastern wood-pewee, perched on a twig.
May 23, 2025 at 10:54 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
what my marriage is like
An exchange of text messages: "Hiya, I would like to see a peewee documentary tonight. It airs at 8pm so l would like to eat dinner earlier. Its like old school fixed time tv not on demand! We have salad and quiche ---- wait- it's about a bird? ----- Herman Paul Reubens -----oh. oh well-----
May 23, 2025 at 10:35 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher
Photographed on 1-5-25 in Garabito, Costa Rica

Posting this today for no particular reason, beyond general good feelings this week about unusually long-tailed Tyrannus flycatchers
A demure-looking scissor-tailed flycatcher, perched on a wire. Dainty peach-and-gray colored bird with a long, split tail hanging downward, creating the overall impression of a ballerina, legs crossed, at the barre.
May 23, 2025 at 10:13 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
yes! got there yesterday, around noon- the rain had let up, and the bird was present and active the whole time I was there. So amazing
May 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Here's another look at that forked-tailed flycatcher. check out that tail, huh?
Fork-tailed flycatcher (same bird as in quoted tweet). Photographed by Roy Tsao on Randalls Island (New York, NY) on May 27, 2025
May 23, 2025 at 12:54 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
Fork-Tailed Flycatcher
Randalls Island (New York County)
May 22, 2025

This is the first-ever recorded fork-tailed flycatcher in NY county (= borough of Manhattan)...No, I'm not the hero who found it. But I did at least get to see it, close. Lifer!

Species #242 on my New York county list
A fork-tailed flycatcher- a robin-sized bird with a black head, white breast, and broad, deeply-forked tail- perched on a stem in a tall meadow. Photographed by Roy Tsao at Randalls Island (New York, NY), on 5-22-25
May 23, 2025 at 12:01 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
May 16, 2025 at 1:44 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
my proudest public-facing accomplishment of late
roses growing on an iron fence, in front of abbrick building in Manhattan’s West Village
May 15, 2025 at 10:17 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
as you wish
ebird.org/checklist/S2...
May 13, 2025 at 3:22 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
saw some birds in the park
May 10, 2025 at 9:54 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
After this weekend I'll be logging off for a while. Here's a photo of a plucky little toucanet for you to remember me by while I'm gone.

See you all sometime on the far side of Easter. Be well.
Northern Emerald Toucanet (a pineapple-sized green bird with a blue chin and a big bill). Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/2/25 at the Finca Ecologica San Luis in Monteverde, Costa Rica
March 2, 2025 at 10:23 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Hey look there's me at the annual Arendt conference in Leiden!

(only on zoom this year, sadly- that's me on the screen, looming in the background. wish i could be there to do my looming in person)
photo of a panel at the annual Arendt workshop in Leiden
February 20, 2025 at 4:13 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
this
Imagine if Abraham Lincoln had spoken passionately against slavery during his debates with then-incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas in 1858, only to fall silent afterward because he lost. Imagine if civil rights leaders had framed segregation as a moral crisis but, after losing a legislative battle, decided their role in the struggle was finished. If the stakes were high enough to demand public resistance before, they remain high enough to require it now. This is what makes Harris’s silence (and the silence of others who once sounded the alarm) so striking.
February 14, 2025 at 12:35 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
<chef's kiss>
"So, does this mean Al is making us dumb, is inherently bad, and should be abolished to save humanity's collective intelligence from being atrophied? That's an understandable response to evidence suggesting that Al tools are reducing critical thinking among nurses, teachers, and commodity traders, but the researchers' perspective is not that simple. As they correctly point out, humanity has a long history of "offloading" cognitive tasks to new technologies as they emerge and that people are always worried these technologies will destroy human intelligence."
February 11, 2025 at 12:42 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
Black-and-White Owls

Seen last month near Carara National Park, Costa Rica.

(Sorry for the mediocre photo- they were high in a dense tree, in poor light. I have somewhat better pics from same trip of a ferruginous pygmy owl but I figure I should go with the big boys today.)
Two black-and-white owls, perched on a tree limb. The owls have black faces and black-and-white stripes on breast and belly. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/5/25 near Carara National Park, Costa Rica.
February 10, 2025 at 1:35 AM
roytsao.bsky.social
wasn't going to post anything today, but as it feels kinda dead over here- it's been a rough week, i know- i offer for your attention this photo i took of a parrot in the rain

White-Fronted Amazon
Monteverde, Costa Rica
#birds
White-Fronted Amazon parrot, in the rain. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 12/30/24 in Monteverde, Costa Rica.
January 24, 2025 at 11:23 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
like i said: you don't want to mess with this guy
#birds
a photo of a tough-looking Streaked Flycatcher, perched on a tree branch. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/4/25 in Tárcoles, Costa Rica.
January 23, 2025 at 11:06 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
context missing from news coverage of Bishop Budde's homily: that same day, the *national leadership* of the Episcopal Church issued a letter in response to Trump's E.O.s., likewise calling on him to show compassion and mercy toward migrants
www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffair...
Screenshot of portion of letter from national leadership of the Episcopal Church, dated Jan 21, 2025: "Even as we gave thanks for a peaceful transfer of power, we learned from news reports that the new presidential administration has issued a series of executive orders that are a harbinger of President Trump's pleage to deport undocumented immigrants at a historic scale, restrict asylum, and direct other immigration actions. We read this news with concern and urge our new president and congressional leaders to exercise mercy and compassion, especially toward law-abiding, long-term members of our congregations and communities; parents and children who are under threat of separation in the name of immigration enforcement; and women and children who are vulnerable to abuse in detention and who fear reporting abuse to law enforcement..."
January 23, 2025 at 10:25 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Don't mess with this Streaked Flycatcher

Tárcoles, Costa Rica
#birds

[photo taken moments after the bird caught, chomped, and scarfed down a large butterfly]
A Streaked Flycatcher, perched-- looking d own, glaring. A handsome, tough-looking bird with a dark mask over eyes, thick bill, black-steaked yellow breast, and tawny tiger-striped cap. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/4/25 in Tárcoles, Costa Rica.
January 23, 2025 at 5:50 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
one more Green-Crowned Briliant (this one female)
#birds
A female Green-Crowned Brilliant hummingbird, perched. A little bird with a long, pointy bill- mostly green, but with flecks of white on the throat and breast. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/3/25 in Monteverde, Costa Rica.
January 22, 2025 at 10:41 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Here's another Green-Crowned Brilliant for you- this time, an adult male

Monteverde, Costa Rica
#birds
A perched Green-Crowned Brilliant hummingbird- all green, with a little purple patch on the throat. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/1/25 in Monteverde, Costa Rica
January 22, 2025 at 9:55 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
Green-Crowned Brilliant Hummingbird*
(immature male)

Monteverde, Costa Rica
#birds

[*official name is just Green-Crowned Brilliant, but obviously yes a kind of hummingbird]
A photo of a Green-Crowned Brilliant hummingbird, perched on a twig. Iridescent green hummingbird with a blue tail and wings. There's a peach-colored patch on the face below the eye, which is how you can tell it's an immature male, not yet in full adult plumage. Photographed by Roy Tsao on 1/1/25 in Monteverde, Costa Rica.
January 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
roytsao.bsky.social
well ok but here's Richard Hooker in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, I.x (1594). n.b. "Men always knew..."
Screenshot of a passage from Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vol. 1 ch. 10: "To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries, and wrongs, there was no way but only by growing unto composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto; that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that when force and injury was offered they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that howsoever men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others it was not to be suffered, but by all men and by all good means to be withstood; finally they knew that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, inasmuch as every man is towards himself and them whom he greatly affecteth partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon: without which consent there were no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another; because, although there be according to the opinion of some very great and judicious men a kind of natural right in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to govern them which are of servile disposition; nevertheless for manifestation of this their right, and men’s more peaceable contentment on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed seemeth necessary."
January 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM