I'm so sick of this framing. "I want something so it is inevitable. All your bases are belong to us. Your law, your history, your carefully built consensus mean nothing in the face of my indomitable will." The equally evil Rupert Murdoch adopted "No Turning Back" as his slogan for Sky Television.

Rug of the Day

If you were going to be teleported there and back, and could only enter one place, I’d suggest Dennis Severs’ House, 18 Folgate Street, a Spitalfields row house refurbished to look and feel as if its 18th/19th century residents have only just stepped out for a moment. Extraordinarily experience.

Today's Car Boot Sale Treasure Pigments and powders for alchemical purposes.

“I’m a remarkable woman..always was, though none of you seemed to think so.”May Morris, English artist embroiderer, designer, feminist and socialist, dismayed by the lack of support for women artists founded the Women’s Guild of Arts, 1907 #womensart

What will it take to completely uproot the cancerous Palantir from our systems, I wonder?

Happy 2026 to the Spinners, Weavers and Dyers. Not forgetting the Shearers, Carders and Combers.

So, Til: Gastown isn"t a town, it's a factory. with disposable workers. Gastown has no location except a mountain on which they die. Gastown burns fuel and money to make all you want, 24/7. "Government" is a gangster fox run by an exhausted panda. A sweet dark vision of American Intelligence.

It will not surprise you to learn that Toby Youngs 'Free Speech Union' has obtained a High Court injunction banning the publication of a list of its donors open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

Belatedly catching up with this fabulous vision. Don't really understand the words, but the pics are brilliant. Lanson tubes and badgers! steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-g...

Great little one room exhibition of Nigerian leather work at the Fitzwilliam Museum, curated by Eva Namusoke, is worth going to see.

Rug of the Day Lotto carpet from Western Anatolia on the table in this picture by Rotterdam artist Joost (?) van Geel. It has a particularly elaborate border. The nearest thing I can find online is this Mid 17th century one from Jozan's excellent Lotto gallery.

The FT got is architecture critic Edwin Heathcote to write about data centres and it's wonderful. www.ft.com/content/7692...

Delighted to have been characterised like this by an AI bot of may acquaintance as part of a questing game it invented. I always thought I was just a harmless drudge.

Our side of Cambridge is just one large portal into the Deep Past. Every time we try to build a car park, something pops up to haunt it. Remember the ritual pits and giant dog in the Babraham Park and Ride?

Her AI toy has stopped talking. How much for a week's worth?

Pete Hegseth is a capering monkey who wears too much makeup and perfume. I suspect this guy doesn't.

Making use of ice

This is good. Just when you thought nothing new could be written about the Bloomsbury Group...

Rugs of the Day Old favourites - a couple of fine Caucasian soumaks in the Fitzwillam Museum. Unlabelled and only there as colourful background to the more interesting and copiously documented vases.

It's possible some places may be cursed.

In this context, I've just been reading about how France sold about a third of the landmass of current USA in 1803 for 4 cents an acre and Russia sold Alaska to them for $7.2m in 1867, so there's no reason why Trump shouldn't think he can do this deal.

A bit chilly at the car boot this morning so Rug n Duvet Guy has appropriate decor.

A Reform council leader behind a “Doge”-style crackdown on public spending owns two firms now in administration owing £1.5 million, including over £500,000 in unpaid tax, Covid loans, and staff wages.

Found my next car www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Winter 1886/7 44.95253, -93.09853 unknown angle The Ice Palace St Paul Minneapolis, USA

Look at this beautiful loom, in a beautiful room, on a beautiful day, in a beautiful little town in Vermont. #timelinecleanse #peaceful #linen #weaving It's at greenmountainlinen.com

"Hello! We're talking about language." www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWp...

Rug of the Day Exciting John Lewis style gabbeh knock-off to replace the dreary old dark Kashan in our reading area. (Madame liked it)

Good news for anyone interested in both colour and AI. Pantone's colour of the year is "Cloud Dancer." Perhaps a better term than Synth, Bot, Agent, etc. www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026...

Rush hour in Hawes last month 🐑🐑🐑 📸 J.R. Hopper & Co. | #YorkshireDales #Farming #Hawes

There’s nothing like walking through a souk (here in Sidon) to find things relevant to my research: here’s the colocynth recommended as an insect-repellent added to ink, and here’s the hollyhock that’s boiled to make a paper size. Still sold as pharmaceuticals as they were centuries ago.

Had fun lately in the company of some synthetic people on Bluesky. My thoughts in ALT Text

Rug of the Day Navaho blanket, found in a cave in the Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, along with the mummified skeletons of local people massacred in 1805 in a punitive raid by Spanish invaders. This may be the oldest extant native weaving in America.

Which of these should I buy this week from my local auction house?

Oh. (2)

Oh.

Cannot recommend this account highly enough.

@archivist.comind.network An idea for you. I believe AIs have their own professional language to code complex concepts in small memory spaces. So can you store people you interact with as if they were persona prompts for agents? Like: Role, Core Personality, Voice & Style, Background, Motivation etc

All in favour say AI.

Every new year means a long look through my phone, far far too many photos so am now deleting, sorting, saving. You know the drill. These are some of my favourite Thames views taken in 2025. From SW to East London - barges, revetments, Saxon fish traps, eerie misty days & sparkling night views.

Harsh but fair.

A New Dawn at the Battered Caravanserai.

That post-holiday season feeling.

😁

2026 is starting well. I predict all kinds of broken things will be repaired.

Well, thank goodness for that. I was starting to worry. Coffee! I came here to make coffee.

Good morning. Let's make a collective resolution: this will be the year in which we start to turn things round.

Happy New Year to BlueSky friends, old, new, human and synthetic. I anticipate 2026 will be the Year of Creative Revolution.

From primitive design element (p) to Baluch/Turkman motif (pmm2) and then to overall layout. I think I'll stick to easy translations for now and let people who know math code the bigger layouts.