🌱May be cold outside but definitely some 🔥 indoors! Aphelandra tetragona has suddenly burst into bloom - after a dozen years of my apparently not handling it correctly!😄 Sold variously as Spring/Summer flowering, but kicking blooms now after a hard Summer pruning outdoors. Acanthaceae

Define the highlight of the year. Visiting the Prespa lakes and meeting @julianhoffman.bsky.social in situ.

The joy of living on the Isle of Purbeck

how gentle when it first rises the north wind #haiku #revision

Warming centers #ColumbusOhio. Pass the word if you live in this area!

Good afternoon from #BrookSide Senior Living. Isolating with some sort of bug. Time to stop doom scrolling and start day dreaming. Flooded with seed/plant catalogues❤️❤️❤️ #GardenGrewPeas #Gardening 🌱

82 here, yes we are protesting, writing etc. Have the feeling “they” would like to wipe us out….

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

This speech is over 400 years old. It is gripping even now. He could be speaking of Steven Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tom Homans. It is devastating: "This is the strangers’ case And this your mountainish inhumanity." Share. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceE...

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

An appreciation thread on this last #MelvilleMonday of the year, with some passages that come to mind... "Whoever afflict us, whatever surround, Life is a voyage that’s homeward-bound!" - Herman Melville, White-Jacket (1850) Marine by Knud Andreassen Baade (1808-1879):

Also glad to be retired in this time of nonsense. Will note in passing that the Bible can be quoted as literature.

All very well and I am really happy for this fellow and admire his courage in speaking up, but is it not a pity that he (and doubtless many others) had to be so ill in order to support a program which helps so many (though I would be first to say the program cld be vastly improved)

They “strongly suggest” patients & visitors mask, but you won’t see that much. SMDH

Tuesday 30 Dec, Dublin

I once thought she looked REALLY old, sixty plus years after I first saw her, I now consider her remarkably well preserved😃

Venerable old #Tortoise!

Oh so Kavanaugh doesn’t want his name associated with ICE arresting people who look like they might be Hispanic or are speaking Spanish? Too late, shitbird. It’s stuck to you like a vinyl seat on a summer day in Tucson.

Epstein didn’t "voluntarily" hang himself. I bet somewhere in those Epstein Files it reveals the motivation for his murder. Every Republican is complicit.

Destroying research, especially research that could save lives is tantamount to murder.

YES

Trump posted a clip to his Truth Social account Wednesday that suggested the Kennedy name be removed entirely from the Kennedy Center. The clip complained that Kennedy had been “elevated to obscene levels.”

RFK Jr. Will Let Us All Die Just to Make a Buck “Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it. Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.” newrepublic.com/article/2044...

Kristy Lee cancelling her Kennedy Center performance. Now that's a solid statement. Trump is now left with Nicki Minaj, who's shopping for a pardon for her sentenced-to-life child-rapist brother. Or Stephen Miller doing ventriloquism with his Trump puppet.

Yes

What’s one gardening mistake you made that taught you the most? 🌱 Every grower learns by trying.

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is RESOLUTION/LOSE #wotd #resolution #resolutions #lose #NewYear #NewYearsEve #NewYearsResolution

An interesting development in genealogical research, and I’d like to get back into researching my family tree next year. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

A heavy fall of snow at Vindolanda fort a few years back, a moment of almost complete silence on site apart from the soft patter of snowflakes which drew my imagination into the past. #hadrianswall #archaeology #northumberland

Nullus vult.

Here's the call for the Interntational Society for Neoplatonic Studies affiliated panel at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in Boston in January 2027. Please consider submitting an abstract, otherwise help spread the word!

I criticize @nytimes.com a lot, so props when they do a good job, as here. The US military is committing war crimes on the direct orders of Hegseth and Trump. Den Haag is waiting.

They’re not sending their best.

Traffic jam Yellowstone style.

Brilliant: US govt will pay 7.5 million dollars to place 75 (possibly) illegal immigrants in the middle of the Pacific??? Pricey! We gonna make up this money placing bets on their “Survival” ??? www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Breakfast with the Birds, 1934 by Expressionist painter Gabriele Münter, #womensart

We all know that US surveillance is pervasive, but it's still jarring to see it. "Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown—whose 2018 reporting essentially reopened the Jeffrey Epstein case—wants to know why her flight information is in the Epstein files." www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Something Shameful www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

NEW from me — I broke down Trump's claim on local right wing radio that the US carried out a Christmas Eve land strike in Venezuela, how he doubled down Monday, the subsequent media reports with no substance, the potential role of social media rumors about an actual fire, and how we need the truth:

The truth always finds you, even on Truth Social...🤣🤣🤣

'Just as long as I get the chance to turn Gaza into the Las Vegas of the Middle East.'

I never planned on doing this, but when Jon Husted voted to put billionaires and special interests over Ohioans, I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines.

Ohio doesn’t have a Senator that’s fighting for us – when I win, that’s going to change.

"Maria" sent us this photo from where she and her coworkers are hard at work in Tulare CA harvesting mandarin oranges. They get paid $60 per 900 lb bin and spend their work day going up and down ladders filling heavy bags of oranges and rushing to dump them in the bin. #WeFeedYou

Out of curiosity, are these #billionaires worth more $$$ to #CA as job producers (workers do pay taxes, spend locally etc) or as tax income (not a criticism of ballot measure and loathe tax cheats, just wondering about the economic realities)

Nice, but first, let’s not count our chickens and second, wounding a poisonous snake simply makes it more dangerous. Let us not forget the Trump hearings.

About time…

All going according to plan….

Sickening….

Zelenskyy calls Russia’s claim of a strike on one of Putin’s residences a “complete fabrication,” a lie designed to sabotage diplomacy, justify more attacks on Kyiv, and excuse Moscow’s refusal to end the war. He warns the world must not stay silent as Russia tries to derail peace.