It's not grounded in psychology, science, or robust therapeutic practice. I was raised in a house fearing a parent & even now at the grand old age of 33, the feelings of anger, fear, and sorrow are weaponised into narratives of alienation. Because of people like TBR we aren't allowed our own minds

Sometimes you learn about the people behind "parental alienation" or those who enact it's politics (of misogyny) and it's hard to feel anything other than disgust for them and the legacies they leave behind. Trish Barry Relph is one of those contemptuous figures www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

One of the strangest-looking birds we saw in Peru, the Hoitzin, is also one of the most unusual. Like cattle, it's a ruminant, meaning its digestive system ferments plant matter. The Hoatzin is the last surviving member of a bird line that branched off in its own direction 64 million years ago,

source! and more on why the rabbit do that caitlinfitzgeraldart.com/milk-hares-t...

Rabbit, Sweden, 15th century

YAY! I have pressed The Button. My new book is now trundling through the system and should be available to actually BUY within the next few days!!!!

"autistic and non-autistic adults produce different angry, happy, and sad facial expressions" "autistic and non-autistic faces may be essentially 'speaking a different language' when it comes to conveying emotion" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... based on posed (not spontaneous) expressions

This is a pretty shocking story for any journalists on the health beat.

📢Job: postdoctoral research officer📢 For 'Witchcraft politics (Hexenpolitik) across the sea. A new entangled history of #EarlyModern England and the Holy Roman Empire', led by Profs Alison Rowlands & Rita Voltmer. 🗃️ - 33 months - 0.8 FTE - Deadline 1 Feb www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQC497/s...

Yet another Boston cross-dressing prosecution: this one from 1840. Mary Perkins was charged with wearing men's clothing & also with theft of clothes, including pantaloons. The cross-dressing charge was dropped, but she was sentenced to 2 months in the House of Correction for Larceny 🗃️

Thanks to a post on iNaturalist, and a series of serendipitous events, an Australian flowering plant thought extinct for almost 60 years has been rediscovered. au.news.yahoo.com/photo-leads-...

One thing Trump cannot be blamed for is Iran's own massacre of 3,000 of its own people. The only people to blame for that are the brutal, violent, murderous forces of the Iranian regime. edition.cnn.com/2026/01/17/m...

The whole Iran stuff is just so much and so grim, and I know so many people worried about loved ones there that it's omnipresent. And they feel really abandoned at the moment, so try and ask how people are doing and know that that they're dealing with an enormous amount right now.

🦷 “analysis of tooth enamel samples collected from the remains of people buried in England b/w the end of Roman rule in Britain around A.D. 400 & the arrival of the Normans around 1100 indicates that migration to the island was continuous throughout the period” 🦷 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Can anyone point me to people on here or elsewhere who are posting/writing about life in Ireland/or the UK in the mid-to-late 1800s?

Wait what - we've got MORE anti LGBTQ+ Scottish bus tycoons? Weren't the last ones bad enough?

I have a *lot* of friends who have always had strong family relationships start talking about how they're now struggling to even speak to their parents in the last few years. Every time - their parent's worldview is getting darker and nastier as a result of their media and social media diet.

A reminder for my fellow asexual and aromantic peeps. You don't owe anyone sex, or sexelessness, or an explanation. You just have to be. Don't let anyone take that from you.

"Hold on, hold on," you may say, "I read the book and I don't remember that part." Yeah. That'd be because from the 2nd edition onwards, that passage was deleted.🧵

Book Mark says: I survived because people are good. Movie Mark says: I pulled myself by the bootstraps!🧵

The Martian (the book) is a humanist tale. Fuck, it's a COLLECTIVIST tale. It's a story about people caring about others. The movie, though? Most of the plot beats are kept intact, but just in case anyone mistakes it for anything but a tale of individualism, it ends with the monologue: Text below🧵

It means not making fun of people talking to themselves, or stimming, or becoming distressed in situations that don’t bother you. In a lot of ways, it means rejecting low-hanging comedic fruit that’s been fair game our whole lives.

@bobmarshall.co.uk did a lovely reconstruction of the interiors of Glasgow Cathedral for us a few years ago bsky.app/profile/bobm...

'There are fears that rights are under further threat following the Supreme Court ruling which concluded that the definition of sex in the Equality Act should be interpreted as ‘biological’ sex only... a person’s legal sex is the one recorded at birth, which will directly impact intersex people.'

Catalan article in the newspaper El Pais about my 2023 book The ‘Catalan Hermaphrodite’ and the Inquisition: Early Modern Sex and Gender on Trial. elpais.com/quadern/2026...

Some Rockpool critters under UV light from night session in Shetland this evening. The Sea Spider just glowed, and the pink from the Cowrie is fantastic. #MarineLife #Rockpool #Tidepool #Shetland #Sealife

The only time you hear these guys caring about women is when it's an excuse to be vile to trans people

I cannot overstate how much it seems like every lawyer on Scotland is committed to making it harder for women to report sexual abuse and have something done about it

DuckDuckGo hat aktuell eine Umfrage, ob man eher Team "Yes AI" ist oder eher Team "No AI". Wäre cool, wenn ihr eure Meinung da lasst, ist nur ein Klick und zementiert hoffentlich, dass wir das nicht wollen. Aktuell sind 94 % "NO AI", love it. voteyesornoai.com

I don't think people who haven't gone through burnout understand what burnout is. And autistic burnout in particular. Higher education is perfectly designed to induce it and I'm trying very hard to reconcile my career with my ability to function day-to-day.

People get really seriously hurt by these companies in ways that are often impossible to recover from. People churn out of the industry with extremely limited prospects out of it and what is for all intents and purposes a brain injury.

I think this gets lost in a lot of these discussions. Crunch isn't just a bad experience in the moment or a bad job situation. Burnout has long, lingering effects on the brain and body that can last for years.

Burnout is genuinely life-destroying and I really can't say, on this website, what I think should happen to managers who not only let it happen to one individual worker but who systemically make it happen on large groups of workers.

According to sources, nobody was upset before Emma Bernard, 36, expressed how upset she was – and now everything’s uncomfortable and we hope she’s happy.

Seven rock crystal tools were recovered from the lower Mousterian layer of the Merveilles rockshelter, six of which can be seen in my photo, one was out on loan when I visited the Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Something beautiful for the weekend! ✨ A rare rock crystal tool made by Neanderthals between 200,000 - 40,000 years ago. From a Mousterian level at the Merveilles rockshelter, Sergeac, Dordogne, France. 6 x 3.3 x 1.5 cm. Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye 📷 by me #Archaeology

Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking? Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me. 1/

If the Mr Muscle marketing team isn't looking at options to monopolise on this in some way then they are missing a trick. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I'm so fucking angry. As a cis woman it doesn't "violate my dignity" to share spaces with trans women, but it doesn't matter how many of us say this, the courts are determined to impose bigotry and biological essentialism on me.

#Carmentalia - celebrated 11 & 15 January in honour of Carmenta, #Roman goddess of childbirth, mothers, midwives & prophecy. Women brought offerings to her Capitoline temple; animal products were forbidden. Originally Nicostrate, she was mother of Evander & invoked as knowing past and future.

Archer-Butler Luck Stone Originally owned by the Butler family of Garnavilla, near Cahir, Co. Tipperary & used to protect cattle from disease. Dipped in drinking water or hung from the neck of a cow. The crystal ball is 200g, frame ?17th century. (Hunt Museum, #Limerick)

Musings on a lovely day: the Rector of Stiffkey may have sat in this room; otters will bite your hand off; Henry Williamson’s still-visible swastika, Hugo the rescue hound and Rayburn control for beginners…with pictures. Free to read and subscribe over at beatcroft.com beatcroft.com/2026/01/16/o...

16 January 1583: Mendoza sends a long account of Elizabeth's meeting with Lennox (pictured) a few days ago. She 'complained greatly of him', putting seven main charges to him, to which he responded stoutly, although in at least one case he was flatly lying (he denied having met ... 1/ #earlymodern

This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden. (After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)

I read someone's assessment of a proposed death ray, once: "if you could get a German soldier to stand in front of it, perfectly still, for twenty-four hours, wearing a copper waistcoat, it would make him feel pretty seedy."

After Dark - new podcast episode on the Vardo #witch trials with me, @maddypelling.bsky.social and Anthony Delaney www.historyhit.com/podcast/afte... If you want to know more: my book Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials and the work of Norwegian expert Liv Helen Willumsen

Toad woke up. “Drat!” he said. “This house is a mess. I have so much work to do.” Frog looked through the window. “Toad, you are right,” said Frog. “It is a mess.” Toad pulled the covers over his head.

Every time I think I have a handle on the corpus of 'Scottish' manuscripts for my book, a new one pops up. The latest is as perplexing as it is delightful. In a private collection, so perhaps this is why it had escaped my notice, but there are so many more questions to answer....

The votive ship in the lower church of Glasgow Cathedral, forever sailing into its own huge shadow.

The boar’s head standard found by @pcaarchaeology.bsky.social is just so fabulous. #drawingdiggingforbritain #diggingforbritain