Belated Happy New Year Everyone ❤🙏 Wish you a peaceful & joyful 2026 ❤️💯🪗 !! For more music from me check out 🙌 😃 🥁 www.youtube.com/@TanitaTikar... Love Tanita Tikaram #singersongwriter #London #musician See less

'The London Underground' (from 'This Is London', 1959) by Miroslav Šašek

It isn't 2026 everywhere: Thailand 2569 Ethiopia 2018 Israel 5786 Pakistan 1447 Iran 1404 India 2082 China 4723 North Korea 115 Japan 8 Sources listed below.

Keen to appear outward-looking and open to Western culture, in 1838 the Second King of Siam bestowed upon his son a most unusual name. @BullenRoss explores the curious case of “Prince George Washington”, a 19th-century Siamese prince: publicdomainreview.org/essay/g...

A gorgeous jewel-like, hand-tinted portrait of Anna May Wong by Atelier Gudenberg.

I gather you enjoyed yourself in Spain.

Christophe Jacrot. Lighthouse. Iceland.

Book Cover of the Day:

How Music Motivated Artists from Matisse to Kandinsky to Reinvent Painting. (Jackson Arn • Artsy) www.artsy.net/article/arts...

UK regulator asks X about reports its Grok AI makes "sexualised images of children" and undresses women. Sickening. X profits but not good at monitoring. Give everyone an enforceable copyright of their face, voice, body parts. Enable people to sue social platforms for violation of that right.

BBC journalists have been banned from describing the kidnapped Venezuelan leader as having been kidnapped. The BBC News Editor has sent this to BBC journalists.

It's freezing outside. For many it's back to work / school / study. Here's some warm sunshine to fill your ears. Episode 223 - Birdsong in deep forest ambience (50mins) On a steep rough path by a stream, pristine quiet. Just the wind in the firs and birdsong. > bit.ly/LenKldrB

Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale on blowing up “commies” and their gravesites: “Exactly. What do you think founding Palantir was supposed to be about?”

NHS England is rolling out software to run our health records from Palantir – a US spy-tech firm that has supported mass deportation in the US and enabled genocide in Gaza. Say No to Palantir in the NHS ⬇️ goodlaw.social/658abc

Yet another huge contract, awarded without any competitive bidding process, to Wes Streeting's favourite NHS supplier, the Hard Right US surveillance tech specialists Palantir, for military decision making capability.

Owl, William Holbrook Beard, 1889. #OwlishMonday

Eyes wide open, folks. They're revealing the supervillain plot.

John Constable, Cloud Study, Early Morning, Looking East from Hampstead, 1821

‘Look! I'm running away with my imagination’ Maurice Sendak (illustration for Open House for Butterflies’, by Ruth Krauss, 1960)

Regina Giménez: Xeometría cósmica.

Not commenting on Venezuela is one thing, but Starmer's ministers not even being willing to say "no of course the US shouldn't invade a peaceful sovereign democratic NATO country, which is one of our closest allies" is quite another.

Generally speaking when British politicians start bringing God into it, we're in for a bad time.

Japanese New Year's Card, Cranes and Sun

Double page spread from Hamonshu (1903), a Japanese book of wave and ripple designs that would have acted as a kind of go-to guide for Japanese craftsmen looking to adorn their wares with such patterns. See all three volumes of the work here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/h...

Pictures that explain things. Trees in Winter (back endpapers) Artist: SR Badmin, 1963

Genius editor Thelma Schoonmaker is 86. I love her definition of editing: ‘Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it.’

Jeez. Greenland is in the NATO alliance. How hard can this be?

“Lying low and hoping that this too shall pass is cowardice, denial and historical illiteracy” - spot on from @nesrinemalik.bsky.social

Greenland after Venezuela.

Will Starmer support this too ? Trump let’s slip that Greenland is next in about 2 months or is it 20 days , & his 2 cronies find it hilarious .. if we judge Starmer by his reaction to the US attack on Venezuela, he is already aligning himself with Trump’s cronies 🥴…

Darren Jones saying repeatedly the Labour Government won't comment on a hypothetical. It's not hypothetical - Trump is saying very loudly repeatedly what he's done and boasting about it. And yet the UK Government won't even say it's a breach of international rules. Shameful.

Starmer asked to respond to Trump breaking international law and seizing the leader of another sovereign nation replies that it is his "responsibility" to have a good relationship with the US President. "I have stepped up that responsibility [and] I do get on with President Trump," he tells the BBC

Mamdani criticises Trump for regime change and breaking international law - While Starmer appeases Trump

Starmer being as Starmer as you can possibly be

When I think of artist Rowland Hilder’s work I think of winter scenes of rural Kent. But I also love his London landscapes

'Stay Home: BT Tower in the Snow' by Edward Luper edwardluperart.com

Suspending Doctors Without Borders is definitely a thing healthy countries do

Siemen Dijkstra, Single Oak, color woodcut, 2008.

Jason M. Peterson

Has he thought this one through?

BREAKING: A Russian newspaper today — “America no longer sees our country as a threat… The US leader’s philosophy is closer to the values of Russia’s president, not the politicians of the Old World… he sees Europe as a liberal stronghold that must be destroyed…” Read that again.

"Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner were at the negotiating table today. No actual experts on Russia or Ukraine on our side of the table." Why is the president's white nationalist immigration advisor involved in negotiating foreign policy? Via @simonwdc.bsky.social substack.com/home/post/p-...

"List of aid groups working in Gaza that Israel is suspending": 1. Action Against Hunger 2. ActionAid 3. Alianza por la Solidaridad 4. Campaign for the Children of Palestine 5. CARE 6. DanChurchAid 7. Danish Refugee Council 8. Handicap International: Humanity & Inclusion (cont)

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. -FS Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, published 4/10/1925.

Top 10 of this year's most read pieces — no.5: Julie Park's essay on the early modern fascination with the camera obscura, and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced.: publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-ea... (Full Top 10 here publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/12...)

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A photograph of the London Underground taken by Bert Hardy in 1952. #london #londonunderground

Bert Hardy. Tiger Bay. 1950. "It wasn't whether we were black or white, Christian or Muslim or Greek Orthodox - if you lived in Tiger Bay, you were from the bay."