A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death is my guide to the basics of Victorian mourning, gorgeously illustrated by @landisblair.bsky.social. ISBN: 978-0-9881925-4-6, 208 pp. 6×9” trade PB. Please ask your bookstore, library, or museum shop to order it. #WorldBookDay #TheVictorianBookoftheDead

This upper denture is from the 1920s. The plate is made of gold with soldered porcelain anterior teeth and porcelain tube posterior teeth.

Blood Moon alert! Totality—when the Moon is fully immersed in Earth's dark umbral shadow & appears blood-red—will begin at 6:04 am ET on 3/3 in NYC & peak at 6:33 am ET. Totality will last for ~58 minutes, after which the Moon will begin to exit from Earth's shadow. Photo: NASA/GRC/Jordan Salkin

A moment of calm this morning, the general mood is melancholy what with everything that’s going on in the world.

Here's another story about the #drone footage showing #orca and #whitesideddolphins cooperating to hunt #salmon. The #dolphins use sonar to help the orca find fish, then eat scraps Orcas And Dolphins Hunt Together In Rare Ocean Partnership share.google/zvrnEifokgON...

Sarah Vaci is a "gender critical" artist who set out 4 years ago this month to create 100 portraits of "female detransitioners." To date, worldwide, she hasn't even found 100 to take part in her project, and at her current rate, it will take her 10 to 15 years to finish. Why is this important? 1/

This is a really weird fantasia of Edinburgh (and its geography) as it never was and is *full* to the brim of the sorts of simple yet glaring errors and anachronisms you would never have gotten if you hadn't left it to a computer to just barf out an averagised slop answer.

The Iranian New Year begins at the Spring Equinox, called Nowruz. It celebrates the defeat of winter by forces of light and has been celebrated for at least 2500 years historically. #FolkloreSunday

Lorraine Schneider, 1967.

We are all soap lady soap.

My baby just started saying “witch” (pronounced “wee”). Knowing I would not be “wee doctor” (🤭), I asked him to say “witch doctor”. “Wee dada“ 🥹 #TinyJoys

Mushrooms turn dead wood into food and medicine which is better than anything any tech start up has ever done

Amongst the many reasons that I love the garments designed by Claire McCardell is her fastenings. They are always unexpected, rejecting the convenience of a zip for a neat row of buttons. This is a mid #1950s dinner dress with the most chic of bodices #museumatFIT #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Morning.

This “living crystal” is a clump of rotating, jiggling starfish embryos in the lab of the biophysicist Nikta Fakhri. It embodies a state of matter known as an odd material that may have previously unknown biological functions. www.quantamagazine.org/starfish-whi...

The courts have ruled that ai generated work product and output has no protection. This is what happens when you use stolen material to build your plagiarism machine! If you’d just licensed the books you stole, Anthropic, you might have a legal case. Enjoy this tiny violin. 🎻 You earned it!

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

If I painted you an Elizabethan Bat in a ruff with a Pearl earring, would you want to hang it upside down?

Pango is ready for his trip to @londonzoo.bsky.social on #WorldPangolinDay to help raise awareness about the world's most trafficked mammal and the importance of conservation to protect these unique creatures and their natural habitats. If you spot us say hello 👋🏼

Strip Law is exactly what we degenerates didn’t know we needed, and if any of y’all enjoyed it as much as I did, please give it the two thumbs up on netflix (it actually helps!)

Hallmarks of a difficult intubation: 1) short thyromental distance 2) large neck circumference 3) poor mouth opening 4) severe overbite 5) Mallampati score >III

The Totentanz - or Dance of Death - in Bleibach, Germany dates to 1723, and still has all 34 scenes presents. There are 33 figures and their encounter with an anthropomorphised Death plus a skeletal band. In this scene, Death is coming for the cardinal.

Two ancient 20-sided polyhedra inscribed with letters of the Greek alphabet. Now known as 'divination dice', they were used for cleromancy, a form of divination where casting lots determined divine will, sometimes in conjunction with an oracle. 🏺 1/ #ancientbluesky #MetMuseum 📸 me

Giacomo Balla, Canaringatti - Gatti futuristi (Canary-cats - Futurist cats), 1925-26, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 23 cm | 26.5 x 9.1 inches (Galleria d'Arte Maggiore, Bologna)

[Lindisfarne] Me: (chanting) teeth, teeth- Other fossil hunters: teeth, TEETH British Geological Society: [pounding its clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!

Cladonia lichen on a stick, in a field of cotton grass. #Newfoundland, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends #wildflower

Love that AI, a thing we hate and don’t want, steals everything, ruins everything, shittifies everything. Drinks our water, plagiarizes our art, pisses all over our information fidelity, drives kids to suicide, serves the right-wing, and fucks up our devices and services. Good job, techbros!

She looks a little windswept, as if she is holding onto the front of her coat as a chill breeze whistles about her eyes. Hopefully she was wearing an equally cosy hat and softest gloves. Paul Poiret, mid #1920s #thekyotocostumeinstitute #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Here’s one lobster that you might not want with a side of butter: the lobster moth! Named for its lobster-like larval form, this wide-ranging insect inhabits parts of Europe & Asia. While it resembles a crustacean, it can also mimic ants as a way to deter potential predators.

Blue herons nesting in a cottonwood tree. Hopefully no eggs yet with the cold weather coming.

Sometimes there are jewels just sitting on leaves out here This is a tortoise beetle, beautifully iridescent, about the size of my fingernail.

Museum label: ‘they were just roommates’

Not your typical box of chocolates on Valentine's Day...💝 Chocolate tube slime mold. #Newfoundland, Canada. #myxomycetes #fungifriends @jeffontherock.bsky.social

I hear you're supposed to send hearts and stuff to your sweetie on V-day, so I'm thinking about sending some of these to my beloved wife, my Valentine since 1993. (🔬: Stress Cardiac MRI from Mt Baker Imaging)

South Africa has yielded the oldest direct evidence of poisoned hunting weapons. The find pushes poison-based hunting deep into the Pleistocene and reveals sophisticated chemical knowledge, planning and tool use far earlier than previously documented. Ars Technica buff.ly/3ySienA #ShareGoodNewsToo

ICYMI: Fukushima's radioactive hybrid terror pig boom was driven by amorous mothers

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead Suggestive of a very merry widow. A respectable (if luxe) second mourning gown, c. 1885-1890, when fabrics like moiré, satin, velvet, and lace were permitted. Labeled: MME DELBARRE/ Elizabeth Street – 73/ EATON SQUARE. www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/coll...

🔥Meet the fire snail. Found only in the cloud forests of Peninsular Malaysia, this species is easily recognizable thanks to its bright coloration and large size. It is threatened by habitat destruction and collection for the pet trade. Photo: Albert Kang, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

When their ferry sunk on Lake Vättern in 1918, drowning artist John Bauer and his family, they said the Sea King had come to take his wife Ester Ellqvist-Bauer, She had modelled as “Agneta and the Merman” for John in 1911… a dark Scandinavian tale. #WyrdWednesday #GoldenAgeofIllustration

I have made... a mistake. Each auction lot had 8-12 photos, so I assumed that was the number of pieces in the lot. It was merely a sample. Each lot contains 100-ish pieces. I won three lots.

A new peaceful seascape for you. Tisha Mark ©2026, Soft Peaceful Sunset No. 2606, oil on Arches oil paper, 6"x4" Original is available (ships when dry, approx 2 weeks): tishamark.com/shop #art #painting #SciArt #bsnm #BlueSkyArt #ArtSky

It is super weird whenever someone sets up a new Substack and I can't say I have regrets about ditching the platform at all

A beautiful misty morning in the woods. #BlueSkyArtShow #Sunlight

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

Let's talk about Ernest Everett Just, a cell biologist who unraveled the mysteries of fertilization in spite of the obstacles he faced as an African-American. Just's story weaves together good, rigorous science with racism & tragedy. He was born in 1883 in seaside Charleston, South Carolina.

good lord, I love how the most unhinged thing I've ever posted On Here gets the most likes. anyway, I am pure of heart and only make beautiful things like this monarch butterfly cardigan (just finished it this week!)

Ordinarily I associate the creations of Jean Dessès with bright colours and swags of soft fabric so this is unexpected. However, I have long loved a grey suit and this ensemble is crafted to perfection, early #1950s #LACMA #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡