Nature took out the watercolour paints this day! 📷🕊️ …

What is/would be your totem?

Absolutely wild that, in the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty-five, there's a new research article that calls women "females" but calls men "men"

Hats off to 17-year-old Tabby Fletcher from the Isle of Jura for petitioning to ban all single-use plastics in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. #ThrowawayDoesNotGoAway

'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.

The late wasp.

Hair washing using a milk pan in kitchen, using the real fire to dry hair, cleaning teeth with soot, Sing Something Simple on the wireless, spotting the chimney sweep’s brush crowning to chimney, a room never used despite eight people crammed in a two-bed, sleeping in a cot until seven years of age.

Wave upon wave of migration, from the Romans and Celts to the Highland Clearances and Potato Famine.

Portrait of a man aged 24, by Christoph Amberger, done in 1525. His hosiery and footwear are some sight to behold. (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

Shall we all club together and buy a bookshop in the Yorkshire Dales? As a former rare book librarian, I'm still on all the mailing lists...could I run it from Dublin with regular trips over, please? www.worldofinteriors.com/story/richar...

Funnily enough, it’s five years since the UK’s idiot contingent voted to leave Europe.

I once figured out where every spice in my spice cabinet fit in the plant evolutionary tree

Your irregular reminder that English is a bastard language.

I‘ve got more crow’s feet than a rookery. – my mate with bristly oxtongue.

Have just had to phone my mate to tell him he has bristly oxtongue.

Where is the balance @ofcom.bsky.social

Ed Davey, "I'm afraid Nigel Farage should be apologising for helping cause this problem in the first place" "Before Brexit we didn't have a small boats problem because we had 27 return agreements with EU countries and we could return people" -Maybe we should call them Farage's Brexit Boats

My first crop has arrived! Ready to be planted as soon as I have the keys. 🤸🤸‍♀️🤸‍♂️

A ravishing start to the week.

Today is ideal wildflower-sowing weather. Can’t wait to break tilth.

Tory government emails stated ‘[the] VIP route is for MPs who can make life painful and shout loudly,’ and that such inquiries were to be sent to an inbox named ‘Covid-PPE-priority-appraisals.’ 😓When the UK faced one of its darkest hours, the people in charge saw not a crisis, but an opportunity.😡

When the Catholic church finally conceded, in 1996, that Galileo had been right that the Earth moved around the sun, there was no expression of contrition, merely a grudging acknowledgment that the church’s “sad misunderstanding now belongs to the past”.

It’s Sunday afternoon, which means the bloke upstairs is pushing his carpet sweeper round aggressively. So depressing, so irritating, so predictable.

I’ve passed this white campion almost every day for at least three months. Moths love its scent as daylight fades.

Another great dead wood story! Some very cool #PlantScience describing a nurse log (dead tree that supports the growth of young trees) from the Jurassic.

A molecular-resolution look into the near-native architecture of the spinach chloroplast🌱. This one was a long time in the oven, but we're happy to finally share our "version of record". What long-standing debates did we settle? Check back for a short thread🧵 on Monday. #TeamTomo #PlantScience 🧪🧶🧬🔬🌾

🖼️ Emmaranthaceae

The Havisham house.

History rhymes a bit too well sometimes.

Super-friendly cars.

‘It’s a perfect time capsule. It’s dark, moist, cool and anoxic… This is nature’s emergency recovery mechanism. We’ve buggered almost everything up but this will still bring them back.’ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Embroideries at the art gallery celebrating 200 years of the railways by Darlington Stitch and Create.

Wet wet wet

The Socratea exorrhiza palm is native to tropical Central and South America. Over time, the tree ‘walks’ through the rainforest by growing stilt-like roots at one side while letting go of its roots at the other. Nature is clever. Astounding.

Last night's sky in California, sent by a friend

I hope some newspapers use a crop where you can easily read the sign.

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

On the origin of ‘proof’. After a bit of digging, the best I can come up with for ‘proof‘ (a provisional document) is from the 12th century and means ‘evidence and argument to establish facts beyond reasonable doubt.’ Anyone know more about this?

‘Mathematics is, of course, the universal language.’ God help me.

Definitely not looking good for those with functional brain cells. =====================

The US has blocked a UN call for a Gaza ceasefire for the sixth time.

Dear diary, AI facilitates and speeds up your work as a #translator. You will save so much time, they said. AI: Hold my LLM.

Part documentary-part concert sees Hendrix play at the 1970 Atlanta festival. Tonight, 9pm, BBC Four.

A vessel for ideology.

Darlington Stitch and Create have spent the past four years producing 80 pieces of art on the theme of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR). These are on display at Crown Street library. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is what remains of Beit Hanoun, a city in the north of the Gaza Strip which has been under full Israel control since July. It has been completely bulldozed by the IDF. A similar fate awaits Gaza City, once the Israelis take full control there. Depopulated for the first time in 5,000 years.