The cafe in my office building is closed and the coffee machine is turned off.

The first two hours this morning

It’s Godzilla Friday

Happy new year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

"Breaking Light” Watercolor on Paper, 1986 Ray Hendershot (1931-2019)

I DO NOT WANT TO CHAT WITH MICROSOFT WORD.

Paper title of the year 2025, fr fr no cap and so on and so forth in that fashion

"Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?" Lois Lowry - The Giver

Ghostly silhouette of Mont Saint Michel, lost between golden light & morning mist…

First anniversary of me starting treatment for a pretty much totally non-functional thyroid. Overall treatment has been an incredible success and has effectively given me my life back. No more endless pain, brain fog, exhaustion, anxiety and random hair loss. #hypothyroid

Is caulking acceptable as a hobby?

As he celebrates his 100th Birthday this very day, can we all take a moment to acknowledge that time when Dick Van Dyke won the internet internet. Forever.

I'm just gonna post a piece of my art from my files every day til the New Year because WHY NOT. Here's a pastel from 2009.

Robert Brindley (British, b. 1949). Sparkling Morning Light, Grand Canal, Venice (acrylic).

Unfiltered moon is early morning sky looking like a painting

This is fantastic. The Tower of London from the year 40 to 2000. Fairly sure it's the oldest standing building in London. It's gotta be up there.

Fantastic paper from the @campainstudy.bsky.social programme. Absolutely huge epidemiological study of consultation patterns of children and young people with musculoskeletal pain in the UK. Very important new info in a wildly under-researched area. Read read read!

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

My cat, an idiot: Those ornaments look exactly like my toys. Why can’t I play with them? Me, pinnacle of animals: That felt frog wearing a top hat is to celebrate The Lord

Well if you’re a fan of being insanely depressed, I can certainly recommend watching Aniara. Overall a very good film but it turns out a film about a spaceship drifting into the endless void resulting in its population going mad is actually quite sad.

I have now reached the age where the person at the till ID’d me ironically.

I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.

Exciting new #Zebrafish research from the #WeinsteinLab, led by Jong Park! “Specialized gas-exchange endothelium of the zebrafish gill” — www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Amazing to see red blood cells moving through the gills! Don’t forget to check out the supplemental movies ;-)

I’m rebelling against all those flags hung everywhere. Not by tearing them down, but choosing what to think. When I see them I choose to focus on how much I love the diversity of this country. I think of my friends from immigrant families. I think of the immigrants in my family.

Today I learned that “energy” literally means “with work”. En - with or in, ergon - work. If you like this kind of thing, befriend me, because I unrepentantly won’t shut up about etymology.

PSA for husbands: only 23 days before Christmas shopping day!!

Think it’s a three or four hundred coffee morning

Then as now ...

Beautiful frosty morning

Icy sunroof this morning!

Happy Tuesday all. Here is a slimy capybara.

Every time I check in on Threads it’s mainly creatives arguing with bots about AI. I don’t think the Metaverse is well.

Meta halted internal research that purportedly showed (young) people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to an unredacted legal filing released on Friday. www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/m...

Extreme Auroras seen tonight over Montana. 🐴 Go out and look up tonight. It is expected to be even more bright and vivid tonight. Red auroras occur about 125–250 miles high, green about 60–90 miles, and pink around 55–75 miles above Earth’s surface.

Further sunset delightfulness in Lymm. These amazing clear skies followed a day of torrential rain and hail. Really feels like nature got some big feelings out of its system.

Impossible how good reading is. You mean I just point my face at the paper for a bit and it does a whole update on my brain?

Black Friday emails just piling up. I don’t want to buy stuff.

This past summer in Newport. 6”x6” oil

Tall Trees Soaring. #autumnvibes #forestphotography #treescape #goldenhour #naturelover #fallcolors #canopy #woodland #naturephotography #scenicview #autumnleaves #smartphonephotography #photography

Another older watercolour drawing showing St Edward's Passage in Cambridge next to the Arts Theatre and David's Bookshop when it had a shop on that side of the church (now it only has one on the other side) #watercolour #fineart #cambridge

Let's have another Robin photo, this friendly one was saying "hi" to me....or having a scratch ;) #birds #birdphotography #wildlife #wildlifephotography #photography

My painting DAIRY COWS

Gorgeous colours in the sky right now in Lymm. Photos don’t do it justice. It’s glowing amber. Absolutely something else.

Oh really I couldn’t tell over the sound of windows aggressively getting in the way of everything I want to do the whole time.

Word auto save now only seems to work if the doc is saved on one drive. That’s annoying. That function is very old and they’ve broken it to force use of their wider services.

Lights on, heating on. Well Novembery.

This is worth a quick read and a long think about: "We reject the use of generative artificial intelligence for reflexive qualitative research" signed by 416 researchers, including @ginnybraun.bsky.social and @vicclarke.bsky.social who I've referenced roughly a billion times.

Like a stubborn bloom Living in cracks of concrete You cannot kill hope. #poetry #Haiku Photo by Stockcake