mmmm, stapelia

A Black-capped Chickadee showcasing winter fashion by donning a snowflake accessory.

Outside the Level 2 Reading Room in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk there is a wellbeing display. Here are some it's little zines that genuinely made me smile.

about-ness is complicated

Just giant dabbers flying around while people are dancing. I am unsure what they are celebrating, but giant ink-balls were used in #earlymodern printing offices in the last step before printing. Such dabbers consist of pieces of leather filled with wool or hair and a wooden handle. #bookhistory

attempting to take pride in having been able to identify this image in well under an hour (nb: it is one hundred pixels wide; this is a zoomed in version)

i just.

this is how i feel about so many books

The Lion in Winter

(General acknowledgment of privilege and world being on fire preface) why do travel logistics make me so anxious? like. north or south side of the airplane is not a decision that should be so difficult!

Live view of the Air Force One pilot.

the age of human tools is over

I want more stories about the bandit with beer colored eyes in the world of the white rat. he makes me happy every time he shows up

My books cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com

A look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the "modern" book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914

I am in love with these weird teal windows

Yeah watching this on repeat it’s pretty much going to be the rest of my day.

This bobtail squid burrowing into the sand is already adorable, but please watch till the very end! It sticks out its little arms and earnestly sprinkles sand over itself 🦑𓂃◌𓈒𓐍

Colorado Springs has the charming intersection of Carefree and Nonchalant

We see your Humble Jumble Lane and raise you Crack-brain-court and New Martin Street a.k.a. Shall-I-go-naked-street! These are from Whitechapel, London, in the early 1700s. Does anyone have any more stupendous street names, from #OnePlaceStudies or elsewhere, to share on #OnePlaceWednesday?

A man travelling within the lines of a text printed in 1621. Enjoy this short 🧵 for #skystorians and friends of news flows.

Last week we discovered that many towns have hungry bridges.

This man's media team is a bunch of goddamned geniuses, someone scouted for locations and figured out they could set up this very shot. Look at it, it's incredible. Look up pics of Adams being sworn in at the ball drop, which look chaotic, cheap, and undignified in comparison.

I will forever fondly remember the lady on a train in Germany who got so tired of listening to me try to explain what spice I meant in very broken German, so she leaned a row forward and said “Zimt” and then went back to ignoring everyone

Aiming for a Brambly Hedge-ish January

Elegant

It’s for sale for about half the cost of the restoration works, to put it in perspective

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

So today, @Propublica is changing that with our latest tool, RX Inspector. You can use it to see your drug’s manufacturing facility and what the FDA found during its inspections. Here’s what happened when I took it for a spin 2/ #RXInspector projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector...

today’s piping hot political take: i think it was completely reasonable for Churchill not to find Stalin’s jokes about mass murder funny at the Tehran conference

underrated joy of listening to books about Churchill is hearing British people attempt to pronounce Missouri

Marvellous mail boxes of Paris, largely Modernist and you can see more here www.instagram.com/romainlaprade

'Brooks and boulders' - the third piece of my aerial embroidery series incorporating pine bark chip 'rocks'! The contrasts between the hard rocks and soft embroidery, dark and pale shades and terrain makes this landscape my favourite 😊 will be available Friday with all the others! 1/2

'In the winter garden' - my favourite geometric garden aerial that I've ever done! I don't remember if I shared it here or not yet - it has camellia bushes in the centre and beds of winter heather and hellebore :) the geometric landscapes are always more challenging and I love that! #embroidery

political science

I fucking love memes you can understand through the language barrier, holy shit

I was so excited about my new timer light switch but now I am looking at cloth covered wires and feeling much less excited

mmmm, the combination of uncleared partly melted snow on top of uncleared goopy leaves on top of entire chunks of sidewalk that have been covered in mud for years

Almost certainly the best photo I will ever take from an Iron Age Hill fort of the sun setting over an estuary as summer segues majestically into autumn.

Bringing this back since it’s the season ❄️

!!!!!!!!!!!

🌿 It’s #GivingTuesday! Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library take flight as we count down to independence on 1 Jan 2026. Your gift helps #GiveBHLWings – keeping 500 years of biodiversity knowledge open & accessible worldwide. #ILoveBHL 🧪 📖 🌏 💚 Donate now:

small children make me understand the noise muffling virtues of fully carpeted homes

Finally getting some theological clarity on the ethics of reclining in one’s plane seat

"I must tell you that a horoscope which has been cast for my younger son shows that he will be pope, but I'm very much afraid he's more likely to be the antichrist." That's it. That's the *entire* letter.

*small embarrassed voice* A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s. doi.org/10.1093/libr...

I know there’s that thing of “every day a combination of words is uttered that has never been said before” but something I love even more is “these words have absolutely been said before but never in this context, wtf”

other duties as assigned #librarylife

AI 👏 is 👏 fundamentally 👏 and 👏 inescapably 👏 dehumanizing

It's axiomatic! You have to hold them by the head! In pre-modern England, the expression, "Holding an eel by the tail" meant that you were doing something the wrong way. Like...did you just buy a cyber truck so that you could look cool and pick up women? You, sir, are holding an eel by the tail.