As I'm married to a classicist, I actually understood the context of this, and it made it funnier...

Breaking: Coal tits noisily looking for nest material in the holly tree.

Recent Reads: Habitat. Simon Roy's graphic novel is part of his sprawling future history, life after interstellar civilisational collapse. The titular habitat is lost between stars, warring tribes clinging to rituals of emergency rules in the ruins of utopia. A dark, hopeful tale, and oh, the art.

That would be pretty cool.

I need to set an alert on the new Tintin-livery A320...

It seems more than a little apt that Suez ended the British Empire and the Strait of Hormuz ends the US hegemony.

It's always about control of trade routes.

A white and black bird with long yellow legs and red eyes strides across a muddy frame. Behind it are two different black and white birds with curved beaks and shorter long grey legs.

Today's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #BlackHeads, any bird with Black on its head.

From the Artis polder in Amsterdam, a black-winged stilt and a pair of avocets wander through the muddy shallows. Holland is a country for waders...

#birds #birding #wildlifephotography #amsterdam #waders

We did wonder, but after a chat at a Glasgow world con we decided we probably weren’t, at least not as far back as either of us could tell. And my family tree goes back to 1030 or so!

St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman?

Traded in my Kindle 4 to CEX three weeks ago. Phew...

Oh I know. Also my spam filter catches them all...

I really should stop checking for false positives.

Do SEO spammers with their oh so casual "I was just browsing your site and I noticed..." emails not realise that they are using the same script as every other SEO spammer?

Noodling a murder mystery story, Loss Of Signal. A mission to the moon with five astronauts on board goes behind the moon. When it comes back into contact one of them is dead, and the other four are refusing to say what happened. All data from the capsule has been lost. Whodunnit and why?

Amazing stuff as always!

SECOND SKIN YouTube video by Paul Chadeisson

A new Paul Chadeisson film just dropped, Second Skin. Reminds me very much of David Wingrove's Chung Kuo novels, machines printing a layer of roofed cities across the world.

Massive scale!

youtu.be/QIdiTzjIuII?...

Faded advertisements peeping out from under decades of paint.

Faded advertisements peeping out from under decades of paint.

Faded advertisements peeping out from under decades of paint.

Faded advertisements peeping out from under decades of paint.

TFL are restoring the two old iron railway bridges at East Putney station, and in stripping off the layers of old paint have revealed some old advertisements.

Ghost signs back from the dead for a few days. Indecipherable as different layers are visible on different bridge sections.

Oooh, no.

(I shpuld note that the naming scheme we use for most of our machines here is Smallfilms! This comment comes to you from IDRISTHEDRAGON...)

I have it!

I love just how homemade the Smallfilms studios and film-making gear wewre; Meccano, plumbing supplies, and whatever they could find on the farm...

Filming the Clangers

Anglepoise 🤣

A small brown bird in a hedgerow with white flowers.

The #BirdOfTheDay theme today is #Warblers.

The chiffchaff is a warbler, and this one was in a flowering hedgerow near Devil's Hole on the north coast of Jersey.

#birds #birding #wildlifephotography #jersey #chiffchaff

Thanks!

A grey and brown duck, its body moire black and white patterns, with yellow feet and a black bill in clear water over brown silt.

At low tide on the Wandle delta, a male gadwall was gently drifting as the Wandle flowed over the lower weir.

#birds #birding #ukbirds #wildlifephotography #wandle #gadwall

Three juvenile gulls, brown white, and grey, fly above each other as they pass some modern London brick apartments, beige and orange with white windows.

Stacked.

Three juvenile gulls on the Thames, flying past Hurlingham Harbour.

#birds #birding #ukbirds #wildlifephotography #thames #gulls

Clear water over fine silt.

A black bird with a red and yellow beak floating on clear river water. It is covered in water droplets reflecting all the colours of the rainbow.

The rainbow moorhen.

Down to the delta on a sunny day at low tide, and this moorhen was really catching the light.

#birds #birding #ukbirds #wildlifephotography #wandle #moorhen

this is the cyberpunk dystopia i signed up for

Space nazi becomes crime boss...

Looking through one of the four windows of the Orion spacecraft, a tiny crescent Earth is illuminated against the blackness of space and grows smaller as the crew journeys closer to the Moon. Part of the window edge is visible; the rest is darkness. [Alt-text slightly revised from ESA/NASA version]

We are so, so small. #Artemis

Yeah, he did have well-documented addictions.