Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.
No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.
Worth a watch.
(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)
The image shows a rectangular Roman dice tower (turricula) made of four copper alloy (bronze) plates with punched cut-out Latin letters and cut-out decorative patterns. At the bottom front is a stepped exit chute with small bronze bells attached to the opening. The tower is a Roman anti-cheating device. It has an open top and is hollow inside except for three staggered, downward-sloping plates, designed to randomize dice as they fall, ensuring unpredictable dice rolls. When the dice rolled out of the exit chute they rang the bells! There is a decorative dolphin either side of the stepped exit chute. The top of the front plate has two decorative pine cone finials. Height 25 cm. There is a single die shown next to the stepped base to illustrate how it was used. The front inscription reads: PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI Translated as: ‘The Picts defeated, the enemy has been destroyed, play in safety’. Around the top of the three remaining sides, a second inscription made with cut out letters reads: ‘UTERI/FELIX/VIVAS’ translated as ‘Use happily; may you live well’. Found at a Roman villa at Froitzheim in Germany in 1985.
Roman anti-cheating gaming accessory!
This Roman ‘turricula’ (dice tower) was used to ensure a fair roll of the dice! 🎲🎲🎲
Dice dropped into the top, tumbled over sloping internal levels, and appeared randomly below.
From Froitzheim, Germany, AD 300-400
📷 LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn
#Archaeology
To be fair, who among us hasn't made plans that snuck up on us unexpectedly, leaving hundreds of people entrusted to our care stranded overseas as bombs rain down on 10 countries, closing airports and sending energy prices soaring worldwide, and instantly destroying billions in market value?
jan.bultmann
Great news keeps coming in these dark times, though:
Reforestation on 32 sites in West Virginia turned former mine lands into home for wild birds, including key indicator species like chestnut-sided warblers.
More frogs, bats, and small wetlands on the former mine sites, too!! 🥰
I don't doubt that some of this is about creating a distraction, but that's definitely not the whole point. Wars of Resource Scarcity: the theme of this century.
Meanwhile, it's useful to note that Venezuela, Iran, and Canada are three of the top four oil reserves-holding countries in the world, and here we are, "helping" with the sovereignty of all three, while defunding and shutting down our own efforts to move to sustainable clean energy. Tragic.
about how countries most in harm's from dependence on fossil fuels, like Cuba and Ukraine, are turning to distributed solar to insulate themselves from wars over resource control. billmckibben.substack.com/p/surviving-...
American oil companies geneously offered last month to help "stabilize" oil production in Iran, were something, say, to happen to the regime. In fact Iran, they noted, would be much easier to "help" in this way than Venezuela, given the better condition of Iran's oil industry. Bill McKibben writes
Climate Solutions offers a prewritten easy-to-email letter to demanding that legislators keep their commitment to use these funds to cut climate pollution, reduce rising energy costs, bolster good jobs, clean our air, and support tribal-led resilience projects. Link in comment.
Culture moves elsewhere, a la the Trump Kennedy Center. Fascists just can't do good art, it always ends up hectoring and ludicrous.
It's incredible.
Looking forward to seeing your post. I've been wondering about that very question and trying to post only success stories on all environmental issues (on Threads) for awhile now. Looking forward to hearing how you're thinking about it!
This article was truly hilarious/disturbing & also, ratified one strong approach to tech journalism, which is, "go talk to the craziest, most quotable lunatics you can find" harpers.org/archive/2026...
After a historic victory in the #WALeg Senate, the Millionaires Tax to rebalance our upside-down tax code has its 1st hearing in the House!
Sign your name in "PRO" today to show your support for a future where everyone, not just the wealthiest, can thrive in WA: app.leg.wa.gov/csi/Testifie...
Snow-covered mountains over a blue sea.
Looking across the sound from Seattle this morning. A couple snow flakes fell on me too! Hoping lots are falling in the mountains.
🇨🇳In China: agencies budget billions for total surveillance.
🇺🇸In America we buy & install the cameras ourselves.
Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous
A picture of bad bunny with the word love
Bad Bunny understood the assignment…
Westlake was jammed today too. Lovely!
Very big win here. A federal judge says it's just fine for funds and pension plans to boycott fossil fuels
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/c...
Fabulous.
A set of bills making their way through the statehouse propose a sweeping set of regulations to raise rates for data centers.
Legislative sessions are tomorrow and Wednesday, so the schedule is tight. Please sign in yourself as PRO before noon tomorrow, and pass this along to others if you can.
These bills require emissions-intensive trade-exposed facilities that received clean energy allowances until 2035 under CCA to have a plan for continuing with clean energy after the 2035 cut-off.
HB 2537 Washington State Legislature is the House bill record, sign in PRO here. app.leg.wa.gov/csi/Testifie...
SB 6246 Washington State Legislature is the Senate bill record, sign in PRO Here. app.leg.wa.gov/csi/Testifie...
Hey Washington! Nonprofit groups Climate Solutions and Third Act are asking for quick help: Signing in PRO on a 2 bills before the Washington State legislature. I just did it; took 30 seconds each. Links and descriptions of bills follow.
The parallels with domestic-abuser rhetoric are getting so crude & overt that mainstream pundits might even have to notice & write about them soon.
As tens of thousands across America protest the violence that ICE sows with impunity, federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis today. ICE terrorizes our cities. ICE puts us all in danger. Abolish ICE.
Abolish ICE
