Amy Brady, PhD

Plant history for plant nerds! 🌱

Plant history for plant nerds! 🌱

An owl is perched on a tree stump leaning forward with head turned slightly towards the viewer.

'Owl on Tree Stump' - Tejima Keizaburo, ca. 1980s.
#OwlishMonday #JapaneseArt

Capricorn.

From John Bevis' Uranographia Britannica (ca. 1749), a watershed in the history of celestial atlases, being among the last to show allegiance to the old animated mythology of the heavens.

More in our latest post: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bevis-uranographia

Kansas is a beautiful state and trans folks make it better. Our politicians are vile and small. They obsess over cruelty. The prairie is a remarkable place of wonder and resilience. Our legislature cannot imagine a better world, they are too starved by their own bigotry.

Birds Aren’t Just Declining. They’re Declining Faster, a New Study Finds.

“The American dream turns into the American nightmare as we start to look at what we’re doing to biodiversity and systems that we depend on as humans."

Northern Lights in Zenith, by Harald Moltke, 1900.

One of the many images of Aurora Borealis collected in our post “Firelight Flickering on the Ceiling of the World”, looking at how this otherworldly phenomenon has been depicted over the centuries: https://buff.ly/38dxgft

episode 025

A torii (gate) stands at the bottom of stairs flanked by two stone lanterns. Beyond is a large stretch of water with land on the other side. It is a clear, bright, sunny day. A woman can be seen on the steps. A small timber boat is in the right foreground.

'Pacific Ocean, Boshu' from the third Souvenirs of Travel Series - Kawase Hasui, 1925.
#ToriiTuesday #shinhanga #JapaneseArt

#ScholarSunday Thread 264 (2/22/26) – Black and White and Read All Over Neither travel nor snowstorms can keep my #ScholarSunday threads from their appointed rounds—so here’s my 264th of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add m...

Neither travel nor snowstorms can keep my #ScholarSunday threads from their appointed rounds—so here’s my 264th of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ +

blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

Just came under a MASSIVE PSYCHIC ASSAULT at the grocery store

Beautiful!

#FolkloreThursday #yokai

Trying to figure out how I feel about the fact that I'm writing about a very famous and very ancient map whose scholarship was once summarized thusly: "this is a text about which a great deal has been written, most of it nonsense."

#mapfacts #herebedragons

Black-and-white photo of a very fluffy White cat with black patches, looking up towards the camera. It appears to be sitting on a bench outside. Handwriting on the photo says “Mickey“.

Look at this muppet. “Mickey”, photo from my collection, no date.

What Happens When Your Books (Don’t) Get Banned? When a friend wrote to me some months ago that he’d heard a book of mine had been banned, I felt a surge of excitement. I’m not proud of this. The banning of a book is hardly a badge of literary me…

Lydia Millet on censorship, creativity, and what happens when your books don’t get banned.

Ramadan Mubarak!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Laissez bon temps rouler!

Hodesh Adar tov!

Y'ALL

⭐

close seedling apples, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1935

close seedling apples, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1935

Walk along the Long Island sound this morning. The ice is finally starting to thaw

Heathcliff Panel: Heathcliff leaps at birds holding bread in both forepaws. Two men sit on a park bench. One of them says "I like milk chocolate and my partner likes dark chocolate, so what percentage of cacao will leave us both unsatisfied?"

New Yorker Panel: A man speaks to the clerk in a chocolate shop. He says "He's trying to make a sandwich."

2/13/26

A few of the stunning illustrations from a 16th-century treatise on comets — known as The Comet Book — created anonymously in Flanders (now northern France).

More info and images from the book here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-comet-book

French novelist Jules Verne was born #onthisday in 1828. His fantastic tales of voyage and adventure have lent themselves to many wonderful illustrations but perhaps none so captivating as those by Émile-Antoine Bayard for Around the Moon (1870) — publicdomainreview.org/collection/e... #otd

🫡

Virginia Democrats unveil a redistricting map that would aim to give them 4 more US House seats | CNN Politics Virginia Democrats unveiled a proposed US House map Thursday that aims to give their party four more seats in the latest effort to fight President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, even as an ongoing...

As someone who’s writing a history of maps I love the reminder of how much maps f*cking matter #herebedragons #mapfacts

www.cnn.com/2026/02/06/p...

Come with me into my office and see some of what made @abetterworldbook.bsky.social come to be!

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

“The Dust That Measures All Our Time”, Steven Connor on that “most untrustworthy” type of matter... sand: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dust-that-measures-all-our-time

Thanks so much for reading!

Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks-a Cool History of a Hot Commodity [Brady, Amy] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks-a Cool History of a Hot Commodity

Book 4 of 2026: @amybrady.bsky.social ’s Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. A book recommended by Camper English @alcademics.bsky.social (who gets named dropped in the cocktail section). www.amazon.com/Ice-Skating-...