Daniel Svitek

A survey of the Mississippi River belt in 1944, showing it coiling all over the basin

The same image, with heights in relief

This is my all time favorite map. The Mississippi Meander Belt (1944), original and GIS-enhanced

President Trump's Pardons: An Embarrassment of Riches At least the specter of corruption in previous presidential administrations (Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich or Biden’s pardon of his son) appeared to be an exception to the rule. Today, however, the ev...

That is insane: "Biden’s pardons eliminated roughly $680,000 in financial penalties owed to victims or the government. In contrast, Trump’s second-term pardons have forgiven criminal debts of more than $1.5 billion." www.cato.org/blog/embarra...

nyt website currently resembles one of those mock covers people made before 2016 election: economy floundering, war in the middle east, scandal-plagued cabinet sec, brazen corruption....

The Republic and Its Enemies There can be no compromise on our founding principles of freedom, equality, and fellowship.

"Yet they believed that normal politics was possible, and hoped to turn the other cheek, to bless those who cursed them. 'The fever will break,' Biden had been predicting since Obama’s reelection in 2012." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...

How much peace can a dollar buy? Donors need to know how best to fund peace: Introducing CEGA's Peace Per Dollar Initiative

my friend Josh Martin is launching the Peace Per Dollar Initiative, attempting to determine what conflict reduction interventions are effective and cost-effective: cega.berkeley.edu/article/how-...

READ THEORY

Read Theory
(ht @gregorydaddis.bsky.social)

Collage of telescopic photos of the moon during a lunar eclipse using thermal imaging and visible light.

This is AWESOME! A backyard astronomer in Canada did thermal imaging of the moon during the recent eclipse and the youngest craters stood out! 🌕 🔭🔥 www.spaceweather.com #astronomy

Anne Cotterill (British painter) 1933 - 2010
Daffodils,
oil on board
53.34 x 40.64 cm.

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

'Evening, Killarney.' (1941) Speaking to an art critic in the 1930s, Paul Henry said: 'What always strikes me about the Irish landscape is its otherworldliness. There's an air of mystery about it ... you feel that anything may happen round the corner.'

Carl Moll’s landscapes during WW1 can be read as expressing a deep-rooted yearning for harmony and positivity at a time that was marked by political and social conflict and turmoil, an antidote to the violence that was sweeping Europe at the time.

Wojciech Krupa (German Artist, born 1966)
“Roztopy”
Oil pastel, 30 x 21 cm

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

Lilacs in a Window ca. 1880-1883
Mary Cassatt
(American, 1844-1926)
Oil on Canvas
24 3/16" x 20 1/8" in.
Signed: Lower left
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

A Pond with Birch Trees (circa 1910) by Latvian landscape painter and educator, Vilhelms Purvītis (1872-1945),

Oil on cardboard

Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

Mike Adams - American, born 1985
“The Hour Between Worlds”, 2025
Acrylic on panel
7× 9

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

Stepan Nesterchuk/ Степан Нестерчук. Born (1978) Russian
“It's a freezing morning. 2026
Oil on canvas 50x 40 cm.
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

One of my watercolour studies of irises

One of my watercolour studies of irises
#watercolour #watercolor #iris #botanicalart

"When anxious, uneasy, and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

March Thaw (2023) - Mark Boedges (b.1973) #naturalistic_landscape

Adolf Schweitzer - "Fjord" (1880)

Illustration by Ella Du Cane from The Canary Islands by Florence Du Cane, London, 1911. #booksky #artsky #travelsky

Male sheet-gold figurine, Inca + Ritual garment, Moche + Vajracharya Priest’s Crown + pages from Astronomicum Caesareum + Temple of Hathor (w/ Rembrandt, Joseph Recounting His Dreams) + Panel with Horse Heads + Mantiq al-Tayr (Language of the Birds)+ lGenesis 37: 19-20

Rebirth 09 (Joseph)
-collage

Astronomicum Caesareum, Michael Ostendorfer (May 1540) + Mirror clock attributed to Master CR, ca. 1565–70 + Pinturicchio, The Annunciation (1501)

Living Document
-collage

"Summer" by Pol Henry Ledent is a vibrant landscape oil painting with an iridescent tree in the foreground, and the blue sky and rolling hills in the distance in yellows, blues, greens, and pinks.

Summer
by Pol Henry Ledent (Belgium)
Oil Painting
#art #painting #fineart #contemporaryart #oilpainting

Oh?

A great basic introduction to how space nuclear reactors work, their challenges and their potential performance at their current level of development:
ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20...

"In fact, the art of computer programming was essentially invented for SAGE."
MIT Lincoln Lab's page on the US's first air defence system; the 'Semi-Automatic Ground Environment' ADS, built in a panic over nuclear-armed Soviet bombers flying over the Arctic:
www.ll.mit.edu/about/histor...

CSBA report on the "inadequacy of Western munition stocks" and how the "U.S. military has encountered difficulties meeting its PGM demands in nearly every campaign since their adoption".
csbaonline.org/uploads/docu...
It then goes through multiple scenarios to detail how bad it gets.

Sources:
PATRIOT WARS: Automation and the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System by John K. Hawley

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre

Network-centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars by Norman Friedman

Paul Scharre's book expands on this: