A thread 🧵 where I will use maps to try and explain the War on Iran. Hopefully this helps.
Our first map is a true size map from truesizeof.com
It shows the United States compared to the region. Notice how #Iran is much larger than #Iraq and #Afghanistan and its central location.
1/n
Jayme Lawson from Sinners hit the nail on the head and said how I felt with the whole BAFTAs situation.
What absolutely marvellous news, congratulations MP Hannah. Can't remember ever having been quite so chuffed at a political result. Lets hope there are many, many more to come.
The reaction from our volunteers in Manchester! 💚
It is time to join our movement of hope 👉 join.greenparty.org.uk/
British.
tweet by the late Dawn Foster from Sep 4th 2020 "Matt Goodwin once emailed me to accuse him of being racist when I called him a “racist whisperer” and I had to explain to him that horse whisperers aren’t horses."
RIP to a real one
Probably why it resonated with with me so much as a youngster too. Though hearing the original series as it was broadcast are my earliest Douglas Adams memories. Just hearing a bit of Journey of the Sorceror still spikes my dopamine :)
At such moments, we touch the border of those feelings which only music can express. We can never emulate music, because to arrive at the condition of music would be the annihilation of poetry, and especially of dramatic poetry.
- T. S. Eliot, "Poetry and Drama"
tseliot.com/essays/poetr...
In Greek myth, Orion fell in love with the "Seven Sisters". To escape, they prayed to Zeus, who transformed them into doves and flung them into the sky, forming the Pleiades.
High-resolution app.astrobin.com/i/26mg5q
#astrophotography #astronomy #naturephotography #nature #eastcoastkin #photography
'Being detained at your brother's pleasure' will never not be funny
I've never seen this, something I intend to rectify soonest, Švankmajer’s Alice being an all time favourite. Interestingly, whilst showing my youngest some of my favourite animation, we watched it back to back with Akira, and discovered they were made in the same year - 1988. Vastly different, yet..
New study: People who had COVID were more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for at least three years afterward. We need long-term post-COVID care and monitoring.
Fascinating study. One thing I’ve said a lot is that in a post-skinnerian field we are finding cognitive complexity wherever we look in the animal kingdom and this study starts by saying that where sentience can’t be confidently stated it’s in cephalopod species that haven’t been studied much.
Cartoon. Person says to other person „We invented a robot that answers questions.“, adding, „we just have to feed it 10 baby giraffes a day“. The other person asks „But it answers the questions correctly?“ Person responds „Oh my goodness, no. No no no no no.“ By Aram J. French Appropriated due to missing alt text
SCREENCRAFT WHAT IS "MA"? In an interview with film critic Roger Ebert from 2002, Ebert tells Miyazaki he appreciates what he calls "gratuitous motion" in his films, adding that, "Instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are," said Ebert. Miyazaki answered with, "We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. "It's called Ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
My piping hot take on PLURIBUS is that it’s one of the most Ghibli-esque shows on TV today, and people who think its pacing is too slow ought to really sit with and examine why they feel that slow pace = bad.
Its first season has several minutes worth of “mā”, and is much stronger for it, IMO
Lots of artists sell physical media like vinyl on their Bandcamp pages :)
![Excerpt from Wikipedia reads: "Fight against merchandising his characters
For years, Watterson battled against pressure from publishers to merchandise his work, something that he felt would cheapen his comic through compromising the act of creation or reading.[21][22]
He refused to merchandise his creations on the grounds that displaying Calvin and Hobbes images on commercially sold mugs, stickers, and T-shirts would devalue the characters and their personalities. Watterson said that Universal kept putting pressure on him and that he had signed his contract without fully perusing it because, as a new artist, he was happy just to find a syndicate willing to give him a chance (two other syndicates had previously turned him down). He added that the contract was so one-sided that, if Universal really wanted to, they could license his characters against his will, and could even fire him and continue Calvin and Hobbes with a new artist. Watterson's position eventually won out, and he was able to renegotiate his contract so that he would receive all rights to his work. Later he said that the licensing fight exhausted him and contributed to the need for a nine-month sabbatical in 1991.[23]"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c/bafkreihmgl3sxrmb5t6edpjnixyanj2rvcf43zdv46mbifhl7hdtmz5u6y)
Excerpt from Wikipedia reads: "Fight against merchandising his characters For years, Watterson battled against pressure from publishers to merchandise his work, something that he felt would cheapen his comic through compromising the act of creation or reading.[21][22] He refused to merchandise his creations on the grounds that displaying Calvin and Hobbes images on commercially sold mugs, stickers, and T-shirts would devalue the characters and their personalities. Watterson said that Universal kept putting pressure on him and that he had signed his contract without fully perusing it because, as a new artist, he was happy just to find a syndicate willing to give him a chance (two other syndicates had previously turned him down). He added that the contract was so one-sided that, if Universal really wanted to, they could license his characters against his will, and could even fire him and continue Calvin and Hobbes with a new artist. Watterson's position eventually won out, and he was able to renegotiate his contract so that he would receive all rights to his work. Later he said that the licensing fight exhausted him and contributed to the need for a nine-month sabbatical in 1991.[23]"
Bill Watterson is my favorite cartoonist. I adored the relationship btw Calvin and Hobbes as a child. But as I've gotten older, these strips feel even more tender and insightful. My respect for him grew when I learned of his stance against merchandising. Such principles are almost unheard of today.
ICE is what happens when little boys grow up only playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and don't balance it out with silly little games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. Not a drop of whimsy to be found in these broken men.
My first foray into #jamuary - mostly #eurorack #modular noodlings.
Marbles generating notes & gates, Braids acid(ish) bass, Rings the low pad type thing, Ensemble Oscillator the short string like plucks & Morphagene or Monsoon adding the granular goodies. #Elektron #Syntakt (off screen) for drums.
It's almost as if years of relentless media saturation bombing of flat-out lies, demonisation and blaming don't help the public to understand what is actually happening.
Everyone needs a Magnapinna for New Year's Eve, even if you didn't know you did. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 501 #lostcityvents #MarineLife
An original artwork of a wren, created using watercolour paints in shades of brown and red on paper.
In Celtic and Druidic tradition, the wren was a bird of wisdom and divination. Its name in Gaelic (dreoilín) and Welsh (dryw) is often linked to the words for "druid" or "tree-knower," and its complex songs were once thought to be prophetic messages for priests.
#MyBest2025 #OriginalArt #Folklore
mRNA vaccines are one of the greatest scientific achievements of the past century. And this video is one of the best at explaining how it works in an entertaining way.
The most brutal way of telling someone they’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic that I’ve heard in French is t’es pas la truite la plus oxygénée de la rivière. It means “you’re not the most oxygenated trout in the river.”
* read on for similar insults from around the world (a thread)…
“Have they given up? Are they just deciding to build up herd immunity by watching us die? The government has given up, hasn’t it? They are throwing us into the slaughterhouse.”
It’s not hindsight - we knew this at the time @drrachelclarke.com writes:
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
"But if intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to sharpen it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies—to use it as cats use stealth, as walking sticks use camouflage, to make it the tool of our survival."
-Carl Sagan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Went to Thought Bubble over the weekend and have been reading up a storm with new graphic novels this week. Some particular notables I picked up:
