Mandy J Watson

A ship made entirely from recycled cardboard tubes.

Some of the stages of the making showing how it's constructed from back to front.

It may sound odd, but to switch myself off after busy days, I make stuff. Often simple things, but sometimes I lose myself in more complex models, a kind of meditation. This little ship has been exactly that. 🙂
Made entirely from recycled cardboard tubes.
www.darrellwakelam.com
#edusky #skyart #UKEd

Damn, Anderson Cooper was in the country?

Quick reminder that Substack recently sent out push notifications to random users promoting a literal Nazi blog that they host.

There's a reason why a lot of us don't share Substacks, or even visit sites hosted with them anymore.

All of this kind of reporting is a skill, and the kind of skill that is being lost with the gutting of journalism.

I am happy that the article spoke to you but, as you have seen from the numerous responses to the original post, it was incredibly off putting to others.

I used to do the equivalent in technology journalism for magazines that weren't aimed specifically at tech people, such as women's magazines, plus an educational and science and technology magazine for tweens and high school students, most of whom didn't speak English as a first language.

I wasn't advocating for strictly clinical descriptions. There are ways to make clinical information accessible - and very interesting - to laypeople without it being dry or "sciency" but still keeping it 100% accurate. Science is fascinating when explained well.

I don't personally experience this too much but I DO have an issue with the so-called "legally compliant" air quality but that's a (multiple) rant(s) for in person only.

Ah, interesting. I don't read sports stuff at all (and, of course, USA sports is hardly relevant to me) so I was unaware of that.

I find that USAmerican journalism is very fixated on centering every story around a human - I've even seen this in best-practice guides for how to write a story - but elsewhere this isn't always the case. Unless it's really necessary/relevant, I personally hate reading stories written this way.

Maybe. I don't know the writer but it seems no one has anything good to say about her so that could be. For other journalists I would say that it would be a misguided idea of how to create "emotional impact" but you can do that by describing what the disease does and what that is going to mean.

post by Rutger Bregman (@rutgerbregman.com‬) reads: Absolutely brilliant piece about the Left's TOTAL blindness on AI. Their dismissal of AI risks mirrors how climate deniers treat CO2. Will probably get a lot of nastiness for this on Bluesky, but I guess that's part of the same problem.

i shouldn’t give this piece any more attention than it has already garnered but i feel like it is worth pointing out some flaws in the argument/unquestioned assumptions

thread 1/

Tunic, Night in the Woods Publisher Says TikTok Is Creating and Running Racist GenAI Ads for Its Games Without Permission - IGN Publisher Finji says that TikTok has been using generative AI to modify its ads on the platform without permission and pushing those ads to its users without Finji's knowledge, including at least one ...

Dug into this absolutely wild thing happening to Finji. The deeper I read into their increasingly baffling conversations with TikTok "support" the more I felt like I was on something.

www.ign.com/articles/tun...

Because it's true! (I say this as a tech journalist. They're all the worst!)

No, they literally mean there's the order for who gets to be king/queen and he's in that list (highish up but not actually that high) and he should no longer be allowed to be in that list.

Second person fiction is a really stupid way to do this. You can easily report the process from start to finish with input along the way from doctors and researchers to explain medical bits without having to compromise any real person's privacy.

Fair.

Why are you still using GMail?

No, it is to trap people further into the Google ecosystem (which further enables and supports AI scraping and training) by forcing them to make a choice and, since most people have made themselves dependent on Google stuff, the company is betting they will choose Google.

This is all good news that you guys are the team and so I'm hoping there's no makeup/breakup makeup/breakup romance bullshit and it's a maturing and solid relationship where the only drama, danger, and peril is cool science fiction nonsense.

'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.

Woman finds common Carboniferous fossil on a beach where Carboniferous limestone pebbles are abundant. The things that make the news…🙄

'Smiling' fossil discovered on Holy Island www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Ramadan is imminent so I'd like to share one of my favourite memories. Amble back with me to 2001; I am 19 and I have aspirations of becoming a good, professional stand-up comedian. Once a month I meet with actual real pro comedians who try to turn wannabes into the real deal. 🧵

I'm looking at the shadows of everything and the shadows are being normal.

If it helps, it's beautifully clear weather in Cape Town today and 5 minutes away from the max yet you can't even tell there's a eclipse going on.

I shouldn't need to say it, burt remember don't look directly at the sun.

A pinhole projector is the easiest way to safely see it

I have mine set to "Warn" and what is amazing is how many I encounter Every. Single. Day, which means someone is manually going flag, flag, flag, flag, flag, flag thousands of times a day.

It's been observed by people paying closer attention that 100% of instances of this label on this site have been applied manually by a person with admin power and not as an automated response to a context trigger. BBS forum mod tantrum filter button. See if it's set to Hide or not in your settings.

What they are not saying in this post is that the games are free on itch for the next few days:

itch.io/s/180333/laz...

A watercolour painting propped up in front of my monitor, balanced on my graphics tablet. It depicts Todd, an anthro Belgian Malinois. He's looking straight at the viewer. A glass like crack radiates out from his right eye, the white void of that pupil affected by chromatic aberration. Where the "glass" is intact he's rendered in realistic watercolour. Where it has fallen out there's a ghostly silhouette.

This week has been kinda insane, but I really needed to share this absolutely amazing #watercolour rendition of Todd from my #webcomic, #Revenants! I commissioned @dwuff.com for a cover for the print run of Book 2, and it's absolutely beautiful in person 🤩
#furry #art #furryart #sfw

YouTube video by South African National Space Agency (SANSA) Partial Solar Eclipse

SANSA is streaming it live here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfwh...

Solar eclipse of February 17, 2026 - Wikipedia

Reminder that the solar eclipse is today:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_e...

If you're in Cape Town it:
starts at 14:01:05,
hits its max at 14:43:47, and
finishes at 15:24:21.