Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶

Close-up of the wave pattern formed by increasing and decreasing knitted stitches at graduated intervals.

Am loving the pattern-making in this Laguna Veneta Vest. 🧶
ravel.me/laguna-venet...

Never forget that shutting down your local arms factory is infinitely more useful to the victims of war than voyeuristically consuming imagery of mutilation.

I'd need to reread her entire canon to check, but it's the kind of word she used in letters and essays. Personal Pleasures (1935) would be a good place to start. TH White used it a lot in The Sword in the Stone (1938?) and its sequels into the 1950s.

Rose Macaulay! Did I win?

There is always a tweet.

The process that led to the Holocaust didn't start with killing people.

First it made them non-people.

Then it killed them.

Post a picture you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

Photo of the underside of a house martin tower. Several mud nests can be seen under the eaves and there is blue sky overhead.

A photo of a house martin tower (a tall structure with nests on the top) in a green space with houses and the Malvern Hills in the background.

A house martin tower has been built in #Malvern thanks to funding from #NaturalNetworks and #MalvernHillsDistrictCouncil.

House martins need the eaves of our buildings to provide essential shelter for their mud nests - this tower will provide an additional safe space for them to set up home 🐦💙

Jet lag is horrible. Maybe three more days of waking at 3am and feeling exhausted before 9am. Ugh.

I was about to say that! I first read The Silver Pigs on the way back from my English Heritage staff induction trip in 1990.

Re-reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising About 18 months ago I wrote about Susan Cooper’s five-novel sequence called The Dark Is Rising. If published today they would be classified as children’s / YA fantasy fiction. In the 19…

This isn't an academic article but I an an academic literary historian, so it might be useful. katemacdonald.net/2017/12/17/r...

A very large model of the toothy head of Godzilla above an airport cafe, Haneda, Tokyo.

Meanwhile Godzilla is poet in residence at Haneda airport, Tokyo.

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...

The floor plan for the planned ICE concentration camp in Social Circle, Georgia:

Well I'm relieved you had nothing to say because I could not think what you could have filled a column with otherwise. The poor Guardian editor must be longing for more interesting material. Perhaps that's why she researched European dating apps as a wild spinoff feature.

You could also factor in the equivalent costs of well-trained volunteers working under FLO supervision, like me, who do a lot of basic recording of finds for the PAS. My vol colleague and I both have PhDs, significant arch experience and work for a day a week for nothing in Worcs.

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

A retired British primary school administrator with a British passport and a valid visa was shackled, chained and detained for six weeks by ICE

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Painting featuring a basket of plumbs on a table surface in a dark interior

Louise Moillon (c. 1610–1696) French painter in the Baroque era. One of the best still life painters of her time, she was trained by her father as she was unable to attend academies as a woman- who were thought to lack the ability required for artists #WomensArt

Un monstre gueule ouverte prêt à engloutir ce qui ressemble à un donut

Mmmh un donut

Une créature croisé de loup garou, Hulk et Homer Simpson prêt à engloutir un donut

BnF. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 919
#medievalsky #manuscrits

And at Aberdeen 1981-85. In my first tutorial we embryo medievalists were given a handout in Latin for discussion. The disappointment of our tutor when he realised that none of us could read it was just awful. But at least no-one expected us to know what Hwaet! meant.

Castela sponge cake with gold leaf topping, mochi covered in green matcha powder, red bean paste, matcha ice cream and a squirt of cream.

Last pudding in Kanazawa for my travelling companions. With gold leaf. 🍨 🇯🇵

The firste parte of *Beowulf* ys prettye grippinge but the secounde parte doth dragon a bit

I like that phrase! I shall tell them they're reselling surveillance hardware.

My optician sent me a marketing email about Meta 'smart' glasses. I sent them two links to privacy cases. Got a bland reply. And then there's this. Just because something can be made doesn't mean it should be used.

3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications Just 3.5% of a population engaged in nonviolent resistance can change everything. 150 yrs worth of data show it would take, say, 12 million Americans committed to civil resistance to create real an…

3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications nicolagriffith.com/2026/02/19/3...

All hail the calm competence of Bedford Borough Council's social media lead.

Bamboo shelves to support pine branches in snow.

Rice straw wrapping for tender tree ferns in winter.

Rice straw ropes to keep snow from breaking pine branches.

My favourite plant supports from Tokyo and Kyoto so far.🌱

The really famous Kinkaku-ji temple, top floors gilded, 14thC but rebuilt a lot after fires. Kyoto. Amongst Zen gardens.

Bamboo aqueductlet in Ryoan-ji temple gardens, Kyoto.

Week 2 in Japan. No more shopping. No more! Settling down to tours of Buddhist temple gardens instead. 🌱

I was trying to clarify that while the neolithic period (other commentator's point) does reach past the invention of writing, the early oral circulation of Homer's works predated that.

Sorry, writing energed in 4thC BC! Going backwards in my dating ...