Jim

You could not create bigger, more pathetic losers in a lab owned and operated by Big Pathetic Loser Enterprises LLC.
bsky.app/profile/cram...

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

Old bridge with sidewalk

Funky midcentury overhang with massive twin steepled church behind it

The ornate Rialto theatre

More Joliet #route66

Someone could write a really interesting musical about the way in which Puerto Ricans are expected to assimilate into mainstream American culture.

Frozen leaves on a stream in the Jizera Mountains.

The Moon, setting, bisected by the silhouette of a tree branch.

Moonset early this morning over Illinois.

in a democratic republic (and really in all times and places) the slavish hunger to be in the thrall of a strongman or a king is the ultimate moral degeneracy.

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

#ThickTrunkTuesday
Minnigaff churchyard. Dumfrieshire

Fourteenth Match-1890 Over 1000 rigs and vehicles were hitched along the fences and around the bams. What kind of fences? They might have been the then recently invented barbed wire (1874). The invention put bounds to the seemingly boundless prairie. It enabled farmers to move farther west. A handbook for emigrants from the East, in 1835, said, “Much of this land must lie unoccupied for generations for want of fencing.” On the Illinois prairie the coming of barbed wire meant the gradual grubbing out of miles of Osage-orange hedge.

One of the thousands of artful historical interpretations in May T. Watts' Reading the Landscape: An Adventure in Ecology.

Osage orange --> barbed wire

Large oak tree in winter, by the side of a stream in open mixed woodland

A sleeping giant 🌱🌳

#ThickTrunkTuesday #TreesOnTuesday #TreeClub #Nature #Winter

This whole country has influencer-brain. It's the modern get-rich-quick-ism.

I am above average right now
🌊🌊🧊

Pretti died after asking a woman he was with if she was OK.

Good died after telling the man who killed her that she wasn’t mad at him.

A serene winter landscape in a forest with tall trees and a ground lightly covered in snow.

With cold temps ahead, you may hear about “exploding trees” — but it’s not that explosive. 🌳❄️ Sudden cold rarely causes this. What’s more common is frost cracking, when bark warms in the sun, then cools and shrinks faster than the inner wood, creating a vertical crack. Learn more: bit.ly/4a9Lb8k.

A close up photo of several small snowdrop flowers covered in tiny raindrops. The small flowers have white petals that are still unopened. They are growing amongst some grass that has fallen leaves upon it . A tall church that is out of focus can be seen in the distance

#Alphabetchallenge #WeekCForCloseUp
Snowdrops and droplets yesterday

Tree fern fronds unfurling to form a new crown atop the trunk

Tree fern, Dicksonia Antarctica 🌱🪴

#FernFriday #PlantSky #Ferns #ColorADay #GreenSat #EastCoastKin

A stout maple on water's edge, with a solid nebari of surface roots radiating outwards. The trunk has many twisted limbs, and the background has a glimmer of early morning light through gray clouds.

Thiss morning @mortonarboretum.bsky.social
#thicktrunktuesday

Swamp white oak, Busey Woods this afternoon.

I don't make many memes — but this one seemed worth doing.

January 8, 2026: Morton Arboretum

This week in @mortonarboretum.bsky.social East Woods.

botanistsfieldnotes.com/2026/01/10/j...

A woodland path winding through tall spruce trees. The tree trunks rise like straight columns with no branches until the upper reaches. The greenery of distant trees is visible in the background, as morning sunlight slants through the forest.

Morning light in the woods. 🌱🌳 @mortonarboretum.bsky.social

Humans are funny. Winter arrives and we’re like, ugh, let’s have a bunch of celebrations. Then we have the celebrations and … we’re less than two weeks into winter.

Large tree without leaves, in a clearing with a path to the right. Smaller trees beyond.

Walking between Bridge of Allan and Stirling a week ago 🥾
#ThickTrunkTuesday

A gnarly old oak, bare in winter, in a fen, against a blue sky.

#thicktrunktuesday

Photo of two sculptures in a snowy field resembling the side view of heads, each with a giant eye looking at each other

Oculus, reclaimed tree logs and branches, metal, mirrored domes, The Morton Arboretum, Chicago, Illinois, by contemporary US land artists Olga Ziemska #WomensArt

😍

That is a really nice taper on the trunk.