Illustration from "Plantæ utiliores," London, 1842-1850, depicting a dahlia plant with a large, deep red, densely petaled flower head. The flower is round and composed of tightly curled petals. Two green stems support the main flower and two unopened buds. Several green leaves with serrated edges and pronounced veins emerge from the base. The background is plain, highlighting the detailed botanical drawing. The word "Dahlia" is written below the plant. Despite the sunflower keyword, the image actually portrays a dahlia flower.

🌻 Plantæ utiliores: .
London: Whittaker & Co., 1842-1850..

[Source]

Sask. woman considers MAID because she can't get needed surgery for rare disease | CBC News For the past eight years Jolene Van Alstine has suffered from a rare form of parathyroid disease, normocalcemic primary hyperparathryroidism (nPHPT). It causes extreme bone pain.

A woman in Saskatchewan needs surgery for a parathyroid issue and is being offered MAiD instead.

There’s no one in the province who can perform the procedure and the government won’t pay to send her elsewhere.

This is why disability advocates warn about assisted dying
🧵

A major international meeting has agreed on new rules to protect more than 70 species of sharks and rays, marking a significant step forward for global marine conservation. These measures will tighten trade regulations, helping to reduce pressures from overexploitation.

A morning stroll in Takaragaike Park, with fallen leaves and the final colors of autumn 🍂

📍Sakyo Ward, Kyoto City

After NIH grant cuts, breast cancer research at Harvard slowed, and lab workers left Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.

Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments. n.pr/4a4N3zD

Trump Now Slams Paramount-Skydance Deal After Marjorie Taylor Greene Bashes Him On ‘60 Minutes’ Greene criticized the president on “60 Minutes,” claiming Trump had been “extremely unkind” when she received death threats, and that other Republicans are “terrified to step out of line.”

Greene criticized the president on “60 Minutes,” claiming Trump had been “extremely unkind” when she received death threats, and that other Republicans are “terrified to step out of line.”

UK EV drivers save £540 more on running costs than those in Germany.

Why? Combo of smart meters + flexible tariffs is now widespread in the UK but in its infancy in Germany.

🌍 2025
🗓 8th - 9th December
🕘 09:00Z
🛰 Meteosat-9

Everyone imitates Tolkien all the time except when it comes to the one way it would really matter: making the protagonist of your novel for children a short, fat, 50-year-old man who doesn't want to do anything.

A smooth, brown lizard with short legs on sand. it has round black eyes without eyelids.

a giant day gecko, the gecko the geico gecko is based on. it is a bright green lizard with small, bead-like scales. The lizard is licking its own eyeball.

Snakes aren't the only reptiles that can't blink.

Some lizards also have a clear scale over their eyes (called a spectacle)

and many geckos have nothing covering their eye at all (shocker, the geico gecko inaccurate).

📷Brendan Schembri, Andy Goldby

Scenes from my opening talk of the MOF symposium in Stockholm. Got gate crashed at the end by a couple of Nobel Laureates. Should’ve called security. #ozchem #NobelPrize

Sperm whale surfacing with a giant squid in its mouth: #AGoodPlace

Source: www.reddit.com/r/mightyinte...

ICE raided Augsburg University in Minnesota and allegedly pointed guns at students.

They didn’t have a warrant to be on private property, and students are shaken and left feeling unsafe.

At least one was detained.

They’re not going after criminals.

They’re grabbing anyone they can.

A couple of bears doing shenanigans in the yard. The #PNW is loaded with wild animals.

#mammals #seattle #mountains #goodnight #fun #nature #bears #love #trailcam #bluesky

ICE Shoots Protester Point Blank In The Face With Pepper Bullet -
Elgin, IL
December 6th

The Baird's Tapir has a mutualistic relationship with the endangered Jicaro danto tree. Found only in the mountains of northern Costa Rica, the fruits of this tree are very tough and only tapirs can bite through them. The tapirs are the primary way the seeds of these trees are dispersed.

#tapirs

Oprah Pursues Dr. Phil On Ship Through Arctic THE ARCTIC CIRCLE—With a vow to destroy the abomination she had created if it was the last thing she ever did, television host Oprah Winfrey has spent weeks on a ship pursuing Dr. Phil through the Arc...

“I brought this horrid creature into the world, and now I must take him out!” Winfrey said

Illustration of a proboscis monkey perched on a tree branch, showcasing its distinctive large, elongated nose. The monkey has reddish-brown fur with lighter fur on its cheeks and tail. Its long tail curls downward over the branch, ending in a face-like shape. The background features soft green foliage. This historical plate highlights the species’ unique nose, used to attract mates and amplify warning calls.

🐒 Primate Pinocchio? Proboscis Monkeys use the nose 2 attract mates & amplify warning calls.C it in #bhlib #SpeciesOfTheDay

[Source]

A small greenish bird perches on a branch, holding a fluffy bundle of white nesting material in its beak.

This female Northern Bentbill was busy building her nest at @casabentbill.bsky.social #CostaRica

#birdoftheday #nestbuilders #birds #nature

A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s northeastern coast on Monday, December 8th, at 23:15 (14:15 GMT).

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued tsunami warnings for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori, and Iwate.

Here is footage captured by Aomori Asahi Broadcasting.

#earthquake

The graceful decorator crab #Crustmas

YouTube video by Billi Brass Quintet Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) - Georges Méliès - (HQ) - Music by David Short - Billi Brass Quintet

Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was born 164 years ago today.

The French magician and film director played an important role in sci-fi history with A Trip to the Moon (1902).

What 38 million obituaries reveal about how Americans define a ‘life well lived’ Obituaries reveal shifting cultural values across time and place. Here’s a glimpse into how the moral vocabulary has evolved over several decades.

Obituaries reveal shifting cultural values across time and place. Here’s what psychology researchers found when they sifted through 38 million published from 1998 to 2024 buff.ly/oTAueW7

Court confirms Canada is liable for water and housing woes In two landmark rulings the Federal Court confirmed Canada is legally obligated to provide safe drinking water and housing to First Nations.

Federal Court: Canada legally obligated to ensure safe housing, clean water on reserve www.aptnnews.ca?p=280934

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing ...

Oops

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications The dataset contains images of children’s faces downloaded from websites about autism, which sparked concerns at Springer Nature about consent and reliability.

Holy CRAP.

Retired engineer takes random pics of *kids*, without consent or attribution, bins them into “autistic” or “not autistic”, and uploads that “data” for free on Kaggle.

Well over a HUNDRED papers are published, 38 in Springer Nature, 25 in IEEE, using it.

And no reviewers objected? WTF.🧪

Bier's chest-thumping rationale for enforcing platform rules collapsed under scrutiny. The idea that X is a platform where all voices are equal is belied by the fact that you can promote your posts ahead of anyone else's by advertising them, just as the commission had, or by becoming a paid subscriber. And the suggestion that the commission was running some sort of scam rested on Bier's vague assertion that it had found an "exploit" by mislabeling one sort of post as another. More to the point, and to the letter of the DSA law: there was no appeal process, no transparency about how similar cases are handled, and no explanation of why this particular post merited account termination rather than, say, removal of the offending content. (Platforms typically go out of their way to retain advertisers who have done far worse than what the commission is accused of here. How else do you think Meta estimates that it makes $7 billion a year from scam ads?)

When X banned the European Commission's ad account in retaliation for a fine, it demonstrated the exact sort of capricious behavior the DSA is designed to stop www.platformer.news/x-eu-fine-ac...

Seeing Rolling Stone lay off multiple staff less than three weeks before Christmas, one of them Brittany Spanos, a cover story writer with 11 years at the title, really confirms how bad things are in media right now

close view of the magenta-and-white-striped stalks of a chard plant with a bit of the deep green leaf visible

#ArtAdventCalendar
For Day 8, I present an image from my plant pattern series, featuring the striped stalks of a ‘Peppermint’ chard.

In the limited space of our urban garden, I choose to grow colourful vegetables that are uncommon in the grocery store.

A very blue and scuffed up barred hamlet twitches and tweaks for the Camera #barredhamlet #spawningcolors #hamlet #twitch #tweak #turnaround #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity