Lori Witzel

DARVO but for nations.

A cool little Mycena that I photographed in Oxapampa, Perú. Never seen one with this cool stem texture before, no idea which species it could be.

Olympus OM-1 / 90 mm macro lens / 180 images stacked, ISO 200, f/5.

#mushrooms #mycena #fungifriends #olympus

Now more than ever I’m convinced losing Anthony Bourdain meant we lost probably the biggest person on tv who advocated for the wonders of meeting new people and calling anyone online who hated learning new cultures the children they were, ruthlessly to the camera.

My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.

Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!

They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Perhaps an early (bad) sign of what is to come:

Vinay Prasad, who helped lead a campaign against lifesaving mRNA vaccines at FDA, is being welcomed back to the University of California San Francisco, where he was prior to joining the Trump administration.

I Will Vote Be a voter. Find everything you need to vote in your state's next election.

Dallas County voters, polling hours have been extended until 9 PM CT. If you're in line, stay in line!

Your polling place may have changed since the last time you voted, and you MUST vote at your assigned precinct.

Go to IWillVote.com/TX to find your polling place.

All y’all need to share this with Joey Santore, aka Mister “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t”…https://youtube.com/@crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt?si=j9snq75inCGP63FG

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

We are a few thousand subscribers away from being a bigger print newspaper than the Washington Post.

We are a mere flurry away from humiliating one of the two Big Space Perverts.

Ask not how a Space Pervert can dominate you. Ask how you can dominate a Space Pervert.

Subscribe below.

They won't start with banning birth control. First they'll lie about it. Then dictate who can prescribe it, use it, fund it, in what forms, and for how long. Suddenly, your doctor won't call you back. I know this is what they'll do because it's what they're doing to transgender healthcare right now.

Milford teen Marcelo Gomes leaves State of the Union after targeted DHS tweet - The Boston Globe Gomes met with members of Congress to discuss his experience in detention before attending President Trump’s speech as Representative Seth Moulton's guest.

DHS was harassing and intimidating immigrant guests at the SOTU.

General McClellan over here not pressing his advantage.

YouTube video by New York City Public Advocate "I'm the first US elected official with Tourette Syndrome and I have some thoughts about BAFTA"

Jumaane Williams posted last night that he was gonna make this video so I had been waiting for it — thanks to @erinbiba.bsky.social for flagging just now.

Williams speaks from a place of deep consideration for everyone involved and it shows in the way he discusses the impact and solutions.

YouTube video by New York City Public Advocate "I'm the first US elected official with Tourette Syndrome and I have some thoughts about BAFTA"

Ah

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgaq...

New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates Kansas is set to invalidate about 1,700 driver's licenses held by transgender residents and roughly as many of their birth certificates.

Roughly 1,700 trans people in Kansas are going to have their driver's licenses and birth certificates revoked this week.

apnews.com/article/tran...

Susan Collins' vote for Justice Kavanaugh led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade — and she still thinks it was the "right vote."

I protected reproductive freedom and the right to an abortion in Maine, and I'm ready to take that fight to the Senate.

Writing an episode on the last slave ship to land in the United States and it's just wild what shitty people the conspirators in the voyage were: One guy had been stabbed by his steamboat clerk, another stiffed the sailors he'd hired, another repeatedly wrecked steamboats while racing them.

The poster for Secondhand Lions, starring Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and a teenage Haley Joel Osment.

In honor of Robert Duvall's passing, I recommend checking out this hidden gem.

A treat of a movie, that's sweet without being saccrine, featuring one of Duvall's most charming performances.

IT'S HAPPENING! @nora.zone is setting up a Gavin's Priors bot and we need YOUR HELP to populate it. Email or DM me for spreadsheet access so you can contribute!

Groups of people at three tables transcribing on their laptops.

Great to see a core group of people turn out early on a Friday to help transcribe documents related to the Colored Conventions for this year's Douglass Day Transcribe-a-Thon in the Marymount Institute at LMU. #DouglassDay
(photo posted with permission of participants)

The Hill: Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years by Dominick Mastrangelo - 02/11/26 10:38 AM ET

Politico: Gallup retreats from political polling , again under new leadership Gallup will announce friday that it plans to measure President Donald Trump's job approval rating only on a monthly basis. 12/21/2018

If you saw today's headline that Gallup will stop measuring presidential approval, they did the same thing in 2018. They do it whenever Trump is president.

A sea cucumber with a cylindrical tapered greenish body covered with large pointy orange welts rests on the sea floor.

Sea cucumber whose orange-brown body is studded with pointy yellow-orange nipple-like welts.

A half-buried white sea cucumber everts the feeding tentacles from its head region. The tentacles are busy and with many complex branchings.

One reason I take so many sea cucumber photos is they don't run away from me, but there's something enticing about a creature that resembles an unfortunate sausage and feeds with tentacles that look like the diagram of a complex nervous system. 🦑 #oceans #Scuba #diving #pacificnorthwest #echinoderm

This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.

The U.S. currently has more prisoners and a more sophisticated system of concentration camps than Nazi Germany had on the eve of World War II in 1939

If they can do this to find a dog, they can do this to find anyone. That’s terrifying.

When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.

I am all at a loose end since you left; I feel as if I haven't seen you for ten years. Every conversation that I have with my mother is about you. Everyone here loves you dearly. Under what constellation were you born then, to be blessed with such qualities, so diverse and so rare? I do not know the name of the feeling that I have for you. But it is a special tenderness, something I have never felt until now, not for anyone. We got on well together, didn't we? It was very agreeable. It was so good that I do not want to share the pleasure with anyone else. If you happen to use Croisset in one of your books, do disguise it so that nobody recognizes it. I would appreciate it. The memory of your visit is just for the two of us, for me. That is how selfish I am. I particularly missed you last night, at ten o'clock. There was a fire, over at my wood-merchant's. The sky was pink and the Seine was the colour of red-currant syrup. I worked at the pumps for three hours and I came home as weary as the Turk with the giraffe? [...] One of the Rouen newspapers (Le Nouvelliste) reported your visit to Rouen, so that on Saturday after I had left you I met several bourgeois in a state of indignation over the fact that I had not put you on display. A former magistrate took the prize: 'If we had known that she was here... we would have... we would have ..? - five-minute pause, he's looking for the word - We would have... smiled at her.' That would have been rather meagre, don't you think? [...] To love you 'more' is difficult for me. But I do embrace you most tenderly. Your letter this morning, so melancholy, stirred me. We parted company just at the moment when all kinds of things were about to find their way into words. All of the doors between the two of us are not yet open. You inspire a great respect in me and I do not have the courage to ask you questions, Farewell, I kiss your sweet and lovely countenance, and I am Your Gve Flaubert

“We parted company at the moment when all kinds of things were about to find their way into words.”

Find yourself a correspondent who writes to you as Gustave Flaubert did to George Sand.

IN. BUSINESS. TOGETHER.

In terms of paper waste, maybe, but ebooks aren'tthe solution. Speaking as a librarian, ebooks are the bane of my fucking existence. I can buy 10 MMPB for the cost of 1 restricted access temporary license ebook. See:
bsky.app/profile/book...