Alan Shopp

Ticks are more likely to carry the bacteria that cause Lyme disease in areas where Common Pheasants Phasianus colchicus are released, according to new research.

Read more: britishbirds.co.uk/journal/arti...
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Painting by Peggie Blizard ‘Yellow Roses’
Oil on panel. Size 24 x 18 Inches.

'Best Kebab', Old Street, Hoxton (2003) by Georgia Peskett
georgiapeskett.com

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer.

This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Dutch late night TV has its take

Blue Tit in flight against a mottled green backdrop

Styling it out #birdsinflight #birds #ukwildlife @rspb.bsky.social

Blue Tit in flight with wings in the crucifix position set against a pale blue sky

Blue Tit #birds #birdphotography #birdsinflight @rspb.bsky.social @rspbengland.bsky.social

Hey! An open double spiral staircase made in wood (the world’s biggest of its kind) is now gracing #NotreDame’s South tower ! Opening day for visitors: 20 September !

This woman will be protected by generations of crows

h/t: Autumn Buck / firstdatejunkie

NEW ORIGIN STORY: The British Chinese. This group constitutes nearly one per cent of the UK population. They are hardly ever spoken about, rarely recognised, and barely represented in media or parliament. This is their story.

London in 3D concept. #Day4 of sharing work-in-progress - Open access LiDAR DSM data, 50cm, 2017. #b3d

Drawing of a sparrow made with charcoal on toned paper.

Little sparrow

Charcoal on toned paper
5x7

#art #birds #nature

Plastic pollution talks fail as negotiators in Geneva reject draft treaties NGOs say deadlock over legally binding deal to curb production and toxic chemicals is ‘blow to multilateralism’

~5% of fossil gas & 15% of oil go into “non-energy producing purposes”: raw material for plastics, fertilizers, industrial chemicals etc.

A global plastics treaty has just been nixed.

These are not unrelated. The petrochemicals industry is fighting for their backup plan in a clean energy world.

Half finished portrait in acrylics of an elderly man wearing a Free Tibet T-shirt. The background is meant to look like an annotated relief map of all his favourite mountains. You can make out the words “Everest, Makalu, Annapurnas, Atlas Mountains, Chamonix, Snowdon, Ben Nevis, Munros, Wainrights, Howgills, Shunner Shuffle x10, or maybe just around Easby today?”

Photo of a hand lifting a 30cm x 40cm canvas up to reveal that I built sort of plug to fit into the recess in the back of the stretcher to support the canvas when flat. It’s several layers of foam core glued together.

Photo of the portrait at an earlier stage, the background is all drips of paint and crayons. The foreground figure is just sketched out in crayon.

Photo of an earlier stage of the portrait with the Free Tibet logo embroidered on the t shirt, just the base colours in acrylic.

Making progress on the portrait (My Dad:Mountain Man. 30x40cm acrylic on canvas). Also included a pic of my genius invention for supporting the canvas so I can draw on it without stretching or creating dents in it.

My work on the cover of the upcoming “Art of the West” magazine Sept/Oct issue!

4/ What's going on? Part of the story, and the piece most often discussed, is the impact of gas on Britain's grid.

Britain is unusually dependent on gas for baseload power, a product of having build no nuclear since the 1990s and phasing out coal rapidly in the 2010s.

Energy in Britain has gotten scarce—and thus expensive.

Prices are high in absolute terms, and further above the European average than any point in at least 40 years (barring the 22/23 shock).

What's behind this, and is it crimping growth? I took a look for @economist.com. (🧵)

Can’t believe all the time we’ve wasted down the years watching men’s football

There's a realistic chance we get to a position where Wikipedia is blocked while official government accounts are posting on a site that created MechaHitler AI

South Park's Matt Stone and Trey Parker are storytelling geniuses! I highlight their remarkably simple but effective "but/therefore rule" in every science communication lecture I give.

New poster depicting Brill windmill with a red kite flying overhead.

Morning all. If you like flying kites and you also like windmills, then this is Brill!

Have a lovely weekend. xx

🪶 #ukbirds

Nighttime triptych of 2.76:1 aspecy ratio shots taken in Tokyo some years back. Top: taxi driver reading in his cab. Middle: a young lady walks towards the camera in the rain, carrying an umbrella. A taxi in the background. Bottom: A low angle of the feet of someone waiting to cross the road. A taxi drives towards the camera, its lights straking into the lens.

A triptych of 2.39:1 cinematic aspect ratio photographs made at night in Tokyo. From top to bottom: the company logo and light on top of the taxi's roof. Middle photo is of a driver, side-on, looking out of his windscreen whilst waiting in traffic. Last photo is on Shibuya crossing, the focus is all on the nearside wing-mirror in which there is a clear, sharp reflection of the driver of the taxi. The city is bokeh in the background and it's myriad lights reflected on the side windows of the cab.

Two triptychs of night time taxis in Tokyo. Over the past 20+ years, the taxis here became an obsession of mine, Less and less nowadays are colourfully coloured. But you can still find plenty around the country. As a Tokyoite, a fantastic part of the cinematic landscape of this city. Night or day.

by Cig Harvey

I do think not enough people know this - everything after a question mark in a URL is garbage. You can delete it all and the URL still works fine. Strip that shit out when sharing anything.

Studies of some peregrine falcons made with pastel on toned paper.

Studies of some peregrine falcons

Pastel

#art #birds #nature #sciart

digital painting of a woman's face half in shadow. Greenish, yellow tones

Is it too late for me to become a mid-century commercial artist who illustrates cheap, pulp paperbacks and lurid magazine covers?
#illustration #art #midcentury

I broke my phone (but not my brain), saw 27 acts, walked for about 40 miles and wrote about it all for the New Cue

@dorianlynskey.bsky.social takes over TNC today and delivers the only review of Glastonbury you need. He got a lot of steps in:

thenewcue.substack.com/p/the-new-cu...

digital painting of a blue tit

I wasn't going to paint a blue tit (too small, too silly, too yellow) but I felt like I had to after realising the pair I often see out of my office window have built their nest in the walls of my house. Now every time I sit at my pc I hear furious cheaping between caterpillar deliveries.

from the Behemoth drawings 2010