Shane Mulligan, PhD

Heysham Hogback

🤯 ‼️ Got to see the Heysham Hogback

An early medieval sculpted stone from the 10th century, thought to be a bridge between pagan Viking Norse myth and Christianity…

🧵 #medievalsky #archaeology

Is a child born in Donetsk today Russian or Ukrainian?

1. A Lamp Falls. To this day nobody knows exactly what transpired in Selamon on that April night, in the year 1621, except that a lamp fell on the floor in the building where Martijn Sonck, a Dutch official, was billeted.

I don't know what makes a book important, but the opening line of The Nutmeg's Curse is a brilliant illustration of the writer's craft.

"Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?"

~ David Baldacci, ‘The Camel Club.’

#Illustration

How's the mood in England, you ask?

But what would be a success in terms of the Ziocon project? Dismantling the state's cohesion and capacities to resist corporate (and perhaps eventual settler) invasion? Or maybe just creating ungovernable territories (like Libya, Syria)?

Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) [Downes, Alexander B.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

Zooming out is important.

Foreign-imposed regime changes (FIRCs) are seen as a product of the Cold War, but they aren't.

Alex Downes catalogued 120 cases from 1816-2008 in his book.

Countries have always tried replacing leaders to get what they want.

amazon.com/dp/1501761145

3/

Arts and culture are definitely worth funding, especially in less imperialist cultures.

YouTube video by TheFriendsoftheSemel Open Mind Event "Reader, Come Home" with Maryanne Wolf

I was pleased to find Maryanne Wolf's _Reader, Come Home_ at my local library. But Youtube > amazon www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fJB...

“UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has shown that deep reading, defined as sustained immersion in a text, builds the cognitive circuits required for critical analysis, empathy and perspective-taking in ways that skimming, scrolling and short-form video simply cannot.”

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

A deep blue winter twilight, looking up through maple trees at a near-full moon.

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some Zen to the feed.

The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive

The beach hedge around our back garden with its brown winter leaves on display.

If you live in Ireland and you need to trim a hedge it’s get it done this weekend or wait until September. It’s illegal to cut a hedge after 1 March before 1 September in most circumstances.

YouTube video by SciTech Daily How Hektoria Glacier Disintegrated in Just Two Months

Here's a video that explains how this happened: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwDp...

So, any other news yesterday?
Anything important?

bsky.app/profile/fare...

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

YouTube video by Cornell Lab of Ornithology Gannet life in Newfoundland, Canada

Northern gannets are monogamous. They spend winters apart and return to places like Bird Rock in N&L each summer to breed. It's a mystery how they find their mates among thousands of squawking, flapping neighbours... but they do.
🐦❤️ from @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YYZ...

An archival photo from the Museum’s collections of a Pteranodon skeleton on display. A man facing the specimen reveals its enormous size.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a dinosaur? Nope to all of the above. This #FossilFriday, let’s celebrate pterosaurs, flying reptiles that ruled the skies for 150+ million years. Some were as small as paper airplanes while others had wingspans bigger than an F-16 fighter jet!

Four years into the Ukraine war, Moscow sees vindication, not failure What many in the West viewed as a strategic blunder is increasingly seen in Moscow as a costly but necessary gamble.

If only western newspapers offered analysis rather than simpering propaganda. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

God, I love the videos of this behavior, which is has been theorized to be cultural and spiritual. Watch with sound up.

vimeo.com/157106967?fl...

Chronic ocean heating fuels ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds Fish levels fall by 7.2% with as little as 0.1C of warming per decade, northern hemisphere research shows

Your 'moment of doom' for Feb. 25, 2025 ~ And acidification.

"The current challenge is that this overfishing crisis is being further exacerbated by ocean warming and deoxygenation."

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

thick moss growing up the side of a boulder and then branching off into a crack

thick tufts of several different types and textures of moss growing on the side of a boulder

thick clumps of short moss converging into thicker groups on a boulder

I'm really quite pleased with how the moss is growing on these boulders in my front yard. I love growing moss, I don't have to do anything but let it be and it creates art in my yard.

I just want to live in a world where I don’t have to say “What the fuck is wrong with you people” every time I leave my house.

#WeedWednesday #LetMyPeopleGrow

The notion of sustainability never really caught on in Alberta.

The "publish or perish" culture must perish. Scientists need time to think.

We just published our Slow Science Manifesto, where we argue that huge changes are needed in the way we fund, publish, and evaluate science.

Read more and sign here: www.slow-science.com

The manifesto has been dropped @aingrosso.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/aing...

😬

“This study reports that in utero SARS-CoV-2 viral exposure was associated with decreased cognitive skills in toddlers at age 2, and this association was mediated by cortical gray matter volumes in the newborn brain.”

Oof! This must be hard on the birds (snowbirds and other migrants). And I guess we shouldn't expect a lot of orange juice this season.