Mark Annand

A figure, depicting the place where it hurts, app developers.

Thoughts and prayers to all the people staffing the desks at Better gym centres, explaining to the customers where the app developers, with the last update, tucked the barcode for entry.

Agree that SUV isn't helpful as a label for these - they're more the cycle equivalent of a UTV (all terrain vehicle).

They are glorious too, but wow, they need space.

There are more Giant Redwood in the UK (The biggest Tree's in the world) than there are in the USA where they're originally from. This Giant Sequoia is beginning to stand out at Wimpole Hall and it's youngster..

Hedgemead boundary redwood, base of trunk. The tree's leaning, not the camera.

The parks department local to me has one growing at the extreme edge of one of their parks and on a 20% slope with its root plate constrained by tarmac on the uphill side. Possibly originally planted as a screening tree. They are *very* effective at piling on the cubic metres.

Not leaning. Much.

Illustration of rebranding using images of products with an arrow pointing from the original name to the new one Marathon became Snickers. Jif became Cif. The Conservatives are becoming Reform UK.

ok today in Marketing class we're going to learn about re-branding

Typewriter again racing a train and trailing paper. la rapidisima Hispano-Olivetti

Also in Spanish!
www.galerie123.com/en/original-...

British Olivetti poster, 1950 Yellow background. In foreground, half a grey typwriter appears at right atop a red square. A piece of Olivetti letterhead in the machine reads "in design and performance". Next to the typewriter lies a handwritten note "in design and performance clearly distinguished". In the middle background at left is the same machine with letterhead in it, but smaller, atop a green rectangle. In the center in the farther background an even smaller version sits on a gold rectangle. At bottom reads British Olivetti Ltd 10 Berkeley Square W1 Standard - Electric - Portable Typewriters - Printing Calculators - Adding/Listing Machines

I do love Olivetti's graphic design
loc.gov/pictures/res...

Thanks for posting that.

Qobuz publish their AI Charter and it's good.

✅ 100% human editorial
✅ Detect and exclude AI music
✅ Will never generate AI content to feed catalog or calculate royalties
✅ Prohibit catalog scraping content to train an ML or AI model
✅ ... plus more

community.qobuz.com/ai-charter

*Accidentally experiences terrestrial TV continuity break*

The usual run, on repeat since whenever: East*****rs, that grizzled fecker, and something involving, I don't know, a psychodonkey or something.

Noooooh idea what the BBC is aiming to achieve there.

An oil painting of a bunch of asparagus tied in a round bundle against a black background.

This painting by the artist Adriaen Coorte, made in 1699, shows a simple bunch of dramatically lit asparagus, on a stone shelf.

Still life paintings of food, often called Vanitas, were a common theme in Dutch art in the 17th century and alluded to moral themes such as the brevity of life.

I wish we could have cycle paths like this between villages here in the UK. Often only a few miles away but only dangerous roads with no pavements between them. Villages have become islands of social isolation where teenagers can’t be independent and those that don’t drive are trapped.

“The radicalisation of men born in the 1950s/60s correlates directly with the end of loco-hauled train services in Great Britain. In this essay, I will…”

A Look at 8 of the World’s Most Beautiful Rail-Trails for Cyclists Here are some of the most beautiful rail trails around the world for a glimpse of how incredible they are, each offering a different flavor of cycling history and place.

Informative, from @momentummag.bsky.social.

momentummag.com/a-look-at-8-...

If you're around in Bristol today, I'm giving a lecture on my New Labour book at the University! I'll be kicking off in the Arts Faculty about 1pm... Come along! www.bristol.ac.uk/history/even...

Rocking in the free world The adventures of Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan in 2026.

I've just updated my newsletter with my plans and updates for 2026. Find the latest gig and album news here: warringtonruncorn.beehiiv.com/p/rocking-in...

The BGS online borehole map for the area records a scattering of GWR's records as they investigated ground conditions for said inland route. Such a sod that 1939 turned out to be a bad time to choose to ramp up the progress on it.

PHOTO OF THE DAY: A cold January day at Princes Dock, Liverpool (1972). 📷 Mirrorpix

If you want to do chemistry measurements on a little auto-sub travelling deep under the ocean, and you don't have a team of highly trained squid in multi-armed labcoats and safety glasses, you need to somehow automate it. Like this 👇

There goes the neighbourhood.

Screenshot of an X.com post by The Associated Press (@AP) stating that dozens of immigrant families protested for better treatment behind fences at a Texas detention facility, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent after being detained in Minnesota. Below is a video thumbnail showing a crowd gathered outdoors along a fenced walkway; many people wear bright blue or red outerwear, and some hold signs.

After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.

"Swindon's Previous Bus Station" has entered the chat.

Tears of joy! SCOTLAND HAS JUST PASSED SWIFT BRICKS INTO LAW unanimously!
4 years of asking England & Scotland sorts it in a month led by ACE ⁦‪ MARK RUSKELL MSP‬⁩ ♥️The RELIEF is unreal! Tell England to follow 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿by emailing PlanningPolicyConsultation@communities.gov.uk now!WOOP!

Chippenham bus station + could be a boat there, I don't know.

#BringTheBoatsBackToTheBusStation I say.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Really powerful, hopeful paragraph from the latest article in the Atlantic by @adamserwer.bsky.social

Thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Yemen’s capital Sana’a on 27 January 2011. The beginning of a year of protests and violence that brought to an end 33 years of rule by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

On this day 15 years ago in Sana’a, Yemen.
27 January 2011. The start of what was to be a very long year of witnessing history unravelling.

Speedweve moth repair nearly done.

They're effective in that they make it straightforward to give structure to what would otherwise be a pathetic attempt from me at darning - and they vanquish that sense of powerlessness felt in the face of a moth attack. Visible mending at its best.

"A Meols you can shake hands with".

A blue yellow and green weave patch on grey top

Second the speedweave - you can make cute little patches, and quick enough to do within a tv episode.