J

rice is life, and I got a thread to share about rice: Park Chung-hee's obsession to make South Korea rice self-sufficient in the 1970s changed everything about the country, including your favorite Korean foods and the urban environment 🧵

A snap from To the Wonder, with riders on horses in a country mountainous landscape.

Just finished 'To the Wonder', a c drama of 8 episodes. About an aspiring writer who returns home to the countryside. Really quite different to the CEO/rich lead trope, beautiful at times. Recommend. On Viki.

If any tech people do happen to have the ears of billionaires, I am here with my wallet open saying I would pay EXTRA for devices and software that don't have AI in them. Please take my money.

I love the soft golden light in this one.

A large, old-fashioned television with protruding buttons and four 1950s style legs

Beautiful everyday Ladybird things.
The television set
Artist: Harry Wingfield (1970)

My friend Jon has died | First Dog on the Moon Jon Kudelka loved his beautiful family and was fiercely intolerant of greed and hypocrisy * Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published * Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...

My friend Jon has died | First Dog on the Moon

"Moderna's CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases: 'You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market. Vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes, and shingles have been shelved.” 9:12 AM Feb 12, 2026 604.8K Views

In terms of what cures are being lost:

- Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis
- herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis
- shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease

What's so amazing about Jim Henson as a puppeteer is that he could literally be explaining that Kermit is made out of felt and ping pong balls and yet Kermit still feels alive the whole time he's doing it

Split-image: On the left, a black-and-white historical portrait of Mary Winston Jackson (1921–2005), the pioneering Black aerospace engineer and mathematician at NASA who became the agency's first Black female engineer in 1958. She is shown in her later years wearing large round glasses, short curly hair styled in soft waves, large hoop earrings, a polka-dot blouse pr scarf with a brooch, and a warm, confident smile. On the right, a color scene from the 2016 film Hidden Figures, depicting actress Janelle Monáe portraying Mary Winston Jackson as a young mathematician and engineer at NASA. She sits at a desk in a classroom-like setting, wearing a bright yellow cardigan over a cream blouse, bold pink lipstick, gold earrings, with her hair in a sleek 1960s bob, gazing thoughtfully ahead amid colleagues in the background.#MaryWinstonJackson #HiddenFigures #NASA #BlackHistoryMonth #WomenInSTEM #JanelleMonáe #HumanComputers

Aerospace engineer & "human computer" Mary Winston Jackson became NASA's first Black female engineer in 1958.

Her story features in 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘍𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 (book/film). She died #OTD in 2005. www.nasa.gov/people/mary-...

#WomenInSTEM #BHM #WomenInScienceDay #IDWGS

Rain! Actual rain!

More than 50 heat records were broken across Australia in the last week of January, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

This is climate change, and it can be lethal.

Was frantically tapping the sound button on this and realized the audio was playing in my fiancé’s AirPods downstairs. He heard the music and came upstairs because he thought I “was watching Lord of the Rings,” and I had to grimly turn my phone toward him as an animatronic pig jawed silently

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

Cartoon by Jon Kudelka. Man and dog bored in the park decide to head to the pub instead.

Man’s Best Friend.

Vale Jon Kudelka.

I cannot stress this enough: court case after court case has ruled that AI does not count as an author when it comes to copyright. Any minute now an AI bot is gonna start reskinning and reselling AI slop and the "authors" will have zero legal recourse because they didn't actually author shit.

You might 'win the race' of getting a book out if you write with Ai (or use a ghostwriter, for that matter), but you're damaging your credibility and potentially damaging the market you want to sell in. You'll lose in the end.

Because someone writing their own book...

there should be a high fantasy author who hates writing about food. "and then king aelfrid joined the dwarven feast and quickly wolfed down some ham and a corn or whatever. back to magic"

A massive stuffed bear laying fae up draped over a picnic table beside a covered public swimming pool.

Mate, I know exactly how you feel.

Deviating from usual railway YouTube's, yesterday I watched a video of a Super Constellation plane called Connie. I decided to look it up, and found out it had a restoration period of nearly 18 years, done by volunteers travelling from Australia to Arizona. Dedication! hars.org.au/display/lock...

He was great in Start Up, good in Hometown Cha-cha-cha, I'm jury out on Can This Love Be Translated because I didn't finish it...but part of the appeal of watching it was because he was in it and was good in the other two.

Oh gosh yes, it really does make rewatching it challenging!

We know AI/LLM often encodes gender bias arising from its training dataset- in this case, academic presentations. So when it comes up with counter-bias results like this, you KNOW the effect must have been very strong indeed. Highly recommend reading the whole thread for further detail. #equity ✊️

Browser war in the 90s

A little memory from the first browser war in the ’90s.

Is your website best viewed using:

Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?

#WebDesignHistory

An aerial view looking down on the 1960s station as if it were a Hornby set - with level crossing, taxi, porters and pedestrian bridge

The railway station in Ladybird Land - captured in Treasure magazine, 1963

(Artist: Don Harley)

A vintage black-and-white portrait of pioneering American microbiologist Alice Catherine Evans (1881–1975), seated elegantly in a dark satin blouse with a strand of pearls around her neck. She gazes directly at the camera with a composed, intelligent expression, one hand resting lightly on a table edge, wearing a pleated skirt in this classic early 20th-century studio photograph. Evans made groundbreaking contributions to public health by proving that the bacterium Brucella abortus (which causes brucellosis, also known as undulant fever) could be transmitted from infected cattle to humans through unpasteurized milk, leading to widespread milk pasteurization laws in the 1930s that saved countless lives. She was also the first woman elected president of the Society of American Bacteriologists (now ASM).#WomenInScience #Microbiology #AliceCatherineEvans #PublicHealth #Pasteurization #WomenInSTEM

Microbiologist Alice Catherine Evans was born #OTD in 1881.

She proved that the bacterium 𝘉𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘴 caused brucellosis (aka undulant fever) in humans & cattle. This led to the pasteurization of milk in the US in 1930. First woman president, Society of American Bacteriologists.

#WomenInSTEM

My favourite way of saying “we’re on it” or “we’ll take care of that for you” is the Dutch we zullen dat varkentje wel even wassen. It means “we will certainly get that piglet washed.”

Magic

Happy National Daisy Day and a reminder that the word daisy derives from the Old English dæġes ēage, which means “day’s eye” (because its petals open at sunrise and close at sunset).

Frog and Toad, all bundled up, put the finishing touches on a snowman. Er. Snowfrog. From "Down the Hill" In *Frog and Toad All Year*

This "How Different Light Bulbs Work" infographic compares incandescent, halogen, CFL, and LED bulbs. Incandescents last 1,000 hours at 15 lumens/watt. Halogens last 3,000 hours at 25 lumens/watt using halogen gas to redeposit tungsten. CFLs offer 10,000 hours and 60 lumens/watt via UV-excited phosphors. LEDs are the most efficient, lasting 25,000 hours at 80 lumens/watt using semiconductors. As longevity and efficiency increase from incandescent to LED, the cost per hour decreases significantly.

Thomas Edison’s patent for the incandescent light bulb was granted #OTD in 1880. This previous edition of #PeriodicGraphics in @cenmag.bsky.social examines the different types of lightbulbs and how they work 💡 cen.acs.org/materials/ph...