Faith Selby Bresson

Index joins call for robust protections against transnational repression in the higher education sector - Index on Censorship Film maker and postgrad researcher Roshaan Khattak was targeted after researching enforced disappearances in Balochistan

Here's a genuine risk to free speech in UK universities – from overseas states – that the government is doing little to prevent. @indexoncensorship.org have highlited the case of Roshaan Khattak, a Pakistani human rights defender and film maker:

www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/inde...

The image shows a close-up of a window set in a red wooden wall. The window has a white frame and is divided into six panes. One of the window's blue shutters is open, revealing the interior. The contrast between the red wall, blue shutter, and white window frame creates a striking visual effect.

I just love the simplicity of this wee Norwegian window

#WindowsOnWednesday
#photography

October is the best

‘Harpy’ linocut print.

I wanted to combine the woodcut style of Aldrovandi’s harpy with the Yubaba bird from Spirited Away. SO I DID.

matpringleillustration.bigcartel.com/product/bloc...

#BLOCTOBER2

Shoutout to the Boomers, really showing everybody else up in 2025

we hit 2 billion posts today! 🥳

Hundreds of hot air balloons decorated the sky during the 53rd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

Meta’s decision to ban ads about politics, elections, and social issues on their platforms like Facebook and Instagram in the EU is now implemented.

This is the new policy. Any ad about fx elections, civil rights, economy, health, climate, immigration, or foreign policy is now (presumably) banned.

Creative hobbies could slow brain ageing at the molecular level To keep the mind young, dance the tango.

🧠 Creative hobbies slow brain ageing

A global study found that activities like dancing, painting, or gaming keep the brain younger by strengthening neural connections, even for beginners.

🔗 doi.org/10.1038/d415...

#SciComm #Neuroscience #Ageing 🧪

☄️🔭

Hiroshige's woodblock print depicting snowy Asakusa Temple viewed through Kaminarimon Gate with five-story pagoda.

Hiroshige's 'Asakusa Kinryuzan' from the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series depicts a snow-covered scene viewed from Kaminarimon Gate toward Asakusa Temple's main hall and five-story pagoda. The work uses karazuri, a blind printing technique without ink, to create texture and volume in the snow.

The Case for Mechanical Watches in a Digital Age La Quête du Temps, an elaborate Vacheron Constantin timepiece on display at the Louvre, represents everything there is to love about watchmaking.

Watchmaker Vacheron Constantin’s ‘La Quête du Temps’ timepiece took seven years to design and build. Now on view at the Louvre, it represents everything there is to love about watchmaking

belle

With “Kavalier & Clay”, the Met is holding out for superheroes The opera, adapted from a prizewinning novel, brings stunts and sopranos together

The opera, adapted from a prizewinning novel, brings stunts and sopranos together

Jane Fonda relaunches free speech group started by her father during the McCarthy era In wake of the Trump administration’s censorship threats, the actor re-established the Committee for the First Amendment with A-list support

Good information! Let's join and be in solidarity.
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

An image of Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee, from 1965. Photo courtesy CBS Photo Archive / Getty.

The naturalist Jane Goodall died today at 91. Hope, she argued, is not merely “passive wishful thinking” but a “crucial survival trait.” Revisit a conversation with Goodall, from 2021: nyer.cm/F55JtsS

RIP Jane Goodall 🦍🖤

went to my first K-Indie gig 🌸👑

Needs 🧪🔭

Aurora + Milky Way =

The revolution won’t be televised but the treason sure is

‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support Zhang Yadi was due to begin a degree in the UK but the activist vanished on holiday amid tensions over Dalai Lama

'Zhang was due to begin graduate studies in anthropology at Soas University of London this month, and her friends say she aspired to work in the field of human rights.'

When and Where Is Home? | Adam Thirlwell The South Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s replicas of places he has lived are extraordinary feats of magical engineering.

These buildings could be disassembled and reassembled in a new location—a process of literally “walking the house.” For Suh, the phrase describes how we carry multiple places with us across space and time.
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Let's go rams 🐏🏈

‘She wrote the best first line – and the most chilling stories’: Stephen King on the dark brilliance of Daphne du Maurier From Rebecca to The Birds and scores of creepy short stories, Du Maurier was queen of the uncanny, writes the US horror maestro

'Sometimes the buildup can be slow, but “there are violins”, meaning that even when things seem relatively innocuous, you sense the shadows gathering. This is a gift few writers have.'

Musicians Don't Feel Pain Like The Rest of Us, Surprising Study Reveals It's well known that learning to play an instrument can offer benefits beyond just musical ability.

“… the musicians' brains responded differently to pain. Their training seems to have given them a kind of buffer against the usual negative effects, both in how much pain they felt and in how their brain's motor areas reacted.”

#scicomm
#music
#pain

www.sciencealert.com/musicians-do...
🧪 🧠 🎶

Authoritarianism Feels Surprisingly Normal—Until It Doesn’t Life in Venezuela was deceptively mundane. Then everything collapsed.

"Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too."
Read Gisela Salim-Peyer:
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Reading the New Pynchon Novel in a Pynchonesque America “Shadow Ticket,” Pynchon’s first book in a dozen years, unfolds its conspiracies in Depression-era Milwaukee and beyond, but it lands in a moment when reality seems to have caught up with his fictions...

“Shadow Ticket” is the first new work by Thomas Pynchon in a dozen years—and, at 88, he’s “still panoptic, exciting, abstruse, distractible, and, for good or ill, unrestrained,” Kathryn Schulz writes.

Why are Moldova’s parliamentary elections on Sunday so important? The background, key players and likely outcome of a contest of crucial interest to both Europe and Russia

'Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said this week that Moldova needed support to prevent it coming under Russian influence, a fate that had already befallen Georgia and Belarus. “Europe cannot afford to lose Moldova too,” he told the UN general assembly in New York.'