@amybrady
Writing a book about maps | Wrote a book called, Ice: FROM MIXED DRINKS TO SKATING RINKS—A COOL HISTORY OF A HOT COMMODITY | historian & journalist | Newsletter: "Library of Wonders": https://libraryofwonders.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-library
Female hooded merganser swimming in profile. Her head is a tuft of spiky orange. There is snow in the background
The merganser continues to swim but has turned from the camera. You can see more of her head feathers from this angle.
Check out these punk rockers swimming not far from our house. Female hooded mergansers, I believe. 🪶#birds
@abetterworldbook.bsky.social co-author Danica Novgorodoff and I had a lovely conversation with Itto and Mekiya Outini about creativity & collaboration on the The DateKeepers – A Hub for Writers and Creators podcast. Have a listen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BX...
Plant history for plant nerds! 🌱
Plant history for plant nerds! 🌱
An owl is perched on a tree stump leaning forward with head turned slightly towards the viewer.
'Owl on Tree Stump' - Tejima Keizaburo, ca. 1980s.
#OwlishMonday #JapaneseArt
Capricorn.
From John Bevis' Uranographia Britannica (ca. 1749), a watershed in the history of celestial atlases, being among the last to show allegiance to the old animated mythology of the heavens.
More in our latest post: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bevis-uranographia
Kansas is a beautiful state and trans folks make it better. Our politicians are vile and small. They obsess over cruelty. The prairie is a remarkable place of wonder and resilience. Our legislature cannot imagine a better world, they are too starved by their own bigotry.
“The American dream turns into the American nightmare as we start to look at what we’re doing to biodiversity and systems that we depend on as humans."
Northern Lights in Zenith, by Harald Moltke, 1900.
One of the many images of Aurora Borealis collected in our post “Firelight Flickering on the Ceiling of the World”, looking at how this otherworldly phenomenon has been depicted over the centuries: https://buff.ly/38dxgft
episode 025
A torii (gate) stands at the bottom of stairs flanked by two stone lanterns. Beyond is a large stretch of water with land on the other side. It is a clear, bright, sunny day. A woman can be seen on the steps. A small timber boat is in the right foreground.
'Pacific Ocean, Boshu' from the third Souvenirs of Travel Series - Kawase Hasui, 1925.
#ToriiTuesday #shinhanga #JapaneseArt
Neither travel nor snowstorms can keep my #ScholarSunday threads from their appointed rounds—so here’s my 264th of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ +
blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...
Just came under a MASSIVE PSYCHIC ASSAULT at the grocery store
Beautiful!
#FolkloreThursday #yokai
Trying to figure out how I feel about the fact that I'm writing about a very famous and very ancient map whose scholarship was once summarized thusly: "this is a text about which a great deal has been written, most of it nonsense."
#mapfacts #herebedragons
Black-and-white photo of a very fluffy White cat with black patches, looking up towards the camera. It appears to be sitting on a bench outside. Handwriting on the photo says “Mickey“.
Look at this muppet. “Mickey”, photo from my collection, no date.
Lydia Millet on censorship, creativity, and what happens when your books don’t get banned.
Ramadan Mubarak!
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
Laissez bon temps rouler!
Hodesh Adar tov!
Y'ALL
⭐
close seedling apples, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1935
close seedling apples, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1935
Walk along the Long Island sound this morning. The ice is finally starting to thaw
Heathcliff Panel: Heathcliff leaps at birds holding bread in both forepaws. Two men sit on a park bench. One of them says "I like milk chocolate and my partner likes dark chocolate, so what percentage of cacao will leave us both unsatisfied?"
New Yorker Panel: A man speaks to the clerk in a chocolate shop. He says "He's trying to make a sandwich."
2/13/26
A few of the stunning illustrations from a 16th-century treatise on comets — known as The Comet Book — created anonymously in Flanders (now northern France).
More info and images from the book here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-comet-book
French novelist Jules Verne was born #onthisday in 1828. His fantastic tales of voyage and adventure have lent themselves to many wonderful illustrations but perhaps none so captivating as those by Émile-Antoine Bayard for Around the Moon (1870) — publicdomainreview.org/collection/e... #otd
🫡
As someone who’s writing a history of maps I love the reminder of how much maps f*cking matter #herebedragons #mapfacts
www.cnn.com/2026/02/06/p...
Come with me into my office and see some of what made @abetterworldbook.bsky.social come to be!
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue
“The Dust That Measures All Our Time”, Steven Connor on that “most untrustworthy” type of matter... sand: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dust-that-measures-all-our-time
