Jean Blaylock

The vessel is cup shaped with a slightly rounded base. It's rough in texture with no decoration. It's a natural buff colour with some darker patches around the top and down part of the side, caused by the firing process. The marks where the straw inclusions were cover most of the surface. Extra info for the photo: The vessel is several thousand years old and measures only 8 cm. I photographed it for the Garstang Museum of Archaeology's 'Before Egypt' exhibition back in 2019.

🏺A tiny (8 cm) pot found during John Garstang's excavations at the ancient site of Koshtamna in Sudan, seemingly plain until you realise all those marks in the surface were made by straw inclusions in the clay. It's details like that that make me happy ...

Photo © me.
#FindsFriday #TinyJoys

When we talk about Baby Boomers not getting off the stage: In 1997, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2007, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2017, the US president was born in 1946.

And next year in 2027? The US president will have been born in 1946.

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

Our Land Trailer YouTube video by MetFilm Distribution

This looks good

www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...

'Unity' is killing our movement whilst fascists claim the streets SUTR has a stranglehold on the UK protest movement and this monopoly on protest is hollowing out our resistance against the far right

I worry about this

www.thecanary.co/opinion/2026...

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

Normally not a fan of cute names for bills but there are exceptions to every rule

As well as TH White in the Wood, I think there is Arden too. Including in the court/Arden cf castle/Wood contrast

Susan George's book 'How the other half dies' really shaped my thinking as a teenager

www.tni.org/en/article/s...

Behold the incredible shrinking Starmer: the PM who promises more while giving less | Aditya Chakrabortty It is not just this doomed government but the Labour party itself that is disappearing before our very eyes, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

An evisceration

AstraZeneca CEO hails NHS drug price deal but keeps pause on £200m UK investment Pascal Soriot suggests UK-US agreement will not be enough to revive plan to expand Cambridge site

Hang on, so we did a deal with Trump which will mean the NHS giving an extra £9bn a year to these 👇 very profitable corporations, on the basis it would help attract investment back. And yet… no investment is coming back. It was a shakedown. Who knew?

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Excavation of the tomb of Akhet-Hetep at Giza revealed a monument to his mother Peseshet, the "Overseer of Women Physicians." She is the world's earliest known woman doctor, and practiced at the time of the building of the great pyramids in Egypt, about 2500 BC. #CelebratingWomen

A finds photograph of a curved iron draw knife, small find sf180 from the Castle Field site at Torksey, Lincolnshire. The knife has a broad, U-shaped blade with two projecting handles, curled over where they would have originally met a wooden grip.

I think we'll stick with tools for today's #FindsFriday... although I can't claim that this is a 'Viking camps' post, as our find isn't from inside either of our winter camps!

This is sf.180, an iron draw knife found in Castle Field, Torksey - south of where we know the Great Army camp was. /1

I think people often wonder this, and it's a great question, so let me explain the advantages of 3D printing whistles. There are many.

The 3D printing effort started from one of our organizers who started by sourcing mass-produced whistles.

A panel in the Labours of the Month series either side of main west doors of Lucca's cathedral. For February a bearded man wearing a cap is shown stepping into wavy water. He's holding a fishing rod and has caught a fish. Over his shoulder is a basket - perhaps with earlier catches? The scene is shown between green marble columns with corinthian capitals supporting an arch above. In space between this and arches to left and right are zodiac symbols for Aries (a ram) and Pisces (a fish). Below the row of monthly labours the months are named, here 'Februarius'.

#ReliefWednesday
Tuscan labours of the month differ from many others: much attention to fruitful wine harvest year round, but in February you might as well just go fishing.

13th C relief, Lucca's #Romanesque Cattedrale di San Martino, w zodiac signs of Aries + appropriately Pisces along the top.

The CPS have asked for time to decide if they will retry the defendants on the charges of which there were no verdicts. Nobody should be held in prison under these circumstances.

Free samuel corner ⛓️‍💥

Shut Elbit Down 🪧

LIFT THE BAN ON PALESTINE ACTION 🇵🇸

3/3

BREAKING: NO CONVICTIONS AS VERDICTS COME IN FOR FILTON24 TRIAL

After 8 days of deliberation, the jury have not convicted Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Ellie (Leona) Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin on any charge.

Defend Our Juries comment to follow.

Grackle squawking with the caption Does anyone know what was up with the calligrapher who was having a bad night in The Residence because I love that it is never explained but also I’m curious

Sometimes I take a pic of a squawking bird and give them stuff to say

There are worse hobbies

Being able to manipulate people successfully often derives from a rock-solid understanding of human nature. So does a lot of good art. It would be awesome if talent was always married to virtue, but… *gestures vaguely at all the things*

"actually his stuff was very Derivative and not Original" like, you don't have to do this. it is good for us all to sit with the cognitive dissonance that a very bad person can make very good art. it is good for us to work through the moral ramifications of that.

The embroidery piece in the header image of this fantastic article is just stunning, but the one further down from Sarah Gonsalves with Renee Good's last words and her murderer's response literally took my breath away.

Israel accepts health authorities’ Gaza death toll is broadly accurate, saying 70,000 have died Israeli military’s abrupt U-turn in accepting official figures comes after years of attacking data as ‘Hamas propaganda’

All those articles* and news bulletins in the UK that compliantly qualified every statistic and death count with “according to the Hamas-run health ministry”, implicitly discrediting them

And now casually oh yeah it’s true

The correction should be as prominent as the error

*inc the Guardian

“The Nation” Nominates Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize With their resistance to violent authoritarianism, the people of Minneapolis have renewed the spirit of Dr. King’s call for “the positive affirmation of peace.”

As longtime observers of struggles to establish peace and justice in the US and around the world, The Nation is honored to nominate the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

Who takes Palantir's money? A new tracker finds out. ICE relies on the firm for deportation tech—and its PAC pays it forward to Congress.

Who takes Palantir’s money? A new tracker finds out.

get in kids, we're making folk heroes

Bitch, do you really want people 3D printing vuvuzelas instead?

The Law of the Jungle Trump's destructive foreign policy not only reveals the emptiness of the liberal 'rules-based order', but announces a new approach built on military might and open corporate power.

Trump is not crazy. He's creating a new world order that bears striking similarities with facism in the 1930s. Today in @tribunemagazine.bsky.social, I lay out what that looks like and how we can fight it. 

#Greenland #Venezuela #davos 

tribunemag.co.uk/2026/01/the-...

Oxfam refuses to provide Israel with details of Palestinian staff in Gaza The UK-founded charity will not adhere to Israel's demand as observers fear data could be used to target aid workers.

Oxfam refuses to provide Israel with details of Palestinian staff in Gaza

👏 👏

www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/...

A British Museum photo showing the reverse side of a silver stater coin from the ancient city of Eretria on the island of Euboea, Central Greece. The coin is roundish in shape, and in the centre there is a relief image of an octopus within a recessed square. The octopus has a bulbous head with a small round eye on either side. Beneath the head, eight arms curve gracefully, symmetrically arranged with four arms on each side, curling into a tight spiral at the tip. Diameter: 26 millimetres. Weight: 8.670 grammes. Dated circa 500-480 BC.

Ancient Greek silver stater (coin) with an octopus on the reverse side. 🐙

Minted in Eretria, Euboea, Greece, 500-480 BC.

Photo: British Museum www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

#Archaeology
#ReliefWednesday