Born and raised in Scotland, currently living in New Hampshire. Author of several books, mostly on meditation and Buddhist practice. Fan of Scots language. Learning #dansk and #svenska. Dabbler in #Pali.
@rebeccawatson I inherited a lawn with my house. I'm in NH, so there's no need to water it. I have an electric (battery) lawnmower which of course doesn't spew out fumes and is much quieter than a gas mower. That'll have to do until I figure sort out how to reduce the area of grassy monoculture around the house.
Marvel is rebranding its TV shows to show fans that they don't necessarily have to watch everything in order to understand what's going on. “The hope is that, like the comics, you can just pop in anywhere and have a satisfying experience. We’re trying to dispel the idea that you need to do any kind of setup work to watch anything else,” says Brad Winderbaum, Marvel's head of streaming, TV and animation. Here's more detail from Variety. What's your take on the MCU these days?
By far my favourite bit of architectural ironwork in Glasgow, and possibly anywhere in the world! It can be found on D.B. Dobson's 1902 Art Nouveau commercial building at 50 Darnley Street in Glasgow.
Not to tread on too much @thisismyglasgow's territory, but yesterday as I strolled with my 92-year-old dad along Great Western Road in Glasgow's west end, I took a photograph of this lovely Art Deco building, which I've seen a million times and often wondered about. It turns out it was originally Walter Hubbard's bakery and tearoom. As you'd expect it was built around 1930. The new signage doesn't do the building any favours, and the side has been much messed-with. Still, it's magnificent.
Is this the best gushet building in Glasgow? A gushet building is one constructed on a narrow strip of land at a junction between two roads (in this case Paisley Road West and Govan Road). Designed in a Renaissance style by Bruce and Hay, it was built in the 1880s as the Ogg Brothers Drapery Warehouse and Department Store.
Another rather unique Glasgow tenement, this time on the corner of Langside Road and Queen's Drive on the city's Southside. Designed by W.M Whyte in a French Renaissance style, but with a statue of Liberty on the top, it was built in 1885.
You'll often hear it said there are five statues of Liberty in Glasgow. However, in reality, this is the only one as all the others are different allegorical female figures.
One of the best things about living in Glasgow is turning a corner and finding yourself looking up at a roof like this!
The former Ogg Brothers Department Store at Paisley Road Toll was designed by Bruce and Hay, and was built in the 1880s. It's topped by the Spirit of Commerce and Industry, who is perhaps better known as the Kinning Park Angel, the Angel of the South, or simply Mrs. Ogg.
The last photo I will share of the aurora: This doesn't look spectacular, but you can clearly see the Big Dipper standing on end, right in the middle of the shot.
It's extraordinary how far phone cameras have come. This exposure took several seconds, yet because of the digital image stabilization, the stars are pinpoints rather than blurry streaks. Hats off to the engineers involved!
For the second time this year, I've ripped a calf's ear trying to tag it. I hate having to tag new born calves. It's horrible that your first interaction with a young creature is to hurt it; and it feels dreadful to interrupt the mother-calf bonding in such a way. I can't believe this is either a humane or a justifiable practice.
Still, it is done, and the tissue sample is taken.
@simon_brooke I became a vegetarian more than forty years ago as a result of what I saw during my veterinary training. I find this disturbing, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to unfollow.
@gbhnews@jessamyn The color-detecting cells in our retinas require fairly bright light to work. At night everything is lacking in color.
If the aurora's faint there's only just enough light to slightly trigger those cells. I wasn't always 100% sure I was seeing colors at times!
Your camera works differently. It can accumulate light over time to register the colors your eye can't, or can only barely, see. The amazing thing is the digital stabilization in cameras, so it's not all a blur!
There are some amazing photographs of the aurora on Mastodon. Bear in mind that a lot of these are enhanced, even if the photographers "forget" to mention that fact. I just looked through the comments on a photograph taken from the Isle of Wight. The landscape almost looks like it was taken in daylight. This tells you it was a very long exposure, and that the human eye would have seen something very different, with not nearly as much color. Why is this important? 1/
@thisismyglasgow Good luck. As I said to someone else, wrap up warm and stay out for a long time. It's surprising how much your eyes adapt if you stay out for longer. Our retinas' colour-detecting cells are not very sensitive to low light levels, and cameras detect color much better, so take pics anyway. Also, most of the photos you're seeing are probably edited, so you're looking for subtler colours than you're seeing on pics here: maybe 5 to 20% as strong.
I just had a conversation with a guy who said, “Yeah, well I’m a capitalist.”
So I asked, “Okay, how much capital do you have?”
Boy, oh boy, does that question put things in perspective. He became a caricature of an old Warner Brothers cartoon character, trying to compose himself as he fumbled for words, all while he avoided actually answering the question.
So I simply repeated the question. I highly recommend.
@MattMerk Is it Stockholm syndrome or something? The US is full of people who act like serfs, talk like rugged individualists, and identify with the very rich.
Tomorrow I'm interviewing big-time audiobook narrator Scott Brick, who narrates the "Dune" books, and Kevin J. Anderson who has written many "Dune" books.
Do you have any questions you'd like me to ask them (I'm especially interested in questions about the language of "Dune").
@grammargirl@EJGilbert Same here. When I read Dune I took Atreides to sound like a-TRY-deez (in the film it's a-TRY-deez — don't know about the audiobook). I also read Leto as Leeto, but I think in the film it's Layto (again, no idea about the audiobook). Did Herbert give any indication of how these names were to be pronounced?
Does anyone know the story behind these tiles about Alice? I run into different ones from time to time on walls around the Southside of Glasgow, mostly in the vicinity of Queen's Park.