A newt in a garden pond.

NEWT ALERT! We have newt!

There are now 10 toilets in Space

International Space Station: 4
Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1
Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1
Tiangong Space Station: 2
Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1
Artemis II on way around Moon: 1

This will be the first time a toilet has left low earth orbit!

A fiberglass rabbit. It is covered with mud.

And the bottom of Nurseryland, near the cliff fall, is covered in mud, right up to the tops of the trees.

A hedge maze. Part of the maze is fenced off.

The cliff edge has come past the edge of the maze now, which feels like a big thing.

A person in front of the Mouth of Hell at Blackgang Chine

Nostalgically returning to Blackgang Chine today. It’s an odd place: both very old (it’s been a theme park since the Victorian era) and very ephemeral (bits of it are constantly falling into the sea).

A frog with a leaf over its head

Apparently there is a frog in this pond, but it seems that it is too well hidden to find.

A frog in a pond, staring at the camera.

Amidst plenty of grim news, I keep on getting notifications on my phone that this goober has popped up on the pond’s wildlife-camera view. Best goober.

ALMOST just sent an email with the typo ‘shartpint’ instead of ‘sharepoint’.

This is a fascinating article - makes a convincing argument that AI has made the recruitment process much more efficient for companies and applicants and the result has been that the process is much worse for everyone.

B&Q surprisingly not very well set up for my very reasonable requirement for a pipe that can fit a medium-sized frog and can easily be carried on a bicycle

A cursed chicken toy in a Christmas box.

The local pet shop has Christmas plush roast chicken dog toys with a smiley face on, only instead of the face being in the place where a chicken has an actual face, it’s… somewhere else. In case you were in need on something eldritch this week.

EES machine: please take off your glasses for a photo
EES machine: *Lots of on-screen instructions about positioning that I can’t read without glasses on*

...ok, there were actually only two tabs (other than the ones that are like 'note to self: finish this thing').

Moly’s Substack | Chinese Doom Scroll | Substack A translation of all the hottest Weibo posts! Click to read Moly’s Substack, by Chinese Doom Scroll, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

This is a fascinating substack that translates/discusses posts that are popular on Chinese social media: weibo.substack.com

In the interest of clearing out tabs that I have saved for some reason or other: these (short sci-fi comics) are good. www.badspacecomics.com

Having a little bit of hovercraft ride as a treat (2025 iteration).

Somehow managed to book myself a journey involving TWO rail replacement buses :/

(Possibly a cunning ploy, since about a thousand seagulls then descended to eat the discards)

Peak British Seaside achieved: a seagull shat on my fish and chips.

The Man in the Moon, in a pub, holding a pint: (appreciatively) This is SO brown. So brown. That’s what I came here for

Satisfyingly, it looks like the kanji for ‘ninja’ contains a blade, a heart, and ‘person whose job this is’.

A stone that looks like a prehistoric standing stone but inscribed with "Asda Price Promise Permanently [text obscured] prices [text obscured]. The stone is by a Drystone wall and vegetation grows around it

One for @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social - I was reading this morning about the Asda 'Price Promise' stones that were erected across the country in the 90s

loststonesofasda.wordpress.com

Some are definitely on the way to being archaeological monuments, such as this one in Trumfleet, South Yorkshire

Huge apologies to the rabbit whose burrow I may just have poured a bucket of sick down at Peartree Services.

Furthest (ground) North, East, South and West, since it seems to be a thing:
North: Keflavík International Airport, Iceland
East: The Infinite Crystal Universe, TeamLab Planets, Tokyo
South: Farol de Naufragados, Santa Catarina, Brazil
West: Point Campbell, Anchorage, Alaska

The sample schedule for the summer camp the kids are currently at puts the fire lighting and the axe throwing activities before the problem solving activity, which I feel shows good commitment to giving children the tools to solve problems themselves.

Rewatching the LOTR films as preparation for upcoming shenanigans, and I can’t help wondering what happens if you light a beacon by mistake. Can you take it back, or do you have to wait a week or two until the army turns up and send them home?

The European honey bee may have originated from eastern Africa. This bee is pictured in Tanzania. Photo: Muhammad Mahdi Karim 12mm long Apis mellifera, Apis mellifera. Pictured in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee#/media/File:Apis_mellifera_Tanzania.jpg

Honeybees understand the concept of zero, or "null set", putting them in the same cognitive class as parrots, dolphins and primates in that regard.

What's more interesting to me is HOW WE CAN KNOW THAT.

The experimental design is what I want to focus on:

I once mixed up my obligations and said ‘thank you’ to the oncoming person while letting the door slam in their face.

Went back to the huge family pandemic-era Minecraft castle and was almost immediately trapped in a dungeon by my former self.

I’m petrified about today’s science news. Genetically modifying crabs to have cheetah genes? This could go sideways fast.