Aspirin can reduce the risk of cancer - and we're starting to understand why The 4,000-year-old drug, most commonly used to treat pain, prevents certain tumours from forming and spreading across the body – findings that are already changing health policies.

Interesting article about benefits from taking aspirin.

Just exactly what is the difference between Blue Labour, and the RCP/LM/Spiked cult?

They operate in the same way, have the same politics, and are equally toxic to British society.

Mahmood: White liberals who want to put me in a box can f--- off Home Secretary responds to heckler claiming she is trying to ‘out-Reform Reform’ with tough stance on immigration

“I do think there is that element of it which is: ‘How dare you, a brown woman, say a thing that we white liberals think you’re not allowed to say?’
No Shabana Mahmood, it's more like "How dare you, a Labour MP, spout far-right white nationalist talking points and remove rights from refugees"

Rise in Speeding Fines Linked to More Drivers Breaking the Limit Speeding fines and convictions have risen sharply across the UK in recent years, with new figures indicating that more motorists are exceeding limits and more of them are being caught. Consumer expert...

Outstanding journalism from the BBC here. www.bbc.co.uk/articles/cm2...

Medieval manuscript image of three men wearing crowns asleep in the same bed; above them is a bright star and an angel emerging from a cloud with a scroll.

ge-mǣtan, wk.v: to dream. (yeh-MAT-ahn / jɛ-ˈmæː-tan)
Image: The Dream of the Magi from a psalter; England (Oxford), 1200-1220; @britishlibrary.bsky.social Royal MS 1 D X, f. 2v.
#OldEnglish #WOTD

i have a theory that he didn't actually post it. i think there's a decent chance he was talking through this little adventure with his ai and it posted this. he was very proud of the fact that his social media was largely run by ai. it even tells him his notifications apparently

👀 These don't come along very often! An incredible opportunity for the right person.

We are stuck togethir on a tinye beautiful driftinge rocke wyth nobodye outsyde and nobodye cominge to save us. We are the onlye ones heere yn a wild expanse of night and silence. We sholde be lovinge each othir all the tyme. We sholde be greetinge each othir "hey, miracle!" We sholde be daunsinge.

When I began this project I would never have imagined that within a decade people would be arrested and imprisoned in Britain for years just for discussing a possible protest, yet here we are. We now have anti-protest laws worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship and nobody seems to have noticed.

A small green-leaved growth on a wooden surface.

Terrible pic but does anyone know what this is? Suspect some kind of willow gall but iNaturalist etc can't substantiate. It's like a fruit consisting of tiny contorted leaves with a hard centre.

Yes indeed. Can’t go wrong with scientific Latin. It’s also the name that Linnaeus authored. Cardamine pratensis L. , so sensible 😊💚🌱♥️

Yes. The huntress. 💚

Mornings in the #bog. It's like its own little utopia. It's hard to imagine a more cool place to be. The pitcher plant bogs of North Florida are otherworldly. From a recent foggy morning. #photography #landscape #ECK #bogs #pitcherplants #Sarracenia #fog #bogplants

Concentric, or irregular bands of iron oxides forming in porous sedimentary rocks through secondary chemical processes.

Leisegang bands

Dactylorhiza insularis, Orchids of Sardinia © Michele Viganò

A final postcard from the field as our #OrchidsOfSardinia tour draws to a close, from tour leader Michele Viganò:

On our last day we found, after a good search, some Dactylorhiza insularis in bloom. This took us to 33 species for the week, with 6 bonus hybrid combinations also seen... (1/2)

Concentric, or irregular swirling bands of iron oxides have formed in porous sandstone through secondary chemical processes.

Leisegang banding, Carboniferous sandstone

In Abbey Gardens #BuryStEdmunds today doing a recce for a tree walk later in the year and intercepted by this St Mark's Fly, Bibio marci, which I persuaded onto my note pad. No doubt preparing for its day on Saturday (St Mark's Day). 😉
#Diptera #Suffolk

🌙

The Mausoleum at Castle Howard
Nicholas Hawksmoor
what a composition in the landscape

@justagalandadog.bsky.social

Arum maculatum, Lords and Ladies, Cuckoo Pint

Tulipa Apeldoorn
good for cutting
and brightening the morning in my bedroom

Five-lobed white flowers with yellow fornices

One year ago today 🌿

Oreocarya flavoculata, our Yellow-eyed Cryptantha, blooming in Gypsum #nativeplants

Ophrys gortynia

Ophrys cretica

20/4/26 #Crete - Today we kicked off our #OrchidsOfCrete tour - and got stuck in right away! Set against the background of rolling hills with perfect shirt & sleeves weather, our guests enjoyed a number of fine #orchids including Ophrys cretica and Ophrys gortynia @mariposanature.bsky.social

seen from the front, a flower with around half a dozen large, rounded, overlapping white petals that cup in to form a bowl-shape. in the center, there is a squat light green ovary capped with a large, pale yellow, hemispherical cluster of stigmas, surrounded by around a dozen inward-curving pale yellow stamens.

two mayapple shoots growing up from leaf litter on the forest floor, seen from the side from shin to knee height. the small shoot on the left is sterile: its unbranched stem holds one circular, deeply lobed green leaf from a point at the leaf's center. the shoot on the right is much taller; at the same height as the sterile shoot's leaf, this fertile shoot branches in two, each branch continuing upward at an angle before terminating in their own larger leaves. from the point where the stem branches, a nodding stem grows, bearing a large white flower with petals cupping forward around a large green ovary & array of stamens. the top of the fertile shoot and most of its leaves are out of frame. a couple lobes and the cut between them are illuminated by sunlight. the circular leaf is divided into large, wedge shaped lobes which have their own smaller lobes along the outer edge.

looking up towards the ridge of a hill in a forest, blue sky visible behind the trees now leafing out. in the distance a haze of green obscures the forest floor above the leaf litter. closer in, the ground is covered in an extensive colony of mayapples. standing up to knee high, these shoots have either one unbranched stem and one leaf (sterile), or a branched stem with two leaves (fertile); in the crook between the branch on fertile shoots, sometimes a large white flower may be glimpsed. the shiny green leaves are large, well over a handspan in diameter, held from the center by their stems. they are cut into usually 4-9 deep wedge-shaped lobes, each often with smaller lobes on their outer edges. poison ivy grows abundantly beneath and between the mayapples.

🌼 mayapple 🌿
Podophyllum peltatum

#nativeplants #ecoregion71

Palantir in the NHS is linked to Mandelson

Mandelson is linked to Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting is defending Palantir’s involvement in the #NHS

Nothing to see or everything to see

Palantir must be removed from the NHS

Damning report into Natural England’s failure to designate any new SSSIs since 2023.

21/4/26 #OrchidsOfCrete - Live from the field and we’re in wildlife heaven here in the mountains. This patch of emerging fuciform #orchids are particularly spectacular 🥰 @mariposanature.bsky.social