it's by deesign

THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE 1924 LA BEAUTÉ In 2025, in a small thrift shop in Namibia, I found something no one expected to exist here — a nearly intact 101-year-old Parisian photogravure art portfolio, La Beauté, Album X from 1924. What looks at first like an old booklet is actually a rare survivor from the early modernist art world of Paris — the same era that produced Man Ray, Josephine Baker, Picasso’s atelier period, and the birth of Surrealism. Albums like this were never mass-market magazines. They were professional tools used by artists, sculptors, photographers and art students as anatomical and lighting references before photography and printing became widespread. Most of these portfolios were: (a) torn apart in art studios, (b) lost in the chaos of WWII, (c) sold plate-by-plate for profit, (d) thrown away as “indecent,” (e) or simply disintegrated over a century of poor storage. Yet this one survived. It travelled from 1924 Paris — a city buzzing with modern art, the Olympic Games, early photography studios, and bohemian life — all the way to southern Africa, crossing continents and generations with no record of how it got here... It lost its cover, but kept what mattered: 31 intact photogravure plates, clean, undamaged, and printed in the same workshop district that produced some of the earliest modern artistic photography. The statistical odds of such a piece surviving — and then appearing in Namibia — are absurdly small. These albums almost never leave Europe or the US. Many collectors look for years and never find early issues like this one. Whether or not another copy exists on the continent is unknown — but realistically, this may be the only surviving Album X (1924) in Africa. For 225 Namibian dollars, I rescued a cultural artifact that carries: (a) the faces and forms of women who lived a century ago, (b) the craft of early photogravure printing, (c) the history of Parisian art education, (d) and the improbable journey of an object that should not have survived. This tiny portfolio is a reminder that history doesn’t always sit in museums...Sometimes it hides on a dusty thrift shop shelf, waiting for someone paying attention. And now it’s preserved — properly, respectfully — for another hundred years. Hopefully.

I like how dramatic this photo is for no reason; the Easter Bunny waiting to be introduced by Trump.

schiaparelli spring 2026

enjoying this book

As my wife points out, in this cesspit of male egos, there is one person who has been sent to prison A woman

The bigger the idea, the lonelier the process.

IN FULL BLOOM ... After recent heavy rains in the southern parts of Namibia, white and pink lilies could be seen blooming at farm Sandhof near Maltahöhe in the Hardap region over the weekend. The lilies resort under bushveld 'vlei' lilies. These stunning plants are found at Maltahöhe and surrounds. Farm Sandhof, about 40km outside Maltahöhe, features a 700ha pan of the lilies. Photos: Wildlife Vets Namibia

Qatar formally announces the shut down of foreign bases. A big win for Iran and the Middle East. Good job 🇶🇦

for your own sanity you have to go on a walk every single day

Your bones are shrinking and you're calling it aging. - Walk 7,000–10,000 steps daily. Not occasionally. Not when you feel like it. Every single day. Bone density doesn't negotiate with your schedule. It responds to load or it disappears. Those are the only two options. - Eat calcium-rich foods. Dairy, sardines, tofu, broccoli, almonds. If you don't feed your body calcium consistently, it doesn't politely wait. It dissolves it straight from your bones to keep your heart running. Your skeleton is being cannibalized right now if your diet is poor. - Get your vitamin D levels tested. Not assumed. Tested. You can swallow calcium every day and still be losing bone mass if your vitamin D is deficient. Most people are deficient. Most people also have no idea. That combination is exactly why osteoporosis is an epidemic nobody talks about until someone's hip shatters. - Strength train. Heavy and consistently. Not yoga. Not a walk. Not stretching. Resistance training is the only stimulus that forces your body to build new bone tissue. Without it your bones are on a one way street and it doesn't go somewhere good. - Take collagen seriously. Cartilage has almost no blood supply. That means once it's damaged it barely heals. You are not getting new cartilage. You are managing what you have left. Protect it now or spend the rest of your life managing the loss of it. - Get your weight under control. Every single kilogram of excess body weight puts four times that pressure on your knee joints with every step. Not metaphorically. Mechanically. Your knees are doing the math whether you are or not. - Drink water like your joints depend on it because they literally do. Cartilage is 70% water. Chronic dehydration doesn't just make you tired. It dries out the cushioning between your bones. You are grinding bone on bone in slow motion if you're chronically dehydrated and you won't feel it until it's too late to fully reverse. - Eat anti-inflammatory food. Turmeric, ginger, berries, fatty fish. Chronic inflammation doesn't announce itself. It just quietly destroys tissue day after day while you eat ultra processed food and wonder why your knees ache at 38 and your hands hurt at 45. - Stop sitting for more than 45 minutes without getting up. The human body was not engineered for chairs. Prolonged sitting compresses spinal discs, stiffens cartilage, and shuts down the muscles that protect your joints. The office chair is doing more damage than most people's worst habits and nobody puts a warning label on it. - Stretch for 10 minutes every single day. Not when you're injured. Not when you can't move. Now. Today. Flexibility loss is silent and gradual until one morning you reach for something and something tears and the doctor asks how long it's been this bad and you realize you have no idea. - Take omega-3s daily. Fish oil, fatty fish, flaxseed. Joint inflammation doesn't wait for you to be old. It starts in your 30s and builds quietly. Omega-3s are one of the few things with genuine clinical evidence for reducing joint inflammation and most people aren't getting anywhere near enough.

"Imagine your sister" No.... Develop empathy without imagining her to be your sister or mom.... Develop basic humanity.....

So l actually just looked this up and apparently it's true.. middle children are dwindling. In the 1970's, it was common to have three or four children. Today, almost 65% of women with children only have one or two. So the "middle child" is becoming increasingly rare. The fact that middle children are going extinct is the most middle child thing I've ever heard.

🚨BREAKING: Russia says future oil and gas deals with Europe will be priced in Chinese yuan.

JUST IN: 🇮🇷 15 ships passed through Strait of Hormuz with permission from Iran over past 24 hours.

Iranian embassies on X are leading an excellent psychological warfare campaign.

BREAKING: Qatar officially ousts the US troops from its country,amid Iran threats.