David Schofield RGI

Nobody could figure out why the abandoned Hendricks apple orchard suddenly bloomed in April 2019. The trees hadn't produced fruit in eleven years. County agriculture office sent two inspectors. They found sixty thousand honeybees working the property - a massive colony that had escaped from Tomás Vega's apiary three miles south. Tomás had reported the swarm missing in March. He expected them dead. Instead they'd colonized the hollow barn on the Hendricks lot and cross-pollinated every surviving tree. That October, the orchard produced twenty-two tons of Cortland apples. The Hendricks family offered Tomás a permanent lease. He moved his entire operation there the following spring.

“We have always said that we would engage with Mr Campbell. However, he has made it clear that he thinks anyone other than Ms Rowling is below his touch. “We do not know if this is because he really is this arrogant, or if he fears that he would be humiliated should he attempt to debate any of the many qualified women who have studied this issue and he feels safe in the knowledge that JK Rowling will turn him down. “Insultingly, he has now told feminists that they should listen to his interview with the trans politician Sarah McBride, something which suggests he has crossed from political commentator to online troll.” thetimes.com/uk/scotland/ar…

파울 클레, 〈건망증이 심한 천사〉(1939)

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German painter and lesbian activist Jeanne Mammen dies in Berlin. She was 85. Here are some of her works:

He will certainly make sense and is far more trustworthy

Yes, the people who call themselves 'trans' exist and they deserve exactly the same rights as everyone else, which, fortunately, they already have in the UK. It would rightly be considered discrimination if a person was refused employment, housing or the vote because they identified as trans. 'Trans women are women' is a thought-terminating cliché. Men are not women. That doesn't mean they're not allowed to present themselves however they like, call themselves whatever they like and believe whatever they like about themselves. It means they haven't changed sex. If we replace the objective, observable characteristic of sex with the unfalsifiable concept of gender identify, women and girls lose, among other things, their right to fair and safe sport and women-only spaces, including changing rooms, prison cells and rape crisis services. Women and girls are provably more vulnerable to forms of abuse including sexual assault, harassment and voyeurism in mixed-sex spaces. There is no evidence that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same rates of criminal offending as all other men. Trans people exist. I have no desire for them not to exist; indeed, I wish them safety, happiness and health. However, 'existence' does not, and should not, mean the violation of other people's right to privacy, dignity and freedom of speech, or the reconfiguration of society to indulge a fallacy.

Hildegard von Bingen, "Days of Creation" (c. 1151)

Two Comedians (1966) was Hopper's final canvas. It shows Hopper and his wife, Jo, on stage taking a bow. After decades spent spotlighting American life, he ends by stepping into the scene to say a quiet goodbye to the world he painted. #artbots #hopper

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by @TTomTToro.

“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.” ― Kahlil Gibran

ジャン・ヴェベ （Jean Veber、1864-1928） 『肉屋』 （La Boucherie）

Every time a German Messerschmitt pilot wanted to escape a Spitfire on his tail, he did the same thing. He pushed the nose down. In a dive, the German engine kept running — it used fuel injection. The British Spitfire's engine cut out. For one and a half seconds the Merlin went dead, the aircraft shuddered, and by the time it caught again the German was gone. Worse: if a German was behind a British pilot and the British pilot dove to escape, the German could follow and keep shooting while the British engine was silent. Pilots were dying because of a carburetor. The engineers at Farnborough knew about the problem. They were working on a long-term solution — a redesigned carburetor that would take years to perfect and manufacture. A woman named Beatrice Shilling fixed it with a washer. She was born in Hampshire in 1909 and was the kind of child who spent her pocket money on Meccano sets and tools. At fourteen she bought her first motorbike. Her mother, with the inspired instinct of someone who understood what her daughter actually was, found the Women's Engineering Society and arranged an apprenticeship at an electrical firm. She went to Manchester University — one of the first two women ever to study engineering there — graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, stayed another year for a master's in mechanical engineering, and in 1936 joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough as a scientific officer. By the late 1930s she was one of the best carburetor engineers in Britain. She was also one of only three women to hold the British Motorcycle Racing Club's Gold Star — awarded for lapping the Brooklands racing circuit at over 100 miles per hour on a motorcycle. She had reportedly told her future husband, an engineer named George Naylor, that she wouldn't marry him until he earned his own Brooklands Gold Star first. He earned it. They married in 1938. The problem with the Merlin was specific and lethal. The SU carburetor used a float chamber to regulate fuel flow. Under negative g-forces — the forces experienced in a sudden dive — the fuel flooded to the top of the float chamber and starved the engine for 1.5 seconds. Just enough time for a German pilot to turn the tables entirely. The RAF had known about this since the Battle of France. The formal solution — a redesigned pressure carburetor — was in development but wouldn't be ready for years. Shilling was thirty-one years old, working in carburetor research, and she designed a fix in weeks. A brass thimble with a precisely calibrated hole in the center — later simplified to a flat washer — fitted inline in the fuel line just before the carburetor. It restricted maximum fuel flow to just enough to prevent flooding without cutting off power. The key breakthrough: it could be fitted without taking the aircraft out of service. No downtime. No factory return. The old guard at the RAE looked at it and called it a plumbing fix. They called her a plumber. The first batch of 5,000 units was made by a Birmingham firm that normally manufactured plumbing fixtures, which they found embarrassing. The RAF pilots who flew Spitfires with Messerschmitts on their tails called it something else. They called it Miss Shilling's Orifice. With deep affection. By March 1941 she had organized a small team and was personally touring RAF fighter stations across England — traveling between bases on her old racing motorcycle — fitting the device to every Merlin engine they could reach. Squadron leaders all over the country were demanding installations. The word spread faster than the official channels could keep up with. The Germans noticed. They couldn't explain why British fighter pilots had suddenly started following them into dives. They were baffled by the new aggression. They didn't know about the washer. (More story replies)

Only a princess could be so finely sensitive that she would be troubled by a single pea placed under all these mattresses and featherbeds. Here’s two wonderful illustrations of her in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale ~ at L, by Gennady Spirin and at R by Edmund Dulac

in 1974, a japanese pharmacist in tokyo released a dreamlike psychedelic acid-folk album. it was the only record he ever released and it was lost for DECADES, until being rediscovered in 2024. he passed away in 2021, never living to see people listen to his music again.

Alfred Kubin, 'The Creature from Mars,' 1906

Around the year 1500, medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch painted a person with sheet music written on their butt being tortured in hell. 500 years later, someone decided to transcribe and play the song. Now, you can hear it too.

Here it is, my occasional reminder that balloons won't make it up to grandma in heaven. But they will return to Earth and choke wildlife.