A circular necklace made of alternating dark and light cylindrical beads, with three larger flat, L‑shaped pendants hanging from the lower half, displayed against a black background.

This 6,000-year-old necklace offers a glimpse into the artistry of the Neolithic Schussenried culture in southwest Germany.
Its three marble pendants and jet‑and‑limestone beads create a striking black‑and‑white contrast, characteristic of the Schussenried culture's jewellery design. 🧵1/2

📷 me

This is jaw dropping

The Lyte Jewel: exquisite miniature portrait of James VI of Scotland & I of England, by Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), Royal Goldsmith & Limner.
Watercolour on vellum, 1610-1611, in jewelled & enamelled setting, viewed open, closed & reverse.
Waddesdon Bequest
@britishmuseum.bsky.social

Sonay Kartal gets it done 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 against Madison Keys

She stayed solid, and it paid off, hardly making any unforced errors in the last couple of sets. Keys played flawlessly in the opening set but its a win for Kartal in this one.

📸 Jimmie48/WTA Tour

"To run through better waters the little ship of my wit now hoists its sails, leaving behind it a sea so cruel, and I will sing of that second realm..." Canto 1 Purgatorio

BL Yates Thompson MS 36; Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia; 15th century; Italy, N; f.65r
@blmedieval.bsky.social

Did baby boomers eat all the pies? John Lanchester on the truth about the generation gap It’s a grim time to be in your 20s, no doubt, but don’t blame it all on older people: being chopped up into ever smaller rivalries only serves the market

Terrific essay on inter-generational fairness from John Lanchester, that brings up some of the discomforts of the past but still broadly accepts the problems now faced. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

A tall archway of marble and other stone frames a wooden door with carved panels. One side is open offering a view into a courtyard with further arches and a fountain. The stone doorway is styled with columns either side and a coat of arms at the top with dolphins on each side.

#AdoorableThursday #MarchArch
Doorway in Volterra, with an enticing glimpse into a courtyard.
One of many in hilltop walled town in Tuscany that's been occupied since C8 BC.

I go to see an opera as often as I can, probably twice a year, every year. I went to my 1st ballet last week and have tickets for another in month

Opera is not dying, Timothée, it's thriving. In Europe alone, 14m a year attend (2.5m under 25s) worth €10bn. Since 2000 La Traviata had 30,000 performances. In its lifetime it's been seen by half a billion people and recorded 291 times. Check back in 180yrs to see how Marty Supreme is doing, yeah?

Two wading birds silhouetted by the light and reflected in the water's surface.

The theme for today's #BirdOfTheDay is #StandingInWater.

Gone for a bit of an arty one today. Two waders which I think are probably redshanks; bills a bit short for godwits.

#birds #photography

This from the Daily Mail is quite something

The one tabloid that has done more damage to cultural cohesion, attacked diversity, migration, Islam, than any other, yet here they are praising the diversity of Dubai

It’s the psychology that makes a difference 🙄

The greatest orator of our times

Young Woman Being Harassed by a Man

This is Judith Leyster's amazing 1631 painting ‘Young Woman Being Harassed by a Man’.

She was well known in her day but SURPRISE! her works were later misattributed either to Frans Hals, her local contemporary, or her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer.
www.thetimes.com/article/f41d...

The fabric looks like you could touch it

Self-portrait of artist in his room at Villa Medici Rome 1817, by Léon Cogniet (1794-1880), French Romantic history painter & noted teacher, winner of Prix de Rome in 1817, friend of Géricault & Delacroix; appointed Professeur de Peinture à l’École des Beaux Arts from 1851.
Cleveland Museum of Art

William Whewell, influential British polymath & philosopher, coined words physicist & scientist, proposed new terminology for discoveries in chemistry by Faraday & in geology by Lyell. Mentioned in Trollope’s Barchester Towers; died #OTD 1866.
Professor, Master, Chancellor Trinity College Cambridge

1. Thread 🧵

Freedom of Movement wasn’t just a policy.
It was a simple freedom: the ability to say yes.

• Yes to a job.
• Yes to love.
• Yes to a new life in another country.

When that freedom disappeared, something subtle but important changed.

Janan Ganesh. (a biweekly columnist and associate editor for the FT. He writes on international politics)

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

My photo shows part of a limestone wall panel carved in bas relief from the Fifth Dynasty mortuary temple of king Userkaf at Saqqara, Old Kingdom, 2465-2458 BC. It shows a Hoopoe, a crested bird with black and white wing pattern, and an ibis, with long curved beak, amongst papyrus plants in the marshes of the river Nile. My photo was taken in 2022 at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Lovely naturalistic relief of a Hoopoe and Ibis, carved by an Egyptian artisan some 4,500 years ago!

Limestone wall relief from the 5th Dynasty mortuary temple of Userkaf at Saqqara. Egyptian Museum, Cairo 📷 by me

#ReliefWednesday
#Archaeology

Sacred harmony: Pieter Jansz Saenredam, Dutch Golden Age architectural painter & draughtsman (1597-1665); pioneer of ‘church portraits’, whose subtle, tonal compositions foreshadow abstract modernism.
St Bavo Haarlem, 1635, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

A luminous full moon rises in the sky, prominently featured against the dusky blue of early night. In the foreground, a line of Eurasian cranes is silhouetted in mid-flight, their long legs and necks stretched out as they navigate by the moonlight.

Look to the sky tonight for March's full moon 🌕🍃

Also known as the Worm Moon, it marks the shift in seasons as the soil warms, earthworms re-emerge, and nature awakens.

It has many other names including: Lenten, Plough, Crow, & Sap Moon.

🕖 Moonrise: 18:09*

A reminder: Matt Goodwin lost heavily in spite of an almost total lack of tactical voting, not because of it.

The combined Green/Labour vote was 66%, versus 28.7% for Reform.

If Labour and the Greens split the vote 50/50 – a total coordination fail – he'd have finished third, not second.

Las Meninas 1656: strong light defines Infanta Maria Teresa & attendants against the shadowed background; the artist is reflected at his easel, King Philip IV & his Queen mirrored in rear wall looking glass. The ambiguity of space is intensified by the figure in the open doorway (Queen’s Chamberlain) and by the suggestion of Rubens paintings from the Royal Collection on the rear wall. Painted by Diego Velázquez, great artist of Spanish Golden Age, influenced Goya, Sargent, Picasso. Museo del Prado

Artist in the picture: Las Meninas, 1656, complex masterpiece by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), great artist of Spanish Golden Age, influenced Goya, Sargent, Picasso; image of Infanta Maria Teresa & attendants, artist at easel, King Philip IV & his Queen reflected in rear wall mirror.
Museo del Prado

You seem to have missed that this constituency doesn't just include Gorton and Denton!

"Family voting"...

I’m afraid this letter shows why so many Labour MPs think Starmer needs to go. His political antenna is non-existent. If you have just been humbled in a by-election it might not be the best idea to slag off the choices of the voters who deserted you in their droves.

Extraordinary that in these fractious & divided times, so many of us can unite around the single, simple fact that Matthew Goodwin is an irredeemable twat.

We rarely see blue rosettes in Manchester, and this election was no exception. But to lose your deposit and then point at the other guy to resign....
Incidentally we are all finding it hilarious that whoever had that blue rosette lost their deposit LMAO