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Daniel Williams @dbenjw.bsky.social · 11h

“Crystal Forms: A Victorian Aesthetics of Accident” is out in JVC!

I read James/Cecilia Glaisher’s snow-crystal images as a case study in accidental aesthetics—unsettling familiar stories about representation, mechanical objectivity, and lookalike forms in science + art ❄️❄️❄️

doi.org/10.1093/jvcu...

Screenshot of article abstract. Text:

Abstract. This essay uses the snow-crystal studies of the meteorologist James Glaisher and his wife, the illustrator-photographer Cecilia Glaisher, as a case study to describe a nineteenth-century aesthetics of accident, to assess its limits, and to draw wider lessons for the history of scientific and artistic representation. The argument is in two parts. The first examines the Glaishers’ accounts and images of snow-crystal morphology across a range of print media, from scientific periodicals to art journals. I argue that they pivoted from an empirical and taxonomic inquiry toward an aesthetics of design, developing representational strategies that emphasized symmetry. The latter part of the argument identifies two lessons we can draw from this case study. First, I complicate a narrative in the history of science that takes snow-crystals as exemplary of a nineteenth-century epistemic shift in styles of representation, from ‘truth to nature’ in hand-drawn images to ‘mechanical objectivity’ in photomicrography. The Glaishers’ case, I suggest, confounds this narrative of the ascendancy of mechanical reproductive techniques. Second, I contend that these images have an aesthetic kinship with projects of iterative representation in twentieth-century art, and anticipate conundrums about ‘pseudomorphism’. The Glaishers’ snow-crystals offer a compelling way to talk about quasi-identical forms in science and art, not so much by discriminating among them than by accommodating, even celebrating, the variety of causal stories and contexts that surround them. Their project reveals a nascent aesthetics of accident in the Victorian era whose legacy can be traced in, and help us understand, later representational forms.

Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with symmetrical laminae, in white lines on a solid ox-blood red background.

Woodcut engraving of two identical snow-crystals superimposed, in white on a solid dark green background, with a smaller cross-section showing the structure of the double crystal at lower left.

Woodcut engraving of a snow-crystal with complex symmetrical needles and short laminae, in white lines on a solid Prussian blue background.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 1d

The Uncanny Valet

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 1d

our economy is currently being propped up by the promise of billions of fully autonomous robot butlers coming in a year or so

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Miles, knitting screaming agony werewolf @queermedieval.bsky.social · 1d

kind of obsessed with the monster high xenomorph doll. xenomorph queen if it slayed even harder

a monster high doll version of the xenomorph from Alien, on a spaceship background. she’s got the iconic head shape and tail, and is wearing a funky dress with an exoskeleton-esque bodice and a transparent panelled skirt, plus a pair of exoskeleton-esque heels.

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priscilla page @priscillapage.bsky.social · 1d

Diane Keaton in her Manhattan apartment with Buster, an Abyssinian, photographed by Jill Krementz in 1977

black & white photograph of young Diane Keaton smiling and standing next to a white refrigerator in a barren-looking kitchen. her cat Buster is crouched on top of the fridge playing with/swatting her hair in the upper right hand corner. she's wearing a long skinny white scarf with a dot-grid pattern, a high-neck white blouse with an ascot/kerchief around the neck, and a black blazer/skirt or blazer dress over what looks like a vest

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Christy Ward @wardchristy3.bsky.social · 1d

Look at this absolute unit that stopped at the feeder today. #chonk #thicc #birdsky

Close up of a northern red cardinal from a bird feeder camera

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NiCHE Canada @nichecanada.bsky.social · 1d

"Does humour in the face of the climate crisis allow us to explore environmental humanities research in novel and innovative ways?" - @nulybranch.bsky.social

niche-canada.org/2025/07/25/f...

#envhist #envhum #climatecrisis

Finding Humour in the Environmental History of the Climate Crisis

This series explores how humour helps environmental historians engage climate crisis narratives, bridging human-nonhuman relations and resisting despair.

niche-canada.org

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AlTheColorsOfTheDark💀🦇🪦 @afizgig.bsky.social · 1d

#DailyBat 🖤🦇🖤

A photo of a tiny bat on someone's finger.

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Wouter Wagemakers @wouterwagemakers.bsky.social · 1d

Always make sure to read the Letters to the Editor in @lrb.co.uk

Dirty Books:
Barbara Newman, writing about Boccaccio, notes that ‘in modern Italian, the adjective boccaccesco mean “lascivious”’ (LRB, 14 August). She might have added that in the UK, ‘Chaucerian’ means about the same, though with a scatological edge. Meanwhile here in Japan the Decameron has a special following because slang for ‘big’ is deca and for ‘penis’ is Mara, while ron means ‘a treatise’.

Timon Screech, Kyoto

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Dr Francis Young @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social · 1d

Why has no-one written a Latvian-set hardboiled detective novel called ‘Riga Mortis’?

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

YES! This is the beauty and romance of Jane Eyre: two assholes together and another asshole fucking off over to India.

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Megan All Hallows' Eve 🦇 @meganeve.bsky.social · 1d

My sign.

Scary green witch figure with a sign "please do not play with the witch. She is fragile."

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Aw but he’s *Jane’s* asshole!

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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 1d

Posting this for @darthbluesky.bsky.social to see when he comes back from his weekend off

A ghost holding a red and blue striped box filled with French fries.

“NO MATTER WHAT'S GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE, THERE'S SOME FORM OF POTATO THAT CAN MAKE IT BETTER.”
@jess.a.creates

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Dr Sam Hirst @romgothsam.bsky.social · 1d

Continuing my long-running and unavailing attempts to try to convince the world Rochester is worse than St John.

Dr Sam Hirst @romgothsam.bsky.social · 1d

He's an emotionally manipulative, selfish, frequently cruel, whining 'me me me' asshole. He would never start a school for local chidren, trek through a snow storm to deliver aid to the dying or anything at all for duty because anything unpleasant begins a chain reaction of 'woe is me' assholery.

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, I dislike St John as a man and a Christian - Rochester is just a funny little guy!

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Ugh, no, Sam! To put it flippantly: Rochester is so wrong he’s right; St John so right he’s wrong!

More seriously: Brontë makes it clear that St John is another divided self like Jane - it’s his Christianity that makes him bearable - as a man, he is an uncanny cold fish!

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Bat Conservation Trust @batconservation.bsky.social · 1d

We are proud to support another urgent call to the government to not weaken or remove the laws that help protect our natural heritage.

Campaign for National Parks @campaign4parks.bsky.social · 4d

Over 200 charities, businesses & organisations have signed our open letter to Keir Starmer asking him not to weaken the laws protecting National Parks and Landscapes.

We're so thankful to everyone who added their name 💪

This letter represents millions of people and shows that #NationalParksMatter

Over 200 charities, businesses and organisations have signed our open letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer asking him not to weaken the laws protecting National Parks and National Landscapes.

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Still, it’s AMAZING that Jane’s rejection of St John boils down to ‘I WILL NOT be fucked by him.’

Unmarried to him, this would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations - coolly put into practice his plans - go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him - not as his wife: I will tell him so.'

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Grasshopper @8doing8.bsky.social · 1d

Since I'm Rick Rolled, you're all Rick Rolled 😆

Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Unsolicited Rick Roll

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

St John Rivers is just skincrawlingly creepy - like a marble statue he is often compared to come to life!

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Jane immediately giving up 3/4 of her fortune is moving and *right* (and makes me think of Harry Potter’s corresponding stinginess as one of the first of Rowling’s red flags)

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

Unsolicited Rick Roll

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Dr McInnes’s Monster @drbeard79.bsky.social · 1d

I remembered St John and his sisters obviously but I’d TOTALLY forgotten that such a character as Rosamond Oliver existed - it makes St John’s ‘I think you’re ugly but come and be my missionary wife’ to Jane so much more insulting when she knows he fancies the neighbourhood hottie!

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Art History Animalia @arthistoryanimalia.bsky.social · 2d

For #SquittleDay (squid and cuttlefish day!): 🦑
Bakufu Ohno (Japan, 1888-1976)
#Cuttlefish (Mongo-ika), 1940
From Familiar Fishes of Nippon (Dai Nihon gyorui hanga-in)
Oban, 40.3 x 28.4 cm
ukiyo-e.org/image/jaodb/...
#JapaneseArt #CephalopodWeek

vintage Japanese color woodblock print in landscape orientation, illustration of an inking cuttlefish (light brown & light blue body, black ink), with seals and signatures on lower left

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Lori Batchelor🇨🇦 @lorichirp.bsky.social · 2d

Today's #BirdOfTheDay is all about 'Juveniles/Chicks' so dig out your captures of young birds. #birds #photography #EastCoastKin

Pileated #Woodpecker nestlings, waiting to be fed.

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