Dr Francesca Santoro
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phyllida.bsky.social
Dr Francesca Santoro
@phyllida.bsky.social
1.7K followers 780 following 3.1K posts
Greek & Roman history, politics, art history, literature. Music: Mahler, DSCH, opera, chamber music. Have lived in Rome & Amsterdam. Love languages, theatre, museums in general, Shakespeare, London, the House of Commons, Rowson cartoons, in particular.😊
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phyllida.bsky.social
Decodex 2025-12-09

🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢

Time: 1:28

@tonylarch.bsky.social @lightacandle.bsky.social

I quite like this one!😊

Play here: playdecodex.com
Decodex – A Daily Cryptogram Puzzle Game
Decode a quote a day! Play the daily cryptogram at playdecodex.com.
playdecodex.com
December 9, 2025 at 1:40 AM
phyllida.bsky.social
😼😼https://www.nytimes.com/badges/games/v1/bee.html?d=2025-12-08&l=abeiptz&p=103&r=Queen%20Bee&c=466c5bfa165ac0df5c9c7f6aa67f4761&smid=url-share 👑🐝🤗Challenge: Make the first word a Pangram. One that uses all 7 letters! Bonus Points😼!!
I got Queen Bee!
How many words can you make with 7 letters?
www.nytimes.com
December 8, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
merisi-vienna.bsky.social
🌜 Good Night, Good People Everywhere! 🌛

VIENNA AT CHRISTMASTIME
Hotel Römischer Kaiser
Balcony of a more than 300 year old Palais,
decorated with Norway Spruce trees
Annagasse, Inner City
Image © Merisi Vienna
#EastCoastKin #Photography
#PhotographersOfBluesky
Light pink façade of a 300 years old palace, a balcony with two small spruce trees and a large white-framed window.
December 8, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
borealman63.bsky.social
Northern lights from mid-November.

#canada #boreal #northernlights
Northern lights.
December 8, 2025 at 3:59 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
wtafc.bsky.social
December 8, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
brymo.bsky.social
Razz gets in on the glamour shot
#cats
#orangecats
#photography
An orange cat looking at the camera with his paws on a wooden trellis
December 8, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
nicococreates.craves.pizza
Good morning!

I limited interactions on this one. Hoping it stays with the mooties 😎
A black cat cozied up in bed like a human
December 8, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
paulsgundlach.bsky.social
For the ultimate in end-of-week Zen, here is a video of the firefly display tonight at the massive multi-acre Gardens Aglow holiday lights exhibit on Cape Cod. Tap and turn horizontal for full-size. I hope you have had a great day!
December 8, 2025 at 3:36 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
jamesdaustin.bsky.social
Genuinely love whoever in aincient Mesopotamia decided that the correct shape for weights was ducks.

RETVRN
December 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
elizabeth-warren.bsky.social
Thanks to Republicans’ chaotic policies:

Small businesses have let 120,000 employees go.

Grocery and utility prices are up.

The cost of health care is skyrocketing.

But instead of helping struggling families, Trump is looking into building a giant “Arc de Trump”.
December 8, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
digitalprimate.bsky.social
Good morning from Haarlem.

#GoodMorningFromHaarlem
Someone is riding their bike down the narrow alleyway that leads towards the big cathedral in the center of town
December 8, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
walksincamera.bsky.social
Leafy trail #trees #woodland #TreeClub
December 7, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
atrupar.com
Mark Kelly: "They are not silencing me. I'm still speaking out. I still am going to do my job every single day regardless of whether this president wants to kill me, hang me, execute me, or shut me up. I'm not gonna shut up."
December 7, 2025 at 2:39 PM
phyllida.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/badges/games... 👑🐝🤗 Such fun!
I got Queen Bee!
How many words can you make with 7 letters?
www.nytimes.com
December 8, 2025 at 3:48 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
petramichaela.bsky.social
As the day draws to a close, let us find peace in the simple truths that truly matter: the well-being of those we love, the satisfaction of a day well spent, and a heart overflowing with gratitude for the blessings in our lives.
December 8, 2025 at 3:46 AM
phyllida.bsky.social
Decodex 2025-12-08

🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢

Time: 1:35

I wonder if it's possible for @playdecodex.bsky.social to use a darker print for the encrypted message—and perhaps a larger print. My poor eyes will thank it!🔎🦇😵‍💫

@tonylarch.bsky.social @lightacandle.bsky.social

Play here: playdecodex.com
Decodex – A Daily Cryptogram Puzzle Game
Decode a quote a day! Play the daily cryptogram at playdecodex.com.
playdecodex.com
December 8, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
rbreich.bsky.social
Health insurers are jacking up premiums while raking in billions in profits.

Expiring ACA subsidies will saddle millions of Americans with massive monthly premium increases.

Is it any wonder that 63% of Americans now support Medicare for All?
December 8, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
phyllida.bsky.social
#ShakespeareSunday how sour sweet music is,/
When time is broke and no proportion kept! /So is it in the music of men's lives/...I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. R II V.5 Topic: Time @lightacandle.bsky.social @tonylarch.bsky.social @tjmiddleton.bsky.social @earlgreytea220.bsky.social
Westminster Portrait, ca. 1090. Richard, crowned, wearing his Coronation robes, sits on the Coronation Chair. He holds the orb and scepter.
December 7, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
alt31.bsky.social
⭕Rassemblement devant la #Maison-Blanche contre la politique belliciste des #États-Unis contre le #Venezuela.
December 7, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social
Bull's head rhyton, Minoan, 1600-1500 BC
The head of a bull done in I think clay in black and white and I spotted a bowl here a right honey is a drinking vessel designed so that you can't put it down once you fill it with liquor fill it with wine you have to keep drinking till it's empty
December 7, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
rebeccaforec.bsky.social
December farmers market haul.

I love living in California. ❤️
Produce from farmers market: snap peas, peppers, cherry tomatoes, berries
December 7, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
forbes.com
The Top 10 Richest People In The World | December 2025
The Top 10 Richest People In The World | December 2025
There’s a new No. 2 on Forbes’ ranking of the world’s wealthiest people.
www.forbes.com
December 7, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Self Portrait” by Mic Diño Boekelmann (Filipino American) - Oil on board, Manila envelope / 2024 - Fabricated Boundaries, American University Museum (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #Boekelmann #AUMuseum #FilipinoAmericanArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #selfportrait
In this intimate self-portrait, a warm golden Manila envelope fills the frame, its flap, clasp, and seams clearly visible as a familiar office object turned stage. The front of the envelope has been intricately hand-cut into looping vines and stylized blossoms that weave across the opening like a paper lattice. Through those cut shapes we glimpse a painted image on board: the artist’s face, with medium warm-brown skin, deep brown eyes, and dark hair pulled back from her forehead. Her expression is steady and reflective, her features softly modeled with luminous highlights on her nose, cheeks, and lips. A band of white behind her head suggests cloth or wall, while brown and yellow brushstrokes echo the envelope’s color, blending portrait and container. Small fragments of her shoulders and her white top appear at the lower edge, partially hidden by the floral forms, so that her likeness feels at once present, framed, and gently obscured by the envelope that surrounds her. Artist Mic Diño Boekelmann has described the iconic golden Manila envelope as a starting point for her practice: a humble material she cuts, layers, and transforms to explore memory, home, and belonging across the Filipino diaspora. Rooted in family stories of abacá and Manila hemp, the envelope carries associations with labor, paperwork, and migration even as it becomes a delicate, almost lace-like screen. Here, placing her own painted face behind those cut flowers turns a bureaucratic object into a tender shield and filter. She appears through patterns linked to Filipino textiles, flora, and ancestral narratives. Shown in “Fabricated Boundaries: Filipina American Textile & Fiber Artist” at the American University Museum, the work joins fellow Filipina/x American artists in weaving personal and collective histories, asking what it means to feel seen, safe, and whole while moving between countries, languages, and generations.
December 5, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Mustataustainen omakuva” (Self-Portrait, Black Background) by Helene Schjerfbeck (Finnish) - Oil on canvas / 1915 - Ateneum Art Museum (Helsinki, Finland) #WomenInArt #art #artText #HeleneSchjerfbeck #Schjerfbeck #SelfPortrait #FinnishArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AteneumArtMuseum
A bust-length view of a ghostly-pale woman emerges from a nearly solid black ground. Her face is turned slightly to one side, large gray-green eyes lifted just above ours with a searching gaze. Warm brown hair is pulled back tightly, with one loose curl. A bright pink flush sits on her cheeks and small, closed mouth, giving a sense of vulnerability and quiet resolve. She wears a pale, high-necked blouse that dissolves into thin, sketchy strokes, suggesting shoulders and torso without firm outline. At her chest hangs a round green pendant on a delicate gold chain, the color echoing the cool tones of her eyes. In the lower left, a bright red paint pot and upright brushes signal her tools and identity as an artist. Across the top, the block capitals HELENE and SCHJERFBECK are rubbed and partly erased, so that her own name hovers like a fading inscription over the dark surface. Painted in her early 1950s, as she lived a relatively secluded life in Finland, this self-portrait marks Schjerfbeck’s shift toward a spare, modernist language. Commissioned by the Finnish Art Society for its official self-portrait collection (where she was the first and only woman artist represented), it quietly insists that a modern Finnish woman painter belongs in a lineage long dominated by men. The black background and mask-like simplification of the face may hint at illness, aging, and the passing of time, while the sharp red of the paint pot likely affirms her continuing creative force. The faint, scraped letters of her name at the top suggest both assertion and self-effacement as she writes herself into art history even as she acknowledges how easily women’s contributions can be rubbed away. In the Ateneum’s Hallonblad Collection, the painting stands as a landmark of Nordic modernism and a powerful meditation on artistic persistence, mortality, and how we choose to be seen.
December 6, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Dr Francesca Santoro
ghirlandia.bsky.social
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.

All's Well That Ends Well
V, 3

Milo Winter #ShakespeareSunday
December 7, 2025 at 1:03 PM