Nancy's Ink Spots 🎨🕊 @NancysInkSpots

UK textile artist Rachel Wright, machine embroidery on calico with various fabrics #womensart #EmbroideryWeek

@XMartinsMusicX Terry Hall

The seven wonders of the world: To see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to feel, to laugh, to love ❤️

I recently read about a psychologist in 1980s who healed an entire ward of criminally insane patients. WITHOUT SPEAKING TO THEM. WITHOUT ENTERING THE WARD. WITHOUT LOOKING AT THEM. He simply sat in his office, read their files, and repeated 4 phrases over and over while staring at their photos. That's it. Here's an incredible story that'll make you rethink healing and consciousness. His name was Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. The technique he used is called Ho'oponopono. It's a 5,000-year-old Hawaiian healing practice based on one radical premise: everything you experience is your responsibility to heal. And, the 4 phrases he uttered weren't instructions to them. They're instructions to himself: • I'm sorry • Please forgive me • Thank you • I love you That's the entire protocol. He repeated these while holding their file. While thinking of them. While acknowledging his role in their existence on their reality. But how did it work? Neuroscientists now know that holding resentment, anger, and blame literally reshapes your prefrontal cortex. Your thoughts about someone change their neural pathways in YOUR brain. When you release blame, you rewire yourself. And something bizarre happens: they often change too. Think about it this way. You're not healing them directly. You're healing your perception of them. You're removing the energetic charge you've placed on their existence. The moment you stop seeing them as guilty, dangerous, or broken, something shifts. They sense it. They respond to it. Dr. Len's insight was, "you can't change someone's behavior by confronting them. You change it by changing how you hold them internally." By taking responsibility for how they show up in your reality. By forgiving the part of yourself that attracted this person into your story. So, the 4 phrases work because they bypass the conscious mind. "I'm sorry" = I take responsibility for my role in this "Forgive me" = I release the judgment I've been holding "Thank you" = I recognize this person taught me something "I love you" = I see their wholeness despite their actions Repeat this 100 times a day and your nervous system reprograms. When you genuinely forgive—not for them, but for you—something neurological shifts. Your nervous system relaxes. Your perception opens. You see possibilities instead of problems. And paradoxically, the people you forgive often transform. Because you stopped projecting your pain onto them. Start today. ➸ Pick one person who still has a charge for you. ➸ Repeat the 4 phrases 50 times while thinking of them. ➸ "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you." Track what happens to your nervous system. To your thoughts about them. The deeper you go with Ho'oponopono, the more you realize: everyone who appears in your reality is a mirror. They're showing you something unhealed in yourself. Which means healing is always possible. Because the only person you can ever truly change is you.

Unfortunately, the winds of war are blowing once again in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in many other parts of the world, sowing violence, terror and death, and once again affecting many innocent people. Let us not allow these winds to extinguish the flame of hope and peace, even when it seems fragile and flickering. I renew my hope that we will persevere on the path of dialogue, encounter and diplomacy. This is the only path capable of leading to a just and lasting peace, in which peoples can live in reconciliation, mutual security and respect for the dignity of every person.

“Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.” - Emory Austin (art: Jill Murphy)

#FolkloreSunday “Alone we are miracles, together we are miraculous.” ― Scott Wright, Sunflower Circle

Amazing work from the king of orbital astrophotography

Don Pettit @astro_Pettit

3 days ago

Milky Way views over the city lights of Earth. Humans shining back at the stars that inspire us! Taken with Nikon Z9, 14mm, f/1.4, ISO 6400 with homemade sidereal tracker on ISS Expedition 72

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Have a beautiful evening, everyone! See you all tomorrow🌿

"If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter,' then by all means paint...and that voice will be silenced." —Vincent van Gogh

The officer sits nearly twice the size of the girl across the small table, and it is not a mistake. In 1891 the artist Joseph Pennell looked at that gap and recognized a camera at work: the way a lens blows up whatever sits closest to it. Vermeer, working around 1657, may well have been tracing what a lens threw onto the wall. A camera obscura is a dark box or room with a small lens that throws the live scene onto a surface, upside down. An architect named Philip Steadman figured out the exact size of the room in this painting from the floor tiles and the window. Six of Vermeer's interior scenes come out at exactly the size a lens in that back wall would have thrown. The canvas also shows effects an eye does not make on its own: little beads of light pooling on the wine glass and the chair, the scattered dots a lens throws when part of the scene drifts out of focus. No document proves he used one, and some scholars still push back. Almost everything in the room is a specific object you can still trace. The map is an actual Blaeu map of Holland, turned on its side by our standards, with west at the top. One physical copy of it survives, in a museum in Hoorn. The wall glows because Vermeer mixed a blue called ultramarine into his white paint, ground from lapis lazuli dug out of Afghanistan and, in his day, the most expensive color on Earth. The man's black hat is beaver felt. Europe had hunted its own beavers nearly to nothing, so the fur was shipped in from across the Atlantic. One quiet Delft room, holding the whole Dutch trading world. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the man who would pioneer the microscope, was named to settle Vermeer's bankrupt estate. The two were born in the same town, Delft, in the same year, 1632. One of them ground the best lenses of the century to see things too small for the eye. The other may have used a lens to paint. Vermeer died suddenly in 1675, at 43, worn down by the collapsed art market, leaving a wife and eleven children. His widow tried to settle a 600-guilder bread debt with two of his paintings. This canvas sold for 44 and a half guilders in 1696. Then he vanished for two centuries, and in 1861 this exact picture sold in London as a Pieter de Hooch, a completely different artist. Only about 34 Vermeers survive, and nearly every one is locked inside a museum. The last one to come up for public sale sold for about $30 million.

Daily Dutch Masters 🎨 @Goudriaan2

5 days ago

Officer and Laughing Girl Johannes Vermeer, ca. 1657

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eu acabei de fechar sem querer uma aba que eu ia ler há 2 anos

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

"A good mixture of nothing and everything is eating up my head alive" Anne Sexton ~ A Self-Portrait in Letters Kenton Nelson

My buddy called me at 8am on a Saturday to tell me he'd gotten engaged and needed me at his place immediately. I showed up expecting champagne. There was no champagne. There was just Marcus sitting at his kitchen table with his laptop open and the energy of a man who had made a decision he was fully committed to and slightly terrified of simultaneously. Marcus: I need help writing the Instagram post. Me: At 8am. Marcus: She's asleep. I have maybe two hours. Me: To write a caption. Marcus: Not just a caption. The caption. The one that sets the tone for our entire relationship going forward publicly. I sat down. He had a document open with eleven drafts. Draft one said "She said yes!" with three exclamation points. Draft six was a paragraph. Draft nine had a Pablo Neruda quote in it. Me: Marcus. Marcus: I know. Me: You wrote a Pablo Neruda quote for Instagram. Marcus: It felt right at 3am. Me: Nothing feels right at 3am. Me: Why don't you just post the photo? Marcus: Because everyone just posts the photo. I want something real. Me: Then say something real. In your words. Not Pablo's. Marcus: My words are terrible. Me: What did you say to her when you proposed? He closed the laptop. Marcus: I said I've been nervous about this for six months and I'm still nervous right now but I know that the only thing scarier than asking would be not asking. Silence. Me: Marcus, write that. Marcus: That's not Instagram language. Me: It's your language. Write it. He opened the laptop and typed it almost verbatim. Then added the photo. Simple. Her laughing, not looking at the camera, hand over her mouth. He showed it to me. Me: Post it. Marcus: What if nobody likes it? Me: Your girlfriend just agreed to marry you. I think the bar has been cleared. He posted it. Put the phone face down. We sat there for a while. Him: Want some coffee? Me: I've been here twelve minutes. Him: I'm just nervous. Me: About what? She already said yes. Him: Now it's real. Me: It was real before the Instagram post. Him: Not publicly. I made the coffee. His phone lit up immediately. Three hundred likes inside ten minutes. His fiancée walked in at nine in pajamas, looked at her phone, then at him. Her: You quoted yourself. Marcus: My friend said to. She looked at me. Her: Thank you. Me: I just got here. Her: That's the most Marcus thing anyone's ever written. Marcus tried to look modest and failed completely. I went home at nine thirty. Got a text from him at noon. "She cried. In a good way. Also Pablo Neruda texted and said he would've done it differently." He didn't but that's vintage Marcus.

Actual footage of every penalty run up in the World Cup.

UK ceramics artist Sarah Saunders #WomensArt

9 Undeniable Signs Your Soul Was Born With a High Cosmic Frequency Perhaps for years, you seemed too sensitive, too introverted, or too dreamy to the people around you. But the truth is, you were simply born with a different cosmic alignment. If the following points feel familiar, you are one of those rare souls who can read the energy of the universe. - Your words are seals: You notice that the things you say, even jokingly or in passing, eventually turn into reality. The universe hears your voice, and your words instantly turn into vibrations, a form of magic. Therefore, please be very careful about what you wish for and what you speak into existence. - The voiceless children of nature find you: It is no coincidence that animals are drawn to you when you walk down the street. Even injured or vulnerable wild animals showing up at your doorstep is because they feel that healing safety radiating from your aura. - You are drawn to the earth's memory: Since childhood, you have likely felt a deep connection to crystals, natural stones, and even ordinary-looking rocks that carry a certain frequency. Collecting them is an instinctive method of protection and alignment for your soul. - You instantly see past people's masks: You can read what kind of person someone is from their energy before they even open their mouth to speak a single word. And ninety-nine percent of the time, your initial impressions are absolutely right. - Crowds exhaust your aura: Heavily crowded public spaces or large stores drain you out of nowhere. This does not mean you are weak; on the contrary, it proves you have a powerful empathic aura that absorbs and feels the energy of everyone in the room all at once. - A childlike curiosity for the unknown: From a very young age, you have felt an unexplainable attraction to mysterious subjects, unseen realms, and the supernatural. - Your home is your sacred sanctuary: You are highly selective about who you invite into your personal space. After people leave your house, you instinctively feel the need to physically or energetically cleanse the environment. - A profound bond with the Moon: Staring at the Moon and watching its cycles gives you an indescribable sense of peace. You only feel truly safe, grounded, and balanced when you are resting in the heart of nature. - A heart beating in sync with the seasons: Your energy and mood change perfectly with the seasonal cycles. While you become more introverted and tired like nature hibernating in winter, you feel your energy awaken and explode along with the light in the summer. You are not a coincidence. You are here to anchor universal frequencies to earth and heal your surroundings with your light. Instead of rejecting or suppressing this divine power, embrace it. The universe is by your side, supporting your journey every step of the way.

My brother showed up to Christmas dinner and announced he was now going by a different name. Not legally. Just socially. Starting immediately. Brother: I've been doing a lot of work on myself this year and I feel like Kevin doesn't represent who I am anymore. Me: Who are you now? Brother: Caspian. Our mom set down the green beans. Mom: I'm sorry? Brother: Caspian. It means from the Caspian Sea. Dad: You're from Cleveland. Brother: Names don't have to reflect geography, Dad. The table went quiet in that specific Christmas way where everyone is pretending to be calm while aggressively staring at the centerpiece. My aunt broke first. Aunt: Like the Narnia horse? Brother: The horse's name is Bree. Caspian is the prince. Aunt: You've been reading Narnia. Brother: I've been on a journey. Me: A journey to the thirteenth century. Brother: That's judgmental. Me: Kevin, you work in insurance. Brother: Caspian works in insurance now. My dad picked up his fork and put it back down twice without eating anything. Dad: Can I ask what prompted this? Brother: I've been seeing a life coach. Me: The life coach told you to change your name. Brother: She helped me understand that I've been performing an identity that was assigned to me rather than chosen. Dad: Kevin was assigned to you because your grandfather was Kevin. Brother: And I love Grandpa Kevin. But I need my own...... Dad: Kevin, your grandfather is here. We all looked at the end of the table. Grandpa Kevin, eighty-three years old, had been quietly eating mashed potatoes and appeared to have heard all of this. Grandpa: (without looking up) I didn't like Kevin either. That was not what anyone expected. Grandpa: Always wanted to be called Ray. Mom: Dad, your name is Kevin. Grandpa: I know what my name is. My brother was staring at him with genuine surprise. Grandpa finally looked up. Grandpa: (to my brother) You picked Caspian? Brother: Yes. Grandpa: (considered this) I would've gone with something shorter. Brother: What would you have picked? Grandpa: Ray. Brother: That's just a regular name. Grandpa: Exactly. Easy to spell. Nobody asks you about Narnia. The table erupted. Even my brother laughed. He's still going by Caspian. But Grandpa now introduces himself as Ray at family functions. Nobody corrects him. He's eighty-three. He can be whoever he wants. My mom calls them both by their new names with the energy of a woman counting down to January. Dad just sighs and passes the green beans.

Hand a scientist nothing but a swan's skeleton, with no living birds to compare it to, and they would probably decide the animal couldn't fly. Its arm bones reach only about halfway down the wing. The rest is feathers, and feathers usually rot, so from the bones alone you might decide those arms were for spearing fish. That is roughly the problem with how we draw dinosaurs, and the bird in this photo is the punchline. It is a white-tufted grebe, one of about 11,000 bird species that make up the last living branch of the dinosaur family tree. Its bright red eye and spiky crest would leave almost no trace in the bones. For most of the last century, scientists thought dinosaur color was gone for good. Mike Benton, a paleontologist at Bristol, used to tell students it was something we would never know. Then in 2010 his team looked at fossil feathers under a strong microscope and found melanosomes, tiny sacs of pigment that survive for hundreds of millions of years. Their shape tracks their color, so sausage-shaped ones mean black and gray while round ones mean ginger and red. So we started pulling actual colors off fossils. Sinosauropteryx, a small Chinese predator, had a ginger and white striped tail. Anchiornis, from about 160 million years ago, had a gray body, black and white striped wings, and a rusty crest running down its head like a mohawk. Microraptor, a four-winged dinosaur the size of a pigeon, was glossy blue-black, the way a crow shifts color in sunlight. Even Borealopelta, an armored plant-eater that weighed nearly 3,000 pounds, was reddish-brown with camouflage shading, so even something big enough to fight off most predators still needed to hide. Melanosomes have a limit, though. They only capture colors made by melanin. The bright reds, yellows, and pinks that birds get from their food, like flamingo pink or a cardinal's red, leave no trace. Many blues disappear too. So even our colorful dinosaurs are probably undercounted. That grebe's red eye would be invisible in the rock. In 2012, three researchers wrote a book called All Yesterdays making this exact case. They gave a name to the habit of drawing skin pulled tight over bone, with every joint and muscle showing: "shrink-wrapping." Living animals carry fat, pouches, wattles, and loose skin that all disappear after death. To prove the point, they rebuilt familiar animals from the skeleton alone. Their elephant had no trunk. Their rhino had a sail on its back and no horn. Their baboon came out looking like a venomous monster. The grebe has no bone-deep explanation for its face. Neither did most dinosaurs.

The Lost Aeons @thelostaeons

4 days ago

Yeah, we definitely are still reconstructing dinos in very conservative ways.

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