@stragu back before most photography was digital, you had to put blank film rolls into your camera which you had to send in to companies developing the film roll into actual photos. These rolls came in these tiny cute plastic cups which were very useful to store small stuff once the photos were developed. I still have some ancient ones around to store seeds for example 😁 @birdsarah
@paul_cS should not be too stressful no! they're only in there for a matter of seconds, and it's the last thing we do before releasing them - entire banding process goes quite quickly, and they're inside a dark bag (calms them down) until we handle them
Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle forms of plastic waste – such as drinks bottles, nylon textiles and polyurethane foams – using acid recovered from old car batteries. The process then converts the waste into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals. The reactor was developed by researchers from the University […]
We never see the world as a whole because we are so fragmented, so terribly limited, so petty. We never have the feeling of wholeness, where the things of the sea, the things of the earth, nature, the sky, the universe, are part of us. Not imagined – you can go off into some kind of fancy and imagine that you are the universe, and then you become cuckoo. But break down this small, self-centred interest, have nothing of that, and from there you can move infinitely. And meditation is this, not sitting cross-legged, or standing on your head, or doing whatever one does, but having the feeling of the complete wholeness and unity of life. And that can come only when there is love and compassion.
Spring has a way of announcing itself with clever little signals.
Sometimes it arrives as a wall full of flowers, sometimes as a handmade note beside free blooms, sometimes as a bird returning to a branch, and sometimes as a patch of “weeds” that turns out to be a feast for bees. These 10 photos capture the smartest, sweetest, and most imaginative clues that winter is over and the world is waking up again.
Spring has a way of announcing itself with clever little signals.
Sometimes it arrives as a wall full of flowers, sometimes as a handmade note beside free blooms, sometimes as a bird returning to a branch, and sometimes as a patch of “weeds” that turns out to be a feast for bees. These 10 photos capture the smartest, sweetest, and most imaginative clues that winter is over and the world is waking up again.
ZABOU turns spring into something deeper than decoration. The flowers are lush and bright, but the real power comes from the tension between the calm face, the skull, and the butterfly resting between them. It feels like the season’s oldest message painted at full scale: life keeps coming back.
💡 Nerd Fact: This was not painted as a generic spring mural. Zabou made Alive for Blank Walls’ “Strength” series and described it as a work about resilience and “life stronger than death,” which makes the flowers feel less like decoration and more like a rebuttal to the skull.
🦋 Forest Butterflies — By Dege in Le Puy-en-Velay, France 🇫🇷
Some spring signs are quiet, and this one feels exactly like the first truly warm walk through the woods. Dege fills a parking wall with water, light, moss, and giant butterflies, turning a concrete space into something that suddenly feels cool, green, and alive again.
💡 Nerd Fact: Le Puy-en-Velay is not just any French town: it is the best-known French starting point of the Via Podiensis route to Santiago de Compostela, a walking trail famous for crossing landscapes rich in flora and fauna. That gives this forest mural an extra layer: in a city built around setting off on foot, the wall feels like the journey has already begun.
🌱 Nadine and the Vertical Commute — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸
David Zinn makes one little sprig of growth feel like a full spring adventure. The crack in the pavement becomes sky, the plant becomes a ladder, and suddenly the season is not just arriving, it is climbing. Few artists make first-growth optimism feel this playful.
💡 Nerd Fact: David Zinn’s own wonderfully over-the-top term for his sidewalk method is “ephemeral pareidolic anamorphosis”, meaning his drawings are temporary, improvised on site, and built from cracks, textures, and found objects. Nadine is also one of his long-running recurring characters, not a one-off mouse.
🌻 Flowers for West Town — By Ouizi in Chicago, USA 🇺🇸
Ouizi paints spring at building scale. The flowers climb the brick like they were always supposed to be there, and the butterfly near the top makes the whole wall feel mid-bloom. It is the kind of mural that can change the mood of an entire street corner.
💡 Nerd Fact: Ouizi does not paint random bouquets. She has said that she tries to reflect the flowers actually found in each place and even consults horticulturists to get them right, which means this mural works almost like a neighborhood botany portrait, not just floral wallpaper.
Nothing says spring quite like someone putting fresh yellow flowers out for strangers. The sign is simple, generous, and impossible not to smile at. It turns a tiny act of sharing into one of the season’s smartest reminders: warmth is something people can pass along.
💡 Nerd Fact: A free flower table like this accidentally revives floriography — the 19th-century “language of flowers,” when people in Britain and America used bouquets as coded messages. So even a simple street-side bloom comes with a long history of saying something without words.
🐦 Plant Trees for Birdsong — A Clever Street Message
This one makes its point in a single glance. Instead of trapping beauty, it argues for making room for it. Spring is the season when birds start filling the air again, and this message captures that whole feeling in one smart, humane, unforgettable line.
💡 Nerd Fact: The sign is ecologically spot-on: native trees do far more than give birds places to perch. They support the insects nestlings need for protein, and oaks are especially important because they host more butterfly and moth species than any other plant genus.
One of the cleverest spring signs of all is knowing when not to tidy anything up. Between the poppies and the buzzing logic of the message, this little sign reframes messy growth as care. Suddenly the wild patch looks less neglected and more like a public service.
💡 Nerd Fact: The logic behind this sign lines up with current pollinator advice. Flowers people often dismiss as lawn “weeds” — like dandelions and white clover — can be important early food for bees, which is why low-mow campaigns focus on letting spring flowers bloom before cutting them down.
🌺 Bougainvillea Shades — Street Art in Pondicherry, India 🇮🇳
Sometimes the best spring artist is the plant itself. This Pondicherry wall is already playful, but the bougainvillea bursting above the painted sunglasses turns it into a perfect collaboration between mural and season. It feels styled by nature in real time.
💡 Nerd Fact: In Puducherry’s White Town, bougainvillea-draped yellow walls are already part of the area’s signature look, so this wall is tapping into a real local streetscape. And botanically, the bright pink parts most people call the “flowers” are actually papery bracts, the true flowers are the small pale ones tucked in the center.
💙 Fairywren in Blossom — By Geoffrey Carran in Carlton North, Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺
Bright bird, pink blossoms, dark wall — everything here is balanced perfectly. Geoffrey Carran captures that instant when spring feels crisp instead of soft, vivid instead of vague. The fairywren looks like it landed for a second and made the whole wall lighter.
💡 Nerd Fact: The likely real-life reference here is the superb fairy-wren, a common southeastern Australian “blue wren” whose males turn brilliant blue in breeding season. Even better, courting males are famous for carrying flower petals to potential mates, which makes the blossom setting extra fitting.
🔥 End of Winter — By Miguel Peralta in Castro Caldelas, Spain 🇪🇸
Not every spring sign is floral. Miguel Peralta goes for fire, procession, and ritual, showing the season as something earned and celebrated. It feels like winter being carried out in flames so the brighter months can finally take over.
💡 Nerd Fact: This mural is basically a portrait of a real local ritual. Castro Caldelas celebrates the Festa dos Fachós every 19 January, when giant straw torches are carried through the village and thrown onto a bonfire, and Miguel Peralta’s mural was created specifically as a tribute to that tradition.
At present, a part of the mind is trying to capture the whole, is it not? One part is struggling against another part, one desire against another desire. The hidden mind is in conflict with the open; violence is attempting to become non-violent. Frustration is followed by hope, fulfilment and another frustration. That is all we know. There is the ceaseless pursuit of fulfilment, in whose very shadow is frustration, so we never know or experience wholeness of being. The body is against feeling; feeling is against thought; thought is pursuing the what should be, the ideal. We are broken up into fragments, and by bringing the various fragments together, we hope to make the whole. Is it ever possible to do this? This feeling of the totality of your being, of your body, mind and heart, is not the bringing together of all these fragments. You cannot make contradictory desires into a harmonious whole. To attempt to do so is an act of the mind, and the mind itself is only a part. A part cannot create the whole.
From Commentaries on Living Series 3
#
... Show more...
At present, a part of the mind is trying to capture the whole, is it not? One part is struggling against another part, one desire against another desire. The hidden mind is in conflict with the open; violence is attempting to become non-violent. Frustration is followed by hope, fulfilment and another frustration. That is all we know. There is the ceaseless pursuit of fulfilment, in whose very shadow is frustration, so we never know or experience wholeness of being. The body is against feeling; feeling is against thought; thought is pursuing the what should be, the ideal. We are broken up into fragments, and by bringing the various fragments together, we hope to make the whole. Is it ever possible to do this? This feeling of the totality of your being, of your body, mind and heart, is not the bringing together of all these fragments. You cannot make contradictory desires into a harmonious whole. To attempt to do so is an act of the mind, and the mind itself is only a part. A part cannot create the whole.
To be attentive implies that there is no distraction. When you are attentive, you take in the whole, not the part; you see the people, the colours, the light, the shapes. You are aware and therefore attentive. In that attention, there is neither the observer nor the observed, because there your whole being, your mind, your body, your nerves, your ears, your eyes – everything is attentive. Therefore, there is no division. In that state of attention, there is an observation of oneself. Therefore, there is no condemnation of oneself. Therefore, you are learning.
To be attentive implies that there is no distraction. When you are attentive, you take in the whole, not the part; you see the people, the colours, the light, the shapes. You are aware and therefore attentive. In that attention, there is neither the observer nor the observed, because there your whole being, your mind, your body, your nerves, your ears, your eyes – everything is attentive. Therefore, there is no division. In that state of attention, there is an observation of oneself. Therefore, there is no condemnation of oneself. Therefore, you are learning.
We are concerned not only with the cultivation of the mind and the awakening of emotional sensitivity, but also with a well-rounded development of the physique, and to this we must give considerable thought. For if the body is not healthy, vital, it will inevitably distort thought and make for insensitivity. It is necessary that the body be in excellent health, that it be given the right kind of food and have sufficient sleep. If the senses are not alert, the body will impede the total development of the human being. To have grace of movement and well-balanced control of the muscles, there must be various forms of exercise, dance and sport. A body that is not kept clean, that is sloppy and does not hold itself in good posture, is not conducive to the sensitivity of mind and emotions. The body is not the instrument of the mind, but body, emotions and mind make up the total human being, and unless they live together harmoniously, conflict is inevitable. Conflict makes for insensitivity. The mind may dominate the body and suppress the senses, but it thereby makes the body insensitive
... Show more...
We are concerned not only with the cultivation of the mind and the awakening of emotional sensitivity, but also with a well-rounded development of the physique, and to this we must give considerable thought. For if the body is not healthy, vital, it will inevitably distort thought and make for insensitivity. It is necessary that the body be in excellent health, that it be given the right kind of food and have sufficient sleep. If the senses are not alert, the body will impede the total development of the human being. To have grace of movement and well-balanced control of the muscles, there must be various forms of exercise, dance and sport. A body that is not kept clean, that is sloppy and does not hold itself in good posture, is not conducive to the sensitivity of mind and emotions. The body is not the instrument of the mind, but body, emotions and mind make up the total human being, and unless they live together harmoniously, conflict is inevitable. Conflict makes for insensitivity. The mind may dominate the body and suppress the senses, but it thereby makes the body insensitive, and an insensitive body becomes a hindrance to the full flight of the mind. The mortification of the body is not conducive to the seeking out of the deeper layers of consciousness; this is possible only when the mind, the emotions and the body are not in contradiction with each other, but are integrated and in unison, effortlessly, without being driven by any concept, belief or ideal.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyvw9… A porno star 2hich spesk reality, say a scientist, you data is wrong. Which is wrong. Look to the scientist, xan she handle 100 dicjs a day?
Last month was full of climate extremes around the world, and it can be hard to summarize it all. Even temperatures for the #Antarctic region were at record high levels
Jacob Urlich 🌍
in reply to birdsarah • •birdsarah likes this.
Polly Kraisus
in reply to birdsarah • • •What's a film roll cup?
Colin
in reply to Polly Kraisus • • •Rob van Kan🔻
in reply to Colin • • •James
in reply to Polly Kraisus • • •everybody's favorite gay epileptic ringtail
in reply to birdsarah • • •Maike
in reply to birdsarah • • •tlohde
in reply to birdsarah • • •Paul Schn
in reply to birdsarah • • •birdsarah
in reply to Paul Schn • • •Azure is tired of lying in bed
in reply to birdsarah • • •Poloniousmonk
in reply to birdsarah • • •Sylvhem
in reply to birdsarah • • •Sari Mikkonen 🇫🇮🌻🇪🇺
in reply to birdsarah • • •Kranston 🪑
in reply to birdsarah • • •The Shaking Earth
in reply to birdsarah • • •GothPanda
in reply to birdsarah • • •Mer-fOKxTOwl
in reply to birdsarah • • •