Not a news network!

@alg24

Nature lover, bibliomaniac, worrier. Yes, those are some of my bookshelves. I am still not an Algerian news network. Maybe I should have picked a different user name this time. Banner pic: tightly packed paperback fiction. Profile pic: egret.

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Not a news network!@alg24· May 16

I'm drinking coffee out of one of Gail's mugs right now. Highly recommended. This one even matches my decor!

Photo of a coffee mug with a design showing brightly-coloured books on a shelf. Behind it, on the far side of the room, is a wall of brightly-coloured books on shelves.

Not a news network!@alg24· Dec 22

And Faversham!

Looking up at a street name mounted high on a crumbling brick wall. It reads "Ticklebelly Alley".

Ticklebelly Alley. Looking straight ahead along a narrow alley, with high brick walls on both sides. Vegetation forms an archway at the far end.

Not a news network!@alg24· Nov 9

Death by paper cut?

A Sierpinski triangle made by cutting and folding a sheet of A4 paper.

Not a news network!@alg24· Nov 8

Apparently I've misremembered, and mine is a different one from the same series. (Either that, or I have two, which I definitely wouldn't rule out... I certainly do have more music boxes about the place.) Also from The Magic Flute: Der Vogelfänger.

A small music box on a bookshelf. There's an intricate silhouette illustration on it: a person in a feathered costume, with a butterfly net over their shoulder, is watched by a wide variety of birds perched in and around a pair of trees. There are other ornaments on the shelf, including a miniature house and a wooden mouse, and it's densely packed with paperback fiction.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 7

Leave a leaf, take a leaf... QRP with a leaf, if you like! Here's a leaf full of leaves. #LeafPosting

A cut-out maple leaf shape in a small square black metal fence panel. Behind it, out of focus, is an orange building and some bright green and red leaves, backlit by the sun. The combination makes it seem as if you're looking at an autumn leaf, green blotched with orange and red, bright in the sunshine.

Not a news network!@alg24· Sep 9

"Spread Love". Someone has clearly tried to remove this, but love has been stronger than bigotry.

An A4 poster glued to a grey item of street furniture. It says "Spread Love" in big letters at the top, then there's a reproduction of Banksy's "Flower Thrower" mural (a masked man poised to throw a bunch of flowers rather than a bomb), and then at the bottom it says "Misinformed bigots are tearing apart our town with needless hatred. Faversham, choose love". Someone has tried to tear it down, but has only managed to shred one corner a little.

Not a news network!@alg24· Aug 11

Oh, nice! This one? (This is the version I had in my early-80s childhood; I have very fond memories of it, and was extremely pleased to finally track one down on eBay!)

A Ravensburger "Original Memory" game, in a blue box with pictures of eight of the game tiles laid out at jaunty angles. There's a little cottage with a blue roof, a man with a big white beard and an even bigger fish, a stripy blue arrow pointing to the right, a goat in a yellow hat and green coat smoking a pipe and leaning on a wall, a couple of white-spotted red toadstools amongst autumn leaves, a tile divided into nine coloured squares, a magpie on a branch, and a penguin amongst tropical flowers.

Not a news network!@alg24· Aug 10

The word muting feature includes tags. You can specify whether to mute the word in tags alone, or in both. No wildcards, but it should still help. In the iOS app, you'll find it under Settings > Moderation > Muted words and tags; I imagine it's somewhere similar in other apps and on the website.

A screenshot of the "Add muted words and tags" interface in the iOS Bluesky app. The guidance text reads: "Posts can be muted based on their text, their tags, or both. We recommend avoiding common words that appear in many posts, since it can result in no posts being shown." There is a text field labelled "Enter a word or tag", a choice of four durations (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or Forever), a choice to mute the word in both text and tags or in tags only, and an option to exclude users you follow.

Not a news network!@alg24· Jan 12

Shadow or reflection?

A winter-bare tree casts a shadow onto the blank end wall of a building. The sun and the camera are about ninety degrees apart, and the shape of the tree means that the shadow looks remarkably like a reflection, with a long branch reaching out to the right where the tree has one reaching out to the left.

Not a news network!@alg24· Dec 9

Relieved to find mine still safely in place on the shelves!

A paperback copy of The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer. It's a Collins Lions edition from the early '80s. The title is in red block capitals on a white background, and the cover illustration below it shows Milo and Tock meeting the Mathemagician in the numbers mine.

Tightly packed paperback fiction on dimly lit wooden shelves. A copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, with a red spine and mostly white front cover, has been pulled out a little. Alongside it on the shelf, it's fairly easy to make out Hellspark by Janet Kagan, two Emil books by Erich Kastner, Scarf Jack by P.J. Kavanagh, The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye, Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor, and three books by Victor Kelleher: Del-Del, To the Dark Tower and The Hunting of Shadroth. There's also a copy of The Flying Classroom by Erich Kastner sitting on top of the other books.

Not a news network!@alg24· Nov 30

Can I interest you in an alarmingly large Grinch?

A very large inflatable Grinch, dressed up like Father Christmas, stands in front of a butcher's shop in an English town. When I say "very large", I mean it: to the tip of its hat, it's a good two storeys high.

Not a news network!@alg24· Nov 17

If you see this, please repost with a favourite photo of the sky that you’ve taken recently.

A pre-sunset sky, with a golden glow that could have come straight out of a Turner painting. Beneath the sky are a church spire and some Victorian school buildings, half in flint and half in red brick.

Not a news network!@alg24· Nov 4

Quote with your emotional support isopod.

A shiny articulated copper woodlouse, with black beads for eyes, resting comfortably on my forearm. It's a perfect fit: about as long as the distance from the crook of my elbow to my wrist, and just the right width for its legs to straddle my arm. It's a very fine beast indeed.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 30

If you see this, post a photo taken in the mountains. I didn't think I'd have any on this phone, but here's the summit of Mount Diablo in California! And a view from just below the summit, in case anyone is now thinking the whole mountain has been roofed over.

$The base of a concrete column, set in bedrock. A small sign on the column reads "Summit of Mount Diablo The mound of fractured bedrock at your feet is the actual summit of Mount Diablo. The floor of the building was constructed around this point to allow you to stand on top of one of California's most prominent peaks."$

A spectacular view from a mountaintop. A layer of dark cloud at the top of the photo and a dark treeline at the bottom frame a view of mountains and the plains beyond. The mountains are in shadow from the clouds overhead; the plains are brightly sunlit. It feels appropriate that we are standing in shadow on a mountain called Diablo, looking out at a sunnier land.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 27

Seasonal cat.

A black cat sitting contentedly, eyes closed, on a sunlit doorstep. He's tucked in under a yew hedge, and surrounded by red, orange and brown fallen leaves.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 26

If you see this, quote post something green from a photo you took. (I couldn't narrow it down to one!)

A green crocodile painted on a chalk cave wall. The crocodile has its mouth open and looks quite cheerful, but it doesn't seem to have any feet! - its legs end quite abruptly. This is one of the paintings in Margate Caves in Kent, England.

A green notice requests "Please do not put fish in this pond. Thank you". This seems like a strange thing to have to say. It's surrounded by some more natural greenery, mostly bramble leaves.

There's also a smaller notice, which is white with a red border, but it has very small print, and I have no idea what it says.

A bright green car is parked in front of a slightly darker green shipping container, with the word EVERGREEN on its side. It looks almost like a caption for the car, because it's lined up perfectly along the top of its roof. The photo was taken in a boatyard, and in the background are an assortment of boats awaiting or undergoing maintenance. None of them are green.

A view along a narrow woodland path flanked by tall trees in full summer leaf. Some of the trunks are wrapped in dark green ivy. Sunlight is filtering through the canopy, making this a very green photo.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 18

Happy autumn! After a week of clouds and rain, a perfect blue sky and gloriously backlit leaves.

Looking up at a clear blue sky through colourful autumn leaves, backlit by late afternoon sunshine. On the left is a magnolia, leaves still green. On the right is a cherry, showing a mixture of bright red, orange and yellow leaves.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 10

Intense enough now that I can see the pink with my naked eye, although it looks much better through the phone camera. In Kent! About as far south as you can get in the UK!

The Northern Lights: pink and green in the sky above some buildings.

The same night sky view, but the pink has got more intense and streakier.

The same view again, with the pink REALLY intense now.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 10

I've got cloud cover down here in Kent, but my phone camera is picking up pink behind the clouds, which is interesting. Nothing doing with the naked eye (and I had to look at the actual photos to see it - the screen didn't show it while I was taking the pictures).

A cloudy night sky, with pink showing through some of the gaps in the cloud.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 7

I can't walk past this boatyard crane without taking a photo of the nameplate. The typeface! The colour! The name itself! It's all just so pleasing.

The manufacturer's nameplate on the back of a vintage-looking boatyard crane. It's yellow with black writing, and it says RUSTON BUCYRUS. Each word is on its own line, and the tail of the S in RUSTON overlaps the top of the B in BUCYRUS.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 4

Margate Caves, complete with crocodile.

Manmade chalk caves, with paintings on the walls. There's a crocodile with a cheery grin on the left-hand wall, and straight ahead is the THANET HUNT, though all we can see from here is the caption and some trees; the huntsmen can't be seen from this angle.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 3

I wonder how long it took these snails to get to where they are, and why they made the journey.

A hexagonal metal lattice separating a parking structure from the pavement. It's the green of verdigris, but it looks as if it might actually have been painted that colour. There are some rusty patches showing through. Three garden snails are perching on three different hexagons; it's hard to imagine why.

A slightly closer look at the same metal lattice, and two of the three snails.

A much closer look at one of the snails on the metal lattice. The shell is beautifully striped, and seems very out of place in this starkly artificial context. Not everything green is growing, and there's nothing there for a snail to eat.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 3

I do like reflections.

A bright, colourful picture of the Iron Wharf Boatyard in Faversham, taken on a sunny October morning. Amongst other things, we can see a red tractor and the very tip of a folded red crane, a grass-green storage container with a lemon-yellow noticeboard on one end, a repurposed railway goods van, and some green poles holding up a sheltering roof. Recent rain has left large puddles, which are reflecting parts of the scene.

Not a news network!@alg24· Oct 3