Lyrebirds farm their own food – and shape entire forests Earth.com
Joseph Gardens – Botanizing: The best hobby you’ve never heard of: “The quickest way to describe botanizing is that it is like bird-watching, but for plants. To botanize, you go out into natural areas and look for plants growing in the wild, maybe hoping to see new species …
diffchecker.com compares files etc
Taking their cues from mosques and palaces, cathedrals and chapter houses, interior designers are adding a glazed gleam to unexpected walls, doors and exteriors
The corner of architect Aida Bratovic’s Edwardian home in London has become a magnet for people posing for selfies. For the exterior cladding she used midnight-blue tiles as a nod to the property’s past as a shop and post office. The glazed backdrop, both “familiar and unexpected,” says Bratovic, has become a local talking point.
Ceramic tiles are increasingly spilling out of bathrooms and kitchens, as interior designers take their cues from mosques and palaces, cathedrals and chapter houses to add a glazed gleam to doorways, floors, furniture and exteriors. In the 19th century they were seen as practical and hygienic. For the Modernists, glazed surfaces softened the austerity of glass and concrete. Minimalists were less keen. Decorative tiles were replaced by monolithic slabs of grey or beige. For a while, tiles became boring. No longer.
For designer Scott Maddux it is their “intricacy” that appeals. “You can use tiles to break up large expanses in an interesting way.” A recent London project featured a column clad in earth-toned tiles, creating “a softened version of Brutalism,” he says.
Non-fiction (not) in paperback
In the Wall Street Journal Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reports that: 'Publishers increasingly give nonfiction authors one shot at print stardom, ditching paperbacks as priorities shift', in Waiting for the Paperback ? Good Luck (possibly paywalled ?).
Yes:
Traditionally, the paperback would hit the shelves about a year after the hardcover. Today, book publishers are printing fewer of them, closing a second-chance window for writers counting on a new cover or marketing campaign to spark sales. The shift reflects changing reader habits, the popularity of audiobooks and ebooks, and the power a few major retailers hold over the publishing industry.Stunningly:
New adult nonfiction paperback titles tumbled by 42% from 2019 to 2024, to just under 40,000, according to Bowker Books in Print, a bibliographic database.
The number of adult hardcover nonfiction titles fell by 9% during that same period.
