Naomi Andersson 🌍🌱

@naomiandersson.bsky.social

OCR A Level Geography | AQA Politics Ludlow Sixth Form College |NPQLT | AIT Hashimoto’s Disease | Regenerative Allotment Grower | Winter Knitter | GA Post16FEHE | Paleo | Lifter | Paddler | Dalsland 🇸🇪 | Herefordshire 🍎 🐂 🇪🇺

🚨 Meet Big Chicken - a powerful industrial system producing more than 1 BILLION chickens in the UK every year. Together, those birds generate an estimated 3.5M tonnes of 💩 a year – and often our rivers are left to deal with the consequences.. 1/2. riveractionuk.com/news/factory...

Factory Farming UK: How Big Chicken Is Polluting Rivers

Discover how factory farming and intensive poultry production are polluting UK rivers, driving nutrient pollution and threatening wildlife across the country.

riveractionuk.com

Do any of my NZ pocket friends like to make entomology-related art/merch & would like to sell their crafts at our upcoming NZ Entomological Society conference 1st week September? If so, please get in touch. 🪲 🐞 🪱 🪰 🕷

Today’s task, bagging silage tarp strewn from the barn by the previous owner. There’s a dedicated skip for it at the tip. I’m on my 4th roll of bags. There’s an alder tree growing through it and barbed wire fencing embedded for added tangleyness. Bonus butterflies of every description flapping by.

The pile of tangled silage tarps and netting, with alder tree roots and barbed wire to wrap around. Bags and bags and bags of silage tarp and netting ready to go to the tip.

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.

This oil painting portrays the Viking 1 landing on Mars, which appeared in countless publications. The story of this work is relayed in an earlier post and is shown here for comparison with the new portrayal of this very view, showing the event as it would have appeared. 
This 1975 anticipatory painting was done with oils on a gesso smoothed 16 X 20 canvas panel, using traditional art methods including a tracing paper guide featured earlier. 
 This work shows in retrospect my ideal of the 'spirit of space art', showing something of a summary of what is known of the subject while conveying what it is about the subject's known or theorized attributes that I find visually compelling. The new digital painting updates that visual impression with one based on our current knowledge. The new digital work was also done at the same size as this one was for possible printing purposes, 16 by 20 inches at 300 DPI.
 #Sciart   In 1976 the pair of Viking spacecraft orbiter/lander combos were sent to Mars. Before Viking, Mars was still largely a place of our imaginations, an unknown that we wrote stories about then studied from Earth and space. The dominance of cratered terrain on the portions of Mars photographed by Mariners 4, 6 and 7 gave an initially Lunar impression of that world, which changed during the development of the Viking lander after Mariner 9 revealed the planet.
 The first landing was aimed for a flat flood plain, judged as a decent place to search for life. The landing date was July 4, however the intended site appeared too rough for comfort in the high quality orbiter photos, causing the landing to wisely be delayed. A smoother site further 'down stream' was found using photo and radar data.
The landing proceeded quite nominally, a magnificent achievement that apparently accounted for what it had to and made it the first time.

The first photo from the surface was a look at a footpad to see how solid the 'footing' appeared. Then a moderate resolution panorama of the surroundings was obtained, first showing the rocks, hills, dunes-and bright sky. The latter was my biggest surprise as a space artist. 

The adjustments to the color balance of the later photos were gradually narrowed down. The ubiquitous dust is planet wide, suspended in the air and coloring the sky a luminous tan ochre. 

This digital painting shows the view a meter above the surface seeing the lander briefly kicking up dust less than a second before touchdown with the footpads 1.4 meters high. The landing rockets were designed with many nozzles to disturb the surroundings as little as possible. The nearby disturbed dust resembles in color that of the sky. We are 6 meters away from the center of the lander. field of view is 60 degrees, we are looking Northwest with the Sun and Earth off the frame to the left.

This is a digital art update of the pre mission oil painting I did for NASA HQ 1n 1975.

  #Sciart

RefUK, RW media, & Eurofash are plainly trying to whip up a panic about this. Any serious report must begin by explaining that Ceuta is in Africa - not mainland Spain - and 48k+ of the 50k crossers were already returned. It is frightening how many still don't know this. Please share on all socials.

Map showing the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.Screengrab from Politico piece that explains, citing Reuters, that 48,300 of the 50,000 recent crossings have already been expelled or voluntarily returned to Morocco.BBC report on Friday, still echoing the RW disinformation - or at the very least not challengning it sufficiently.

"Spain's PM blames traffickers after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta from Morocco
01:32
What triggered the mass migrant crossings into Ceuta?
Sofia Ferreira Santos and Sarah Rainsford, Southern and Eastern Europe
correspondent
31 July 2026
Spain's prime minister has blamed trafficking gangs after about 60,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. At least 57 people died during the surge, according to local media."Daily Mail and Daily Express from this weekend, with front page headlines "Ministers MUST stop the Spanish border invaders reaching UK" and "SPANISH BORDER CRISIS IS 'WAKE-UP CALL' FOR UK", respectively.

In fifteen years, the UK has deleted coal power from their power system, halved fossil gas use, replaced most of that with wind and solar, and the country has not suffered the hellish blackout apocalypse conservatives and media outlets promised would happen. ember-energy.org/data/electri...

Stacked area chart showing UK electricity generation (terawatt‑hours) from 2000–2025, highlighting a steep fall in coal, declining gas and nuclear, and steady growth in wind, solar and other renewables over time.