Untitled

[armatigeshanks]

Brutalism in Basildon.

Finally stopped ( 30 years after first being struck by it) to take photos of this housing scheme. I’ve always l liked it as a brutalist architectural development, it’s brutal but softened with curves. Circa 1975 i think.

From memory the railing’s have always been orange and i think this works in its favour also.

[armatigeshanks]

Colchester March 2026.

Walking home through lion walk. Late fiday night.

[henk-heijmans]

Mindscape / the beginning, 2023 - by Wojtek Papaj (1969), Polish

[jogoraz]

[armatigeshanks]

Another attention grabbing unique piece from this incredible photographic artist.

[armatigeshanks]

👏👏👏

Saw this street sign addition, in Chelmsford uk today, really put a smile on my Monday morning face.

[maureen2musings]

A starling murmuration , Rotterdam

"If you look carefully you can see a falcon or hawk winding them up on the top right of the formation"

Claire Droppert

[armatigeshanks]

Not interesting subject matter, but the light on my coat liner caught my eye and made me take a photo

[armatigeshanks]

Hard to believe this clematis is still in flower 28th November, 2025 colchester uk. The leaves are browning now as winter finally begins to bare its teeth! On the floor is a frost flattened nasturtium

[armatigeshanks]

The irony just hit me.

Now as the bbc hero worship the musicians of 40 years ago, for bringing a terrible situation to the worlds attention and trying to influence positive change, they are at the same time, condemning and condemned because they showed a musician outraged by the situation in Gaza at Glastonbury

What has happened to our nation? Shame on todays musicians and persons of other media “influence” that haven’t got the morality, strength and courage to make their voice represent a disgust in the world ignoring the genocide happening right now in Gazza.

Those who can and do influence, please just look at what is happening over there, look at how bands and artists came together to make change to starvation, appartheid, u.k civil war etc 40 years ago, then look at yourself in the mirror and go influence a positive change.

I’m anti-systematic slaughter of all innocent people

Who isn’t? Who wouldn’t be?

Share the message, stop the suffering, affect change.

Oh and it should go without saying but, shame on the house of parliament members for turning a blind eye to genocide and war crimes! These are not British values and you shame our nation.

Know this, Neville chamberlain did not know that hitler would build concentration camps and murder the innocent on masse - you know this is happening, happened today and will happen again tomorrow.

We know you know, history will remember your actions or lack thereof. your silence is a licence for the slaughter and persecution of innocent people.

Stop the war crimes

Stop the slaughter

[armatigeshanks]

There’s an invisible 3 inch drop to the entrance/exit to the ladies and gents toilets that are below the linen curtains. Very nearly face placed on way out.

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[armatigeshanks]

I’m just here for the pictures really; but as individuals, family members and citizens of democratic countries we have to be ready to stand up and resist.

never before in my lifetime have i felt that the freedoms I’ve took for granted are at risk of being taken away.

I’ll never be a 21st Century nazi, not in deed word or thought.

I’ll never join them so must be ready to prevent them now or die as their enemy later.

There’s no other way with Fascists, unless you are willing to be like them, you’ll be against them and so like many good German people in the 1930’s who didn’t like Hitler and what he was doing to their country, there became a time when it was too late and to speak up then meant extreme repercussions to you and your family and ultimately death.

Let’s prevent the evil lying fascist bastards.

I’m ready to stand and be counted now, not later with likeminded people branded “traitor of the nation” from a camp.

Good people - we cannot do nothing, we know where that will lead.

[sovietpostcards]

Director Leonid Gaidai and actor Yuri Nikulin on the set of The Diamond Arm. Photos by G. Korabelnikov (1968).

[armatigeshanks]

Walking through Autumn. Peak District Derbyshire, Chee dale. 25th October 2024

[armatigeshanks]

Colchester 16/2/24 23:35

[armatigeshanks]

Colchester 10/2/24 20:00

[armatigeshanks]

Colchester 22:30 9/2/24

[armatigeshanks]

Came across this iced up water feature today (16/01/24) in Colchester. Was fascinated by the water zig-zagging underneath the Marble shaped ice looking like wiggling black fish, and ( I assume) forming the marble shapes?