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“No mud, no lotus.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

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Our fossil is a rare new witness. It comes from roughly 80-million-year-old rock in São Paulo state, Brazil. We named it Tametara mirim, meaning “adorned” and “small” in the local Indigenous language.

(Photo: Agustin Martinelli)

The new fossil of Tametara mirim reframes how we understand snake evolution.

(Photo: Agustin Martinelli)

Life reconstruction of the burrowing stem snake Tametara mirim which lived alongside now-extinct stem-birds and sauropod dinosaurs.

(Illustration: Gabriel Ugueto)

The bones of Tametara show it had the skull of a burrower. CT scan volume-rendered with VGSTUDIO MAX.

(Image: Roy Ebel)

One theory about how snakes evolved suggests lizards went underground, lost their limbs and elongated their bodies.

(Illustration supplied - Roy Ebel)

80‑million‑year‑old snake fossil sheds light on why lizards lost their limbs and started slithering

Snakes are everywhere in our legends and mythology. Yet for most of us, our blood runs cold whenever we encounter these strangely undulating, scaly tubes of muscle slithering through the leaf litter.

The loss of an arm or leg poses a challenge. Yet snakes do perfectly well without all four of them. This makes them suspect. It also leaves us unable to fathom how this radical transition produced one of the most successful vertebrate body plans.

More than 4,000 species of snakes are alive today, on every continent except Antarctica, from thread-thin burrowers to massive pythons, on land and in the sea. We have studied them since antiquity, and still the oldest question about them has no answer: what turned snakes into snakes?

We have long suspected their peculiar, limbless body plan is explained by how the earliest snakes lived. In a new study, published today in Nature, my colleagues and I describe a small, exquisitely preserved fossil that brings us closer to an answer than ever before.

By Roy Ebel

Research Officer Herpetology, Museums Victoria Research Institute, Australia

The Conversation - July 23, 2026

80-million-year-old snake fossil sheds light on why lizards lost their limbs and started slithering

Snakes lost their limbs millions of years ago to become undulating, scaly tubes of muscles. Scientists are finally figuring out why.

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Cover artwork from Commotus music album recorded and mixed by Lucrecia Dalt, 2012. Originally released by Human Ear Music on vinyl and CD. © all rights reserved

1. Saltación 03:24

Lucrecia Dalt - from Commotus album

2. Escopolamina 04:05

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

3. Turmoil 03:30

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

4. Conversa 03:20

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

5. Multitud 02:17

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

6. Jet 00:42

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

Access via Bandcamp link, below >>

7. Esplendor 04:12

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

8. Mohán 04:34

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

9. Silencio 03:01

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

10. Do I Dare Disturb Your Dreams? 01:33

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

11. Waste of Shame 01:00

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

12. Batolith 08:21

from Commotus album by Lucrecia Dalt

Access via Bandcamp link, below >>

Commotus music album by Lucrecia Dalt

2012 - 12 tracks, 40 minutes

Bandcamp link >>

https://lucreciadalt.bandcamp.com/album/commotus

Released September 6, 2012

Recorded and mixed by Lucrecia Dalt in Barcelona.

Originally released by Human Ear Music on vinyl and CD.

© all rights reserved

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Lucrecia Dalt

Lucrecia Dalt website:

Lucrecia Dalt

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Chemical signatures of a sugar called erythrulose have been detected near the centre of the Milky Way.

(Photo supplied: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al.)

The astronomers used data from the Yebes 40m (pictured) and IRAM 30-metre radio telescopes. (Wikimedia: Yebesoan)

(Photo: Wikimedia - Yebesoan)

Erythrulose is a sugar that contains four carbon atoms, four oxygen atoms, and eight hydrogen atoms.

(Photo supplied: Jiménez-Serra et al. Nature Astronomy)

Signs of sugar detected near centre of the Milky Way

Astronomers have detected signs of a type of sugar in gas clouds near the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Sugars provide energy and are key building blocks of life on Earth, such as DNA, but how they got here is a mystery.

It is not uncommon to find sugar in the cosmos — simple sugars such as ribose and glucose have been previously discovered on asteroids in our Solar System.

But this is the first time sugar molecules have been found beyond our Solar System in the interstellar medium, astronomers report in Nature Astronomy.

They found the chemical fingerprint of erythrulose (C4H8O4), which contains four carbon molecules, and is a type of sugar known as a ketose.

On Earth, it is found in raspberries and is used as an ingredient in self-tanning lotions.

The study's lead author, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, of the Center for Astrobiology CSIC-INTA in Spain, said the detection of erythrulose suggests these compounds may be more universal than originally thought.

"The detection of the first sugar in interstellar space suggests that the key ingredients for life can form in molecular nebula before stars and planets form," Dr Jiménez-Serra said.

The astronomers say the discovery provides clues about how sugars may have formed in the universe and became building blocks of life on Earth.

By Genelle Weule

ABC News - 14 July 2026

Signs of sugar detected near centre of the Milky Way

Astronomers have detected signs of a type of sugar found in raspberries in gas clouds near the centre of our galaxy the Milky Way.

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IMAX Melbourne has the largest film format you can project on – you won’t see a sandalled Matt Damon any bigger.

(Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon)

Christopher Nolan shot the entirety of The Odyssey with IMAX film cameras.

(Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon)

Dan Drobik is one of only a few people in Australia qualified to thread an IMAX 70mm projector, making him extremely valuable ahead of The Odyssey’s release.

(Photo: Jason South)

Dan Drobik splicing and threading film reel in IMAX Melbourne’s projection room.

(Photo: Jason South)

17 kilometres of film, $47 a ticket: How The Odyssey is resurrecting film

Over the next few weeks, Dan Drobik will be cooped up in a little cinema booth bringing The Odyssey to life.

He didn’t star in the film or help make it. But without Drobik, and other projectionists like him, people wouldn’t be able to see the mythological epic exactly as Christopher Nolan intended: in IMAX 70mm.

This, the IMAX technical manager explains, is an analog film format. It relies on a projector and physical film prints rather than standard digital prints to tell a story. It’s also the largest film format you can project on – you won’t see a sandalled Matt Damon any bigger.

“Film prints have gone the way of the dinosaurs, but thankfully Christopher Nolan is a big fan of IMAX 70mm. So, we’re lucky enough to have maintained our projector and can still display it here,” Drobik says.

IMAX Melbourne is the only cinema in the Southern Hemisphere screening The Odyssey in such a format. There are only 40 other cinemas worldwide showing the film this way, with some fans travelling from as far as Germany to experience it. It also has the largest 1.43:1 screen in the world, making it the exact ratio Nolan shot in. According to an IMAX Melbourne spokesperson, patrons will see up to 40 per cent more image than in a standard cinema.

By Nell Geraets

The Age - July 14, 2026

Shared from Apple News

17 kilometres of film, $47 a ticket: How The Odyssey is resurrecting film — The Age

Just a few dozen cinemas worldwide are showing The Odyssey exactly as its director intended – and one of them is in Australia.

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The actor died surrounded by family, according to a post on his official social media channels.

(Photo: Lawrence Smith)

Sam Neill and Judy Davis in My Brilliant Career (1979).

(Photo supplied)

Neill in a scene from the film Jurassic Park III (2001).

(Photo: Reuters)

Sam Neill in 1989, the year he appeared in Dead Calm.

(Photo: Fairfax)

Sam Neill pictured with journalist Laura Tingle in 2019. He said they had three wonderful years together before splitting in 2021.

Photo: Brendon Thorne / Getty Inages)

Vale Sam Neill: Honorary Australian who charmed on and off the screen

SAM NEILL 
September 14, 1947 – July 13, 2026

Handsome, talented and with an easy, gracious charm that delighted audiences, Sam Neill was a consummate professional with a stellar career who switched effortlessly between leading roles in Hollywood blockbusters, arthouse films and big-ticket television shows. Often compared to Cary Grant, the Northern Ireland-born, New Zealand-raised actor was an honorary Australian who kept a home in Sydney since the late 1970s and was ever loyal to the Australian film and television industry.

In 2023, Neill published his memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, in which he reflected on his life and career as he was undergoing chemotherapy for blood cancer. He wrote the book quickly because: “The truth was, I didn’t know how long I had to live. What I had was aggressive. I thought I’d better scribble down some stuff before I shuffle.”

In April this year, he told 7News he was cancer-free after undergoing a new treatment when the chemotherapy stopped working. “I was at a loss and it looked like I was on the way out, which wasn’t ideal, obviously,” Neill said, as he advocated for government funding for the revolutionary treatment called CAR T-cell therapy. “I’ve just had a scan now and there is no cancer in my body, this is an extraordinary thing.”

Sam Neill is survived by his brother, sister, four children and eight grandchildren.

Obituary by Amy Ripley

Additional reporting by Karl Quinn

The Age - July 13, 2026

Shared from Apple News

Vale Sam Neill: Honorary Australian who charmed on and off the screen — The Age

Handsome, talented and with an easy, gracious manner, the Northern Ireland-born actor was a consummate professional with a stellar career sp

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YouTube video : ABC TV program Australian Story - His Brilliant Careers • Sam Neill documentary [ABC 25 October 2023 / 30min.]:

As a tribute to the late Sam Neill, we look back over the actor’s dazzling career and recent health struggles.

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Sam Neill

(Photo: Carlo Allegri / AP)

Remembering the quiet genius of Sam Neill

I remember watching an interview with actor Sam Neill, who has died aged 78, saying “Good screen acting hints at secrets. At other lives underneath the veneer.”

At the time, I wondered what were these secrets Neill was referring to.

I just had to look at the vast body of Neill’s work, the characters he played, and how he played them to answer that question.

Neill’s ability at nuance made his roles so believable and authentic.

When we view his body of work, we can see Neill’s characters always have a significant level of intellect and astuteness. He was often cast in roles of men of intelligence, quiet authority or class. Neill was the reasonable, decent man everyone looked at for stability and strength when disaster fell, and all others were losing their heads.

He had this understated quality to many of his roles. Not being the overt method actor like many of his generation, he chose restraint and reason, embellishing his characters with a feeling of genuine realism.

Neill was able to relate emotion through slight facial expressions or minute vocal inflections. He could be equally delighted, menacing or upset with just a glance.

Neill uncovered the secrets in the lives of all of his characters, presented them to us in his own inimitable style and made even the most ordinary moments feel quietly extraordinary.

Obituary by Daryl Sparkes

The Conversation - July 13, 2026

Remembering the quiet genius of Sam Neill

Sam Neill has died at 78. He was an actor who chose restraint and reason, embellishing his characters with a feeling of genuine realism.

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Jackson Pollock (USA, 1912-1956)

Blue Poles, 1952

oil, enamel, aluminium paint, glass on canvas

212.1 h x 488.9 w cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Copyright © Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Licensed by ARS/Copyright Agency.

BLUE POLES

How Pollock Created a Masterpiece

By Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax

[Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax is the National Gallery’s Curator of Australian Prints and Drawings]

Jackson Pollock’s monumental painting Blue Poles is recognised today as an Abstract Expressionist masterpiece. The work is a prime example of his unique approach to action painting.

He started Blue Poles in 1952 by working on the floor of his studio, a converted barn on Long Island in the United States of America. It was painted on a large roll of prepared canvas using commercially produced enamel and aluminium paints. It measures 213 centimetres high by 489.5cm centimetres wide and weighs 99 kilograms.

Blue Poles was purchased from New York collector Ben Heller for Australia’s national collection in 1973.

Jackson Pollock painted Blue Poles using flung and dripped lines of brightly coloured household paints. We see the vivid brilliance of ultramarine blue, the deep warmth of cadmium yellow, a reddish orange like tangerine, thin drips of white, puddles of thickened cream and squiggles and splashes of black. These paints are standard colours, like those we might buy in cans from a hardware store.

Pollock also used a shiny silver-coloured paint manufactured from aluminium particles. He was excited by the textural contrast this metallic paint formed in combination with ordinary oil paint. Certain colours were left to dry before he added further layers. Others were layered wet on wet to mix on the canvas, the paints mingling, their intersections forming pockets of marbling. The effect of this seemingly random mixing of colour and Pollock’s rhythmic actions means that there is an equal impression of chaos in a small section as in the overall painting.

Pollock painted Blue Poles when he was forty years old. A few years earlier he had made the radical shift from working on an easel to unrolling lengths of canvas onto the ground. For Pollock, this impulse brought together his experience working on murals during the Great Depression, his long interest in the sand paintings of south-western Native Americans and the vast plains of his unsettled childhood in Wyoming, Arizona and California.

With his pivotal shift in approach and scale, Pollock’s work became increasingly abstract, as he relied on his unconscious for guidance. His figurative paintings had been darkly symbolic, drawing on Jungian archetypes excavated through a decade of analysis and treatment for recurring alcoholism and depression. He distilled his life experience in this late stage of his career into physical gestural rhythms, with his figurative symbolic images becoming obscured beneath layers of energetic linework.

Blue Poles The Work of Art » ACTION REACTION Jackson Pollock & Blue Poles

Headline: OUT OF THE BLUE How the conservation project unfolded Intro: While the National Gallery was temporarily closed due to COVID-19, an

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JACKSON POLLOCK: BLUE POLES

A Documentary film by Alison Chernick [Video 17min.+17sec.]:

Jackson Pollock: Blue Poles The Work of Art » ACTION REACTION Jackson Pollock & Blue Poles

A living archive and conservation project by the National Gallery of Australia

A living archive and conservation project by the National Gallery of Australia

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Sandy Topper

Upon Reflection

The Reflecting Pools in Washington, D.C. were designed for one purpose: reflection. They are supposed to mirror the beauty, dignity, and symbolism of the monuments around them. They were never intended to look like a chlorinated Olympic swimming pool where you can count pennies on the bottom.

That soft, dark surface is the point. The slight haze, the ripples, the depth — all of it creates the illusion of the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument floating in history itself. It’s art, architecture, and symbolism combined.

But Trump looked at them the way a casino owner looks at a hotel fountain: “Why can’t I see the bottom?” Because he fundamentally does not understand the difference between beauty and branding. Every fifth grader on a D.C. field trip learns that these spaces were designed to inspire reflection about democracy, sacrifice, and history. Trump sees murky water and thinks somebody forgot the bleach. That tells you everything.

To him, if something doesn’t sparkle like a gaudy resort lobby, it has no value. History becomes décor. Symbolism becomes maintenance failure. National monuments become props for a photo op. The Reflecting Pools are not there to showcase perfect filtration systems. They exist to reflect America itself — complicated, imperfect, deep, and worthy of contemplation.

The tragedy is that Trump can stare directly at a reflecting pool and still never see himself clearly.

Dennis Wortham

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“We may not revolt as one, but we are revolted as one, e pluribus nauseam.” ― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

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“I never wondered what made Baker commit atrocities, because the answer is the same for every serial abuser: people let him. Ordinary people saw that he was committing exceptional crimes, and they let him get away with it.” ― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

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(1852) Frederick Douglass, "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July" •

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of h

yearly required reading

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Frederick Douglass

Daguerreotype photo by Samuel J. Miller

Contributed by BlackPast.org

Frederick Douglass 1852

“What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July” – Historical Context

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Douglass used the occasion not to celebrate America’s triumphs but to remind all of the reality of race relations in their nation, including its continuing enslavement of millions of people.

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