O. Sharp
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o-sharp.bsky.social
O. Sharp
@o-sharp.bsky.social
510 followers 110 following 760 posts
Gene Buckle once said, "Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies." That pretty much works as a description of me.
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o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Winter. A man, a sled, and a dog team. The dog team, however, is made up entirely of dachsunds, and seem completely uninterested in pulling the sled, or indeed in even attempting it. The man with the sled has his arms outstretched in a gesture which could roughly be described as: "What the hell? Why aren't we moving?"
September 16, 2026 at 6:58 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
September 16, 2026 at 12:55 AM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
A preservationist, with gloved hands, grasps one of the tiny books inside the library of Queen Mary's dollhouse, built for the Royal Family in 1924. Incredibly the hundreds of volumes are all actual books, made specifically for this library. Along with tiny Bibles, reference volumes and the complete works of Shakespeare, there are original titles as well. For example there's a book of Kipling's poems, hand-illustrated by Kipling himself. Another example is an original Sherlock Holmes story, "How Watson Learned The Trick", written by hand by A. Conan Doyle.
September 14, 2026 at 9:32 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
September 14, 2026 at 1:36 AM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
The "Tunnel Of Love", somewhere outside the Ukraine town of Klevan. Back when this photo was taken, I heard it described as an idyllic place to visit as long as you avoided the freight trains which passed by three times a day. I have no idea if it still looks like now, after years of war launched by a deranged Russia, but I hope it can return to being this place of beauty again soon.
September 12, 2026 at 6:36 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
(Not so) random photo of the day.
September 11, 2026 at 4:39 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth, during her days as an auto mechanic and ambulance driver during World War Two. It took great persistence on her part to persuade her father the King, and his advisors, to let her take up the potentially dangerous work. She took great pride in it, and it just goes to remind us that the United Kingdom had an amazing, willful, kick-ass Queen.
September 9, 2026 at 7:08 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Bit of graffiti by Banksy: an arched rat-hole, stenciled onto the side of a building. Two rats, both formally dressed, stand beside the opening, one holding a clipboard and the other poised to greet arriving guests. As an added touch, a "red carpet" has been painted in front of the opening. I don't know if Banksy has given this work any official title, but one description online has named it "Red Carpet Dinner Service". In this particular photo, a (real) woman is walking by the rat-hole. She doesn't appear to be planning to dine there.
September 8, 2026 at 8:12 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Our dog Lungripper, a.k.a. The Dog Without Fear, the day he ate a mailman.
September 7, 2026 at 7:16 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
September 6, 2026 at 8:37 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
A little tricky to describe, but... Photo of a pickup truck in the woods. Three pleased figures in the cab with bottles of beer, and a carcass strapped to the roof after a successful hunt. What makes it a more interesting photo is that the figures inside are moose (or possibly elk), and the carcass is that of a hunter who presumably thought things would go differently.
September 5, 2026 at 10:03 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Marauder the Wonder Dog disrupts a Scrabble game.
September 4, 2026 at 6:15 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Image from Ben Edlund's farcical superhero comic, "The Tick". A hugely-muscled supervillain bearing a hammer and sickle (in fact a paid, and carefully scripted, provocateur) prepares to destroy a park dedicated to "that decadent and imperialist American, Melville Dewey, hated originator of the Dewey Decimal System!" He concludes: "I, The Red Scare, will ruin this place for EVERYONE!!" It was meant as satire of overwrought comic books, but now it feels like satire of overwrought conservatives.
September 3, 2026 at 9:18 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Full solar eclipse of 20 May 2012. A nearly-closed crescent of light, all that remains of the moon-blocked sun, surrounds the silhouette of what appears to be a kid holding a basketball. Photo taken by Colleen Pinski with a telephoto lens, one and a half miles away from the ridge the kid is standing on. She had no idea who the person was who walked onto the ridge and framed themselves perfectly into her shot.
September 3, 2026 at 4:03 AM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
September 2, 2026 at 1:30 AM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Ridiculously tiny toolbox, filled with remarkably detailed miniature tools. A miniature wood plane, roughly 5 centimeters long, is a working plane and has taken shavings off a (normal-sized) pencil in the foreground. (Before you assume AI fakery, I've had a copy of this photo for at least twelve years. There are some amazing miniaturists out there.)
August 31, 2026 at 11:26 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
Mickey Rooney hunting the wild Rainier, in a 1970s-era beer ad.
August 30, 2026 at 4:10 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Just sayin'.
August 30, 2026 at 1:14 AM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
The beautiful but abandoned City Hall Station of New York's subway system. Originally meant to be the showpiece of New York's subway stations, it was designed by Rafael Guastavino with tiled Roman arches, elegant chandeliers and skylights. It's now a ghost station, though I'm told it can be viewed in passing by taking the Number 6 train southbound from the Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall station.
August 29, 2026 at 7:51 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
J.W. Waterhouse's painting "The Tempest", inspired by the Shakespeare play. Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, looks on at a shipwreck caused by her father's magic. The ship being wrecked carries Prospero's traitorous brother Antonio, King Alonso of Naples who aided in the brother's treachery, Ferdinand the Prince of Naples who will later fall in love with Miranda, Gonzalo the King's courtier who aided Prospero as he was exiled... well, you get the idea; it's a full shipment of plot complications about to wash ashore. But, hey, what a great painting.
August 28, 2026 at 7:31 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
At last, some people are starting to get it.
Quote from Sarah Longwell, a onetime Republican strategist who has become a Democratic strategist: "Democratic voters want their leaders to stop acting like peacetime diplomats, recognize the Republican Party for the threat it is and mount an effective counteroffensive. They are deeply frustrated by years of their politicians saying that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, but not acting like democracy is truly at stake."
August 28, 2026 at 7:16 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
August 27, 2026 at 6:33 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Tariffs! We're not just shooting ourselves in the foot. We're not just electing a madman who will cripple the country. We're going to make sure our country doesn't have a leg to stand on!
August 27, 2026 at 5:58 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
A beach at night, stars overhead, much brighter points of light in the surf. This is the "Sea of Stars", on Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives. The "stars" are bioluminescent phytoplankton living in the surf. Beautiful as it is, it must be noted that rising sea levels may completely submerge the entire Maldives republic in less than a decade. The Sea of Stars is on the ever-growing list of beautiful things we'll lose unless we get our carbon usage under control.
August 26, 2026 at 6:34 PM
o-sharp.bsky.social
Random photo of the day.
In 1989, after two months of protests for democracy in China's Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government sent out the military to crush the protests. One of the better-known videos taken by Western journalists shows a single protestor standing in the way of three or four Chinese tanks. A wider-angle photo taken that day by Stuart Franklin, however, reveals how much more of the Chinese military machine that lone protestor was blocking. This photo shows the man blocking a line of at least NINETEEN tanks, with at least fifteen more waiting in a distant lot to join the line.
August 25, 2026 at 7:09 PM