Snap Dragon

Music Arts & Culture Books Fashion & Beauty Music Movies Literature Pop Culture Music Cats Dogs & Music

[The greatest @greatestptl]

Lana Del Rey - Stars Fell on Alabama, 2026

[World's Amazing Things @Hana_b30]

Not all bees are yellow, some are blue..
Blue carpenter bees, native to southern Asia, make honey like European honeybees, but it’s much thicker and denser than the honey we’re used to, like cookie dough or peanut butter consistency. The female bees mix this honey with pollen to create ‘bee bread’ upon which they lay their eggs.

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

When Emelyn Story died in 1895, her tombstone was made by her husband, the sculptor William Wetmore Story. It was his final work. Here it is in Rome.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Depiction of the Milky Way in the Tomb of Ramesses VI, Egypt

[Van Gogh Museum @vangoghmuseum]

‘It’s a type of painting that changes… the more you look at it,’ Van Gogh wrote about his sunflowers.
What do you say, does it change the longer you look? Or the more you see it?

🖼️ ‘Sunflowers’, 1888 © Van Gogh Museum

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

How to survive the heat.. 😅

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

There’s something striking about Hugo Simberg’s painting, which portrays grim reapers not as harbingers of death, but as gentle, attentive gardeners.

I really love this painting by Hugo Simberg (1873–1917) because it portrays the end of life not as something terrifying or tragic, but as something quiet, peaceful, and deeply human. The skeletal figures gently tend a garden of flowers, carrying out their work like ordinary gardeners. Rather than evoking fear, they appear compassionate and thoughtful, caring for a natural process that ultimately connects all living things.

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

Rose Valland spent nearly four years in a museum office surrounded by German officers who assumed she was harmless, mute, and culturally insignificant. They spoke freely, issued commands, documented plunder, and discussed train routes for stolen masterpieces. They believed she understood none of it. What they didn’t realize was that Valland was quietly fluent in German and meticulous beyond measure. She wrote down everything—artist names, crate numbers, departure dates, warehouse locations—and copied coded catalog lists late at night when no one was watching. She memorized routes when she couldn’t risk paper, then passed information to Resistance contacts who safeguarded each detail as if it were a life.

When Paris was liberated and Nazi art caches were uncovered, her secret notebooks became maps. Because she had listened when listening was dangerous, Rembrandts, Picassos, tapestries, altarpieces, and Jewish family portraits were traced back to owners who had been murdered, displaced, or silenced. Her quiet defiance challenged the myth that espionage belongs to those with guns and uniforms. Valland’s weapon was observation; her battlefield was a gallery desk. She didn’t recover art for glory, but to repair a world torn from families and memory—one shipment, one signature, one whispered detail at a time.

#archaeohistories

[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Jack White had announced a new album called Frozen Charlotte

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

Dracaena Cinnabari or Dragon Blood Tree; is native to a single island from Socotra archipelago, part of Yemen 🇾🇪. Dragon's Blood tree is named for unique red sap. This red sap forms a resin that was a prized commodity in ancient times. It is a unique tree that is one of the most peculiar trees in the world. The tree has a distinctive external shape that makes it look like a huge umbrella, as the leaves grow only at the end of branches and point upwards. It has many branches; it grows by dichotomy, which means that each branch is divided into two until the leaves finally grow on the branches' ends. It produces a lot of green leaves that are renewed every three or four years; they fall and other leaves grow in their place.

Dragon blood tree dates back to over 50 million years; it first appeared in Mediterranean. It can now be found in a nature reserve containing 360 species of endangered plants and animals in Socotra, Yemen. It can also be found on Mount Dhofar in Oman, and in some subtropical forests. At 1400 sq miles, Socotra is largest of four islands in Socotra archipelago about 210 miles off southern coast of Yemen. Archipelago is one of most biodiverse places in the world, nicknamed “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean”. An estimated 37% of the island’s 825 plant species, 90% of its reptiles and 95% of its land snails are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else on Earth. In 2008, Unesco named the Socotra archipelago a natural world heritage site. Most of the dragon’s blood trees in the wild today are probably hundreds of years old, though their exact age is impossible to calculate, because they have no rings in their trunks. But without a younger generation to replace them, current generation could be the last.

Many ancient sources reported on dragon’s blood trees, from Herodotus and Pliny to Marco Polo and Hindu texts.

In Hindu myth, gods Brahma and Shiva fought in form of a dragon and elephant respectively. Dragon bit elephant and drank its blood. However, upon falling, elephant crushed the dragon and their blood mixed to form tree’s red sap.

In Greek mythology, dragon’s blood tree myth comes from legend of Heracles and Ladon. Ladon was a 100-headed dragon that guarded golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides. Heracles’s 11th labor was to steal golden apples and kill Ladon. Spilled dragon’s blood led to creation of trees, and when cut, tree bleeds Ladon’s blood.

In Arabic, dragon’s blood tree is known as Dam al-Akhawain, or “blood of the two brothers”. According to folklore, first dragon’s blood tree grew in spot where two brothers, Darsa and Samha, fought each other to death. Today, Firmhin plateau is part forest, part dragon’s blood graveyard.

Perhaps because of these legends, many people believed that dragon’s blood trees held magical sap that could cure almost anything. Tree's root yields a gum-resin, used in gargle water as a stimulant, astringent and in toothpaste. Root is used in rheumatism, leaves are a  carminative.

Trees can be harvested for their crimson red resin, called dragon's blood, which was highly prized in ancient world and is still used today. Around the Mediterranean basin it is used as a dye and as a medicine, Socotrans use it ornamentally as well as dyeing wool, gluing pottery, a breath freshener, and lipstick. Because of belief that it is blood of dragon it is also used in ritual magic and alchemy. Some sources suggest that Egyptians and Guanches of Canary Islands used dragon’s blood in embalming and mummification processes. Dragon's blood was used as a source of varnish for 18th-century Italian violin-makers. It was also used as tooth-paste in 18th century. It is still used as varnish for violins and for photoengraving.

According to Mark Milburn, an expedition to Socotra Island by Oxford University researchers found “large artificial reservoirs, megaliths, temples, caves containing rock paintings and glassware fused with dragon’s blood.”

🎥© margaretrivertrees (IG)

#archaeohistories

[PmAmTraveller @pmamtraveller]

Statue of an Etruscan woman from the 6th century BC.

[Claude @Claudestar2012]

#DavidBowie - 1995 - by John Rankin.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This is an Osiria Rose, known for its striking colour combination.

The roses are blood-red on the inside and pure silvery-white on the outside.

[David Bowie News @davidbowie_news]

David Bowie, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 1973, by Lynn Goldsmith.

[Rossie @caIImeminho]

CONFESSIONS II FILM DAY WE HERE

[ArtNomads @ArtNomads]

@buitengebieden @Kerfuffle16 Still hundreds of thousands of Monarch butterflies at Rosario sanctuary as of Feb 26, 2026.
Reports are that population is 2x last year ! 😍🥳

[Impressions @impression_ists]

Apple Tree by Gustav Klimt

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

The FBI had boxes full of serial killer confessions they couldn’t actually use.

Hours of interviews.
Detailed admissions.
Direct conversations with some of the most violent men in America.

And none of it was scientifically useful.

Then a 42-year-old psychiatric nurse walked into Quantico and changed criminal investigation forever.

Her name was Ann Burgess.

1975.

FBI agents Robert Ressler and John Douglas had spent months traveling across the country interviewing imprisoned serial killers. They believed understanding offenders could help solve future crimes.

But when Ann Burgess listened to the tapes, she immediately saw the problem.

“This isn’t research,” she told them.
“These are just stories.”

The room went silent.

“You’re asking them to talk about themselves,” she said. “But every interview is different. There’s no structure. No methodology. You can’t compare one offender to another.”

Then she asked a question nobody else in the room had thought to ask:

“Tell me about the women they killed.”

Not the killers.

The victims.

Who were they?
How old were they?
Where were they approached?
What made them vulnerable?
How did the offender gain control?

The agents were confused.

Ann Burgess explained something revolutionary:

“If you truly study the victims, you’ll understand the offender.”

At the time, Burgess was already a groundbreaking trauma researcher. In 1974, she had co-authored one of the first major studies proving rape caused lasting psychological trauma — at a time when courts barely acknowledged it.

She helped create the term “rape trauma syndrome.”

Now she brought that same scientific rigor to the FBI.

She redesigned the interviews.
Created structured questionnaires.
Introduced victimology as the foundation of profiling.
Distinguished between a killer’s “MO” and their “signature.”
Mapped escalation patterns.
Explained that sexual violence was about power and control — not desire.

Suddenly, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit had something it had never truly possessed before:

Methodology.

And it worked.

In 1983, young boys began disappearing in Nebraska.

Using Burgess’s framework, investigators built a profile:
A young white male.
Slight build.
Someone trusted around children.
Likely connected to scouting or youth activities.
A person who kept souvenirs and detective magazines.

Police arrested John Joubert.

The profile was astonishingly accurate.

Almost overnight, criminal profiling became legitimate law enforcement science.

And yet most of the credit went elsewhere.

The public celebrated the FBI agents.
Books were written.
Movies and television series followed.

Ann Burgess became a footnote.

When Netflix released Mindhunter, they based a character on her — but changed nearly everything.

They made her a psychologist instead of a nurse.
Changed her personal life entirely.
Most viewers never even realized she was based on a real person.

Meanwhile, the real Ann Burgess kept working.

Teaching.
Publishing.
Consulting.
Testifying in court.
Training professionals around the world.

More than 150 academic publications.
Multiple landmark books.
Decades of pioneering work.

And through all of it, one truth remained:

Modern criminal profiling exists in large part because a psychiatric nurse walked into a room full of FBI agents and told them they were asking the wrong questions.

Not:
“Why did the killer do this?”

But:

“Who were the victims?”

That shift changed criminal investigation forever.

Ann Burgess is 88 years old now.

Still teaching.
Still working.
Still brilliant.

And finally receiving recognition not as a side character in someone else’s story —

But as herself.

The woman who taught the FBI how to truly understand predators by first understanding the people they harmed.

[Amazing Nature @AmazingNature00]

🔥Yosemite National Park showing off like only Yosemite can. 🔥🌕

This rare “firefall” effect happens when the light hits the waterfall at the perfect angle, making it look like molten lava pouring off the cliff. But catching it like this is not luck alone. It takes clear skies, the right season, the right water flow, the right position, and seriously perfect timing.

Miss it by a few minutes and the magic is gone.

Nature doesn’t perform on demand.
But when it does… the whole world stops scrolling. 🏔️

[Hellenist ☀️🏺⚡️ @RealHellenist]

Each event stands within a network of meaning that extends beyond the moment in which it appears, held together within a greater unity which the soul gradually recollects as prior to its own becoming.