Follow @samanthsubramanian.bsky.social to remote Pacific islands & secretive cable-laying operations that reveal the astonishing world of undersea cable infrastructure. Stories arnd geopolitical tensions & quiet heroics from the internet’s unseen circulatory system.
PLS pre-order - US / UK for now!

Just found out about #BloomScrolling (love it!).
A ragingly magnificent Magnolia specimen here from southeast London.

Have you ever learnt a new technique and then been like “lol, never again”. I met mine with latch hooking. It’s an extremely tedious process that proceeds at a pace so excruciatingly slow that you’d be rather walk on hot coals for the rest of your life than ever risk meeting another carpet.

Painted mica overlays depicting different tradespeople, probably Company School, India, 19th C.
Collections: SOAS.

Cats Christmas Party. Louis Wain.

"Shah Jahan Hunting Blackbuck with Trained Cheetahs" (1710-15, Rajasthan) for #CheetahDay today. Courtesy: The Met, public domain.
You can also go see The Great Mughals exhibition at the V&A on the extraordinary creative output and culture of the Golden Age of the Mughal Court (about 1560 – 1660).

You can find more drawings and information at the link below. They are all digitised.
bit.ly/3s0SqaL

Instead of Black Friday, a bit of Bloom Friday?
A few of my favourites from the botanical drawings of Scottish surgeon/botanist Dr Francis Buchanan-Hamilton (1762-1829). He commissioned several from artists in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Myanmar.
1. Cassia glauca 2. Begonia picta 3. Camellia hengna

As a person with a weakness for field interviews and anecdotes, these were my favourite.

Midday visual break:
A bunch of amusing octopuses sumo wrestling (bottom centre), breakdancing (?), playing intruments.
Edo period woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), who was one of the three principal 'Ukiyo-e' artists that includes Hiroshige. (British Museum Collections)