I saw that this new digital library for a horticultural society was launched and thought "that's nice!"

"The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has launched a new Digital Collections platform, allowing anyone to access 10,000 library items and herbarium specimens online for free. "
https://collections.rhs.org.uk/

... But wait, if you read the press release, they give a large attribution of thanks to something I've never heard of:

"The RHS digital library project was made possible with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players" https://www.rhs.org.uk/press/releases/RHS-launches-digital-library-of-over-10,000-items,

Which sounds weird until you read the footnote which gives thanks to other organisations, so it makes more sense. Kinda.

"The herbarium’s digitisation project commenced in 2011 with the generous support of the 1851 Royal Commission, the Mellon Foundation, RHS Members and more latterly, the National Lottery Heritage Fund"

1851 Royal Commission - british, scholarship/grant giver, that's fine

Mellon Foundation - NY based, kinda weird but still OK

RHS members - very normal

National lottery heritage fund-----
And today I learned that britain has a STATE-RUN???? Lottery???? like a proper regulated pool of money, gambling for ball draws and everythign?????

I think it's cute that the National Lottery heritage fund logo is FINGERS CROSSED and just says "Heritage Fund", no mention of the fact it's an officially govt run lottery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_Heritage_Fund

btw latterly means recently

@nomo the brits are weirdly casual about gambling by American standards, when I went to England there were just like, normal storefronts full of slot machines sitting right between the convenience store and the coffee shop and it never stopped surprising me

i guess having an official gov’t run lottery is one way to ensure your regulations on that kinda thing remain lax 😆