Photo taken at sunset - looking EAST !!

Explained at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website:

Explanation: Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the east. There, not only was a rainbow visible, but an impressive display of anticrepuscular rays from the rainbow's center. In the featured image from Lekeitio in northern Spain, the Sun is behind the camera. The rainbow resulted from sunlight reflecting back from falling rain. Anticrepuscular rays result from sunlight, blocked by some clouds, going all the way around the sky, overhead, and appearing to converge on the opposite horizon -- an optical illusion. Rainbows by themselves can be exciting to see, and anticrepuscular rays a rare treat, but capturing them both together is even more unusual -- and can look both serene and surreal.

A dozen relevant links at the source. 

Divertimento #196

"Her most popular videos by far are about vaginal lightening, which involves using a specialized treatment to lighten the vulva or general bikini area. (It does not, as the term would seem to imply, lighten the vagina itself, which is located on the inside of the body.) Most practitioners treat the labia majora, or the external lips of the vulva; many people request lightening the labia minora, or inner lips, as well, though this is not recommended and many practitioners will not do it.  In her practice, Taub estimates that she gets four or five requests for the treatment per day; in terms of the popularity of the services she offers, she says it is a “50-50” split between vaginal lightening and laser hair removal."

An extended explanation of what it means when you start seeing "floaters" in your eyes.

In 2018 the NFL was entering the "golden age of punters", who "are now neutralizing and terrorizing the most electric return men in the NFL with kicks that spin and move and bounce and flip in all sorts of unpredictable, terror-inducing ways."

The life of a professional (licensed) safecracker.  "Charlie Santore was not arrested by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office that day, and he did get the safe open. It would also prove to be the first of many such calls, as more and more homeowners in the burn zone would return to discover nothing but a safe standing where a long-cherished family house used to be. Their belongings had been reduced to whatever was locked inside that box. Santore was there to help them retrieve those possessions, rolling up in his sagging Mercedes, ready to get to work."

“Wonder Woman” follows a long line of Jewish ties to comic book characters. Many superheroes were created by Jews, according to Haaretz, including Superman, Captain America, Batman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Ironman, the X-Men, Thor and the Avengers. Since daily newspapers in the 1930s would not accept illustrations by Jews, Haaretz reports, many Jews found a home in comic book publishing.

4,400-year-old Egyptian tomb opened; walls covered with painted sculptures and figures.

The odd and unexplainable side effects of head trauma ("why some people become sudden geniuses").

Accumulated hippo feces create lethally anoxic water that kills all aerobic life in it.  The same article notes that "migrating wildebeest nourish the Serengeti by drowning en masse in the Mara, adding about 1,100 tons of dead meat to the river every year."  This is an Ed Yong article.

While writing the above entry I learned that the word "feces" is a plurale tantum - a noun that exists only in the pleural sense.  That's worth a full post in the blog.  Later.

How to "game the system" for recharging electric scooters.

The harsh life of musk oxen - including burial by an ice tsunami.

On Friday, J.K. Rowling's Pottermore, the official online companion compendium for all things Harry Potter, revealed another surprising tidbit that threw fans for a Quidditch loop. "Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms," the tweet in question reads. "Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence."  Also discussed here.

Jacqueline Ades sent a man more than 159,000 text messages — some of which were threatening — over the course of nearly 10 months...The two went on a single date... One text read: "I'd make sushi outta ur kidneys n chopsticks outta ur hand bones."

A longread about how genetic information is implemented.  "“The modern synthesis has got causality in biology wrong … DNA on its own does absolutely nothing until activated by the rest of the system … DNA is not a cause in an active sense. I think it is better described as a passive data base which is used by the organism to enable it to make the proteins that it requires.” "This explains why humans seem to have only a few more genes than flies or mice (around 20,000), while a carrot has 45,000! There is no correlation between the complexity of living things and the number of genes they have. But there is a correlation with the evolving complexity of regulatory networks. Counting genes to understand the whole is like judging a body of literature by counting letters. It can’t be done."

"Scary" formatting of a church sign.

BBC article has photos of an unfortunate carpet python in Australia covered with 500 ticks.

A sports op-ed opining that in football "Kickers exist mostly so coaches will have someone to blame when they lose a close game," and suggesting that field goals should be reduced to one point.

If you rob a bank, don't make your getaway on an electric scooter.

"Saturn's rings are only 10 to 100 million years old. This is much younger than the planet itself, which is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old."  So the first dinosaurs and mammals on earth, had they looked up, would not have seen rings on Saturn.

"Europeans have found the secret to making some of the world's costliest medicines more affordable, as much as 80 percent cheaper than in the U.S.  Governments in Europe have compelled drugmakers to bend on prices and have thrown open the market for so-called biosimilars, which are cheaper copies of biologic drugs made from living organisms. The brand-name products — ranging from Humira for rheumatoid arthritis to Avastin for cancer — are high-priced drugs that account for 40 percent of U.S. pharmaceutical sales.  European patients can choose from dozens of biosimilars, 50 in all, which have stoked competition and driven prices lower. However, the U.S. government stops short of negotiating and drugmakers with brand-name biologics have used a variety of strategies — from special contracting deals to overlapping patents — to block copycat versions from entering the United States or gaining market share."

An allergy to corn can make your life a living hell, because it is in so many foods and non-food.products.

"Veterinarian school is costly. Recent studies conducted by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the industry’s largest nonprofit advocacy entity, show that the average veterinary student now graduates with $143,000 or more in debt; about 1 in 5 leave school with more than $200,000 to pay off. Veterinary salaries — which start at about $67,000 a year — aren’t keeping pace with rising tuition rates."  Many vets commit suicide.  "Another key driver of this suicide crisis: Veterinarians are consistently asked to act as animal undertakers. Euthanizing animals can cause what a recent study referred to as ethical conflict and moral distress, which arises when vets are forced to put aside their expert opinions and accept pet owners’ decisions about if and when to put their animals down. More so, this proximity to death makes dying seem like a reasonable way to ease suffering."

Very unfortunate optics of a cereal promotion.

Australian woman bitten in the nether regions by a carpet python that was in her toilet bowl.  A good reminder to look in the bowl before sitting down.  Pix at the link.

“Unlike most other hard liquors, tequila doesn’t spike your blood sugar, which means even people with type 2 diabetes can drink it — in fact, it may even lower glucose levels and increase insulin production.”  I doubt that's true, but haven't researched it.

"...at least 1,000 women and girls in the UK had been subjected to [breast ironing]... whereby mothers, aunties or grandmothers use a hot stone to massage across the breast repeatedly in order to “break the tissue” and slow its growth."

"But St. Louis prosecutors on Friday evening came to a different conclusion. The [police] officers, they say, were playing a deadly game — pointing a gun with one round in the chamber at each other and then pulling the trigger.

Police departments seize money and don't return it.  "When a man barged into Isiah Kinloch’s apartment and broke a bottle over his head, the North Charleston resident called 911. After cops arrived on that day in 2015, they searched the injured man’s home and found an ounce of marijuana. So they took $1,800 in cash from his apartment and kept it." "Police are systematically seizing cash and property — many times from people who aren’t guilty of a crime — netting millions of dollars each year. South Carolina law enforcement profits from this policing tactic: the bulk of the money ends up in its possession."

"Consistent with other analyses, Hiya’s report found that the number of robo-calls is on the rise. Roughly 26.3 billion robo-calls were placed to U.S. phone numbers last year, Hiya said, up from 18 billion in 2017. One report last year projected that as many as half of all cellphone calls in 2019 could be spam."

"The complete 14 Batman window cameos"

Many, many Americans do not understand how tax brackets work.

"The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said nearly 40 percent of children ages 3 to 6 used more toothpaste than recommended by dental professionals. For young children with emerging teeth, swallowing too much fluoride toothpaste can cause discoloration of their teeth, a condition called dental fluorosis."

"In fact, if you’ve been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain, researchers are increasingly learning that breakfast might have the opposite of the desired effect — it can promote more calorie consumption and weight gain. But even the best available studies in the mix have serious limitations.  Before we get into what the science says, it’s worth understanding how the myth of breakfast was created..."

Genealogical relationships of Presidents of the United States.  Some second- , third- , and fourth-cousins in the early years.  But Warren G. Harding is ninth cousin to both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.  Trump is related to three previous presidents, and Obama to five.

"A 24-year-old man in Fort Worth, Texas has died after a vape pen he was using exploded in his face and severed an artery to his brain"

The best article I've read on kleptocracy (written in 2019, but prob has increasing relevance today.

A home-made water-cooled 72,000 LED flashlight.  Video compares it to a 500-lumen flashlight.

Bumper stickers of a crazy sociopath.

A composite image of 100 vulvas.  "Vulvas are rarely seen outside porn and childbirth, which Dodsworth puts down partly to their position on the body. “Cocks are right there at the front. They are visible, whereas vulvas aren’t. If you’re a straight woman, you don’t see many.” And, as she writes in her book, they’re not easy to look at: “Let’s be honest, it’s tricky to witness our vulvas for ourselves, legs awkwardly astride pocket mirrors, bums shuffled up close to full-length mirrors, or taking a selfie with the unflattering lens of a smartphone.”

A young girl achieving her Make A Wish with a Disney princess.

"The healthcare industry has for decades attributed widespread understaffing issues to a nursing shortage... But according to research and projections conducted by the US Health Resources and Services Administration, most states have nurse surpluses that are projected to grow over the next decade. Instead, nurses’ advocates say, the shortage is simply a reluctance by companies to cut profit margins by hiring enough staff. “It’s a convenient argument for the industry to validate their underresourcing of registered nurses on the floor, simply saying there’s a nursing shortage, but there isn’t,” said Michelle Mahon, nursing practice representative and organizer with National Nurses United, the largest labor union of registered nurses in the US. “It’s a market decision that benefits the employer,” she added."

An account of the massive carnage resulting from an "inland cyclone" in Queensland in 2019.

A 2019 op-ed criticized Democratic party officials for trying to silence Ilhan Omar, whose "foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment."

An octopus can kill a shark by suffocating it.

A BBC article on "fish pirates." “Approximately 20% of all global catch is illegal, unreported or unregulated,”... And the impacts are widespread, hurting the fish stocks themselves, the fishing industry and consumer trust. “If illegal fishing ultimately could result in stocks collapsing, this will then affect the livelihood of fishers across the globe.”

The embedded images are from a Smithsonian article on How Microbiologists Craft Stunning Art Using Pathogens. Details at the link.

And having read through all these links, what will you do with your newfound knowledge?

I paid $7.99 for a dozen eggs this morning

I've been blogging about bird flu for a long time and wondering when it would show up in grocery shopping.  The graph above is from Bloomberg.

I'm not screaming bloody murder because I can still have breakfast for under $2, but of course this cost is going to metastasize through the food production chain to affect everything else that contains eggs or egg proteins.

American restaurants are falling victim to a national egg shortage that has already plagued grocery stores from New York City to San Francisco and sent prices to $7 a carton.... the breakfast chain is planning to switch to liquid eggs for dishes such as omelets, scrambled eggs and batters, he said. It has less wiggle room for other offerings such as sunny-side-up eggs.

Some 104 million egg-laying hens have been lost since the outbreak started in 2022, with 29 million killed since October, according farmer group United Egg Producers. That’s resulted in shortages at grocery stores at a time when shoppers just keep on buying more.

Organic eggs have been in short supply too. Over the weekend, refrigerated shelves were almost completely bare at a ShopRite in Brooklyn. The few crates left were priced at about $1 per egg.

It will be interesting to see how this gets blamed on the Biden administration.

Language phrase of the day: "Plurale tantum"

While preparing the next linkfest I came across mention that "feces" is only a plural noun.  

A plurale tantum (Latin for 'plural only'; pl. pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the plural form and does not have a singular variant for referring to a single object. 

In English, pluralia tantum are often words that denote objects that occur or function as pairs or sets, such as spectacles, trousers, pants, scissors, clothes, or genitals. Other examples are for collections that, like alms, cannot conceivably be singular. Other examples include suds, jeans, outskirts, odds, riches, gallows (although later treated as singular), surroundings, thanks, and heroics.

In English, a word may have many definitions only some of which are pluralia tantum. The word "glasses" (a set of corrective lenses to improve eyesight) is plurale tantum. In contrast, the word "glass"—either a container for drinks (a count noun) or a vitreous substance (a mass noun)—may be singular or plural. Some words, such as "brain" and "intestine", can be used as either plurale tantum nouns or count nouns.

The term for a noun that appears only in the singular form is singulare tantum (pl.: singularia tantum), such as the English words: information, dust, and wealth.

And while we're at it, see ...

The plural of talisman is talismans

Latin plurals used in the English language

The two spellings’ coexistence – some call it competition – is not unusual: witness appendixes and appendices, formulas and formulae, millenniums and millennia, referendums and referenda, stadiums and stadia, and thesauruses and thesauri, all used regularly...

There are no hard and fast rules about which plural to use and when. In certain cases the Latin is more formal or even affected, but not predictably so. Occasionally the two spellings differentiate in meaning. For example, stigmata normally implies a religious context, while stigmas is the general-purpose plural. Some authorities advise limiting mediums to spiritualists and using media for all other senses of the word, but usage varies.

"Who by fire?"

YouTube link.

In 2019 I watched American Animals, a sort of true-crime docudrama about four inept students who try to steal rare books from a university library.  I'm not going to review the movie, but I did want to feature the bit of soundtrack in the clip embedded above.

This was the penultimate song, accompanying the apprehension of the students by teams of FBI agents.  As I watched the movie, this song sounded medieval, like a chant by monks or witches.  It was unfamiliar to me, and I had to search the lyrics online:

And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of May, who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt
And who by avalanche, who by powder
Who for his greed, who for his hunger
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident
Who in solitude, who in this mirror
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand
Who in mortal chains, who in power
And who shall I say is calling?

The song is by Leonard Cohen, who explained it as follows:

"The melody on which this next song is based I first heard when I was four or five years old, in the synagogue, on the Day of Atonement, standing beside my tall uncles in their black suits. It¹s a liturgical prayer that talks about the way in which you can quit this vale of tears. It’s according to a tradition, an ancient tradition that on a certain day of the year, the Book of Life is opened, and in it is inscribed the names of all those who will live and all those who will die, who by fire, who by water…"

Reposted from 2019 to note that this song is currently featured in the introduction to Bad Sisters, season 2, which I'll review when I finish watching.

Add "ing" to the title of a movie. Now what is the storyline of the movie?

 That was the challenge in an AskReddit post 6 years ago.  Here are some of the replies:

Hooking - Peter Pan's just trying to make extra money before the holidays

The Ringing -  tinnitus coming out of the TV

Ghosting - Patrick Swayze doesn't know how to say goodbye

Jack Frosting - A tale of a cake decorator

The Jungle Booking - Tales of a Sri Lankan corrections officer

Dude, Where’s My Caring? - Two wild dudes learn the true meaning of compassion

Lots more at the link.  Readers are invited to add their own have added dozens more in the comments.

Automobile tires were originally WHITE

Knowing this will win you some bar bets: "early tires were white, and only around World War I did they turn black."

“Original tires had a lighter shade because of the natural color of rubber,” a company representative told me. “Carbon black [a fine manufactured soot] was added to the rubber compound in [circa 1917] and produced a tenfold increase in wear resistance.”  "...a tire without carbon black would last “less than 5,000 miles...

The Michelin spokesperson went on, saying carbon black represents about a quarter to 30 percent of the composition of the rubber used in tires today, and in addition to making them more wear resistant, the material that gives tires their black color is also good at protecting tires against ultraviolet rays that can cause cracking, and it also improves grip and general road handling.

Embedded image (credit David Tracy) and text from Jalopnik.  More info with pix at Coker Tire (which specializes in whitewall tires), and at Just A Car Guy.

Addendum:  And a tip of the blogging cap to reader Drabkikker, who notes that the original Michelin Man was white:

via Wikipedia.

"Cousin-german"

I don't know where or when I encountered this word; it's been on my "words" list for years waiting to be looked up.  I was a bit surprised by what I found in the OED:

1a. The son or daughter of (one's) uncle or aunt; (one's) first cousin. (1826 R. Southey Lett. to C. Butler 232 The marriage of cousin-germans‥was allowed in the first ages of the church.)

2. A person or thing closely related or allied to another; a near relative. 1822 W. Irving Bracebridge Hall (U.K. ed.) II. 85, I had been apt to confound them [sc. rooks] with their cousins-german, the crows.)

One's brother and sister can similarly be called your "brother-german" and "sister-german," with some implications for the genetics.  Nowadays the term means the person is your brother/sister via both your parents, as opposed to a "brother on the father's side" or a "brother-uterine" (brother via your mother with a different father).

And the "german" part?  Here's the head-slap moment - it's a variant of "germain" [O.F. < Latin], which of course means "closely-related" or "relevant."

I was going to publish this without a picture, but when I ran the term through Google Images, I kept seeing moths.  Turns out there are several species of moths called the "Cousin German."  The embedded one I found here; the UK Moths site says "A rare and local species, restricted to birch woodland in the Highlands of central Scotland.  They are also illustrated in BugGuide.  Why they should have been given that common name, I have no idea.

Reposted from 2011 to add this useful graphic:

Via the mildlyinteresting subreddit.

Who believes bullshit like this ?

This apparently is a real Truth Social tweet, not a creation of the Onion, because I've seen it cited in mainstream news media.  

Thousand of likes, thousands of "retruths" for a delusional fantasy.  I'm guessing that Trump conflates a trade deficit with "subsidizing."

The title of this post is rhetorical.  I know who believes this.  I'm closing comments for this.  Also I'm going to revert to a strategy I used previously by not posting shit about Trump in the main blog; I'm going to reserve it all for TrumpDumps (like the linkfests and gif-fests) so readers can wallow in it or scroll past it with eyes averted.

Divertimento #195

It has been years since I've done a proper linkfest with excerpted content.  For the past 3-4 years all the divertimentos have been gif-fests.  Those are quick and easy to assemble from piles of bookmarks, but a proper linkfest should include occasional brief excerpts to highlight content and help the reader decide which to visit.

I file bookmarks for linkfests in folders of 12 so I can open all simultaneously in tabs.  At present I have 155 folders with 12 links each.  Lots of the older ones are undergoing linkrot, so best to start getting some of this material out onto the blog.  I'm going to start with the oldest links, which begin in 2018.

The Ig Nobel prize winners for 2018

The biology prize was for demonstrating that wine experts can reliably identify, by smell, the presence of a single fly in a glass of wine.  The chemistry prize for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces.  The reproductive medicine prize for using postage stamps to test whether the male sexual organ is functioning properly.  And more.  Links at the link.

How the Boston underground (MBTA) was designed

The redesign was done in the 1960s, mostly re esthetics, colors, lighting, and information: "One common ground in our analysis was that we could transform the entire system by simply helping people figure out where they were and where they were going."

Iranians are properly considered not to be Arabs.  They are Persians.

"Given its location in the Middle East, Muslim majority, and language which resembles Arabic, Iran is often mislabeled as an Arab nation. A cognate of “aryan,” Iran means “land of the Aryans” and is excluded from the list of Arab League nations in the Middle East/North Africa region."

When you are buying a home, consider getting a sewer inspection.  "...shared a bunch of sewer inspection videos with me over the past year showing failed, relatively newer sewer lines. Each one of these drain lines requires an expensive repair that I would absolutely not want to get stuck with as a home buyer. I put together a short video of these defects."  Compilation video at the link.

Girl pulls 1500-year-old sword from lake.  I was reminded of a Python sketch:  "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

Physicist sells his Nobel prize medal for $765,000.  "That put the transaction at No. 4 on the list of 10 Nobel Prize sales over the past 30 years."  The top three are discussed at the link; two of them are familiar names.

RPG doesn't stand for "rocket-propelled-grenade."  It actually stands for "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot"  "Rocket-propelled grenade" is a backronym.  Just like "save our souls" is a backronym for the easy-to-click Morse code signal.

A new menace: Asian long-horned tick.  "For the first time in 50 years, a new tick species has arrived in the United States — one that in its Asian home range carries fearsome diseases.  The Asian long-horned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, is spreading rapidly along the Eastern Seaboard. It has been found in seven states and in the heavily populated suburbs of New York City...  a woman who had been shearing her pet Icelandic sheep came to his department with ticks on her hands and wrists.  “I thought she’d have a few,” Mr. Rainey said in an interview. “But she was covered in them, easily over 1,000 on her pants alone.”

The elevation span (vertical distance from highest point to lowest point) is charted for every country.  You will need to click on the image twice to make the country names readable.

 

A truncheon is a prosthetic penis enhancer.  "First, surgeons sever the organ’s suspensory ligament, causing it to hang an inch or two lower, giving the impression of extra length. They then extract fat from the patient’s stomach and inject it into the penis shaft, increasing girth by around two inches. Erect, it’s worth noting, it remains roughly the same size, suggesting the motives for many men are not necessarily to enhance either their – or a partner’s – sexual experience."

How biomass is distributed among Earth's taxa.  Which of the following taxa has the greatest total mass on our planet:  protists (single-cells, amoebae), archaea (bacteria-like),  fungi, bacteria, plants, fish, arthropods...  Answer at the link.

Two-billion-year-old water found in a mine in Canada.  “When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock,” said U of T geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar in a conversation with the BBC. “But in fact it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of litres per minute—the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated.”  The water has a salt concentration 8X seawater.

"French doctors do not know why clusters of babies have been born with limbs missing (13 babies).  Ongoing arguments as to whether the cause is environmental (pesticides etc) or coincidental.

Antoine Winfield's incredible interception for the Minnesota Gophers in 2018.  In the final minute of the game, Fresno State had the ball on the Minnesota 4-yard line, 1st and goal.  Then the interception.  And necessary because a simple deflection would have allowed Fresno State three more tries.  Winfield went on to star as a safety in the NFL for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Quarterback playcall language "Double Right Open. Z-Orbit, Scat Left, 787 F-Drag On 2".  Includes an explanation of the "Omaha!" emergency call.

The first known photo of a surfer - in 1890 !

Weatherman's exaggerated hurricane report.  Apparently he was instructed to lean into the wind for emphasis; nobody told the pedestrians.

An outrageous hospital charge.  There are of course endless examples of this, but nobody in the health care delivery field does anything to prevent or correct it.

Pennsylvania prisoners may not receive books; they have to pay $149 for an e-reader and then $2-29 for each e-book.  "The library of ebooks available contains 8,500 titles and consists largely of material that exists in the public domain and could be read freely through Project Guttenberg, “but that cost anywhere from $2.99 (Moby-Dick) to $11.99 (The Federalist Papers), all the way up to $14.99 (Joseph Conrad’s The Rescue)."  Shameful.

Scary earthquake footage.

"When a middle school in Stafford County, Va., had a lockdown drill... to prepare for potential mass shootings or other emergencies, a transgender student was barred from both the boys’ and girls’ locker room — where other students were taking shelter. She was instead instructed to sit in the gym and then the locker room hallway while teachers discussed where she should go... “Let me be clear. During an event that prepares children to survive an attack by actual assailants, she was treated as if she was so much of a danger to peers that she was left exposed and vulnerable..."

Bicycle converted into a water bike.

"Nonso Muojeke and his family, who fled Nigeria in 2006, were facing deportation from Ireland until his classmates began a campaign to save them. They gathered 22,000 signatures and delivered it to the justice minister, convincing the government to allow the family to stay."

If you are told there is a fee to cancel an appointment on short notice, ask if you can reschedule for a later time.  Then call back to cancel the later appointment.

The £750 Touch of Fur shawl by Fendi looks like a giant vulva.  Picture at the link.

Marie Antoinette's jewelry being auctioned off by Sotheby's.

"Shortly after she hoisted her sample from the well, the bottle ruptured from internal pressure. The water gushed out through the cracks, fizzing like soda. The gas erupting from it was not carbon dioxide, as it is in soft drinks, but hydrogen—a flammable gas."  An article at The Atlantic discusses endoterrestrials - organisms that live deep underground.

A hunting dog trapped in a hollow tree trunk died there, and his body became mummified. "Chestnut oaks contain tannin, which is used to tan animal pelts and prevent decay. Tannin is a natural "desiccant," or material that absorbs moisture and dries out its surroundings. The low-moisture environment stopped the microbial activity. And no microbial activity means no decay. "  What a horrible way to die (pic at the link).

A man died from a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because he ate squirrel brains.

"Some bird species have been reported to fly at the upper levels of the troposphere. On November 29, 1973, a Rüppell's vulture (Gyps rueppelli) was ingested into a jet engine 11,278 m (37,000 ft) above the Ivory Coast."

"The condition looked remarkably like polio—the viral disease that is on the verge of being eradicated worldwide. But none of the kids tested positive for poliovirus. Instead, their condition was given a new name: acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. .. Parents have described their children collapsing mid-run like “marionette dolls,” or going to bed with a fever and waking up paralyzed from the neck down. AFM wasn’t a one-off, but likely a new biennial normal. It’s still rare, affecting just one in 1 million people, but that’s little comfort for the roughly 400 children who’ve been affected, many of whom are looking at lifelong disability or paralysis."

"Workers were readying commercial space at the T.B. Converse Building, located on North Patterson Street in Downtown Valdosta, when they found an estimated 1,000 teeth buried in a second floor wall."

"Scientists say West Coast waters now have a hypoxia season... "If there are crabs in the pot, they're dead. Straight up," Bailey says. And if you re-bait the pots, "when you go out the next time, they're blanks, they're absolutely empty. The crabs have left the area." A hypoxia event will kill everything that can't swim away—animals like crabs, sea cucumbers and sea stars."  Just like the Gulf of Mexico.

A list of films that feature miniature people.  Over 60 movies, from Alice in Wonderland to Ant Man.

The Human Terrain is a map depicting population around the world using vertical bars for number of people.  You can pan and zoom.  Cool.

"The international team of scientists reviewed two datasets, including a large registry from Sweden, and found that removal of the appendix was associated with a decreased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. They also found that the human appendix contains clumps of a protein called alpha-synuclein in a form associated with the disease. There’s more work to be done, and the authors are not advocating that people preemptively remove their appendixes, but they hope that the research could provide a pathway towards treatment."  That was in 1918, and coincidentally this week I heard a science podcast reporting that genomic studies have found tentative links between manic-depressive disorders and the pancreas.  The human body is more complex than we realize.  

A hotel sign suggests that your end of the hallway might not be very peaceful.

"A Scottish man has had his peanut-butter smeared genitalia bitten off by an English bulldog. Paramedics were unable to recover them for reattachment."  I was sorry to read that the dog was later put down.  It wasn't the dog's fault.

"Inaccessible Island rails live only on Inaccessible Island; it appears, as far as any evidence shows, that they never even made it to the neighboring Nightingale Island."  They are flightless, but apparently their distant ancestors flew there (then discovered they didn't need wings).

Placebo pills actually work.  "You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing."

Some phonograph records have "locked grooves." "It is usually a silent loop that keeps the needle and tonearm from drifting into the label area. However, it is possible to record sound in this groove, and some artists have included looping audio in the locked groove."

An impressive sea-stack.  "A few years ago, a helicopter landed several scientists on the stack; they were the first humans to set foot there for ages. They stayed there overnight and examined the surface where they found the remains of a medieval house, walls, cultivation ridges, and a corn grinding stone."

"The average wedding in the U.S. now has five bridesmaids—according to an annual survey conducted by the wedding-planning platform The Knot—a number that is up from four in 2007 and appears to be steadily rising. It’s now common, several wedding experts told me, for a bride to have 10 or 11 maids. “In the South, forget it,” says Meg Keene, the author of A Practical Wedding Planner. “You’re going to have 50.”

In the Czech Republic there is "Vila Mátma, or “My Darkness Villa,” where clients spend seven days or longer alone and in complete absence of light... There’s not much to do in the dark, at Vila Mátma or any other darkness-therapy center. And that’s more or less the point. Depending on the facility, clients sleep, exercise, and meditate. They eat and bathe in the dark. They sometimes write, draw, sculpt, or play an instrument, all in total darkness. Without access to their phones or to the internet—or even to a clock or calendar—they tend to spend a lot of time alone with their thoughts, and on occasion chatting with a therapist or “guardian.” Not infrequently, clients report intense audiovisual experiences, most likely vivid dreams or hypnagogic imagery (the sort of micro-dreams you experience in between wakefulness and sleep), which can be pleasantly mind-expanding or downright terrifying. At the BRC, the procedure costs 2,000 Czech koruna a day, or just under $100, and patients must reserve the one-person facility for a minimum of a week at a time."

Horseshoe Bend is what happens when a patch of public land becomes #instagramfamous. Over the past decade photos have spread like wildfire on social media, catching the 7,000 residents of Page and local land managers off guard. According to Diak, visitation grew from a few thousand annual visitors historically to 100,000 in 2010 – the year Instagram was launched. By 2015, an estimated 750,000 people made the pilgrimage. This year visitation is expected to reach 2 million."  I remember visiting national parks in the 1960s-70s when they were mostly empty.

Impressive graphic zooms along the U.S. - Mexico border when you scroll with your mouse.  This was important in 2018, and looks to become important again.

"A video released by the US Forest Service shows the moment when a gender reveal party in Arizona went horribly wrong, sparking a wildfire that burned nearly 47,000 acres and caused more than $8 million in damage."

Football-throwing championship won with two-handed passes.

The history of Nancy Drew books.

In a 5-minute video, conservators at The British Museum explain how they decide whether to wear gloves or not when handling an object.

Enough for now.  That emptied 10 folders of 12 links each, yielding about 50 useable links (the others have undergonelinkrot or are now behind paywalls, or are now irrelevant (politics), and some I moved to my blog-it-now folder because they were extra good. But it only cleaned out my bookmarks for 2018.  There may be some copy/paste errors; if so, let me know. More to come...

Embedded photos from the 2015 Nikon Small World photography competition.  Identification of the subject matter and photo credits via the link.

Interesting rock

Identified at the whatsthisrock subreddit as a fossil of a crinoid stem.

Postal codes explained.

Would it be possible to sort and deliver mail using what3words?  Humans couldn't do it, but perhaps computers could.  Via Miss Cellania.

A clever ad for mayonnaise

Via Miss Cellania

What is the missing number?

The circular arrangement is just a design feature, not part of the math.  The puzzle could also have been written out 2,3,4,5,6,8,12...?

Some birds protect their nests with snakeskin

Here's the abstract, from The American Naturalist:

Many species of birds use shed snake skin in nest construction, but this behavior remains poorly understood. Ecological context is likely key for understanding how this unusual, but widespread, behavior evolved. We use comparative and experimental approaches to suggest that the evolution of this behavior is mediated by nest morphology and predator communities. First, we reviewed the literature and found that 78 species from 22 families have been reported to use shed snake skin in nest construction. All but one of these species are passerines and, using comparative analyses, we show that this behavior is disproportionately observed in cavity-nesting species. Second, we examined a subsample of North American species, all of which are reported to use snake skin in nest construction, to see whether the proportion of nests with snake skin differs between cavity- and open cup–nesting species. This analysis suggested that the proportion of nests with snake skin is roughly 6.5 times higher in cavity- than in open cup–nesting species. Finally, we used a series of experiments and comparisons to test four hypotheses whereby snake skin could award fitness benefits (nest predation, nest microbiotas, nest ectoparasites, social signaling) and found support for the predation hypothesis. Snake skin reduced nest predation in cavity, but not open cup, nests. These unequal fitness benefits highlight different ecological conditions between nest morphologies and likely explains why, across species, cavity-nesting birds show this behavior more frequently than open cup–nesting birds.

Embedded image from The New York Times, where the results are discussed.

Mississippi bill would criminalize masturbation to ejaculation

As reported by WBLT3 News (Jackson, Mississippi).  It's not clear how this would be enforced.  

"Shrimp fraud" in Gulf Coast cities

 As reported by USA Today:

Restaurants throughout the Gulf Coast are serving imported shrimp but telling their customers they're feasting on fresh crustaceans fished in the Gulf of Mexico, a series of new studies found.

SeaD Consulting, a food safety technology company, tested shrimp from randomly chosen restaurants in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi; Galveston, Texas; and Tampa Bay, Florida. Researchers found a significant number of the restaurants were passing off their shrimp as locally sourced, even though they were grown on foreign farms and imported to the U.S.

The cities with the highest "shrimp fraud rate" were Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, Florida, at 96%, according to SeaD Consulting. Only two of the 44 restaurants sampled were serving authentic shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, a study found...

The consulting company behind the research says the rampant misrepresentation hurts not only customers – who are put at higher risk of consuming tainted food – but also harms local fishermen struggling to compete with the low cost of imported shrimp from countries like India, Vietnam and Ecuador...

Earlier this month, a new law went into effect in Louisiana requiring restaurants selling imported shrimp to include a notice on their menus telling customers the shrimp is imported and listing the country of origin. A similar law went into effect in Alabama in October.

An interesting specialized tool

Posted at the often-interesting whatisthisthing subreddit, with the following thumbnail description:

"Thin yet heavy metal pen-shaped object with a removable clip.  One end is ball-shaped (but no ink could possibly flow), and the other end has a fishing-line-type loop."

A major clue is that the ball at the end is magnetic.

Here are two replies:  

    "It's a tool to remove foreign objects from your eye, used most often in welding and machine shops. The other end is a nylon loop that holds a drop or two of sterile water to attract non magnetic debris in the eye.

    "Optometrist here. If you have a medical eye doctor nearby you can save the ER trip. I've removed a ton of these in office myself, and any ophthalmologist can. Just don't go to a lenscrafters or pearl vision etc. and expect anything beyond glasses/contacts."

Lots of comments at the link from metalworkers.

xoxoxoBruce has died

Reader Jim Armstrong left a comment in another thread noting that reader xoxoxoBruce had passed away.  I found independent confirmation in a Chevy truck forum.

I am totally shocked. Bruce was just at my house on the 10th. He had just picked up his newly painted SSR. He spent a lot to fix it up but never got to enjoy it. It was done at my old shop.

I just noticed that he texted me last Thursday the 17th, the day they said he past away, about coming up next week to fix some things on his truck.

Man this is hard too take. 😢He would send flowers to my wife every year on our anniversary saying what a mistake she made marrying me. He was such a jokester.

Going to miss all his emails and conversations.

RIP my friend 😫😭

I "know" a lot of my readers/commenters as a result of years of curating comments (I've never met any  reader IRL except my family).  The username xoxoxoBruce has been commenting on TYWKIWDBI for at least the past 8 years - maybe longer.  I never had to delete any of his comments, which were always pleasant and courteous.  I'm sorry to hear that he's gone.

Posting this for other readers and for other bloggers (Miss C, Marilyn, Jesse),

Addenda:  Here is a tribute to xoxoxoBruce, posted this morning at Nag on the Lake:

"I was saddened to learn via TYWKIWDBI that Bruce, who contributed links to this blog for the past two decades, has died. We never met in person but over the years we communicated regularly. When I was travelling he would send extra links because he knew I would have less time to round up my own. He sent me homemade Christmas cards and never forgot my birthday. A few years ago I posted a story about the world’s smallest bar which is about an hour from where I live. He sent me a gift certificate for cocktails there. I have often written about my love of Scotland so last year he sent me a bottle of Arran Gold liqueur.  I mentioned to Bruce that my dad was suffering from dementia but still enjoyed corny jokes. For many years Bruce sent me jokes to pass along to him. He also forwarded articles on antique firetrucks for my firefighter husband. I know he will be missed by the many friends he so easily made. I plan to pull out that bottle of Arran Gold and raise a toast to Bruce in front of the fire tonight."

(Marilyn's blog is very similar to TYWKIWDBI, for those readers here who have not yet found it.)

And a tribute from Miss Cellania:

"Bruce was a regular contributor to the comments section here, sent me links, and was a regular correspondent. I just received his Christmas card the other day, postmarked December 11th but for some reason it took more than a month to get here. Bruce was always ready with a joke, ready to be friends, and quite generous. Bruce helped keep me afloat a few years ago when I got laid off from Mental Floss and times were tough. I couldn't be more grateful."

Humor for English majors

Queen Elizabeth was visiting sick children in a Scottish hospital, and after performing her planned duties, she wandered off to other parts of the hospital. Walking into an unidentified ward, she went up to a patient in bed and asked him how he was doing. He replied:

"O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly played in tune....."

Finding the response somewhat inappropriate she wished him good day and moved down the ward to a room where another man was sitting quietly. In response to her inquiry, he began singing:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min' ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne ?"

Somewhat baffled by this sequence of events she found a third room, where her greeting was met with:

"Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie ...."

She gave up, and left the ward. On her way out, she encountered the head nurse. "Is this the psychiatric ward?" she asked.

"No, your majesty," the nurse replied. "It's......the Burns unit."

Reposted because January 25 is Burns Night.

"Daughters"

In my opinion, an outstanding documentary.  It's not for everybody; the trailer will tell you whether it's for you.  

The world's largest flower

Rafflesia arnoldii, in the Palupuah forest of West Sumatra, Indonesia.  The Wikipedia page has tons of information...

Although Rafflesia is a vascular plant, it lacks any observable leaves, stems or even roots, and does not have chlorophyll. It lives as a holoparasite on vines of the genus Tetrastigma (most commonly Tetrastigma augustifolia). Similar to fungi, individuals grow as a mass of thread-like strands of tissue completely embedded within and in intimate contact with surrounding host cells from which nutrients and water are obtained. It can only be seen outside the host plant when it is ready to reproduce; the only part of Rafflesia that is identifiable as distinctly plant-like are the flowers, though even these are unusual since they attain massive proportions, have a reddish-brown colouration, and stink of rotting flesh. According to Sandved, the flower opens with a hissing sound.

The flower of Rafflesia arnoldii grows to a diameter of around one meter (3.3 feet), weighing up to 11 kilograms (24 lb)

...ecotourism [note the photo] is thought to be a main threat to the species. At locations which are regularly visited by tourists the number of flower buds produced per year has decreased.

Photo credit Adi Prima/Anadolu/Getty Images, via The Guardian.

Speaking truth to power

Embedded above are the closing moments of an inauguration prayer directed toward Donald Trump, delivered by The Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde, who is the Episcopal bishop of Washington.

The full text of the sermon is here.

Following the sermon, the president attacked Budde online, labelling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday. He argued that she had “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and described her tone as “nasty”.

Trump characterized the service as “boring” and “uninspiring”, and asserted that Budde and her church “owe the public an apology.”

Trump's allies joined in the criticism -

The Georgia representative Mike Collins suggested on social media that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”, while the Fox News host Sean Hannity called her a “so-called Bishop” who turned the service into a “woke tirade” and described her prayer “disgraceful” and filled with “fearmongering and division”. 

Yes, because we should deport Americans who express standard Christian values and use them to criticize us. FFS.

Budde said an interview with the New York Times that she felt her sermon offered a “perspective that wasn’t getting a lot of airtime right now” and a perspective of Christianity “that has been kind of muted in the public arena”.

“To plea for mercy is actually a very humbling thing to do,” she said.

“I wasn’t demanding anything of him. I was pleading with him, like, can you see the humanity of these people?

Following her sermon and the Trump response, the Episcopal Church as a whole has issued a "Statement on Creation Care," urging adherence to the Paris Agreement.

I'll leave comments open for a while, but if the thread devolves into a flame war, I'll close it.

Corny - but chuckleworthy

A person leaves a nickel on their balcony...

Here's their report and a question:

TLDR: I left a nickel on my balcony near my birdfeeders and now there's a hole.

I could be totally overthinking this. I have a small balcony facing a small wood. I have a few birdefeeders and I get all kinds of birds everyday. Basically, is it possible one of them pecked this perfect circle into my nickel?

I left it out there one day after seeing my first crow. That was a couple weeks ago and it didn't move at all til just a few days ago. I thought it may have been frozen to the deck. Eventually it had been moved and I noticed this hole! The back side seems to have the metal still present and folded over, I thought that might help confirm what had happened here. Anyone know how easily a bird could do this? Thanks!

The explanation was one that most readers of TYWKIWDBI could have predicted:

"A bird would not do that but it’s possible it took your nickel away and brought back another that it found.  I would continue to experiment."

Other replies:

"My crows brought me a bullet casing and a child’s Jack among other things they love shiny!"

"I had a murder of crows I left roasted peanuts (unsalted) and nickels out for. The nickels disappeared and one time, there was a very shiny dime and a silver gum wrapper in the spot where I fed them! Prized possessions."

"The Xmas tree fell a few years ago, and the string of beads broke.  Wife had the brilliant idea to put them and peanuts in a flower pot hung from a tree limb.  The crows rolled in.  I get gifts almost daily. Glasses, coins, beads, metal shot glasses, a car key to a jeep wrangler, dog tags, a medical alert bracelet, silver crosses, necklaces.  They hang out to see my reaction.  They harass the crap out of the local hawks, who think they want one of our chickens.  And, I might give them leftover hotdogs when I'm grilling."

I have heard of this, but never experienced it.  Our crows are gone for the winter, but I think this summer I'll leave out some shiny new nickels and see if they will exchange it for an old buffalo nickel or shield nickel.  Any reader experiences in this regard?