This looks interesting...

"But then I wandered into a curio in the festival lineup, a Nigerian drama called “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” directed not by a single filmmaker but by a group called the Agbajowo Collective, made up of waterfront slum dwellers, community activists and a few technical helpers.

The movie was on none of my critical colleagues’ radar; it came to town without a U.S. distributor and, as far as I know, left without one. And it is excellent, a gripping magical-realist tale rooted in the real-life injustice of Lagos neighborhoods getting bulldozed by corrupt Nigerian government officials to make room for resort casinos from which they’ll profit — a community tragedy that continues. “Legend” is professionally shot, evocatively scored and edited like a thriller, with a meaty central performance by Temi Ami-Williams as a grieving mother who transforms into an avenging angel in a fable that feels like a distant cousin to “Beasts of the Southern Wild” but stands defiantly on its own collective feet.

How can you see this movie? At this juncture, I don’t know. I do know that Netflix’s international offerings have space for a “Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos” if the vagaries of film distribution allow it, which is an improvement over previous years, when a discovery like this might surface at a festival only to disappear forever."

I remember seeing and thoroughly enjoying "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which I reviewed for TYWKIWDBI.  If this is anything comparable, it will be worth viewing.

Comments excerpted from "Why I go to film festivals: Beyond buzz and applause there's treasure."

Ike

Taking a moment to remember an old-fashioned Republican (and the Supreme Allied Commander of Forces in Europe).  Photo from the New York Times, via the nocontextpics subreddit.

Some button batteries taste terrible

I don't use button batteries very often, so I was surprised to note the information on the packaging, which apparently is a new development this year.  The batteries are not only in child-resistant packaging, but they also taste bitter, and stain the mouth a bright blue color.

I knew ingesting button batteries was dangerous, but I didn't realize the rapidity of the toxicity: 

Ingested coin or button batteries result in thousands of emergency hospital visits each year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which notes that “the consequences of a child swallowing a battery can be immediate, devastating and deadly.”

“A button cell battery can burn through a child’s throat or esophagus in as little as two hours if swallowed,” according to the agency.

Detailed information is available from Energizer.  Their FAQs indicate that the reaction time (taste and color) are immediate, and that the blue dye is food grade.  I was seriously tempted to lick one, but I'll leave that up to some adventurous reader. 

Portions of the Sahara desert are turning green

"Preliminary satellite analysis shows accumulations of many tens to more than 200 millimeters of rainfall in the areas affected—roughly equivalent to what the region receives in a year. The rainfall accumulation estimates are based on NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM) data, which is one of the only options for systematically assessing precipitation in the Sahara over broad areas because ground-based rain gauges and radar stations are so scarce.

“What’s also fascinating is that normally dry lakes in the Sahara are filling due to this event,” Armon added. Several of these lakes are visible in the image as dark blue areas, including one in Morocco’s Iriqui National Park (shown in detail within the inset circle).

Excerpted from the NASA Earth Observatory website, where you can pull the slider across the image to compare August and September.  The map embedded below is from Bloomberg.

Jim the Penman

The embedded video is a "teaser," because as far as I know the entire presentation is not available in video format.  The full podcast is a product of the Smithsonian, and as expected is exceedingly well done.

Note the detail on the forged banknote.  All of that was created by hand, one line and dot at a time, by tracing a valid banknote in the attic of a rural farmhouse in New Jersey.

"During the mid-1800s, one third of all paper money in America was thought to be fake. It was the golden age of counterfeiting, and one exceptionally talented con artist stood out from all the rest. His fakes were nearly perfect…but for a trademark tell. Known to law enforcement only as “Jim the Penman,” this celebrity criminal led many Americans to wonder—can great art truly be criminal?"

Click here to access the 20-page transcript or the 40-minute podcast.  I recommend the latter; you will know within 5 minutes whether you want to continue to the end.

The gifts of old age

An excerpt from "Little Gidding," in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

"Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."

Found while searching for something else, and posted on a whim.

Water ice... on MERCURY !!

The process of writing posts for TYWKIWDBI keeps driving me to various corners of the internet, where I encounter things that I not only didn't know, but couldn't even imagine.  As a child I was told that one of the special features of our planet was the availability of abundant water.  Later I came to understand via reading (and movies) that there are extraterrestrial "water worlds," including within our own solar system (Europa has more water than Earth does).

In 2009 I blogged Surprising quantities of water on the moon!, adding the exclamation point to the title.  Earlier this year it was Huge quantities of water ice detected on Mars, without the exclamation point because earlier studies of Mars geology had suggested that the planet had once had abundant water.

None of that previous knowledge prepared me for the shock of reading recently that NASA has found good evidence for water ice on the planet Mercury.  

"The yellow regions in many of the craters mark locations that show evidence for water ice, as detected by Earth-based radar observations from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. MESSENGER has collected compelling new evidence that the deposits are indeed water ice, including imaging within the permanently shaded interiors of some of the craters, such as Prokofiev and Fuller."

I have embedded above an hour-long video from the NASA channel presenting the recent conference summary.   Knowing that most of the readers of TYWKIWDBI fall into the TLDR category, here is my oversimplification.

It begins with the realization that although Mercury as a whole is incomprehensibly hot, it is not uniformly hellish.  This scan of a polar region shows temperatures ranging from 50 degrees Kelvin (-223 Celsius, -369 Fahrenehit) to 500 degrees Kelvin (227 Celsius, 440 Fahrenheit).  The temperature at which water freezes would be the 273K yellow shade.  The blues below that are subfreezing.

Point #2 is that some areas in craters are in permanent shadow from incident light:

Water would arrive via the impact of icy comets or meteors -

The non-water dust/rocks in the impacts would provide a modicum of cover for the ice, delaying its sublimation.

Recent instrumentation has shown the depth of water ice in these craters

I just speeded through the video myself while taking the screencaps, so I need to go back and listen in detail for the nuances.  (on second speed-through I heard comment that liquid water is still impossible on Mercury because the absence of an atmosphere would result in only meta-stable liquid form that would immediately volatilize.)

I'm just totally gobsmacked, especially by the cosmic implication that all this water is flying all around the universe and crashing into planets that have moderate temperatures, and that this has been going on for billions of years (see early universe link below), which raises in my estimation the likelihood of water-based life elsewhere in the universe close to certainty.

You learn something every day.

See also:  Water was plentiful in the early universe and Origin of water on earth.

Standing on a water lily

This old photo from the archives of the Missouri Botanical Garden depicted a young woman playing a violin while standing on a water lily.  Photographers of that era were capable of image manipulation, and its possible a support was placed under the lily pad.  But a recent project conducted by horticulturalists around the country demonstrated that the event was probably real.  

Botanical gardens across the world competed in a friendly fashion to see how much weight a giant Victoria water lily pad could support.  

Horticulturists in Denver then tallied the results and awarded first place to the five-foot Missouri water lily, which took on water once it shouldered 142.1 pounds.  Second place went to a Victoria lily at the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida for holding 135 pounds, while the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh took third place honors with a water lily that held 105.8 pounds.

The result would not come as a surprise to a jacana.

Sheriff asks Ohioans to write down addresses of Kamala Harris supporters

"An Ohio sheriff instructed residents to keep a list of homes displaying campaign signs in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Tim Walz, in remarks on social media that caused alarm.

Bruce D Zuchowski, the Republican sheriff of Portage county, posted the remarks on Friday to his personal and professional Facebook pages, warning that undocumented immigrants would arrive if Harris were elected over his party’s nominee, Donald Trump...

The Portage county commissioner, Tony Badalamenti, publicly denounced the post and resigned from the county’s Republican central committee in a video posted to Facebook, the Portager reported.

“This is not the leadership I want to be part of,” Badalamenti said.

Referring to Zuchowski’s actions, Badalamenti added: “It scares people. It’s called bullying, from the highest law enforcement in Portage county, the sheriff’s office.”...

Others condemned Zuchowski’s comments as an act of voter intimidation, especially given the sheriff’s high-ranking position in law enforcement..."

Embedded image from the USA Today report on the same subject.

"Drunk brick"

"Drunk Brick or the Hollywood Bond do not follow the traditional rules of masonry. This type of bond is an artistic rendering of brick courses designed to make the construction appear as very rustic and thrown together, as they do not follow any specific pattern. One could say that it has the look of a fairytale cottage."

I found lots of pix and anecdotal reports (especially in real estate listings), but haven't found a good comprehensive review of the subject, or why the "Hollywood Bond" name applies.

Parody of "Last Train to Clarksville"

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump claimed during a debate segment on immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

When the ABC debate moderator David Muir informed him that the story had been debunked, Trump stood by the claim, saying he had seen it “on television”.

The rumour had also been disseminated by JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, who in the aftermath of the debate justified doing so.

Trump and Vance seem to be doubling down on the assertions.  Trump posted this AI-generated image of himself protecting cats and ducks on an airplane:

How many newtons does the spring scale read?

I got this wrong, which is why I'm posting it.  Answer in this video:

Via the theydidthemath subreddit.

Cannabis products should never be packaged like this

I presume these are gummies, but in any case no cannabis products should be marketed with cartoon-like images that might lead children to think they are candy.

Image cropped for size from the original at Politico, where this is discussed.

Bipartisan assessment of the Harris/Trump debate

"Thoughts and prayers for Trump's political career.

 It was painful, but we are all in a better place now that the suffering is over." - The Lincoln Project

Note how many of the video clips are from FOX News and how many comments are by Republicans.  (reader comments closed for this post)

Michael Jackson, 1995

MTV Awards performance, remastered in HD.  "Billie Jean" at about the 3:30 mark, and the "Dangerous" segment begins at about the 7 minute mark.

Hard to believe this was almost 30 years ago...