August 25, 2019
Larry Elgart And His Manhattan Swing Orchestra
Dogs have so many friends because they wag their tails, not their tongue
It's National Dog Day! Here are a few links in celebration of the best animals ever:
- View the results of a National Dog Day Survey
- A crew of Canadian service dogs watched a live musical as part of their training
- For National Dog Day, meet the 2020 hopefuls running for America's First Pooch
- Dunkin’ prepping for pups on sweet ‘National Dog Day’
- An annoying Bark Box commercial
- Dog hugs (everyone needs one)
Video of yacht sailing through sea of pumice near Tonga
On August 9, 2019 we sailed through a pumice field for 6-8 hours, much of the time there was no visible water. It was like ploughing through a field. [more inside]
Prisoners’ Inventions
We asked Angelo to illustrate and describe the many incredible inventions made by prisoners that he had made, seen, or heard about over the years. These inventions are attempts to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to suppress. The inventions cover everything from homemade sex dolls, condoms, salt and pepper shakers to chess sets, privacy curtains and ways of communicating between cells.
Bom bom bi bom bi dum bum bay
Lizzo challenged the internet to do a ballet routine to her song Truth Hurts, and dancers delivered. And how! On point(e)! Here’s a short list of links to notable performances so far, from wow to perfect to cute and all degrees in between: [more inside]
Les Bijoutiers Fantaisistes
"My grandmother passed away. Her funerals were today, but here I'd like to talk about the most important thing I couldn't spend too much time on in her eulogy: her love for Dungeons & Dragons. She started very late, at 75, only a little over a year ago . . ."
Twitter thread, including fan art of her beloved gnome druid and his goose friend. Threadreader.
Twitter thread, including fan art of her beloved gnome druid and his goose friend. Threadreader.
All England Summarise Proust Competition, 2019 edition
Over this Bank Holiday weekend, BBC Radio 4 is airing Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 10 episodes running to about nine hours in total. With a starry cast headed by Derek Jacobi as the Narrator, the adaptation is written by U.S.-born, UK-based playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker. [more inside]
Platform Blues
A Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com Inc.’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators—items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves. Among those items, at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children. Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products [WSJ, may be paywalled; additional related articles below] [more inside]
An Octo-Octet
more weird and magnificent mustelids
The greater grison is Central America's answer to the honey badger. (It is largely greater in relation to the lesser grison, which lives a ways further south.) Grisons have been difficult to study on account of small heads and thick necks, making radio-collars especially difficult. Unusually for a mammal, the grison seems to be mostly diurnal. They are said to be relatively tameable as pets, and are undeniably adorable when young. [more inside]
"on any given day half a million raptors might be gliding overhead"
The largest flyway for birds of prey anywhere in the world is in a narrow stretch of Veracruz State in Chichicaxtle. So many birds fly through this area during migration periods that it's been dubbed the River of Raptors (video). [via]
Solutions Backwards Initiative
It all started on Feb 12, 2007 with a t-shirt. Which led to a website. Which led to another website [Flash required, safe to use]. Which led to audio recordings and other websites and on Feb 14 My Violent Heart was "leaked" [Happy Valentine's Day!] and then on Feb 15 Survivalism was released... it was obvious we weren't dealing with anything ordinary. [more inside]
Backgrounds for Banks
A twitter thread delving deeply and nerdily into the background images you see when you log into a Chase bank account.
All the Feets
Comment on this Twitter post: I added Aerosmith ft. Run DMC to this video of the shadow of a millipede walking and it has amused me more than it should have done. [more inside]
California’s new law to stop police shootings
And why some civil rights groups are worried that the bill doesn’t go far enough. The bill aims to “affirmatively proscribe” — as in, explicitly limit — the instances when police officers can use deadly force, changing the standard from one based on a “reasonable belief” that the officer or another person is in imminent danger to one that requires police officers to use deadly force only when necessary. The legislation — AB 392, or The California Act to Save Lives — came as the result of months of negotiation between law enforcement lobbying groups and civil rights organizations, and some advocates of police reform view the new law as a watered-down effort. [more inside]
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie - October 11, Netflix
Trailer. Note the Hank and Gomez memorial plaques on the wall outside the interrogation room.
Malignant tissue expectorated upon the pages
The Fairy Penguin is small, but so powerful it can move suburbs!
In the 1980s fairy penguins were down to one colony on Phillip Island in Australia and that colony was shrinking fast. On the penguins’ breeding ground, 190 structures — mainly homes — were built as part of Summerland Estate, with plans for hundreds more. And so, over a period of a decade, the state government halted construction, bought back all the homes and removed the suburb. Today Phillip Island Nature Park is home to 31,000 penguins and a thriving tourist destination. Viewing the annual Penguin Parade is draw for tourists and a right of passage for local children.
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