Floccinaucical

Posted on December 4, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 12/4/2022:

Art, Music, and Film

It’s that time of year when Hallmark Christmas movies (and their imitators on Lifetime, Netflix, et. al.) are streaming 24/7. In these Christmas-cookie-cutter cinematic confections, you are apt to encounter many of the items on the following list. (N.B. you can use the list for a drinking game—at your peril.)

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

SFWA Names Robin McKinley Its 39th Grand Master!

The SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” It is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master. McKinley joins 38 writers who’ve been granted the title, including other luminaries such as Nalo Hopkinson, Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Ursula K. LeGuin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, and Joe Haldeman.

Robin McKinley is one of the leading writers of the modern fairy-tale retelling genre, and indeed, her debut Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, could be said to have started the fairy-tale retelling trend. She is also celebrated for her original fantasy novels. Her 1982 book The Blue Sword received the Newbery Honor, and its 1984 prequel The Hero and the Crown was awarded the Newbery Medal. School Library Journal said, “Her work has impacted not just the Newbery canon, but the fantasy genre, too.” Her 1985 anthology Imaginary Lands won the World Fantasy Award, and Water, the 2002 collection she co-wrote with Peter Dickinson, was later nominated as well.

Midwinter magic: Robert Macfarlane on the enduring power of The Dark Is Rising

Write Note Pads: Notebooks and Planners Referral link for quality affordable notebooks, memo pads, and planners.

Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. . . . “What I believe happened is that I and other accounts have been mass reported for the last few weeks by a dedicated group of far-right extremists who want to erase archived evidence of their past misdeeds and to neutralize our ability to expose them in the future,” Loder said. “What I suspect happened is that Twitter’s automatic systems flagged my account for some reason and no human being is reviewing these.”

Opinion The court’s supremely obtuse response to its ethical problems

The New York Times reported earlier this month the story of a conservative Ohio couple, Donald and Gayle Wright, who were deployed by a religious rights, antiabortion organization to befriend the Alitos and other conservative justices as part of an influence campaign.

The Rev. Rob Schenck, who headed the organization, said that Gayle Wright had tipped him off in advance about the outcome and authorship of a 2014 case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, involving religious employers’ obligations to provide contraceptive coverage. Gayle Wright and the Alitos denied any leak (Donald Wright died in 2020), but contemporaneous evidence bolsters Schenck’s claim of advance knowledge.

Assisted living too often fails older, sicker residents, report says

Science and Nature

Researchers discover two new minerals on meteorite grounded in Somalia

Why this mammal eats its own brain — and why it could matter for you

The Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians, and the Atlas are the same mountain range, once connected as the Central Pangean Mountains

Referral link: Curiosity Stream delivers shows across the full spectrum of the non-fiction genre to demystify science, nature, history, technology, society, lifestyle and more. $19.99/year for thousands of films (or $2.99/month).

Technology

Big-screen Kindles return as notebooks, but they’re better for reading

Social Quitting

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

From a bunker, an acting mayor keeps her front-line Ukraine town alive

Jacinda Ardern asked if meeting Finland’s PM because they are ‘similar in age’, shuts that question down

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Why you should almost always wash your clothes on cold

Something Wonderful

Missing daughter reunited with family after 51 years

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

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Elsewhere for November 27, 22022

Posted on November 28, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 11/27/2022:

Sorry for the late post; family health issues.

Art, Music, and Film

Amazing Vintage Japanese Pachimon Postcards With Famous Places Around The World

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

That’s blatherskite! Podcasts plan to save endangered dialects

An experimental scheme to boost endangered regional vocabulary will see examples “adopted” by prominent public voices. A group of leading podcasters has agreed to sponsor a word chosen from those identified as on the brink of extinction by the British Library. Regional radio broadcasters are also being urged to join participating podcast shows, which include The Lost Tapes of History and Black History Buff, whose presenters have agreed to “adopt” a favourite, whether or not they use it themselves.

Feds arrest Russians allegedly behind ‘world’s largest’ pirated ebook library

Maggie Appleton: Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects

Finally, a formidable response to Amazon-owned Goodreads: Introducing The StoryGraph

Write Note Pads: Notebooks and Planners Referral link for quality affordable notebooks, memo pads, and planners.

Food and Drink

Butter chicken has helped me at every stage of my life – and has always united my family

With its sweetly spiced tomato and cream-based gravy, butter chicken is a comforting, warming dish that feels decadent thanks to its silky-smooth richness. It’s a dish that can be cooked with either breast meat or chicken thighs, with bones or without. The most important thing is that you marinate the chicken fully to allow the flavour of the spices to shine. For a truly authentic experience, enjoy it with crispy naan, perfectly soft in the middle, and a side of pickled sliced onions.

Why Brussels Sprouts Taste Better Than They Did When You Were A Kid

History and Archaeology

In 1480 Two Bales Of Hops Came To Bristol

Via @Academicats@scholar.social: Hunting for Neanderthal spear tips under the sea

Coins study suggests ‘fake emperor’ was real, say scientists

“We’re very confident that they’re authentic,” said Prof Paul Pearson, of University College London, who led the research. “Our evidence suggests Sponsian ruled Roman Dacia, an isolated goldmining outpost, at a time when the empire was beset by civil wars and the borderlands were overrun by plundering invaders.”

Science and Nature

Technology

Apple changed how reading books works in iOS 16, and I may never be happy again

Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year

The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, “Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather.” Those questions aren’t monetizable.

‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts

Tim Bray: Bye Twitter

Today I’m leaving Twitter, because I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll. But also because it’s probably going to break down. Read on for details.

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

‘A gentle calm’: France’s streets once again echo to sound of working horses

Something Wonderful

Goncharov: why has the internet invented a fake Martin Scorsese film?

Thousands of Tumblr users have been making posters, soundtracks, drawings and fan fiction for a 1973 Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro – but it never existed

53 easy ways to add cheer to your life as winter looms

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

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Elsewhere for November 20, 2022

Posted on November 20, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 11/20/2022:

Art, Music, and Film

Bring Yourself Recurring Joy with Apple’s New Lock Screen Photo Shuffle

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

Via Book Riot and Sarah S. Davis: How And Why I Schedule My Reading

here was no way I was going to accomplish my reading achievements, like reading a book a week for a total of 52 in the year, nor was I going to keep up with my reading for Book Riot’s TBR, where I work as a Bibliologist, and not for my monthly column of “Recommended Reads” that I write for my hometown newspaper.
Something had to happen. Something had to change. I could not go on like this.

H/T: Victoria Strauss: Writers Wrestle with Twitter: Do I Stay or Go (and Where?) See also: What Will Writers Do Without Twitter?

If the book industry is a walled garden, Twitter is a ladder. It allows people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in publishing to get a toehold. People of color, people who live anywhere other than New York City, people who work day jobs unrelated to media—they can build an audience, post links to their work, attract the attention of editors. If a thread of theirs goes viral, sometimes they can even get a book deal.

‘Publication Laundering’: How Publishers Happily Accept Fake And Nonsense Conference Papers In The Pursuit Of Profits

Write Note Pads: Notebooks and Planners Referral link for quality affordable notebooks, memo pads, and planners.

Food and Drink

Comfort and joy: the welcome resurgence of rice pudding

History and Archaeology

Hundreds of mummies and pyramid of an unknown queen unearthed near King Tut’s tomb

Buried within these shafts, archaeologists found a “huge limestone sarcophagus” along with “300 beautiful coffins from the New Kingdom period,” Hawass said.
“Burials from the New Kingdom were not known to be common in the area before, so this is entirely unique to the site,” Hawass said. “The coffins have individual faces, each one unique, distinguishing between men and women, and are decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead [an ancient Egypt funerary text]. Each coffin also has the name of the deceased and often shows the Four Sons of Horus, who protected the organs of the deceased.”

Politics and Society

In largest strike of 2022, California academic workers walk off job

Jacob Kemner, a doctorate student in environmental studies at UC Riverside, makes roughly $28,000 a year and donates blood plasma twice a week for roughly $200 in extra income.

“I’m making ends meet by selling plasma,” Kemner said. “I am less able to be effective in my job as a result of this because I spend six to 10 hours going to and from the plasma donation center. If I wasn’t spending time on that, I could be lesson planning and grading.”

Technology

Twitter user gets account back after ban for ‘intimate’ image of meteor

The Twitter Worker Who Captured Elon Musk’s Takeover in All Its Cartoonish Glory

Megnut on Web-People And Dot-Com People

And I realized there are dot-com people and there are web people. Dot-com people work for start-ups injected with large Silicon Valley coin, they have options, they talk options, they dream options. They have IPOs. They’re richer after four months of “web” work than many web people who’ve been doing it since the beginning. They don’t have personal sites. They don’t want personal sites. They don’t get personal sites. They don’t get personal. Web people can tell you the first site they ever saw, they can tell you the moment they knew: This, This Is It, I Will Do This. And they pour themselves into the web, with stories, with designs, with pictures. They create things worth looking at, worth reading, worth coveting, worth envying, worth loving. They create Beautiful Things. We need more of those.

Via @Jean Macdonald: Goodbye, Twitter

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of over 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Every household in Wales invited to collect and plant a free tree as part of plans for National Forest for Wales

Something Wonderful

There was a baby chimp born at The Sedgwick County Zoo, the baby had to be put on oxygen for a few days. This is a clip of it being reintroduced to its mother for the first time. pic.twitter.com/E3uwemfhjq

— 🥀_Imposter_🕸️ (@Imposter_Edits) November 18, 2022

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Elsewhere for November 13, 2022

Posted on November 13, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 11/13/2022:

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

H/T Brad Dowdy: John Dee’s marginalia

Via Tim Bray: Just Don’t

How My Latest Book Ended Up Self-Published

Food and Drink

How to make creamy soups without adding dairy

From basmati to jasmine: how to choose the right rice for your meal

Write Note Pads: Notebooks and Planners Referral link.

History and Archaeology

The Yasmina Dog From an archaeologist:

The story of my favorite ancient Roman dog

Politics and Society

The culture wars are pushing some teachers to leave the classroom

The growing polarization in the nation’s classrooms comes as many schools are struggling to hold on to teachers and staff. One recent study estimates there are more than 36,500 teacher vacancies across the country and more than 163,500 teachers are either not fully certified or not certified in the subject they are teaching. Those figures are conservative, because data from more than a dozen states could not be collected, according to the study. Meanwhile, a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office says “[negative] perception of the teaching profession and perceived lack of support for current teachers” are “among key recruitment and retention challenges.”

Science and Nature

The plot thickens: new study reveals complex identity of ancient Britons

They are the oldest human fossils ever found on British soil. Excavated 30 years ago at Boxgrove, in West Sussex, the leg bone and teeth of an early human species were subsequently dated as being around 480,000 years old.

Other finds made at Boxgrove also revealed these ancient men and women were hunting horses, deer and perhaps even rhinos and butchering them. Crucially, they were doing so with sophisticated stone tools long before the appearance of Homo sapiens – though the exact identity of these individuals remained a puzzle. . . . In an attempt to resolve the issue an ambitious British and Spanish project has tried to uncover the identities of these mysterious people by attempting to link them with the former residents of another remarkable fossil site, La Sima de los Huesos – the Pit of Bones – near Burgos in northern Spain.

Original paper here.

Can a daily crossword puzzle slow cognitive decline?

H/T @snailseyeview: Older male Superb Lyrebird excluding a younger male from his territory.

@RickiCoughlan: Not uncommon this time of year in Royal National Park. I observed this for around 20 minutes. At one point they flew straight over my head and brushed me with their wings.

Technology

Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

‘A Misinformation Nightmare’

The tech CEO spending millions to stop Elon Musk

Dan O’Dowd says Tesla’s ‘Full Self Driving’ software shouldn’t be on the road. He’ll keep running over test dummies until someone listens.

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

Did pandemic stress change women’s periods?

During the pandemic, many women experienced high levels of stress as they took on a disproportionate share of child care and housework and dropped out of the labor force in large numbers.
Now, a new study suggests that all of this extra stress may have changed women’s menstrual cycles in a variety of ways.

Don’t work with psychopaths

Most of them are rather charming, charismatic too (these are known and consistent traits of psychopaths).

I observe the arrogance, the deceit, the explicit language and framing choices. (In a somewhat bizarre way, it is so creative that it’s really interesting). I also ask clarifying questions. But here’s the thing: they are much better at this game than I am. More sophisticated. Remorse is not part of their repertoire. They are in it to win it, regardless of the reality of facts or the consequence of actions.

Princess Diana was the queen of revenge fashion

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

An amazing feeling’: asylum seeker stuck in hotel thanks Observer readers for sending books

Something Wonderful

he ranks of TDF unite people of many civil specialties, including archeologists.

While constructing a defense line, the soldiers of the 251 TDF battalion discovered and preserved previously unknown archeological artifacts and were featured in the @archaeologyEAA publication.

‘It was giving me a hug’: video captures rare giant octopus encounter

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Elsewhere for November 6, 2022

Posted on November 6, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 11/6/2022:

Art, Music, Fim, and Video

The underrated Star Trek: why you should watch Deep Space Nine

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

The Libby app put a refuge in my pocket when I needed it most

Now Do Amazon

One of the great literary hoaxes of our time is the book spine. A staggering number of logos stare out from dust jackets, celebrating names including Crown, Vintage, Ballantine, Knopf, and Dial. But the pluralism implied by this diversity of monikers is a sham. In the U.S., nearly 100 of them belong to a single company: Penguin Random House. The rest are owned by a small handful of competitors, one of which is Simon & Schuster.

At the end of 2020, PRH, the result of a 2013 merger between Penguin and Random House, announced its intention to buy S&S.

Fanfiction was the guilty pleasure that helped me unlock the internet

Food and Drink

The F*ck You Buffet: Secret Family Recipes of Kids Betrayed by Their Homophobic Parents*and A Few Recipes from Good and Kind People Because Balance is Key

History and Archaeology

Mary, Queen of Scoffs: jailed monarch ate only the best, papers reveal

She was executed as a Roman Catholic threat to the English throne, but during her long years of imprisonment by her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots was still treated as a queen, previously unpublished documents reveal.
The British Library has acquired official financial accounts for the 1580s which detail the finest foods and other luxuries given to the Scottish queen during her captivity at Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire and Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire.

Andrea Clarke, the library’s lead curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts, told the Observer that this was “deluxe imprisonment. These provide a really colourful snapshot of [Mary’s] existence in prison. The food that’s listed is incredible, from the basic – bread, butter, eggs – to a massive range of poultry, fish and meat, some of which I’d never heard of and had fun looking up.”

Politics and Society

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

Science and Nature

Preventing wildfire with the Wild Horse Fire Brigade

Why did images of early pregnancy cause such a social media firestorm?

Most people don’t know what early pregnancy actually looks like. That complicates abortion discussions.

Edward Stone Has Been the Voyagers’ Project Scientist for 50 Years. He Just Retired

Technology

‘I don’t want to work with these clowns.’ Inside the culture war that Elon Musk has unleashed at Twitter.

Whenever I’m on Twitter, I always find something that makes me laugh, or learn something. I don’t engage. And that’s one of Twitter’s problems, engagement. And those who do engage often get harassed. The content moderation is a work in progress. But striving to be safe and secure for everyone really matters. Or at least it did matter. I don’t know if it will anymore. I’m very concerned for the future of the platform. I think problems of safety and harassment will get worse before they get better.

Twitter layoffs begin, sparking a lawsuit and backlash

Jessica González, CEO of Free Press, which is part of the #StopToxicTwitter coalition, said she and leaders of more than 40 other groups met with Musk earlier this week.
“He promised to retain and enforce the election-integrity measures that were on Twitter’s books before his takeover. With today’s mass layoffs, it is clear that his actions betray his words,” González said.
She said Musk was taking apart Twitter’s investment in fact checking, moderators and policy, which could allow more dangerous disinformation to spread, especially so close to Election Day.

Elon Musk Blocks Top Marketer Who Questioned Twitter’s Retreat From Content Moderation

Twitter, cut in half

The layoffs gutted entire teams, including the ethical AI team, which is responsible for making Twitter’s algorithms more transparent, the communications team, which — according to one estimate — went from roughly 80 people down to two, and the entire human rights organization. Other teams that were hit hard: the disability experience team, the internet technology team (which keeps Twitter up and running), marketing, social, and the “Redbird” organization for internal tools, according to the New York Times. The company’s employee resource groups were all shut down as well, employees said.

The company’s trust and safety teams were reduced by just 15 percent, tweeted Yoel Roth, who runs them. That relatively small decline reflects the brand-safety crisis that appears to be shaping up for Musk: multiple large advertisers have paused or pulled their spending amid concerns over Musk’s freewheeling style (and conspiratorial tweeting), and the head of the NAACP called for a total advertising boycott. (“They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” was Musk’s take.)

It was grim. It was also, in any number of ways, pointless: there had been no reason to do any of this, to do it this way, to trample so carelessly over the lives and livelihoods of so many people.

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

This Group Might Save Your LGBTQ Kid’s Life

As a queer person myself, I felt some hesitation when I initially joined the Mama Bears Facebook group several months ago, and read post after post from parents describing “grief” after a child came out as gay or trans. If this feels hard for you, I’d think, try being your queer child. But as I began to better understand the rapid and disorienting trajectory that many of these women were on, I saw how the group’s tactics, which echoed social-science research, accomplished a task that, in America in 2022, is nothing short of remarkable: helping change minds around a seemingly intractable cultural issue.

We should eat more plants. Here’s which ones are best for the planet. Probably not the ones you think . . .

Stuff I Wrote

The Rocketbook

Alternatives to Twitter I’ve been moving away for a while, but Musk and the related exodus of my friends is the death knell for Twitter. I’m hoping to encourage people to move back to blogging. Twitter at its best was a variant of the long comments threads of blogs, which often crossed servers to include comments on other blogs. I’m contemplating inviting friends to the Slack I use mostly for consulting work and tech support. I’m really not finding the kind of deep thread I favored on Twitter on the alternatives, though I am still participating in several.

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere for October 30, 2022

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 10/30/2022:

Art, Music, and Film

Doomed revival: Star Trek, Captain Kirk and the resurrection that never was

Judi Dench wins royal rumble as Netflix labels The Crown ‘fictional dramatisation’

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

Peterborough libraries offer amnesty on fines to recover 22,000 missing books

Food and Drink

How to make pulled pork – recipe

History and Archaeology

Greek monastery manuscripts tell new story of Ottoman rule

And the manuscripts tell a story at odds with the traditional understanding in Greece of Ottoman depredations in the newly conquered areas, through the confiscation of the Mount Athos monasteries’ rich real estate holdings. Instead, the new rulers took the community under their wing, preserved its autonomy and protected it from external interference.

Caesar’s favourite herb was the Viagra of ancient Rome. Until climate change killed it off

Perfume, tonic – even love potion – silphium was prized by the ancient Romans, but in its success lay the seeds of its own downfall

1,700-Year-Old Roman Villa Complex Identified By Archaeologists Using Google Earth Images in England

Science and Nature

Why did he suspect a COVID surge was coming? He followed the digital breadcrumbs

Over the course of the pandemic, social media sleuths, epidemiologists and health nerds alike began noticing an interesting trend in the review section for Yankee candles on Amazon.
Whenever there was an influx of negative reviews citing no smell, there was usually a spike in COVID cases to go along with it.

How a desert bloomed in the driest place on earth

A colossal meteorite struck Mars. Then NASA made an even bigger discovery.

Technology

David Sparks: The Trouble With Apple Watch Faces

She clicked sign-in with Google. Strangers got access to all her files.

You’ve probably seen it on lots of apps and websites: buttons urging you to sign in with your Google or Facebook account. Sometimes it’s to let you share files, photos or emails. Other times it’s to use Google or Facebook as a quick way to log in somewhere new.

My rule of thumb is to just say no.

There are too many ways using these buttons can leak personal information or help Big Tech track you.

H/T @lymond: Welcome to hell, Elon You Break It, You Buy It

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’“Congresswoman makes remark after former vice-president says there will be ‘pro-life majorities’ in House and Senate”

A retiree served food to the homeless for years. Then it got her arrested.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

How one school makes kindness a visible priority

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Dread About Samhain

Something Wonderful

Video: Whale’s majestic move brings dramatic end to marine rescue off Canada

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

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Elsewhere for October 16, 2022

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 10/16/2022:

Food and Drink

Piedmont on a plate: Italy’s lush land of food, wine and art

It’s brown, muddy-looking and could make your breath a bit stinky, but for lovers of the pungent and salty, bagna càuda is glorious. The recipe is simple: sliced garlic (a whole head per person!), olive oil and anchovies, cooked slowly to a sticky sludge into which diners dip potatoes, peppers (roasted or raw), celery, spring onions and, in Piedmont especially, cardoons – a thistle-like artichoke relative. With good friends, good bread and jugs of good red wine, it makes for a convivial evening.

History and Archaeology

Neanderthals and modern humans may have copied each other’s tools

Modern humans lived alongside Neanderthals for more than 1,000 years in Europe, according to research that suggests the two species may have imitated each other’s jewellery and stone tools.
Previously, it was known that humans and their ancient relatives existed at the same time on the European continent for more than 6,000 years and that the two species interbred on several occasions. But the extent of their interactions remains the focus of scientific investigation.

The latest paper suggests Homo sapiens may have coexisted with Neanderthals in France and northern Spain for 1,400-2,900 years before Neanderthals disappeared as a distinct species.

Politics and Society

Elizabeth Bear: What to do when you feel awful & nothing seems to make sense: identifying & navigating gaslighting.This is one of the most accurate discussions about gaslighting, and the most compassionate, I’ve seen

Reparations: The US town paying its black residents

Here’s every word from the 9th Jan. 6 committee hearing on its investigation

Science and Nature

Video:‘Very eerie’ mating call helps American elks find love

It worked! NASA successfully moved a stadium-sized asteroid.

Huge, unusually powerful explosion in space just detected by scientists

Alaska cancels snow crab season for first time after population collapses

Technology

Tour Amazon’s dream home, where every appliance is also a spy Everything Amazon learns about your family, your home and you

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

‘Do you believe this?’: New video shows how Nancy Pelosi took charge in Capitol riot

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Via @Michael Warburton: In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond. His reply was a doozy.

Something Wonderful

Fenrir, the world’s tallest living cat, supports animal shelters and HIV patients

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

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Elsewhere for October 9, 2022

Posted on October 9, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 10/09/2022:

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

They tried to shut down Drag Story Hour. A Montana bookstore fought back

Food and Drink

Strawberry Jam Easy, three ingredient, no pectin, strawberry jam.

Coffee vs. tea smackdown

History and Archaeology

iPad Pro is revolutionizing how archaeologists preserve the ancient history of Pompeii

Politics and Society

In Trump White House, classified records routinely mishandled, aides say

Early signs a new U.S. COVID surge could be on its way

“In the past, what’s happened in Europe often has been a harbinger for what’s about to happen in the United States,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “So I think the bottom line message for us in this country is: We have to be prepared for what they are beginning to see in Europe.”

Science and Nature

Half of world’s bird species in decline as destruction of avian life intensifies

Women’s Work

U.S. Soccer ‘failed’ women’s players, report finds, as new abuse claims emerge

Something Wonderful

Video: Ukraine Girl Bereft Without Her Cat is Reunited Thanks to Kind Strangers in 5 Countries and 7,000 Miles

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

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Elsewhere for September 25, 2022

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 9/25/2022:

Art, Music, and Film

Who Do the Benin Bronzes Belong To?

Against defenders armed with swords and muskets, the British-led force deployed machine guns and mobile artillery. Hundreds of Benin residents likely lost their lives.

The British drove into exile—and would later capture—Benin’s oba, or king, a man of semi-deified status known to history by his regnal name, Oba Ovonramwen. They looted the royal compound and packed the most beautiful contents into crates to ship home. Then a fire ignited, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not. Shrines, storehouses, the homes and burial places of past obas—all were destroyed.

Most of the spoils were auctioned off in London. The artworks of carved ivory and cast metal were immediately acclaimed as masterpieces: heads of kings and queen mothers, symbolic animal figures, bells to summon the spirits of the ancestors, metal plaques that depicted court life and the great deeds of the obas. The artistry of the finest pieces is extraordinarily delicate. Seen from the side or bottom, a metalwork from the great age of Benin art, from roughly 1450 to 1650, is astonishingly thin, only about an eighth of an inch thick.

J. Michael Straczynski Rallies Fans to Save the Babylon 5 Reboot

See @straczynski: The fate of the #Babylon5 pilot may be decided end of this month.

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

The Lindisfarne Gospels review – was Eadfrith the monk Britain’s first great artist?

Interview: Elizabeth Strout: ‘There’s a quiet rumbling of violence in America. Is it going to expand and explode?’

Food and Drink

Which chilli when?

Different chillies perform different roles in cooking, and they’re not just about heat; chillies bring sweet, sour, fruity, earthy and smoky notes, too. So you need to understand why a chilli is there in the first place before switching it for an alternative.

6 apple cake recipes that smell and taste like home

History and Archaeology

A second ancient canoe is found in Wisconsin — this time tracing back to 1000 B.C.

Science and Nature

‘They really don’t ever forget’: 10 things only an elephant-keeper can tell you

Technology

Federico Viticci: iOS 16: The MacStories Review

iOS 16 review: unlocking the lock screen

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

Nina Totenberg looks back on her decades-long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Hilary Mantel: Royal BodiesAudio lecture and transcript.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Patagonia founder gives away company: ‘Earth is now our only shareholder’

In a letter posted to the company’s website, Chouinard wrote that ownership of the company, which was founded in 1973 and reportedly valued at about $3 billion, has been transferred to a trust that was created to protect the company’s values and mission as well as a nonprofit organization.

“Earth is now our only shareholder,” it said. “100% of the company’s voting stock transfers to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, created to protect the company’s values; and 100% of the nonvoting stock had been given to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.”

Elton John ‘flabbergasted’ and teary after Biden surprises him with medal

‘This is what a river should look like’: Dutch rewilding project turns back the clock 500 years

Something Wonderful

Once pushed to the brink of extinction, condors are soaring in Northern California skies again with the help of an Indigenous tribe and a team of scientists.

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Elsewhere

Elsewhere for September 11, s022

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Lisa Spangenberg / 0 Comment

You should read this for 9/11/2022:

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

H/T @Elizabeth Bonesteel: Former U.S. attorney dishes on how he held line against Trump White House

Education

My high school paper published a ‘pride’ issue. Then we got canceled.

Politics and Society

Via Rachel Clark @doctor_oxford: The extraordinary moment when the great humanitarian & trauma surgeon David Nott met the Queen, shortly after his return from Aleppo.

Technology

Steve Jobs Archive

SetApp: A Suite of macOS Apps for a Single Price Affiliate link for a great collection of ver 200 apps for macOS and iOS for a flat subscription fee.

Women’s Work

The Short, Unhappy Life Of Elizabeth Windsor

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

New York returns $19m worth of stolen art to Italy

Something Wonderful

Deer Lounge Under Cherry Blossom Trees In Japan’s Nara Park pic.twitter.com/kX34D1i8ot

— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) September 6, 2022

“>Deer in Nara Park, Japan.

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.