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In 1822, someone in northern Germany shot a stork. The bird fell, revealing a 31.5-inch arrow lodged in its neck. The real question wasn't how it could still fly—it was where that arrow had come from. For Centuries, People Thought Birds Flew to the Moon During Winter—Until an Arrow Shot in Africa Landed in Germany [Xatakaon]

DC band Sub-radio here to give you a catchy lil ditty about one of the worst people! And tbh, a pretty fun Cake cover.

Fossil clue suggests echidna ancestors lived in water like platypus. A study of a 100-million-year-old bone suggests the ancient relative of the echidna and the platypus was semiaquatic — and echidnas moved back to the land from the water as they evolved.

A poetry competition using the words flagged by the Trump Administration. (Link goes to the Submittable portal which requires registration). Submit an original poem that makes creative use of the words that the Trump administration is flagging on government websites and research papers. See the list (PDF). There is no fee to enter. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. A free anthology will be published.I feel...

For a group of not-terribly serious holiday romance movies, Netflix's Christmas Prince films actually demand a long and significant alternative history. The map shown in the third movie of the series, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, show three kingdoms ruling over eastern Europe, two of which have royal families that speak RP English, and one of which is east Asian and uses Chinese...

Under the fold, Ontario small presses Guernica Editions, Invisible Publishing, and Palimpsest Press.Here's the third in a series of Canadian small press roundups. Guernica Editions publishes poetry, novels, short story collections, literary and cultural essays, and theatre. CBC recommends As Good a Place as Any, a novel set in 1970s Toronto by Rebecca Păpucaru, Remaindered People & Other Stories, fiction about people on the...

What is remarkable about the 1970s, and the subsequent half century, is, from Foucault's perspective, not that a "new" liberalism emerged (as, he implied, "new" liberalisms are continually emerging) through a reshuffling of economic policies, but that its ideological dominance was established through, or amid, the narrowing of this formerly expansive repertory down to a single, minimal figure of "economic man." from Just Another...

Ander Louis, an author from Melbourne, Australia, is in the midst of translating Tolstoy's epic, War & Peace into Bogan Australian.As he rightly says: "Early 1800s Russia wouldn't be all that bad a place to live, if it weren't for all the social protocol and that bloody Napoleon bastard, trying to invade the place. This is not a parody. This is not a spoof....

The series is considered to be among the most influential comedy programs in history. In 1998, Entertainment Weekly praised the series as one of the "100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time". In 2007, Time magazine selected it for its "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". Jerry Seinfeld has declared that The Abbott and Costello Show, with its overriding emphasis upon funny situations...

One Million Chessboards . Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There are no turns. You can move between boards.From the brain behind One Million Checkboxes, you can read more about it on the creator's website.

There are four cor-ten forms in a row, four objects different than they appear. Not closer, not through a mirror. Stand to one side and see an inverted, truncated cone; shift your vantage point a few feet to the right, and it's a parallelogram in front of you. But the point is to go inside—you don't look at them in space but inhabit the...

There are glimpses of hope, even beauty: whispering Koranic Hadiths on the Autobahn while doing Amazon runs, savoring self-made wine in a French village where a family has lived for six generations, or finding queer liberation in Berlin. Judah's dispatch on the war in Ukraine, one of the best in the book, reflects the otherworldly terror of battle. He describes a swamp «where everything...

Rick Steves' The Story of Fascism in Europe - "In this one-hour special, Rick travels back a century to learn how fascism rose and then fell in Europe — taking millions of people with it. We'll trace fascism's history from its roots in the turbulent aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people rose up, to the rise of charismatic leaders who...

In tonight's Last Minute, a note on Bill Owens, who until this past week was executive producer of 60 Minutes. He was our boss. Bill was with CBS News nearly 40 years -- 26 years at 60 Minutes. He covered the world, covered combat, the White House. His was a quest to open minds, not close them. If you've ever worked hard for a...

The signal (and apparently extemporary - almost certainly not) Vatican meeting between Zelensky and Trump is producing a wide range of analysis seeking what was going or or alluded to. Women's Wear Daily / WWD delves into Zelensky's wardrobe and it reads like a retelling of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition / PR [coffeeandflapjacks blog a book review blog].History has definitely returned [.pdf @ C21...

A group of Indonesian and French (among others) researchers has, for the first time filmed a living Indonesian coelacanth in the wild, at a depth of 145 m. In addition to the various PR buzz, they've also published a scientific paper on the sighting.Often called a "living fossil"* (a term I, as an evolutionary biologist, don't especially like, but it's used all the time)...

For more than a decade, O'Brien kept a meticulous log of mixed metaphors and malaprops uttered in Ford meetings, from companywide gatherings to side conversations. It documents 2,229 linguistic breaches, including the exact quote, context, name of the perpetrator and color commentary. from The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues' Verbal Flubs [WSJ; ungated]

Wes Anderson has had many creative partners. But have any stimulated the juices of anticipation more than his most recent? Richard Ayoade will feature in The Phoenician Scheme (also Hanks, Del Toro, Ahmed, Johansson, Cumberbatch etc.). This is the trailer.A bit more on what it's about.

Under the fold, a small press roundup for Canadian presses Above/Ground Press, Figure 1 Publishing, and Inhabit Media. (Small press previouslies.)In honour of Canada's federal election on Monday (discussion here), I put together a big post of over 60 Canadian small presses. But it was so long I felt like most of it would end up getting glossed over. So instead here's three (and...

Pat Finnerty is boycotting Chevrolet over the crappy interpolations in its commercials and the lack of Bob Seger. It seems to be going okay, so far.

The Identification of Non-binary Gender in Prehistoric Burials in Central Europe A new paper from Cambridge University Press on evidence of non-binary people in prehistoric Europe.There is some reason to believe that much evidence of the existence of non-binary people was intentionally erased [reddit] by Western colonizing nations over the last few centuries. The work of re-claiming this history, and restoring these cultural realities...

Do you like writing instruments? Do you like being able to stab people if necessary? Have I got something for you.instructional video

A new reality show featuring the talented and emotional judge from The Great Pottery Throw Down (highly recommend), Keith Brymer Jones, and his partner Marj Hogarth, actor and self-taught textile designer, as they renovate a new home and studio: Our Welsh Chapel DreamFrom Channel 4's website: Keith Brymer Jones and his partner Marj throw themselves into the restoration of a derelict Welsh chapel, as...