Odious and Peculiar

 Magpie hunts a baby rattlesnake:

 Cuttlefish pass marshmallow test To examine whether cuttlefish could delay gratification for a better reward, researchers (Schnell et al. ...

Meanwhile in Taos: prosecutorial misconduct centering around witchcraft , in the aftermath of a decapitation. Head went in the Rio of course...

 The Yarn of the Nancy Bell by Sir W.S. Gilbert

 TIL - Apparently, Northwest native languages picked up their words for house cat from kitty-calling sounds: Nimiipuutimt (Nez Perce): picp...

 If you want to know what's being studied and learned at Göbekli Tepe (and don't we all?) without the pseudoscience and claptrap, Te...

 New Euripides fragments ! I'm unable, however, to find their actual text, translated or un-.

 I thought I'd posted this, but apparently not: Incomprehensible idioms in Maltese . “Libbislu ċoff u daħħlu wejter!” Literal transl...

I haven't made my deep dive yet, but this looks like a promising series: Philosophising in... For instance, Philosophising in Sakha (t...

 3d model comparison: Aurochs cranium versus modern cow . Hiking with these in the landscape would be... exciting. HT: Searun at Querencia

A real musical oddity from the French Baroque: Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille , i.e. Scene of Cutting for the Stone by Marin Marais. ...

What Tenochtitlan looked like HT: Languagehat

 Dealing with dinosaurs: Darren Naish recounts cassowary wrangling. Including a note for the speculative fiction crowd: "Cassowaries th...

 The smurfs are an obvious reference to the Barallot heresy. Gargamel represents the Dominicans.

Huchen and taimen appetites have also found their way into folklore. Ainu stories from Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido speak of monstrou...

 2024 total eclipse map

 Sundial for a binary star system.

 "Two or three years ago they were just another snake cult. " To believe that psychedelics had a central role in our evolution I ...

Anniversaire de Tintin: cinq mots qui ont changé de sens sous la plume d’Hergé

 I missed this when it dropped, but there's an examination of St Brides  done by the Assume Nothing podcast. I've not far in, but so...

The Computer: Ruin of Science and Threat to Mankind File under "well, not wrong". (ht)

As do so many, I have occasionally wondered about the idiom tace is Latin for a candle . Here is the phrase's history , though its logic...

 Via Odious: King of the Hill dubbed into Tocharian. You're welcome.

 More Hegel discovered . Just what we need? I spent a fairly pleasant winter a couple decades ago 'working' at around 12,000 ft., mo...

 Silphion  discovered growing in Turkey (maybe).

 Razib Khan's latest quiz . Median score is 16. I got 27, and felt pretty good about it.

  Scruton on architecture , at St. John's.

Rumor has it that McCartney would have played Frodo, George Harrison would’ve portrayed Gandalf, Ringo Starr would’ve been Sam, and, funnil...

Multiocular O - just going to quote Wikipedia : Multiocular O ( ꙮ ) is an exotic glyph variant of the Cyrillic letter O . This glyph vari...

 Highlander: a Celtic Opera Yes. That Highlander . Not, frankly, recommended except as a curiosity.

 Today I learned: the first English translation of Euclid included pop-ups for 3-D proofs . (I was fact checking a claim that John Dee was t...

  Sloth bears! (with excellent photographs)

 The Ambracian gulf is a lowland lament with brekekekex! from Preveza, koax! from Amphilochia and an answering koax! from across the mountai...

 This article details--no, it doesn't summarize well. Here's an entrée: "Out of this group would arise several radical separat...

Washington, man... where cattle rustling is white-collar crime. Exhibit A : Cody Easterday, has admitted to a scheme in which Defendant [Eas...

 Names for chess pieces in many languages

 All empires should be judged by their drink. Thus: Soviets: vodka English: gin Mongols: arkhi  (though I can't find a good source for t...

The Deep Sea . I was not prepared for some of the mammals.

 Fun toy: Scroll around the globe and eavesdrop on local streaming radio . Language lovers will have a great time. Music lovers will be inte...

 For all you liguistomasochists out there: Tongue twisters in Klallam , a Coast Salish language from Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Cli...