I don't necessarily trust the source of this alleged Chinese folklore, but se non è vero, è ben trovato. A legendary batrachian appeased by booze and opera: 

The Frog General (青蛙將軍) is one of southern Fujian’s most charming folk deities, a fallen Tang dynasty general said to have returned as a spirit in frog form. He favors high places on temple walls and answers summons made with clean vessels and strong liquor, his beloved offering. After drinking, his cheeks glow red, and his taste for opera awakens.... When the Frog General selects a show, fortune blooms. Wherever he leaps, blessings follow.

Hence, with some corroboration here. 

This may in fact have happened to me ten days ago. I'm still sore. 

In Japanese folklore kama itachi is a yokai that in English translates as sickle weasel. They look like weasels with spiky fur and long razor sharp claws and appear riding on dust whirlwinds, sometimes barking like dogs. They move so fast that they become basically invisible. Kama itachi travel in groups of three to hunt. The first weasel knocks the victim to the ground, the second uses their sharp claws to slice out chunks of their flesh, and the third applies a healing remedy that mostly hides the damage. This all happens so quickly that the victim believes they simply tripped, fell and scratched themselves and they remain completely unaware that their flesh has been dinner for a kama itachi.

Certainly can't disprove it.... Via Curious Ordinary on BlueSky

“Jane? Why, she was a little old maid ’oo’d written ’alf a dozen books about a ’undred years ago. ’Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ to ’em, either. I know. I had to read ’em. They weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d call even interestin’—all about girls o’ seventeen (they begun young then, I tell you), not certain ’oom they’d like to marry; an’ their dances an’ card-parties an’ picnics, and their young blokes goin’ off to London on ’orseback for ’air-cuts an’ shaves...

"... it’s a very select Society, an’ you’ve got to be a Janeite in your ’eart, or you won’t have any success... You take it from me, Brethren, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. Gawd bless ’er, whoever she was."

IYKYK (rather the whole point)

Happy 250th, Jane! 

 

 Recommended podcast episode: Medieval eels, plus maps and history, but mostly eels. 

 Enheduanna's Song to Innana translated into Scots. Sample:

Draigon-lik      ye’ve pushionit the merse,
Yir thunnery rair      wedes aa the flooirs awa,
Fleet wattir      hurlygushin fae the muntain,
Foremaist Muin-Dochter,      Queen o Heivin an Erd.
Ootpoorin fluffed flames      doon aa ower the laund,
Graced wi the Heich God’s airts,       baist-muntit Leddy,
Ye gie deliverances      as the Heich God bids;
Ye awn grand rites –      and wha can ken whit’s yours?

An English version if your Scots isn't quite up to snuff. 

 "A samurai looks on as a giant frog runs over the menials"

Found while scouring Wikimedia Commons. Colour woodcut by Kuniyoshi, 1847/1848. 

 Upupa dicit, rana coaxat: The first children's picture book?

 The 23,000 year chronology for those footprints at White Sands seems to be holding up to confirmation.

This paper reports on an independent study of the chronology of a previously unrecognized stratigraphic record of paleolake Otero that is directly traceable into the track-bearing alluvium. The stratigraphic data along with 26 additional radiocarbon dates on palustrine mud determined by two labs independent of the original investigations document an aggrading lake/wetland/stream record that includes the tracks and spans >23.6 thousand years to ~17.0 thousand calibrated years before present, providing another line of evidence further supporting the validity of an LGM age for the tracks. 

 Magpie hunts a baby rattlesnake:

 Cuttlefish pass marshmallow test

To examine whether cuttlefish could delay gratification for a better reward, researchers (Schnell et al. 2021) offered them an Asian shore crab (a less preferred food) immediately, or a grass shrimp (a more preferred food) if they were able to wait. The food was offered in two chambers with sliding doors. Before the test, cuttlefish were trained to recognize symbols on the doors that indicated if it would open immediately (a circle) or with a delay (a triangle). Most of the cuttlefish waited 50 to 130 seconds to get the more desirable grass shrimp, comparable to time delays shown by chimpanzees and crows.

Meanwhile in Taos: prosecutorial misconduct centering around witchcraft, in the aftermath of a decapitation. Head went in the Rio of course. Hard to pullquote this one, just read it.

 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): picpic ('c' goes 'ts')
Lushootseed (Snoqualmie): pišpiš
Chinook Wawa: puss'-puss

Contrast Shoshone languages, which seem to have simply grabbed the English: kedi, kiidi, kaattu

If you like this sort of thing, here's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? in Nimiipuutimt.

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

 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 translation: “Tie a bow on him and employ him as a waiter.” What it means: “The object/human you are speaking about is useless.”

“Mela żobb, Sur Kappillan!” Literal translation: “Therefore penis, Mr Parish Priest!” What it means: “You bet!”

I haven't made my deep dive yet, but this looks like a promising series: Philosophising in... For instance, Philosophising in Sakha (that's Yakut to old-schoolers). Or you could try the posts on Syriac, Amharic, Cuneiform and more.

 Via Languagehat (of course, because is anyone else even attempting to put anything interesting on the internet anymore?)

 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.

Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille begins with a somber section in the key of E minor and tempo marking Lentem (slowly), freely performed. It is followed by a contrasting lively piece titled Les Relevailles in the key of E major, tempo marking Gay, joyously celebrating the patient’s return to life. The score is annotated in considerable detail, guiding the performer in what the music is attempting to convey. As Joseph Kiefer accurately observes: “The music successfully depicts the apprehension, fear, agitation, and other emotions of the patient as well as the mounting tension of the operation itself, building up to the climactic extraction of the stone.”Les Relevailles is etymologically of particular interest. It refers to an ancient ritual that designates a period after delivery when the mother needs to regain her strength. Historically this period lasted 40 days and may be related to the religious ceremony known as “churching.”

What Tenochtitlan looked like

HT: Languagehat

 Dealing with dinosaurs: Darren Naish recounts cassowary wrangling.

Including a note for the speculative fiction crowd: "Cassowaries themselves might think of us as slightly unusual members of cassowary kind. Keep this in mind when imagining a hypothetical zoo housing non-bird dinosaurs. At least some such animals would likely become sexually fixated on humans."

 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 monstrous taimen (known as chirai in Ainu) large and voracious enough to eat deer, bear, and humans whole. In Mongolia, legend tells of an especially harsh winter when starving herdsmen discovered a giant taimen trapped in river ice. Relieved to find food, the herdsmen chopped off pieces of its flesh. They survived the winter, but when the river ice melted in spring, the giant taimen came onto the land, tracked them down, and ate them all.

More taimen lore and biogeography here.

 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 would need to see them at the center of religious iconography regarding knowledge and creation worldwide. And this would have to be the case from the beginning. This seems like an impossibly high bar to clear.

And yet, this is true of snakes, which are worshiped all across the globe, and have been from the beginning. One strange coincidence is how often they are associated with knowledge, despite having a peanut for a brain. What no one has noticed is that snakes themselves contain a hallucinogen: their venom. I argue that there was an ancient psychedelic snake cult concerned with selfhood from which modern snake symbolism descends.

 Filed under "sure, why not?".

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 far it is relatively unsensationalized.

Their own summary:

Ireland, 1984. St Brides School for young ladies opens its doors in the quiet fishing village of Burtonport, county Donegal -- but all is not as it seems.

The mistress and 'girls' appear to believe that they live not only in a different century, but in an entirely different world.

They are The Silver Sisterhood...

Most of the St Brides games may be found on Internet Archive. If you like that sort of thing, they are the sort of thing that you will like. 

Happy New Year! 

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 is no clearer than before. At least I now know how it's traditionally pronounced: /ˈteɪsiː/ (generally with a Monty Python accent, I trust). 

Related and perhaps even stranger:

The usual explanation of brandy is Latin for a goose is that it must be read as What is the Latin for goose? (The answer is) brandy, with a pun on the word answer: the homophonous Latin noun anser means goose, and brandy was drunk as a digestive after the eating of goose, in the same way as an answer follows a question. A variant, brandy is Latin for fish, first appeared with the following explanation in London Labour and the London Poor (London, 1851), by Henry Mayhew (1812-87), English social researcher, journalist, playwright and advocate of reform:

We are told that the thirst and uneasy feeling at the stomach, frequently experienced after the use of the richer species of fish, have led to the employment of spirit to this kind of food. Hence, says Dr. Pereira, the vulgar proverb, “Brandy is Latin for Fish.”

Via Languagehat, of course.

 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., mostly just reading Phenomenology of Spirit in a small shelter with a propane heater that had a minor leak--which only enhanced the hypoxic environment. I still have my notes but they look like marginalia from Miskatonic University.

 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, funnily enough, John Lennon would have played Gollum.

Fortunately, Tolkien himself had the wisdom to cast this idea into the fires of Orodruin.

Multiocular O - just going to quote Wikipedia:

Multiocular O (ꙮ) is an exotic glyph variant of the Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the Old Church Slavonic phrase "серафими многоꙮчитїи" (serafimi mnogoočitii, "many-eyed seraphim").

There are apparently other instances of Old Church Slavonic scribes playing around thus, rather like people dotting their i-s with little hearts or me turning the letter S into a python given the slightest excuse. 

Hat tip: Odious.

 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 the translator. No, but he wrote the preface and did some editing.)

 Sloth bears! (with excellent photographs)