New Mexico is stretching an inch every 40 years. Surprisingly evenly, as it turns out.

Far out: Saturn's north pole features a rotating hexagonal clouds system.

My kind of poem:

Please Sir, God of Death
Don’t make it my turn today,
not today
There’s fish curry for dinner.

-Bakibab Borkar

Via photographer Rajan Parrikar, who notes that the poem "captured the essence of what it means to be Goan".

I can't believe I've lived over three decades unaware of this:

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

-Tennyson, The Kraken

Hat tip to Derb (apropos of something very random)

Vermin Supreme for President:

I'm quite amused by the New Mexican's cover art for the state centennial:

Fragment of an unfinished libretto:

JIM WALKER:
Signori, ascoltate! Credimi, mio ben!
É un vil menzogno, bugiardi son tutti.
Io giuro, credimi, per carità,
Texano non son io!

FRA MARTINEZ (con l'ultimo velen):
Spergiurerai tu stesso davanti a Dio?
La verità io so, ai popoli la proclamo:
Texano voi siete!

GIUSEPPINA:
Vil traditor!

POPOLI:
Al patibolo! Al patibolo!

-from I Carnefici di Taos (Act II finale), dated January 1912, Prawne family archives

Och, science!

Scottish scientists recreate Shackleton's whisky

Cephalopod mimics fish, fish mimics cephalopod:

What distinguishes a really nice map from a generic, mass-produced map?

....it may be the last important paper map ever to depict our country.

True and sad. I will also note that aficionados of clickable, zoomable, interactive maps seem to have a habit of dying a dog's death on backroads of the American West. Cartographic geekery can save your life!