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.

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.”

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.

 Vedius Pollio and execution by lamprey... Wikipedia's notes claim that it must rather have been morays. Appalling and rather tough to credit either way, even by Roman standards, but nonetheless remarkable.

Let it never be said that appalling '70s culture was solely an American phenomenon: the Russians could hold their own. Dschinghis really starts gettin' down around 2:26.

The letter X is made to vex. What did children's alphabet literature do before x-rays and xylophones were going concerns? Xanthippe was apparently a popular choice:



Or:

X is a letter that seldom is used,
But its shape will remind us how sinners abused
Their Saviour and God, when, with brute, cruel force,
They compelled Him to bleed and die on the cross!

And, an entire alphabet mocking the Cubists.

Via Languagehat.

The Soviets filmed The Hobbit in 1985. They include some of the songs.

Needless to say, if you watch this you have nobody to blame but yourself. But it's still not as bad as at least two of the three Peter Jackson films.

You know what limited this sort of thing in the past? Dueling.

The world of young-adult-fiction Twitter, or YA Twitter, is a very intense place, prone to constant callouts and opinion-policing, particularly on matters of identity and social justice. And things seem to have only gotten worse since Kat Rosenfield wrote the definitive article about this subculture for Vulture, "The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter" in 2017.

One with Nineveh and Tyre

Supreme Courtship is a comedic visual novel adventure game, where you learn about the people and proceedings of our nation's highest Court. In Supreme Courtship, you’ll be able to:

* Join a bench with young, stylish versions of your favorite Justices - Justice Ginsburg, Chief Justice Roberts, and more!
* Master the powers of the third branch of government!
* Experience the world’s first Judicial Friendship Simulator

Thy mercy on Thy people.

Exporting our vices to weaken our competitors is worse than launching plague-ridden corpses over the city wall with a trebuchet.

Japanese anime has conquered China. In Chinese, the term “2D culture” (erciyuan wenhua) describes both the television shows, video games, anime (cartoons), manga (comic books), music, and movies inspired by Japanese pop culture and the millions of Chinese who consume these products every week. This “second dimension” is one of the fastest-growing industries in China—with more than 200 million consumers, the market is projected to reach more than $30 billion by 2020. 

But the runaway success of Japanese pop culture among China’s youth has caused confusion, shock, and anger in a country still bitter over historical grievances. Many Chinese see this as a war for the hearts of their children—one they’re losing.

Consider the hagfish, at length if you think you're hard enough. Choice hagfish tidbits:

Typically, a hagfish will release less than a teaspoon of gunk from the 100 or so slime glands that line its flanks. And in less than half a second, that little amount will expand by 10,000 times—enough to fill a sizable bucket.

You could inject a hagfish with an extra 40 percent of its body volume without stretching the skin.

The entire hagfish is effectively a large gut, and even that is understating matters: Their skin is actually more efficient at absorbing nutrients than their own intestines.

[Last but not least, a photo caption:] A car is covered in hagfish, and slime, after an accident on Highway 101.

On the independent recommendations of some friends whose taste I now esteem more lightly, I have started The Name of the Wind. I can say without exaggeration that this book is the worst commercially successful fantasy novel I've ever read--and I've read every Dragonlance novel ever written. The prose is atrocious, the plot non-existent, and the protagonist is the literary equivalent of Lin-Manuel Miranda, possessor of the world's most punchable face. IThe last character I hated as much as Kvothe was Dolores Umbridge. He is Thersites's self-insert Gary Sue.

I will probably blog more about this once I have cleared the taste from my mouth with strong drink.

AI does classic book covers: Link one.
AI does classic book covers: Link two.

"This possibly marks one of the few times in history when a computer generated code to be executed by humans": Knitting patterns generated by AI. Choice quotes from knitters:

 "...a bona fide eldritch horror..." "Okay, now who here has read Snow Crash?"

For Odious:



Also this:



You're welcome!

I never know how late to these parties I've arrived, but here:

Things I Won't Work With

A quick paragraph or two from some selections:

From "Sand Won't Save You This Time":

Let’s put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using [chlorine trifluoride] in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction.

From "Azidotetrazolate Salts":

An early favorite has appeared in my “most alarming chemical papers” file for this year. Thomas Klapoetke and Joerg Stierstorfer from Munich have published one with a simple title that might not sound unusual to people outside the field, but has made every chemist I’ve shown it to point like a bird dog: “The CN7 Anion”. The reason that one gets our attention is that compounds with lots of nitrogens in them – more specifically, compounds with a high percentage of nitrogen by weight – are a spirited bunch. They hear the distant call of the wild, and they know that with just one leap of the fence they can fly free as molecules of nitrogen gas. And that’s never an orderly process. If my presumably distant cousin Nick Lowe does indeed love the sound of breaking glass, then these are his kinds of compounds. A more accurate song title for these latest creations would be “I Love the Sound Of Shrapnel Bouncing Off My Welder’s Mask”, but that sort of breaks up the rhythm.

Seedlings of the parasitic plant dodder can detect nearby plants (i.e. potential victims) and grow toward them.

One trouble with having gone through a certain sort of adolescence is that one cannot read the samkhya sutra without thinking about it in terms of a Dungeons and Dragons encounter table.

"Efficient Causes! Roll 1d8:

1) Virtue. Evolve to a higher plane (gain one level).
2) Knowledge. Emancipate and reroll.
3) Dispassion. Immune to purusa; gain 'absorption in pakriti' quality.
4) Power. Automatically succeed on next roll.
5) Vice. Descent to negative material plane.
6) Ignorance. As Hold Person.
7) Passion. Roll on Reincarnation table.
8) Weakness. Fail next opposed roll."

I'm not saying it's the Deep Ones, but..... Did bioluminescent pyrosomes start the Vietnam War?

News of the 21st Century: the Navy is synthesizing hagfish slime and contemplating its potential.

“From a tactical standpoint, it would be interesting to have a material that can change the properties of the water at dilute concentrations in a matter of seconds,” Ryan Kincer, a materials engineer at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division, said in a statement.

The Navy also envisions using the material in products to protect firefighters and divers, as an anti-shark spray, and as a coating for ships to protect against algae, barnacles and other aquatic life that typically attach to them.