Category: Leon

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

April 30, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Thursday, April 30, 2020, which puts us about three or four days from D-Day (Duckling Day). Fingers crossed! It’s both and National Raisin Day and National Oatmeal Cookie Day. The latter often contain the formers, but I see the whole enterprise of making these unpalatable cookies as failed attempt to replicate chocolate-chip cookies.

It’s also Bugs Bunny Day (the sarcastic rabbit, then named “Happy Rabbit,” made his cartoon debut on this day in 1938), National Mr. Potato Head Day (this was the first toy ever advertised on television—on this day in 1952; did you ever have one? I did.), Hairstyle Appreciation Day (not this year!), International Jazz Day, a UNESCO holiday, Honesty Day, and, of course, Walpurgis Night. Finally, it’s Captain Tom Moore’s 100th birthday. Read about him below: he’s raised over $39 million for the NHS by using his walker to go back and forth in his yard.

Here’s an early cartoon in which Bugs Bunny, looking very different as Happy Rabbit, appears.  Notice that Elmer Fudd is already in full character. But Bugs (who appears 42 seconds in) is not yet neotenous, having a long, pointy face. You can see his evolution, which parallels that of Mickey Mouse, below the video:

The evolution of Bugs Bunny:

. . . and of Mickey Mouse. Notice how in both cases the head gets larger while the feet get larger. Steve Gould wrote about this with respect to Mickey, claiming that the character became more like a young animal, like a puppy or kitten (or human baby), to appeal to the public’s love of young-animal appearance:

Today’s Google Doodle is another lockdown game, one in which you can play the theramin. Click on the screenshot:

News of the Day: What do you think? Coronavirus deaths have reached 61,504 in the U.S. and about 228,000 worldwide. Several things happened yesterday, including a promising test of an antiviral drug. T

In Illinois, too, two Republican lawmakers have brought suit against Governor Pritzker, claiming that he does not have the authority to lock down the state (he does).  One suit, at least, was a personal suit, claiming that the lawmaker was personally injured. A judge has ruled in favor of the lawmaker, exempting him from the restrictions, but the state attorney general has appealed.

The New York Times has a news summary where you can click on these links.

Stuff that happened on April 30 includes:

  • 1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.
  • 1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.
  • 1803 – Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.
  • 1897 – J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London.
  • 1905 – Albert Einstein completes his doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich.

Here’s Einstein’s doctoral thesis. I guess they were printed up professionally in those days:

Here are the two great stars, along with the owner of the theater, Sid Grauman:

  • 1938 – The animated cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuts in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit, an early version of Bugs Bunny. [See above]
  • 1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.
  • 1966 – The Church of Satan is formed in The Black House, San Francisco.
  • 1973 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that White House Counsel John Dean has been fired and that other top aides, most notably H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, have resigned.
  • 1993 – CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free.
  • 2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the children of the last Tsar of Russia, whose entire family was executed at Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks.

All of the remains have, I think, been retrieved. Here’s a photo I took of their tombs at the Fortress of Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg (August 2011), along with pictures of the executed family:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1651 – Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, French priest and saint (d. 1719)
  • 1777 – Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist (d. 1855)
  • 1877 – Alice B. Toklas, American memoirist (d. 1967)
  • 1916 – Claude Shannon, American mathematician and engineer (d. 2001)
  • 1920 – Tom Moore, British army officer and fundraiser. 

Moore is 100 today, and reader Jeremy reminded me of his birthday. His great action, of course, was raising tons of money for the NHS and its Covid-19 staff by walking around his yard on a walker. Jeremy gave this information:

The Wikipedia page is pretty up-to-date: here’s the link to the relevant section of the article.  Here is a link to the Just Giving page, where you can see the total raised in real time.  £1 is currently worth $1.24, so right now the total he has raised is about £31 million ($39 million). The RAF will be marking his birthday with a special flypast and the BBC’s report also has photos of the 125,000 birthday cards he has been sent.
This is one of the loveliest stories to come out of the pandemic. Moore, a World War II veteran, has raised an immense amount of money, and, touchingly, did it by hobbling back and forth in his garden. He aimed for 100 traverses, but reached that on April 16, and is still walking! You can donate at the page above.  After I read more about his story, I donated as well. How can you resist? What a great feeling he must have after having raised so much dosh!
Captain Tom Moore (source)
  • 1926 – Cloris Leachman, American actress and comedian
  • 1945 – Annie Dillard, American novelist, essayist, and poet
  • 1985 – Gal Gadot, Israeli actress and model

Those whose life petered out on April 30 include:

  • 1865 – Robert FitzRoy, English admiral, meteorologist, and politician, 2nd Governor of New Zealand (b. 1805)

FitzRoy, depressed and impecunious, committed suicide by slitting his throat with a razor. He was, of course, the captain of HMS Beagle during Darwin’s voyage. Curiously, FitzRoy’s predecessor also committed suicide while on the previous voyage of that ship.

Here, from The Met, is Manet’s “Cats” (etching on paper; 1838-1839):

 

  • 1900 – Casey Jones, American engineer (b. 1863)
  • 1936 – A. E. Housman, English poet and scholar (b. 1859)
  • 1983 – George Balanchine, Russian dancer and choreographer (b. 1904)
  • 2016 – Harry Kroto, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1939)

Meanwhile in Dobzyn, Hili has a case of confirmation bias:

Hili: Is this the ray of hope?
A: No, it’s the flash of the camera.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy to jest światło nadziei?
Ja: Nie, odbłysk flesza.
Here’s Szaron:

And nearby, Elzbieta shares her sandwich with Leon:

Leon: Give me a bite to eat!

In Polish: Daj coś przekąsić!

And Mietek is all grown up and wanting to hunt.

Mietek: What a pheasant!

In Polish: Ale bażant!!!

From Susan:

From Facebook:

From Jesus of the Day. Cats! You can’t live without them, and you can’t live without them. . .

From reader Barry. This is one honking big shark, and why is the woman swimming so close to it? Reader Barry notes that she got into trouble for doing this.

https://twitter.com/backt0nature/status/1254547052236886021

Good news from reader Simon: Trump lost his “virus bounce” and is back to an approval rating ten points lower than his disapproval rating.

A tweet from Heather Hastie:

Matthew’s tweets. He suggested I try this, and, shaggy as I am, I’m willing to think about it!

Battling harvestmen, grappling with their chelicerae:

An amazingly melodic duck:

This is by far the best boredom-dispeller to come from the lockdowns. It’s the Fine Arts Game!

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 29, 2020 • 6:45 am

Good (?) morning on Hump Day: Wednesday, April 29, 2020, about four days from Hatch Day. It’s going to rain today and tomorrow in Chicago, but the weather should improve for the ducklings.

It’s also National Shrimp Scampi Day (more cultural appropriation), International Dance Day, Denim Day (you must read about the origin of this day), International Guide Dog Day, International Noise Awareness Day, and Zipper Day, celebrating the data on which this most useful closure was patented in 1913 by Gideon Sundback.

Today’s Google Doodle is part of the site’s continuing attempt to keep people amused by playing computer games. When you click on the screenshot below, you go to a game, “Fischinger,” in which you can compose your own music:

News of the Day: No worse than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are currently at 58,964; worldwide they stand at roughly 217,000. But remember, as they say annoyingly and frequently, “we’re all in this together.” Who decided that that mantra was going to cheer us up?

The New York Times has an interesting article today detailing how Sweden has handled the pandemic: no lockdowns, trust in citizens to keep social distance, wash their hands, and so on, and no closing of stores or schools.  It has not been a disaster. Excerpts:

While other countries were slamming on the brakes, Sweden kept its borders open, allowed restaurants and bars to keep serving, left preschools and grade schools in session and placed no limits on public transport or outings in local parks. Hairdressers, yoga studios, gyms and even some cinemas have remained open.

Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned. Museums have closed and sporting events have been canceled. At the end of March, the authorities banned visits to nursing homes.

That’s roughly it. There are almost no fines, and police officers can only ask people to oblige. Pedestrians wearing masks are generally stared at as if they have just landed from Mars.

The results? Much better than one would have predicted:

Trust is high in Sweden — in government, institutions and fellow Swedes. When the government defied conventional wisdom and refused to order a wholesale lockdown to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus epidemic, public health officials pointed to trust as a central justification.

Swedes, they said, could be trusted to stay home, follow social distancing protocols and wash their hands to slow the spread of the virus — without any mandatory orders. And, to a large extent, Sweden does seem to have been as successful in controlling the virus as most other nations.

Before you pooh-pooh this because you think that U.S. lockdowns must surely be the right solution, at least read the piece. And I calculated this:

U.S. population size/Sweden population size: about 32.1
U.S. coronavirus deaths/Sweden coronavirus deaths: about 25.0.

I think those figures are correct. Sweden still has more per capita deaths, but the difference is not huge. Of course other countries with lockdowns have even lower death rates than does America, and the U.S. has the huge aggregations of people in places like New York and Chicago.

Stuff that happened on April 29 includes:

  • 1429 – Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orléans.
  • 1770 – James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names.
  • 1834 – Charles Darwin during the second survey voyage of HMS Beagle, ascended the Bell mountain, Cerro La Campana on 17 August 1834, his visit being commemorated by a memorial plaque.

Here is that mountain, which is 1880 meters tall:

  • 1916 – Easter Rising: After six days of fighting, Irish rebel leaders surrender to British forces in Dublin, bringing the Easter Rising to an end.
  • 1944 – World War II: British agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo’s most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group.
  • 1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both commit suicide the following day.
  • 1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.
  • 1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.
  • 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Here’s a performance by the revival cast of the musical at the 2009 Tony Awards. This is one of the enduring songs from that musical, along with “Aquarius”.  Wikipedia says the songs weren’t well received by the cognosecenti:

The music did not resonate with everyone. Leonard Bernstein remarked “the songs are just laundry lists” and walked out of the production. Richard Rodgers could only hear the beat and called it “one-third music”. John Fogerty said, “Hair is such a watered down version of what is really going on that I can’t get behind it at all.” Gene Lees, writing for High Fidelity, stated that John Lennon found it “dull”, and he wrote, “I do not know any musician who thinks it’s good.”

Ah, the good old hippie days! We thought we’d change the world, and what do we got we got now? TRUMP!

  • 1974 – Watergate scandal: United States President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal.
  • 1992 – Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.
  • 2015 – A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1854 – Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, physicist, and engineer (d. 1912)
  • 1863 – William Randolph Hearst, American publisher and politician, founded the Hearst Corporation (d. 1951)
  • 1893 – Harold Urey, American chemist and astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
  • 1899 – Duke Ellington, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1974)
  • 1901 – Hirohito, Japanese emperor (d. 1989)
  • 1933 – Willie Nelson, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
  • 1945 – Brian Charlesworth, English biologist, geneticist, and academic

It’s the 75th for my pal, collaborator and ex-chair, now retired (but still working hard) at the University of Edinburgh.  Here’s a photo of Brian:

  • 1951 – Dale Earnhardt, American race car driver (d. 2001)
  • 1954 – Jerry Seinfeld, American comedian, actor, and producer
  • 1970 – Andre Agassi, American tennis player
  • 1970 – Uma Thurman, American actress

Since it’s the Duke’s birthday, and tomorrow is International Jazz Day, let’s have a video of his band playing his signature song, “Take the A Train.”  The main was a fricking genius, and employed some of the best musicians of that era as well as composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn, who wrote this song. (The original release by the “Blanton/Webster” version of his band didn’t have vocals, and is better; listen to it here.)

The man loved his food, and it shows. Brain Pickings has a summary of his diet taken from Terry Teachout’s biography (his dessert is amazing, and the items were combined in one bowl):

Duke, who is always worrying about keeping his weight down, may announce that he intends to have nothing but Shredded Wheat and black tea. . . . Duke’s resolution about not overeating frequently collapses at this point. When it does, he orders a steak, and after finishing it he engages in another moral struggle for about five minutes. Then he really begins to eat. He has another steak, smothered in onions, a double portion of fried potatoes, a salad, a bowl of sliced tomatoes, a giant lobster and melted butter, coffee, and an Ellington dessert — perhaps a combination of pie, cake, ice cream, custard, pastry, jello, fruit, and cheese. His appetite really whetted, he may order ham and eggs, a half-dozen pancakes, waffles and syrup, and some hot biscuits. Then, determined to get back on his diet, he will finish, as he began, with Shredded Wheat and black tea.

Those who croaked on April 29 include:

  • 1951 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (b. 1889)
  • 1980 – Alfred Hitchcock, English-American director and producer (b. 1899).

Matthew sent a tweet honoring the laconic director:

  • 1997 – Mike Royko, American journalist and author (b. 1932)
  • 2008 – Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist and academic (b. 1906)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is trying to cadge food from Hili:

Szaron: Share with me.
Hili: You had exactly the same in your bowl.
Szaron: Yes, but I’m growing and you are already too big.
In Polish:
Szaron: Podziel się.
Hili: Miałeś dokładnie to samo w twojej misce.
Szaron: Tak, ale ja rosnę, a ty już jesteś zbyt duża.

Here’s another a picture of Szaron:

. . . and of the Vistula river that abuts the property of Hili, Andrzej, and Malgorzata. After you walk through the cherry orchard, you come to a cliff that runs down to this view:

 

In nearby Wloclawek, Leon and Mitek are in charge.

The cats: We’re taking over!

In Polish: Przejmujemy kontrolę

 

From Bad Cat Clothing:

I guess it’s All Cats Day. This is from Jesus of the Day:

Fricking Pence! He went to the Mayo Clinic to visit the staff and patients and learn about antibody testing, was told that everyone had to wear a mask, and he didn’t, even though he was informed well in advance. He stood right beside a coronavirus patient unmasked! What point is the dumbass VP trying to make?

For some reason the Mayo Clinic took down this tweet (I suspect Trumpites were beserk), but Matthew had a screenshot:

From Simon: Randy Rainbow sings about drinking Clorox:

A tweet from Heather Hastie via Ann German. Nobody hates Trump like Ricky Gervais!

Tweets from Matthew. First: why the planets don’t really orbit the Sun.  Good luck figuring this mess out! Matthew says the explanation is in the thread, but if you need to do that, you shouldn’t be tweeting. Tweets should be self-contained!

Any idea what this burrowing owl is doing with the antenna?

https://twitter.com/backt0nature/status/1254887294122766337

This is just mean and unfair!

 

 

Friday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

April 10, 2020 • 7:00 am

Welcome to Friday, April 10, 2020; it’s National Cinnamon Roll Day, and boy, could I use one! It’s also American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Day (it was founded on April 10, 1866), National Farm Animals Day, Global Work from Home Day (make that a month or two), Siblings Day, Golfer’s Day (who’s the one golfer being celebrated?) and, of course, Good Friday, when Jesus was supposedly crucified some time between A.D. 30 and 36.  April 10 is normally the 100th day of the year, but it’s the 101st in 2020 because it’s a leap year.

Today’s Google Doodle continues the two-week series praising coronovirus helpers. Today’s Doodle appears to celebrate those who grow our food (click on screenshot):

News of the Day: Do I need to say it’s still dreadful? As of this writing, the worldwide death toll from the pandemic is 96,791, and in the U.S. it’s 16,676.  Last night the news named Illinois as one of the growing pandemic “hot spots”.  The media and the Outrage Brigade continues to leverage the pandemic to bolster identity politics: every group is claiming the exacerbation or uncovering of oppression by the pandemic. See today’s New York Times for some choice examples.  (And yes, I do think Trump’s repeatedly calling coronavirus “the Chinese virus” is a deliberate example of bias and xenophobia.) But can’t people put their agenda aside just for a couple of months?

Today I will walk four miles through dicey parts of Chicago today to pick up my car at the garage (brakes got fixed), as, on medical advice, I dare not risk taking an Uber. Well, it’s exercise.

Matthew says he wrote “a cranky letter” to the Guardian; here it is. I love that old curmudgeon!

Stuff that happened on April 10 includes:

  • 1837 – Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU (5.1 million kilometres/3.2 million miles).
  • 1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, comes into force in Great Britain.
  • 1815 – The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth’s climate for the next two years.
  • 1858 – After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonnes (32,000 lb) bell for the Palace of Westminster, had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonnes (30,300 lb) bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
  • 1865 – American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
  • 1912 – RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton, England on her maiden and only voyage.

Here’s a photo of its departure on April 10, 1912. Little did those aboard, or those watching the ship, know that its voyage would end at the bottom of the North Atlantic:

Zapata, a hero of the Mexican Revolution, is shown in the photo below. Yes, many did wear sombreros; Zapata is the one seated in the middle with the big hat. But look at the diversity of headgear! Wikipedia caption: “Zapata in his characteristic large sombrero and his staff in all manner of hats”

And here’s his corpse after he was killed 101 years ago today (also from Wikipedia):

  • 1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
  • 1963 – One hundred twenty-nine American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
  • 1970 – Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.

It’s a sad day for that, but I suppose the Beatles had reached their end.

  • 1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is signed in Northern Ireland.
  • 2019 – Scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project announce the first ever image of a black hole, located in the centre of the M87 galaxy.

Here’s the famous picture: remember it? Caption: “Visible are the crescent-shaped emission ring and central shadow, which are gravitationally magnified views of the black hole’s photon ring and the photon capture zone of its event horizon. The crescent shape arises from the black hole’s rotation and relativistic beaming; the shadow is about 2.6 times the diameter of the event horizon.”

This media was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1829 – William Booth, English minister, founded The Salvation Army (d. 1912)
  • 1847 – Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-American journalist, publisher, and politician, founded Pulitzer, Inc. (d. 1911)
  • 1917 – Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
  • 1932 – Omar Sharif, Egyptian actor and screenwriter (d. 2015)

Two facts about Sharif: he was a world class contract bridge player who sometimes contributed to a bridge column in the Chicago Tribune. Also, he smoked 100 cigarettes a day! He did quit, but died of a heart attack 5 years ago. Oh, and do you remember that, besides playing Ali in Lawrence of Arabia, he was also the protagonist of Doctor Zhivago?  Here he reunites with his great love Lara, played by Julie Christie. I really should watch this movie again:

 

  • 1941 – Paul Theroux, American novelist, short story writer, and travel writer
  • 1952 – Steven Seagal, American actor, producer, and martial artist

Those who joined the Choir Invisible on April 10 include:

  • 1909 – Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic (b. 1837)
  • 1919 – Emiliano Zapata, Mexican general (b. 1879)
  • 1931 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American poet, painter, and philosopher (b. 1883)
  • 1955 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest, theologian, and philosopher (b. 1881)
  • 1966 – Evelyn Waugh, English soldier, novelist, journalist and critic (b. 1903)
  • 1975 – Walker Evans, American photographer (b. 1903)

Evans photographed people impoverished by the Depression and their circumstances, working for the government’s Farm Security Administration and Fortune Magazine. The photo below, one of his most famous, is from the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with the writing by James Agee.  It’s a poor but proud family of sharecroppers in the South (caption underneath):

Bud Fields and His Family, Hale County, Alabama, photograph by Walker Evans, c. 1936–37; from the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) by Evans and James Agee. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a first world problem:

Hili: To choose priorities is the most important thing.
A: And what is your priority?
Hili: First, I will take a nap.
In Polish:
Hili: Najważniejszy jest wybór priorytetów.
Ja: A jaki jest twój priorytet?
Hili: Najpierw się prześpię.

And Leon and Mitek are both in the car heading for a walk. Mietek is still awed by the world:

Mietek: The world is kind of strange.

In Polish: Jakiś dziwny jest ten świat.

Two bogroll-related memes from Merilee:

Better than roses!

From reader John:

The latest from Titania. And yes, her characterization of the article is pretty accurate:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. The first is what cat staff do during quarantine. But look at that amazing standing jump!

https://twitter.com/planetpng/status/1246599725756952577

This one is pure Trump:

Tweets from Matthew. He says this dystopian photo of London is genuine:

Anxiety-provoking rescue of mallard and offspring, but it apparently all turns out o.k. Sound up on this one.

Now this overabundance of offspring, the vast bulk of which will die right after birth, is a bit of a mystery. Do you have a solution?

A lovely “V” of migrating geese. Sound up, please:

And SPOT THE CAT!  I looked for a while and couldn’t find the damn cat, but many people claim that it’s easy.

https://twitter.com/LumpyandFriends/status/1248170081542168576

 

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

February 16, 2020 • 6:45 am

It’s Sunday, February 16, 2020, and in one week I shall go to Paris for a short R&R&E (eating) spree. Speaking of food, it’s National Almond Day, as well as Tim Tam Day, celebrating an Australian bikkie that I’ve never tried, though I see you can buy them in American stores like Wal-Mart. It’s also Do A Grouch A Favor Day, which means somebody should send me some Tim Tams. . .

The goods

They sound really good:

The Tim Tam is a popular chocolate biscuit native to Australia. It consists of two wafers of malted biscuit which sandwich a creamy chocolate filling, with the whole thing being held together by a thin outer layer of chocolate. By nibbling away part of the biscuit, you can drink through it in the same way you would a straw! This technique is called by many different names, including the Tim Tam slam, the Tim Tam suck, Tim Tam bomb, and more.If you’ve got a pack of Tim Tams and a beverage, you’ll surely want to give it a try.

Sounds good with hot chocolate or a latte, or like these Tim Tam Slams, with tea (I wouldn’t want to mix chocolate with tea, though):

In North Korea it’s the “Day of the Shining Star,” celebrating Kim Jong-il’s birthday, which was in either 1941 or 1942, and either in Korea or Russia (what we do know is that he died in 2011). The day’s name comes from the bogus claim that a bright star appeared in the sky on the night he was born. At least the birds didn’t sing praises in Korean when he was born, though the DPRK reports many natural wonders on the day he died.

News: It was bloody cold and windy in Chicago yesterday, much colder than predicted (the low was 25°F or -4°C, but the wind made it much worse). Here’s a sunset shot from my crib; doesn’t it look cold?

Stuff that happened on February 16 include:

King Tut’s tomb has been restored, and now looks like this:

  • 1959 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.
  • 1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

From Wikipedia about this circumnavigation, which followed the route of Magellan’s first trip (below):

The actual submerged circumnavigation occurred between 24 February and 25 April 1960, covering 26,723 nautical miles (49,491 km; 30,752 mi) in 60 days and 21 hours at the average speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) while crossing the Equator on four different occasions. Also, the total duration of Triton‘s shakedown cruise was 84 days 19 hours 8 minutes, covering 36,335.1 nautical miles (67,292.6 km; 41,813.7 mi), and Triton remained submerged for a total of 83 days 9 hours, covering 35,979.1 nautical miles (66,633.3 km; 41,404.0 mi) during her maiden voyage.

The route:

A few other things that happened on February 16:

  • 1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.
  • 1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).
  • 2005 – The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia.
  • 2005 – The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004–05 regular season and playoffs.
  • 2006 – The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1838 – Henry Adams, American journalist, historian, and author (d. 1918)
  • 1926 – Margot Frank, German-Dutch holocaust victim (d. 1945) [JAC: She was, of course, Anne Frank’s sister, who died with her in the Bergen-Belsen camp.
  • 1935 – Sonny Bono, American actor, singer, and politician (d. 1998)
  • 1941 – Kim Jong-il, North Korean commander and politician, 2nd Supreme Leader of North Korea (d. 2011)
  • 1958 – Natalie Angier, American author.

Read her new story on the color black in nature at the NYT (I may post on this today). Natalie didn’t give her birthday on her Facebook page, but I saw it on Wikipedia and went over and congratulated her anyway. I hope she doesn’t get mad (some people hate birthdays).

Only two notables made their exit on February 16, including:

  • 2001 – William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (b. 1915)
  • 2015 – Lesley Gore, American singer-songwriter (b. 1946)

Lesley Gore, whose real name was Lesley Sue Goldstein, was Jewish, and here’s one of her big hits, sung live on the famous T.A.M.I. show from 1964:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the dialogue is a bit confusing, so Malgorzata explains:

Hili is looking (through the window) at Andrzej who is preparing something for posting. She doesn’t like the photo he has on the screen, and ordera him to crop it. He does that and she approves. It’s a different photo than the one you see in this dialogue.

Hili: You have to crop this picture a bit.
A: Will it be OK like this?
Hili: It’s OK.
In Polish:
Hili: Musisz to zdjęcie trochę przyciąć.
Ja: Tak będzie dobrze?
Hili: Może być.
Malgorzata and Andrzej are in the process of taming a feral gray cat as a companion for Hili (if Hili hates the cat, a male, then he will live upstairs with the lodgers).  Fingers crossed that he’ll be tamed!  So far Andrzej is feeding him in the barn and the cat lets Andrzej pet him, though he’s still afraid of Malgorzata, whom he hasn’t seen so often.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon are thinking of napping. Look how big Mietek has gotten!

Leon: Are we going to sleep?

In Polish: Idziemy spać?

It seems to be Cat Day today. I know it’s two days late, but I couldn’t resist posting this photo from Wild and Wonderful:

From The Cat House on the Kings:

And a great cat meme from Jesus of the Day:

Zuby, a black rapper and Oggsford man, weighs in on the transwomen in sports issue:

A tweet from reader Barry of upwards lightning, though I think every bolt from above is preceded from one going upwards (though not this strong!):

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden_/status/1228434120323338241

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. More backwards stuff!

Mad March hares!

Tweets from Matthew. Who knew that squirrels could barter? This is ineffably adorable:

https://twitter.com/planetpng/status/1228374663530713089?s=11

Butt wiggling would help this cat power up:

Good morning tweets:

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue (with Leon and Mietek)

February 4, 2020 • 6:45 am

Good morning on the cruelest day of the week, Tuesday, and it’s February 4, 2020: both National Homemade Soup Day and National Stuffed Mushroom Day.  I was excited to read that it was also National Quacker Day, but that is a cruel ruse:

National Quacker Day celebrates “Quackers,” those who are enthusiasts of Quacker Factory, a women’s clothing company founded by Jeanne Bice.

It’s also Liberace Day (if you remember him, you’re old), born Władziu Valentino Liberace, and who died on this day in 1987.

And it’s Rosa Parks Day, celebrating the Civil Rights icon born on this day in 1913 (she died in 2005). In California and Missouri, however, it’s celebrated on December 1, the day she was arrested for not relinquishing her seat to a white man in 1955. That led to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which successfully challenged the law requiring segregation. The very bus that made her famous is now preserved at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Detroit, Michigan.

Here’s a short video recounting the story of Parks and what happened to the bus:

News of the Day: If you’ve followed the voting in Iowa yesterday, you’ll know that there are NO RESULTS YET. There’s apparently been a delay in reporting the delegate counts, and although we know nothing, several candidates, including Bern, say they have a “good feeling” about how they did. We shall see.

In lieu of those results, here’s what yesterday’s WEIT caucus showed: a victory for Bernie. (As usual, not that many people voted, though.). Uncle Joe was second, with everybody else far behind, with Warren barely registering. You’re all a pack of socialists!

Stuff that happened on February 4 includes:

  • 1555 – John Rogers is burned at the stake, becoming the first English Protestant martyr under Mary I of England.
  • 1703 – In Edo (now Tokyo), all but one of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master’s death.
  • 1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
  • 1846 – The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Salt Lake Valley.
  • 1948 – Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth.
  • 1969 – Yasser Arafat takes over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
  • 2004 – Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

Notables born on this day includes:

  • 1818 – Emperor Norton, San Francisco eccentric and visionary (d. 1880)
  • 1902 – Charles Lindbergh, American pilot and explorer (d. 1974)
  • 1906 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and theologian (d. 1945)
  • 1913 – Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist (d. 2005)
  • 1921 – Betty Friedan, American author and feminist (d. 2006)
  • 1948 – Alice Cooper, American singer-songwriter

Bonhoeffer is one of only a handful of pastors and theologians I admire (well, perhaps the only one!), mainly because he stood up for science in the “God of the gaps” problem, and mainly because he was immensely brave, and was hanged by the Nazis for conspiring to assassinate Hitler. The circumstances of his hanging (whether it was quick or deliberately prolonged) are cloudy, but it’s clear that he was stripped of all his clothing before he was executed. Here he is:

Those who became ex-persons on February 4 include:

  • 1968 – Neal Cassady, American novelist and poet (b. 1926)
  • 1982 – Georg Konrad Morgen, German lawyer and judge (b. 1909)
  • 1983 – Karen Carpenter, American singer (b. 1950)
  • 1987 – Liberace, American singer-songwriter and pianist, (b. 1919)
  • 2006 – Betty Friedan, American author and activist (b. 1921)

Two of my heroes—Karen Carpenter and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road)—died on the same day. Here’s Neal, who also drove The Buss (with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters aboard) in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He looks a bit like Elvis:

Cassady died at 41 from drugs, his comatose body found alongside a railroad track in Mexico. I’m pretty sure that’s the way he would have wanted to go.

 I didn’t know there was a documentary about that famous bus trip “Magic Trip“, but here’s a trailer, with several shots of Cassady. I must see this movie, but it’s not on YouTube and who would have it?

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, we have a pun in today’s Hili:

A WOKE CAT
Hili: I had a nap and now I understand everything.
A: What do you understand?
Hili: The complexity of the world.
In Polish:
PRZEBUDZONA
Hili: Przespałam się i teraz wszystko rozumiem.
Ja; Co rozumiesz?
Hili: Złożoność wszechświata.

And Elzbieta reports that Leon and Mietek the Kitten had their first walk together! As I had hoped, Mietek is being leash trained. He took to the leash wonderfully, and so can go for walks with his brother Leon. Here’s three photos and Elzbieta’s caption:

First walk together.

In Polish: Pierwszy wspólny spacer.

From Facebook, a very great cartoon (except that ducks don’t have teeth):

A Kliban cartoon posted by Stash Krod:

A cartoon clipped and saved by my friends Tim and Betsy:

And a superb series of photos from Wild and Wonderful titled “The best steal in history.”

This is bad: HARVARD is on the list. Click the link for the reasons:

 

A tweet sent by reader Ken. SPY MONKEY! It’s a monkey-shaped cam, and when the langurs think it’s dead, something very much like grief appears.

A nice demonstration, though I’m not sure it’s safe to breathe the stuff:

Well, this is from the bad Womens March—the original, not the the good splinter groups—and yes, this is on their home page. If you want to see the demonstration video, go here.

A good quote from the one Dawkins book that almost nobody reads:

From reader Barry. Yes, this is a beautiful creature indeed, but it’s lazy compared to the women lions!

A tweet from Heather Hastie: Badger love. Is that as good as muskrat love?

Look at the legs on this beetle!

When I asked Matthew what those legs were for, he sent a picture with a note: “They do this apparently”. It seems to be, as the caption suggests, a kind of defensive behavior. Readers with some free time might want to see if those legs can squirt a noxious fluid as well.

Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon and Mietek monologue)

January 24, 2020 • 6:30 am

We’ve reached the week’s end, as it’s Friday, January 24, 2020, with light snow and just-about-freezing temperatures predicted for Chicago this weekend.  Although wretched January is waning, it’s still gray, slushy, and soul-eroding.

It’s National Peanut Butter Day, a peculiarly American comestible, and National Lobster Thermidor Day, a dish I’ve never had.  And don’t forget it’s National Eskimo Pie Patent Day, celebrating the day in 1922 when Christian Nelson patented this chocolate-covered ice cream bar. I suspect most Americans here have had at least one. The story of the patent on Eskimo pies is a tortuous one, and you can read about it here.  But here’s one of the frozen confections (they also come on a stick, which is unacceptable.)

It’s National Compliment Day, so let me begin: you’re a swell bunch of readers! Finally, it’s National Beer Can Appreciation Day, celebrating that day in 1935 when Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale became the first beers to be sold in cans. I prefer bottles but will take beer from a can so long as the contents are poured into a glass. Here’s what those first cans looked like:

Stuff that happened on January 24 includes:

  • 1848 – California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento.
  • 1908 – The first Boy Scout troop is organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.
  • 1918 – The Gregorian calendar is introduced in Russia by decree of the Council of People’s Commissars effective February 14.
  • 1961 – Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.

More than that; one of the bombs that fell out of the broken-up plane was armed, and some experts say we came very close to a nuclear detonation over North Carolina!

When American forces captured the island in the 1944 Battle of Guam, Yokoi went into hiding with nine other Japanese soldiers. Seven of the original ten eventually moved away and only three remained in the region. These men separated,
but visited each other periodically until about 1964, when the other two died in a flood. For the last eight years, Yokoi lived alone. He survived by hunting, primarily at night. He also used native plants to make clothes, bedding, and storage implements, which he carefully hid in his cave.

Despite having hidden for twenty-eight years in a jungle cave, he had known since 1952 that World War II had ended. He feared coming out of hiding, explaining, “We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive.”

After a whirlwind media tour of Japan, he married and settled down in rural Aichi Prefecture.

Yokoi became a popular television personality and an advocate of austere living. [He died in 1997.]

Yokoi was the antepenultimate Japanese soldier to surrender after the war, preceding Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda (relieved from duty by his former commanding officer on 9 March 1974) and Private Teruo Nakamura (arrested 18 December 1974). [JAC: the last “holdout” was Teruo Nakamura, who surrendered on December 18, 1974, after 29 years and three months in hiding!]

Here’s Yokoi’s first haircut in 28 years; his cave (visible on the Wikipedia page) is now a tourist attraction.

  • 1984 – Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States.
  • 1989 – Notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, with over 30 known victims, is executed by the electric chair at the Florida State Prison.

There were many notables born on this day, including Theodosius Dobzhansky, my academic grandfather:

  • 1670 – William Congreve, English playwright and poet (d. 1729)
  • 1712 – Frederick the Great, Prussian king (d. 1786)
  • 1862 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1937)
  • 1900 – Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian-American geneticist and biologist (d. 1975)

Here’s Dobzhansky, known as “Doby” or “Dodek” to his friends and students; it looks as if he’s examining Drosophila salivary-gland chromosomes under the microscope, something he spent much of his life doing. You can read the stuff written about Doby on this site at this link.

Others born on January 24 include:

  • 1917 – Ernest Borgnine, American actor (d. 2012)
  • 1918 – Oral Roberts, American evangelist, founded Oral Roberts University and Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (d. 2009)
  • 1928 – Desmond Morris, English zoologist, ethologist, and painter
  • 1941 – Neil Diamond, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
  • 1941 – Aaron Neville, American singer
  • 1943 – Sharon Tate, American model and actress (d. 1969)
  • 1947 – Warren Zevon, American singer-songwriter (d. 2003)
  • 1949 – John Belushi, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1982)
  • 1955 – Alan Sokal, American physicist and author

Those who ceased to exist on January 24 include:

  • AD 41 – Caligula, Roman emperor (b. 12)
  • 1895 – Lord Randolph Churchill, English lawyer and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (b. 1849)
  • 1965 – Winston Churchill, English colonel and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1874)

JAC: Winston predicted he’d die on the same day of the year as his father, and he did!

  • 1975 – Larry Fine, American comedian (b. 1902) [JAC: one of the Three Stooges [JAC: Real name was Louis Feinberg; like Curly and Moe, he was Jewish and changed his name.[
  • 1989 – Ted Bundy, American serial killer (b. 1946)
  • 2017 – Butch Trucks, American drummer (b. 1947)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss the state of the world. I’m told that she’s responding to Andrzej’s angst about (I quote) “what’s going on in Poland (dismantling of independent judiciary) and what’s going on in the world (among many other things, mass murder of Christians in Africa while the world is busy with fighting Islamophobia and mourning 6 million Jews one second while trying to kill 6 million living Jews a second later). Hili cynically reminds Andrzej that the world was never sane.”

A: I have the impression that the world’s gone crazy.
Hili: So what’s new?
In Polish:
Ja: Mam wrażenie, że świat zwariował.
Hili: I co w tym nowego?

And in Wloclawek, Leon naps with his brother Mietek:

Leon: It’s time for an afternoon nap.

In Polish: Pora na poobiednią drzemkę.

A cartoon sent by reader Jon, Bound and Gagged by Dana Summers; strip for January 23, 2020″:

From Jesus of the Day with the caption, “SQUEE!. PHOTO CREDIT: Daisy Gilardini Photography”. A tuchas ride!

A tweet from Titania. Be sure to listen to the song!

And another. Although I don’t formally “follow” the Queen of Wokeness on Twitter, I look at her tweets nearly every day.

A tweet from reader Barry about otter love (remember “Muskrat Love“?):

https://twitter.com/Otter_News/status/1220047294063611910

From Dom. Look at this beetle grub cake! It’s too pretty to eat.

A tweet from Heather Hastie. (I may have posted it before, but it’s worth seeing again.)

Tweets from Matthew. The first one settles a longstanding etymological question:

Another murmuration (Matthew and I love these):

Ah, the power of sexual selection! Be sure to watch the video.

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

January 18, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s Saturday, January  18, 2020, and National Gourmet Coffee Day (I buy my beans at Trader Joe’s, which seems to me the best value in high-quality fair trade coffee). It’s also National Peking Duck Day, which once again is cultural appropriation because that is a genuine Chinese dish. In fact, it should be called “Beijing Duck Day.” Finally, it’s Winnie the Pooh Day, celebrating the birthday of creator A. A. Milne in 1882. Here’s Milne at 40:

If you’ve read the Winnie the Pooh books, it’s likely that you identify with one of the characters. Can you guess my Pooh “spirit animal”? Answer below the fold.

Finally, it’s also the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, but there’s no need to care about that since prayer doesn’t work and Christianity is disappearing anyway.

News of the day: Donald Trump has added both Ken Starr (independent counsel in Clinton’s impeachment trial whose investigations led to that episode) and Alan Dershowitz to his legal team in Trump’s impeachment proceedings. Dershowitz has really jumped the rails in the last few decades; I suspect he just loves public attention. And Clinton’s people are still after Starr:

 “Whether it was representing Big Tobacco, obsessing about President Clinton’s sex life or disgracing himself in the Baylor rape scandal, Ken Starr has always been on the wrong side of history, ethics, and common decency,” said Paul Begala, a former White House counselor to Mr. Clinton. “He is therefore the perfect lawyer for Donald Trump.”

On a lighter note,somewhere in America a Magellanic penguin helped a sailor propose to his girlfriend (h/t: GInger K.)

Stuff that happened on January 18 includes:

  • 1486 – King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV uniting the House of Lancaster and the House of York.
  • 1778 – James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the “Sandwich Islands”.

No, Cook did not find the Polynesians eating hoagies. The islands were named after John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich. However, Montagu is said to have invented the sandwich.

  • 1788 – The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from Great Britain to Australia arrive at Botany Bay.
  • 1896 – An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.
  • 1919 – World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.
  • 1919 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland.
  • 1943 – Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
  • 1967 – Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler“, is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

DeSalvo is said to have killed 13 women, and pleaded guilty, after which he was sentenced to life without parole. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison in 1973.

  • 1977 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires’ disease.
  • 1990 – Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.
  • 1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 states.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1782 – Daniel Webster, American lawyer and politician, 14th United States Secretary of State (d. 1852)
  • 1880 – Paul Ehrenfest, Austrian-Dutch physicist and academic (d. 1933)
  • 1882 – A. A. Milne, English author, poet, and playwright (d. 1956)
  • 1892 – Oliver Hardy, American actor and comedian (d. 1957)
  • 1904 – Cary Grant, English-American actor (d. 1986) [JAC: real name was Archibald Leach]
  • 1911 – Danny Kaye, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1987)
  • 1941 – David Ruffin, American singer (The Temptations) (d. 1991)
  • 1952 – Michael Behe, American biochemist, author, and academic

Kaye was a remarkable talent: he could sing, dance, act, and make people laugh. Here he is playing Hans Christian Andersen in the eponymous film. (He was Jewish and his birth name was David Daniel Kaminsky.)

As for Behe, who has wasted his life promulgating Intelligent Design (his last book was a flop), this statement still appears on the site of Lehigh University’s Department of Biological Sciences, where Behe works:

That caveat, of course, is there to let prospective students know that he’s the lone loon in the Department, so that the students won’t be deterred from coming to Lehigh.

Those who expired on January 18 include:

  • 1862 – John Tyler, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 10th President of the United States (b. 1790)
  • 1936 – Rudyard Kipling, English author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865)
  • 1952 – Curly Howard, American actor (b. 1903)
  • 1989 – Bruce Chatwin, English-French author (b. 1940)
  • 2011 – Sargent Shriver, American politician and diplomat, 21st United States Ambassador to France (b. 1915)
  • 2016 – Glenn Frey, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1948)

Here’s what I consider Frey’s greatest song, and the live performance is stunning.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3n82z0

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is checking out the human loo. She is not impressed.

Hili: I’ve never understood your litter box.
A: Some cats know how to use it.
Hili: It’s not natural.
In Polish:
Hili: Nigdy nie rozumiałam tej waszej kuwety.
Ja: Niektóre koty potrafią z niej korzystać.
Hili: To nie jest naturalne.
And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon and Mietek are cuddling. What a wonderful relationship! (Mietek, by the way, is completely better.)
Leon: Are you already asleep, young one?
In Polish: Leon: Ty już śpisz, Młody?
I posted this on my Facebook page 9 years ago yesterday. I still think it’s darkly hilarious:

This picture, posted by Diana MacPherson on her Facebook page, is also very good:

From Amazing Life via reader Rick: a gorgeous Bengal kitten, apparently named “Bear”. This is the kitten I want, or one just like him:

Titania’s latest tweet, which is pretty much on the mark for the Woke Left:

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1218249387228499968

A tweet I made featuring a story from reader Jacques Hausser:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. First, Mrs. Lumpy the badger eats an egg:

A panoply of starfish tuchases:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1216060534262394880

Four tweets from Matthew. Can you see the angry duck?

 

Sound up on this one. I’m not sure, though, that these skillful hackeysackers are being “casual”.

A nice animation about how ticks bite and suck, from a recent paper in Nature Scientific Reports. The abstract:

Here, we propose for the first time an animated model of the orchestration of the tick mouthparts and associated structures during blood meal acquisition and salivation. These two actions are known to alternate during tick engorgement. Specifically, our attention has been paid to the mechanism underlining the blood meal uptake into the pharynx through the mouth  and how ticks prevent mixing the uptaken blood with secreted saliva. We animated function of muscles attached to the salivarium and their possible opening /closing of the salivarium, with a plausible explanation of the movement of saliva within the salivarium and massive outpouring of saliva.

For those of you with horse benches, you might want to consider a replacement:

Click on “read more” for the answer to see my Pooh spirit animal:

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