Enjoy ASMR from an ancient library, paintings to evoke childhood wonder, a yummy lentil curry, a punk loving goat and how to cope with climate anxiety and much more this week in edition #106 of 10 Interesting Things I Found on the Internet
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Hola amigos welcome to edition #106 of Interesting Things I Found on the Internet, get friendly with a #punk loving #goat, Victorian #vampire films and #Bjork fixing a TV in the 90’s and more, so charge your eyeballs… #ContentCatnip
“My 12yr old daughter handed me £500 pounds and asked me to build her a house in the shape of a mushroom. I got a bit carried away! Downstairs in the stem will be a small desk area and steps up to the top of the mushroom. Once through the trap door, you enter a living area. This has some stained glass windows, and a glass floor section looking down to the river below. There will be another door, which leads onto a small exterior platform and more steps down to the garden. There is also a window in the roof. Most of the wood used is red western cedar, inc. cedar shingles on the roof. We plan to use space saving ideas inside for furniture, and there will be a bed and tv as well as a fridge. Inside she wants it to be vintage, with some industrial lighting. The brickwork below has a small ‘deathly hallows’ design outside the front door due to her love of Harry Potter. She also has circular hammock chair that we plan to suspend from the oak beams on the side.” ~ Ben Swanborough.
She is the luckiest 12 year old in the world! He won 2017 Shed of the Year for this though…you can really see why…the artistry is incredible!
Les Vampires is a 1915–16 French silent crime serial film written and directed by Louis Feuillade. Set in Paris, it charts the escapades of a journalist and his friend who uncover and try and stop and strange underground criminal gang known as Vampires.
El baile de Irma Vep (Musidora), disfrazada de vampira -"femme fatal", en el 3er episodio del serial dirigido por Louis Feuillade "Les vampires" (1915-1916). Uno de los precedentes del cine policíaco francés pic.twitter.com/cFRnd7Zdrr
Samy Zenati is a very talented singer, musician, producer and composer from Algeria. He specialises in the modern music like Hip Hop, R&B, Latin and electronic music.
2 cups green lentils 4 -6 tablespoons olive oil 1 large onion cut into strips (about 1 cup) 4 cups water 4 cups tomato juice 2 tablespoon tomato paste Salt to taste
For serving Lemon juice parsley or mint leaves
Directions
Wash your lentils then soak them for an hour (you can skip the soaking step but then you have to boil the lentils for a longer period of time)
In a pot over medium heat, add the olive oil , tomato paste, and onions. Stir occasionally for 3-5 minutes or till the onions welt.
Drain the lentils, and discard the soaking water.
add the water to the pot, add the lentils, and bring the water to a boil.
Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Taste a few lentils to make sure that they are cooked through. Add the tomato juice and salt then simmer for 15 more minutes.
Take off the heat and serve with lemon juice, parsley or mint leaves.
Just being a bit of an oddball or having some different opinions could get you a one-way ticket into a padded cell in those days. A bit shocking really how arbitrary and silly these reasons were! Via Interesting as Fuck on Reddit.
Biquette was the famous goat mascot for the French grindcore band Wormrot. She was known for her stoic enjoyment of hardcore punk and metal music and for eating cigarette butts at gigs. She went along with Wormrot all over Europe when they toured. The band members were straight edge vegan punks who rescued Biquette from a slaughterhouse. Rest in Peace Biquette, she died of old age after a life of partying, music and mayhem. Via Interesting as Fuck on Twitter
Young activists are particularly vulnerable to climate anxiety because they are facing the reality of a world that is rapidly changing due to human activities. They see the devastating effects of climate change on their communities and are often left feeling helpless and hopeless.
However, it is important to remember that climate anxiety is a normal response to the overwhelming information and emotions associated with climate change. It is also important to understand that there are ways to manage and cope with climate anxiety.
Stay informed but also take breaks from consuming news and social media about climate change.
Connect with other activists, support groups or people who share your concerns.
Practice self-care, including regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits.
Lynn Lupetti is a Californian artist born in 1938. She always wanted to be an artist even as a child and her earliest jobs were related to her art, working in design and creating window displays for the local shopping centre. Upon graduation from high school she pursued the study of commercial art at the College of San Mateo and San Jose State University. She was an illustrator for a children’s textbook publisher. She married Roberto Lupetti, a classically trained Milanese painter, who introduced her to oil painting in the Renaissance Masters style. Besides painting at the easel, she joined Roberto’s atelier creating murals, frescoes and gold leaf work in churches and other public and private venues throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
#BookReview: Case Study by #Scottish writer Graeme MacRae Burnet who is the author of one of the best Scottish crime novels ever written His Bloody Project, which I have reviewed on this blog before #ContentCatnip 4 stars
Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet is the author of one of the best Scottish crime novels ever written His Bloody Project, which I have reviewed on this blog before. Burnet’s new book is yet another step back in time and another psychological thriller. There is a similar focus on retrospective analysis of the personality and motives of the protagonist, a faulty narrator and an unsolved crime at the heart of the book.
Compared to His Bloody Project, the era and setting is completely different though. Case Study takes place in 1965 and features a charismatic and sociopathic psychotherapist named Collins Braithwaite, a naive young woman who is driven to her death by way of a railway bridge and the woman’s sister who later investigates what happened.
The sister has a fractured sense of self and so goes by the name of “Rebecca Smyth”. She is a slightly paranoid, deeply insecure and uptight young woman about her appearance and manner. Her insecurities and ways of seeing the world reflect the social attitudes of the 1960’s and the shift in consciousness of that time. This is a darkly funny book and it totalled absorbed me from start to finish. The mental, emotional and sexual jousting between Rebecca and Braithwaite were quite interesting and exciting and kept me hooked. I can’t give away too much more of the plot without giving away too many of the unexpected plot twists. I would definitely recommend giving this one a go!
Solutions to our current crisis appear beyond rational appeals for help. Somehow in all of this complexity and loss and seeming hopelessness, a response is asked from us, and in this response lies the seeds of our own rootedness.
Rachel Carson’s friend asked her why she felt called to write her ‘poisons book’ – the now classic Silent Spring. Rachel responded that she felt called by the dead birds she held in her hands. She could not live, knowing what she had learned about DDT, without speaking, without – her gift – lifting her pen to write.
~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science Nature and Spirit.
Artists & Writers in Their Own Words: Evaldas Azbukauskas AKA Giriu DvasiosPhoto by Kristina Paukshtite on Pexels.comDeep in the Woods – Winter Sun
Oil on canvas | 30×24 ins. Nicholas Hely Hutchinson, Britain.
Darkness falls on the meadows of Otago Copyright Content Catnip 2016
Quote from Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science Nature and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Book Review: Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science Nature and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Watch a beautiful kitten transform into an adult, journey along with a dog school, learn how to help a grieving person, enjoy some roaring 20’s art of birds and blooms, some floaty ambient sounds and much more in edition #105 of 10 Interesting Things I Found on the Internet. Hope you enjoy it
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Edition #105 of Interesting Things I Found on the Internet is brimming with caring mother #cats, #birds in riotous colours, a #Dali inspired wardrobe and a woman who never gave up saving a #tree, your fortnightly fix #ContentCatnip
I love this practical guide and the hand-drawn cosy vibe of this infographic. This is no doubt an important guide to tuck away somewhere for when it’s needed.
I adore the colours of this painting and the sense of the enormous castle looming in the background. Indeed, looking from the Grassmarket upwards towards the castle from the cobblestone streets in real life has this same impact, there’s a feeling of awe looking up. I love the cosy feeling of the old buildings jumbled together…there is something hyperrealistic and true about that. Found via the epic art curator Helen Warlow.
‘Starry Sky, The Grass Market. Edinburgh’ by Nikki Monaghan
Flaming and raucous birds and blooms by Jesse Arms Botke (1883-1971)
I adore the cheeky, raucous cockatoos and gallahs I can almost hear their screaming and squealing calls through the painting. Also the regal peacock in all his glory is divine!
Jessie Hazel Arms Botke (1883 – 1971) was an American painter known for her paintings of exotic and cheeky birds and for using gold leaf highlights.
Born in Chicago, Illinois she attended the Chicago Art Institute. After a trip to Europe in 1909, she returned to her parents home in Chicago and listed her public profession as “artist, interior decorating.” She lived in both New York City and San Francisco and married fellow artist Cornelis Botke in April 1915, she gave birth a year later to her only child William. They moved to artist enclave and haven Carmel-by-the-Sea in California in 1919 and both were key figures in the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club teaching there and exhibiting there for decades.
Daria Andronescu is a skilled and knowledgable fashion designer and stylist and I love her thoughtful and philosophical take on clothing and how to be inspired by a particular piece of art for creating your own capsule wardrobe.
In 1997 Julia Butterfly Hill climbed up a 1000 year old Californian redwood tree named Luna located in Humboldt County, California in protest of the tree being destroyed. She didn’t come down for another 738 days.
During this time Julia lived through ferocious storms and extreme heat and cold in a 1.8-1.2 metre pod on the tree. She rarely washed her feet as the sap from the redwood allowed her to have better grip on the branches. She used a solar powered mobile phone to conduct interviews with the media and to protest the destruction of the red wood forest. A small group of eight people provided her with ongoing supplies throughout her sit in.
To stay warm she wrapped herself in a sleeping bag with only her nose outside to breathe. She stayed put in three even during extreme weather, a ten day siege by security guards, aerial harassment by helicopters and more.
After Julia came down – the tree named Luna remains standing and she still remains standing today!
The north and south of the river thing could easily be Melbourne. However I can see how the suburbs of Berlin are a bit like enclaves as well…I love that place and could live there.
This was an incredible song I stumbled upon on Youtube. Knowing nothing about Robert Amacker I managed to find him on Instagram but he is not very well known, despite his lack of description he makes cinematic and beautiful modern classical music, perfect for in the background when you’re trying to study or work.
This exciting exhibit is a work of the Australian artist Tanya Schultz (Pip & Pop) and her team. In collaboration with Kew Gardens plant scientists and volunteers the artist created a futuristic food utopia. There is more to it than its eye-candy aesthetics. Among the fantastical creations there are objects based on the shapes of rare fruits and vegetables.
When Flowers Dream is on display until 5 March 2023 at Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, located at London’s Kew Gardens.
DINNER: sweet peas, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts
My Spring Chef’s Veggie Bowl
Just go wild with this. I took each vegetable and just played with spices.
The red cabbage I sautéed in olive oil with sea salt and cracked black pepper with a tablespoon of balsamic glaze.
The carrots also sautéed in olive oil with za’ atar, fennel and a bit of honey.
The Brussel Sprouts sautéed in olive oil and bit of honey, balsamic vinegar and red pepper flakes.
The cauliflower also sautéed in olive oil and curry powder.
Allow yourself to get created and give these spring vegetables a bit of love with spices, sauces or as I did the sweet peas, just enjoy their raw deliciousness.
#BookReview: Something out of Place, Women and Disgust by Eimear McBride. This #nonfiction debut packs a punch, it explores the ways that women are classified as tho we have no consciousness and are mere cuts of meat #feminism #books
This is a fascinating, provocative and stirring book. It enrages and stimulates in equal measure and will make you think differently about the world if you are a woman or if you are a man then you will come to understand the disturbing ways that women and their bodies are either revered and salaciously admired, or undermined, ridiculed and ostracised. It’s an essay from eloquent, award-winning Irish novelist Eimear McBride. She previously wrote the novels: ‘A girl is a half-formed thing’ and ‘The lesser bohemians’.
This non-fiction debut is incredible and packs a punch, as Eimear explores the many ways that women are classified and sorted as though we cease to have consciousness and are simply cuts of meat. How through this system we are inevitably pitted against one another in a hyper-masculine, hyper-competitive paradigm, how it is easy to have ‘something out of place’.
This never-ending hamster wheel of social approval is what powers the toxic influencer culture of Instagram and Tiktok. It’s what powered the exploitation of Page three girls of British tabloids. Eimear explores the rise of Samantha Fox, a Page Three girl who became famous for sexualising her body from a young age. Her mother gave permission for her to be bare-breasted in tabloids when she was underage. From there, she had an acting and singing career. Samantha maintains that this was a power move and that she rose above poverty through doing this. It seems to be a double-edged sword though, one can go from being an ‘acceptable’ piece of meat, to having a body that elicits disgust and condemnation in a heartbeat.
In reality, many women actively or passively resist this narrative thrust upon them – through their active care and cooperation with each other, or their rejection of beauty standards and rejection of the masculine ‘meat’ paradigm all together.
Woman as ‘acceptable meat’ and the ‘wrong kind of meat’
“She can expect to be continually marketed by the idea that the rewards of becoming not only meat but precisely the right kind of meat are boundless. Conversely, those women who cannot be tempted onto the butcher’s slab, who are not motivated enough to meet the criteria, or even those who long to stretch out upon it but cannot starve or feminise themselves enough into sufficient stereotype-aligning representations of womanhood to make the grade will not find themselves treated as flesh. They will instead just be stamped as the ‘wrong type of meat’, which on principle can never be rewarded.
“Here be the lesbians in comfortable shoes, the overweight, the old-ish, the busy, the indifferent and the already content. These women – and there are a lot of us, will be persistently reminded of the undesirability of their brand of meatiness and of just how little the pleasure of going through life without bothering to contort oneself into a more readily acceptable version of femininity makes up for that unpleasant fact. It is an effective deterrent particularly among the young, it inculcates many women into obedience from a young age.”
Eimear McBride
Women are not all the same
Women are not all the same. We are all not trying to get to the same place and perhaps there is no one place for all of us to get to together. What we have in common is that, at one time or another we have all been seen, or treated as a matter out of place in the world, we have every right to call our own. We have seen it. We felt it. Lived it. Died it. Had it open chasms up inside of us. Had it waste our time.
Eimear McBride
“The disgust I have been writing about has succeeded in surrounding us and even managed to creep inside of us. We can be sure it cannot dissipate by itself and it will not stop being wielded as a weapon until it is no longer effective. The journey to rendering this disgust obsolete begins with women noticing and identifying it for what it is and it will end only once we have taught ourselves and everyone else, to refuse it at every turn. Only then will the taboos placed upon us all fall away and the universe be restored.”
Eimear McBride
Women’s bodies have been used to sell everything from computer keyboards to face cream. Originally tweeted by lookcaitlin (@lookcaitlin) on September 24, 2022. Source
Eimear goes into dark places that it’s important to go. She explores how, despite the progress made by women’s rights, it may not be safe for many women to be on the streets and how often it’s not safe for them in the home either.
“In the weeks after Sarah Everard’s murder the World Health Organisation published a report saying that 1 in 3 women globally have experienced physical or sexual violence during their lifetime. That’s about 736 million women’s bodies that have been subjected to violence. Violence solely inflicted upon them because they are women. We didn’t start a war, but a war is being waged on us, nonetheless staying indoors is not the answer – most of it happens in there anyway. The outdoor life isn’t for us either it seems, not according to the media, online or everywhere we can be seen and heard.
“The willingness to just accept this as a status quo for women is a stain on contemporary society and an affront to human dignity.”
Eimear McBride
There is a sense that we as women are too complacent and accepting of the rage, violence and disgust inflicted upon us on a daily basis.
I believe there should have been more of an exploration of bodies of other marginalised groups like trans women, black or brown people, people of other genders in this book. The disgust elicited from bodies is no doubt amplified and intensified for these people. It would have been good to see how this disgust manifests in the form of violence against trans people, people of colour, people of different genders, as it does for white women. It’s a phenomenon with deep institutional roots and seems to manifest in police violence, the locking up of more brown and black people into prisons, shootings in gay night clubs etc. It would have been good to see where those roots come from historically and where they can be traced from in terms of power dynamics.
A thought-provoking song to end this
This song by DJ Boring takes a sample of 90’s era Winona Ryder talking about how casting directors told her she ‘wasn’t pretty enough’. It’s a good example of the idea of women as ‘meat’. If Winona Ryder wasn’t considered pretty enough, it’s a hard slap to us all for being the ‘wrong kind of meat’.
My thoughts
I feel rather sheltered from the scathing, observing gaze now, with my introverted lifestyle and a close circle of loving and trusted people. When I was younger, it probably would have benefited me to know and understand this invisible paradigm that haunts women’s lives, to be able to read this and give words to this moral trickery, this confusing social quicksand that so often engulfs young women. To define this is the first step to defying it and overcoming it. To the younger me I want to say to her: “It’s all a bullshit lie – opt-out, now!”
We only get one body in this life, the one we are each endowed with at this moment. Please begin by giving yours the respect it deserves.
Did you realise that every atom is 14.5 billion years old? All bodies are part of matter, created at the big bang, 10 billion years before earth appeared.
The water in your body seems to flow into your mouth from a fountain or a glass, then out again through pores and orifices. But like all of the waters on earth, no one knows where it came from. Perhaps a comet’s tail, it’s said.
Your body isn’t just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive, as anyone knows who’s ever danced, had a sore throat, made love or stubbed a toe.
All of the baroque variety of life on earth is considered to come from a tiny common ancestor who appeared about 4 billion years ago.
Still today, on a cellular level, basic functions like respiration look similar in plants and animals. So does your DNA -we humans share about half of our genetic material with plants. We truly aren’t very far away from anything.
Our salty blood remembers oceanic origins, the structure of our spines and ribs was first developed by fish. Population geneticists agree that all of us are literally one family. What would our world be like if everyone acted on this truth?
Yet as connected as we are, there is astonishing diversity even within human beings. Each person is utterly distinct. Our fingerprints, toeprints and tongueprints will never be reproduced.
Scientists believe that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe, capable of making one hundred trillion neural connections. Lay all of your neurons end to end and they’ll reach to the moon and back. Awake, asleep or dreaming, your brain is active night and day, a magic lantern. Not only that but your brain is capable of self-awareness.
Brain and body are inseparable collaborators, producing the symphony that fully absorbs us. This is the wonder of life. How amazing that we can even be amazed.
Written in short chapters that culminate in in-depth guided meditations, this is a book that spans vast tracts of interdisciplinary knowledge from the areas of Buddhism, Christianity, Psychology, Sociology and brings together these fields in a compelling, thought-provoking and deeply nourishing way. This is a book for the soul and spirit yes – but tempered with scientific knowledge and grounded practical advice for how to improve one’s ability to give and receive love in its variety of different forms.
Book Review: Real Love – The Art of Mindful Connection by Sharon Salzberg
Enjoy a calming tea ritual, some ancient Irish words that are now used in English, a bittersweet lament to birds by Christopher Tin, endangered mushrooms, acid trance an unzipped Vampire and much more in edition #104
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Welcome to edition #104 of Interesting Things I Found on the Internet, jam-packed with goodies incl. ancient #Irish words, calming #tea, acid #trance, a lament to lost birds and unzipped #vampires. Get in there peeps! #ContentCatnip
Beautiful! Although it is worth mentioning that someone wrote in the Reddit comments that this map is not truly representative of the vast and complex cultures and fabrics available on the African continent.
“South Africa alone has 7-12 different tribe’s in it alone. This far from captures the rich history of textiles in Africa. It’s far more than one type per country and then there’s the various patterns (kente from Ghana for example has hundreds of different patterns and configurations) and there’s so much overlap due to trade and cultural migration. You can divide African cultures by country, a lot of the borders are remnants of colonialism and do not represent or reflect the cultural complexity that is the African continent. It’s far too diverse for so simple an illustration (context I’m a South African xhosa man married to a Ghanian Ashanti woman born in Botswana).”
Did you know that the words ‘brat’, ‘banshee’ and ‘hooligan’ originate from Irish? given how rowdy and hilarious Irish people get when they are having a night out…this does not surprise me whatsoever. Here are some other words that we use every day from Irish. Via Wikipedia
banshee (from Irish bainsídhe/beansídhe, meaning “woman of fairy” or “of a fairy mound”[2]
Bean (ban) is the Modern Irish word for woman.Síd(h) (modern spelling sí) is Irish for ‘mound’ (see Sidhe). In traditional Irish mythology, a spirit usually taking the form of a woman who sings a caoineadh (lament) warning of impending death in an old Irish family.
bog (from “boc”, meaning “soft” or “marshy”[3] and -aigh to form bogach meaning “soft soil composed primarily of peat”[4])Used as the Anglicized “bog” as slang for a mire, but also to become stuck or impeded.[5]
bogeyman (possibly from bogaigh + English man)The word bogaigh is pronounced approximately as “boggy”, and the bogeyman legend originates from humanoid-appearing logs and human “bog-bodies” found well-preserved in peat. These occasional discoveries gave rise to unsettling stories some suggest may have been used to encourage good behavior from otherwise misbehaving children.
boreen (from bóithrín, meaning “country lane”)A narrow, rural Irish road.bother (possibly from
bodhar, “deaf; bothered; confused”; or from bodhraigh, “to deafen; to annoy”)The earliest use appears in the writings of Irish authors Sheridan, Swift and Sterne.[6]brock (from old Irish brocc[7])A badger.brat (from Old Irish
bratt meaning “cloak, mantle”[8])A cloak covering or cloth.[9] Also as swadding-clothes[10] and bird’s plumage.[11]
brogan (from bróg, meaning “shoe”[12] or “boot”.[13])A boot or shoe of untanned leather, often with holes in the sides or over the toes intended for drying while worn in wet conditions.[14]
brogue (from barróg, meaning “to wrestle or grasp”[15] with teanga (tongue) to mean an impediment of speech.[16])Though found in wide use in English to indicate a heavy accent, the Irish do not use this term for the negative connotations.[17]
clabber, clauber(from clábar) wet clay or mud; curdled milk.
clock O.Ir. clocc meaning “bell”; into Old High German as glocka, klocka[18] (whence Modern German Glocke) and back into English via Flemish;[19] cf also Welsh cloch but the giving language is Old Irish via the hand-bells used by early Irish missionaries.[18][20]
colleen (from cailín meaning “young woman”) a girl (usually referring to an Irish girl) (OED).
corriea cirque or mountain lake, of glacial origin. (OED) Irish or Scots Gaelic coire ‘Cauldron, hollow’
craicfun, used in Ireland for fun/enjoyment. The word is actually English in origin; it entered into Irish from the English “crack” via Ulster Scots. The Gaelicised spelling craic was then reborrowed into English. The craic spelling, although preferred by many Irish people, has garnered some criticism as a faux-Irish word.[21]
cross the ultimate source of this word is Latin crux, the Roman gibbet which became a symbol of Christianity. Some sources say the English wordform comes from Old Irish cros.[22][23] Other sources say the English comes from Old French crois[24] and others say it comes from Old Norse kross.[25]
drum (ridge), drumlin(from drom/druim meaning “ridge”) a ridge often separating two long narrow valleys; a long narrow ridge of drift or diluvial formation. Drumlin is a linguistic diminutive of drum, and it means a small rounded hill of glacial formation, often seen in series (OED). A landscape of many Drumlins occurs in some parts of Ireland (including counties Cavan and Armagh). Drumlin is an established technical word in geology, but drum is almost never used.
drisheen(from drisín or drúishin).dulse[23] (from Old Irish duilesc).
esker(from eiscir) an elongated mound of post-glacial gravel, usually along a river valley (OED). Esker is a technical word in geology.
Fenian(from Fianna meaning “semi-independent warrior band”) a member of a 19th-century Irish nationalist group (OED).
fiacrea small four-wheeled carriage for hire, a hackney-coach. Saint Fiacre was a seventh-century Irish-born saint who lived in France for most of his life. The English word fiacre comes from French. (OED)
Gallowglass (from gallóglach) a Scottish Gaelic mercenary soldier in Ireland between mid 13th and late 16th centuries.galore(from go leor meaning “til plenty”) a lot (OED).gob(literally beak) mouth, though used in colloquial Irish more often to refer to a ‘beaky’ nose, i.e. a sticky-beak. Perhaps from Irish. (OED)
griskin (from griscín) a lean cut of meat from the loin of a pig.
hooligan (from the Irish family name Ó hUallacháin, anglicised as O’Houlihan) one who takes part in rowdy behaviour and vandalism.
keening (from caoinim[ˈkiːnʲəmʲ] meaning “I wail”) to lament, to wail mournfully (OED). No relation to “keen” = eager.
kibosh, kyboshto finish, to put an end to: “That’s put the kibosh on it”. The OED says the origin is obscure and possibly Yiddish. Other sources[26] suggest that it may be from the Irish an chaip bháis meaning “the cap of death” (a reference to the “black cap” worn by a judge passing sentence of capital punishment, or perhaps to the gruesome method of execution called pitchcapping);[27] or else somehow connected with “bosh”, from Turkish “boş” (empty). (Caip bháis – pronounced as kibosh – is also a word in Irish for a candle-snuffer.)
Leprechaun(from leipreachán, based on Old Irish luchorpán, from lu ‘small’ + corp ‘body’ (ODE).
lough (from loch) a lake, or arm of the sea. According to the OED, the spelling “lough” was originally a separate word with a similar meaning but different pronunciation, perhaps from Old Northumbrian: this word became obsolete, effectively from the 16th century, but in Anglo-Irish its spelling was retained for the word newly borrowed from Irish.
phoney (probably from the English fawney meaning “gilt brass ring used by swindlers”, which is from Irish fáinne meaning “ring”) fake.[28]
shamrock (from seamróg) a clover, used as a symbol for Ireland (OED).
Shan Van Vocht (from sean-bhean bhocht meaning “poor old woman”) a literary name for Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
shebeen (from síbín meaning “a mugful”) unlicensed house selling alcohol (OED).
shillelagh (from sail éille meaning “a club with a strap”) a wooden club or cudgel made from a stout knotty stick with a large knob on the end.
Sidhe (Irish pronunciation: [ʃiː]) the fairy folk of Ireland, from (aos) sídhe (OED). See banshee.sleveen, sleiveen(from slíghbhín/slíbhín) an untrustworthy or cunning person. Used in Ireland and Newfoundland (OED).slew(from sluagh meaning “a large number”) a great amount (OED). Note: as in a slew of new products, not as in slay.slob(from slab) mud (OED). Note: the English words slobber and slobbery do not come from this; they come from Old English.[24]
slogan (from sluagh-ghairm meaning “a battle-cry used by Gaelic clans”) Meaning of a word or phrase used by a specific group is metaphorical and first attested from 1704.[29]smithereens: small fragments, atoms. In phrases such as ‘to explode into smithereens’. This is the word smithers (of obscure origin) with the Irish diminutive ending. Whether it derives from the modern Irish smidrín or is the source of this word is unclear (OED).tilly(from tuilleadh meaning “a supplement”) used to refer to an additional article or amount unpaid for by the purchaser, as a gift from the vendor (OED). Perhaps more prevalent in Newfoundland than Ireland. James Joyce, in his Pomes Penyeach included a thirteenth poem as a bonus (as the book sold for a shilling, twelve poems would have come to a penny each), which he named “Tilly,” for the extra sup of milk given to customers by milkmen in Dublin.[30]
tory originally an Irish outlaw, probably from the Irish verb tóir meaning “pursue” (OED).
turlough a seasonal lake in limestone area (OED) Irish tur loch ‘dry lake’
whiskey (from uisce beatha meaning “water of life”) (OED).
It is a bittersweet, joyful and sad song that captures the essence of that ineffable feeling we all have when we think about the animals that are disappearing from our world. Warning: don’t listen if you are already feeling a bit teary. On the other hand, keep listening if you don’t mind having a wee cry.
In the suburb of Koenji, Tokyo you can visit the anti-procrastination cafe and choose between levels of “support” from the staff to get your next book, design or creative project moving.
Wrinkled Peach Mushrooms Rhodotus palmatus are natural works of art
Wrinkled Peach mushrooms are classified by IUCN Red List as one of the rarest and most endangered mushrooms in the world. They are threatened by the reduction of elm and ash wood trees caused by fungal diseases and removal of dead woods.
Deforestation for timber is also reducing the habitat for this rare beautiful jewel o the forest. Dutch elm disease affects the growth of this mushroom and has to date killed over 60 million elms. Some people claim that this mushroom has no odour but others insist its odour is strong, minty, and smells like camphor. They are considered inedible.
Once found throughout Europe and the UK, these mushrooms are now exceptionally rare. Their red sap-like substance is called “guttation”, which is basically the mushroom’s way of purging excess water as it grows.
Wrinkled Peach Mushrooms Rhodotus palmatus are natural works of art
I love Róisín Murphy’s vivacious and extra personality, amazing clothes, husky voice and solid gold stage presence. She recorded this during lockdown in her lounge room, I just love it.
I love this channel on Youtube it’s wacky and hilarious and features a range of larger-than-life characters that you never knew you needed in your life…like Divinity the TV psychic from the 80’s giving you insights into what’s going to happen this year.
As she would say… “Nana Stays”
It’s the late 90’s early 00’s again with this acid trance mix
I love the sound of this I guess you will need to see and hear for yourself…
I was unable to find the source of this mysterious painting which is a remix of an oil painting of Princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna (1741 – 1838) a Russian noblewoman and lady in waiting. She was originally painted by Alexander Roslin, a Swedish portrait painter who worked in Sweden, Poland and Russia at this time, painting the aristocracy. How the unzipped version with a ravenous vampire inside was created and by whom is a total mystery and Google searches have uncovered nothing. If anyone knows, please let me know. This is endlessly compelling!
These amazing diagrams showing a medical cross–section of Godzilla along with other Japanese monsters such as Mothra, Gamera and Agurius. These illustrations were created in 1967 by Shogo Endo for a book called ‘An Anatomical Guide to Monsters’. This cult book was crafted by Shoji Otomo (writer) along with Shogo Endo (illustrator) (1967). An Anatomical Guide to Monsters has long since gone out of print.
If Godzilla were real, he would be an incredible biological specimen
Although I can only guess at what the captions for these anatomical diagrams say (any Japanese friends want to fill me in?) the geeks over at Popular Mechanics have devised some quasi-scientific methods for guessing at the biomechanics of Godzilla.
The radioactive, chaos-spawning kaiju of terror
Since his first awakening, the radioactive, fire-spewing kaiju has grown to 60 metres tall and filled out to around 150,000 tonnes. Godzilla is now 30 stories tall and weighs as much as a cruise ship. No actual animal could take the pressure of being so massive: It would overheat, its organs would implode, and it would need to mainline elephant steaks to get enough energy.
Weight: 164,000 tonnes
Based on a methodology devised by paleontologists to work out the mass of bipedal dinosaurs. This would make Godzilla bigger than the heaviest dinosaur we know of Argentinosaurus who clocks in at 100 tonnes.
Metabolism: 1.4 megawatts
This is the same amount of power you would get from a large wind turbine in Wellington. In the throes of destruction, fighting Mothra for example or ripping apart a cruise ship, he would generate about 37 megawatts of power. Enough to power a small town in New Zealand.
Bone strength: 300 MPa
Compared to our bones which can handle about 150 megapascals, Godzilla’s bones can withstand the same amount of pressure found 60 miles below the earth.
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