Just a selection of this year’s creations. The last two pictures are the same eggs from front and from back.
©Charly, all rights reserved, click for full size.
©Charly, all rights reserved, click for full size.
©Charly, all rights reserved, click for full size.
©Charly, all rights reserved, click for full size.
Juoni.
The Finnish word juoni has multiple meanings. Plot (of a book or a play) or intrigue. As a geological term it means a dike. This dike is (I think) a magmatic intrusion, probably thousands of millions years old. This rock is in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki and the (otherwise) paved seaside way/path for pedestrians goes over it.
Click for full size!
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Meretricious / Vapid / PoppycockMeretricious
Adjective.
1: of or relating to a prostitute: having the nature of prostitution, meretricious relationships.
2a: tawdrily and falsely attractive. b: superficially significant: pretentious.
-meretriciously, adverb.
-meretriciousness, noun.
[Origin: Latin, meretricius, from meretric-, meretrix prostitute, from merēre to earn.]
(1626)
“I’ll say you’re right,” said Mark. “Unfortunately, Miss Marple, we didn’t realize that. We wondered what the old boy saw in that rather insipid and meretricious little bag of tricks.”
Vapid
Adjective: lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force: Flat, Dull.
-vapidly, adverb.
-vapidness, noun.
[Origin: Latin vapidus flat-tasting; akin to Latin vappa flat wine and perhaps to Latin vapor steam.]
(1656)
“His face grim, Conway Jefferson lay remembering and thinking. Before his eyes he saw again the pretty, vapid face of Ruby.”
Poppycock
Noun: empty talk or writing: nonsense.
[Origin: Dutch dialect pappekak, literally, soft dung, from Dutch pap pap + kak dung.]
(1865)
“And she didn’t care tuppence for Mr. Jefferson. All that play of affection and gratitude was so much poppycock.”
All quotes from The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie.
I couldn’t make up my mind today, so a twofer…
A total cutiepuss from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Over the weekend Charly wrote an interesting post about different types of fungal infections in trees. Today, Jack and I came upon this downed tree and if I remember his post correctly this is a sapwood infection with unaffected heartwood. The damage is quite extreme and I think the infection is parasitic rather than fungal. So much of the wood has been eaten away that I suspect some sort of critter made a banquet of this tree.
©voyager, all rights reserved
Installation view of Indecline’s “The People’s Prison” (2018) at the Trump International Hotel & Tower (all photos by Jason Goodrich for Indecline and used with permission, unless indicated otherwise).
Robert Mueller may not have succeeded in bringing Donald Trump to justice yet, but for a fleeting few hours Friday night, the shadowy art collective Indecline did what millions of people in the US and beyond have dreamed of doing since November 2016: they put Trump behind bars.
It may not have been the actual maximum security prison of our collective dreams, but Indecline — most recently known for surreptitiously staging a graveyard at Trump’s Bedminister Golf Course, hanging a troupe of “Ku Klux Klowns,” and previously for planting naked Trump statues in multiple cities during the 2016 election — managed to stage a prison cell installation, dubbed “The People’s Prison,” in a suite on the third floor of the Trump International Hotel & Tower next to Columbus Circle. The work was installed in less than 24 hours, entirely undercover, and without the knowledge of hotel employees, who unwittingly helped carry all of the props and equipment to the room.
Installation view of Indecline’s “The People’s Prison” (2018) at the Trump International Hotel & Tower.
Surrounding the one-man prison cell were portraits rendered on American flags, burned and tattered at the edges, each illuminated with its own individual lamp. Indecline worked with 12 artists — including Molly Crabapple, Ann Lewis, LMNOPI, and the Panic Collective — to create the portraits of 12 artists and activists from across history, including Muhammad Ali, Leonard Peltier, Angela Davis, Hunter S. Thompson, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and even more contemporary figures like Erica Garner and Edward Snowden. Interviews with each of the portrait subjects played for the duration of the show over a background soundtrack of strangely relaxing ambient music.
All of the figures in the portraits, an Indecline spokesman told Hyperallergic, are “activists and fighters that we look up to. Activists that made a difference and made a good point. He has to sit here with the people who actually made a difference.” The spokesman continued: “Everyone on these walls fought to make this flag stand for something greater than it does currently under the Trump administration … they’re the ones who should be regarded as historical figures.”
My, my, conspiracy lunatic and asshole christian Rick Wiles has been booted off Youtube. This is a terrible event, everyone! It presages the very worst of all history wadded up together in a nasty spitball.
“America’s leftist snowflakes are furious that half the country no longer listens to their idiotic Marxist propaganda. My ancestors were German Reformed Church members who fled religious persecution in Europe in the 1700s and risked everything to come to America so they could freely worship God. There’s freedom running through my veins. My ancestors were not silenced, and I won’t be silenced by YouTube’s New Nazis. Every generation has its tyrants. We have tech tyrants,” stated Mr. Wiles.
Pastor Wiles fears America is on the verge of a French Revolution-style upheaval during which leftist mobs will try to execute Christians and conservatives to purge “Old America” speech and thoughts from our society. “France is an atheistic, socialist nation today because it never recovered from the French Revolution that started in 1789. The Jacobins decapitated Catholic priests and burned churches over a period of 10 years. Likewise, the communists who overthrew Russia in 1917 slaughtered 300,000 Russian Orthodox Church priests. Don’t tell me it can’t happen here,” Wiles remarked.
“Mao Zedong would be proud of the Marxist cultural revolution sweeping America and erasing our heritage,” said Pastor Wiles. “It must be stopped, or we will be swept into a communist nightmare that could take 70 years to escape.”
Hmm, last time I looked, France was doing okay. Haven’t noticed that it’s particularly atheistic, but yes, it is secular, as a nation should be, in order to serve all its citizens well. As for Mr. Wiles’s grasp on history, he could use a bit of work there. Missing a fair amount of bits. Perhaps if Mr. Wiles stopped braying for a moment, he’d realize no one has siphoned the freedom out of his veins – he still has the freedom to worship as he likes, where he likes.
“I have warned for years that a spirit of Nazism is rising up inside the USA,” he added. “The new Nazis are here. America is on the verge of a French Revolution-style upheaval during which leftist mobs will seek to execute Christians and conservatives in order to purge American society.”
Yes, most of us who are at least part way woke are all too aware of the nazis running about, and we aren’t happy about it. You might want to pay attention to actual news now and then, Mr. Wiles. I’ll happily settle for defanging all you deluded asshole christian conservatives. You can still have your churches to run to, where you can complain and moan to your heart’s content. I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to execute anyone. I probably wouldn’t mind gagging you lot for a while though.
Ilma.
Ilma is Finnish for air and also colloquially weather. In November 2017, it was windy and wet snow was falling in Hesperia park in Helsinki. With flash, it was possible to catch the trajectories of the falling snowflakes in the air (thanks for the advice in this blog a few months before, Caine).
Click for full size!
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Colloquial Czech does not distinguish between a foot and a leg. The word “noha” normally refers to the whole limb from the hips down. Medical terminology differs from this and the word “noha” means only the foot, and “dolní končetina” is used for the whole limb. Professor Kos has hammered this point home throughout multiple lectures and we were suspecting that if someone were to use the term “noha” in its colloquial sense during an exam, it would be an insta-fail.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Legs and feet are our means of movement, so they are very important. It is therefore important to look after them. Which, regarding the bones, means adequate exercise and not more than the body can handle.
What ordinary people do not usually know is that bones are not fixed structures. They are consumed from within and regrown throughout our lives. That way they can heal, but also change shape. That way they can also get injured in a rather peculiar fashion.
One of the stories Professor Kos was telling was a story of “march fractures”. Fresh army recruits, especially those from cities who were not accustomed to walking a lot, were often complaining about pains in their legs and feet bones after long marches. Initially they were deemed as pretenders becaue the x-rays looked normal, but some of them broke their legs when forced to go on. Then someone took a magnifying glass to an x-ray of the alleged pretenders legs and feet and noticed microscopic fractures developing before a clearly visible fracture occurred.
These are so-called fatigue fractures and they happen when a bone is deprived of nutrients. The bone continues to be consumed at a normal rate, but it does not manage to regrow back fast enough. Over time these tiny deficits accumulate and the bone starts to hurt and can even break.
A colleague of mine has developed just that in her foot during nordic walking strolls that were just a bit too much, too sudden and too long for her. It took a few weeks to develop and over a year to heal, with a surgery and a very long rehab being necessary.
Too much exercise is just as bad as none.
Choir of Young Believers – Hollow Talk. Lyrics at the link.
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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Grackle! I was so excited. Just the one so far. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
