Badger Buries Cow Carcass.

Warning: If you don’t want bad Benny Hill skits in your head, mute video immediately. Badger buries cow.

After scientists set up cameras to keep tabs on the behavior of scavenger animals in Utah, they were surprised to discover a badger buried a small cow carcass, according to a new study published Friday.

While badgers, which are small, omnivorous mammals, were known to scavenge and store small food items underground, this was the first evidence of the critter storing an animal carcass larger than itself, according to the study, which was led by undergraduate students from the University of Utah.

You can read all about it here.

Cool Stuff Friday.

all photos courtesy parnassus.

all photos courtesy parnassus.

Located roughly an hour north from central Tokyo is a fairly nondescript government building: Itakura Town Hall in Gifu prefecture. The building houses a small gallery that counts among its collections various obscure pottery work and paintings as well as a glass-enclosed sculpture of a Buddhist deity made from roughly 20,000 beetles in numerous varieties. If you have any form of entomophobia or insectophobia I suggest you don’t read on.

The sculpture was made almost 40 years ago in 1978 by a man named Yoneji Inamura, who was in his 50s at the time. We recently learned that Inamura had passed away earlier this year in January at the age of 98, which is what prodded us to look into his work.

Although Inamura created several sculptures out of beetles, he spent 6 years in the 1970s constructing this one, which has become his masterpiece and the largest sculpture he ever made. When it was done he donated it to the city.

The sculpture, made from rhinoceros beetles, winged jewel beetles, drone beetles, longhorn beetles and other types of local beetles, depicts the senju kannon bosatsu (1000-armed bodhisattva), a popular Buddhist deity in Japan.

You can see and read more at Spoon & Tamago.

Jade suit, unearthed from Tomb 2, Dayun Mountain, Xuyi, Jiangsu (2nd century BCE) (photo © Nanjing Museum).

Jade suit, unearthed from Tomb 2, Dayun Mountain, Xuyi, Jiangsu (2nd century BCE) (photo © Nanjing Museum).

Exceedingly wealthy, the royalty of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) lived indulgently, and these aristocrats were determined to enjoy their accustomed luxuries in the afterlife as well. While their strong affinity for the extravagant is largely unrecorded in historical texts, modern archaeology has immensely helped to shed light on these lifestyles from 2,000 years ago. Since 2009, archaeologists have uncovered thousands of telling treasures buried in royal tombs that date to the Jiangdu kingdom. They found not only exquisite mortuary objects and finely crafted domestic wares but also artifacts that speak to the body’s needs and desires — including a number of ancient sex toys.

You can see and read more at Hyperallergic.

And last, an animal so Disneyfied it makes Disney animals look woefully inadequate:

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You can see more of a Japanese Dwarf Flying Squirrel here.

The Farce That Is “The Wall”.

Ryan Zinke (Twitter).

Ryan Zinke (Twitter).

Just when you think rethuglicans really could not possibly go lower or more regressive, *bam*. Ryan the fink Zinke has a problem with the stupid wall – placing it on U.S. land would cede the Rio Grande, oh no wtfbbq!!!11!1 The solution? Doesn’t seem to be one right now, outside of making sure endangered animals are endangered right into extinction. It seems the only way to keep the Rio Grande would be to either steal land from Mexico, or build it on Mexico’s land and claim it for uStates. Or something. Jesus Fuck. There’s that Colonial mindset at work.

E&E News reports that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talked about the logistics of building a border wall while speaking at an event held by the Public Lands Council this week, and he said the Trump administration didn’t want to build the wall on American soil because it would mean ceding the entire Rio Grande river to Mexico.

“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall,” Zinke said. “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”

Zinke didn’t elaborate on how the wall would get built if it wasn’t located on America’s side of the Rio Grande or in the middle of the river, which implies that it would be built on the Mexican side of the border.

Elsewhere in his talk, E&E News reports Zinke said the Trump administration will seek a waiver to the Endangered Species Act so it can build the wall in jaguar habitats that are for now protected from “destruction or adverse modification.”

Via Raw Story. And, Ryan fucking idiot Zinke has now said there’s no such thing as clean energy. Nope.

Cool Stuff Friday.

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I really, really don’t want to spoil the surprise here. I’ll just say I was laughing myself silly, and this is someone who is delightfully familiar with the flat rat phenomenon. Go see!

One of my most favourite authors, Jim C. Hines, came out of model retirement for a good cause:

Click for full size!

Click for full size!

And, from The Creators Project, Vintage Posters can now be yours, for free!

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If the posters of today still had the look of those of yesteryear, would they still get tagged and trolled as often? Much work today, it seems, lacks the graphic audacity of yore, opting instead for forms and formats we’ve become accustomed to. That’s why, when you find vintage posters in flea markets, you find prices that might suggest they were just printed.

Many of these posters are available online, but it’s often difficult to find high enough quality to print them beyond standard A4 printer paper sizing. Finally, our savior: FreeVintagePosters.Com. The name explains the concept rather well. From Soviet propaganda posters and advertisements for airlines of the 60s, it’s up to you—there are several categories ranging from “Sport” to “Film” to “Nature” and everywhere in between. At Creators in France, we’ve been redecorating. Check out a few of our favorites below:

Head on over to see their picks, or go straight to FreeVintagePosters.com.

Horses Of Course.

I have a backlog of submissions I’m slowly getting posted, but serendipity strikes, and I have two horse submissions, very different from one another. We start with the amazing and beautiful art of painting resin horse models, thanks to Kestrel. This is time consuming and difficult work. This isn’t a type of art where the artist gets to simply go with flights of fancy, the object here is intense realism. One such artist, Mindy Berg, has her latest up for auction, and it is a beauty!

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I am so very proud to formally introduce to you my newly completed Lucius resin, sculpted by Emilia Kurila. Lucius needs no introduction.. but in case you have not seen him before he is one of the most coveted resins in the hobby (for good reason!). Made from a small edition, he is one hard resin to find, either painted or unpainted. This particular copy has been with me since the start of the edition, and it has taken me since then to complete his coat. Now we all know that time doesn’t necessarily equate to quality, but, I do want accentuate the fact that I have taken my time on this piece with no holds barred, and allowed myself to boldly go where I have not gone before…

Introducing Skywalker. Destined for great things, in this horse I aimed for the stars. He is by far the most detailed and complicated pattern I have ever attempted. Skywalker was painstakingly hand painted in oils, with each tiny hair a stroke of a minuscule brush, and there are thousands upon thousands of tiny hairs. There is a great reason that this technique is not commonly employed! Although a beautifully effective way to create realistic coat patterns, it is an incredibly slow process. Acrylics and pastels, and some pencil, were also sparingly used in his creation as well. He is an example of what I can create without time constraints, my painting “magnum opus” to date.

Then we have some photos from rq, of an interesting place visited for a work event, which also had a horse. I think it would make a cool cabin. They should have made the tarse large enough to slide down! Click for full size.

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© rq, all rights reserved.

Santiago.

An animated self-portrait exploring the line of human evolution and a projection of a possible future.
As our evolution turns from biological to technological, are we now the bridge between the born and the made.
I painted this stop frame animation on myself using face paint, a mirror and a camera.

Copyright Emma Allen.

Story, animation, performance -Emma Allen – emmaallen.org
Post Production – Huxley Studios – thisishuxley.com/
Sound Design – Edapollo – soundcloud.com/edapollo

Emma Allen
instagram.com/imakefings/
twitter.com/imakefings
facebook.com/paintfaces/

Wonderful! I like the beginning best. Santiago on Vimeo. Santiago at The Creators Project.