Strange Women Lying in Ponds

History. Art. Culture. The Written Word. Comedy. Curiosities. Nature and The Sciences. Anything Else That Holds My Attention. Combinations Thereof. And The Occasional Disjointed Personal Post. ((Hodge-Podge)) Welcome Bid. "Queen of the Cultured Wilds. Empress of the Empty Space between Words. Grand Duchess with Dominion over Damasks" - shilohta "The best mystery I've ever discovered" - R a n d e h

[calling-out-of-context]

Judith and Holofernes (Koloman Moser, 1916)

[theonion]

With fragrant smoke wafting down Pennsylvania Avenue as a line of administration officials and VIPs stretched around the block, sources reported Saturday that leadership at the U.S. Department of the Interior had begun grilling up the nation’s last remaining endangered species.

“Whooping crane’s served!” said an apron-clad Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who manned multiple grills on the new patio in the White House Rose Garden and was seen struggling to flip the vanishing bird’s three-foot-long wings with a set of tongs. “Hoo boy, that’s looking good. Get ’em while you still can, people! I’m about to throw some woodland caribou on there, too. Oh, and the jaguars! You won’t find these anywhere else in the whole country. Just tell me how you want yours cooked. You know how it is—some folks like their jaguar well-done, others like it still roaring.”

Full Story

[playwrongs]

Illustration by Byam Shaw for Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Also a useful reaction image! Image from the Folger Shakespeare Library's Digital Collections

[tinykitchenvegan]

Seared Lemon Zucchini Sandwiches

[ak-nm]

[notwiselybuttoowell]

QUESTION: WHY do I always wait like 6 years to buy things I want and WHEN will I stop doing it

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israel deliberately starting wildfires in southern Lebanon, firefighters say

Emergency services, residents and environmental groups say military dropping flares to destroy forests and crops

Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” Fakih said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.” The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and on agricultural land, according to videos and testimony from emergency services, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

[...]

According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment that threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support. Hisham Younes, the founder of Green Southerners, a Lebanese conservation organisation, said: “These are long-established woodlands, dominated by productive stone pine alongside oak. They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds.” Younes called the Israeli attacks an ecocide. “It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate and sustain life. When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”

[...]

It is not the first time Israeli forces have been reported to have set fires deliberately.In the summer of 2024, Israeli troops used trebuchets – medieval catapults – to fling flaming debris over its border wall with Lebanon, while the Lebanese army published photos of Israeli drones that carried hoses that doused forests in flammable materials. Health and environmental experts raised the alarm in February when Israeli planes dropped herbicides linked to cancer on farms in south Lebanon. Besides the environmental and health consequences of these fires, residents of south Lebanon have mourned the loss of the green spaces in the villages where they grew up.

12 August 2026

[sunbentshadows]

tiktok that is good

[allcatsconstitutethesamefamily]

Source details and larger version.

They’ve had many lives and many ages: cats I’ve met in my time travels.

[lionofchaeronea]

A Viking ship. Detail from the Överhogdal tapestries, named after the village in Sweden where they were discovered in 1909. The tapestries include imagery drawn from the Norse tradition, such as Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir and (possibly) the world-tree Yggdrasil, as well as Christian imagery. Interpretation of the tapestries differs, but the scenes may represent Ragnarök, the end of the world as recounted/prophesied in Norse religion and myth. Recent radiocarbon dating places the tapestries between 1040 and 1170. They are now located in Jamtli, a museum in Östersund, Sweden.

Photo credit: Jämtlands läns museum Jamtli / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

[bob-belcher]

a detailed list of things I hate:

hot weather

high temperatures

heat

warmer than average conditions

[justinspoliticalcorner]

ICE to spend up to $20m on gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

According to manufacturer, shock ‘is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds’

Maanvi Singh at The Guardian:

ICE plans to spend up to $20m (£15m) to purchase thousands of gloves for officers and agents that can deliver painful electric shocks by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices, called Glove (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. According to the manufacturer, “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars”. The company has advertised the device as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform”. The gloves have previously been used in settings such as jails in the US.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company. “It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.” Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

This is peak insanity: ICE to spend up to $20M on shock gloves.

[undermybed-stuff]

m*a*s*h 99/?

[random-brushstrokes]

Josephine Sibley Couper (American, 1867-1957) - A Portrait

[dozydawn]

shiebler, c. 1893.

[enchantedbook]

"View in the Park of the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati" by Maurice Sand.

Published in the French magazine Le Magasin Pittoresque in 1856.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Centrist Dems Really Do Hate the Left More Than Trump

The years-old joke goes that centrists fight the Left harder than they fight Donald Trump. It’s no longer a joke: after “rolling over and pl

The political opponents that have the centrist Democrats newly energized and willing to fight like hell are the democratic socialists who have become a powerful organizing force within their party and some of its most popular national figures.  That’s according to the New York Times, which reported yesterday that the centrist organization Third Way, in concert with unnamed “moderates,” plan to launch a “discrediting campaign” lasting from now until 2028 that takes aim at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the group whose members include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and is a key part of the coalition behind the party’s Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. That campaign will see Third Way not just do opposition research into DSA and target its elected officials but also go after politicians like El-Sayed, who don’t identify as socialists but make common cause with the group. “We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” Third Way’s president, Jonathan Cowan, told the Times about the campaign. This is a month after Cowan and Third Way’s executive vice president, Matt Bennett, warned in the Washington Post that DSA was “not a faction to be appeased,” urging the party to “fight” the group by pledging “money, organization, and spine.” It’s a well-worn joke at this point that Democratic centrists fight the Left harder than they fight the far right. But here, Third Way and whatever “moderates” are part of this effort are actually giving us an honest-to-God, real-life example of it: centrist Democrats’ big play to push back against Trump’s wrecking ball of a presidency was to literally do nothing. Third Way itself has been largely invisible, other than to make a list of words Democrats shouldn’t use, lead a public campaign against leftist streamer Hasan Piker, and tell Dems to be more hawkish. But now that the Left is winning elections, they are jumping into action, pledging to “fight” a “war” and calling on Democrats to show “spine.” You can’t make this stuff up.

[...]

This is the crux of it: centrist Democrats are clearly willing to tear apart their own party and hand power to the forces behind Trump, as long as it means stopping the Left from having any power. 

7 August 2026