Songster

[iconuk01]

I'm very proud of my countrymen for introducing America to the world of the proper football chant.

None of this cheerleader stuff for soccer, oh no sireee, I mean, no disrespect to cheerleaders who put a LOT of work and effort into their performances, but somehow "Rah-Rah! We're the best" from peppily gymnastic young things can't quite match the sheer power of entire stadiums of grown up fans yelling at the top of their lungs things like....

It's unclear if this one originated with the English of Scottish games (spelling of "old" as "auld" notwithstanding), but either way, well done.

And it's striking home too! :D

Sportsball holds no interest for me, but that doesn't mean I can't respect the participation aspects sometimes.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

The rotting jack-o'-lantern's aides and cabinet have apparently been scrambling to keep him from watching any of the world cup games with English speaking crowds, because so many of the chants have been about Epstein and him.

This includes keeping him from presenting the winners trophy at the final game, because can you IMAGINE sixty thousand international fans with a live target for those chants? He might shit himself to death on the spot.

[dungeonmastersdiary]

[alexaloraetheris]

We used paper cutouts glued to toothpicks and stabbed into erasers, but I like this idea better.

[inbabylontheywept]

For a college game, I used an entire box of candy canes as a size colossal monstrous zombie grasshopper, and then when it died I ripped the box open and used the candy canes as size large monstrous parasitic horsehair worms erupting from its corpse. Nobody actually wanted to eat them after that so I took them home and ground them into a powder with a pestle, intending to add it to my hot cocoas. But I didn’t wash the pestle very well last time after using it to crush garlic and chilis, so I accidentally made chili-garlic-mint powder and then I tried serving that cocoa at a later D&D sesh, and we were all baffled at why it tasted so horrible until I was like oh my god it’s the ground up zombie ass worms. I contaminated them with garlic and chilis. And the group was like YOU GROUND UP THE ZOMBIE ASS WORMS AND FED THEM TO US which seemed like a lot of fuss over what would have otherwise been free and delicious cocoa. Then after that before taking any snacks they’d ask did you perchance put any zombie ass chili-garlic worm powder in this?, and then refuse to eat until I said None.

Which they thought was very funny, even if I was slightly less amused, but I bided my time until they got tired of the joke and stopped specifically asking. Then I poured all the remaining zombie ass chili-garlic worm powder into a bag of party mix. The first guy to take a bite spluttered, and I laughed, and everyone said WHAT DID BABS DO, and I said THE WOOOORMS… YOU FORGOT TO ASK… OHMYGOD… and then I laughed so hard I actually cried. Derailed the start time almost an hour.

Oh that was a wonderful day.

[bonetrader]

A good, a neutral, and an evil DM. In this order.

[iconuk01]

It's strange how two, otherwise innocent, words can produce such bowel knotting levels of terror by simple proximity to each other.

Take "land" and "slide" for example, or "knuckle" and "duster".

And now we can add another such combo

"Sparkling Borscht"

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The real impact of AI at university level that I've watched in real time is how so many students come onto courses now - including Masters level - who straight up don't know how to analyse/evaluate things anymore. They just accept whatever they first read/hear completely uncritically. Every time you point it out you have to coax them into Actually Thinking.

I've spotted a huge decline over the last two years. What's upsetting is how so many of our current third years have declined since their first year. I did a seminar with them the other day, on the topic of the environmental impacts of different diets. One guy told me confidently that there would be no additional agricultural lands if we all went vegetarian.

"Cool," I said. "What's your source for that?"

"I'm sure I read it," he said.

"Fair," said I, "go and look it up. Find an academic source, let's assess it to see if it's robust."

The first thing he did was go to Google, and then read the AI summary.

"That's not a source," I said. "Find me a source."

Five minutes later, he happily tells me that a Guardian article says so, and mentions the World Economic Forum.

"Okay," I said. "Neither of those are academic sources, and the WEF is secondary anyway. Go to Google Scholar, and find a journal article."

Ten minutes later, he tells me he can only find articles that say it's a very complex issue in spite of pop cultural received wisdom, and we don't actually know.

A THIRD YEAR. This man has a dissertation due in THREE MONTHS. This is a skill we taught him in first year, and it's all dribbled out of his ears in the quest for easy summaries from an autocomplete algorithm. And I dearly wish I could say he's an exception, but Jesus Christ, that would be a lie.

I'm currently writing a lecture for the second years for their research methods module, and I normally wouldn't need to do this. But I'm having to re-introduce them to the basic concepts of how to actually analyse findings rather than lazily take whatever they seem to say at face value. I'm trying to find a good paper that had Surprising findings, because I want to show them a research question and a set of results and then get them to speculate and research on why they found something so different, but that's a difficult thing to search for.

Ngh. Yelling at the choir here, I know, but NNNNGH

[maverick-ornithography]

pelcan Mouth perfec t size for put baby in to n\ap! inside very Soft and Comfort baby sleep soundly put baby in Pelican Mouth. Put Baby In Pelican Mouth. no problems ever in peliccan mouth because good Shape and Support for baby neck weak of big baby head. Apelican Mouth yes a place for a baby put baby in pelican mouth can trust pelican for giveing good love to baby. friend pelican

[st-just]

Remember, history was awful. Never trust the romantics.

[booksandchainmail]

#you want to know a sentence that rewrote my brain:#most people have never been 20#more than half of humans ever born never made it to 20#which. is so crushingly sad to me i can't think about it for too long and also weirdly tempering when i'm angry at the state of the world#most people have never been 20! is it any wonder we're bad at being people sometimes! it's so new. we're young to it#anyway#i'm so stupidly grateful to live in the present and for modern medical technology (tags via @thoughtsformtheuniverse)

[zenosanalytic]

XKCD: Degree Off

Never Forget what Childhood Vaccines and Antibiotics have done.

[burninglights]

The two most powerful words in the English language, owed entirely to the efficacy of vaccines, are thus;

“Smallpox was.”

For most of history, smallpox was (!!!) the scourge that haunted human civilisations. We have evidence of smallpox from mummies c. 1350BCE in Egypt. It’s speculated to be one of causative agents of the Plague of Athens c. 430BCE. There were outbreaks of smallpox in Angola in 1484, in South Africa in 1731 that wiped out entire clans of Khoisan people. There was at least one major smallpox epidemic almost every decade across Europe.

Smallpox was transmitted by droplet/aerosol infection; it tore through even the smallest population centres. Typical smallpox incurred a blistering fever, raised pustules, debilitating joint and back pain; if you lived — and that was a fat fucking if, as typical smallpox had a mortality rate of 30% — you’d have tell-tale pockmark scarring, and face stigma for the rest of your life. Some were left blinded.

The worst form of the disease was haemorrhagic smallpox; all the agony of typical smallpox, with the addition of skin haemorrhage and pinpoint haemorrhage in the spleen, liver, kidneys and gonads. Near-universally fatal, haemorrhagic smallpox made up 5-10% of all cases. Of this number, 72% were children.

The global smallpox vaccination campaigns of 1958 to 1977 were a monumental effort by the World Health Organization and its global associates, backed by incredibly diligent public health work and epidemiological monitoring.

Wherever there were outbreaks, there was herd immunisation. Health bodies campaigned tirelessly for the general population to be immunised. In the ‘70s, a concerted effort was made by the WHO to ensure vaccines were administered in the most remote and vulnerable communities in the Horn of Africa, South Asia and the Pacific.

In 1980, the world was officially, finally free of one of it’s oldest adversaries; universal vaccination had been achieved, and there was no population that could act as a reservoir for smallpox.

If mankind has only one great achievement, it’s the smallpox vaccine; to date, smallpox is the only human disease to be completely eradicated.

After over two millennia of suffering, mass disability and death, humanity finally had the means to give one of it’s biggest threats the biggest possible fuck you, and through scientific and public health collaboration, careful epidemiological monitoring and countless hours of on-the-ground vaccination efforts, managed to blot it from existence entirely.

Where there is vaccine coverage, childhood diseases with high morbidity and mortality rates like whooping cough, diphtheria, influenza B and have dropped.

We have vaccines for TB, another of our greatest and longest adversaries.

With enough effort to counter misinformation, more people fighting for vaccine equality, patent free medication for communicable disease, and universal vaccine coverage, and everyone making sure to keep up to date with their vaccinations, one day, we could be fortunate enough to be able to say;

“Tuberculosis was.”

[crazy-pages]

“Smallpox was.”

Fuck. That hit me hard.

[duckbunny]

death and the stars

[hedwig-dordt]

I'm quite fond of the heroes of my field have slain one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse

[dykepuffs]

One of my friends was a university lecturer who had worked in the lab where the final smallpox case escaped from a lab and killed Janet Parker, a medical photographer who worked in the room upstairs. He was a very funny man, always "on", but once a year when he taught the lecture about smallpox and about 'swiss cheese' risk management, he looked like a dead man walking.

[vaspider]

[birdandmoon]

Nature Valentines: now available as a set of 6 cards, so you get to choose which friend is most like slime mold and which is worthy of the coveted phosphorus cycle.

[malspinningyarns]

The Muppet Christmas Carol is now considered a holiday classic and probably one of the best of the Muppets’ filmography, but when you look at it, it is such a departure from all the previous Muppet media. It’s much darker- both in terms of tone and color palette. There’s no celebrity cameos. A human is the central character instead of one of the Muppets. There are many new Muppets instead of relying on regular Muppets for some of the roles and some the Muppets are in roles you wouldn’t expect.

A lot of this makes much more sense with the context that this is the first Muppet project after Jim Henson’s sudden death and Muppeteer Richard Hunt was incredibly sick due to complications from AIDS that he was unable to participate (he would die during production). It’s a film created by a lot of people actively in the grieving process. You can feel that grief in scenes like the ones in the Cratchit home. It also explains why certain Muppets appear and some don’t. They really only use Jim and Richard’s characters when they have to. You can’t have a Muppet movie without Kermit, so Kermit is in. Statler and Waldorf are both perfect for Jacob Marley, so they both had to be recast because they were performed by Richard and Jim (which makes the fact they are ghosts kind of sad). Beaker is one of Richard’s characters and because you can’t have Bunsen without Beaker, Beaker was recast. Of Jim’s other major characters, Dr. Teeth and Rowlf are present but silent and the Swedish Chef has a more active cameo. Of Richard’s regular characters, only Janice is present. Scooter and Sweetums are not in the film. Frank Oz was busy with other jobs, so he really only does his main four of Miss Piggy, Animal, Fozzie, and Sam the Eagle. Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, and Jerry Nelson did a lot of the main characters, except the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future. Jerry Nelson did the face puppeteering and voice of the Ghost of Christmas Present. I think it speaks to Jerry Juhl’s skill as a writer that he was able to not only adapt to these casting considerations, but also write one of the most faithful adaptations of A Christmas Carol.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

The movie also launched the absolutely spectacular duo act of Gonzo and Rizzo.

But it is definitely weird that they created new puppets/characters for the Ghosts, rather than casting existing Muppets in the role. But it’s also a move that garnered them a lot of praise. More understandable with the casting necessities though. I could certainly have very easily seen Sweetums as Present, for example.

[rockmusicplays]

Rewatching this movie as an adult knowing all of this, and knowing how hard it was for Steve Whitmire to step into the roll after Jim Henson’s death adds a whole other level of heartbreak to “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. We shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting there was among us.”

[honoriaw]

oh

[armengoldira]

Guy freezes his hair and it stands tall.

[coughloop]

Guy freezes his hair and it stands tall.

[morwentrouble]

sound on for his adorable gremlin giggles and commentary in a lovely accent

[mikkeneko]

[notfinancialadvice]

This is so fucking embarrassing. This is one of the most embarrassing business quips I have ever seen in my entire vile career.

[birdsareblooming]

coat bath

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

tag yourselves i'm the GREAT ROOM beside the GOURMET KITCHEN

[pocket-deer-belly]

i remade it in the sims 4

[sic-sempervirens]

I live in the huge wax closet keep your skis in the coat bath instead

[lmages-remade]

was trying to sleep but then my third eye snapped open involuntarily so I had to make this

[pjie2]

I am 100% convinced that I only cope with daily life (to the extent that I do) is that in addition to being somewhat neurodivergent I'm also somewhat deaf.

[titleknown]

Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…

[hopesterling]

This….

This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.

Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.

[withasmoothroundstone]

This explains a lot.  And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce.  Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.  

And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that.  Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid.  Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given.  It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.

[lizardtitties]

I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, it’s enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby that’s pretty interesting:

https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2016/01/06/healthcare-in-iceland-vs-the-us-weve-got-it-so-good/

[thebibliosphere]

Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, I’m frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and it’d be over $100 out of pocket. So I didn’t get my eyedrops.

I’ve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.

It’s the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. It’s downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.

The rest of the world is not like this.

Eat the rich. Resist.

[dyannehs]

When I was travelling in Germany once, I seriously hurt my ankle. In a few hours, it had swollen to twice its size, and I went to a little ER in a tiny town. I spoke no German and only one nurse spoke English. They ran an X-ray and an MRI to determine what had happened (turned out I had bruised my peroneus brevis muscle and pulled the tendon), gave me a ton of very regulated meds for the pain and swelling, including some supports so I could walk…and my poor little 22-year-old ass was sat there, knowing all of this would cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, back in the US. I was shaking.

I’m in the exam room, post diagnosis and with pill bottles in hand, and in walks the one nurse I’ve been able to speak to the entire time. She pats my hand and tells me (and this is verbatim—I will never forget this conversation as long as I live), “I’m so sorry. We had to run those tests, and they are expensive. You don’t have insurance so you will have to cover the full cost.”

I start crying.

She continues, softly, as if telling me someone has died, “It’s going to be three hundred.”

I start sobbing, certain I’ve misheard, certain that I would be absolutely fucked, broke and going into debt in a foreign country. “Thousand?” I clarify.

Her entire demeanor changed, and she looked at me as if I had sprouted four extra heads. “No,” she says, “euros.”

That moment radicalised me.

[queern-bn]

My family got charged several thousand dollars for a late-night trip to the ER when I was a kid after an oops at home resulted in a large cut that needed almost 40 sutures. We lived in the US at the time.

Now we live in Canada. Last year my leg got rolled over by one of the front tires on a pickup truck. I spent 3 weeks in hospital, had 3 surgeries, one of which included skin grafting to cover the half of my leg that was degloved in my accident. I had IV antibiotics 4 times a day, I had physiotherapy daily, I was on a lot of meds for pain and having complex wound dressings changed every day. After all that, I had a home care nurse visit me every 1-2 days for 6 weeks to help with my wound care. The greatest expense to us as a family for the amazing care I received was my parents and husband using the parkade next to the hospital, which was like $13 a day. If we’d lived in the US, that injury absolutely could have bankrupted us.

[cranquis]

This information needs to be part of the US med school curriculum.

[beaniebaneenie]

I remember the moment that radicalized me.

I went to the UK for graduate school, and being there for that long meant I had to buy insurance for the duration. 18 months was something like £800 (this was in the early 2010’s). I, being American, figured “oh ok, that’s the premium and if I need serious medical care, I’ll get charged deductibles and all other kinds of fees at the time of care), because that’s how it works here.

Some time in the early part of that winter, I got incredibly sick. I’m immunocompromised, so sometimes that happens. But being a broke ass grad student in a foreign country, and dealing with unrelated financial abuse from family members, I figured I couldn’t afford going to the hospital. I figured I’d go to their version of Walgreen’s (Superdrug, and yes that is really that store’s name, load up on cough drops, some OTC meds, and try to ride it out as best I could.

One of my friends in my program came over to check on me and offer help. When she got to my room and saw how sick I was, she asked why I hadn’t gone to hospital. I was near tears and said I couldn’t afford it.

This is when I suspect my friend knew she was dealing with an American who was ignorant of how socialized healthcare actually worked, and realized that I couldn’t really be reasoned with. So she said, “I’ll pay for it- let’s go.”

Off we went to hospital, my friend did the talking bc my voice was so shot. The receptionist said, “as you don’t have an appointment, you may need to wait quite a bit.” I heard that and figured 5+ hours was at least what I was in for.

23 minutes later, my name was called.

My friend went back with me, bc I was pretty out of it. The nurse leading us back apologized for the “huge wait” because having a sick patient wait “nearly half an hour just for medical care” was unacceptable. I was stunned.

The nurse and doc asked some questions, looked at the medical records I had on my phone (bc I was a foreigner with very little medical history in the country), did a few rapid tests. The whole time, I’m seeing an old-timey calculator ringing up charges and freaking out… even though my friend said she’d pay, I was so conditioned to believe this would cost a fortune.

About 30 mins later, the rapid tests confirm I have both bronchitis and pneumonia. Doc writes me a prescription for some serious heavy-duty meds. My American ass is thinking, “ok, so now I go home, wait for 4 days for the pharmacy to fill it, then go get it.” The doc tells me that there’s a pharmacy counter on the way out, and I can stop there to collect the meds before heading home.

I’m skeptical but thank him. My friend gets me to the pharmacy counter. I give my name and hand over the paper, fully expecting to be told that it’ll take days to fill. The pharmacist turns around, pulls a bag off the shelf, hands it to me. Because my meds were already filled and waiting.

Me: you had them already?

Pharmacist: of course- there’d be no point in sending you home without medication, that’s why you came here. To get medical help.

Me: that’s so fast? (I am very confused)

Pharmacist: well, we expect people to have these illnesses at a higher rate this time of year, so we do our best to stock up on our end.

Me: that’s so nice? Also, what do I owe you?

Pharm: sorry, love?

Me: what do I owe you? For the medication? And the visit. All of it, how much do I need to pay?

Chat, her whole fact changed. She realized I didn’t just sound funny because I was in respiratory distress. I had an American accent. She reached over and patted my hand.

“Love, that’s what the health insurance is meant to be for. You’ve already paid for this. We’re not taking extra money off you, we don’t do that here.”

The entire visit was less than 2 hours, absolutely free, and everyone worked to be as efficient as possible in the goal of providing comprehensive healthcare for me, the patient.

Once I got home with the meds, I did actually recover pretty well (and relatively quickly, as far as I’m concerned). I talked to the friend after, and she admitted that she knew it was going to be free, but that I wouldn’t or couldn’t understand that in the brain fog of serious illness, so she said what she had to in order to get my stubborn (and terrified of bankruptcy) ass to the doctor.

That’s what healthcare should be. A goal of providing comprehensive and compassionate care to your patients, being well-staffed enough that no one waits for hours, anticipating medication needs, ensuring that patients leave with the medical care they sought- and that they’re not afraid to seek it, because they know medical care won’t make them homeless.

[hollowboobtheory]

how many times do we need to say it disability benefits aren't worth the effort of a scam

[hollowboobtheory]

a lot of actually disabled people don't think they're even worth the effort of applying legitimately

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

I just deeply and utterly loathe with every fibre of my being how rancid the discourse around immigrants and refugees has become in the UK. To the point where a historically centre left political party like Labour has become almost indistinguishable in its dehumanising, scaremongering rhetoric from far right racists like Reform. It is impossible to read a comments section on any news media story without mountains of the most disgusting filth comparing asylum seekers to parasites and vermin and hoping that they drown in the channel to blaming them for every single violent crime that ever occurs as if white British folk are pure as the driven snow and have never done anything wrong ever.

It’s not just colour based racism either. It’s a deep hatred and fear of anyone with a foreign name or accent. So called ‘white’ immigrants, especially Eastern Europeans, are not immune to this pitiable behaviour. It’s so pathetic and stupid and inhuman and I hate what we as a society are becoming.

I know this is hardly a new issue - in the late 90s/early 00s, there were a large number of Kosovan refugee families living on my estate, and while a good deal of the locals were friendly and welcoming, there was also some utterly horrid and racist arseholes. Sadly, they have always existed but I have never in my life seen things as bad as they are now.

[batshit-auspol]

Please enjoy the infectious laughter of the Australian senate struggling to keep its composure while grilling a man about bee semen

[a-book-of-creatures]

May you have the confidence of a medieval bestiary artist drawing an animal he has never seen, never will see, and hasn’t got the slightest idea of what it looks like

[hapalopus]

May you have the confidence of a medieval bestiary blogger posting animals from renaissance paintings they've never looked into, never will look into, and haven’t got the slightest idea of what a medieval bestiary even is

[a-book-of-creatures]

“marginalia”

[cosmichorrorlesbians]

hey @feminist-mina-harker please elaborate on the chameleon bestiary rant

[feminist-mina-harker]

Okay, since you asked for it, here is the chameleon bestiary rant.

This is a chameleon from a lavish thirteenth-century bestiary, Bodley MS 764, produced in England c. 1240.

'Haha', you say, 'look at those idiot scribes! They drew a rainbow horse instead of a lizard!'

That's when I hit you over the head with a baseball bat and tell you to shut your fucking mouth.

Because of course this illuminator had never seen a chameleon--the vast majority of chameleon species live in sub-Saharan Africa, with a few in Asia and one in the southernmost part of Europe. Only a very few people had the ability to travel extensively during this time, and it was extremely risky to do so even if you were one of the tiny percentage who had the means.

Instead, they relied on descriptions--written, not verbal--from the few people who had traveled, such as this one:

'The chameleon is not all of one colour, but is multi-coloured, like the pard. It is able to vary the colours of its body very easily, whereas the bodies of other animals cannot readily be changed in this way. The chameleon-pard is so called because while it is like the pard in having white spots, its neck is like that of a horse, its feet like those of an ox, but its head is like that of a camel.' (Richard Barber, 1992, pp. 67-68)

'But Lucy,' you would say, had you not been thoroughly concussed with the baseball bat, 'chameleons don't look like leopard-horse-ox-camel hybrids! That's crazy!' And if you had said this, I would beat you over the head again, and say yes they do, if you think about it for more than thirty seconds.

Let's start with the first part of the description: 'it is like the pard in having white spots.' You see those little white spots around that central stripe? Check.

Second: 'its neck is like that of a horse.' That dorsal ridge is pretty reminiscent of a mane, and when they stretch their necks, you can see the resemblance to the musculature of a horse:

Check.

Third: 'its feet like those of an ox.' You see those bifurcated toes, and the tiny claws at the end of them? That's an extremely distinctive feature of chameleons, and well worth describing. You know what other animal has bifurcated feet and would be very familiar to the medieval people back home in England? An ox, with cloven hooves:

Look at the claws at the end of chameleon toes and tell me you don't see the resemblance. Check.

Fourth: 'its head is like that of a camel.' This one's a little confusing until you remember that some camels have heads with prominent ridges/bumps, like this:

Looks like a smaller version of the crest on our second lil chameleon, no? Check.

'But Lucy,' you'd interrupt again if you still had all your teeth, 'that might explain the description, but not the drawing--they got it all wrong!' To which I would reply that the description was all these illuminators had. They couldn't have conversations with the travelers directly to gather what exactly they meant by 'feet of an ox' (bifurcated) or 'head of a camel' (crested)--they only had the words themselves.

So you end up with this image, which very much does have the white spots of a leopard, the neck of a horse, the feet of an ox, and the head of a camel.

And since they didn't have any other guidance as to size, body shape, tail, etc., they improvise those based on the animals the description said it resembles--the body shape of a horse, the tail of an ox, etc.

In conclusion, don't be mean to medieval illuminators. They were not stupid, they were not overconfident; they were simply doing the best they could with the information that was given to them.

And if you have a problem with that, my baseball bat is always ready.

[a-book-of-creatures]

Okay, I really feel I should step in and say something. Much as I appreciate this defense of the artist, I must address the elephant in the room. Or rather, the giraffe. foreshadowing

First off, as I've discussed before on this very weblog, bestiaries were not based on traveler's tales. They copied and paraphrased previous authoritative Classical works, with additions, omissions, and alterations creeping in as copies were made of copies. In the case of MS Bodley 764, the primary sources were an earlier bestiary and On the Nature of Things by Rabanus Maurus, along with Gerald of Wales, Hugh of Fouilloy, and Peter of Cornwall as other sources. Meanwhile, the bestiary's obsession with finding the etymology of names is a holdover from Isidore of Seville, another major source. And ultimately all bestiaries owe their existence to the Physiologus (Barber, 1993).

And things got confusing! Because as mentioned, the process of copying and rewriting previous authors led to all sorts of confusion. I've already talked about how a sea monster evolved from Aristotle's account of the elephant filtered through a Latin translation from an Arabic translation from the Greek.

Classical authors were well aware of what chameleons look like. Aristotle talks about the chameleon having a lizard's body, with descending ribs and a backbone that sticks up like a fish. He describes its face as apelike, its tail as long, its feet as divided into two parts - in fact, he goes into detail about how the feet have five toes, with the ones in front having three in and two out, the ones in the back having three out and two in. He even describes the chameleon's bizarre turreted eyes (Aristotle, 1862). Hm, I should look into a newer translation of Aristotle, come to think of it.

But that's not the point. The point is that at least as far back as Aristotle, people knew what a chameleon looked like. Above is the chameleon Aristotle would have been familiar with, the common chameleon (the chameleon posted further above is from Madagascar). I guess you could say the spots look leopardy? Either way, the description still seems... wrong.

Let's take a look at it then. There's something fishy about it. Don't worry, I'll highlight it.

"The chameleon is not all of one colour, but is multi-coloured, like the pard. It is able to vary the colours of its body very easily, whereas the bodies of other animals cannot readily be changed in this way. The chameleon-pard is so called because while it is like the pard in having white spots, its neck is like that of a horse, its feet like those of an ox, but its head is like that of a camel. It is a native of Ethiopia." (Barber, 1993, pp. 67-68)

What gives? What animal are we talking about here, a chameleon or a chameleon-pard? And why does it live in Ethiopia? We just said chameleons are found in Europe!

And this is where it starts to make sense. These are two separate accounts, one about a color-changing animal called a chameleon and one about an Ethiopian animal called a chameleon-pard. You probably know it by another name.

That's right, the giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis). See, the name's right there! Because it was seen as having spots like a pard/leopard (that's another thing to discuss) and otherwise camel features! These are two different animals!

The last piece of the puzzle comes from the source of this information. In this case, Bodley 764 copies almost verbatim from Isidore of Seville.

"The chameleon (chamaeleon) does not have one color alone, but is speckled with a diverse variety like the pard. It is named thus... The small body of the chameleon changes with a very easy transformation to whatever colors it may see, while the larger body size of other animals is not as suited to an easy transformation. The giraffe (camelopardus) is so called because while it is speckled with white spots like the pard (pardus), it has a neck like a horse, ox-like feet, and a head like a camel (camelus). Ethiopia produces this animal." (Isidore of Seville, 2006, p. 252)

And there you have it. Isidore of Seville describes the chameleon and the giraffe in sequence. Our bestiarist followed his lead, but took "camelopard" to be "chameleon-pard". And, as far as I can tell, the artist either treated them both as the same animal, or just illustrated one of them (the chameleon-pard).

Either way, this confusion of the chameleon with the camelopard/chameleon-pard led to, for instance, this depiction of the chameleon in the Ortus Sanitatis, accessed here.

On the other hand, other sources give us a more reptilian chameleon, such as Valenciennes 0320 (Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum, accessed here).

References

Aristotle, Cresswell, R. trans. (1862) Aristotle’s History of Animals. Henry G. Bohn, London.

Barber, R. (1993) Bestiary. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge.

Isidore of Seville, trans. Barney, S. A.; Lewis, W. J.; Beach, J. A.; and Berghof, O. (2006) The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

[upennmanuscripts]

Not a manuscript, but relevant to our interests (alas we do not have an illustrated bestiary in our collection, but perhaps someday)

[pjie2]

And famously the giraffe is likely the inspiration for the mythical Questing Beast in various Arthurian legends, such as this one from Malory. He went for a serpent's head rather than a serpent's neck (as in other versions), adding to the confusion. "And this meanwhile there came Sir Palomides, the good knight, following the Questing Beast that had in shape a head like a serpent's head, and a body like a leopard, buttocks like a lion, and footed like an hart"

[copperbadge]

Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:

Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.

Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.

[copperbadge]

The sando gender spectrum I osmoted this weekend according to a specific type of dude:

1. Roast beef is the most masculine of sandwiches. The only sandwich it is permissible to ask for by name (we did not have roast beef as an option).

2. Ham is an acceptable substitute for roast beef. There appears to be some controversy, however, over the bread options; we only had two, croissant or ancient grains roll (gluten free). Croissant is considered slightly more manly than ancient grains UNLESS you are under 20 in which case "ancient grain" sounds badass.

3. Turkey is okay, obviously not ham but if you don't like ham it's an option as long as you don't show enthusiasm for it. Definitely has to have mayo however. Mustard is a bit much. (Initial field research indicates mayo is the manliest of condiments but we have not introduced barbecue sauce into the study yet.)

4. Chicken salad is woman food. Absolutely not acceptable unless you announce loudly that it's for your wife or that she's making you for your health.

5. Vegetarian wraps require a recoil reaction or a sheepish "oh, no, no, what meats do you have?" protest. We had the veggie wraps off to one side so vegetarians could get to them more easily, and guys would come up to the wrap boxes because there was no crowd/line, then I'd say "that's veggie wraps" and they'd stagger back.

To be clear, most of the people of all genders at the event were totally fine, this was a small and specific set of guys -- mostly older dudes and (unsurprisingly) their young sons or grandsons. Maybe 20-30 people out of the 400+ attendees. But it really was both sad and a little funny to watch them unnecessarily assert their manhood using deli meat to me, a guy in a floral shirt with neon blue hair handing out box lunches at a charity event. My indifference to your masculinity is so vast it has its own international calling code, fellas.

[copperbadge]

Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.

We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:

The Italian.

For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.

The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, "We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie," and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.

I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I'm going to call it "I'd Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns."

[copperbadge]

Ahead of the Sandwich Gender Spectrum Studies Department's annual report on the September 2025 new data release, I wanted to share some recent findings by a research colleague at a prestigious academic institution on the east coast:

My sample size is growing all the time and my research is replicable.

[copperbadge]

Field work in sandwich gender studies, sandothropology if you will, can be challenging at times. While my thesis has been supported by both independent researchers such as above and grant-holding professionals (aka "people who work in food service"), the window of time in which I perform my yearly field survey is brief.

This year a new variable was introduced. The selection of sandwiches we were given to hand out was reduced to three: ham, turkey, or vegetarian. For the first time, the vegetarian option was a sandwich and not a wrap, as well.

There seems to be something about the idea of a wrap that makes it particularly unpalatable to a Certain Kind Of Person; we didn't have anyone getting hissy about being offered vegetables this year, and also got far fewer remarks about getting a turkey sandwich "for the wife" or "because she's making me". Perhaps when your options are realistically ham or turkey, rather than an array of choices that you have to navigate correctly, the social pressure eases off. Plus, ham and turkey both fall in the middle of the spectrum, so they're a little more ambiguous than say, roast beef and chicken salad. Why bother performing gender for two almost equivalent options? (There's a bisexuality joke in here somewhere.)

I did have one guy furiously lecture me for about two minutes because we didn't have any sandwiches on wholegrain bread, but if we'd had more sandwich options he'd have been mad we were spending the organization's money unwisely on sandwich fripperies (I know him of old) so that barely registered.

[alias-milamber]

The Sandwich Thing is one of my most memorable examples of not being a Real Man[1], when a colleague saw the wrapper of my (Brie, Cranberry, Grape, Rocket) sandwich and said “Isn’t that a bit feminine?”.

I’ll admit the phrase “I’m sorry you want to fuck my sandwich?” isn’t the *most* suitable for an office context, but it did make a third party expel cola from their nose.

[1] Probably Imaginary Man, because being a Complex Man[2] seems like a lot of effort into something I don’t really value[3].

[2] I.e Odysseus

[3] if you were to arrange a scale of gender-devotee from agender at 0 to transgender at 100, I’d look at you strangely for a moment then wander off talking about cultural obsessions with quantification.

[4] You’ve gone too far, abort.