Nothing happened today, so have a stuffed badger
Spotted at one of the country shows. They tried to put it over as an albino, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a very old bit of taxidermy. There’s a similarly pale wolverine in Kipling’s old study.
Have a good weekend!
August 8, 2025 — 6:12 pm
Comments: 3
It’s a miracle! No, really, it’s pretty impressive
This is genuinely weird. This is the chapel of Saint Theodora in Vasta, Greece. It’s maybe a thousand years old – nobody’s sure – and it’s got seventeen large trees growing out of its walls and roof and there are no roots penetrating the inside.
According to the Orthodox Wiki (who knew there was an Orthodox Wiki?)
Many researchers have spent years studying this structure, even X-raying the walls, but have no explanation for the roots of the trees. In 2003, a geophysical report was presented at the 4th Symposium of Archaeometry in Greece. The results of this investigation proved that the roots followed the gaps existing inside the stone wall of the chapel creating repulsion stresses between the stones and thus reaching the ground.
Perhaps there’s an engineer among us who can explain what “repulsion stresses” are. Grok failed me. Well, I failed me…Grok did his best.
There’s a stream that runs under it. So I guess they just…pull sustenance up through the stones? Beats me.
Here’s a blog that has more pictures.
August 7, 2025 — 4:29 pm
Comments: 11
Uncle B bought me a robot!
It’s a battery powered can opener and, believe it or don’t, it works. You clamp that little magnet down on top of the can, press the button, and it grinds round and round until it’s completely detached the lid. Usually takes it about two revolutions, but it gets the job done.
It also makes me squeal with delight.
I’d give you a link, but I don’t want to look it up. ‘Twas a gift.
August 6, 2025 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 8
robot made a funny
Last week there was an item on several tech sites about ChatGPT conversations being searchable on Google. You had to use the switch:
“words to search" site:chatgpt.com
Do you know the site switch? Very handy. I use it to search for specific things on sweasel.com (y’all know I use you as a diary, right?).
Anyway, a spokesman for ChatGPT said they only allowed conversations to be indexed for a short while, as an experiment. Most of the conversations were dead boring, as you might expect. My whole reason for posting it was this:
Another person asks the snarky, hostile AI assistant if they can microwave a metal fork (for the record: no), but they continue to ask the AI increasingly absurd and trollish questions, eventually leading it to create a guide called “How to Use a Microwave Without Summoning Satan: A Beginner’s Guide.”
First AI to make me go ha ha.
August 5, 2025 — 6:13 pm
Comments: 5
Oh, that’s cool
Myelin, you probably know, is the insulation on our brainal wires. It keeps them from arcing and sparking as they cross each other. That’s my very in depth medical understanding, anyhow.
Turns out, when you practice – whether a sport or an instrument – the actual measurable physical mechanism by which you get better is you grow more myelin sheath. Your insulation gets thicker!
I read that interesting fact this week and I cannot remember where. Grok backs me up.
It’s touched on briefly in this article (item 18) but I’m only linking to it because I stole the illustration from them. I dunno. I think they might be selling supplements.
August 4, 2025 — 6:03 pm
Comments: 4
‘Make better choices’: Endangered Hawaiian monk seals keep getting eels stuck up their noses and scientists want them to stop
That’s the actual headline of the article. It’s an archived article from 2018, so I have no idea the source, but here’s the same story from the Guardian.
Short answer, they don’t know how this happens. Three or four juvenile seals were found with eels jammed up their noses in the two years prior to 2018. I mean, really jammed in some cases.
No idea if it still happens, but I would guess not. A quick Google search only turned up articles from 2018.
I saw it, so you had to. Have a good weekend, everyone!
August 1, 2025 — 3:53 pm
Comments: 7
Is he…buggering a wolf?
I guess he’s supposed to be riding it, but the position is all wrong.
Nothing happened to me today, so I gave MidJourney the prompt “completely and utterly out of ideas.”
The other three images were: a mysterious but ultimately boring one about boats.
Something about trees and seashells. This image looked a lot better when I let P’shop automatically make some adjustments, but I decided to give it to you as is. The piss yellow sky is a thing.
And this bizarre sea filled with strange white animals.
These are all actual size and color, so they’re bigger images than I usually run. I ain’t guarantee they’re worth clicking on.
July 31, 2025 — 5:33 pm
Comments: 6
Hay!
They were harvesting this morning. Seems early in the year. It is upon us!
Farmers around here have largely switched to dwarf varieties of wheat. This makes sense, as the wheat expends less effort making long stalks, but it’s a real problem for our painfully quaint thatched roof house industry. They can’t get the thatch.
Our roof is super steep, but it’s not thatched. I’m relieved, honestly. They look cool, but they’re mighty expensive to maintain and I think the idea of being wrapped in a yard of damp hay would creep me out.
July 30, 2025 — 5:16 pm
Comments: 2
Not no mo’
Funny, I turned to Uncle B last week and said, “Is Tom Lehrer still with us?” And he was. Then.
Interesting guy. You’ll likely see all sorts of tributes online – mathematics professor turned musician and back into a mathematics professor. He didn’t like performing. What I didn’t know was that he invented the Jell-o shot.
The article makes that claim and then doesn’t back it up. Huh.
He’s well worth a YouTube search. And he put all his music and lyrics into the public domain, so you can steal at will. As he said, “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.”
p.s. Uncle B had to shoot a rabbit with myxomatosis in the garden a while ago. Nice for him.
July 29, 2025 — 4:00 pm
Comments: 8
But what was the category?
Spotted at a flower show over the weekend. First prize in what, though? I didn’t see any other hideously deformed vegetables.
July 28, 2025 — 5:51 pm
Comments: 6