1. Is Toby the reincarnation of Raymond Chandler’s cat? Sounds like it:
2. This article tells me that Matisse collected fabric, so me failing my “don’t buy fabric this year” goal after three months just means I’m collecting a library of inspiration. Yeah.
When he moved house, he also moved his fabrics, describing them as ‘my working library’. He added to the collection all his life, from markets in Algeria, Morocco and Tahiti to the end-of-season sales of Parisian haute couture.
3. This article includes a map that has everything and a fresco with a dog from ancient Pompeii
If your week left you feeling like this Roman dog, good news: it’s the weekend!
International insulators union logo goes hard. That lizard is the exact right temperature. He’s lounging, thanks to the union pic.twitter.com/JCpnvjTAO7
(Turns out the lizard is a salamander and asbestos has been around since ancient times! Salamander still goes hard, tho.)
2.Women’s History Month is over, but here are some facts anyway. (“Did you know that women are the second most respected gender?” Wow!)
3. Scientific and not-so scientific list of things that don’t work, from mathematical notation to my favorite, explaining board games. (I immediately glaze over.)
In ancient beliefs, the cosmic egg, from which everything emerged, was born from and divided by a serpent–god of the earth, of the underworld, and of fire. Thus, an egg, the symbol of the serpent, the male deity of the earth, who was considered, along with the original goddess mother, to be the creator of everything alive on earth–was one of the main elements of a pagan spring holiday dedicated to the spirit of rebirth.
(I also love me an obsessive single-topic site; this one has many cool images of regional differences between pysanky.)
“The pysanky on this page are all from the western part of Podillia (see map here), and many display a berehynia (goddess) or serpent motif.”
2. My Lutheran ancestors want me to balance all these pagan snake gods with some “real” Easter stuff. Today’s the day for listening to the St Matthew Passion.
1. This week I learned about the saola, “by far the largest terrestrial animal in the world (of certain existence) that has never been seen in the wild by a biologist.” It’s a bovine that lives in the mountains of Vietnam! It’s only been known about since 1992! And it’s critically endangered. 🙁
2. I also learned about “The Great Green Wall” being built across Africa to stop the expansion of the Sahara. I can only think of terraforming Arrakis.
It the rawest testament to the absence of effective courses of action. When war consists primarily of unelected men in undisclosed locations pouring fire on the heads of people we will never know on the other side of the world, there is very little that ordinary people can do to arrest its progress. But we still have our bodies, and it is in the nature of fire to refuse containment.
2. Kind of the only segue possible, from writer Vinay Krishan:
3. Uh, sorry for the downers at the end of the week. We’re still here, though. And we’re getting swole.
Sure, an app might be able to tell you how much you lifted the last time you did a mid-shin block pull. [..] But it’s unlikely to have the note that you made in your paper journal, explaining why your coach assigned this lift in the first place — “helps with the middle of the deadlift.” Or the notes that appear every time I am told to do tempo squats: “Coach hates me.”