Blog Post

Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring - wow, there is a lot more to know about herring than I ever would have imagined!
Ian's Shoelace Site Is Still The Best Site For Tying Your Shoes - Ian's site is pretty awesome - I even have it linked on my Fun Links page. It's an old school, helpful site that's been around forever. But, Ian himself asks, “Have you ever wondered ... why websites like mine are disappearing from the Internet?”
Lighthouses of the Northern Seas - This is a really cool, interactive lighthouse map (which also shows beacons and minor lights). Clicking on a light will give you various bits of information like the range, what color the light is, if it's fixed, height, light flashing pattern, time period of the flashes. I spent a lot of time clicking on lights!

I got some more postcard club goodies this week! My mailbox was so happy! 📬

image of a postcard and 5 stickers. The postcard is an undersea theme with dark blue water, air bubbles, 4 fish swimming about and a mermaid with purple tail. She has long dark hair adorned with seashells. Of the 4 fish, one looks like a clownfish and one looks like and angel fish. One is pink with long tail and dorsal fins and one is in shades of orange and pink, also with long fins. Under the postcard are 5 stickers: some kind of plant that looks like a stalk with sea flowers on all the branches, a sand dollar, 2 different starfish and a shell.

The theme this month for Silver Swan Post Club was mermaids. I received a sweet, chatty letter and this postcard with 5 stickers. She also sent a recipe card. Usually it's for a food item but this month she switched it up and sent 2 drink recipes: one for a mocktail and one for a Passionfruit Mule. It looks delicious and she says it's one of those dangerous drinks because you just taste the juice, not the alcohol.

Scanned image of 2 postcards. The top postcard says FARM STAND in the upper right corner and has images of items you would find at a farmers market: flowers, fruits, vegetables, honey, jam, bread, eggs, a shopping list, a drink, cheese. The bottom postcard has items related to camping: a canoe, matches, a lantern, cookware including a cast iron pan with eggs and bacon in it, a carabiner, a stack of rocks, a frog, a flying bug, a pine cone, a deck of cards, a shovel, a knife, a fishing fly, a bear print.

Loupaper's theme this month was a double one - camping and farmers markets. She also sent a lovely chatty letter, talking about both. This is a fairly new postcard club (I think this is only the 3rd mailing she's done) and another topic she discussed was finding some clarity as to how the postcard club would proceed. In addition to the postcards, she also sent a sheet of stickers, a single sticker and a sunflower magnet!

a scanned image of a sheet of stickers, a single sticker and a single magnet. The sheet of stickers have the same images as the postcard with the camping theme. The single sticker is a dragonfly and the magnet is a bright yellow sunflower.

So, my original intention was to switch up postcard clubs every month so I can sample all of them eventually but now I feel guilty at the thought of cancelling my memberships with these current ones. 😬 I'm probably overthinking that but that is one of my superpowers. ⚡

Voter postcard encouraging Texans to vote for James Talarico for US Senate.

"Sue" is my voter postcard name, not my real one!

I've also been doing some voter postcarding again. This time I wrote out a batch of postcards encouraging people to vote for James Talarico for Texas senator. You would think this would be a slam dunk choice as his opponent is a corrupt-even-for-this-regime turd whose own defense lawyer has publicly supported Talarico but waves hands at current American political situation ... yeah.

Anyway, those cards were for Activate America. There are currently a lot of campaigns going on with all the postcarding groups since this is primary election season. For my next batch of postcards, I opted to go with Postcards to Swing States. This is the group where they send them in bundles of 100 but their messages are nice and short, which my arthritic hands greatly appreciate! They also have a lot of campaigns to choose from but instead I ordered 2 bundles, one from the state most needed and one from the US House district most needed. I'm curious to see which states I'll get!

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

Last week I had written that I still had some Grace Draven novellas to finish up. I read both Black Hellebore (which has 2 of her characters who are my favorites, Brishen and Ildiko) and The Undying King. I'm all caught up with her series that I read. I think she's scheduled to have some full-length books come out later this year, so that's something to look forward to.

After I finished those, I continued on with my slow reread of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mystery series set in Egypt and England in the late 1800s/early 1900s. I believe this book, The Ape Who Guards the Balance is set in 1911.

Once I finished that, I picked a book that I'd had on my Libby wishlist for a while: Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly. Astronaut Scott Kelly has a twin brother, Mark (who also happens to be one of my state senators), and in 2015 (I think) he started a year long mission on the ISS. He himself was an experiment - since he had a twin brother to use as a control, this was an opportunity to evaluate what being in space does to the human body. The book switches between the ISS mission and his life growing up.

I'm still in the middle of this book but I'm amazed at what jack-of-all-trades all the astronauts had to be. Not only did they have to handle equipment repairs (the CO2 scrubber, the unit that processed urine into drinking water, etc) but they had to work on all the science experiments. Kelly's background is a jet fighter pilot, not a scientist. But he received training prior to going up and was watched while he was performing the experiement but still. Can you imagine being completely unfamiliar with a process and then being the only one available to do it? Even with training?

Scott Kelly is an intelligent, determined man but it kind of amazes me he made it as far as he did because as a young man he was a school screwup. Scott said that these days he probably would've been diagnosed with ADHD. Back then, though, he just didn't care about school and grades, never learned how to study and just coasted through on vibes until he read The Right Stuff which made him want to become an astronaut. He had to learn in college how to study. As someone who was "the smart kid" and never had to learn to study because things came easy - until they didn't - I am extra amazed and impressed.

Watching

I have a list of movies that I have jotted down in my little notebook that I want to watch and usually I keep adding on to the list instead of watching a darn movie. Part of the problem is that I think I don't want to be in front of the TV for 2 hours and then I end up watching 2 or more hours of YouTube instead. But I finally knocked one off my list! This past week I watched Red Planet, a 2000 SF movie with Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss, amongst others. It was a box office bomb but I would give it a solid 6. I was entertained so it did its job.

Link Lagniappe

World's biggest whale graveyard found in Indian Ocean off Australia - This is amazing! Not just one whalefall but 5, plus a boatload of fossils and the discovery of a new extinct species.
Meet ‘Snuffleupagus,’ a newfound fish sporting shaggy camouflage - Remember Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street? This little fish's camouflage makes him look like a Sea Snuffleupagus.
Stained Glass Shopping Cart - this is actually an art project that's a commentary on consumerism, wealth disparity and material survival. But darn it, it's pretty! I'd like to tool around the local Winco with this.
CrankGPT - a fully offline, human-powered local AI. I have feelings about AI but this almost analog AI is an interesting project.
Swarovski can continue to fuck off - Delicious sparkly drama in this Tumblr post. Swarovski attempted to make their product a true luxury item by restricting who could buy and demanding strict business agreements. It didn't go entirely well for them.
I've got a bridge to sell you - Well, I don't. Cape Cod does. In fact, they have 2! They're looking for someone to buy the bridge(s) and then dismantle them and set them up in a different location for preservation. So, if you have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket and room for a bridge, this might be an opportunity for you!
There’s Something Living Inside Fog, Scientists Find - Shades of Stephen King!
The Red List of Endangered Crafts - Heritage Crafts, a UK charity set up to celebrate, support and safeguard traditional craft skills, has come up with a list of heritage craft skills that are endangered, often because the current practitioners have no one to pass the skills on to. Crafts are divided into 4 categories: Extinct in the UK, Critically Endangered, Endangered and Viable.
Ocean Census project discovers 1,121 new species of ocean life around the world in one year - Discovery stories like these always amaze me.

OK, that's about it for this week!

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