if you're looking for something next month to get your mind off of screaming in angst...
...why not come listen to Somerville's own Cara Giaimo talking about her newest Atlas Obscura book, Wild Life, on "the world’s most extraordinary wild species?"
Free!
https://somervillepubliclibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/cara-giaimo-atlas-obscura-wild-life/
Interesting interview with the host of YouTube channel Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong, examining the inaccuracies of dinosaur toys. I now know how to properly make "dinosaur hands"!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/paleontology-accurate-dinosaurs
Bwahahaha! Some people have a way to compare things:
"Guys who's necks are thicker than my thighs."
Early on-demand music streaming required lots of nickels https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/shyvers-multiphone #atlasobscura #TIL
"For all of Americans’ faults and missteps, irrationalities and peculiarities, this was a country that I always assumed, on some level, made some kind of sense. There were strange tales, but they were blips, errata, diversions. But the more time I’ve spent in this country, the more I’ve come to see these moments of oddness as central to the American story. The United States, in a word, is eerie." https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/column-mad-gasser-of-mattoon via #AtlasObscura
Freaky experience: just followed a link to an #AtlasObscura article and something at the site triggered a sound loop as if a video was autoplaying. But leaving the site didn’t stop the loop. Closing all apps in the phone didn’t stop it. Only powering down stopped it.
Anyone else had this experience at Atlas Obscura? It behaved sort of like a virus which has me worried.
Today I went to the federal courthouse in Central Islip to see the Shorthand Gallery.
It was incredible.
Photos, it turns out, are not permitted in any federal buildings (oops) so I can’t share pics of the interior, but it’s a tiny corner of the lobby of a beautiful building and I spent over an hour there admiring the progression of shorthand from BC to present.
As a non-practicing lawyer, court reporters will always be miraculously magical sources of wonder for me.
Sunday soundtrack is the insanely cool psychedelic acid pop of ‘Sound Mirrors’ by Syd Arthur.
The bandname is a play on Herman Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha’ as well as a nod to Syd Barrett & Arthur Lee. Which is quite a good fix on where the music is.
Sound mirrors are large 1930s concrete lenticular monoliths that stud the British coastline, erected as pre-radar early warning amplifiers of approaching aircraft noise.
@Techmeme If #AtlasObscura's podcast - in @overcastfm - starts hitting me with SXM ads, I'm dropping them! #Stitcher
Speculum Alchemiae is a lost alchemist's lair found after a 2002 flood in Prague
We found out about it from #AtlasObscura and really enjoyed our opportunity to check it out while we were in #Prague a few years ago
Prague was fantastic in general, glad we got that opportunity
And of course, Imagination park pops up on an #AtlasObscura email a couple days later: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/30140
"Prior to World War II, and well before its potential for energy or weaponry was recognized, uranium was commonly used as a coloring agent in everything from plates, glasses, and punch bowls to vases, candlesticks, and beads. Uranium glass mosaics existed as early as 79 AD."
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/uranium-glass-radioactive-plates-cups
Why an Alaskan Hospital Added Reindeer Pot Pie and Seal Soup to Its Menu
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/alaska-hospital-native-food
"Atlas Obscura is repurposing striking images of some of the not-quite-iconic (though we think they should be) places in the Atlas. Wonder can be experienced from home"
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/atlas-obscura-zoom-backgrounds
