"Here’s to alcohol, the cause of — and solution to — all life’s problems."  
~ Homer Simpson

Nick and Sue found the book 📚 from Bohemian Baking Library 


Drugs and the golden age of glossy magazines. “Plane highs were usually the best,” says one former editor, “especially in first class”... Giant Glossies Luminaries  

Researchers identify 1,500 dance moves bees use to communicate  Daily Mail 

The joy of intimacy Aeon

Why Witchcraft Is on the Rise Atlantic

Where we find ourselves …Ross Douthat’s New Book Examines Our Cultural Disaffection as a Problem of Absence 

We are, Douthat tells us, exhausted. We make the same movies, over and over (most involving Marvel superheroes or galaxies far, far away). Our young turn away from actual sex and toward the consolations of pornography: sex without human relationship, and therefore without consequence and contingency. We approach “politics the way [we] approach a first-person shooter game—as a kind of sport, a kick to the body chemistry, that doesn’t actually put anything in [our] relatively comfortable late-modern lives at risk.” As Walter Benjamin famously predicted as early as 1939, we aestheticize through alienation, and alienate through aestheticization: living our lives in second order.

GOOD LORD: A 6-Year-Old Girl in Florida Was Committed to a Mental Health Facility After She Threw a Fit at School.

A virus called Wuhan-400 makes people terribly ill … in a Dean Koontz thriller from 1981. How is it that some books appear to prophesy events? SCMP

Spring 2020′s best books: Jozef Imrich is still drowning in Cold River, Hilary Mantel ends her trilogy, Elena Ferrante begins again. 

Old Photographs . ..

The Oldest Treasures From 12 Great Libraries

Atlas Obscura – The Oldest Treasures From 12 Great Libraries – We asked some of our favorite libraries: What’s the oldest item in your collection? – “When you start to think about the oldest books that a library might hold, there are any number of rabbit holes you can fall down. What’s the oldest book in any particular city? What’s the oldest book in the world? Well, what do you mean by “book”? The oldest written text? The oldest manuscript? The oldest printed material? The oldest bound book? Librarians take these kinds of questions very seriously, so when Atlas Obscura contacted some of our favorite libraries to ask about the oldest books in their collections, we were treated to a wealth of information about the treasures they hold. The New York Public Library, for instance, has not only cuneiform tablets and ninth-century gospels, but also a Gutenberg Bible and a copy of The Bay Psalm Book, one of the oldest books printed in America. In addition to its own cuneiform tablets and Gutenberg Bible, the Library of Congress holds one of the oldest examples of printing in the world, passages from a Buddhist sutra, printed in A.D. 770, as well as a medieval manuscript from 1150, delightfully titled Exposicio Mistica Super Exod. In the history of writing, bound books as we know them today arrive fairly late, so there are no actual “books” on this list. Instead, this is a wondrous collection of illuminated manuscripts, papyrus scrolls, and clay tablets.


Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool? ProPublica

Universe Sandbox is a interactive space & gravity simulator that you can use to play God of your own universe.

You can create star systems: “Start with a star then add planets. Spruce it up with moons, rings, comets, or even a black hole.” You can collide planets and stars or simulate gravity: “N-body simulation at almost any speed using Newtonian mechanics.” You can model the Earth’s climate, make a star go supernova, or ride along on space missions or see historical events.

I found Universe Sandbox after watching this video about what would happen if the Earth got hit by a grain of sand going 99.9% the speed of light (spoiler: not much). This game/simulator/educational tool is only $30 but I fear that if I bought it, I would never ever leave the house again.