MaugaFamily photo in handcrafted traditional wear, made by David & Geraldine Mauga, for Matavai Pacific Cultural Arts, Sydney X
honey is the only food product that never spoils. there are pots of honey that are over five thousand years old and still completely edible
So apparently last year the National Park Service in the US dropped an over 1200 page study of LGBTQ American History as part of their Who We Are program which includes studies on African-American history, Latino history, and Indigenous history.
Like. This is awesome. But also it feels very surreal that maybe one of the most comprehensive examinations of LGBTQ history in America (it covers sports! art! race! historical sites! health! cities!) was just casually done by the parks service.
this is from a real diary by a 13-year-old girl in 1870. teenage girls are awesome and they’ve always been that way.
A little girl in my 4th grade class came up to me after recess and said, “I got married at recess!” and I said “Oh? I didn’t know anyone was ordained under the age of twelve.” and she asked me what ordained meant and I explained and then she said “Oh, well, no, my wife and I were married by the slide, but we’ll be happy together anyway.”
So apparently on school playgrounds, slides are already legalizing same-sex marriage.
I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Kurt Vonnegut, I Love You, Madame Librarian (via jennhasablog)
I’m serious
an entertaining thing to do would be to replace every instance of “for ritual purposes” in any archeology article with “for funsies”
TODAY IN HISTORY: The rings of Saturn, August 17, 1981, in an enhanced view from the Voyager 2 space probe, assembled from clear, orange and ultraviolet frames taken at a distance of 8.9 million km (5.5 million miles).
(NASA)
You could be forgiven for thinking that the otherworldly rock formations in these pictures come from another planet, or from a sci-fi movie perhaps. But they’re actually called sand tufas and they come from right here on earth.
A tufa is a peculiar form of calcium carbonate, and they’re created when calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through alkaline lake water (which is rich in carbonates). The carbonate and calcium combine and, over centuries, these elements form unusual spires, towering columns, and strange cauliflower-shaped mounds which can reach heights of up to nine metres (30ft). Tufas can only form underwater, and they’re only exposed when lakes are drained or dry out over many years. Check out this collection of pictures compiled by Bored Panda to see these curious formations for yourself.
Via + image credits
“A mysterious wooden idol found in a Russian peat bog has been dated to 11,000 years ago - and contains a code no one can decipher.
The Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Pyramids and Stonehenge - and is by far the oldest wooden structure in the world. Even more mysteriously, it is covered in what experts describe as ‘encrypted code’ - a message from a lost civilisation. Professor Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology said: ‘The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.’ Russian experts think that the strange carvings may contain a belief system, the equivalent of the Bible’s Genesis. The statue had been dated as being 9,500 years old, after its discovery in a peat bog 125 years ago. But new research in Mannheim, Germany used Accelerated Mass Spectrometry n small fragments of the sculpture, and found it is at least 11,000 years old. That means the sculpture dates from the very beginning of the Holocene epoch - the era when man rose to dominate the world.’
Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mysterious-russian-statue-is-11-000-years-old—twice-as-old-as-the-pyramids-170632897.html#4zrWvRH
If you’ve never seen the sunset at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (located in both North Carolina and Tennessee), you’ve been missing out. If you have seen one, you’re probably dreaming of the next one. The gentle curves of the forested mountains, the rising fog in the hollows and the glowing colors painting the cloudscape create a scene so beautiful, you’ll never forget it. Photo by Rick Sereque (www.sharetheexperience.org).
I think the biggest german discussion is when you meet someone from a different area in Germany and they call things differently and you are just like “nooooo that is not what it’s name is!!!” But the other person just won’t see your point because they think the same you think. Friendship can break over this folks.
you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:
On August 2, 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin is working near the lunar module. The Moon is small compared to some celestial objects, but it’s seemingly vast compared to that speck in the distance. Photo by Dave Scott.
(NASA)