Sunday Links

Hand-colored photograph of a tattooed Japanese laborer by Felice Beato, circa 1880s.Via Wikimedia

Epic Ink: How Japanese Warrior Prints Popularized the Full-Body Tattoo 

The Qhapaq Ñan road network: A 30,000km road network from the Andes to the Amazon

Bill Callahan, the only sad man worth loving Kottke has written this post about his favourite living, active musical artist with lots of tunes that make for perfect Sunday listening.

The Fies Files: A Fire Story A cartoonist responds—with art—to losing his home in the Northern California fires.

Valerie Stivers writes a column called Eat Your Words for The Paris Review where she creates menus inspired by literature. I enjoy it.

São Tomé and Príncipe: a travel adventure that's great, green and diverse I'd never heard of these islands off the coast of West Africa. They're nicknamed the African Galapagos and they sound like paradise. Pics here

Candy Corn Hasn't Changed Since the 19th Century

Elaborate Halloween Costume Tips from a 19th-Century Guide to Fancy Dress: Here’s a 19th-century guide to dressing for fancy balls, with costumes for witches, carrier pigeons, glowworms, and air.

Did you know that all British tanks since 1945 have included equipment to make tea? 55 Interesting History Facts You Won't Learn Anywhere Else. Fascinating.

How Does It Feel? An Alternative American History, Told With Folk Music: On Guthrie, Robeson, Seeger, Lomax, Dylan, the Red Scare, the fall of labour, and what folk music had to do with it.

Reason # 84 Why writing takes so long

‘Reality shrivels. This is your life now’: 88 days trapped in bed to save a pregnancy

Remembering Basquiat through stories from those who knew him Via

The Seventy-Four Best Entries in the Devil's Dictionary

The Rise and Fall of the Viking "Allah" Textile: Why should we care about whether a 10th-century textile says “Allah” or not?

7 Hotels Straight Out of a Wes Anderson Movie 

The Ghosts of the Tsunami: The 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed thousands in Japan. But the pain did not announce itself. Instead, it began to haunt those left behind.

Ernst Haeckel’s Trip to South Asia and Its Aftermath  A trip to Sri Lanka sowed the seeds for not only Haeckel’s majestic illustrations from his Art Forms in Nature, for which he is perhaps best known today, but also his disturbing ideas on race and eugenics.

15 of the World’s Scariest Travel Destinations

Here's What My Parents' 1974 Wedding Would Cost In 2017 Dollars Is the wedding industry a racket or have people's expectations become unrealistic? Via

Where Priests Get Their Clothes  Via