Sunday Links

The Ghats at Varanasi: First Light by Sarvesh Phansalkar

Places that only exist at a certain time of day. The magic of some places is only seen when the light, the tide, the fog, and the quiet are just right. (image above)

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Set the focus to infinity and take it all in. Via MetaFilter

A Walking Car  Via Memo of The Air

The good news is that the dudes at Facebook are not evil geniuses plotting world domination in secret underground bunkers. The bad news is that they don’t wash their hands after using the washroom facilities.

A gorgeous West Coast Modern House on Bowen Island British Columbia.

NYC Street Clock Via Waxy

A visitor’s guide to the Isle Of Skye

Learn how to do Bernadette’s Special Arm Thing Via Rusty’s Electric Dreams

GPTZero’s AI Vocabulary feature detects the most frequent phrases and words used by AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude. Via Things Magazine

In 1977 Dimitrij Farkavec created the smallest oil painting in the world. It measured 1/85th of an inch and was titled Our Beautiful Canada.

8 Free Alternatives to GeoGuessr

Do any of you need butler assistance with grocery shopping? I don’t, nor does anyone I know, but if you live in Los Angeles it’s available here.

According to the Global Peace Index 2026 the world has become less peaceful than it was last year. Canada stands at 14 while our troubled neighbour to the south ranks a dismal 134 out of 163.

Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural: The story of a found mural, a lost artist, and a conference talk. It’s udderly entertaining.

Ian’s Shoelace Site  Via Memo Of The Air

An official Bayeux Tapestry tartan has been created for its London exhibition.

Graphic of the Week: American Diplomacy Retraction. More than 75% of African countries currently lack a US ambassador. Via TMN

How a Teenager's Thirty Seconds With RFK Haunted Him For Fifty Years Via Miss Cellania

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the world switch to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood YouTube channel. I guarantee you’ll feel right as rain in no time.

Turkish Psychedelic Music a single released in 1970 by Anatolian rock pioneers, Mogollar.

What are the risks of contracting West Nile virus from a mosquito in Canada? Link

Happy cloud art daily  Via everlasting blort

Threads Of Resistance

Britta Marakatt-Labba’s 24-metre embroidery Historjá, often compared to the Bayeux tapestry, chronicles Sámi life from ancient times to modern resistance.

 

 

Via everlasting blort

Textile History Of The Sámi People

Britta Marakatt-Labba is a Sámi artist whose 24-metre embroidery Historjá, often compared to the Bayeux tapestry, chronicles the life of the indigenous people of Scandinavia from ancient times to modern resistance. 

Via everlasting blort

Sunday Links

When the Bayeux Tapestry (image above) makes its historic visit to the UK next year, it will need to travel in a container that is exceptionally resistant to vibrations. Seeing it in Bayeux, Normandy many years ago was a travel highlight for me.

In 2010, Randall Munroe’s fiancée was diagnosed with cancer. Now and then Randall uses his XKCD blog to update us about how things are going with the two of them. It has now been fifteen years since her diagnosis and here is his latest heartwarming update. (Via Kottke)

101 Things I Learned Listening to Every Number One Hit Via Web Curios

Franklin publisher slams Hegseth for his meme of the beloved turtle firing on drug boats. I hope they sue this monster. Via PfRC

Antonio is my spirit animal Via everlasting blort

Mar-a-Lago face: “A Fellini-esque exaggeration of the dolled-up Fox News anchorwoman look"

Tree ornaments, a naughty tablecloth, lotsa socks and more… Museum Shop Gifts

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

“Here’s how this is gonna go: First, you will step up to the rental counter only when I give you The Look. The Look is not markedly different from my resting face. In fact, it’s no different at all. But it’s your job to recognize The Look, so pay attention.” Read more: McSweeney’s

Pigs on the wing The story of Algie, the pig who closed Heathrow.

 Grungeology is a self guided tour to Grays Harbor County, the home of grunge. I am on the senior end of the grunge spectrum but I still like it very much. Via Web Curios

Country Life Vlog is a surprisingly engaging Azerbaijani Farm Channel that is also lovely to look at. Via Hanan’s Tumblr

 Space-Age Frigidaire Ads

Saved by Stoppard A London professor cites some lines from Stoppard’s masterpiece, Arcadia, as the inspiration behind reconceptualizing the behaviour of breast cancer cells. Many lives were extended or saved as a result.

Do you think Mr. Nag would like this for Christmas?

My annual post of 52 Things Tom Whitwell Learned This Year

Before 1800 almost every parent lost a child; now it’s such an uncommon experience that people have forgotten and want to ban vaccines. Via Kottke

This is an amazing scientific health breakthrough that I knew nothing about. Jean-Baptiste Denys and the First Blood Transfusion

The Night Before Christmas - Beatnik Style

Confidence is everything! Excuse me while I scrub myself with an oven glove. (Via Memo Of The Air)

Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is a very funny story. I laughed so hard at one point that tears were running down my cheeks. Via everlasting blort

The Black Gold Tapestry

The Black Gold Tapestry is 67 metres of wonderment by visual artist and embroiderist Sandra M Sawatzky that tells the story of oil from the age of dinosaurs to our utter dependence on fossil fuels. Inspired by the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, it took nine years to complete. 

Images copyright © 2023 Sandra Sawatzky

Via Web Curios

The French Shore Tapestry

TOM COCHRANE PHOTO/ GO WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND

Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, artists and embroiderers in a Newfoundland village commemorated a lost way of life. The tapestry on display in Conche, a village on Newfoundland’s historic French Shore, illustrates the area’s French connections, including its complex history of fishing rights. It took a team of a dozen embroiderers about three years to finish embroidering the tapestry. It is more than 200 feet long and winds around a room in the French Shore Interpretive Centre.

TOM COCHRANE PHOTO/ GO WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND

Read more: Atlas Obscura

(Thanks Bruce!)

Mia's Bayeux Tapestry Colouring Book

Via MeFi

Sunday Links

Link - Thanks Bruce!

Blackbird Cabin: From a back of a napkin sketch to a serious piece of design engineering. 

World War II Couple's Love Letters Found Beneath British Hotel's Floorboards 

Some neighbors are better on your T-shirt. When Sid Vicious lived across the hall

Maps Mania brings us two sites that show the locations of thousands of bombs that landed on London during World War 2.

Very creepy

Yet another case highlighting the significance of wrongful conviction in the United States: Hertz "deeply saddened" that it took 5 years to find the receipt to free an innocent man 

Some Memes to mark a year of lockdown. Via Miss Cellania

Spring is Here, Cats Flying Back Home 

A series of Then and Now photographs from around the world at The Guardian

I was hoping we wouldn't be wearing masks by now but we are so this might be helpful: How to Prevent Foggy Glasses While Wearing a Face Mask Thanks Bruce!

Apparently there was a time when making wine for children was okay.

Incarceration in Real Numbers

A beautiful essay about hearts and hummingbirds Via MetaFilter

14 Things You Might Not Know About 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' 

I've been enjoying ginger lately and will try to grow my own: How to Grow Ginger in Containers And Get a Huge Harvest

Gore Vidal and Orson Welles Play Warhammer Via MeFi

BirdCast - Bird migration forecasts in real-time

The lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco. 

I like this sinuous stone house that blends into a Greek hillside.

Explore the Bayeux Tapestry online Via Everlasting Blort  (and here's a link to some of my related posts)

Picasso's owl 

Lockdown LPs Via Things Magazine

From The Guardian: A lost poem by Vladimir Nabokov, written from the perspective of Superman as he laments the impossibility of having children with Lois Lane, has been published for the first time.

The best bus shelter in Britain

Paris Apartment Renovation Reveals Hidden Revolutionary Frescoes

Famous meme faces then and now

Craft thy own Bayeux Tapestry

Craft thy own Bayeux Tapestry
Slay mischievous beasts
Rule the kingdom
Rotate, resize, clone…

Programmers Leonard Allain-Launay and Mathieu Thoretton and software engineer Maria Cosmina Etegan created this historic tale construction kit that allows you to choose a background and an appropriate medieval font to create your own updated version of the Bayeux Tapestry.

More: Open Culture

It was a dream come true when I saw the actual tapestry. See my Bayeux related link trove.

Animated Bayeux Tapestry

Via Miss Cellania

See my trove of Bayeux Tapestry links here. I actually got to see it five years ago, realizing a dream I'd had since childhood.

Football's Bayeux Tapestry

The FIFA World Cup 2018 launch trailer is an embroidered history of football that is the product of months of work undertaken by The London Embroidery Studio and animator Nicos Livesey.
It takes its influence from the Bayeux Tapestry and the graphics of historical posters from the Soviet Union.



More: It's Nice That 

The Exquisite Uterus Project

Based on the Bayeux Tapestry, The Exquisite Uterus Project  by Alison Gates is embroidered with a quote in pidgin latin related to a key phrase in Margaret Atwood’s classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale. A loose translation is "Don't let the bastards grind you down."

Via

Sunday Links

How Fashion Has Constricted Women’s Bodies Over 250 Years Yet another reason why we're cranky.

How Long It Takes to Reach a City From Every Place on Earth

A timeline for Lock and Co Hatters of London, the oldest hat shop in the world

Reading the Odyssey to My Four-Month-Old

Storming the Beach at Normandy: Andrew Cunanan’s Miami Murder Tour

The world's largest retirement community is testing self-driving taxis (when they say large they mean it)

A Subterranean Mystery on Oxford Street Is there a Victorian High Street underneath the present Oxford Street in London?

A font based on vintage Bulgarian lottery tickets 

Come for the Ride! Six destinations where getting there is all the fun.

The 1969 Easter Mass Incident Hilarious! Via 

n. putri is an embroidery artist living in indonesia. Her artworks are often confessional, depicting vivid melancholy and naiveté. Via

Distilling the Essence of Heaven: How alcohol could defeat the antichrist

The London Time Machine: Compare London of 1682 with aerial imagery from today, street by street. Via

Haint Blue, the Ghost-Tricking Color of Southern Homes and Gullah Folktales 

My dad voted for Trump—and my mom moved in with me 

Ax-Throwing Bars, Explained: Apparently establishments that pair alcohol with leisurely hurling deadly objects at targets are a Canadian thing. Who knew?

Cooking For an Ogre With Giambattista Basile: In her Eat Your Words series, Valerie Stivers cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers. This fairy tale menu looks delectable.

They’re so vain: pop culture’s most misguided vanity projects

For the First Time in 940 Years, the Bayeux Tapestry Will Leave France I saw it in Bayeux. I wonder where it will be shown in Britain.

Interesting Pictures of a Country Store on Dirt Road in North Carolina, 1939; It Is Still Standing More Than 70 Years Later!

Urban love letters 50 murals in West Philadelphia that were spawned in Brazil. Thanks Bruce!

Kopi Luwak, The World's Most Expensive Coffee Comes From The Poop An Animal I actually have a box of this. Does anyone want it? I'm serious.

Need a 45 minute break? Listen to pianist George Winston's 1982 album Winter Into Spring Via MetaFilter

The Complete Bayeux Tapestry

This video by Lindybeige is a  complete guide to the story depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry.



Via

The Stitch Lives Of London – ‘A Modern Day Bayeux Tapestry’

 Rosalind Wyatt's art textile installation tells the story of London in stitch through historical garments and artefacts. The Stitch Lives Of London will be housed in a building by the Thames and its 100 metre length will mirror the undulations of the river.  Words of Londoners- rich and poor, famous and obscure- will be sewn into the very garments they have worn.  Hats, gloves, garments and shoes become the historical “canvas” for the epic story of London. Wyatt will direct the work of artists, writers, researchers, curators, historians, architects, and designers.

image credit

The first piece completed for the exhibition is titled If Shoes Could Talk  and tells the story of 15 year old Mary Pearse, the daughter of a London shoemaker. The tiny Edwardian silk satin dancing shoes, donated by the Ward family from Wandsworth, are the canvas for these words written by a clerk at the Poor House where Mary stayed:

Mary Pearse ~ 15 years old ~ …states, that her Father is a shoemaker – & that her mother is living ~ that she has never been from home, till the evil example of a Sister, who has been a Prostitute some time, led her to think of quitting her Parents. She stole from her Father £7 ~ & took up her abode at No. 6 Charles street, Drury Lane, where she spent £5 ~ of the money, the remainder being recovered by her Father.

This sounds like a fascinating exhibition.



Read more about the project here

Via

Flowers of the Sky

This is a wonderful collection of depictions of comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars over a millennium. I saw the one below when I visited Bayeux last year.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry showing men staring at Halley’s Comet
Source 

Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of
November 12-13, 1833,
from E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888) – Source

Image from J.J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde (1844) – Source

More: The Public Domain Review 

Thanks Bruce!

A New Ending For The Bayeux Tapestry

The famous Bayeux Tapestry is 70m long and woven to tell the tale of the final days of King Harold's final encounter with William the Conqueror in battle.

But until now that tale did not include the coronation of William, which happened on Christmas Day 1066. A year ago stitchers in the tiny island of Alderney set about making their own version of the missing Bayeux Tapestry ending and have now completed it.

I visited the beautiful town of Bayeux in May and saw the tapestry. Too bad I didn't get to see the new section.



More: BBC News

Star Wars Story Hand-Stitched Onto 30ft Bayeux-Style Tapestry

Designer and illustrator Aled Lewis has translated the entire Star Wars epic into a hand-stitched 30ft tapestry akin to the Bayeux which tell the tale of the Norman conquest. This Star Wars version contains in-jokes complete with quotes stitched in Aurebesh, the fictional language used in the films, to mirror the Latin captions on the original.

This caught my interest because I'll be in Bayeux in April and am looking forward to seeing the famous tapestry (which is 230 feet long).

More at Mail Online
Via

Pimp The Bayeux Tapestry

Historic Tale Construction Kit

Via Cruel.com

I Want To See This Someday

The Bayeux tapestry (1066) is one of the most historically important, and unusual, chronicles of its day, is now located in the town of Bayeux in Normandy. The 70m-long (231ft) tapestry offers a splendidly vivid depiction of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. It begins with Harold of Wessex’s visit to Normandy and his meeting with Duke William in 1064, and culminates with the flight of the English army at Hastings. All the main intervening events, including the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, Harold's coronation, William's elaborate invasion preparations, his landing at Pevensey, the Battle of Hastings and Harold's death, are covered in painstaking detail. Along the top and bottom of the tapestry run decorated borders illustrating scenes of contemporary warfare, hunting and husbandry and also some episodes from the fables of Aesop and Phaedrus. The tapestry is often referred to in French as La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde (Queen Mathilda’s Tapestry) after William’s wife. Although it was almost destroyed in 1792 when French revolutionaries used it as a wagon cover, the whole tapestry (with the exception of the final section, thought to have depicted William's coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066) has survived to this day and can still be viewed by visitors to the town of Bayeux.

The Tapestry consists of 626 humans, 55 dogs, 202 horses, 41 ships, 49 trees, almost 2000 Latin words, over 500 mythical and non mythical creatures such as birds and dragons. At least 8 colours of yarn are discernible. It is approximately 70 metres long and half a metre wide.

via Metafilter