kengr | Network

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maine-beer-company

When you enter the tasting room at Maine Beer Company, look up! There’s a 50 foot long fin whale skeleton suspended from the rafters above the bar area.

This whale skeleton, named Finny, was collected in the fall of 2024 by students and staff at College of the Atlantic Allied Whale and was preserved and articulated by Dan DenDanto of Whales and Nails.

The installation was made possible because of Maine Beer Company's longstanding nonprofit giving program. In 2009 their first-ever 1% for the Planet nonprofit donation was sent to Allied Whale and so began a long giving partnership. In fact, Lunch, their popular IPA, is actually named after a whale that was first spotted in 1982 off the coast of Maine (and was catalogued by their photo ID project).

Finny isn't Lunch, but her skeleton does represent a unique way for visitors to learn about marine mammals while enjoying a beer.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maine-beer-company

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/colchester-causeway

Run the Island Line Trail to its northernmost section and you'll find the geological marvel that is the Colchester Causeway: a three mile-long land bridge delivering pedestrians and cyclists to South Hero Island. On this path, you'll be able to see Lake Champlain only a few feet from you on either side, with breathtaking views of Stave, Sunset, and Law Islands to the west.

This land bridge was originally built by the Rutland-Canadian Railroad for trains to bring passengers northward through the Champlain Islands to Montreal, but after service ended in 1961, the city repurposed it for public use. To allow boat traffic, the causeway ends about 2.7 miles across the lake in a 200-foot gap, known to locals as "the cut."

A bike ferry from Local Motion operates during the summer to shuttle cyclists and pedestrians across. Interested parties can run a yellow flag up a pole on either side of the gap to request service.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/colchester-causeway

phys_social_feed

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-opinion-china-condom-tax-effective.html

Once the world's most populous nation, China is now among the many Asian countries struggling with anemic fertility rates. In an attempt to double the country's rate of 1.0 children per woman, Beijing is reaching for a new tool: taxes on condoms, birth control pills and other contraceptives.

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-opinion-china-condom-tax-effective.html

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3195/

Welcome to the International Space Station Exclamation Point!

https://xkcd.com/3195/

james_davis_nicoll

Their last cunning scheme set apocalypse in motion. What wonders will follow Billy and Milly's next bold endeavour?

Their Kingdom Come (Night Eaters, volume 3) by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

flamingsword

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Talk about your creative process.

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

Okay, so let me walk you through my creative process for the thing I’m going to make for one of my besties, I guess?

Summer top for ot_atma
• Information-overload-surfing / idea gathering: I pull up Ravelry or a web search prompt with “pattern” “knitting” “dk” “summer” and then words like top, tank, or shirt and then I start going through Ideas: “Would that look good on them?”, “Would that pull on their neck uncomfortably?”, “Would that technique be hard enough to learn from my current knowledge base that it will spur me on the whole project?”, “Is this stitch going to be too fiddly to be relaxing to knit?”, “The armscye of this pattern is too constricting but the neckline looks so cool, how could I replicate that on a different pattern?” And so forth until I have saved a small buffer of good ideas and things that either fit all my selection criteria or that I can use to make the thing look cooler or be more functional.

• I do forms of concept jamming play with fibers and knitting techniques and shapes: “What if I use this knitted pullover shirt pattern as the base, but with stretchy, shaped panels of brioche knitting across the front and back of the neckline, to make it easier to get on and off?”, and “What about this cooling, summer-weight cotton/bamboo blend will change the fit and drape of the pattern, and how will I need to account for that in what needles I use etc.?”, and “What if they want it entirely sleeveless but the pattern is written as a circular yoke? How would I account for that?” Those kinds of thought experiments are fun and like a background hum of pleased, gentle busy-ness. (It’s like my brain is a beehive of individual tasks all focusing in on one central purpose. It’s nice to feel like I have a purpose that I can fulfill at my own pace.)

• I play with the fiber and its properties by swatching and washing and drying and changing needles and repeating the process until I understand how to get the density or openness I want as well as being able to calculate the size the garment will turn out to be after the first washing, since some fibers tend to change shape/curl more/change size during the process of getting wet and then being dried.

• Then comes the part where I do the repetitive motion of knitting, which is like other kinds of stimming, except that when I’m done I have part of a sock or a sweater or a summer top. I move along the knitting pattern like one of those old school calculating machines moves along its program cards, and listen to podcasts and music and the sound of my own brain being reasonably quiet.

• And then I weave in the ends when it’s done, and wash it and pin it out to dry on blocking boards etc.. and then

ot_atma will have a new summer top in a really breathable moisture-wicking fabric.

And I get to jump into the next project, and play with different concept, and learn new stitches or techniques, and make fun things to keep people comfy, and have my brain be full of happy bees, dancing maps and patterns.

sovay

Alexander Knox was born on this date a hundred and nineteen years ago and without him I might never have discovered that the fan magazines of classical Hollywood could get as specifically thirsty as the modern internet.

Come to that, you would have been pretty tasty in the pulpit, too, Alex. You look, except for that glint in your eyes and that dimple in your cheek, like a minister's son. You look serious, even studious. You dress quietly, in grays and blacks and browns. Your interests are in bookish things. You live in a furnished apartment on the Strip in Hollywood, and have few possessions. You like to "travel light," you said so. You like to move about a lot, always have and always will. You've lived in a trunk for so many years you are, you explained, used to it. Of course, you've been married twice, which rather confuses the issue. But perhaps two can travel as lightly as one, if they put their minds to it. But you do have books. You have libraries in three places. At home, in Canada. At the farm in Connecticut, of which you are part owner, and in the apartment where you and your bride Doris Nolan still live. You write, which would come in handy with sermons. You're dreamy when you play the piano. For the most part it isn't, let's face it, church music you play. But you could convert.

—Gladys Hall, "Memo to Alex Knox" (Screenland, August 1945)

Current Music: Wolf Alice, "Don't Delete the Kisses"

rydra_wong

This collection of links to local mutual aid funds, food banks, and other organizations doing work on the ground:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

phys_social_feed

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-employees-slighted-reveals.html

A missed birthday. A forgotten anniversary. A milestone that goes unnoticed. These small slights from a manager may seem like no big deal, but new research from Wharton reveals that even the mildest of mistreatment at work can affect more than just employee morale.

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-employees-slighted-reveals.html

nnozomi posting in

senzenwomen

Aso Ito was born in 1876 in Onomichi, Hiroshima, where her family kept a tobacco shop or possibly an inn. After finishing elementary school she was fostered out to a family in Kobe. The details of her youth are not clear, but she probably spent much of it as a live-in maid and a factory clerk. She married while in Osaka and had a daughter [although some sources say she adopted a daughter later but never had children of her own], but left her husband because he was “truly boring.”

Around 1910 or so, she took her young daughter [if she had one] and moved to Innoshima, an offshore island near her birthplace, where she launched the Aso-gumi company as a subcontractor to the various shipbuilding companies now established there. Her specialty was brokerage and ship scrapping. Shipbuilding was then a thriving industry and the Aso-gumi flourished, with employees eventually numbering over a thousand.

Ito also opened the Aso Inn, since there was then nowhere to stay on the island, which became popular with politicians like Ozaki Yukio (and presumably his wife Yei) and writers such as Kawahigashi Hekigoto and Hayashi Fumiko. Fumiko, another Onomichi native, put Ito into a novel as O-Riku, with “hair short as a man and cigarettes in her sleeve.” She had her employees call her “uncle” or “gramps.” Hekigoto described her as a tiny woman dressed in men’s clothes, with a square face, a formidable gaze, and a heavy Kansai drawl, hair cut very short and a dueling scar on her forehead, sometimes hidden by her Panama hat. The knife scar came from a quarrel with an electrician over payment; Ito visited him while he was in prison for the attack and employed him when he came out, earning his eternal loyalty.

The money she earned went back to the community: she founded a kindergarten, a girls’ vocational school, and a scholarship fund in the region and built a sewage system and several parks, as well as a temple to Kannon. In her old age she left her business to another single mother she trusted and went to live in her park near the Kannon temple, where she prayed regularly. She died in 1956 at the age of eighty.

Sources
http://kamijimajiten.com/104 (Japanese) Adorable illustration of Ito by local (modern-day) elementary schoolers

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/16/the-happiest-little-otter-face

Via uso_otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/16/the-happiest-little-otter-face

rydra_wong

Elden Ring also has the summons mechanic.

Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:

IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve

YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)

james

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

sholio

I rewatched this one tonight, mostly for the Timov of it all, but also ...

( Spoilers for the episode )

merriamwebster_feed

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/vendetta-2026-01-16

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 16, 2026 is:

vendetta • \ven-DET-uh\ • noun

Vendetta refers to an active and mutual hatred between two families or groups, also known as a blood feud. It can also refer to an often prolonged series of retaliatory, vengeful, or hostile acts, or to a commitment to carrying out such acts.

// The student insisted that the principal had a personal vendetta against her.

See the entry >

Examples:

"Rita publicly refused a vendetta at his funeral. She wouldn't ask her sons to avenge him, even though that wasn't just normal for the time, it was expected." — Rita Halász, Deep Breath: A Novel (translated by Kris Herbert), 2025

Did you know?

English speakers borrowed vendetta, spelling and all, from Italian in the 19th century; literally meaning "revenge," vendetta first referred specifically to Italian and especially Corsican family- or clan-based feuds. It later extended in meaning to cover the acts that tend to feature in such feuds, and later still expanded further to refer to a commitment to carrying out such acts. Vendetta ultimately traces to the Latin verb vindicta, meaning "revenge" or "vindication." That Latin word is also in the family tree of other English terms related to getting even, including avenge, revenge, vengeance, vindicate, and vindictive.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/vendetta-2026-01-16

flareonfury posting in

comicbook_icons

Various Marvel icon dump of various comics/shows/animated/film characters/pairings.

Preview

Please comment & credit if you use!

See the icons here.....

cahn

This book, via

selenak, was just very relevant to my interests and I adored it so much! It's one of those books that I didn't really want to end. It's a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the Sybil, with nods towards making it Bronze-Age historically plausible.

Gull begins her life as the daughter of a slave in Pylos, and is apprenticed to the Pythia, the oracle of the Lady of the Dead, becoming Pythia herself when the current Pythia dies. After Troy (here called Wilusa) is sacked for the second time, the black ships of the Wilusan prince Aeneas and the remnants of his people land in Pylos to try to capture back some of their people who had been slaves (including Gull's mother, though by that time she has died). When they depart, Gull/Pythia goes with them as their Sybil on their sea adventures as the People search for a home...

I just really loved so many things about this, starting with that retellings of epic poems are always my jam. I loved Gull/Pythia and the way in which centering her and her experiences centers the lived experience of the women of Wilusa. I loved the way that Aeneas and the Wilusans are portrayed as refugees, because that's what they are. I loved that the gods, while they do appear on the edges, are mysterious beings that may be real and may be wholly belief; and that they aren't toddler-level petty and vindictive like in the Aeneid. I loved how Pythia and Xandros had that sort of fealty-love thing going with Aeneas, uh, not that this is a hardcore thing I love or anything.

Of course I was very curious about how Dido would be portrayed, even without knowing (as Graham says in her afterword) that Carthage didn't... actually... exist during this time period, so that Aeneas & Dido would have to at the very least be revamped. ( Mild thematic spoilers. )

One of the things that's really interesting here is the through-line of how the world is getting worse, piracy is getting worse, civilization is crumbling. Gull/Pythia can see that all of this is getting worse during her journeys with the black ships, and has gotten worse since the previous Pythia's days. And yet, as the reader knows, and as Pythia comes to dimly see, the arc of civilization since that time will curve upwards, and Aeneas will be part of that. (And I find this a somewhat comforting thought in some ways...)

I'm rather impressed that this was Graham's first book, which I had no idea about until I finished and went looking for more books by her! Occasionally there may have been a bit of unevenness, but all in all I thought it was extremely strong. Sooooo now I'm gonna reread Judith Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands to get myself in a proper Alexander mood, and then I shall go on to read Graham's Stealing Fire :D