"Sometimes they wake in the middle of the night / at the same time, giving each other a fright"

[larryhammer]

Back from WFC, and while I did write something of what happened, it's so small a slice as to misrepresent the whole -- making me dubious even of linking to that. Though I will say, in a fantasy context I found myself oddly reluctant to mention A Desert Year (to use the working title), and that because of a chance comment from someone, I opened the file of "Seven Myrmidons Against Thebes" and discovered that, indeed, the point the draft started going wrong was further back than I thought, and started making notes against the several stanzas to be junked or deferred.

So instead of con reportage, I have linkage.

• The newest world's largest web-spinning spider, with a leg-span of 5 inches (12 cm). (via)
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan comes along with a reminder that the United States was never a uniform, white society. (via)
  
  
• Another butler candidate for meteor that killed the dinosaurs has been identified. (via)
  
  
• Thank you, National Geographic. (via)
  
  
• Paul Krugman's scholarly science fiction. (via)
  
  
• Do not drink while reading: "A Regency Romance in 2 Minutes" (via)
  
  
• The death of teapot effect. As the writer says, "If this doesn't win these guys an IgNobel, I don't know what will." (via)
  
  
• Some light on the vexing question of what V signs mean in Japanese photographs, "victory" or "peace" or "take my photo".
  
  
• I like these animated color stereoviews of Meiji-era Japan, but if flickering animated GIFs give problems, you probably shouldn't click through. Not even for the stereoview of geishas looking at stereoviews.
  
  
• Useful tips on how to prolong your batteries' lives, be they laptop, phone, or autotrebuchet. (Not that I have a autotrebuchet, but if I did, it'd want to maximize its battery life youbetcha.) (via)
  
  
• An intriguing account of the "discovery" of the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex.
  
  
• A disquisition with footnote on how teenage girls become medieval nerds. (via all over)

Though for that last, contra the writer I think "fangirl" is the appropriate term in this case.

---L.