wnycradiolab:

atlasobscura:

odditiesoflife:

The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake Kaindy

What makes Lake Kaindy truly remarkable is that it contains an underwater forest. Visible on the lakes surface are the tall, dried-out tops of submerged Spruce trees that rise above the water’s surface like the masts of sunken ships. They are the only sign of the amazing frozen forest below the water’s surface.

The water is so cold (even in summer the temperature does not exceed 6 degrees) that the pine needles remain on the trees, even after a hundred years of being submerged. During the winter, the lake freezes and becomes a popular spot for ice diving.

The lake is 400 meters long and is located in Kazakhstan’s portion of the Tian Shan Mountains, about 129 km from the city of Almaty. The lake was created after an earthquake in 1911 triggered a large landslide blocking the gorge and forming a natural dam.

Even more on Kaindy Lake… 

Holy crap.

leasthelpful:

I guess my high school was only teaching 9th grade English ironically

superfuntimedeluxe:

“I’m sorry, Ham Rove. One of us is dead meat and you already are.” — Stephen Colbert

<

p>Current Fox News guest.

Weirdly, he is on a panel with Dennis Kucinich

Just one more. Hearing her sing that beautifully out on the street just gives me chills.

And her lovely duet with Calexico that led me to her music.

I really love the way she mixes surf, garage, and ’60s French pop influences. Her name is Françoiz Breut.

Fox News Update: I was just informed that you can’t be masculine and liberal.

Staring into the news abyss: Day 1

I technically have a full undergraduate degree in journalism. To prevent News madness, I might as well draw on those semi-honed instincts

The story of the day is the IRS “targeting” of 501c4 groups. I will let The Economist sum it up:

Facing a surge in campaign groups formed during Mr Obama’s first years in the White House, and worried that many were too political to merit tax-exempt status, inspectors hit upon the shortcut of targeting groups with names containing “tea party” or “patriot”. Later, when that triggered complaints of bias, IRS officials switched to scrutinising groups that wanted to change the size of the government or even criticise it, firing off demands to know who led each group, what they were saying in newsletters or on the internet, and even what their members were reading.

According to the Times today, we now know that some officials who knew this information after an internal inquiry sat on it for a few months before the election.

Here is a pithy bit of judgement on the whole situation, from the same Economist column:

Though the government has a right to police overly political non-profit groups, liberal groups appear to have endured less harassment. Worse than wicked, the IRS’s behaviour was stupid: faced by angry citizens with a Don’t Tread On Me loathing of taxes, the agency sent taxmen to tread on them.

This writer’s take on it seems about right to me. If, at some point, this scandal is tied to higher rungs of the management ladder in the executive branch, it will come to seem more and more Nixonian. More likely, it will emerge as a heavy-handed attempt at problem solving worsened by bureaucratic hemming and hawing.

None of this rudimentary understanding was improved by 8 hours of “news programming.” The hosts instead preferred to turn to make broad, paranoid assertions about the following:

The woman who was the head of the tax-exempt department at the IRS is now in charge of enforcing the tax portions of the Affordable Care Act. Scary because: Death Panels. Alternately, if it is a reward for services rendered, we’re approaching 11 on the Nixon scale. Strangely, they went with option 1. If you are going to speculate wildly about wrongdoings, why not go full moustache-twirl?

Giant-headed Neil Cavuto was angry at the stock market for not being adequately upset about the days events (it went up a smidge). I find this inexplicable.

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino claimed that this was an expression of the inherent liberalism of those in civil service, something which must be rooted out.

Observations

1. Perhaps civil service would be more conservative if y’all deigned to participate in it.

2. People tend to side with those that don’t bash them all day.

3. Why are liberals consistently treated like a tumor on the body politic? They aren’t an illness to be cured. They are half of the population of the United States, and your fellow citizens. If they act like petty, over-political tyrants, call them out for that, not for their position on the social safety net.

So, we spent an entire day speculating on an undeveloped story that may or may not go anywhere, ignoring the actually major and relevant stories about the Russians selling arms to the Syrians like amoral assholes, the sexual assault crisis in the military, and the president’s infrastructure proposal.

Cable news: All light, no heat.

Disclosure: The two authors of this post are in the same office, sitting about five feet away from each other.

— 

Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield Hold Split-Screen Interview in Same Parking Lot - Dashiell Bennett and Philip Bump - The Atlantic Wire

Do not miss. Easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this week.

Again. Please. Keep always reminding me about all the Important Things I miss out on by deliberately not ““keeping up”” with ““the news.””

Yikes.

[via]

(via merlin)

centuriespast:

Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586

This work has been informally dubbed the Drake manuscript because the English explorer Sir Francis Drake is twice mentioned in the text and some thirty geographical references match his ports of call.

The Morgan Library