News
European Hedgehog Behaviour - Self-Anointing
Gotta have at least one animal fun fact per newsletter! Hedgehogs are one of those things where it kind of blows my mind every time I remember they exist in the wild. Did you see that news clip a month or two back of the lady who thought she'd found an injured/half-dead baby hedgehog (they're called hoglets, if you want to get technical) and she took it to the emergency vet, only to learn that what she'd lovingly picked up and tried to give water/watched carefully overnight was actually just a dirty hat pompom? Amazing. Also, in one of the most "huh, that makes sense" naming origin stories ever, they are called hedgehogs because of their love of hedges and the fact that they make little grunting noises like hogs. I fell down a related rabbit hole looking at whether hedgehogs and porcupines are closely related and learned that A) they are definitely not even a little related, B) they each represent a different one of the four main evolutionary groupings of modern placental animals, and C) anteaters (and aardvarks, weirdly) are in one of the other remaining groupings (technically called clades) alongside our floaty potato manatee friends. IT'S ALL CONNECTED.
The Paleta War
More ice cream drama!!! Slightly less dramatically told, but still very good. Do you like ice cream on a stick/paletas/popsicles, or does the wood taste ruin it for you? Or the otter pop/freeze pop things (idk what they call them in Minnesota lol)?
The Unusual Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist
I really thought I'd already sent this one to you, but it's on my list of "things still to send," so did I just miss taking it off??? It's got Manhattant vibes in the sense that it's just so fascinating to see the unique things that spring up when there's a relatively isolated geographic area + specific circumstances to adapt to/around. The full documentary is about an hour and is available on YouTube, if you were interested (although I wouldn't class it as "happy," but it's also not strictly unhappy? Mixed bag.)
Baby goats 🥺
I think this link should work without you needing to actually be on facebook, but if not just add it to the list of things to show you next time we see each other lol. It's literally just three minutes of sweet newborn tiny baby goats living their best life while being narrated by a woman with a fabulous Tennessee accent. That's it, that's the video. And it's so wonderful.
Pick Me Up: All I wanted was to literally get swept off my feet by a man. Then I did.
Honestly this whole essay is just great. So unexpected, and sweet, and also hilarious. I lost count of how many times I laughed when I first read it a month ago, and it was every bit as good on a re-read (I've had it on my list to send to you for a while, but completely forgot about it until today). Did you like being carried when you were younger?
His Biggest Hit Sold More Copies Than Any of the Beatles’. So Why Haven’t You Heard of Him?
Outselling the Beatles is impressive on its own, but it's also super interesting just to see how the perfect storm of factors can allow something like this to take off (and/or crumble). And in general, a guy who can make a song called "Oh Death" sound happy is worthy of recognition.
Never back dnd players into a corner
The algorithm sent this to me and I thought you might also appreciate it :) RIP to DMs everywhere who map out brilliant arcs, only to be creatively thwarted before they can even begin.