A Colorful Weekly Link Round-Up

 

Another quiet week with a bit of rain to enjoy here at Casa Kittling. I've got to polish my scooter so it's all bright and shiny for my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I've also begun preparations for my niece Karen's arrival in two weeks. (Two weeks?!? She and I were beginning to think the day would never get here!) Karen will be spending almost three weeks with me. I can't wait because I know I'm going to enjoy every minute that she's here. It's going to be wonderful to have an English accent in the house again. 

I've stopped making tissue box covers, and it was about time, too; otherwise, I'd need an entire closet just to hold the things. That would never do! Instead, I've decided to make a patchwork-style wall hanging, and I've been having a blast going through all the yarn in my stash to find complementary color combinations.

Colors and their endless combinations have always fascinated me, and this is a good way to use some of my forty-year-old yarn. (I told you I had a stash!)

Virtual hugs to you all, and enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• On that disgraceful, disreputable, (wonderful) form of punctuation: the parenthesis.
• Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says Texas is "coming for the books" in public school libraries.
• 404 tracked a shipment of rare books. It ended at an Amazon AI training facility.
• Alfred Hitchcock's favorite Hitchcock movie is an eerie 1940s psychological thriller. (I was rather surprised when I discovered it was also my favorite Hitchcock film.)
• The neuroscience of why you can't stop buying books you don't have time to read.
• Last year's trendiest vacation? A reading retreat. (Who cares if it's trendy or not?)

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A medieval man's injuries reminded one archaeologist of modern-day car crash victims. They turned out to be the work of an English trebuchet. (The first trebuchet I ever saw was at Urquhart Castle on the shore of Loch Ness.) More from Live Science.
• Archaeologists say they've identified traces of a 2,000-year-old love note still etched into a wall in ancient Pompeii.
• Archaeologists are mystified by these 2,000-year old bodies seated upright and facing west in France.
• Archaeologists discover an intact cannonball from the Battle of the Alamo one day before the pivotal conflict's 190th anniversary.
• Lady of Elche: a 2,400-year-old bust of a mysterious "highborn" woman from pre-Roman Spain.
• An ancient Egyptian drawing is now theorized to represent the Milky Way's great rift.

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• Why are some octopuses so smart? The answer might lie in a never-before-seen mutation that helps them accurately build proteins.
• See the photos of three red panda cubs born at the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute this year.
• 15 photos of lions, the most majestic big cats found throughout Africa.
• The global web of subsea cables that connects the world can now detect whales-- even when they're silent. 
• Fishers discover a first-of-its-kind bright orange shark in the Caribbean.
• New Zealand's massive green parrots have narrowly avoided extinction. But many of their parasites did not survive.

►The Wanderer◄

• These coral reefs off West Africa were long presumed dead. Scientists just found them alive and teeming with life.
• The little known noir of Timor-Leste.
• Exploring the perfectly preserved abandoned town of Kitsault, British Columbia.
• Scientists find the mysterious source of the massive 1831 volcanic eruption that cooled Earth and made the sun appear blue.
• The centuries-old abandoned farmhouses of Puglia are having a Renaissance moment.
• The 230-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry will return home to England for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Meet three research assistants who traced women's stories from state fairs to the Smithsonian Institution.
• Archaeologists used to think women in prehistory wielded no power. Genetic data is upending that idea. (Surprise, surprise.)
• Way Bandy was one of the most influential makeup artists in the world. He challenged stigmas in the 1980s by making sure his death from AIDS was widely known.
• This is what being in your twenties was like in 18th-century London.
• The Tougaloo Nine were arrested in 1961 for reading at a segregated public library. Their contribution to the Civil Rights Movement have long been overlooked.
• An archaeologist may have uncovered the remains of D'Artagnan, the famed French musketeer.

►I ♥ Lists◄

• 60 of the most anticipated books of Fall 2026.
• 7 Victorian phrases you still use without realizing it.
• 6 innovative ways humans have kept cool throughout history.
• 17 psychological thrillers set in wealthy suburbs.
• Highly anticipated book-to-screen adaptations out in the second half of 2026.
• The best mysteries and thrillers of Summer 2026.

That's all for this week! No matter how busy you may be, don't forget that quality Me Time curled up with a good book!