Brotherhood of the Mustard of Dijon - This is one of the most delightful things I've read in a while. There is a real group of people dedicated to maintaining mustard purity and the tradition goes back to the 1600s. They even have medieval-looking mustard garb! (via MetaFilter) Sunflowers - a reverse Minesweeper where you plant sunflowers instead of getting blown up. (via Clive Thompson's Linkfest #47) Knit Wits exhibition: when SIBLING made knitwear loud, strange and fun - article about an exhibit featuring fashions from a London label that made really weird knitted stuff. source OMG, just look at these!! Aren't they cool? I hardly ever eat corn on the cob but if I had dino corn holders that would probably change. If Stegosaurus isn't your fave then they also come in Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Anklyosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Brachiosaurus, T Rex, green Stegosaurus, a different color Parasaurolophus, and the very unusual choice of Amargasaurus, which I hadn't heard of before. This Thursday I go in for my second hip replacement surgery. This time I'll be getting the right side replaced. I'm hating life a little bit at the moment because I had to go off my NSAIDs prior to surgery. It's not even a very powerful one but it's just enough to keep me going. I had been toddling around pretty well, especially with the new left hip. But, since stopping the NSAID, I've been in a whole lot of pain and have even had to use the cane to hobble around the house, where usually I was getting by with just some occasional wall surfing. I can't wait for surgery day! Some time last year I posted a link to the 2025 Edward Gorey Envelope Art Contest. There was a recent post on MetaFilter linking to the winners and finalists. Participants ranged in age from 4 to 55 and everyone was so impressively creative! Go check them out, they are awesome. Last year's theme was The Evil Garden. 2026's theme, if you are interested in participating, is The Utter Zoo. Voting for the Tiny Awards is open until September 25! Listening Some podcasts I've listened to this week: Untitled History Podcast - Episode 14: The Surprising History Behind the Eurovision Song Contest Eat This Podcast - The Tomato in England In Our Time - (Archive) Plate Tectonics I'm continuing to make my way through the 99% Invisible/BBC podcast, A History of the United States in 100 Objects. I've been doing a lot of postcarding and I've been playing that while I'm writing. I had started with episode 11 and liked it so much I went back and started working my way from the beginning. I've listened through episode 8 and the objects covered so far have been: The Century Safe; 60 Degree Screw; The Pension Files; Lowe's Gas Bag; the Blue Black Speller; Sharpened Screwdriver; The Otis Pamphlet and Billy Possum. These are so interesting! It's not just about the objects but about the history around them. Reading I have been in such a reading slump this month! I finally picked up Knight Training again by Jon del Arroz. I had started it and was feeling meh about it and then I didn't read anything on the Kobo (or an actual book) for days. I picked up the Kobo again last night, thinking I'd give that book one more try and something interesting has happened in the story and now I'm invested in it so I think I'll be finishing that. Watching I've been watching season 3 of Silo. I'm loving the show but I'm kind of mad because characters the show led me to hate in the previous 2 seasons, I am now being made to feel somewhat sympathetic towards. I just have episodes 8 and 9 left to watch and then I'll have to wait until next week for the finale. I went out with Best Son this week to see a movie, The End of Oak Street. It was fine. I would give it maybe a 6/10. I usually prefer watching movies at home but I thought a dinosaur movie warranted being viewed on a big screen. There were at least 3 groups of people in our small theater who decided they were in their own damn living room and chatted with the people they came with and gave an unasked for stream of commentary. They were SO LOUD and I am so salty about that. 🧂🧂🧂 There have always been loud, rude people who attend movies but it seems to have gotten so much more worse. And these weren't kids, they were grown ass adults who should have known better. Going to the movies has gotten too expensive to put up with a crappy viewing experience. I watched a delightful YouTube video, Full recipe box found in antique shop takes woman on search for owner's kin. A woman bought the box and found that it was full of handwritten recipes, dating back to the 1920s. There was an envelope with an address in there so using that and deducing that, "... with this many recipes, this woman must have been Lutheran," she was able to track down the owner's family and give the recipes back to them. This is such a sweet story. Link Lagniappe World Monitor - this site correlates all kinds of information into one large overview. Conflict events, ship and aircraft tracking, natural events/disasters, climate anomalies, markets and disease outbreaks are just a few of the data points that can be monitored. Here's a Wired article on who created this and why. Designer Creates World’s Most Hideous Hawaiian Shirt to Hide From AI Surveillance Cameras - not gonna lie, I kinda like the design. Discover the Mundaneum, an Early 20th-Century “Internet” That Put the World’s Knowledge on Millions of Index Cards - a couple of Belgian lawyers had a great idea: to gather, classify, centralize, and make universally available all human knowledge. On note cards. (via Perfect for Roquefort Cheese) Before Sci-Fi Was Cool: Scientific Romance - Here romance means an adventure, a sense of excitement and usually some action, possibly with a journey. Think Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. How Streaming Has Changed Pop Music - Shorter or no intros and shorter songs in general, the demise of the bridge, "wallpaper music" made to fit into an algorithmic list and music created specifically for TikTok moments. Ray Cats, Artificial Moons and the Atomic Priesthood: How the Government Plans to Protect Our Nuclear Waste - Scientists attempted to solve the problem of how to keep far future generations away from nuclear waste sites. There were many suggestions including the one by 2 European linguists who suggested breeding cats that would change colors when exposed to radiation. Then, even if someday the scientific knowledge behind radiation was lost, there would be folklore about the color-changing cats being indicators of danger. When You See Me, Weep - "The Hunger Stones have words engraved on them. They were etched in years of hardship—such as 1616, 1746, and 1892— when droughts brought soaring food prices and starvation. They are resurfacing again... " Past Catalog Archive - the webmaster is scanning in his collection of old catalogs from places like Radio Shack, Heathkit and Allied Radio Corp and making them available for download. If you have an old catalog you would like to share online, he invites you to contact him. (via Kottke.org) Font Lonesome - curated list of unicode that can be used for common icons found on personal blogs. (via 32-Bit Cafe Discourse) Dear Readers: Yes, pen pal programs still exist in a digital world - AP News article about pen pal programs. After reading the article, you can check out International Pen Friends, an organization that's been connecting pen pals since 1967. That's about it for this week! When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.