fox

Posted by Miss Cellania

https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/06/You-Know-About-Coca-Colas-Cocaine-But-What-About-the-Kola/

Coca-Cola is the most popular soft drink in the world. It's sweet, fizzy, a little tart and usually cold. The drink was developed in the 19th century as a medicinal product due to the coca leaves. But that was only half the story- there were also the kola nuts that contributed half the drink's name. Kola nuts have twice the caffeine found in coffee beans. Combine them with cocaine, and you have products like "forced march tablets" that serve as nature's speed.

The kola nut has an interesting history of its own. Considered sacred in many West African cultures since ancient times, it figured in some of the darker parts of our history. Does Coca-Cola still use kola nuts in their signature drink? No one knows for sure, because unlike cocaine, the kola nut isn't illegal. This TED-Ed video explains the lesser-known side of Coca-Cola's original recipe. -via Geeks Are Sexy

https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/06/You-Know-About-Coca-Colas-Cocaine-But-What-About-the-Kola/

kalloway in

small_fandoms

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mrkinch

Today's high tide was a little lower than yesterday's but still high enough to be interesting, so I went down to Meeker Slough about 11 am for the 11:50 high. I wanted Wilson's Snipe but someone told me they are no longer on the little island off the footbridge; I'll go looking some other time. Still no birds in the berry trees yet but I expect there will be eventually. I saw two species of duck I hadn't found at Arrowhead, a pair of Northern Pintail and a pair of Gadwall, as well as Northern Shovelers and Green-winged Teal. I had two particularly interesting sightings. There was a small flock of Savannah Sparrows in the vegetation right at the Bay's edge, looking like Song Sparrows but not quite, with different behavior, as well. But the best moment was looking out over the flooded marsh dotted with American Coots and noticing one that was tiny. Also not black. I identified it as a Sora just about the time it flew off. Gosh, it was little. ( The list: )

I hope I can go there again tomorrow, check out two other areas. We shall see.

lannamichaels

My notes on these. Still not much to say but it's been, quite frankly, better than Nashim.

( Read more... )

nnozomi in

guardian_learning

部首
广 part 3
库, warehouse; 应, should/to answer; 底, bottom/end ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=53

词汇
笨, stupid (pinyin in tags) bèn
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
既然我答应过赵云澜要照顾你，我就一定会好好把你带回去, since I promised Zhao Yunlan I'd take care of you, I have to bring you home safe
笨蛋，闭嘴！ shut up, idiot!

Me:
我们应该把仓库收拾一下。
我怎么这么笨，真服了。

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-vinegar-museum

Billing itself as "the world's first and only museum dedicated to the wonder that is vinegar," the International Vinegar Museum first opened its doors in 1999 as a way to bring tourism to the tiny town of Roslyn, South Dakota. Located in the town's former auditorium, built in the 1930s and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the museum is the work of local vinegar enthusiast Lawrence "The Vinegar Man" Diggs.

Visitors can see and taste different vinegars from around the world, learn how vinegar is made and its many uses, and even see paper and ceramic made out of vinegar. Additionally, the museum hosts a Vinegar Festival every year, with a parade, tastings, cooking demonstrations, and a contest to crown the Vinegar Queen and "Royal Quart".

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-vinegar-museum

kaberett

Breakfast in bed, accompanied by completing my first ever playthrough of the main body of Monument Valley. I think I wound up getting two prompts from A, who also spent a significant chunk of the afternoon attempting to get it working on two different large-format touchscreen devices -- I'd been struggling with the trackpad, and was gratified when A reported that they'd had a go at playing the very first level with a trackpad and it really was kind of wretched. (Made it to approximately halfway through Appendix 1 before deciding I needed to call it for the day...)
smitten kitchen's braised chickpeas with zucchini and pesto continues fantastic.
'tis The Season for my current Favourite Chocolate (I'm not sure if it's available year-round but the company we get groceries from only carries them during the winter, and I honestly probably enjoy them more because of the Seasonal Availability). I am writing this post with one of them + a mug of warm milk.
The box of meds I dropped in an airport this Monday gone has successfully been picked up! First step in a pass-the-parcel that will hopefully conclude weekend after next...
Got a substantial increase on my highest score in one of the silly clicky games in Flight Rising :)

aethel

1. Dreamwidth's December points bonus has started. dw_news also has an update on some of the state-level censorship legislation.

2. I found another quirky booktuber to watch: Michael K Vaughan. See Classics of Literature…or ARE they?

3. I recently watched The Green Knight and thought the scenes I could see were very pretty, but it seemed to be less gay than the poem?? I need to reread the poem.

4. 2025 reading progress: 102 books

Most recently finished: Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I had previously read this one as a teenager; the concept is interesting, but this time I couldn't help noticing that it mainly consisted of men explaining things to each other--no action, no female characters.

Most recently abandoned: Mr Collins in Love

Currently reading: Native Nations (will probably have to return this to the library before I finish); Ancillary Sword (I listened to the audiobook of Ancillary Justice, but the whole trilogy was sitting on the bookshelf in paperback, so I couldn't stop at just one); Salt Magic, Skin Magic (same author as Mr Collins in Love, but with characters who aren't the most annoying character in Jane Austen); and A Princess of Mars (I expected it to be dated and sexist, but I didn't realize the hero was a former Confederate soldier)

adrian_turtle

I heard there was a new version of the musical Chess, much better than the original. I don't know the details, but I think they added some outside narration for context, to help it make sense? And changed the focus? (I am not really worried about spoilers. Even if they make the plot less inane, the audience should be there for the music, not the plot.)

A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide

(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)

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endings

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atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-submarine-tunnels

The tunnels offer walkways along the sides.

Montenegro’s submarine tunnels, or bunkers, are channels dug out of cliff walls in the Bay of Kotor (on the northern coast of the Luštica Peninsula, near the village of Rose) built by the Yugoslav Army for the purpose of concealing submarines and small warships from satellites or spy planes.

Three such tunnels were constructed, intended as protection from air raids. A submarine would have entered a tunnel while submerged and surface completely once inside. With an average depth of about 90 feet and a maximum depth of over 200 feet, the Bay of Kotor offered an ideal location to such hide vessels of marine warfare.

Each tunnel is cut about 300 feet deep into the cliff side with a water depth of around 30 feet. Once camouflaged with phony rocks which have since deteriorated, the tunnel entrances are now easy to see from a distance. They were abandoned around the time of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, being too small for today's larger submarines.

Boat operators from multiple locations along the Bay of Kotor offer boat trips to view, and possibly swim in, several features including these tunnels. Smaller your boats are able to enter the tunnel, and depending on the type of tour you take it may possible to swim inside or walk along the sides.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-submarine-tunnels

luzula

Well, it's great that it's the weekend, but my day was SO FULL and I'm very tired (in a good way) and did not even write an alibi sentence. Ah well. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 5:

china_shop,

sylvanwitch,

badly_knitted,

goddess47,

chestnut_pod,

trobadora,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans,

Bonus farm news: We went and got four trailer-loads of manure from a nearby farm with horses. The ducks thought Christmas had come early (they love eating worms).

tozka

A metal sculpture style mailbox featuring a kid sitting on a tree trunk reading a book. A dog is on the ground looking up at the kid. The mailbox is at the top of the tree trunk. The whole thing looks old and tarnished, with green corrosion on the tree part.

This is super cute! Most of the mailboxes around here are buried in concrete pillars, so it was fun finding this one.

📸 All Photos

♥ ->

falena

This is a trilogy of historical m/m romances by KJ Charles, the queen of the genre. Now, anything penned by KJ Charles is a cut above anyone else's, imho, so if you haven't read anything of hers, you totally should. Characterisation, plot, intrigue, smut, excellent writing, her books have it all. The Will Darling Adventures are set in London in the 1920s. It's a spy/action series with an amazing love story at its heart, where the conflict is absolutely real and the characters have an emotional growth arc across the three books. It's the most satisfying kind of romance. You will fall in love with the two MCs, it's impossible not to. Once you've finished the books you'll be left wanting more, so here's some fic to tide you over. These are all Kim/Will, with a touch of DS/Archie, and won't make much sense unless you've read the books, I'm afraid. Btw, the audiobook version of the books, narrated by Cornell Collins, is just sublime.

the world is but a word. 1.6K words. Will was speaking with a customer when Sir Archibald Curtis walked into his bookshop. A lovely little vignette. Podfic availbale, though I haven't listened to it yet.

scrape out what's left (at the end of the year). 2.2K words. The drive to Holmclere was uneventful, leisurely, and most importantly: not completely overshadowed by one or both of them being framed for murder. At least it had that going for it. Lovely epilogue for the whole seriesscrape out what's left (at the end of the year).

one shade the more. 3.9K words.Perfect Will and Kim voice, their banter kills me.

The Pitt

detect my sudden existence on your sonar by Lirazel . 25K words Mel/Frank. Mel thought everything would get easier when he came back. Instead, it's a new kind of torture. This fic is, to me, the definitive take on Mel's POV. I'm not on the spectrum, I've little experience with people who are, so I may as well be talking out of my arse, but reading this story is just such an immersive experience, ti does such an excellent job of sucking you in and making you feel like you're living it all as Mel would. And the pining is exquisite. So good it's almost unbearable. Gah.

genarti

I have various longer posts to make (job transition news, a write-up of a truly hilarious theater experience, etc), but in the meantime, a quick post to let you know that the Murderfish anthology, which I have a story in, is now officially out and available for purchase!

Murderfish is, as it says on the tin, an anthology of stories about murderous fish. (Its predecessors were Murderbirds and Murderbugs, which cracks me up every time I think about it.) Each story features a different kind of sea life, as well as very cool art of them all! I haven't read all the rest yet, but I'm excited to, and it looks like there are a whole lot of genres involved. My story, "In Sheets of Seaweed," is about a woman in the simultaneously privileged and precarious position of being a prince's mistress, who dreams increasingly of sharks calling to her; I called it my "shark selkie" story for a long time before I thought of a title, and in fact after. I'm very fond of this story, and I'm delighted it's found a home at last.

The ebook is available here and the paperback here. The audiobook is coming soon, but hasn't been unveiled quite yet.

Those are both Amazon links, though not affiliate ones. If you're like me and prefer to avoid buying things through Amazon, full support, but for the moment that's all I have. I've asked if it'll be available on other sites as well, and I'll update when I get an answer.

cosmolinguist

angelofthenorth gave me my birthday presents today! I thanked her and said I was surprised because it's not my birthday yet. But V and I always have a joint party - after their birthday and before mine - and that's today.

She sensibly pointed out that they won't see me for my birthday, as I'll be off doing family xmas things by then.

So, yeah, why not, today's my birthday.

james

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skygiants

I am home! with my own cats! and my own computer!! This is very exciting because I have spent most of the last two weeks traveling, including last Monday when I spent about 24 hours total stumbling through different airports getting rerouted onto different flights before finally getting to achieve my dearest wish at that point, Be Horizontal.

In the course of that extremely long day I watched two French movies on planes:

( Au revoir là-haut/See You Up There )

( La venue de l'avenir/Colors of Time )

lightreads

At Midnight Comes the Cry

3/5. Tenth in this series of mysteries about the episcopal priest and the police chief (they are married with baby at this point).

I’m always happy to spend more time with these characters, but I’m gonna be honest here: I come to this series for small town stuff and mysteries and a light but intense approach to relationships. I do not come for white nationalist terrorism or action movie stuff. And yet, guess what I got here.

This also feels like a final book, with a weirdly pasted on ‘five years later’ epilogue. Which is fine if that’s how it is, but I was disappointed in the treatment that a secondary couple got. She is so good at relationships that shouldn’t work but do. In this case, a divorced woman in her thirties with young kids and a history in the porn industry, and an early twenties rookie on the police force. She does messy but magnetic so well, and she let them develop over many books. So I found the conclusion(?) to their story here, and how little attention was paid to the thorny emotional stuff between them, to be uncharacteristic and disappointing. Same take on the resolution(?) of the addiction plotline.

Content notes: White nationalism of several flavors, violence (domestic and otherwise)

thistleingrey

(Formerly stalled drafts have been nudged by end-of-term exams, in progress.)

Sonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, The Rajes 1 (2019)
Recipe for Persuasion, The Rajes 2 (2020)
Incense and Sensibility, The Rajes 3 (2021)

Beyond the pairwise romance ostensibly cranking its plot, the first book is a love letter to third-culture kids whose lives have been bent by contradictory familial expectations, and an acknowledgment of bits of the wreckage wrought by postcolonial aspiration. Light touch, relatively, but I appreciate that these books say some of the quiet things aloud about costs and---better---that several characters encourage each other to speak to someone specific.

"Raje" isn't ordinarily a surname, which makes it a good choice.

Perhaps the most important feature of the setting, as a fix-it, is that when the kids who figure in these books as adult characters were growing up, several older relatives were local. I also appreciate the queer side-character situationship, whose arc suits the books' setting.

Anyway, four books total---none for Mansfield Park, which I think would be tough to fit. The fourth is The Emma Project (2022), which I've begun.

case in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6910 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 49 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

case in

fandomsecrets

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #988 ]

The first secret from this batch will be posted on December 13th.

RULES:
1. One secret link per comment.
2. 750x750 px or smaller.
3. Link directly to the image.

More details on how to send a secret in!

Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is.

Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret.

Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment!

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blossom-book-house

Staying true to its tagline, Blossom Book House has books that are old, rare and new. Located in the heart of the city, the bookstore stands sandwiched between rows of shops, unassuming to onlookers.

Established at the turn of the millennium by Mayi Gowda, who quit his job to start selling books on the side of the road, the store has expanded from a quaint 200-square-foot space to a 4,000-square-foot store that now occupies two buildings. It stands today as a sanctuary for bibliophiles who visit from all over the city.

Piles of old and new books line the walls of the store right from the entrance. Dozens of pre-loved, dog-eared books can be found among them, with annotations scribbled in the margins by students and dedications from friends, family, and lovers. But fret not, there are plenty of new books too, with many specials and bestsellers featured right at the entrance.

Nestled between many books occasionally lie rare second-hand editions. From well-worn classics starting at times from 60 rupees to obscure titles you may never have heard of, the bookstore has it all. Plus, the staff are always willing help locate a specific volume or edition.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blossom-book-house

psocoptera

I wore the same make and model of sneaker for something like 10 or 15 years and would happily have kept buying another pair every 15-18 months indefinitely, but my mom alerted me in late 2023 that the newest edition of them had been completely redesigned in a bad way, so I panic-bought two more pairs to put off the dread day of reckoning when I had to find a Different Shoe. I deployed the first of them in 2024 and attempted to deploy the second this past summer, at which point I discovered they were also Different, in that instead of the normal tongue-and-collar situation they had a sort of elastic ankle tourniquet that wasn't going to work for me at all. (One walk was enough to confirm that.) If I had taken a better look at them when I had gotten them, I would have tried to return them, but alas, at the time I had merely glanced in the boxes to see that they were the colors I had picked, and more than a year and a half later I was somewhat past the 90-day window for returns, oops. So that was an expensive mistake, but today I took them to Goodwill, and I like to think that someone who might struggle with the cost of nice running shoes will be pleased to find this practically-unused pair, as long as they don't mind having their ankles tourniqueted. (And I did successfully make it through the ordeal of finding a new brand and model of shoes that work, which I will now hopefully keep buying every 15-18 months until they also decide they're tired of having me as a repeat customer.)

Also I actually took last night's books to the library as a book sale donation.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/12/06/disappointing-dido-and-aeneas-from-versailles/

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network

You Know About Coca-Cola's Cocaine, But What About the Kola?

Additional Guideline

12/6/2025 South Richmond Marshes and Meeker Slough

[Daf Yomi] Zevachim perek 6-8

第四年第三百三十二天

International Vinegar Museum in Roslyn, South Dakota

some good things (a post)

misc.

Defect

(no subject)

Abandoned Submarine Tunnels in Kumbor, Montenegro

Write every day: Day 6

photo: bookish mailbox

Rec-cember Day 6: The Will Darling Adventures by KJ Charles

New story in anthology -- out now!

(observed)

Cards!

(no subject)

At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming

also recent reading

[ SECRET POST #6910 ]

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #988 ]

Blossom Book House in Bengaluru, India

Disadvent 6: an expensive mistake

Disappointing Dido

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December 2025

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