http://www.metafilter.com/83377/Beware-the-jumbo-flying-squid

Divers [have been] spooked by tales of assault as swarms of aggressive jumbo flying squid invade the shallows off San Diego. No, not the return of Cthulhu; it's just a swarm of Humboldt squid. Here's a rather long talk with video images by one of the world's experts on these vicious nightmares.

Survived a week with my parents, brother, and his children and am now in Lake Tahoe/am stuck in a hotel room next to people taking the pot (and lots of it). (Why isn't their smoke alarm going off?)

The Pet Shop Boys have the number one record on the Billboard Dance Charts/I am bad at math and Neil just turned 55, not 54 like I thought - enjoy your special menu at Dennys, Cupcake! I'm not sure which of us I'm more embarassed for.

There is no news yet about the closing of the hospital and the latest rumor is that they will still keep the emergency room open and at least one of the floors and probably convert one of the other floors (or two) to a rehab facility (as the city voted down the plan to convert the entire hospital to rehab/urgent care)./they are going to wait until September until they bother to re-vote or bother to tell us anything else so we will quit worrying or know to look for another job. STILL. This has been going on for like six months now.

http://www.metafilter.com/83376/The-Walled-Cities-Keeping-Out-The-Joneses

The first human settlements... before the bronze age, before the iron age and even probably before the stone age, didn’t happen because people liked each other’s company. "As the old saying goes, there's safety in numbers... and fortifications. "If you have any doubt about how wood, stone and later even steel walls helped shape human civilization, all you need to do is take a close look at most of our cities, especially the older ones."

http://www.metafilter.com/83375/Man-recovers-vision-after-12-years-by-implanting-tooth-in-eye

Recently, a man's sight was returned to him after losing it for 12 years. How did he do it? Surgeons drilled a hole through one of his canines, put a lens in it, and implanted the construct in his eye.
The specific surgery is called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis and was first pioneered in Italy in 1963. Essentially, a tooth and a small portion of the jaw is removed from the patient. A small hole is drilled into the tooth and a lens is attached inside. The tooth construct is implanted in the cheek to allow it develop a blood supply, and then later is implanted into the eye. Despite how unwieldy this procedure seems, it has a shockingly high success rate over time. In this survey of 181 patients, 85% retained functional use of their eye after 18 years, with approximately 55% retaining the best postoperative functionality.

This evening we had a short but severe thunderstorm. At the end, the biggest rainbow I've ever seen stretched over the city:

Current Mood: impressed

http://www.metafilter.com/83374/Living-communally-in-Russia

Kommunalka - communal apartments - were begun by the Bolsheviks in Russia at the end of the Russian Revolution to address overcrowding in cities - and also to punish the bourgeoisie who had previously lived in comfort. Kommunalka were an enduring social experiment, where multiple families were assigned by the state to live together in close quarters with no expectation of privacy. It was not uncommon for tenants to spy on each other. Though communism ended in Russia almost two decades ago, Kommunalka still exist today.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090718.html

This dramatic skyscape was recorded during the

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/07/sunday-secrets_19.html

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http://www.metafilter.com/83373/With-that-keyboard-I-wonder-what-CtrlAltDel-would-do

Ctrl is an NBC webseries starring Tony Hale (Arrested Development's Buster, Chuck's Emmett Milbarge) as an office drone who suddenly finds that, thus far, CTRL-Z lets him undo recent events in his own life, and CTRL-B emboldens him to stand up to his boss and confess his love to the source of his crush. It was based on a short film, Ctrl-Z, starring Hale's Chuck co-star Zachary Levi as the boss. Not exactly a new concept, but nonetheless well-executed by a fairly good comic team ...
Also, as an added plus, it features a really beautiful end-credits song.

Also, it's obviously receiving no money whatsoever from NESTEA^TM POMEGRANATE PASSIONFRUIT RED TEA, NOW EVIDENTLY AVAILABLE IN 1-LITER BOTTLES!, despite the bottle actually magically rotating its label towards the camera in the opening scene of episode one ... subtle it ain't. Mmm, look at that CGI splashing goodness!

I finally got around to uploading my pix of Mexico. (I know it's not that late, but I'm usually very quick to upload.)

I put Lista on a plane this afternoon. The house feels a little empty. I'm off to a wine club thing tonight and then tomorrow is the day of nothing/cleaning.