Crate of Curios part 71

The sun is heating up the air during noon these days, birds are chirping at the top of their tiny lungs, street cats are lounging on the warm sunny spots of pavement… could it finally be spring? Tourists are already sporting shorts and T-shirts in the streets, whereas the locals are carefully replacing the winter jacket to a slightly thinner one. The trees have been pruned and for a while the streets are full of light – just until the heat picks up and the new leaves will be providing a welcome shadow… But enough of the spring dreams for now – it’s time to open this week’s Crate.

  1. “I think Richard Dadd was very much of his time, right up until he killed his father,” Marc Demarest, who maintains a popular web page about Dadd, the ‘fairy painter’, told Artsy.

2. Pools can be exquisite things of beauty – especially if they are designed by Julia Morgan.

3. How common is your birthday? This chart will tell you.

4. Roeselien Raimond is a portrait photographer who portraits… foxes.

5. After the everyday politics of anger, Ece Temelkuran is proposing politics of gentleness.

6. And to finish off for this week, a little comic about life from The Awkward Yeti.

And that’s it for this time. Happy reading and until next week!
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Crate of Curios part 3

Week 3 and still going… As it’s been a busy week, this one is rather light and cheery.

  1. The Awkward Yeti knows what makes us happy.

2. Hypothesis: Are carrots orange because of 17th century politics? Reply: M-m-m-maybe. Too bad that we so seldom get to see the other colors!

3. Apparently a team of scientists in University of Arkansas have developed a method of producing clean limitless energy from graphene.

4. How many porn stars pr million inhabitants does your country have? (limited to Europe, though)
Just FYI, the link is to the porn star database where numbers are from, so you won’t find more stats or maps there.

5. Tasmanian devils are back in Australia after three millennia of absence. May they live long and prosper and keep the local ecosystem in check.