Merry Christmas! Here are some otters enjoying holiday treats. See you soon!

From Cassandra: When it’s charisma vs. intelligence, charisma usually wins. (See also: politics.)

Swiped from Shelly: Did you know Björk released an album when she was eleven? Did you know she read the Nativity Story on Icelandic TV, also at the age of eleven? I didn’t, until today!

Lainey’s annual Gingerbread House Challenge has been posted. These people create a house which is also a work of art in about twelve hours, using only edible ingredients. This year’s competition includes a Sesame Street scene!

And finally, here’s a holiday video made by Bunny for our friends and family. Thanks for reading!

Happy Monday! Hope your solstice was lovely.

From Cassandra: Lights, Camera, Christmas! 

Regular readers of Folderol know I’m a big fan of Dada. Flavorwire lists ten female Dada artists who need more recognition!

While this is probably not the time (here in America, at least) to promote this sort of art, I do appreciate the “murdered furniture” project in Paris.

Weird Fiction has been around for ages, but is having a revival of sorts. Jeff Vandermeer is a master of the genre, and he wrote an article on it, too.

Happy Friday! And happy birthday to my mom, too!

After I posted about the spontaneous Erasure singalong in London, Zazoo sent me this amazing moment on a British street corner. You might need to know your ‘80s pop songs to get what’s going on, but it’s pretty great.

In more retro news, also from Zazoo: Beetlejuice 2 is a go, with Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder returning!

Swiped from Kim: an online Spirograph. This may destroy your productivity, be warned.

From my mom: The radical roots of Wonder Woman. Yes!

 From Cassandra: The Simpsons, bringing insight to universities. See, pop culture can be educational!

Happy holidays, everyone! We’ll be on a reduced posting schedule through the rest of the year, but we’ll be around. In the meantime, enjoy one of my favorite holiday songs. See you next week!

Have I linked to the Public Domain Review before? If I have, you should go back and check it out anyway, because there are wonderful articles like this one on a fake catalog for a fake library, created during the Renaissance.

The Library of Congress blog has an entry on holiday shop window displays. Lots of artists and authors are mentioned, from Andy Warhol to L. Frank Baum.

Bill Lucey has all the season’s facts and figures in one handy post!

Lady M’s Haunted Parlor is celebrating the holiday season in style! Her post on Christmas trees is especially great.

If you’re looking for gothy Christmas music, Ethereal Dreams has the album for you!

UK readers: Has anyone been to Talliston? It’s a house in Essex with themed rooms, and it looks amazing.

Also UK-related: If you start singing Erasure on a subway platform, you might be surprised how many people join the fun!

Wassily Kandinsky gets his own Google Doodle for his birthday, hooray!

Suffrajitsu now has its own website. Look out!

J. M. De Cristofaro has made an amazing cyberpunk wristwatch. Go look.

Jim Bachor creates beauty out of Chicago potholes with mosaics.

For the modernists among us (like Bunny): here’s some home décor to covet.

Monday again? That means it’s time for art.

Cinema: Vulture assesses the most valuable movie stars of 2014. Also, if you can’t/won’t see the Hobbit trilogy, here’s a handy summary done in LEGO. 

Music: Did Anna Magdalena Bach write some of the music attributed to her husband? The Telegraph gives one side of the argument, the New Yorker another.

Literature: Welcome to transrealism, a new possible genre in fiction.

Happy Friday!

From Julie: Prehistoric abstract art has been discovered! Well, it was already discovered, but now it's confirmed.

From Cassandra: Does money make you mean? (You know the answer to this already, I bet.)

Slightly related, via John Green: Blake Fall-Conroy has made an art piece which is a brilliant commentary on the minimum wage argument.

From various friends: Cards Against Humanity is celebrating Ten Days of Whatever, and there are puzzles and comics and all sorts of crazy shenanigans, including this comic which I sent to Bunny. (Bunny did not build snowmen as a child, and now I know why – he’s an alien. Or immune to snow golems. Either one works.)

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

It’s that time of the year when the “notable” and “best of” lists begin to arrive. Here are a few:

“I Can’t Breathe” and other notable quotes of 2014 have been compiled.

The A.V. Club lists their favorite books of 2014. (I haven’t read any of them. Go, me!)

“Overshare” is the word of the year, according to the Chambers Dictionary. According to the OED, on the other hand, the word of 2014 is “vape.”

If you’re not into lists, consider this New Yorker article on the city’s endangered bookstores, or ponder the impact of information warfare

Okay, so I was reading about machines used during the heyday of spiritualism, and through that I discovered there was a well-known spiritualist in the middle of Athens County during the 1850s. The things you learn!

Then I discovered the Kindertrauma website, and I’ll be there the rest of the day. Join me, won’t you? (Especially you, Cassandra. I know this is right up your alley!)

How is it possible that I'd never heard of the Witley Wonder before today? An underwater dance hall, now left to the elements? Amazing! A full photo exploration is out there as well.

Hello! Folderol will be taking the next few days off as we get organized for the holidays. We’ll be back next week with more links!

In the meantime, here’s a catch-all of odds and ends.

Wanna design a Christmas tree light display? Made With Code shows you how! I tried it and although my tree is not very impressive, learning how to design it was very cool.

John Scalzi’s Whatever is in the midst of its annual Holiday Shopping Guide week, where people can post their suggestions and creations.

You can help the Large Hadron Collider end the world…er…search for the Higgs Boson by looking for anomalies in the data.

Denizens of New York City, here is the Rat Information Portal you’ve always wanted! (It’s pretty neat. Provided you're okay with rats, I suppose.)

Looking for some escapism today? Read on!

Would razor blades hidden in caps work as practical weapons? The Bartitsu experts look at Peaky Blinders. 

Artist Jessica Joslin has a new exhibition coming up, and it looks fantastic.

The future is coming – at Starwood hotels, you’ll soon be able to open your room door with your phone. 

Girls Just Want to Have Fun, circa 1912: a rendition. 

Girls Just Want to Have Fun, circa 1849: a guide to Philadelphia’s brothel scene.

Day With(out) Art 2014

World AIDS Day 2014

World AIDS Day, AIDS.gov

WHO campaign, AIDS Day 2014

As we head into the holiday weekend, I hope everyone stays safe (and warm). Happy Thanksgiving.

From Zazoo: Janelle Monae’s on Sesame Street! 

 For those of you, like me, who love talking about names: Here are some Victorian-era names which could use a rebirth.

Swiped from Maura: How famous artists would plate Thanksgiving dinner. (Using “plate” as a verb cracks me up every time, for some reason.)

See you next week!

Well, today is fairly depressing all around, isn’t it?

 Digg has the full transcript of the Ferguson grand jury case.

On a literally brighter note, Repurpose Schoolbags are solar backpacks designed for kids in remote regions.

I somehow completely missed the news that poetry brothels had become a thing. Here’s New York’s version. 

In what could be related news, here’s an infographic on the aroma of books.

We still don’t have jetpacks, but we might have floating cities in the near future!

Gaudi’s La Sagrada Família won’t be finished until the 2020s, but it’s amazing as it is right now and worth a visit.

Happy Friday! Thanks to everyone who sent in links!

From Cassandra: spooky books for kids.

Also from Cassandra: a story of doing the right thing in this crazy world.

From Jack: an ancient Egyptian handbook of spells! 

From Zazoo: Scooby Doo loses the plot a bit with Daphne's so-called nightmare.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Hi!

It's another busy Thursday here. This will calm down a bit after Thanksgiving. In the meantime, consider Bill Lucey's Thanksgiving-themed tips for journalists, and we'll be back tomorrow!

If you have a spare day or so, you could spend it perusing the World Religions Tree. It’s not complete, but wow, is it ever detailed.

Also incomplete: The World that’s being constructed in Dubai. Hey, world-creating is hard work.

Scouting NY is having a birthday, and true New Yorkers can get this great sticker/magnet to prove how hardcore they are.

The Masque of the Red Death: horror, yes. Sci-fi…well, sort of. Musical…??? Behold, the combination of all three concepts!

Gather round and listen to the story of an international con man who swindled people in the name of…margarine? It’s true!

But wait, there’s more! Watch the incredible Edith Margaret Garrud demonstrate her martial arts technique on would-be attackers. She also offered what became known as “suffrajitsu” training for suffragettes!

And finally, for those who love steam and don’t care much for people, I recommend The Moon and the Sledgehammer, a documentary on a British family who worked on machinery in the wilderness. It’s fascinating.

Okay, it’s Monday, and here is a quick summary of the (currently) important things in life.

1. It is snowing here. See, here’s photographic proof.

2. The Union in Athens burned over the weekend. This is very big and sad news. Many thanks to Jack, who linked this post on why it matters. 

3. Here are some sounds from space. The Philae has gone dark, but you can imagine some noises from it, too.

4. Existential Muppets will get us through all this, I hope.

It's Friday! It's the end of a somewhat disorganized week, and I have no links from others to share. At least, I don't think I do. I may find some at the end of the day. See? Disorganized.

In the meantime, however, David Malki has put up a mega post which begins with a propeller car and then goes off on some tangents, all of which are awesome. So go check it out, have a spiffy weekend, and I'll see you next week.

Congratulations to the Philae lander! Space is so cool.

The Internet of Things is also cool. And expansive.

The archives of the Detroit News library will be protected, thanks to Michigan’s state archives.

The Qatar Digital Library is brand new and chock-full of information on art, mathematics, history, and so much more.

The British Museum, meanwhile, will be recreated in Minecraft. Sure, why not?

Do you lose your umbrella occasionally? Not any more! 

Do you lose your luggage occasionally? Not any more! 

Do you think tricycles are just for kids? Not any more! 

Do you think Bigfoot is a hoax? Well…actually, it probably is. But scientists as well as hoaxers are on the case, and there’s even a scientific journal devoted to the creature called Relict Hominoid Inquiry.

I am back and more or less together. Let’s get to the links, shall we?

A silent Sherlock Holmes film has been rediscovered!

LightDims are for LEDs which are too bright. I never considered this would be an issue, but I suppose it’s something which will just increase over time, so it’s good to be prepared.

Behold the weapons of the Resinator Lab! 

Take a walk in London and regard the surveillance cameras…then get arrested for regarding the surveillance cameras. Follow along on The Nor.

Sick day, ugh. Back tomorrow, I hope.

Friday, hooray!

The Internet Archive is expanding geometrically. This looks like it’s going to be fun. Take some time and look around the place, it's got all sorts of wonderful things.

Brown Dog is an attempt to retrieve data in antiquated formats. Good plan!

From Cassandra: Neil Gaiman on his version of Hansel & Gretel; a Russian artist cuts off his earlobe in protest; and some space movies are actually scientifically accurate. 

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

No post today means a bigger post tomorrow! See you then!

There’s something oddly fitting about a Guy Fawkes Day occurring directly after Election Day.

Did you know the University of Virginia has a Division of Perceptual Studies? And that you can participate in the studies?

A new book on the combination of rock music and the occult is out, and it looks really interesting.

And, in news which might be considered spooky but is not paranormal: Ambulance drones!

It’s Voting Day! Go out and get a sticker for coloring in some boxes. Being an adult isn’t so bad.

Kate Beaton has great new stuff for sale. Wee Edgar Allan Poe, for one!

The Beaux-Arts Ball of 1931 was a strange spectacle, filled with noted architects wearing their buildings as costumes. There’s even film of it in this newsreel, starting at the 3-minute mark.

Remember those AT&T “You Will” ads? Well, they were twenty years ago (I know, I KNOW) and Metafilter checks out how far we’ve come. I’m still waiting for voice-activated door openings to be made available to those of us in the middle class, but really, that’s a minor quibble.

Happy Monday, Happy November!

 Remember earlier this year when I linked to Amtrak’s Writer Residency program? The first group has been chosen.

Is South Korea’s Songdo the city of the future?

The Maria Callas Opera Academy is going to open in her old apartment building in Greece. 

Speaking of Greece, there’s apparently a Robin Hood-like vigilante there, who steals from banks, gives money to the poor, and escapes from prisons on a regular basis. (The authorities have a different view, of course.)

Happy Halloween, everyone! And it’s Friday, too!

From Cassandra: You may have heard about spooky clowns running around in California. But have you heard that spooky clowns are running around in France, too? 

Also from Cassandra: Case notes from a Victorian-era lunatic asylum. Wow.

Also also from Cassandra: Heidegger and technology. It’s complicated, unsurprisingly.

From Bunny: Cats who live in comic book stores. Our personal favorite, Mr. Eko, is featured! (I highly recommend everyone visit Mr. Eko if at all possible. We hung out with him just last week.)

Also from Bunny: 13 horror hosts you should know. Meet Cleaver Theatre is among them! (MCT is considering getting the band back together. Maybe. Possibly. Watch this space.)

The BBC radio production of An American Werewolf in London is available for the listening! Here’s Part 1, and here’s Part 2.

And finally, here is Omaha’s celebration of Halloween in 2006. Muahahaha. Happy weekend, everyone!

Hello! Running a little late today, so this is short but substantial.

First, Rejected Princesses provides you with lots of history, lots of great art, and some idols for little girls. (Well, maybe not Ranavalona. But lots of others.)

 And second, a real-life ghost story from West Virginia.

It’s the spookiest time of the year, hooray!

 Dave Lowe has some great prop ideas for your Halloween decorating.

Pinterest has a whole board dedicated to spooky décor. 

Important facts for those of us giving out the candy: here’s which wine goes well with each treat.

Today’s Google Doodle honors Dr. Jonas Salk on what would have been his 100th birthday. It’s lovely.

I am intrigued by the Near Future Laboratory’s plans and machinations!

Steampunk’s not dead, but is, instead, expanding. LIKE SPACE.

The Eye Catcher analyzes your emotions and reacts to them. It's a little creepy, but...eye-catching. And possibly soul-stealing. I’m not sure yet.

We’re back! We had a lovely time away from most of the world. Now we’re back, and fortunately, we have links from others while we get re-settled into the groove.

Cassandra has lots of stuff to share:

 - Spooky biology! 

- What does multitasking do to the brain? 

 - How does culture affect disease? 

 - Sensory deprivation! 

 - And, possibly most importantly, here’s what color next year’s CFRs will be! 

From Holly:

- Steam Wars: the LEGO results are in!

It’s Friday! And it’s the beginning of a vacation for the Spooky Librarians, who are going to focus on being spooky away from the computer for several days. We’ll be back soon!

From Zazoo: “Poor Morrissey. This time, it sounds like his life is melodramatically bad for real.”

From Cassandra: Protecting those with albinism in Tanzania, rediscovering the women who were among the first computer programmers, and studying the hallucinations astronauts experienced in space. 

Discovered via Metafilter: Stayed Up All Night, which lets you create mixtapes online, complete with choice of cassette and labels!

And finally: My mom went to the People’s Climate March in New York City last month, and here’s some video of her talking about her experiences, along with others who went to the march. (For those of you who don’t know me in person, see if you can guess which speaker is my mom.)

Have a spiffy weekend and following week, everyone! See you soon.

An article from the Wall Street Journal encourages adults to read slowly, “like a first grader,” to reduce stress. I’m not sure if reading like a first grader really accomplishes that, but hey.

The Kitchen Library is a library which lends out cooking utensils. Awesome!

If you’re interested in the Manhattan Project, the papers are now open to the public.

The FingerReader, developed at MIT, is a ring for blind readers. One ring to rule all the printed material! Huzzah!

It’s Halloween season, and Final Girl is celebrating Shocktober!

Did you know that the monsters of Universal have their own army? It’s true, and there’s much to discover.

I found Hollywood Gothique via a review of a stage production of The Call of Cthulhu, which sounds amazing.

And in more practical matters, consider the Urban Death Project!

I went to X-Entertainment to see their annual Halloween celebration, but horrors! The site is temporarily gone! But no fear, Dinosaur Dracula is here in its place, and celebrating October spookiness in style. Whew.

Longsword fighting is making a comeback. It’s always good to know these sorts of things. (Video, too!)

Klaus Kemp continues the endangered Victorian art of making diatoms, and there’s a short film about him titled “The Diatomist.”

It’s a grey Monday here. On to arty links!

Architecture and more: here’s what’s going on in Berlin nightlife.

TV: Twin Peaks is coming back in 2016! 

Photos: Some great photos of this year’s Gold Rush Days, which features vintage baseball being played in an old mining town in Wyoming.

Artist Anselm Kiefer lives in Barjac, in the south of France, on a property which looks like it belongs in a storybook illustration.

Happy Friday!

Mazda is giving a grant to one of four TED participants, and you can vote for which one should receive the grant. All of them are really interesting people with really interesting projects, so even if you don’t have a preference, it makes for good reading!

From Zazoo: Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre is coming back to life, and looks stunning.

From Cassandra: Marmosets are learning from video! I originally thought this said marmots instead of marmosets, and was excited to see groundhogs studying videos. But I’m all for marmosets, too.

Also from Cassandra: Charles Blow talks about childhood, abuse, poverty , sexuality, and race. Interesting discussion here.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Public libraries as makerspaces? Yes!

In Lisbon, a gorgeous vintage van is tooling about, offering literature to people. Meet the Tell a Story van.

Congress.gov is out of beta and is currently much more helpful than their human counterparts!

Combining a printer and a Roomba to deliver documents seems like a hilarious idea. I’m all for it.

Bill Lucey examines the correlation between beards and World Series rings. Quick, someone go shave everyone on the St. Louis Cardinals.

Good news, fellow brunettes: apparently the new hip hair color is “French brown.” We are so fashionable!

Google’s newest trick lets you explore the (outside of the) Pyramids of Giza from wherever you are.

A leftover from yesterday: The New York Transit Museum is having a steampunk party tomorrow! 

You may like drag queens. You may like professional wrestling, and/or lucha libre. You may like stories about the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border. This New Yorker story has all that and more! (Seriously, this story is great. Check it out.)

Today is going to be crazy busy, so today’s post is a bit shorter than usual.

To the past! Behold, Edwardian Fashion Week (bonus: no Kardashians).

Also from the past: The cats of WWI. I’m fascinated with old photographs of animals, so this is right up my alley. So to speak.

To the future! Let’s hope we all have dancing crosswalks in all the cities. I think it would help.

Monday, it is.

Literature: Behold the art of diagramming sentences. (I’m getting this book for my dad for Christmas.)

Photography: Amazing photos document scenes in Hurricane Katrina between then and now, nine years later.

Music: How long do CDs last? Well… 

History: They’ve found more Mayan cities in Mexico!

Happy Friday!

For those into social media, I’m now on ello as jinnet. (I also have invites, if you’d like to try it out.)

From Bunny: Nicknames for men have developed through the years in strange ways. The comments are really interesting, too.

From Cassandra: Let’s all go into the (natural) light! 

Also from Cassandra: an illustrated guide to one person’s history in our universe. Good stuff.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

It’s Banned Books Week! This image is taken, I think, from the Richard Oakes Multicultural Center Library. Apologies if the source is wrong.

Which banned book are you? Apparently I am Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934). I guess maybe I should read it.

Banned Books Week also has its own website, and its own YouTube channel which features celebrities reading from banned material.

 If you don’t feel like reading a banned book, but would like to help historians, consider helping the Smithsonian with their crowdsourcing transcription project.

Today: Rabbit hole links.

From The Legal Geeks blog, I found this Kickstarter for the Boston Metaphysical Society comic, and from there the comic itself, which involves Tesla, Edison, Houdini and more!

From this map showing where Americans use “um” and where they use “uh,” I found out about Midland American English. Apparently the Cincinnati area is unique in its version of this dialect. Who knew?

It’s the future! Pele shows off a new lighting system for soccer fields, powered by kinetic energy.

It’s the past! The photos of John Frank Keith show decades of Philadelphians.

Also: I’ve linked to it before, but Another Nickel in the Machine is just so, so great.

And lastly: some uncomfortable truths about the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The sixties truly were a time of tumultuous change.

It is, once again, an arty Monday. But first, congrats to my mom and everyone else who participated in the People’s Climate March yesterday!

Architecture: What should we do with abandoned airports? 

Music: Why does some music get repurposed as hold music? 

Art, part 1: Consider the color green! I love these articles.

Art, part 2: If you see a car with a NY license plate DRAWONME, that’s exactly what you should do. (The tumblr page isn’t updated, but the car is still alive and well and driving around!)

Happy Friday! And happy Talk Like a Pirate Day. As per tradition, the rest of today’s post will be in pirate dialect.

Avast! Me bucko Jack published a book, and you should read it!

T' Piranhamoose has been spotted in t' wild, crashin' up cars in t' name o' Malki!

You can prepare for t' winter by taggin' penguins at Penguin Watch! 

Take a tour o' Toronto’s Reference Library….by DRONE. Ahoy!

From Cassandra: Helpin' helps! Who could have predicted such a thin'?

Have the spiffiest o'weekends, everyone. See you Monday. Arrr!

I’m spending all my free time today watching the Scottish referendum news. Back tomorrow with more links!

(If you're interested, but don't have time to follow the news and just want the result, watch this space.)

However, in the meantime, consider future career options like librarianship…or sea captainship. Or BOTH.

Today’s links are an exercise in stream of consciousness. Ready?

Someday, when I have an inordinate amount of free time, I am going to learn about cricket. Maybe these videos (narrated by Stephen Fry) will help.

Speaking of the UK, some creative soul has recreated the Fawlty Towers hotel in LEGO.

Speaking of LEGO, several more creative souls have recreated scenes from The Princess Bride in LEGO. 

Speaking of imaginary medieval settings, the imaginary world of LARPing is seeping into the archaeology world. Hee.

And speaking of archaeology, what better way is there for kids to learn about mummification than mummifying a Barbie doll?

Making the rounds this week is an amazing collection of photographs which is part of an exhibition in England called the Black Chronicles; the photos are fantastic, and it’s wonderful to see an aspect of Victorian England which was often ignored.

Continuing back in time, the Edwardian Promenade excerpts some school entrance exams from the 1880s. I think I would have passed the Geography section and nothing else.

The Crystal Palace is long gone, but the Library Time Machine takes us back to its opening days.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Phil Abernethy is creating exquisite timekeepers.

Do you visualize the characters in a book as you read? What do they look like? 

I haven’t seen the Extinction Symbol out in the wild yet, but now I’ll be looking for it. 

David Waldorf’s photographs are fascinating, and wildly varied, and include David Lynch.

Happy Friday!

It’s not too early to start thinking spooky. I’m just saying.

Bunny and I watched this summary of arcades in movies. Unsurprisingly, he knew almost all the movies.

From Julie: Secrets of Stonehenge revealed – for real this time! Stonehenge did not act alone, it seems.

From Cassandra: Guns don’t shatter toilets….well, actually, they do sometimes. Oops.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

I have been digging into family history lately, and found a whole branch which lived in the heart of Manhattan during the early nineteenth century, then moved to Brooklyn a few decades later. So I’m studying New York City history a lot, and found this article about a “secret” subway entrance under Times Square to be all sorts of fascinating.

The American Ballet Theatre is donating its archives to the Library of Congress. Huzzah!

A new Pew Report indicates that, when it comes to libraries and the internet, the kids really are all right. 

The Knight News Challenge asks about inspiration for the future of libraries. Any ideas?

Good news: The FBI is digitizing its files! Bad news: The FBI is then destroying the printed files. Eeep.

If you’re in London this fall, check out the Kew Gardens and their exhibit on “intoxication season.” Looks brilliant.

What happens when you enter the witness protection program? Well…it’s complicated. 

If you’re from a country which looks like another country…it can also get complicated.

Cities don’t usually suffer from these sorts of problems. Let’s go to the interactive map for details on how cities have attracted people over the years!

Behold Lock-Man, a wannabe Transformer! Lock-Man, neither lock nor man! Knockoff toys are awesomely weird.

Also awesomely weird, but in a more practical way, is the Apocalyspork. Even in the end times, you’ll need to eat.

How fast is your state’s internet? (Internet: one thing, one speed! Just like Lock-Man!)

The Internet Archive has made millions of public domain images available via Flickr’s Commons. It’s a great time for artists!

Monday again?

History: The World Remembers is an incredible website dedicated to World War I.

Music: The Bulletproof Stockings are a female Hasidic band in Brooklyn, and they only play for women due to religious restrictions. They sound really interesting.

Literature: The five worst book covers ever! Also, some insight into Hemingway’s edits for The Sun Also Rises. 

Art: You can hang the Internet on your wall now (well, soon), thanks to Electric Objects.

Happy Friday!

 A leftover fun link from yesterday: The curriculum for Rupert Giles, MLS. My favorite is a tie between “Archiving Despite Demonic Interference” and “Integrated Library Systems And Standard Runes.”

Kate Beaton is drawing tiny historical figures. My favorite, I think, is wee Walt Whitman, but all of them are pretty great.

From Cassandra: an NPR Report on the amazing photos produced from 1935 to 1945, and the repository for the digitized photos at Yale. 

Also from Cassandra: Remember Schoolhouse Rock? Well, take a look at Public School House Rock’s interpretation of Interjections! 

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

As Google Alerts and Blog Search disappear into the distance (much like Google Reader), people are looking for replacements. Anyone tried TalkWalker or News360 yet?

Even Supreme Court justices accept some facts without question…no matter how odd they might be. To the fact-checkers! Here’s a list of what to do. (Hint: Librarians are very good fact checkers.)

Dodging the Memory Hole is a conference scheduled for November, dedicated to figuring out solutions for disappearing archives in the transfer from print to digital information.

Following up on yesterday’s Hubble art, here are scarves with designs taken from open-source images from the Hubble. Pretty!

 Alan Moore talks about Lovecraft, which is always interesting. There's a new project in the works!

I found the Diamond Geezer weblog via a post on strange London bus stop names (The Squirrels? I am so there!), and am now reading all about London. Great stuff.

Back to the grind! Here are some random links while we get organized.

The Hubble Telescope has now switched its major to modern art. I like it.

We now have an Instagram account (spookylibrarians)! Here are some comparisons between Britain as seen via Instagram and Britain as seen in real life (slightly NSFW).

Behold, a field guide to getting lost, and some thoughts about what that entails. I love the etymology of the word.

For less literal interpretations of getting lost, consider the wonder/horror that is gin.

Happy Friday!

Another moment of silence this Friday, this time for one of our library school professors, Lois Chan. 

. . .

From Cassandra: Where are the flying cars? Well, you see… 

Also from Cassandra: the horrible story of what happened (and may still be happening) in Rotherham. 

Not from Cassandra, but for her: The People’s History of Tattooine. Keep clicking on the "next page" button - it's a few screens long. (My favorite quote, among many: “WAKE UP GREEPLE.”)

Have a spiffy and safe long weekend, everyone! See you on Tuesday

Greetings! Check back tomorrow for Friday links from others!

Today we are doing spoooooky links! If you’re not in the mood for spooky, however, here is something less creepy but still really interesting: an extensive world map/timeline throughout history. You can customize it by timeframe, by category, and much more.

Okay. Right. So, I found this Kickstarter for a Cthulhu Ouija board (what could possibly go wrong?), and from there I found that the Lovecraft-themed Delta Green is online, and from there I found news articles, including this amazing (and true!) article about a pyramid structure built in the middle of nowhere.

I also found this article about secret societies in the modern world, but it’s not so much spooky as just weird, and sort of disillusioning.

Wow, today is busy. So this is short, but the links are chock-full of material and will last you a long time!

Agnes Quill is a teenage detective. She’s also cursed. And she also lives in a haunted city. And there’s a lot more going on, too.

Vintage Japanese swimsuit photos! And wacky family photos, too!

Happy Monday!

The site formerly known as Rap Genius is now just Genius, and is annotating everything in sight. Songs, speeches, IRS forms, warning labels, everything.

In related news, a map of New York City annotates Jewish literature to great effect.

A new book on the modernist era in Paris is full of sensory descriptions – colors, especially.

Remember when I linked to a story a month or so ago, describing how gory Shakespeare plays could be? Well, as it turns out, the audience for the latest production of Titus Andronicus found it terribly gory, and were dropping in droves - even a reviewer hit the pavement!

Special announcement this Friday, before we get to links from others: We’d like to extend our condolences to the friends and family of Chuck Kallendorf. Chuck was a faithful Folderol reader from way back and contributed many Friday links over the years, and we will miss him.

We are pretty sure Chuck would be fine with the juxtaposition of this sad news with two completely unrelated links. So:

From Zazoo: They’ve just moved to the Clinton Hill neighborhood, and evidently they share their new hood with Notorious P.I.G. Who knew?

From Cassandra: Post-mortem imaging is helping modern medicine. A sidebar mentions a scientist named Ruby Wax, which is all kinds of fabulous.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

History and research are the focus today. Here we go!

An analysis of Richard III’s bones reveals information about his lifestyle and diet.

As part of the WWI centennial, the London Illustrated has opened its archives for 1914-1918. 

The New York Times has a new way to access their archives, and it’s called TimesMachine. Ha.

Flickr now offers a way for people to license their photographs! 

The state of search capabilities on e-commerce sites is…pretty rotten, actually. 

Did you notice that Google killed its blog search engine? Here’s a way around it.

It’s sort of a gloomy Wednesday here today, so here are some downbeat links. But there’s a light at the end.

How best to spread the word about Ebola? Through a dance song, of course. This is a brilliant idea.

From Cassandra: a vintage story about murder and vengeance from beyond.

Andrew Leatherbarrow found there was a lack of focused reporting on what exactly happened at Chernobyl. So he put the story together, along with hundreds of photos which trace the history of the plant, the nearby city Pripyat, and the 1986 meltdown. The photos by themselves are available on imgur, and are worth looking at on their own.

Finally, a bit of cheerfulness. Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins is back on tour, and there will be t-shirts, and I am hoping that soon there will be more available to Americans. Go Tom!

Retronaut has a YouTube channel, filled with retro goodness! Like Star Wars PSAs, for example! And much more.

Via Gizmodo’s article about a mobile geology lab meant to go to the moon, I found SpaceRef, which has more information on moon vehicles. I think these are great. Possibly because I liked the Moon Patrol video game.

Shades of Snow Crash: in Washington, DC, they’re planning housing made from shipping containers. Er.

The centennial of World War I has resulted in many articles and retrospectives. Here’s one which talks about how the weapons of the past met the weapons of the future during the conflict.

If it’s Monday, that means it’s time for arty links…

A 1970 Charley Harper mural was covered up in a Cincinnati convention center, but now it’s being uncovered and it’s fabulous. And it's about space!

Crayola once had “prussian blue” as a crayon color – now it’s known as midnight blue. The story behind the actual Prussian Blue and its associated objects is pretty fascinating.

Iceland is a nation of readers – so much so that at Christmas, so many people give each other books that it’s a phenomenon called the “jólabókaflóð” (Christmas book flood). My kind of people.

The Pet Shop Boys wrote an operatic tribute to Alan Turing, and they talk about their creation and inspiration.

Happy Friday, everyone!

From Julie: A letter from Admiral Nelson has been discovered. The important aspect is that it was written before he lost his right hand!

From Cassandra: Hooray for dissent! Also, it’s time for a Costume Party, regardless of your gender identification.

Found on Kate Beaton’s tumblr: a dictionary of Nova Scotia phrases and idioms. Lots of great stuff here.

Found on Metafilter: X-rays of toy robots! These would make great framed prints.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

The Wall Street Journal speaks up for public libraries. Thanks, WSJ!

The Oxford Dictionary Online has updated its vocabulary. Get ready for many internet-based slang words.

Reading online is a different experience than reading paper. This may not be news, but now we have research! 

LawComics is brand new and aims to demonstrate law via the power of the graphic arts.

This week is full of bad news, isn’t it? We’re going with the escapism theme today.

Also, today is International Left-Handers Day. Celebrate accordingly.

Bill Coperthwaite built amazing yurt structures in northern Maine, and here are the photos to prove it. 

When traveling the world, it’s important to know where to get good tea. 

A national park on the moon? It’s possible!

Insight comes from strange places at times. Cracked, of all sites, has a sensitive article on Robin Williams and the dark world of comedians.

In completely unrelated news, we now have an Instagram account. Check out our exciting (?) life! (Spoiler: there’s not much there yet.)

The August list of steampunk events is up at Tor. In other steampunk news, an Indonesian artist creates a giant turtle from metal trash, and a new game adapts Around the World in Eighty Days to create a story-driven travel experience.

We mourn the loss of our friend Robin Williams, who always made us laugh and smile. pic.twitter.com/UOY8LTjVRA
— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) August 11, 2014

It’s been 100 years since the beginning of World War I. You can help historians at Operation War Diary by annotating entries.

It’s been over 50 years since the Great Train Robbery, and the insider behind it has finally been identified.

It’s been…well, a few years since Detroit started to fall apart, but now there's a vibe of “post-post-apocalyptic optimism” in the city.

What happens to virtual cities when they fall apart? Let’s find out!

The festival is over, but you can still read about the robot poet of the IF: Milton Keynes International Festival.

Happy Friday! This weekend brings us the Route 127 Yard Sale, which is nearly 700 miles of strange and wonderful stuff.

 From Julie: Save the date! Richard III will be reburied March 26, 2015.

Also from Julie: schoolboys dig up some ancient gold, and Missouri has a museum devoted to hair ornamentation – that is, using hair for decoration.

From Zazoo: Marianne Faithfull’s boyfriend killed Jim Morrison. Apparently. Accidentally. Sort of.

From Cassandra: Behold, cryotherapy in action! 

 Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

It’s a grab bag of library links!

Newspapers are belatedly realizing the importance of archives. 

WHO provides information on the Ebola outbreak.

A small library in Devon gets support from its patrons in a big way. 

A librarian posted this idea for dealing with reluctant returners of overdue materials. (Only for the patrons, though, not the materials.)

When I was in journalism school, we had to take an exam on grammar and style which was mind-breakingly difficult. I have found out what happened to the people who wrote the exam. They went on to write the CIA style manual.(Full manual is available from the link, too!)

There’s an amazing exhibit going on in London right now to commemorate the beginning of World War I, with poppies pouring out of the Tower of London to represent each death. Here’s more information.

Buzz Aldrin did an AMA on Reddit last month! And he had some fascinating things to say about space and life in general.

Atlas Obscura has a Morbid Monday (how did I not know this?) and, for its latest installment, goes to “New York’s most metal cemetery.”

I'm at a legal research seminar all day today. Back tomorrow with links!

Today, I learned about a group of people I’d never heard of before: a group of Confederates who emigrated to Brazil after the Civil War and kept their language and way of life for over a hundred years. It’s a pretty amazing story. 

In more news of the odd: Have you seen concrete arrows across America? Here’s the scoop.  And if you’re interested in that sort of thing, check out the world of aviation archaeology.

In somewhat related news, psychogeography is a real thing, and worth studying.

In completely unrelated but interesting news, text is returning to video games in a big way!

Happy Friday! On to the links!

From Cassandra:

• Whither Youth? asks this edition of the Lapham Quarterly.

• Youth can be embarrassing, so make the most of it, says Mortified Nation.

• Neuroscience is advancing rapidly. (Hooray!)

From Zazoo:

• “Cool! A wooden ship from 1773 was found under the World Trade Center site. 

• A fun, rather cute interview with Lana Del Rey, where she says she's happy in the summer. This woman is full of contradictions... 

• And then there's this hilarious online interview with Sinead O’Connor...” 

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Here’s what a librarian looks like! 

Here’s what a water main break in a library looks like! 

A new proposed act in Congress would eliminate the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which is a very, very bad thing. Tell your representative to say no.

 I think I’m going to join the Letter Writers Alliance. (Josie, if you’re reading this, do not click. I think I found your birthday present on this page.)

I forgot to post this article yesterday about “male escorts” (no, seriously, that’s what they did, escort single women around) in 1930s New York City.

Did you know about Burlington, the secret underground bunker city in England? If you like this sort of thing, be sure to check out Nettleden, which has a huge list of abandoned places for the exploring.

Over here in America, we have haunted national parks. Well, of course. Here are eight of them. I’ve been to one so far (Mammoth Cave), but did not meet any ghosts there..as far as I know.

If Folderol ever fades away, I will probably look into tinyletter. It could be interesting.

Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins is back! Singing old classics and maybe some new stuff, too! Yay!

The amazing Because We Can company just finished the Asbury Discovery Center at the Hattiesburg Zoo in Mississippi. I think steampunk works really well in architecture and interior design.

And speaking of steampunk, an exhibit at the Meadowlands Museum in New Jersey is going on all summer, with different events throughout the length of the exhibition.

When I was in Brooklyn last month, I got the chance to see The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago at its permanent installation, and it is incredible. The websites are detailed and informative, but nothing like seeing it in person. Highly recommended, especially if you get a chance to take the guided tour!

The daughter of John Cheever investigates the death of the father of ee cummings. 

You know what the problem is with Shakespeare? All that blood! That’s one critic’s view, at any rate. I tend to disagree.

Happy Friday! Today, my mom is flying to Europe. This has not been a great month for international flights, so let’s all think nice, safe thoughts, okay?

In Canada, there’s a little girl who isn’t aging, and scientists are studying why.

In Sweden, they’re holding an auction based on emotions.

From Cassandra: Time to clean up psychiatry! 

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Meet Cooper, a library therapy dog. I keep telling people we need library therapy dogs or cats here, but it never goes over well.

The Library of Congress has added a bunch of search options, and it’s also launched its own Pinterest account. Take that, luddites!

Fact checkers of the world, unite!

Against the Grain works to keep librarians in harmony with publishers and vendors, and they now have a news section.

Unexpected day off today -- back tomorrow with more links!

Spooky stuff today. Sort of.

 Behold, a Swedish Spring-Heeled Jack! 

There are now Lovecraft-themed bars on both coasts – the original in Portland, and a new (unrelated) one opening in New York City.

The military now has x-ray weapons. It’s true. Yikes.

Here’s some happy news on a Monday: new (to us) poems by Pablo Neruda have been discovered! 

Louise Bourgeois’s home in New York City is kept the way it was on the day she died, and it’s fascinating. 

I wish I’d had the chance to see “Andy Warhol’s DRELLA“ – it looks pretty amazing.

Happily, I might have the chance to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition going on at the Met – the Smart Set goes into some detail on the group and what they wanted to achieve.

Happy Friday!

 From Julie: the first book ever printed in English just sold at Sotheby’s.

From Cassandra: The cultural history of pain is fascinating (and heartbreaking).

From Zazoo: a tearjerker of an interview with Kylie Minogue.

Ending on a brighter note, David Malki is exploring the strange and wonderful world of the Restoration Hardware catalog, with help from readers, and Catalog Living is a weblog entirely devoted to such oddness.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

I’m on a mailing list which discusses library technology, and a conversation about drones led to some great links. Look, a delivery drone! And a book bot! And an underground robot library!

(Spoiler: we will not be using drones to deliver books anytime soon. But it would be pretty fun, especially in a law firm.)

One of Buzzfeed’s latest listicles: 17 Bookstores That Will Literally Change Your Life. I have my doubts about the “literally” part of the title. Since I haven’t been to any of the seventeen on the list, I propose that someone fund my trip to all of them in order to determine whether my life literally changes.

The Tour de France is not just about bikes and hills and drugs. It’s also about murder! And sacrifice! And nihilism!

Today, I have a wonky back and a new respect for those who live with chronic back issues. How do you do it without resorting to violence?

Anyway. If you’re the athletic sort (as opposed to me, obviously), consider the Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Race, taking place in Istanbul this weekend!

The Pandora Society looks at the life of Mary Todd Lincoln in their “this day in history” series.

Here’s a detailed tutorial on how to make a lovely spooky book!

As previously noted (on several occasions), the SpookyLibrarians are not sun worshippers. However, we do think artificial environments can be pretty neat. So we are cautiously favorable toward CoeLux, which promises to provide the sunlight experience from other regions, like Scandinavia and the Caribbean.

We are not so favorable toward the concept of pistols for bicyclists, although we are sympathetic to the bicyclists.

Bunny is a fan of Brutalism (the architectural style, that is), and here’s an article on the increasingly endangered status of many Brutalist buildings.

I am a fan of cats, so I love this story of Tama the train station cat, as seen via Now I Know (and if you haven’t subscribed yet to Now I Know, you really should – it’s fantastic).

Happy Bastille Day! France is also commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I in the celebrations this year.

Nick Cave (the singer, not the designer) is the subject of a new docu-drama in which he talks to Blixa Bargeld (yay) and Warren Ellis (the musician, not the writer), among others.

Street art in New Orleans says “Love” and people are annoyed by it. Well then.

RIP, Nadine Gordimer.

Song of the Day!


Happy Friday, everyone. Many thanks to those who sent in links while I was gone!

From Julie: The UK will display the U.S. Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence next year. Just make sure to send them back, guys. We're on to you.

From Cassandra: The rise of anti-intellectualism.

Also from Cassandra: Those people who climb corporate ladders so well are really from the Dark Side.

And speaking of the Dark Side, also from Cassandra: Here’s Darth Vader on the National Cathedral. He REALLY climbs ladders well!

The era of crowdfunding may be coming to an end soon. It's all the fault of potato salad. (It isn't, really, but I don't like potato salad and am happy to blame it for anything and everything.)

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. Back to normal posting schedule on Monday!

Hello! I'm back and catching up on everything. While I get organized, you can check out the photographic record of our adventures. More soon!

Happy Friday! And happy day-before-vacation to me – I will be out east for the next week or so. Look for Folderol to return around July 10, maybe a day or two earlier.

One of the places I’ll be visiting is the Morbid Anatomy Museum! Woot!

Cassandra is here to break your brain. The Myers-Briggs Personality Test is crap! The concept of trophy wives is a myth! Educational technology isn’t helping poorer kids! 

Julie is here to update you on world news. An English library still exists in the Italian Riviera, and a cave in southern France has been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, due to its amazingly preserved prehistoric drawings.

Have a spiffy weekend and week, everyone! See you soon.

Psst. Warren Ellis is sort-of-secretly writing at Morning.Computer. Shhh.

For the librarians and researchers among us, here are some PDFs: Rebooting Legal Research (from LLRX) and, more entertainingly, an 83-page document instructing FBI agents on the use of slang on the interwebs. Yes, you might be typing YSMTU (You So Made That Up), but it’s true!

Via the latest question in XKCD’s What If? series: WhatPulse measures how much you type. It gets competitive. Really! I'm not making that up, either!

Here’s your PSA for the day!

Did you know... you're more likely to be bitten by Luis Suarez than a shark.
— Sydney Aquarium (@Sydney_Aquarium) June 25, 2014

(If this is inexplicable to you, here is some context.)

In completely unrelated news, here’s a roundup on vampire hunting kits that have been appearing lately.

An analysis of crime has resulted in the news that crime goes up in the summer. I think we all knew that, but now there’s factual proof.

Aaron Carapella has made an amazing map of Tribal Nations across North America. The full detailed PDF of the map is here, and I highly recommend studying it.