Today I learned

It's just another French word we fucked up.

"fraud, deception, humbug"

She killed Seabird on the new episode "Hope N' Mic Night".

That unusual therapy is all very well—or perhaps not—but its existence among some pre-Columbian peoples of the Western Hemisphere and some post-Columbian peoples of eighteenth-century Europe does little to explain why the slang expression "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" emerged only in the 1940s or later. My guess is that the historical practice is only coincidentally related to the modern expression.

But if the weird medical practice isn't the source of the slang term, what is? I suspect that the answer is amplification: sometimes a slang term that has been around for a while acquires new cachet thanks to a snappy word replacement or an edgier extension. But if this simply a case of amplification, a couple of other phenomena are likely: (1) we might see alternative extended versions of "blow smoke"—especially in the period before "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" comes into frequent use—that use less startling words than "ass"; and (2) we ought to see "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" being used not just for "blowing smoke" definition 2 above, but for definitions 1 and 3 as well.

I mentioned to someone how I think there should be more hands-on learning in schools and he told me to look up Waldorf schools. Very interesting to say the least. Rudolf Steiner had very unique philosophies, some very weird or outright morally questionable, but some that I think were an appropriate reaction to the “thinking in the box” that is often dolled out in school.

The parts I agree with are that kids are taught engagement with crafts (eg, carving), music and creativity, an inquisitive exploration (reminds me of the Socratic approach), and an adaptive progression of subject matter that is based on the students’ individual levels. It reminds me a lot of the origins of the liberal arts being the skills a free person needed to engage the world, which included music and logic/rhetoric.

The parts I don’t really agree with are the pseudo-spirituality, the pseudo-science, and the racist parts of Steiner’s theory. I think I would need to do a thorough investigation of the specific school before I would consider sending my student there, but the philosophy definitely seems to meet some needs of students that are otherwise under-developed in the current school systems.

What are your thoughts?

I never went as far as to defend Gwyneth Paltrow, but after her Hot Ones appearance I created a post (which I will link in the comments) where I suggested that she's done no more harm than male grifters and that the dislike of her as a person was primarily due to misogyny. That's before I learned about her promotion of these unproven "vampire facials". Now an unlicensed clinic performing this procedure has given at least three women HIV. You guys were right and I was wrong.

The symptoms normally disappear after several days and there are no adverse health effects.

The cause of pine mouth has not been determined, but several researchers have indicated that a particular species and source of pine nut, Pinus armandii exported from the Shaanxi and Shanxi regions of China, may be responsible for causing the symptoms. This species of pine nut was previously only consumed locally and not widely exported for consumption as whole nuts.

…a self-governing territorial of France

I don't like the guy, I just found this on YouTube and decided to share it

Bagheera kiplingi inhabits Mimosaceae trees, Vachellia in particular, where it consumes specialized protein- and fat-rich nubs called Beltian bodies. The nubs form at the leaf tips of the acacia as part of a symbiotic relationship with certain species of ants. The spiders actively avoid the ants that attempt to guard the Beltian bodies (their food source) against intruders. Although the Beltian bodies account for over 90% of B. kiplingi diet, the spiders also consume nectar and occasionally steal ant larvae from passing worker ants for food. Sometimes, they cannibalize conspecifics, especially during the dry season.

Despite their occasional acts of predation, the spiders' tissues have been found to exhibit isotopic signatures typical of herbivorous animals, implying that most of their food comes from plants.[3][6] The mechanism by which they process, ingest, and metabolize the Beltian bodies is still unresearched. The vast majority of spiders liquefy their prey using digestive enzymes before sucking it in.

Raw foods such as fruits and vegetables are not part of this 3% because they are not manufactured.