Apropos of actually nothing

[conuly]

this is the song that's been running in my head nonstop the past few days. I'm pretty sure it's not some sort of sad subconscious commentary on the state of the world, I think it's just stuck on a loop.

That time Robert E. Howard, fellow pulp writer, trolled the hell out of Lovecraft

Man Spends 23 Years Carving Sprawling Underground Temple Under His House

Controversial copyright law rejected by EU parliament

The deep roots of writing

Why Are There Palm Trees in Los Angeles?

Racy ad campaign featuring naked men called out for being ‘sexist’

Ordinary Person, Wild Radical

How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar

US Army quietly discharging immigrant recruits

How Horrific Things Come To Seem Normal

Comments

[ioplokon]

Yeah, my subconscious soundtrack has been People Give In by the Manic Street Preachers....

re: the palm tree article, it's interesting to note that one of the possible etymologies for the name "california" is "caliph" & derives from a description of an island in a fictional adventure tale where black Amazon women used tools made of gold and lived in a paradise on earth. So these ties to the Middle East and North Africa go back even further than the 19th-century marketing campaigns. Also it's odd to me that they don't tie in any of the Asia-Pacific islands, and especially HAWAII, which were surely another cultural contact-point for palm trees.