an exceedingly aesthetic duck, cheese, barbed wiring, cleaning advice is surprisingly hilarious

[cimorene]

Atlas Obscura: Barbed Wire Telephone Lines Brought Isolated Homesteaders Together - And then let them snoop on each other, BY NATASHA FROST. Fascinating early telephone history from the 19th century via a viral tilthat post on Tumblr.

xkcd 806 "Tech Support" (please note alt text's "go get a computer and turn it on so I could restart it") via vass.

Buzzfeed advice columnist roundtable from Jan 8 by Rachel Wilkerson Miller featuring Ask a Manager, Dear Prudence, Captain Awkward, Care and Feeding, Dr Nerdlove and Ask a Clean Person. They discuss favorite & weirdest letters and other phenomena of the trade. I lost several hours opening all the links. Also cried laughing. Via agonyaunt.

Tumblr taught me of the existence of the Cayuga duck, a popular ornamental domesticated duck variety from New York state in the US, which are entirely black with iridescent green like the head of the male mallard. Apparently superior examples also lay an array of monochrome eggs varying from black to pale gray with the seasons. Then Wikipedia taught me (or well, Wax) that this is a 'breed' or variety of duck merely, not a species, and that species-wise all domesticated ducks are 'basically mallards' (says Wax). I am curious about ducks now.


Surprisingly fun and engaging YouTube vid, Cheese Expert Guesses More Cheap vs Expensive Cheeses from Epicurious's "Price Points" where cheese expert Liz Thorpe guesses which of a pair of cheeses is more expensive, explaining her reasoning and providing little 'what to look for' lists for different types of cheese. From last summer.

Comments

[which_chick]

I do not know a lot about ducks, but the things I do know about ducks are at least amusing.

See here. And here.

[cimorene]

This also aligns with what I know about ducks!

[ealgylden]

Re: all domesticated ducks being mallards, more or less. True, with one weird-looking exception: the Muscovy. They're a separate New World branch (despite the name) of the duck tree. They can be crossbred with mallard-types, but you get giant sterile mule ducks (which are apparently popular with foie gras producers). We raised Muscovies when I was a kid, and as a result I never had any doubt that dinosaurs became birds. Regular mallards are just birds; Muscovies never stopped being dinosaurs.

[cimorene]

Oh wow. That doesn't even look like a duck to me!