This is quite possibly the most adorable thing I’ve seen in a long time (seriously, click through and see the other two pictures):

 
 
And speaking of foxes, there’s a fox living on the White House grounds.

 
 
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I discovered some new websites:

Bad Figure: God-awful good-for-nothing figures from cutting-edge published research.

frex:

 
 
Buzz Hoot Roar is comics + science.
 
 
And discarded images, which is a tumblr dedicated to the images found in the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts.

frex:

weasel: ‘The weasel is called mustela, ‘a long mouse’, so to speak, for theon [telos] in Greek means ‘long’. […] It hunts snakes and mice. […] Some say that weasels conceive through the ear and give birth through the mouth; others say, on the contrary, that they conceive through the mouth and give birth through the ear…’ (transl. Aberdeen Bestiary Project)

Bestiary, Thérouanne ca. 1270.

LA, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XV 3, fol. 91v

 
 
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I discovered the West Virginia State Park Program: Hiking West Virginia and have absolutely no idea how I didn’t know about this before.

 
 
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I learned how to make a penguin wetsuit, in case that need ever arises.

 
 
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And on Facebook, my friends and I had a long discussion on body image and the treatment of women in the media.

There was a link on Facebook purporting to show how celebrities look in real life versus in magazines. But it was magazines photos compared to candid shots, and bothered me for several reasons:

1. It was ALL women. No men.
2. The “normal” shots were paparazzi shots. I think paparazzi are a scourge upon the world.
3. There’s no time comparison–were the photos taken weeks, months, years apart?
4. A lot of the paparazzi shots were vacation shots. Come on, who hasn’t pigged out on vacation and worn comfortable clothes?

Essentially, I felt it was just mean.

But, it IS true that the image of women that is presented in the media is unrealistic and completely unachievable. So I found some sites that had much better (and far less mean) comparisons, that let you see people at the best, and how photoshop is still used to manipulate those images.

Links of interest:
23 Celebrities Before & After Photoshop
40 Amazing Before and After Photo Retouching Photos
The Reality of Celebrity Photoshop: Before and After

And that’s what happened this week.