I already replied in-thread but I just remembered the actual funniest thing I ever saw on twitter.

forgot the most important of the genre

'neapolitan' so basically it was lies all the way down

"astronaut ice cream": introducing schoolchildren to the brief wonders and crushing disappointments of science

some of you are apparently a lot more forgiving of "astronaut ice cream" than I am. if I see an astronaut it's on sight

Norman Wong, retired carpenter, great grandson of Wong Kim Ark, and now activist to protect #birthrightcitizenship.

whitey not even on the moon

moby-dick, his eyes enormous: from hell's heart you STAB at moby? for hate's sake you spit your last BREATH at moby? oh! oh! the great shroud of the sea for ahab! the great shroud of the sea rolling on as it rolled five thousand years ago!!!!

slow-motion mental video of the cat taking off vertically, as at Cape Canaveral, reaching apogee at bagel height, and returning to earth with a lox sample that didn’t survive reentry: the greatest moment of his wicked little life

Taiwan novel on International Booker Prize shortlist for first time - Focus Taiwan "Taiwan Travelogue," a novel by Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子), is among the six shortlisted titles for the 2026 International Booker Prize, the first time a Taiwanese author has reached the fi...

Taiwan Travelogue continues to break new ground for Taiwanese literature on the world stage

focustaiwan.tw/culture/2026...

Browsing Zhang Hua’s 博物志 Accounts of Doctoral Thangs

I always feel like a jerk when I point out that 企鵝 is really more like “tippytoe goose”

a winnie the pooh bear in a tuxedo sits on a blue chair ALT: a winnie the pooh bear in a tuxedo sits on a blue chair

anionic rodents

(It’s 負 as in 背負, “carrying on the back,” but I will never not find it funnier to read it as in 負數 and imagine some late Qing naturalist seeing their first possum and thinking yes, that is worse than zero rodents)

In Mandarin, the word for opossum,負鼠, does not actually translate literally as “negative rat,” but you could try it if you wanted to

joyful greetings to all who celebrate

Making a comeback at Easter, though. Audacious. Upstaging Jesus himself.

OH MY GOD GUESS WHAT???!!

Nice detective work! Always glad to have a chance to recommend Sinocal - it's based on tables rather than just calculating lunar dates, so it's the most accurate tool I know of for historical dates.

NEW: Dozens of robotaxis by Baidu stopped on the road in Wuhan, China, causing crashes on highways and trapping passengers in the cars—some for more than an hour. One passenger told me it took her 30 minutes to even connect to a customer representative.

Here’s a dash cam video of one crash.

no true ones

This is pretty much the happy ending of William Gibson’s latest

those who study history are doomed to imagine the glee of future students of history

Reading Agatha Christie novels and encountering characters with bespoke 1930s ethnic prejudices such as:

But it's not like the US state names mean "to the north/south of some geographical feature called Carolina", any more than the Chinese name means "in the north/south half of the lake"

The Portuguese are definitely grapes

Yeah, I was wrong about the Jesuits - for Ricci it was 亞墨利加, for Zeng Guofan it was 咪國 and 咪夷, and 'Meriken'-shaped transliterations weren't the norm until after the 1860s

I was wrong about how old 美利堅 is, though -- the earliest Jesuit map has it as 亞墨利加, and according to the Chinese wikipedia page for 美國 it was 咪國 for Zeng Guofan, and 美利堅-shaped transliterations didn't become standard until the late 19th century.

三藩市 "Sam Fancy"

... but "ramen" is an interesting case since it seems to be the same word across a pretty wide area: Uyghur laghman, Korean ramyun, Mandarin 拉麵/撈麵, etc.