Today I learned...

Back in 844, a Viking fleet sailed right round the North and West of the Iberian Peninsula, up the Guadalquivir river and attacked Seville. After initial success, they had their arses roundly whipped and left.

Most of them.

According to Moorish historians, some of them stayed, converted to Islam... and became cheesemakers. I feel there's a whole missing DLC for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla just waiting to be made.

The historical evidence is ultra sketchy, but a man can dream.

https://arqueotimes.es/el-mito-de-los-quesos-vikingos-en-al-andalus-un-alimento-envuelto-en-la-polemica/

Looks sadly at story board for "Berserk are the cheesemakers"

Well I blame the deer that I hit...on the M6.

Fuck it - make it anyway. All cheese is good, even imaginary cheese that never existed, but should have!

even imaginary cheese that never existed, but should have

..all the possibillicheese..

The lego spilt from the Tokio Express after a freak wave swept a container full of lego overboard is still washing up on Cornish beaches. A lot of it was - funnily enough - nautically themed.

Lego helpfully provided an oceanographer with an inventory, which included 28,700 life rafts, 52,000 red propellers, 66,300 portholes, 4,200 black octopuses and more than 50,000 sharks.

Despite many other discoveries, no shark has ever been found.

(Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001qt53)

Clearly not sufficient sustenance for the sharks. After some cannibalism, the last must have died of hunger.

That my work internet censors the entire miscellaneous and meaningless sub-forum. Hadn’t noticed before but the threads simply do not appear

Is that just because you're not logged in? I think the visibility settings got changed.

I can’t login at work so yeah you may be right that would make sense. But I didn’t know the m&m forum was members only.

about nursemaid's elbow

… a valuable lesson about prep work. Did a very un-thorough job of rubbing down the existing paintwork, then whacked a couple of coats of the dark green on. It basically just peeled off again - you could run a fingernail across it and it would scrape off back to the white. Now I’m sanding it all off again and properly giving it some tooth before I do it all again. Serves me right for rushing a job!

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That a letter that arrived today with this on the envelop is not an invitation to join MI6, but rather a survey from the government.

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Iif you wanted to fix a chariot race in Ancient Egypt, one method was to recite a prayer while drowning a cat, then write the race details down using mercury-based ink, roll up the papyrus and stick it in the dead cat's ear.

If you want to spend idle hours in bizarre rabbit holes, I can recommend the Esoterica channel on Youtube. Dry sense of humour and unexpected pop culture references abound.

TIL that Bobby McFerrin’s dad was the singing voice for Sidney Poitier in Porgy and Bess.

Did you know that his son, Taylor McFerrin, makes pretty chill music as well?

Saw him in Berlin a couple years back (together with Marcus Gilmore), was an amazing show..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVadBQ2GWQM

Madison McFerrin is also worth listening to! Incredibly talented family.

Also learned today that Bobby McFerrin went to Juilliard aged six for a programme for gifted children 🤯

This is going to sound untrue, but I honestly just learned what TIL means by clicking on this thread.

Wait until I tell you about Reddit!

Is that an acronym too?

By the way - the "B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stands for Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

Madison McFerrin is also worth listening to!

Ha, fuck, didn't even know about her 😅

In one of the several Mesopotamian versions of the Great Flood myth (the one from the Epic of Gilgamesh), the god Enlil sends the flood because humans had become so noisy that he couldn't get a good night's sleep. Most relatable religious myth ever.

the "B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stands for Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Hoho, that's fucking gold