fowl-mouthed: Apple’s newest IOS to tweak auto-correct feature that turns a common expletive to “ducking”
olive grove: climate change bringing new crops to Canada’s Pacific Northwest
pop 101: a guided formulaic approach to composition
magic kingdom: research finds that fungi sequester a third of carbon emissions—via Slashdot
fact-checking: the rise, fall and rebirth of Snopes
ski googles: Apple previews new prototype AR/VR headset—to be on the market next year
Two dozen Roman and Etruscan bronzes and other votive offerings discovered at San Casciano dei Bagni last year will be exhibited at the Quirinale Palace later this month. 
The deliberately sealed-off sacred baths (see above) dating from the third century BC and in use for four hundred years in Tuscany was found (assisted by the village bin man) with a wealth of trinkets, coins, figurines of afflicted limbs as a petition for the healing water and from the wealthier visitors statues of the gods and goddesses for whom this spring was their domain and faithful likenesses of themselves in hopes of relieving their suffering. One showcase artefact was first taken as the image of a hero or athlete during excavation was discovered to be the effigy of an individual, a named donor called Marcius Grabillo (and given the above nickname, Scabra Puer, by archeologists once placing the find in context) , suffering from a debilitating skeletal disease, with the whole cache casting new insights on not only health and medicine of ancient times but also unique representation of disease and disability.
An modern retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a clinical delusion, and perhaps contributing to 
audience acceptance of the pivot towards reality television that came about due to the last Hollywood Writers’ strike, as our faithful chronicler informs, the collaboration between Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol, The Truman Show, went into general release on this day in 1998. Starring Jim Carrey as a man who leads a seemingly normal life, Truman Burbank is unaware that his whole life has been the subject of a long-running tv programme with a cast of supporting actors, who further the plot and product-placement. Once the protagonist’s love interest run counter to the arc-of-narrative, a “Free Truman” campaign is started by activists in the real world and in parallel Truman begins to suspect the nature of this simulation and panopticon. The film’s community of Seahaven was shot in the planned-community of Seaside, Florida with the family residence depicted in the movie the home of state senator Don Gaetz, congressional representative Matt Gaetz, and his step-brother, Palmer Freeman Luckey, entrepreneur and inventor of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset offered at a price-point for everyone.
The modern form of fan fiction, with us since the days of Shakespeare and Cervantes as a fix-it fic in 
today’s parlance (with other examples including the continuing adventures of Jane Austen’s characters, Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes and the figure of Dracula), emerged with Star Trek and a zine, independently published and distributed in 1967 called Spockanalia once it became clear that the Enterprise would not be fulfilling its five year mission—at least on the small screen—in order to limn out details and better understand the relationship dynamics between the captain and his science officer. By 1973, up to ninety percent of contributions were from female authors, augmenting and completing canon and fanon.
folkocracy: the latest from Rufus Wainwright
old hollywood: one property management company dedicated to preserving Los Angeles’ vintage homes and apartments
ladies’ ordinaries: a look at how gender got on the menu—see also cultivating a creative community: Tina Roth Eisenberg on “How I Built This”
ologies: a comprehensive chart of the medical disciplines and how they fit together—also a good podcast
purchasing power parity: mapping the cheapest Big Macs
morbid passion for one of the opposite sex: the recent invention of heterosexuality
controspazio: a photographic tribute to the recently departed post-modernist architect Paolo Portoghesi
what a wicked thing to do—to let me dream of you: Tenacious D kicks off their next tour with a cover of the 1989 Chris Isaak hit
Expanding on a previous post using AI to unframe and extend the backgrounds of iconic works of art and other bounded creations, the same suite of tools has been applied to internet memes to image what’s going on just outside of the picture, like for Side-Eye Chloe or Wandering-Eye Boyfriend.
Investigating charges that some school textbooks widely in use in classrooms were stoking anti-American sentiment, a commission working from New York City adjudged on this day in 1923 eight titles of being 
guilty of perpetuating the propaganda for suggesting that the Revolutionary War was unnecessary and questioning which side was at fault, some one hundred fifty years on. The head of the commission ordered a biblioclasm and that the editors be labelled un-American. While the fact-finding group charged with this culling owed that statements critical of American patriots might be accurate and worth of investigation, the assessment was overly sophisticated and dangerous for impressionable young readers, ruling that only textbooks that contained no suggestion of “derogation or in disparagement of the achievements of American heroes” were suitable for the classroom. During World War I, curricula were revised to tone down the nationalism and emphasise affinity and kinship with overseas allies, particularly for the British and this torrent of censorship interbellum was partially in response to those previous changes.
Daughter of Jupiter and Juno and sister to Mars, Vulcan, Lucina, Discordia and Juventas, the Ancient Roman goddess of warfare was celebrated on this day in the Republic and Empire by a cult of priests 
whom mutilated themselves to make a blood sacrifice and placate this deification of madness and frenzy in battle. The majority of rites dedicated to Bellona were equally gory, though fearful of a volatile deity, most worship was not for public spectacle. Her main temple on the Campus Martius with station located through the expanse of the Empire (St Peter’s Minster in York was originally a temple dedicated to her) had an extra-territorial status, the equivalent of modern day embassies and consulates, where ambassadors from foreign states could stay, not allowed to enter the capitol or colonies proper, and could meet representatives of the Senate for negotiations. If diplomacy (fฤtiฤlis) and states became belligerents (bellicose and before the consonant shift, duel come from the name of the goddess), the high priest would launch a javelin over the column of war (columna bellica) to formally declare hostilities.
