Bec Olsen

[In Otter News.... @In_Otter_News2]

BREAKING NEWS: Small sea otter contemplates the big wide world.

[Bec Olsen @bec_olsen]

@RolandOrzabal_ Mad World, 1982. I felt heard.

[Carolyn Rockey @CarolynWRockey]

Jo Nagai was raising swallowtail butterflies at his home in Kobe, Japan, when he noticed something odd. The ones he had looked after as caterpillars seemed to recognize him. Wild butterflies fled. His didn't.
He was in second grade. He wrote a four-page letter to Dr. Martha Weiss, an entomologist at Georgetown University who had studied whether moths could retain memories through metamorphosis. He asked if she could help him design a version of her experiment for butterflies.
She said yes.
Using a muscle therapy device, Jo trained caterpillars to associate the scent of lavender with a mild vibration. When the caterpillars became butterflies, 70 per cent of them still avoided the lavender. Their brains had been completely rebuilt during metamorphosis. The memory survived anyway.
Then he bred them.
The offspring, which had never been trained, also avoided lavender. So did their grandchildren. Without ever experiencing the vibration, two generations of butterflies inherited an aversion to a scent their grandmother had been taught to fear.
Jo documented it all in a 33-page research paper and presented his findings at the International Congress of Entomology in Kobe in 2024. He was 10.
A second grader wrote a letter to a Georgetown professor, and together they found evidence that butterflies can pass memories down through generations.

-Wilderness Whisper

[WikiVictorian @wikivictorian]

Agatha Christie (in centre) roller skating on Torquay pier with the Lucy family. Photographed in 1911.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

When Gentoo penguins start their breeding season at Edinburgh Zoo, kids from Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity paint pebbles for the penguins to present to their mates and can watch the birds choose their favorite via livestream.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

In 1504, Michelangelo finished a sculpture that contained a fact medical science would not catch up with for another 124 years.

No doctor noticed it for centuries...

The sculpture is the David, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. The fact, hidden in plain sight on his neck, was finally observed in 2019 by an American cardiologist named Daniel Gelfman, a clinical professor at the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Gelfman had gone to the museum like millions of visitors before him. But where most people see a perfect male body carved out of stone, he saw something only a heart specialist could see: the external jugular vein on the right side of David's neck is distended, raised visibly above the collarbone, exactly as it would appear on a real human being in a state of intense physical excitement.

In ordinary anatomy, this vein is not visible. It only stands out under specific conditions — adrenaline, fear, exertion, the cardiovascular surge that comes before great physical effort. In other words, exactly the state a young man would be in moments before facing a giant.

Gelfman published the finding in JAMA Cardiology, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. He called it the David Sign, and noted that it had been hiding in plain sight for more than 500 years.

What makes this detail extraordinary is when Michelangelo carved it...

The mechanics of the human circulatory system — the way blood actually returns to the heart through the venous network — were not formally described until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published De Motu Cordis. Michelangelo finished David in 1504. He had sculpted, with anatomical precision, a circulatory phenomenon that medicine would not understand for over a century.

"Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote. "I realized that he must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited."

He had. And he carved it into the marble.

His contemporaries knew they were watching something more than a sculptor at work... They called him Il Divino, the divine one.

In a letter dated September 1537, the poet Pietro Aretino wrote: "The world has many kings, and only one Michelangelo."

If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here:

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For the full breakdown of Michelangelo's David, check out today’s article: 5 details hidden inside what many consider the greatest work of art ever created by man.

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[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Mick Jagger reveals how Robert Smith ended up on The Rolling Stones' new album:

"I turned up one day to do my vocals in London and there's this bloke standing there with his back to me with his long gown on, and when he turned around he was covered in lipstick.

"I've never met him before and I said, 'You are Robert Smith of The Cure.' And he said, he said, 'Yeah, we've never met.' And then I said, 'Well, while you're here then you'd better go and do something.' That's how collaborations work sometimes. Go out and sing the backing vocal."

[Birds Colour 🕊️ @birdscolour56]

You alone can make your Happiness.💛

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

I was skeptical, but now I’m completely convinced. Fencing will become super popular due to this one very particular improvement to the sport.

“Sword tip visualization” It’s going to debut at the summer olympics.

Every single duel will look like a bloody lightsaber fight

[positive side of X 🌞 @positivityofx]

This aquatic microorganism is called Bdelloid Rotifer. It has chainsaw like mouth.

[Global Statistics @Globalstats11]

The True Size of Australia 🇦🇺

[positive side of X 🌞 @positivityofx]

A group of young Kestrels seeing a butterfly for the first time

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy.

[HOW THINGS WORK @HowThingsWork_]

That's actually rather cool

[Heritage Matters🔱 @HeritageMatterz]

Fabergé Imperial jeweled eggs. There are 57 surviving eggs made for Russian Tsars as Easter gifts for their wives and mothers.

[WikiVictorian @wikivictorian]

Only surviving dress known to have belonged to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen to George III, 1805. Fashion Museum, Bath.

[Princess Anastasia @AnastasiaRoya20]

This is a cherished photograph taken on the day Princess Elizabeth ascended to the throne (February 8, 1952). 👑

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

A Peryton (half stag, half bird) on the King's Fountain at Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian, Scotland.

[Today I Learned @TodayiLearrned]

Because nobody had told me 😡

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Temminck’s Lark (Eremophila bilopha) is a small desert bird known for the male’s face markings and tiny horn-like feather tufts.

It lives in sandy and rocky deserts of North Africa and parts of the Middle East.