Ye Olde Thorn
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March 1, 2020
How one forgotten letter (barely) changed the English language forever.
Category: Geography
844,000 Feet Under the Sea
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February 8, 2020
A brief history of the Dutch pastime of telling the ocean to fuck off.
Catalonia’s Coprophilic Christmas
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December 22, 2019
The Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia does Christmas differently. In Sweden’s Burning Christmas Goat, one of my holiday podcasts last year, I talked about their tradition of Tio de Nadal/Caga Tio, the shitting log. Brief recap for those of you who definitely listened: Families decorate a log for the holidays, feed it nuts (tree food) …
Minnesota’s Flag is Bad. Let’s Change it.
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July 23, 2019
Minnesota’s state flag is bad. It’s simultaneously unremarkable and cluttered, ridiculously complex and altogether unrecognizable. It’s an unwanted china plate on a blue tablecloth, a design well-known to all the flagbois out there as the “seal on a bedsheet”, a design schema shared by 25 state flags all proudly flown by no one. Above all, …
Continue reading “Minnesota’s Flag is Bad. Let’s Change it.”
A Tale of Two States
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July 3, 2019
On November 2nd, 1889, Benjamin Harrison, ranked #30 in C-SPAN’s ranking of US Presidents, probably sneered as he drove a knife into the heart of Dakota Territory, dividing it forever along an East-West meridian. When he signed the documents formally creating two new states, the President famously (and cutely) shuffled them, preventing onlookers from knowing …