Bowl Drips

Sunburst mirror PNGs.

Richard Oswald’s Different from the Others was a radical silent film produced in 1919 during the Weimar Republic. And it was almost erased from history. 

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

It is told that while St. Lawrence was being martyred on a burning gridiron, among his prayers and miracles, he also remarked to the guards:

"Now you may turn me over, my body is roasted enough on this side."

and

are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?

okay, then bring it up to a librarian

seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen

While this isn't news to anyone who works in this space, it is useful to have this water-is-wet research to affirm that Indigenous knowledge and land management are extremely effective at storing carbon and protecting biodiversity.

I want to draw special attention to this part of the article:

We dressed up as pirates and went bowling.

We dressed as vikings and went to the grocery store. The security guard told us we had to move our longship because it was illegally parked.

We dressed as Romans and went to Blockbuster. The staff chanted, "toga! Toga! Toga!" at us.

They said Cass Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich. That lie spread around the world, and the truth couldn’t catch up for decades.

On July 29, 1974, in London, Cass Elliot—"Mama Cass" to millions—was found dead in a borrowed flat. She was only 32 years old. She had just finished two weeks of sold-out shows at the London Palladium, a career milestone most singers only dream of. A friend found her in bed, looking peaceful. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a nearby nightstand.

By the next morning, the rumor was everywhere. But it wasn't true. The coroner confirmed the cause immediately: heart failure. There was no choking and no food involved. The sandwich was irrelevant, but the story was too "perfect" for a cruel world to let go. It became a punchline that a woman of her size wasn't allowed to escape, even in death. For forty years, late-night comedians made jokes and newspapers repeated the myth without checking. It became "common knowledge" because, apparently, if you are a woman who doesn't fit the mold, the world will find a way to make you the joke.

Before the lie and the tragedy, Ellen Naomi Cohen was a force of nature. Born in Baltimore, she was smart, magnetic, and gifted. By the 1960s, she was the anchor of The Mamas & The Papas. Think of "California Dreamin'." That warm, iconic harmony wraps around you like summer, but Cass’s voice is what holds it together. It was rich, pure, and unmistakable. Musicians knew that when Cass sang, you stopped to listen.

Yet, the industry didn’t know how to handle her. She was brilliant, but she wasn't thin. Executives told her to lose weight to be a star; TV producers worried her appearance would be a "distraction." While male rock stars could be disheveled or overweight and be called "authentic," Cass was constantly scrutinized. She faced fat jokes on talk shows and was expected to laugh along.

Cass did what many women feel forced to do: she tried to "fix" herself. She endured years of crash diets and extreme weight loss cycles. She would lose 50 pounds, then gain it back, caught in a loop because the industry’s hunger for thinness was bottomless. Offstage, she was a dedicated single mother to her daughter, Owen, and a famously generous friend. She was "Mama Cass" because she took care of everyone. But the world still wouldn't let her be great without an asterisk. Even at the height of her solo success with "Dream a Little Dream of Me," reviews prioritized her dress size over her talent.

When her heart finally stopped at 32, the autopsy revealed heart muscle damage (myocardial degeneration). This is often linked to the physical strain of extreme yo-yo dieting and malnutrition—the very "solutions" the world demanded of her. The industry that told her she needed to change is likely what killed her. And when she died, the world turned that tragedy into a joke about a sandwich.

Her daughter, Owen, now 57, has spent her life defending her mother’s memory. She once noted that perhaps if the world had just let her mother be, her heart wouldn't have been under such impossible strain. We are still doing this today—reducing women to their measurements and making thinness a prerequisite for respect. But Cass Elliot’s voice is still here. It’s in the coffee shops, the movies, and the airwaves.