Its official name was TESMI, short for Theoretical and Experimental Science Metanational Institute (the order of words is wonky, but my grasp of English was looser back then). I gave it a flag (a light blue flask on a deep blue field, surrounded by a golden laurel wreath), an organization (a hierarchy flaring at the base into 2000+ Departments and thinning at the top into a council of ten Deans), an internal culture and aesthetics (an ungodly mix of Enlightenment Neoclassicism and 1950s Soviet futurism), and a rather detailed history. It went about like this:

he really likes to watch the printer print. It seems like he thinks there’s some kind of creature in there that I have the mysterious power to summon that he can then hunt for sport?

he sticks his entire arm inside the printer and breaks it if I don’t put some kind of physical burrier between him and the printer but like he purrs so loud when it starts printing and will beg harder for people to print things than he will for treats.

he just loves hunting the printer so much. he even tried to climb inside the place the paper comes out of the printer when he was a kitten.

No matter where he is in the apartment if the printer makes a noise he sprints full speed. He also knows which button to press to get the printer to print like the ink levels info and alignment sheet, so you have to make sure it’s off or locked up or he will print nonstop himself and then attack the printer and jam it.

is it inconvenient that my cat is obsessed with the printer? yes, but damn if it’s not also adorable.

According to Wikipedia, it works by hidden rubber mallets on the naturally-musical stalactites that tourguides have been knocking on for over a century. The guy who made the organ may have gotten the idea when his son whacked his head on a stalactite.

Here’s a video. It is hauntingly beautiful.

https://youtu.be/HsKUUn29tSs

Tracing a neat straight line, adept and sure, The falcon heeds the calling falconer; Things hang together, and the center holds; Mere symmetry is ordering the world, The sea-bright tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence proceeds; The best have strong convictions, while the worst Are full of resignation and are sad.

Sometimes it's worth it to force yourself outside even when you're running on under three hours sleep for multiple days in a row and you're angry and pessimistic about everything, because you'll come across things like a sleeping bee on top of a flower and things won't seem so bad after

Higgledy piggledy, snowmelt is patchily greening the fields, and the trees are in bud.

Earth is remade by the change of the seasons. The rivers return to the riverbeds' mud.

Spirits of nature come all unapparelled and dance unabashedly, joyous at play.

Hope for no permanence: nonsempiternally, years, like the moment, are rushing away.

After the frost is the warmth of the spring, but it's trampled by summer, as greenery wilts—

slain in its turn by the heliocyclical bountiful autumn, then winter's white quilts.

All that is lost to the seasons' revolving, though, moon after moon in their time will restore;

we, when we die, like the mythocanonical heroes and kings, will be dust evermore.

No one can say if the gods will capriciously grant us the morrow, and maybe they won't.

All that you give to your heart, all you love, will be lost to your heirs on the day that they don't.

Once you are gone and your shadow is facing its judgement in death and the sentence is passed,

never, my friend, will your family, eloquence, piety, anything, save you at last.

so bitter and dark that I can't say how, sleepily, I ceased to follow the path that I should.

The fearful night ending, I saw the sun painting a mountain on whose top I now longed to rise.

But as I climbed higher in that new spring twilight a dreadful new danger appeared to my eyes:

A spotted-pelt leopard, a skeletal she-wolf, a lion whose anger made quiver the air.

These three beasts in concert, symbolically hideous, were pushing me back in the woods of despair.

Deeper and deeper, beset by the monsters (above all the she-wolf), in terror I ran.

A silent, lone figure appearing, I pleaded: "Have mercy on me, whether you be shade or man!"

"No man", he responded, "I was, though; a poet, a Lombard, a pagan, and I sang of Troy.

But why do you linger in terror and darkness, when you could be climbing the mountain of joy?"

"Virgil", I stammered, "o master of poets, o source of my fortune, are you truly here?

See here the monster from which I sought shelter, and help me, my teacher, escape from this fear".

"Not there", after pond'ring said he, "for the she-wolf's not ours to defeat, but a Hunter's to come.

Another path follow, much longer and deeper, on which I shall lead you, or else you'll succumb.

I'll take you to study the damned and the weeping, who've nothing to hope for, but secondly die.

Then you will witness all those who burn gladly, for purging they ready them- selves for the sky.

If you'd see the blessed too, a spirit far worthier than this unbeliever will not lead you astray".

"Master", I told him, "from this and worse evils I'll trust you to lead me; let's go now, I pray".

Then through the deep woods he moved, and I followed; he first, and I second, we were on the way.

First art class in history

Leang Leang, Indonesia (Sulawesi), ca. 50,000 BCE

Cosquer, France, ca. 25,000 BCE (pic source)

Cueva de los Manos, Argentina, ca. 7000 BCE

Groenfontein, South Africa, ca. 2000 BCE (pic source)

Awunbarna, Australia, before 1 BCE? (can't find an actual date) (pic source)

Canyon de Chelly, USA, ca. 1000 CE (pic source)

"G: Displacement preening or ritual preening

In the usual form of this movement, the bird turns its head, thrusts its bill between body and scapulars, and quickly withdraws it. It is given by the male in situations where he is sexually aroused but unable to copulate or commence the pre-copulatory billing either because the female is not yet giving the appropriate signals or because of his own apparent incapacity. That the same gesture is used in these apparently different situations suggests that it is being used whenever an impulse to bill or to copulate is being frustrated but no other positive tendencies – such as to flee or to attack – are present. It also corroborates Whitman’s (1919) opinion that this act provides auto-erotic stimulation as well as serving as a signal to the mate. It is also an integral part of the ceremony of offering to bill, which male performs before proffering his open mouth to the female.