My cabin has a first story stone foundation, and there is snow and ice everywhere, but this picture gives a general idea of what my PA farm is like.

Woodpile Report praises my own native Appalachians, as the American region least assimilated into the community of fashion’s version of modernity, as a practical refuge from taxes and regulation, and as the probable main site of future resistance to the regime.

Appalachia’s quantifiable attributes most easily lead inquiry away from understanding, toward misunderstanding in fact. It’s a case of finding what you want to find. Wealth can be measured in many ways, not all of them obvious. Life is tightly organized around family and friends and neighbors, one reason the towns are small and run down, they aren’t the centers of anything except themselves. Hill folk take care to be on good terms with each other, even tertiary relationships are valued and well maintained. Communities are stable over long periods of time because, while there’s more personal latitude than elsewhere, there’s also an understanding of orderliness that isn’t violated without consequence.

Appalachians don’t have the exaggerated need to avoid failure so typical of their observers, they live their lives first hand as it were and learn from their missteps, after all, success without failure can only end in delusion and disaster. The larger sense of Appalachian self reliance means to live from within oneself. It’s assumed a person ought to form his own opinions and rely on his own judgments. Failure to do so marks a person as mushy and untrustworthy. Self reliance is self-correcting, responsibility for failure and credit for success is personal and directly attributable. Those who choose a life directed by others will never know success because success belongs to their masters. How could it be otherwise? The Pelosis and Obamas of this country don’t come from Appalachia. But let’s get back to Appalachia’s place as guerilla territory in doomer fiction. …

[U]nlike the western mountains, the Appalachians are damp, have a continuous canopy of hardwoods, and they’re lacey with creeks and dotted with springs. In the summer there’s a general haze. It’s how the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains got their name—incidentally, the various parts of the Appalachians go by local names, the Cumberland Plateau and Alleghenys and so forth. They’re full of odd nooks and outcroppings and side ravines, with the occasional cave or white water rapids. Its forests are the most biologically diverse in North America, likely to have been the primary reseeding source for the present interglacial period.

Game is plentiful and the fishing is excellent. But the heat and humidity and bugs in the summer, the rain or snow and cold in winter, the aggressive feral hogs, and the coyotes and bears and snakes, and the sheer ruggedness of the Appalachians are something to prepare for seriously and thoroughly. The so-called Appalachian Redoubt is probably a fiction, on the other hand, nobody’s up in “them thar hills” accidently. A cautious person can enter in one place, travel without much risk of detection for hundreds of miles north or south, and come out another place altogether. Doomer writers get it right, as a homeland for an insurgency—fictional of course—or for bugging out and getting lost on purpose, it doesn’t get much better.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

Bertha, the tunnel-boring machine.

A mysterious object is blocking an $80-million tunnel boring machine 60-feet underneath a major American city and nobody has any idea what it is. The Blaze

Is it a boulder or a buried railroad car? Oregon Live

From Old Picture of the Day via Fred Lapides.

Is Jellyfish a “meat”?

Thrillist compiles the choices of 14 chefs. The most common overrated choices tend to be the most popular cuts of steak, particularly filet mignon. Underrated choices are all over the map. Several pick rabbit and chicken, but not Justin Warner.

JUSTIN WARNER: THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR WINNER, HOST OF REBEL EATS, CHEF AT DO OR DINE (NYC)
Most Overrated Meat: Bacon
“I don’t think bacon sucks. I use it in my restaurant and eat a decent amount of it. I’m just tired of it getting all the press. The Internet has turned what was once a humble breakfast treat in to the meme of meats. You don’t see people cashing in with ‘feed me tornados of beef’ tote bags. You don’t see country ham (which I believe is a better meat for us to be stoked about, as it is an American invention) getting its own ‘day’. Bacon has become the WWF finishing move of the American culinary landscape.”

Most Underrated Meat: Jellyfish
“Texturally, nothing compares. Malaysians say the texture is ‘music to the teeth’. So what’s it taste like? Whatever you want it to. Hot day? Mint, lime juice, olive oil. Depressed? Jellyfish Alfredo. Here’s the other thing: it’s plentiful as hell. I caught 90,000lbs in one boat in one day off the coast of Georgia. That ended up making about 4.5 TONS of comestible food. Of course, we shipped it right off to China to be used in a Foxconn cafeteria or something.”

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Michael Sowa, The Haunted City

Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.

Mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris) equipped with twigs.

Charleston Post and Courier reports on a recent University of Tennessee study which finds saurians in both America and India luring birds to their doom.

American alligators, and their cousin Indian marsh crocodiles, apparently have figured out that if they balance twigs on their snouts, wading birds will try to snatch them for nests. For the quick-snapping gator, that’s free lunch. …

A recently released study – published in Ethology, Ecology and Evolution – is the first to document “lure-baiting” by the species, and one of the few lure-baiting behaviors documented among animals overall.

Nah, you say – just dumb luck? Well, the study documented that alligators in Louisiana use the twig trick only during a relatively brief bird nesting season.

They have thought this thing through.

“For people working with alligators it comes as little surprise because we already know how smart they can be. But for the general public it is apparently a bit unexpected,” said Vladimir Dinets, a University of Tennessee psychology researcher, who is the study’s lead author.

“They are capable of very unique things when it comes to feeding,” said wildlife biologist Phil Wilkinson of Georgetown, who has spent more than 30 years studying the American alligator.

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Also in the Daily Mail.

The Coppergate helmet (York helmet) was found in May 1982 at a site where many Viking Age artifacts had been discovered previously during the archeological excavations. The Anglo-Saxon helmet was right beneath the surface, protected by a brick chimney above. It was created about AD 750-775 but deposited considerably later: the brass decoration was already worn. There is also evidence of using the helmet in battle. Then someone buried it in a wood-lined pit along with a few other objects. It is unclear why such a fine possession was hidden, but it attracted universal attention after it was struck by the claw of a mechanical digger 28 years ago.

After careful excavation and reconstruction the quality craftsmanship of the Coppergate helmet became evident. It was made of iron, with two cheek-plates and a well-preserved mail curtain. Its characteristic feature is a long nose-guard. Both the guard and the edge of eyebrows are richly decorated with brass ornamentation (tests revealed that it contains about 85 percent copper). The framework of the helmet consists of four main elements: a band of iron encircling the head; the brow band to which another band is riveted, running from front to back over the crown; two shorter bands run over the ears. The four spaces between these bands are filled with triangular plates.

The brass strips running from ear to ear and from front to back bear a Latin inscription that reads: IN NOMINE : DNI : NOSTRI : IHV : SCS : SPS : DI : ET : OMNIBVS : DECEMVS : AMEN : OSHERE : XPI. The last segment of the inscription represents the first three letters in XPICTOC, Christ in Greek. Oshere is an Anglo-Saxon personal name. The initial part of the inscription seems clear: In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God [the Father]. What follows received various interpretations: …And with all we pray. Amen or: …And to all we say Amen or else: …Let us offer up Oshere to all saints. Amen.

The Coppergate helmet is currently on display at the Castle Museum in York.

Wikipedia article.

From Abcedarian via Ratak Monodosico.

Pretty much the only good thing in the Chan-wook Park Gothic.

Stoker — Piano Duet Scene from Ekel on Vimeo.