This photo of a weasel (looks like Mustela nivalis) riding on a Green Woodpecker (Picus viridus) is going viral.

Buzzfeed:

East London resident Martin Le-May captured this incredible photo of a baby weasel on the back of a green woodpecker in Essex, England, on Monday

As much as we’d all like to believe this is a wondrous tale of friendship wherein two mates go on an epic adventure featuring a baby weasel and his magnificent flying steed, sadly it’s NOT.

It’s a photo of a weasel trying to kill a woodpecker. …

Le-May, a hobby photographer, was taking a walk with his wife through the Hornchurch Country Park in east London in the hopes of her seeing a green woodpecker for the first time. …

“As we walked we heard a distressed squawking and I saw that flash of green. So hurriedly I pointed out to Ann the bird and it settled into the grass behind a couple of small silver birch trees. Both of us trained our binoculars and it occurred that the woodpecker was unnaturally hopping about like it was treading on a hot surface.

Lots of wing flapping showing that gloriously yellow/white colour interspersed with the flash of red head feathers. Just after I switched from my binoculars to my camera the bird flew across us and slightly in our direction; suddenly it was obvious it had a small mammal on its back and this was a struggle for life.

The woodpecker landed in front of us and I feared the worst. I guess though our presence, maybe 25 meters away, momentarily distracted the weasel. The woodpecker seized the opportunity and flew up and away into some bushes away to our left. Quickly the bird gathered its self respect and flew up into the trees and away from our sight.

The woodpecker left with its life. The weasel just disappeared into the long grass, hungry.”

Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.

A tweet from Gavin MacInnes via Vanderleun.

The Philadelphia Daily News learns a secret about Bill Clinton’s presidential portrait from the artist Nelson Shanks.

The reality is he’s probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting.

If you look at the left-hand side of it there’s a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.

And so the Clintons hate the portrait. They want it removed from the National Portrait Gallery.

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Mauna Kea summit road near Hilo on Hawaii

Daily Mail:

All 50 states of America will see snow this week as the nation is plunged into the coldest month for decades.

For the first time since 2010, meteorologists predict two snow storms barreling through the country in the next seven days will engulf Florida – a usually snow-less state.

It comes as cold weather records continue to fall across the country, with February declared the coldest month in New York for 81 years.

The average temperature in the Big Apple over the last four weeks has been 24F – 11 degrees below normal. New York joins other metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Pittsburgh, which have also experienced their most frigid February in decades.

As the mercury continues to plummet, ice breakers are being deployed by the US Coast Guard to create ferry and shipping lanes along the Hudson River in New York and the Delaware in Philadelphia.

Read the whole thing.

io9:

In Sweden, they say “yes,” by inhaling air into the mouth.

One reader adds that they do it in Northern Ireland, too.

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In the neighborhood of my Allegheny foothills Pennsylvania farm, there is PA Dutch influence on speech: “That field needs mowed.” And there is the Scots Irish habit of adding a superfluous repetitive confirmatory clause, “So there is.”

Everybody on Tumblr seems to be arguing today about the color of the above dress. Buzzfeed

I don’t see what the argument is all about, it looks perfectly obvious to me, but my wife likes this kind of thing so I felt obliged to blog it.

The Dress That Broke the Internet

Gizmodo solved it.

Miyata Nobukiyo: Dragon Teapot, c.1876, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

A well-modeled oriental dragon and Hokusai-style waves ornamenting a teapot with chaste, classical Adam lines.

When the Imperial Government banned the carrying of swords in 1876, makers of tsuba (Japanese sword guards), like Miyata Nobukiyo (Goto School, 1817-1884) found themselves obliged to apply their skills, formerly used to ornament the weapons of aristocratic warriors, to luxury products designed for Western sale.

Via Ratak Monodosico.