How To Find The Summer Constellations (360° Video)

Earth Can Have a New Little Moon, as a Treat

Astronomers have spotted a small asteroid that's been captured by Earth's orbit.

MINI MOON

And these guys are still around too, swooshing through the yard and landing gently as they do wherever there is a promise of food. I see more couple photos on the booth now, and the males are seemingly starting to squabble. First one shows the beautiful subtle back colours of the female.

A crow in four movements.

Yeah the Rudolph elf meme is funny, but are we really forgetting about all the other great and bizarre Christmas specials moments, like when Rankin/Bass beat DreamWorks to the idea of “Hot Jack Frost” by more than 30 years?

How about when they made a Nativity fanfic with a misfit donkey and a baby angel?

That Santa Claus started off giving toys exclusively to depressed World War I-era German children? (Did I mention he was a ginger)

We also shouldn’t gloss over the time when Rudolph teamed up with a caveman, a knight and goddamn Benjamin Franklin not to walk into a bar but to save the Baby New Year.

Really, Rudolph could fill up this entire list all by himself, considering that he also teamed up with Frosty the Snowman one time to fight this wintery motherfucker

WHO HAS GIANT ICE DRAGONS TAKE THAT NIGHT KING

And is one of the five or six clowns who are supposed to be running winter in this universe (they were not very creative when it came to making up bad guys apparently)

And later dies in the most HORRIFYING WAY POSSIBLE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT SHOW THIS MOVIE TO CHILDREN AGE FIVE AND UNDER

Oh, and by the way, Rudolph is also Reindeer Jesus. Look it up.

Confirmed: God is a woman. 

Happy New Year everyone!

Bank Vole in The Forest, by Robert Booth.

The Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku—literally translated as “forest bathing”—is based on a simple premise: immerse yourself in the forest, absorb its sights, sounds, and smells, and you will reap numerous psychological and physiological benefits. “Nature heals me with a mysterious power,” the photographer Yoshinori Mizutani recently said. Born in the countryside, surrounded by mountains, Mizutani told me that shinrin-yoku has always been a part of his daily life. In Tokyo, where he now lives and works, he takes his camera to the city’s parks and engages in a kind of photographic forest-bathing practice. In a new series of kaleidoscopic images created for us, his communion with nature starts at an almost cellular level.

See more. 

Nihon no kotori (Japanese small birds), cute helpful chart by @T_marohiko listing the following species:

First row - 百舌 mozu (bull-headed shrike) / 目黒 meguro (bonin white-eye) / 川蝉 kawasemi (kingfisher) / ツグミ tsugumi (dusky thrush) / 鶯 uguisu (japanese bush warbler)

Second row - 雀 suzume (sparrow) / 燕 tsubame (swallow) / 椋鳥 mukudori (grey starling) / 駒鳥 komadori (japanese robin) / 赤啄木鳥 akagera (great spotted woodpecker)

Third Row - 頬白 hoojiro (meadow bunting) / シマエナガ shimaenaga (silver-throated dasher) / 鷽 uso (japanese bullfinch) / 菊戴 kikuitadaki (goldcrest) / 白鶺鴒 hakusekirei (black-backed wagtail)

Fourth row - 五十雀 gojuukara (eurasian nuthatch) / 四十雀 shijuukara (japanese tit) / 小雀 kogara (willow tit) / 日雀 higara (coal tit) / 山雀 yamagara (varied tit)

Fifth row - 黄鶲 kibitaki (narcissus flycatcher) / 小瑠璃 koruri (siberian blue robin) / 大瑠璃 ooruri (blue-and-white flycatcher) / 瑠璃鶲 ruribitaki (red-flanked bluetail) / 尉鶲 joubitaki (daurian redstart)