Notices by Dr. Anna Hughes (annaghughes@mastodon.online)

Tell me where in the rulebook it says a duck can't play football

Père Fouettard likes to butcher wealthy children, chop them up, and hide them in salt barrels. Santa learns about this and gets PISSED. He brings the children back to life and makes Père Fouettard become his assistant to punish the naughty children.
(Père Fouettard briefly made his way into American Christmas folklore under the names "Father Flog" and "Spanky". This did not catch on.)

Jólakötturinn is a huge Icelandic cat who stalks around the snow eating anybody without new clothes on Christmas. Jólakötturinn was historically motivation for farmers to produce wool faster, but today it encourages children to donate clothes so that everybody gets something new.

In the spirit of “we’ll tell scary ghost stories” here’s a roundup of some Christmas monsters.👹🧵

Frau Perchta is a witch who lives in the Alps. She is absolutely terrifying. She has one enormous goose foot for some reason, and if you’ve been bad she will disembowel you and stuff your stomach with straw on Christmas.

Kallikantzaros are goblins who spend the whole year underground sawing down the tree that holds up the Earth. When the tree is almost entirely cut down, they get distracted by Christmas, and come above ground around to cause mayhem.
When they go back underground, the tree has entirely repaired itself, and they have to start all over again. This happens every year.

One way to protect yourself against the kallikantzaros on Christmas is to leave a colander on your doorstep.

Hans Trapp is a thief who goes too hard with satanism and gets excommunicated from the church. A social reject, he disguises himself as a scarecrow and wanders the countryside. In his travels he develops an insatiable taste for human flesh, so he lures a boy into the woods and eats him.
At this point God decides to step in. He strikes Trapp with a bolt of lightning that explodes his head, obviously killing him. But on Christmas Eve, Hans Trapp rises from the dead to eat naughty children.

Think twice before gifting someone an M dwarf this holiday season

If you have American citizenship but live outside the states, you can still vote! It's super easy to register (if you aren’t yet) and request your absentee ballot through Vote From Abroad 🇺🇸🌎🗳

https://www.votefromabroad.org/

🖼 People loved it so much they used it in wallpaper, artificial plants, book bindings, children's toys, paint, and so many other things.

⚰️ The only bummer about Scheele’s green was that it was super toxic because it contained arsenic. It could cause body sores, severe illness, and death. ☹️

More about it here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8vF-k6yj0N/?igsh=MTZsaGt2dGhyMTQ3dQ==

🧵 2/2

You've heard of The Colour Out of Space, now get ready for green.

🟩 Specifically the deadly Scheele’s green. Scheele’s green was a beautiful and very dangerous  pigment that was nonetheless incredibly popular in the early to mid-19th century.
🎨 Unlike other pigments, it was vivid and cheap, and wouldn't fade into a dull vomity grey.

🌿👒 Scheele’s green showed up during what I would call a Victorian Era cottagecore trend, where people were romanticizing nature and botanical palettes.

🧵 1/2

rude but ok

"Why Finnish?" so I can read my 2006 Nokia camera phone's extended warranty in its intended form shut up

tired: it's pronounced S Q L

wired: it's pronounced sequel

inspired: it's pronounced squirrel

400 million years ago the Tiktaalik decided to walk out of the water and now I have to create a "personal brand" for my LinkedIn page

This week I left a job without anything else lined up. There's a limit to what I'm willing to tolerate, and my former company's leadership went well beyond it. It's a scary freefall now, but I'm proud I stood up to our CEO on behalf of my team, and bummed I had to end it like this.

Absolutely refusing to learn what kubernetes is

Hey mastodon! A very good friend of mine is looking for a job in climate and/or geospatial analysis. Any leads out there would be great!!

I'm sorry, were any of you planning on telling me there used to be a species of penguin that was 6'7" (2m) tall and weighed 250 lbs (115kg) called Mega Penguin or was I supposed to just find that out on my own

People on Mastodon tooting about how much they love Mastodon