Dark Chocolate Brownies by Ree Drummond  16 servings  https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a11388/dark-chocolate-brownies/

Singer-songwriter James McMurtry, son of two renowned wordsmiths, used the term Blackberry Winter on stage.  The term has its first recorded usage in the 19th century, so it’s new by linguistic standards.  But the idea is old:  a late cold front reportedly can help blackberries “set” on their canes, to insure an abundant harvest.  Joe Essig  https://blog.richmond.edu/writing/  If you want to hear McMurtry sing about Blackberry Winter, watch 4:43 video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKnEV_ICvU 

The Egyptian cotton industry was born from a single American event—the Civil War.  Cotton had been so little known in medieval Europe that it was imagined to be a mixture of plant and animal—a “vegetable lamb,” Sven Beckert, a professor of history at Harvard, writes, in “Empire of Cotton.”  Some people theorized that little sheep grew on plants, bending down at night to drink water; other myths told of sheep held to the ground by low stems.  As late as 1728, an encyclopedia entry describes a vegetable lamb that grows in Tartary—a term for areas of north, central, and east Asia unknown to European geographers.  Cotton had long thrived in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  In 70 C.E., Pliny the Elder found in Upper Egypt a shrub whose fruit looked like a “nut with a beard, and containing in the inside a silky substance, the down of which is spun into threads.”  Well into the nineteenth century, the Indian subcontinent had a peerless cotton operation.  Cotton-growing and -manufacturing skills moved to southern Europe with the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam.   With the advent of industrialization, cotton attracted opportunists everywhere.  By the mid-nineteenth century, cotton was driving an industrial revolution in England and slavery in the American South.  Before the Civil War, eighty per cent of the cotton used by British textile mills came from the American South.  As the war escalated, cotton prices increased, and British textile manufacturers started looking for alternatives.  Egypt’s production quickly eclipsed that of the U.S., and, by the end of the nineteenth century, Egypt derived ninety-three per cent of its revenue from cotton.  It had become “the major source of income for almost every proprietor in the Delta,” Roger Owen writes, in “Cotton and the Egyptian Economy.”  Cotton-textile production is long, complex, and riddled with opportunities for tampering.  After it is harvested, cotton is ginned, spun, then woven into fabrics at different facilities, often in different countries.  Cheating can start right in the cotton fields, MeiLin Wan, a textile expert at Applied DNA, told me.  “I’ve heard stories of how, in the middle of the night, all of a sudden, bales get switched and high-end cotton bales get mixed with Upland,” a cheaper type of cotton derisively known as “hairy.”  Spinners and weavers can mix different types of cotton together.  “You can see all the weak links upstream in the supply chain,” Wan said.  In 2009, Applied DNA took a survey of apparel and home textiles that claim to be a hundred-per-cent extra-long staple.  Eighty-nine per cent had been mislabelled:  forty-eight per cent were primarily made with basic Upland cotton, and forty-one per cent were a blend.  Yasmine AlSayyad  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-end-of-egyptian-cotton  

Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet.  Methods employed to acquire such information include searching publicly available databases and social media websites (like Facebook), hacking, social engineering and, through websites such as Grabify, a site specialized in revealing IP addresses through a fake link.  Doxing may be carried out for reasons such as online shaming, extortion, and vigilante aid to law enforcement.  It also may be associated with hacktivism.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing 

Harold Clayton Lloyd Sr. (1893–1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.  Lloyd is considered, alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, one of the most influential film comedians of the silent film era.  Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947.  His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats.  Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street (in reality a trick shot) in Safety Last! (1923) is considered one of the most enduring images in all of cinema.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd 

Adrian Boswell Is Broccoli Street Art Man   See images in London at https://www.shoreditchstreetarttours.co.uk/adrian-boswell-is-shoreditchs-broccoli-man/  This blog post is based on a longer blogpost on Graffoto in which we examine the whole broccoli crisis in more depth and ponder an unexpected role for government in suppressing evidence of the broccoli crisis. 

Lincoln Logs are an American children's toy consisting of square-notched miniature lightweight logs used to build small forts and buildings.  They were invented around 1916 by John Lloyd Wright, second son of the well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  Lincoln Logs were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.  They are named for the eponymous sixteenth president of the United States who once lived in a log cabin.  Starting in 2014, Lincoln Logs were manufactured by K'NEX Industries Inc.  In late 2017, K'NEX, having filed for bankruptcy, was bought out by Basic Fun, Inc., of Florida.  Pride Manufacturing, of Burnham, Maine, manufactures Lincoln Logs for Basic Fun, and the rights to the IP are owned by Hasbro.  The logs measure three quarters of an inch (roughly two centimetres) in diameter.  Like real logs used in a log cabin, Lincoln Logs are notched so that logs may be laid at right angles to each other to form rectangles resembling buildings.  Additional parts of the toy set include roofs, chimneys, windows and doors, which bring a realistic appearance to the final creation.  Later sets included animals and human figures the same scale as the buildings.  The toy sets were originally made of redwood, with varying colors of roof pieces.  In the 1970s the company introduced sets made entirely of plastic, but soon reverted to real wood.  The mold for the toy was based on the architecture of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, designed by the inventor's father.  The foundation of the hotel was designed with interlocking log beams, which made the structure "earthquake-proof" and one of the few buildings to remain standing after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake that crumbled Tokyo.  When he returned to the U.S, John organized The Red Square Toy Company (named after his father's famous symbol), and marketed the toy in 1918.  Wright was issued U.S. patent 1,351,086 on August 31, 1920, for a "Toy-Cabin Construction".  Soon after, he changed the name to J. L. Wright Manufacturing.  Lincoln Logs are believed to be the first toy to be marketed to both boys and girls and appeal to a "simple" type of creativity.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Logs 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2538  July 11, 2022