DONE WITH TUBES (for now)

Today I had a gastroscopy, to investigate ongoing reflux problems, which revealed nothing surprising (mildly irritated stomach lining that WILL NOT calm down, okay, let's up the PPI again...) and which is notable mostly for the local anaesthetic throat spray. The description that suggested itself, immediately and with great force, is "the Devil's own capsaicin-banana cocktail".

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest: much as I continue Furious at This Book, I am charmed by the Fact that

In Europe, trilobite pendants 15,000 years old have been discovered, once worn by Pleistocene people.

The Evergreen Human Behaviour of: Look At This Cool Bug I Found!

The relevant cave is mentioned on English wikipedia (more detail unshockingly available in French), and the citation is to Parat (1902), which is very much all of In French, A Terrible Scan, and Over Fifty Pages Long, so you will forgive me (I hope) for not having tracked down the exact page reference. It has, though, been written about by the American Museum of Natural History, and there's a short educational video (with audio in French) about its creation!

And, while I'm at it, from last year: some exciting news about exquisitely preserved trilobite fossils (published June 2024; I've linked to the press release but it links onwards to the paper).