Tuesday Toss Up #6
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In today’s Tuesday Toss Up of inspirational links #6…
Decor & DIYs:
Lora Bloomquist is one of my favorite DIY bloggers to watch. Here is a post she wrote about simple ways to repurpose old lighting.
How to DIY spring peat pot treat baskets in 15 minutes.
House & Garden UK has a home tour of a former vicarage on the outskirts of Bath.
Garden & House Plants:
Balcony Garden Web has 39 upcycled mason jar ideas in the garden.
Eight longest-flowering house plants according to Gardening Know How.
Epic Gardening has the 21 best flowers for growing in raised beds.
Food Tips & Recipes:
The top-ranked diet, excelling in 12 of 21 categories.
Recipe for Creamy Marry Me Chicken.
Garlic Butter Steak Bites & Potatoes recipe.
Books:
These three books are or will be published in 2025.
The Three Lives Of Cate Kay:
In the novel The Three Lives Of Cate Katy, Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret until now.
As young adults, Cate and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams, and Cate has been on the run ever since.
Atmosphere:
In the book Atmosphere, Joan was elected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980 to begin training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, mission specialist Lydia Danes, warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan questions everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes instantly.
Good Dirt:
In the novel Good Dirt, when ten-year-old Ebby Freeman hears the gunshot, time stops. And when she sees her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shatters as well.
The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring pull on the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers. Still, when Ebby’s high-profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that’s precisely what they get.
So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. As she tries to process what’s happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family’s history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.
Randomness:
10 spots you may not be cleaning well enough in the bathroom.
Six kitchen tools that experts say are worth the storage space.
Seven mistakes to avoid at Costco (while maximizing your membership).
Seven habits people with clean homes always follow.
I saw this and thought it would interest you.
arstechnica.com
What cats’ love of boxes and squares can tell us about their visual perception
Jennifer Ouellette
2–3 minutes
Although some 500 pet cats and their owners expressed interest, only 30 completed all six of the study’s trials over the course of the two-month study last summer. Of those, nine of the cats selected at least one of the stimuli by sitting within its contours (illusory or otherwise) for at least three seconds—a pretty good duration given the notorious fickleness of cats. As for preferences, cats selected the Kanizsa illusion just as often as the square; they selected both of those more often than the control stimulus. In other words, the cats treated the illusory square the same way they treated the real square.
“It’s the presence of the contours, either in the Kanizsa square or in the real square, that causes cats to sit inside, rather than the presence of shapes on the floor,” Smith told Ars. “Brains are very sensitive to contours that differ in luminance. Vision has evolved to answer questions having to do with boundaries and contours.”
The study comes with the usual caveats, notably the final small sample size (the result of participant attrition, a common challenge with citizen science projects). Smith and her co-authors also suggest replicating the study in a more controlled setting, despite the advantages gained from conducting the trials in the comfort of the cats’ own homes. “For the sake of cats, the home was really ideal, but otherwise, for the sake of science, it is best to do things in controlled settings [like a lab],” said Smith.
Smith and Byosiere are also keen to adapt some of the latter’s work with dogs and visual illusions to the study of cat behavior and cognition. “Cat cognition research is certainly lacking in comparison to domestic dogs,” the authors concluded. “Although the reason for this is unclear, the use of citizen science as a precursor to in-lab investigations of cat cognition could greatly help bridge this divide.”
DOI: Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2021. 10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105338 (About DOIs).
Great links again! I enjoyed looking through them all. Interesting that you mentioned the book, Good Dirt. I just picked it up from the library. Haven’t started it yet though because I’m in the middle of another book right now. I have a few flowering plants…I have two African Violets, which bloom often; two Thanksgiving Cactuses which bloom 2-3x/year; and two Kalanchoes – only one of which is blooming right now. The other one isn’t doing well, but I’m trying to nurse it back to good health.
I saw your healthy flowering plants on Instagram. Sure are pretty!
This week has a lot of good suggestions to explore. I want to read the one about the plants that flower the longest. I’d really like to have some of those. Most of my plants don’t flower, but I do have some Thanksgiving cactuses (cacti?) and some orchids that bloom. The orchids usually last a long time when they bloom. I really like all 3 of those rugs. I love the vivid colors and patterns.
My granddaughter wants to redecorate her room. I chose those rugs for her to look at.
Your TV room looks so cozy. And I really like the rugs. Which one are you getting?
I’m not getting any right now. I chose them because my granddaughter is redecorating her bedroom at Kendra’s.
Brenda, I followed your advice on Line of Duty and am rewatching it. It is really good and I had forgotten a lot of the plot…very good twist at the end. I enjoy your blog especially the kitties.
I love that show and am sorry to have already seen it all.