Illustration
October 2, 2020

Fun Illustrations Visualize of the “Same” Words With Different Meanings

Language lovers will be thrilled to know that illustrator Bruce Worden is back to regularly updating his popular website Homophones, Weakly. Since 2011, Worden has been illustrating homophones, which are two or more words having the same pronunciation, but different spelling and meaning. Though the illustrations tapered off after 2016, Worden has been quite productive this year, particularly as he's focusing on a new category—homographs. What is a homograph?

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Dogs
October 1, 2020

Study Finds That a Dog’s Heart Rate Jumps When You Say “I Love You” To Them

Have you told your dog lately that you love it? You may want to start saying those three little words every chance you get. A recent study has proved what dog-lovers always suspected: dogs understand and physically react to this loving phrase. The study by Canine Cottage measured canine bodily reactions and found pups' heart rates increased an average of 46.2% while being told, “I love you.

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Environment
October 1, 2020

Artist Knits “Temperature Scarf” To Track Climate Change Every Day for a Whole Year [Interview]

When artist and author Josie George started knitting her temperature scarf in January, she could not have imagined how this calendar year would unfold. The year 2020 has been unpredictable in many ways—from the emergence of a global pandemic to the social unrest and protests around the world to the wildfires ravaging Australia and then the United States.

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History
September 30, 2020

Uppercase and Lowercase: An Etymological Tale of Two Scripts

To start a sentence, one uses an uppercase letter to begin the first word. But where do the opaque terms uppercase and lowercase come from? To understand why capital letters are “uppercase”—and their smaller counterparts are “lowercase”—one has to look back in history to early handwriting and follow that tale to the printing press. The existence and etymology (the history of a word) of uppercase and lowercase is a fascinating tale.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.