You just know the Johnson government is putting more time and effort into finding an emergency raven than fixing the COVID crisis in the UK.
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BTW. If you twitter, the Tower of London’s Raven Master is well worth your time:
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I thought Slate Star Codex had gone offline, after its author was doxxed by the NYT? Maybe I’ve got it confused with another blog.
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No, apparently NYT stood down their intent to unmask him, so he put it back online. I think the original takedown post might still be buried in the blog somewhere with an update.
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C’mon, you missed a prime opportunity for “COVID crisis” and “corvid crisis”. I am disappoint!
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They should pack The Court of Ravens; six just aren’t enough.
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No more than three times the current number though.
Nobody needs Corvid 19.
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Perhaps the missing raven saw herself as a citizen of Europe and chose to return rather than exit.
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In what way? Ravens are big powerful birds, and more than a match for a single carrion crow; however, crows are a communal bird, unlike ravens, and see ravens as a predator just like they do raptors, and will gang up and mob a raven, harrying it and dive-bombing it if it perches in a tree, behaviour I’ve seen many times - there are a bunch of crows that hang around where I work, scrounging scraps left by staff, and there’s also a pair of ravens around, which often suffer mobbing by the local crow hooligans!
The ravens in the Tower legend isn’t really that ancient, possibly going back to around 1666, but more likely a Victorian confection, like many other things, Druids at Stonehenge being a good example - basically an excuse for grown men to do cosplay and ponce around in fancy-dress in public; there is no recorded connection between Stonehenge and any pagan groups called Druids, other than a few biased comments made by Roman invaders.
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It’s just that, whenever the topic of ravens (or crows) comes up, it seems like someone likes to pick an argument over what is (or isn’t) a crow (or raven). As it turns out, there’s no specific phylogenic criteria that determine which corvids get sorted into crows and ravens (or ravens and crows), but people really, truly, deeply believe in the prescriptivity of categories and tend to get very worked up. It’s not helped by the fact that often when people say raven (or crow) they’re specifically referring to Common Raven (or Carrion Crow or American Crow) rather than the group of species clumped into ravens (or crows) at large.
TL;DR: category debates are problematic when people don’t agree on what the category definitions are.
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man, imagine being the Emergency Back-Up Raven, just hanging out in a cage somewhere (or something?), waiting for the call to be put into rotation.
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Betcha George R.R. Martin has a ravenmaster named “Bran the Blessed” somewhere in his ASOIAF back files.
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Rumour has it Prince Charles visits regularly and has long chats.
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I assume that Ravenmaster Skaife—given his epic name—is part of an epic line of Ravenmasters who have always lived in the tower.
Can we go back to the Mermaid Inn though? Were there mermaids there?
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This checks out because Britain is currently transitioning to a New Management of isolationism and astonishing cruelty. Rumours persist that His Unholyness in power is building a Tzompantli on the site where the Tyburn gallows once stood and i wouldn’t put it past him.
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Oh, BB should definitely do a piece on the Mermaid Inn (maybe if/when they reopen after Covid)! Put it this way: they had to rebuild it after French raiders burnt down Rye in 1377. It reopened in 1420. I had to book another spot in Rye for two nights then reluctantly told them I’d scored a room at the Mermaid and they were completely understanding about it. I left a large tip there.
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It would be nice if you warned people that the comments on that article rapidly turned into transphobic hate speech.
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He has also written a book on his duties. He really loves his job.
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Oh jeez, I forgot about that part. I’m sorry. I feel like there’s a crosspost of it somewhere out there with less awful comments. If I can find it I will swap out the URL, otherwise I will add a note. Thanks.
ETA: updated link and added a CW.
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