The cartoon editor of The New Yorker "invite[s] you to enjoy these delicious, butyraceous cartoons, which you all dug the most on Instagram in 2023."

I'm reading "Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons in 2023/The gags that got the Internet laughing, and liking, the most in the past year."

Lots of cartoons at the link, apparently the ones Instagram users indicated they liked — or, as some people might say, "dug" (and "butyraceous" means like butter, by the way — but I'll just show you my favorite:

 

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"Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor?"

"I was like, ‘That should tell me something.'... I didn't know how to stop.... If the police came over to my house and said, 'If you drink tonight, we're going to take you to jail,' I'd start packing. I couldn't stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older."

Said Matthew Perry, quoted in "Matthew Perry 'Nearly Died' When His Colon Burst Due to Opioid Addiction 'The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,' the Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing author says."

The other "Friends" actors were, he says, "like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That's kind of what the cast did for me." That sounds like something a character on the show would say.

"Racism, dead penguins and retaliation: Why the Vilas Zoo lost its only Black zookeepers."

That's the headline for a Madison.com article about the zoo here in Madison. You might think racism is somehow killing penguins — those birds who might seem to embody the peaceful harmonization of black and white.

There were 2 black zookeepers, and each left to take a job at a zoo in another city. But their exit interviews contained some criticisms, including some things about the treatment of animals, most notably the decapitation death of a penguin. Who would decapitate a penguin?! A raccoon. Wild local raccoons take the liberty to come and go as they please, including slipping into the enclosures of captive animals. 

We're told that, according to an exit interview, the zoo's general curator, Beth Petersen "decided to stop trapping raccoons that got onto zoo property and instead put Epsom salts on the ground in an attempt to repel them." At least one raccoon was insufficiently repelled, got into the penguin exhibit, and bit the head off Alice, the "elderly African penguin."

"No need for ironing, neat, stain resistant, and with a common touch... This has made the jacket a favorite informal attire for Chinese officialdom."

"The jacket has been loved by generations of leaders, because it is versatile and easygoing... The jacket look is lively and exudes vigor."

Quotes from Chinese media about the "Xi jacket" — the navy-blue, zippered windbreaker worn by President Xi Jinping of China, from a NYT article titled "China’s Leader Wears Many Hats, but Only One Jacket."

And here's a quote from an Australian professor, Louise Edwards, who, we're told, "has studied the political symbolism of clothes in China":

“It is sufficiently distinct from the worker ant conformity of the Mao suit but still invokes the same spirit as the Mao suit: frugality, practicality, proximity to the people.... He wears the windbreaker when he wants to show he is down to work.”

The jacket’s message, she said, is, “Running the country is my job, I labor at it, I am a political worker.”

In the summer, Xi just wears "a long-sleeved white shirt and dark trousers." According to the NYT, in what I would have thought as too potentially racist-seeming to print: "When accompanying officials follow suit, as they often do, they call to mind a rookery of emperor penguins."

"Penguins vs. The Rope."

So perfectly metaphorical...



Via reddit, where the top comment is "This guy doesn't even make it across."

Dogs protecting penguins from foxes.

On Middle Island, in Australia:

Maremma dogs are self-reliant; they can be left to defend a patch of land for long periods of time with a supply of food and water that they know not to wolf down right away. During the summer, when foxes pose the greatest danger to Middle Island’s penguins because of tidal patterns that form sandbars, the dogs can stay on the island for several days in a row, watching over the birds from a raised walkway.

Training them for the job involves introducing them to the penguin’s distinct odor. “Penguins don’t smell particularly nice,” said Peter Abbott, manager of tourism services for the Warrnambool City Council. “They look cute and cuddly, but they smell like dead fish.” Gradually, the dogs are taught to treat the penguins like any other kind of livestock, to be defended and not harmed....

"Third Icebreaker Fails To Reach Stranded Ship In Antarctic."

"That was the word early Monday from aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy — the Russian ship with 74 passengers and crew that's been stuck in Antarctic ice for a week now."

The passengers are not all scientists. Some are "paying members of the public." Oh, those people who just need to go everywhere, eh? People with "bucket lists." I suppose they want to pay to go up in space too. Will they have to chip in for the helicopter rescue or whatever else is going to be needed and/or will they sue the shipping company?

Here's how the cruise was presented to the public:

"Grandma called very worried that you would get lost in the snow and eaten by penguins."

"Give her a call to reassure her if you get the chance. Stay warm."

Have you expressed sufficient concern over your East Coast adult children?

And make sure they know not to eat yellow snow:

It's a very important point.... Let me explain this to you.  Snow is white.  That is, until cars drive on it, and of course they just turn it black and dirty like they do to the environment anyway.  But sometimes when you're in the snow where cars haven't been, and it's just lovely, beautiful and white and you're walking in it, which again you shouldn't do.  Don't go outside.  But if you do, and if you've stretched and if you're not exerting yourself, you're walking and you might see a patch of yellow snow, and say, "Whoa, what is that?"

It might look like a natural snow cone to you.  Don't eat it.  Do not scoop it up and eat it.  Yellow snow is not good for you.  It is sterile, I mean, you can rest assured that it is sterile.  But you know what the problem with this is, though?  It's like when I say, "Don't think pink," what are you doing?  You're thinking pink.  Don't eat yellow snow, people are gonna go, "Oh, yellow snow, Limbaugh said don't eat it. I wonder why."  Just don't.

"The boiling of millions of penguins on a remote Antarctic island triggered one of the first international wildlife campaigns."

"A century on, DNA analysis proves it has been a success. Now, Macquarie Island's king penguins must face rampaging rabbits."

Boiled penguins. Rampaging rabbits. I'm deep into the science news this morning.

Apparently, you can cure gayness...

... in penguins.

At Mr. Ice's Café...

... you can pour yourself a cold one on this very cold, long night. So keep the conversation flowing.

"But why?" — Werner Herzog.

(Via Bloggingheads.) IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

That clip makes me think how my own life would seem so much more meaningful and important were I to have a narrator and some choral music in the background. "Shortly before 6 a.m., we saw Pogo heading straight for the downtown buildings some 7 miles away. "Dr. Aingly explained that even if he caught Pogo and returned him to his family, he would immediately head right back for the buildings. "But Why?" Encounters At the End of Minnesota A Werner Herzog Film

MayBee said:

The penguin goes every summer to live alone among the grizzly bears.

Cute things that still walk the face of the earth.

The pygmy tarsier is not extinct:



Nor is the Waitaha penguin:



IN THE COMMENTS: mandrewa said:

Unfortunately the Waitaha penguin is extinct. That Associated Press article is titled oddly. If you read it closely, what has been "found" is the bones of this species. It's a new species of penguin, prior to this time unknown, and it was alive just 600 some years ago, but it is nonetheless extinct.

Oh, no! At least we've still got the pygmy tarsier to cuddle.