At the Hand-Carved-Ice Café...

... you can talk about anything you want. (But you have to wait for me to moderate your comments in, because that's the kind of place this has become.)

Picturing Antarctica.

From the Tumblr Maps on the Web (via Business Insider)...

Antarctica without all the ice:



Antarctica and the U.S.A.:

At the Spring Ice Café...

... you don't need to make sense.

Sharding.

It looks like this close up:



And like this from a distance. That's the shoreline of Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin today:



Though the temperature approached 60° and the lake water was melted, there were piles of distinctive looking ice in one place:



It tinkled like like a pile of glass fragments. Check out the texture:



It's called sharding.

There are millions of mammoth tusks in that Arctic ice that is melting.

And they're worth good money as a substituted for elephant ivory, which, unlike mammoth ivory, is illegal to buy and sell.

At the link, a picture of a man posing with a mammoth tusk — it's huge — that might be "worth $80,000 to $100,000 or even more."

[S]ome scientists lament the tusk hunting and trade. "Each of these tusks is kind of like a tree, which has rings," he says. "The tusks themselves can kind of carry information about the climate, the diet — that would be valuable data. On the other hand, if they find mammoth hair, or an intact mammoth, they're the first ones that tell the scientists."

At the Ice Pellet Café...

... have a drink of your favorite precipitation. Please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like. No one seems to be ordering ice pellets but I'm thinking it's a bit like bubble tea.

At the Black-and-White Café...

... let's get together.

This might help you bike in winter.

The jaunty music makes it seem like fun. I can do this. At 0:33, we got a laugh. ("Go out and buy or find a bike...") At 0:57 — "completely filthy with road grime" — I say, "This is where we lose all the women." At 1:30, the real problem emerges: You've got to keep going forward. You'll fall if you brake or slow way down or do anything other than "Let your momentum go. You are usually okay." Usually! But if 1 of my 60 minutes of riding is not okay, that's absurdly dangerous. "It's a skill," we're told, that you learn over time. But that assumes you don't die! Right after the expert says we can learn, we see a bike going down an icy path toward a curve with the icy lake straight ahead.

At the Ice Dog Café...

... let's romp.

At the Blue Ice Café...

... there's nothing to cry about.

At the Road-to-Hell Café...

... we've got nothing but good intentions.

At the Ice Cold Café...

... we see the Wisconsin Capitol building reflected on the glassy clear and oh-so-thick ice of Lake Mendota, where hearty men fish and full-blooded dogs romp, while timid souls linger on the shoreline and fret about safety. It's America, baby! It's Wisconsin! There is room for the bold individualists and the hand-wringing collectivists. All contribute to the molten mush of human thought here in this moment we were made for. God bless Madison, Wisconsin, and God bless the United States of America.

ADDED: The full-blooded God dog:



The hearty men:




Closer:

At the Ice Dog Café...

... do you know what you're doing?

At the Swan Lake Café...

... you were right. Those really were swans out there on icy Lake Mendota this afternoon.

"There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire..."

".... and a Zamboni clearing the ice."

At the Pink Ice Café...

... be cool.

At the Icicle Café...

... we're all dammed.

Lake Mendota, yesterday.

Will this thing ever freeze all the way?

At the Hoarfrost Café...

... it's warm inside.

"Suddenly There's A Meadow In The Ocean With 'Flowers' Everywhere."

Frost flowers.