The phrase “tusk butts” brings all kinds of possible images to mind, but for Jon Cornforth it meant being violated by a meter-long protrusion belonging to a walurs during an expedition to Svalbard. The U.S. photographer’s image of the enounter is among the latest polar porn published by the Daily Mail of London during an expedition by U.S. photographer to Svalbard earlier this year.

The newspaper also published, within a 30-minute timespan, a male polar bear trying to gnaw through a bar on a porthole of a ship on the sea ice north of Spitsbergen. Wildlife photographer Kyriakos Kaziras said the bear spent about two circling the vessel. Both photos were accompanied by sensationalistic headlines featuring all-caps and exclamation points – something the newspaper does frequently with our wildife (albeit less so than scantily clad females) series of “death-defying” moments featuring the archipelago…

Sure, some folks familiar with Svalbard were at some “other” event in Paris last weekend, but the truly heavenly stage stealers were eight members of the Longyearbyen Mixed Choir who joined a bunch of other choirs in a performance of Händel’s “Messiah” at the L’église de la Madeleine church last Saturday in the French capital. And considering the choir spent 18 months rehearsing for the local performance last year, and they’re performed in Oslo and London since, we did our best to find a photo or YouTube clip of them actually singing, in which case they’d be in a big standalone box on another page. Still, we’ll give them enough kudos to break our “no smile and pose photos” rule … While we’re happy to highlight the clickbait fodder from our tabloid brethren elsewhere, we’re actually more fond this week of a mousing around of the more mentally stimulating kind. The Hindu, in what it calls a Qwikipedia (tinyurl.com/pu55a4m), is asking readers if they can make the connection from Napoli football star Gonzalo Higuaín to polar bear in three clicks at Wikipedia. Being fans of a mobile app featuring such challenges, we’re working our “impossible” list for our website soon.