The idea of a book club is simple enough: on a regular interval, the group decides to read a particular book, and when they convene, they talk about it. However, one particular book club has been talking about the same book for over 28 years, and they are only about to finish reading it. That book is James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which many consider one of the most difficult novels to read because of its unconventional storytelling. And the book club, the Venice-Wake group, is a project launched by filmmaker Gerry Fialka out of curiosity. He says of the origins of the book club:

"I thought, 'Well, the only way I'm gonna learn 'Finnegans Wake' is by diving in. I'm not a scholar. I'm not an academic. I haven't even read any other Joyce. And I just said, 'Why not?' So it's been 28 years and it really blossomed into a lot of things."

The reason why it has taken the book club 28 years to finish reading the book stems from their choice to read it at a slow pace. Fialka quips that they would read one page and proceed to talk about it for two hours. Considering that the length of the book is 628 pages, it's no wonder why it took them almost three decades to go through the whole book. Now, that they're about to finish, one wonders what book they will read next, to which Fialka cheekily replies:

"No, we're never done. The same thing will happen next month," he says. "We'll read page three again next ... There's nothing different really."

- via Dave Barry's Blog

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I remember distinctly when I was in freshman year of high school that the very first assigned reading we had for English class was Mark Twain's The Prince and The Pauper. It took me three days to finish reading the 300-page story. At that time, it was the most daunting task to do and a chore to read, especially as I was unacquainted with the older English prose. For the most part, I only understood about 25% of what was written, and I had to look up notes and guides online to help me fill out the rest. However, that began my curiosity about books, and I swore that I will learn to read such complicated books enough to not make me fear them.

Now, I love reading books of all kinds, and the only thing that will deter me from tackling any book is its availability to me, which is no longer a problem with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and e-books. There are a few books that might still be intimidating even for the most seasoned readers, not merely because of their length, but at times due to their narrative style, structure and chronology, word choice, symbolism, and imagery.

One such book which I struggled a bit is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. His style of infusing magical realism in telling the narrative perplexed me at times, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. Along with that, here are nine other of the most difficult books you'll ever read.

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These two women are literally living life to its fullest. The first is a woman from Chicago, Dorothy Hoffner, who, at 104, has become the world's oldest skydiver. This actually marks the second time she went skydiving. The first was when she was at 100 years old, after which, she had commented that the next jump would be different, and it was as it is unofficially a record-setting one. Before Hoffner, the title of oldest skydiver belonged to Rut Linnéa Ingegärd Larsson at 103, which she had achieved in May 2022.

The other woman is Kim Emmons Knor, an 84-year-old native of Cadillac, Michigan who has been parachuting since she was 20 years old, has competed in international events for parachuting, and is now aiming to make 1,000 jumps. Currently, she is at 600 jumps, and once she accomplishes 1,000 jumps, she will earn her Gold Wings.

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I would like to think that the British monarchy, despite their lives being constantly observed and scrutinized by the public eye, still kept secrets about themselves or their family that nobody would know. And apparently there was one such fact about King Charles III that nobody else had known which the royal family had just recently revealed. To learn what that fact is, check it out on Bustle.

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When we think of placebos, normally we would imagine a drug that generally doesn't do anything that would directly target the symptoms of an illness. And the placebo effect is the result of believing that the said drug will do what it was intended to do, despite not knowing that it was an inert substance, or a pill that did not have any active ingredients toward the desired effect. Usually, placebos are used to conduct clinical trials of new medicines or treatments to determine the real effect they are supposed to have.

Recently, the FDA announced that phenylephrine, a common decongestant ingredient found in drugs like Sudafed and Nyquil, didn't work. In relation to this, Science Friday had wanted to understand what placebos really are and what is the science behind them. They invited professor and placebo research specialist Ted J. Kaptchuk to talk more about the thing we call placebos.

One thing I learned from their conversation is that there is a nuance in placebos. They are not actually the drug or inert substances themselves, but rather all the rituals, symbols, and acts of human kindness surrounding the placebo. Which begs the question, how does it actually work, since there are cases when placebos are believed to have the desired effect they were supposed to have even though they had no active ingredients that would work toward that effect. Moreover, in their conversation, they also talk about the concept of the honest placebo.

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Concerned with how plastics are generally recycled, Eleonora Ortolani attempted a rather strange project. She thought of making ice cream flavoring by using recycled plastic. Inspired by the idea that some worms were able to consume and digest plastics, Ortolani wondered whether it was possible for humans to do the same. Despite the difficulty of finding a scientist who would help her turn the project into reality, she searched and found a food scientist from the London Metropolitan University, Joanna Sadler. The two successfully converted plastic into synthetic vanillin which is a cheaper alternative to vanilla.

Vanillin mainly consisted of crude oil, which is also used to manufacture plastic, so the idea was simply to break down the plastic into its simplest form and then use an enzyme to synthesize vanillin. Despite successfully creating ice cream with recycled plastic as the source for its flavoring, neither one of its creators has tasted it yet, as it still needs to be analyzed by the food regulatory bodies before being considered safe to eat.

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I love animated films. I grew up watching cartoons when I was kid, and my love for the medium and the art has never wavered even in my adulthood. I have watched some weird animated shows and films. Some have left me reeling, others have left me speechless, while there were others that, despite the presence of surreal or phantasmagoric elements, I found captivating, even considering the surrealism a part of its charm.

While animation is usually typecast as children's media, often not being taken seriously by most, there have been attempts at breaking the stereotype. These 12 completely delirious trailers of the most obscure animated films show exactly the boundless possibilities that animation as a medium can offer for any serious storyteller. The video above is a sample for what you should expect from these trailers. I chose it because it was the most palatable for me. Even as a lover of animation, I admit that I found myself squirming at some of these trailers because of their eeriness. But hopefully, if you think animation is just for kids, these trailers will make you think otherwise.

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There is so much to unpack in this story written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus from The New Yorker. The gist of it is that renowned behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of the book Predictably Irrational, and a very prominent Harvard Business School professor, Francesca Gino, who both worked on dishonesty, have, in a sudden twist of irony, been accused of fabricating their data.

Ariely became famous for his work on "The Honesty Pledge" wherein he added a line on an insurance company's automobile-policy review form that prompted participants to sign an honesty declaration, with half the forms placing the pledge at the beginning, and the other half at the end. His thesis was that those with the honesty pledge at the beginning of the form were less likely to lie in the forms than those with the honesty pledge at the end. On the published paper, Ariely found that those who signed the honesty pledge at the beginning were less likely to cheat.

Francesca Gino became prominent in the late 2000s when she saw several papers she wrote being published in journals in a year. She also worked on the topic of dishonesty and frequently collaborated with Ariely. With her unprecedented surge in productivity, Gino became an HBS professor who had a significant influence in research circles. Despite this, several professors and researchers had expressed their doubts about the data and the results of her research. But most of those were simply brushed off, leaving Gino virtually untouched throughout her more than a decade tenure at HBS.

It wasn't until Zoe Ziani, a former PhD candidate who was denied a doctorate because of her critique of Gino's work, contacted the group of Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn, collectively called Data Colada, the title of their blog where they unraveled the dishonest practices of researchers and called out people in their field, to show them Ariely's car-insurance study and started the whole investigation into Ariely's work, apart from Gino's work whom they were already looking into.

Long story short, Gino was placed on administrative leave by Harvard, and although Ariely has continued to forget, misremember, or lie about the data he used or the methods he used to get them for his research, much doubt has been cast on the veracity of the results his studies claimed. For the full details of this story, check it out on The New Yorker.

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I remember when I was about three or four years old, my dad would read fairy tale books to me before going to sleep. I always loved those moments and I anticipated them every night. At times, I remember having to force him to read to me. Understandably, not all fathers may have the time or the energy to do that all the time, however, a new research has shown that dads spending time with their children can go a long way in their children's development.

A study by researchers from the University of Leeds found that dads' involvement in their children's lives, especially during their formative years, through interactive activities like reading, playing, and storytelling can help boost their children's performance at school.

Dr. Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, who led the research, said: “Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child’s life, is critical.”

Furthermore, they also found that dads being more engaged in their children's school activities contribute positively to the kids' academic performance. The research suggests that playing, drawing, or singing with their kids every week and spending even 10 minutes a day reading or storytelling with them proves to have long-lasting effects for their children's scholastic achievements. On the other hand, the mom heavily impacts the kids' emotional and social development. With this in mind, they encourage both parents to share in the responsibility of childrearing as it greatly impacts the cognitive abilities of children.

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I'm not completely familiar with the struggle of finding a place to put your purse in the car, but I think it's understandable how women would prefer having a convenient and secure slot inside their car where their purses will go since all of their essentials conveniently go in it.

The passenger seat may be an option, but there's always the possibility of the purse falling off when you unexpectedly have to come to a screeching halt or, even on the go, it might accidentally slip. I can imagine the difficulty of having to put your purse at the back of the driver's seat. It would be too much of a hassle, especially if you quickly need something from your purse. And it would just be completely out of reach if you were to just place it on the back seat.

With this problem in mind, car designers thought of a few ways for women to have a place in their car to put their purse. One solution is having electronic gear shifts. Instead of the gear shift being mechanically connected to the transmission, some cars are designed where the gear selector sends electronic signals, through a row of buttons on the lower dashboard, thus freeing up some space where the gear stick is supposed to be. Other designs have a carved out space under the shifter console where purses and other stuff can go. In Volvo's EX30 EV, the center console functions as a drawer of sorts where compartments can slide out and allow you to fit coffee cups, phones, and even your purse for a hassle-free drive. What do you think about these designs? - via Fark

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The idea that we can create human-animal hybrids sounds deranged and downright absurd. Such a thing, we would think, only belongs in fiction, folk tales, or myths. After all, how would it be possible for human DNA to mix with that of an animal? Moreover, there is something about these chimerical combinations that obviously crosses ethical boundaries. It's best to leave them etched only in myths or folklore. However, one Soviet doctor had been so obsessed with the idea of a hybrid human-ape super warrior that he went to great lengths to create them. His name was Ilya Ivanov.

Ivanov had been successful in artificially inseminating horses so that one stallion can breed up to 500 mares. Apart from this, he also specialized in interspecific hybridization of animals, which led him, at some point in his scientific career, to become fixated with creating a human-ape hybrid, which he thought would be incredibly resistant to disease and even potent enough to become super warriors a la Planet of the Apes.

Imagining an army of half-human, half-ape chimeras, clad in red, rampaging through Europe was not enough, he knew, to convince the Soviet government to give him the funds for his research. However, he also knew that Vladimir Lenin and his compatriots were heavily anti-religious. Using this as an opportunity, he presented the idea that creating a human-ape hybrid would basically make them gods who could refashion genetics, anatomy, and physiology. He got the funding and set out to Africa.

However, Ivanov quickly found out that making his very own "humanzee" was not as easy as he thought it would be. He faced various hurdles to the point that he became desperate and almost had to forcefully inseminate women. Thankfully, he was caught and deported. But his pursuit of human-ape hybrids didn't end there. He continued his experimentation until his death, albeit unsuccessful in achieving his goal. Until in 2019, when a collaboration of scientists from the US, China, and Spain successfully created a human-monkey embryo. Is this finally the start of the realization of Ivanov's dream? Only time will tell.

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After 25 years of renting out physical DVDs to customers, Netflix finally bids farewell to their rental business. And it comes as no surprise since even the global sales for DVDs and Blu-rays have been gradually dwindling over the past several years, with a 19 percent decrease from 2021 to 2022. The streaming behemoth announced in April that the last shipments of DVDs will be done on September 29th, marking the close of that chapter for DVD rentals.

Netflix first started shipping DVDs in 1998 with Beetlejuice, and since then, they have shipped 5.2 billion movies to over 40 million customers. Over the years, as consumer preferences shifted toward streaming, Netflix also shifted gears, offering movies and TV shows on-demand, later producing and distributing their own content on the platform.

Nowadays, video on-demand has simply taken over the market, and as streaming services continue to grow, we might soon shelve DVDs and Blu-rays along with other technologies from a by-gone era. Disney's move to stop production of DVDs and Blu-rays in Australia is one tell-tale sign that the industry has decided to steer toward digital distribution, which makes sense from a business perspective as it costs less but gives a much wider reach.

However, one good thing did come about this as Netflix also announced that whoever still has rentals in their possession would get to keep them. Furthermore, they may even request up to 10 more movies simply so that the company can finally get rid of all the remaining stock. So, for anybody who still would love to get physical copies of their favorite movies, go and check to see if Netflix still has a copy and request them right away. From Engadget.

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When capital punishment wasn't enough of a deterrent for criminals to stop committing offenses, the British Parliament deliberated on what would be a better way to deter people from committing crimes, and that's when they passed the British Murder Act of 1751. It is considered quite brutal and even said to be a fate worse than death. Weird History tells us about the BMA of 1751 in the video above. - via Digg.

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It was when Dr. James Wade was doing research at the National Library of Scotland when he stumbled upon something rather extraordinary. In a 15th century manuscript, he read what seemed to be notes and details for a live comedy act. Today, we have stand-up comedians writing material and going on the road to test that material out on audiences. Sometimes, they would have spontaneous moments on stage creating comedy magic. I would think that minstrels, the entertainers of the Medieval Age, generally performed impromptu or extempore, but having this manuscript with the writer giving details of the sequences he would perform, is definitely rare especially for medieval literature. Read more about it on Sci Tech Daily. - via Metafilter

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When I was a kid, I learned that there were four distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. There is a fifth taste, umami, which is basically that savory sensation described by the Japanese. Apart from these five, researchers are saying that there is a sixth. Or, to be more precise, we can divide the salty taste into two different sensations: one where the saltiness is just right and you can enjoy the flavor of the food being accentuated by the salt, and the other when there's too much salt and you feel repulsed.

In the case of salt, scientists understand many details about the low-salt receptor, but a complete description of the high-salt receptor has lagged, as has an understanding of which taste bud cells host each detector.

“There are a lot of gaps still in our knowledge — especially salt taste. I would call it one of the biggest gaps,” says Maik Behrens, a taste researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology in Freising, Germany. “There are always missing pieces in the puzzle.”

In our culture, we have a condiment made of fermented fish or shrimp paste with salt. If you eat a handful of that, it tastes awful. It's not exactly bitter, but it's a repugnant taste. That's what high levels of salt must taste like. It's not salty the way we would define salty. It's a whole class altogether, and I think that's what taste researchers are looking into. Although, not everybody is convinced. Amber Dance writes about these nuances on Knowable.

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