In one of the best scenes in one of the greatest comedy series—Yes, Minister—Sir Desmond Glazebrook explains to Sir Humphrey Appleby that, yes, he does carry a copy of the Financial Times with him. But that doesn’t mean that he actually understands it.

(In case it's not clear, the Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.)

Fortunately, the 404 error page of the Financial Times is far more comprehensible to those of us with a passing familiarity with economics. Or, if you’re like me, just smile and laugh when you see other people around you doing likewise. It will be less awkward.

-via Kottke

The common joke is that, eventually, advertisers will be able to buy space in your dreams to sell you stuff. We haven't arrived at that future yet, but we are making progress.

Apple Insider, a website that keeps up on the latest news about that corporation's products and services, notes that Apple recently received a patent for a product called "Apple Glass." It isn't simply a wearable augmented reality projector. It's a "direct retinal projector." This machine would use the human eyes themselves to experience the visual overlay.

So although it's not quite at the level of a holodeck on Star Trek, it is conceptually similar to the synaptic stimulator on the Star Trek:Voyager episode "Equinox."

-via Dave Barry | Image: USPO

I have not, unfortunately, been able to find the name of this amazing athlete. He should be famous, given the extraordinary feats he demonstrates in this video. 

It's not just being able to lift the barbell and a pair of 45-pound plates over his head. Such athletes would be thick on the ground in any gym. But that he can do so on a slackline shows phenomenal core strength and balance.

Who is he? Perhaps the uniquely shaped spire in the background could clue us into at least where he is located.

A suggestion: watch the video with the sound muted.

-via Born in Space

Norsonic Nor277 tapping machine for generating footstep sounds for building sound transmission testing. pic.twitter.com/SQdx1yFd3T

— MachinePix (@MachinePix) October 24, 2021

*slaps fender*

Yessir, this here is a top-of-the-line tapping machine. Barely any taps on it. The previous owner would just use it to tap a few beats on Sunday. You’ve picked the best bargain on the lot.

Why do you need a tapping machine? And, specifically, why do you need the Nor277 tapping machine? Because you need to test the acoustics of an area using a realistic simulation of footfalls with hard-soled shoes. It’s equipped with 5 tapping hammers tapping up to 10 taps per second. It weighs only 22 pounds and can be run from a battery for the off-road adventures that you’re so fond of.

The price? Step into my office. Let’s make a deal.

-via @lazerwalker

When Robert Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement in the early years of the Twentieth Century, it was directly inspired by his military career and the sense that some paramilitary training was proper for patriotic British boys.

This martial flavor is especially evident in the movement’s early literature, such as this 1925 instruction manual that teaches scouts in the tasks necessary to earn the master-at-arms badge. The first section addresses the use of the saber, while using wooden sticks as training implements. Next is the quarterstaff, which is a useful choice, as the most accessible of improvised weapons is surely a broomstick. Leaving aside the weapons, the scouts then train in the basics of boxing, ju-jitsu, and wrestling. The result is a well-rounded combatant.

-via reddit

Many navies maintain large sailing vessels in order to train naval officer cadets how to travel the seas the old fashioned way. Although the US Navy doesn’t, the US Coast Guard has an impressive three-masted barque for this purpose. Ecuador’s Guayas is a similarly built and equipped vessel. Such training vessels rarely engage in combat or even maritime law enforcement.*

Nonetheless, the cadets of the Ecuadorian Navy answered the call intrepidly when it fell to their ship to intercept a customized drug-smuggling vessel. The US Naval Institute news service describes the smugglers’ vessel as a low-profile boat painted gray and packed with potentially tons of cocaine. The crew of the Guayas captured it with their utility boat.

-via Super Punch | Photos: Ecuadorian Navy

*Though, you’d like to read about such a foray in fiction, consider S.M. Stirling’s excellent Nantucket trilogy in which the USCGC Eagle is transported back in time.

If someone asks you to count with your fingers, how do you do it? Anand Jagatia writes for the BBC that this practice varies by culture.

Like a good American, I count off starting on my index fingers. Europeans tend to start with the thumb. Iranians start with the pinky finger. In Japan, the norm is to start with an open palm, then curl fingers in as they are counted.

Here’s where it starts to get complicated. In India, it’s common to count off the lines of the finger segments. In Tanzania, both hands are used, with counts switching from hand to hand, forming a symmetrical pattern. The Northern Pame people of Mexio prefer to count on knuckles. The Yuki people of California used to take a different approach: counting the spaces between the fingers. Read about these customs at BBC Future.

-via Kottke

Harland Sanders came to financial success only in his sixties. By then, he was firmly committed to his restaurant vision as not only a means of making money, but serving particular types of food. He was a perfectionist, which sometimes caused conflicts with his business partners, such as former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown.

In Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, Josh Ozersky describes some of the spin-off businesses that Brown encouraged as Sanders lost control over the company he founded. Among these were a motel chain named Colonel Sanders Inns and a line of British-inspired fish-and-chips shops called H. Salt., Esq., Authentic Fish and Chips (89-91).

Perhaps the most daring venture to accompany Kentucky Fried Chicken was Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham. It was modestly successful, both as freestanding restaurants and as additional menu items, but as it was not as wildly popular as the fried chicken, the company eventually dropped the chain in favor of a focus on fried chicken.

-via Weird Universe | Image: Kawanee Historical Society

Pictured above it the late actor Nigel Terry, who portrayed King Arthur in the greatest movie ever made. At the end of that story, the fallen once and future king was carried off to the mystical island of Avalon to await the day when he would take up the sword of power and be king again.

Similarly, the Nigels have left us. The United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics reports that not a single baby born last year was named Nigel. Although once a very common British baby name, it is now extinct.

On the upside, journalist Harry Wallop reports that there 189 Kylos, 86 Aadams (yes, I spelled that correctly), and 64 Cais.

But no Nigels, “for it is the doom of men that they forget.”

-via Marginal Revolution | Image: Orion Pictures

The headline is a translation. In New Zealand, the standard emergency number is 111. The concept is the same as the American emergency number of 911.

The Associated Press reports that a 4-year old boy dialed 111 on a phone while he was at home in the city of Invercargill. There was no emergency. He just had some awesome toys and wanted to show them off to someone. Could a police officer come and check them out?

The dispatcher put out a call to available units. An officer was, fortunately, available to examine the toys, which he confirmed were indeed “cool”.

Hadrian (r. 117-138) lived to the ripe old age of 62 before he died of natural causes. He was an outlier on that count. Only 25% of Roman Emperors died of peacefully. That's if you count from Augustus all the way to Constantine XI Palaeologus, who died during the fall of Constantinope in 1453. That is a total of 175 emperors. Data scientists in Brazil examined statisical trends in the lifespans of these rulers and published their findings with the Royal Society.

The researchers that found that the likelihood that an emperor would be killed early in his reign was very high. Consider the infamously named Year of the Four Emperors. But once an emperor was able to establish himself and get past these early trials, he tended to live for the next 13 years. Thereafter, his reign became unstable again and the likelihood of assassination increased.

This 13 year rule, the scholars note, confirms a study of 106 modern dictators who ruled between 1875 and 2004. Their power, once they survived initial turbulences, tended to become unstable after 12.3 years.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin

What’s your style of kayaking? Do you like to tumble through rapids? Do you prefer the rigors of the open ocean? Or, like redditor /u/twitch119, do you enjoy quiet, still waters?

The water calls to him in more ways than one. Aside from kayaking, his favorite hobby is painting with watercolors. To combine them, he built an easel onto his boat. You can read a description of his build process here. The unit, which has a side table attached to the easel, fits around the rim of the cockpit. Paracord keeps it snugly secured. The top can be adjusted to different angles and will even fold flat.

Tom Scott, a traveler and teacher about the world’s curiosities, muses philosophically about what makes a place fascinating to people. It is usually a combination of the very familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, we’ve probably all eaten at McDonald’s at some point. But very few of us kayaked up to the restaurant for our Big Macs.

In Germany, a canal that connects to the Elbe River features a McDonald’s. You can drive up or walk up, as usual. But you can also boat up, too. Be sure to watch to the end for Scott’s punchline.

Exit question: can you swim up to the dock and get service?

The calm waters off of Puerto Madryn, Argentina are famous for the many visits of southern right whales. UPI tells us that tourists flock there during whale watching season, which runs from May to December. So far, there have been 1,600 sightings of these majestic leviathans this year.

One paddleboarder got a very close look at one. In the perfectly calm waters, a whale approached and looked at the human for a few minutes. Then he gave the back of the board a push with a fin, submerged, and left.

The human, Analia Giorgetti, tells BBC News that she wasn’t scared. She describes it as a “magical moment” that coincidentally occurred on her birthday, so it was a birthday present from the whale.

-via Lawrence Everett

スペインの画家セルギ・カデナスの作品、見る角度によって老化していく人生を表したアートが凄い…pic.twitter.com/mXOgMXWvNY

— 最多情報局 (@tyomateee) October 9, 2021

Move from one direction to another and you’re looking at a completely different subject. Sergi Cardenas, a painter from Spain, has become famous for his shifting paintings. The young become old, people change genders, or one person is swapped with another.

Artsy asserts that Cardenas taught himself this amazing skill. He uses a pastry piping bag to apply long, thick lines of paint that serve as boundaries between the two different images on a single canvas. This practice, Indie88 explains, is called “lentricular art.” Cardenas adopted it when he took up painting at the age of 30.

This was not, though, Cardenas’s first foray into the art world. He was raised in it. Cardenas’s family has, for three hundred years, operated Ferros d’Art Cadenas, a decorative iron work foundary. Cardenas is a recognized master of that craft. But, as you can see, he wasn’t bound to it.

-via @sanka_kamaru