The Mary Sue introduces us to a meme trending on Twitter. What is depicted in the above image? Some people see a fish. Some see a mermaid. I'm skeptical that those people actually exist.
My first thought was a seal. Some Twitter users think of a donkey, which seems a reasonable interpretation. But it's definitely not a fish or a mermaid; those people are just trolling us. And the whole idea of being left brained or right brained is a pseudoscientific myth.
Snuff is finely powdered tobacco that is snorted. It's fairly rare in the United States these days, and was uncommon even two generations ago, when smoking tobacco was a widespread practice thought to be not unhealthy, or even enviograting.
It was 1954. Using tobacco was normal, as was reading comic books--especially among the young. Can the youth market be turned to using snuff? The George W. Helme Snuff Company evidently hoped so and commissioned a promotional comic book by the studio operated by cartoonist Vic Herman.
The Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware owns a copy of this bizarre comic book. It has digitized the entire issue, which you can read online.
Futility Closet introduces us to the story of a wild hoax which I have verified through authoritative information sources. It begins with Jean Shepherd, a radio host for WOR-AM in New York City. Shepherd was a published author who was frustrated with the misleading way that bestseller lists were created. So, in 1956, he repeatedly told his listeners about the classic erotic novel I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. Shepherd extolled the virtues merits of this saucy tale and urged his listeners to visit bookstores to request it.
I, Libertine did not exist. But there was, suddenly, massive demand for it to exist.
Shepherd sketched a plot outline for the novel. Publisher Ian Ballantine sent it to science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, asking him to ghostwrite the novel very quickly. Sturgeon fell asleep before finishing the text, which was completed by the publisher's wife, Betty Ballantine.
The book included a biography of the fictional Frederick R. Ewing, who was an Oxford graduate, a scholar of the history of erotica, and a retired Royal Navy officer. Ewing's book sold very well for several weeks and was on bestseller lists before journalists exposed the hoax.
Sources:
Bisbort, Alan. Media Scandals, ABC-CLIO, 2008.
Delany, Samuel R. Starboard Wine : More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction, Wesleyan University Press, 2012.
Italie, Hillel. “Betty Ballantine, Who Helped Invent the Modern Paperback, Dies at 99.” Los Angeles Times, Feb 14, 2019.
Photo: University of Tulsa
Trooper Toni Schuck, a 26-year veteran of the Florida Highway Patrol, was, last Sunuday, providing protection to 7,000 runners participating in the Skyway 10K in New Port Richey, Florida. She heard a radio report that a woman in a BMW blew through barricades blocking off the runners' route. Schuck swung around and moved to intercept the suspected drunk driver.
Fox 13 News reports that Schuck's Chevrolet Tahoe cruiser was the last obstacle between the BMW and the runners. As you can see in the above footage, she took a head-on collision to bring the drunk driver to a complete stop.
This is what her cruiser looked like afterward:
Police arrested the driver, who, at a hospital, tested three times over the legal limit for alcohol. Trooper Schuck was seriously injured and remains on medical leave until she has recovered and can resume her heroic duties.
-via Marilyn Terrell | Photo: Florida Highway Patrol
New record: Longest underwater walk with one breath (male) - 107 metres (351ft 0.5in)
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) March 9, 2022
Free diver Croatian Vitomir Maricic went for a gentle stroll along his local swimming pool š pic.twitter.com/CA3nnt4Yte
Vitomir MariÄiÄ, a Croatian freediver, is a master athelete in his sport. Last year, he smashed through the Guinness World Record for the longest underwater walk. That record had also been held by a Croatian freediver and was almost 315 feet.
MariÄiÄ conducted his attempt at the pool of Thalassotherapia Opatija, a rehabilitation center in Croatia, in September of last year. MariÄiÄ says that he didn't actually train for this project. As a world-class freediver, he didn't need to. Instead, he held a weight (to keep himself from rising) and walked back and forth along the 164-foot pool for 3 minutes and 6 seconds.
YouTube member Name Undecided (which is a decidedly good name) offers a wide variety of piano tunes, some of which are played with his fingers on the keys. Others involve Nerf guns or a badminton racket.
Sometimes, although he wants to play with his fingers on the keys, the task just requires too much effort because his piano is all the way on the other side of the room. To make the task easier, he taped strings from the keys to plastic rings, which permits him to play effectively while, as he calls it, he is "socially distancing" from his piano.
-via Laughing Squid
I've just discovered the subreddit /r/TipOfMyFork. It's like /r/TipOfMyTongue (in real life, or the subreddit), but for food. Is there some sort of food that you can't identify? Can you describe a food, but don't know what it is? Submit it there for the suggestions from the hivemind.
One notable post on it from two years ago is this bizarre rounded, fluffy, steamy object from an unknown restaurant. What is it?
The consensus among commenters seems to be that it's a cow or sheep stomach that's turned inside out. The dish is attributed to Korea, Mongolia, or Inner Mongolia in China. I want to try it!
There's no need to check out, either from a human cashier or self-checkout.
The New York Times (paywalled article) reports that Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, debuted this new technology at a store in Washington, D.C. When you walk in the store, either scan a QR code with your phone or let a kiosk scan the palm of your hand. Then start shopping.
As you walk through the store, a vast array of cameras track all of your movements. When you put something in your cart, computers add it do your tally. When you're done shopping, walk out the door. Amazon will bill your account automatically. Appropriately, Amazon calls the system Just Walk Out.
Would you use a store like this one?
-via Kottke | Photo: Whole Foods
Six-language coverage from #Kyiv with @AP_GMS. In this order: English, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. pic.twitter.com/kyEg0aCCoT
— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) February 21, 2022
How many languages can Philip Crowther of the Associated Press speak? At least six. We know this because he's recently reported on the war in Ukraine in English, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish, and Luxembourgish.
The last of these is not surprising once one learns that Crowther was born in Luxembourg to a German mother and a British father. He was raised and educated in Luxembourg, as well as the UK. His travels have taken him around the world, where he rounded out his linguistic versatility.
So as this compilation of his recent reporting shows, Crowther is a very useful person to have when a news organization needs to understand and deliver information about rapidly changing current events.
-via Althouse
The Associated Press reports that Zurich, Switzerland, is opening a new jail and wants to make sure that everything is in order before the grand opening. So it's recruiting volunteers who would be willing to stay locked up for three days in March, living in cells and eating jail food just like real inmates. Participants will get to experience the regular prisoner intake process experience as the new staff trains to supervise real inmates.
Bear in mind that it is a simulation and not an actual jail experience. So attacking the biggest inmate in the yard on your first day is probably unnecessary.
Photo: Pixabay
Deadline reports that Paramount+, a streaming entertainment service operated by ViacomCBS, plans to release a feature-length film based on "Baby Shark".
Yes, "Baby Shark." That's the viral chidren's song that, at some point in the past few years, you have discovered yourself singing or humming. It's an earworm that torments the living over the age of five courtesy of the living below that age.
"Baby Shark" by Korean children's entertainment company Pinkfong became a viral hit in 2016. In January, it became the first YouTube video to reach over 10 billion views, thus establishing a Guinness World Record.
What do you think the plot will be?
-via Gizmodo
First we had #LawyerCat. And now, #LawyerChipmunk has entered the 394th District Court! Despite the @Zoom audio glitch, this lawyer's professionalism never wavered. (How-to for fixing the glitch is at the end.) #OhNo #NotAgain #lawtwitter pic.twitter.com/N65W89sojo
— Judge Roy Ferguson (@JudgeFergusonTX) January 27, 2022
Last year, during the pandemic, many courts in the United States went virtual for procedural hearings. Judge Roy Ferguson of the 394th Judicial Circuit Court of Texas, known for his technical prowess, was able to navigate attorney Rod Ponton through Zoom settings when the lawyer couldn't turn off his kitten filter.
Last month, attorney Rae Leifest entered one of Judge Ferguson's Zoom court meetings with a faculty audio set up. He sounded like a chipmunk! Fortunately, the judge knew exactly how to fix it.
-via The Dodo
Redditor Ravi emphasizes that he is not from Australia. He's from Texas. But Australia is basically British Texas, so that's close enough.
Anyway, as an honorary Australian, he makes boomerangs, including an axe-shaped boomerang, a Batarang (Batman's throwing weapon), and a whistling boomerang. Perusing his Reddit profile is very educational. I learned that there are left and right-handed boomerangs.
Javi's most recent creation is this one shaped like a kangaroo. So it's a kangarang or a kangarooarang. I suppose that it could be used to hunt kangaroos in Australia, which would be appropriate, as that was one of the original purposes of the boomerang.
Israeli artist Vered Aharonovitch calls this disturbing masterpiece "The Cuckoo Clock". It's a complex, incredibly detailed automaton depicting a house of horrors filled with broken and insane people. Each member of the household has lost his grip in his own way.
Although there is no clock face, when the hour strikes, several characters parade outside of the house--just like the wooden cuckoo in the traditional clock. The man in the exercise wheel, though, never leaves his place, nor stops moving in his Sisyphean labors. When the Herzliya Museum exhibited this piece two years ago, the curators explained that it is the story of the relationship between a father and his daughter who are depicted at different stages in their relationship throghout the sculpture.
-via Nag on the Lake
The hotel detective is a common figure in film noir and hard boiled detective stories from eighty years ago. Who are these people? What exactly does a hotel detective do? Professional travel writer Luke J. Spenser explores the history of this profession at Messy Nessy Chic.
Hotel detectives appeared in the United States by the 1870s. For Gilded Age America, travel opportunities proliferated and hotels boomed. Along with bellhops, cooks, maids, and clerks, hotel managers also hired security guards. These were commonly called "hotel detectives" or "house detectives."
Their primary role was to keep respectable hotels free from prostitutes and, worse, prostitutes who robbed their clients. In some cities, this was very much a full time job that required skills at blending in with the rest of the people at a hotel and spotting problematic characters early, then quietly removing such people from the hotel without causing disturbances. The good hotel detective was discreet in his work.
Other tasks included quieting down or removing drunkards. Solving murder mysteries was a far less common occurence, despite film noir stories. Read about their real adventures at Messy Nessy Chic.
Image: Heritage Auctions
