From CNN: “Traveling along the highways of Europe, a campervan named Stella Vita has driven almost 2,000 kilometers without stopping for fuel or plugging in to charge. Described as a self-sustaining house on wheels, the campervan has solar panels fitted to its roof and is powered by the energy of the sun alone. It is fully equipped with living essentials including a double bed, sofa, kitchen area and a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. It can fit two people, who can drive, cook breakfast and watch television using just the vehicle’s solar-charged battery, according to its creators – 22 students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. The team started brainstorming for the project last September and they came up with the idea in two months. From November 2020 until March this year, they designed the campervan, aiming to make it as aerodynamic and lightweight as possible while still making it look good.”
The original Superman was a bald drifter who got his powers from an experimental drug
From Wikipedia: “Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met in 1932 while attending Glenville High School in Cleveland and bonded over their admiration of fiction. Siegel aspired to become a writer and Shuster aspired to become an illustrator. Siegel wrote amateur science fiction stories, which he self-published as a magazine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. His friend Shuster often provided illustrations for his work. In January 1933, Siegel published a short story in his magazine titled “The Reign of the Superman”. The titular character is a homeless man named Bill Dunn who is tricked by an evil scientist into consuming an experimental drug, which gives Dunn the powers of mind-reading, mind-control, and clairvoyance. He uses these powers for profit and amusement, but then the drug wears off, leaving him a powerless vagrant again. Shuster’s illustrations depicted Dunn as a bald man.”
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Sriracha was financed by gold bars smuggled out of Vietnam in cans of condensed milk
From Trung Phan: “Born in the South of Vietnam in 1945, Tran was one of 9 children. He lived in a small town before moving to the bustling city of Saigon in his late teens. The first real business he learned was selling chemicals. By his early-20s, Tran was recruited into the South Vietnamese army. He worked as a chef and started dabbling with chili sauces stored in baby food Gerber bottles. In December 1978, Tran fled Saigon with 100 ounces of gold, worth $20,000, which he stashed the bars in cans of condensed milk. He and his family joined more than 3,000 other refugees on a Taiwanese boat called the Huey Fong (which translates to “Gathering Prosperity”). The boat would inspire the business name Huy Fong Foods. Tran ended up on the East Coast of America in Boston. He was 33 years old and excited to experience snow during the winter. But the snow never came and he couldn’t find work. So, he called his brother — who had found his way to Los Angeles — and asked if people were selling hot sauce.”
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
The bizarre story behind why an online survey replaced the word ‘yes’ with the word ‘forks’
From Pew Research: “At Pew Research Center, we routinely ask the people who take our surveys to give us feedback about their experience. While we get a wide range of feedback on our surveys, we were surprised by a comment we received on an online survey in 2024: “You misspelled YES with FORKS numerous times.” That comment was soon followed by several others along the same lines. Confused by these comments, we decided to investigate. And we discovered a real problem in online surveys: Dating back to at least early 2023, a bizarre and alarming technical glitch – and yes, a hilarious one – started popping up in some organizations’ online surveys and forms, where questions that should have offered answer options of “yes” and “no” instead offered the choices “forks” and “no.” We discovered two interconnected problems that caused the error.”
Scientists have discovered why seals don’t drown when they dive
From the BBC: “A scientist from Northern Ireland has discovered the super sense that makes marine mammals the ultimate divers. Dr Chris McKnight from County Antrim has been researching how seals can hold their breath much longer underwater than many other species as part of his work at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He found that, as well as being able to store oxygen efficiently, they have a unique ability to cognitively perceive levels in their blood so as to not run out and drown. He said the adaptation was “key” to the evolution of marine mammals like seals and walruses, allowing them and potentially other breath-hold diving animals, like birds and reptiles, to spend most of their lives without any access to air while diving.”
Running and jumping while holding a stick horse has become a sport
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com
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