From the ICIJ: “Although his own empire’s resources were depleted, Churchill wanted the United States to control the Soviets in Europe through the use of nuclear weapons. The Soviets still appeared far away from developing their own atomic weapons, and would respect American dominance if exerted. Dropping the bomb—or at least “a showdown” with the implied threat of doing so—must be a vital tool in curbing Soviet communism, Churchill argued. Privately, Churchill suggested that America strike first, before it was too late. According to FBI records, he urged Sen. Styles Bridges, a conservative Republican from New Hampshire active in foreign affairs, to back a preemptory and devastating attack on Moscow. “He [Churchill] pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction,” Bridges told the FBI.
This medieval manuscript features a Yoda lookalike, killer snails and savage rabbits
From Open Culture: “As much as you may enjoy a night in with a book, you might not look so eagerly forward to it if that book comprised 314 folios of 1,971 papal letters and other documents relating to ecclesiastical law, all from the thirteenth century. Indeed, even many specialists in the field would hesitate to take on the challenge of such a manuscript in full. But what if we told you it comes with illustrations of demons running amok, knights battling snails, killer rabbits and other animals taking their revenge on humanity, a dead ringer for Yoda, and the penitent harlot Thäis? These are just a few of the characters that grace the pages of the Smithfield Decretals. When it was originally published as an already-illuminated manuscript in the 1230s, the margins of the text were deliberately left blank by the original French scribes so that future owners of the text could add their own notes and annotations. And they did.”
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Someone hacked crosswalk buttons and made them sound like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg
From The Verge: “Crosswalk buttons in three California cities appear to have been hacked this weekend to give them the seemingly AI-generated voices of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In videos posted online, the apparent voice of Musk begs listeners to be his friend, or that of Zuckerberg brags about “undermining democracy” and “cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop.” A Palo Alto, California city spokesperson told Palo Alto Online that city employees determined that 12 downtown intersections were impacted, and have disabled the crosswalks’ voice features pending repairs. The signals otherwise work as they should, they told the outlet. The hack seemed to have taken place on Friday, the person said. The same thing is happening in Redwood City, and crosswalk buttons in Menlo Park are also reportedly affected.”
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.
Charlie Chaplin’s body was stolen after his death as part of a botched ransom plot
From Swiss National Museum: “The comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin may only have been 1.65 metres tall, but he was one of the greats. He died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of 88, having lived an eventful life. Chaplin was laid to rest in the cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey, close to the mansion that had been his home for several decades. But this was only the beginning of a bizarre story that could have come straight out of one of Chaplin’s many films. Chaplin’s ‘eternal rest’ following his burial did not last long. On the night of 1 to 2 March 1978, two men dressed in black and armed with torches and shovels scurried across the graveyard in Corsier. Both were out-of-work car mechanics, one 24, the other 38. They dreamed of setting up their own car repair shop, complete with vehicle lift and a large clientele. It was this dream that led them to seek out the world-famous funny man’s grave in the dead of night and get to work with their shovels, digging incessantly until they had uncovered Chaplin’s coffin.”
Farmers in Sicily are once again harvesting manna, the magical food from the Bible
From the BBC: “Even if you’ve never tasted manna, you may have heard of it. The phrase “manna from heaven” refers to a Biblical story where a food falls from the sky to nourish the Israelites as they crossed the Sinai desert. In Exodus, manna is described as a “flaky substance as fine as frost blanketed on the ground”. While experts disagree what substance, specifically, this passage refers to, a honey-like, flaky and frost-coloured resin named manna has been extracted from the bark of ash trees in the Mediterranean region for more than a millennium. In the Madonie mountains – home to the 40,000-hectare Madonie Natural Park – manna harvesting dates back to at least the 9th Century when the island was under Arab rule. During the Renaissance, Sicilian farmers used to collect this sweet sap – which tastes like cane sugar with almond undertones – and sell it to merchants from around the Mediterranean, a highly profitable trade that led the Kingdom of Naples to put taxes on it during the 16th Century.”
This guy is living in the future
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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