Category: Misc

I got an unusual email the other day from someone representing the Oxford Union, a fairly prestigious student-run debating society based (not surprisingly) at the University of Oxford in England. The Union was founded by students in 1823 and, despite the name, is separate and distinct from the actual student union at the university. According to Wikipedia, the Union’s first recorded debate was about the topic of Parliamentarianism vs Royalism during the English Civil War. The Union has hosted interviews and addresses by world leaders, celebrities, and others, and its roster of past speakers includes Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Barack Obama. The email noted that these past speakers have also included more contemporary celebrities such as Morgan Freeman and Shakira (I wonder what that address was like) as well as famous world leaders like His Highness the Dalai Lama.

Once it had listed all of these previous celebrities, the email asked if I would be willing to take part in a debate sometime during the current term at Oxford (known as the Hilary term, in honour of St. Hilary of Poitiers). The topic? Whether social media ought to be owned not by huge private corporations, but by the public. By way of background, the Union is modeled on the British House of Parliament, with banks of seats on either side, a speaker who introduces the topic — phrased in the form of “This House believes” or “This House argues” — and then a series of speakers for each side of the debate, some from within the Union and some from outside it. Members vote by leaving through one of two doors, one labeled “Ayes” and one labeled “Noes,” and the vote is recorded for posterity. You can see photos of it here. The Union also has a series of very cool old buildings, including a library and a private club (naturally).

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Continue reading “What I would say to the Oxford Union about social media”

Target, just like many other retailers, has fallen victim to shoplifters, with almost a billion dollars in goods stolen from their stores in 2023. However, the numbers could have been much worse if it weren’t for their unique anti-shoplifting tactics. Target’s way of combating shoplifting was to establish a forensics lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is more advanced and high-tech than many police departments’ forensics labs. The lab was developed in 2003 to give the company expertise when it came to analyzing surveillance footage from in and around the store. The lab hires specialists in analyzing video evidence from cameras and smartphone recordings to help identify shoplifters, frauds, and injuries inside Target stores, but it has also reportedly helped police forces solve murders, arsons, abductions, rapes, and mass robberies. In many cases, the Target lab has been able to solve cases that even the FBI can’t solve. (via The Horizon Sun)

For about 40 years this railroad crossing in Mississippi had the coolest warning sign ever

In the mid-1930s, a dangerous Illinois Central railroad crossing in Grenada, Mississippi, had claimed too many lives. Local inventor Alonzo Billups had seen enough, and his solution was gloriously excessive: a massive gantry spanning the highway, topped with a giant neon skull and crossbones that flashed “STOP – DEATH – STOP” in alternating blue and red whenever a train approached. The Billups Neon Crossing Signal was almost certainly the first gantry-style railroad crossing in America, predating the type now commonly used. But Billups wasn’t content with just dramatic signage. He added flashing neon arrows indicating the train’s direction and replaced the standard crossing bells with an air-raid siren. But World War II brought neon shortages, and the signal had a persistent problem: the siren would sometimes start wailing and refuse to stop until a maintenance crew arrived to shut it up. (via Boing Boing)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Target has a forensic lab that is so good it does work for the FBI”

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. I always knew I was adopted: my mum told me that, as well as her, I had my “tummy mummy”. I was adopted from the Dominican Republic. My mum there was called Julianna, and she and my dad gave me up for adoption because they were poor. Fast-forward to 2013, and I was 24 and working in a restaurant in New Haven. One day, one of my co‑ workers, Julia, noticed my Dominican Republic flag tattoo. She told me she was from there, too. I said I was adopted from there, and she said she was as well. Julia was 23 – we’re 17 months apart. We hit it off right away. People would always tell us we looked alike. We would joke and say: “That’s because we’re sisters.” We decided to compare our adoption paperwork, but our birth mother’s names were different, as was the place we were born. It was anticlimactic. After that, we let it go. We only worked together for about six months, but stayed in touch. In 2018, my mum got me a 23andMe kit for Christmas. (via The Guardian)

Three encrypted notes from the 1900s allegedly describe the location of hidden treasure

In 1885, an author named James B. Ward published a pamphlet telling of a long-lost treasure available to anyone clever enough to solve a puzzle. Ward reported that around 1817, a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale had been the leader of an expedition to the American Southwest primarily concerned with hunting buffalo and/or bears. Beale’s group had instead stumbled upon gold and silver deposits in what is now Colorado. Agreeing to keep it all a secret, Beale’s team had spent the better part of two years quietly mining, then had taken the metals to Virginia by wagon and buried them in a vault underground between 1819 and 1821. Beale had written three notes explaining where the treasure was and who had legal rights to shares in it, encrypting each of these using a different text. However, Beale had vanished after leaving the notes with a friend. Eventually, the second of the three texts was deciphered. It specified which county in Virginia the treasure was hidden in, and referred the reader to the first of the notes for details. But the first⁠⁠ — and the third ⁠⁠— notes remained stubbornly undeciphered. (via Damn Interesting)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “She found out that her friend was actually her long-lost sister”

by Ogden Nash

Hi everyone — Mathew Ingram here. This is a special Christmas edition of When The Going Gets Weird, and it is the last newsletter of the year. Hope you and your loved ones have a great holiday (if you celebrate a winter festival of some kind) and we’ll see you again in 2026!

A butcher, a man with a whip, and a jolly bishop walk into a bar. This is not, in fact, the opening line of a twisted joke — it’s preparation for the biggest day of the year in Nancy, an elegant city in France’s Lorraine region. St. Nicholas Day is celebrated across many European countries on December 6 or the weekend following it. Each evening in Nancy from late November till early January, a lights display projects a story onto the opulent façade of the Hôtel de Ville. The expectant crowd watches as three children knock on the door of a local butcher, only to be chopped up into little pieces and left to cure in a salting pot. Falling snowflakes are replaced with chunks of veal. You might be wondering what this gruesome scene has to do with St. Nicholas, who is the predecessor of Santa Claus. Often throughout Europe, St. Nicholas is said to be accompanied by an evil nemesis designed to frighten children into good behavior. (via Atlas Obscura)

Bob Rutan has one of the best Christmas stories of all time thanks to playing Santa for Macy’s

Santa Claus was nursing a beer at an uptown dive bar. The neighborhood was gentrifying, and management seemed eager to accommodate — there was scented soap in the bathroom and twenty-two-dollar lobster rolls. But the place couldn’t outrun the regulars. They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender. Santa — Billy — was fiftyish, with a modest gut, gray hair, a lustrous beard, and a caddish gaze that followed the bartender up and down the rail. He was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. For the price of three beers, he told me his story. As a young man, Billy had come to New York to be an actor, but over time he began to feel like an extra in his own life, watching it happen without any control over its direction, the way a person does sometimes. These were bad years, shameful even. He lost his job. He lost his wife. Lost touch with his young son too. He was overweight and undershaved. A friend had a weird idea: Billy could try playing Santa Claus at Macy’s. And that’s what Billy did. (via Esquire)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “What does a butcher with a whip have to do with Christmas?”