If you are bored and there are German-speaking people around, try to get them to say the English word “squirrel.” They may try valiantly to do so, but most will be unable — for the simple reason that the word contains a number of sounds that either don’t exist in the German language or never appear in that order. The soft “w” sound that the “uir” in squirrel involves, for example, doesn’t exist — w is exclusively pronounced as a hard V (conversely, the letter “v” is pronounced like an F, so Volkswagen sounds like Folksvagen). There are YouTube videos of German people trying to say squirrel and failing hilariously.
I’ve come across a number of stories over the years about how the word squirrel was used during World War II as a “shibboleth” or a word that could reveal whether someone was a German spy, since the vast majority of Germans would be unable to say it properly. So supposedly English speakers would try to work the word into a conversation to see if the suspected spy could say it. According to one report I came across, this story was repeated by a former World War II warrant officer in the US Army, but I’ve been unable to prove that it’s true (Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson may have started this).
So far, I’ve been unable to confirm whether the story is true or not. If you know of someone who can confirm it, please let me know! Interestingly enough, the German word for the animal that English speakers call a squirrel is Eichhörnchen, which is extremely difficult for English speakers to say, as this video proves. So perhaps both sides during World War II could have used their language’s term for the animal as a secret spy test!
om Harper’s: “Golf Manor is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen. In short, it is the kind of place where, on a typical day, the only thing lurking around the corner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck. But June 26, 1995, was not a typical day. Ask Dottie Pease. As she turned down Pinto Drive, Pease saw eleven men swarming across her carefully manicured lawn. Their attention seemed to be focused on the back yard of the house next door, specifically on a large wooden potting shed that abutted the chain-link fence dividing her property from her neighbor’s. Three of the men had donned ventilated moon suits and were proceeding to dismantle the potting shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces of wood into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. When asked, most mumble something about a chemical spill. The truth is far more bizarre: the Golf Manor Superfund cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn, who attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother’s potting shed as part of a Boy Scout merit-badge project.”
A bioscience company wants to recreate the Moa, the largest bird that ever lived
From IFL Science: “Humans once lived among enormous, wingless birds in New Zealand, but within a few hundred years of our species arrival, they were wiped out. Now, Colossal Biosciences has announced its plans to functionally de-extinct the moa, building complete genomes for all nine species as part of a Māori-led initiative. “When humans first arrived on Aotearoa New Zealand about 800 to 900 years ago, there were nine species of these dinosaur-sized giant birds,” said Colossal Advisor Dr Paul Scofield, Senior Curator of Natural History at Canterbury Museum. “Within the first hundred and fifty years of human presence, all nine species became extinct.” The nine species of moa ranged in size from something not far off a turkey to the South Island giant moa, Dinornis robustus, which was 11.8 feet tall and weighed approximately 507 pounds.”
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If we stop to think about the various technologies that structure our social lives, for better and for worse, we may fail to note one of our oldest and most reliable tools, one with which we are all familiar and which we deploy on a daily basis, so much so that we barely take notice of it. The technology I have in mind is the narrative form, otherwise known as story-telling, and I’m going to argue that this tool is getting glitchy. (L.M. Sacasas)
I want to be in rooms full of people I love. The world goes white then green again like the mind telling the body it is not alone. The body saying something I can almost hear above the sound of a dog barking because he feels himself tied and tremendously alone. Who would you believe? I walk the great streets of New York City where many great people have lived and think how great it is to live and die on earth even if it means having known nothing of the why. Nothing of the why.
From Alex Goldman, former co-host of the Reply All podcast:
“I think what I have come to realize from the past few months of Twitter’s rapid decay, and my dalliances with its competitors is that most people want two different things from social media, and they are essentially irreconcilably in conflict. On the one hand, I want as vast a reach as possible – I am very glad to have had Twitter over the past decade to promote things I make, ask questions of the crowd, interact directly with people who are much too famous or obscure for me to have met any other way. I have made close friends and met musical and journalistic collaborators on Twitter.
The downside of everyone being is one place is that everyone has as much access to you as you do to them. Every crank and weirdo on the internet can make a twitter account and start a fight with you for any innocuous post. Which is, of course, how we get twitter discourse, main characters, and so on, but it doesn’t actually feel all that fun. Posting on twitter right now is the social media equivalent of counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. You post, and then you can only hold your breath before some drive by dipshit comes by to pick a fight with you.”
“For all the issues with tech and tech media, it’s just a minor sub-segment of this broader shift in how media works and in how public discourse works in public opinion formation and public debate happens. That media landscape I would argue has been changing for a very long time, it’s certainly been going through a high rate of change, I would argue even pre the Internet with the arrival of talk radio and then cable television. But certainly the Internet has accelerated that change so I think the whole landscape is changing.
There’s this endless tension on the media side: if you ask journalists what their mission in life is, they’ll basically usually tell you two things, which is to objectively report the truth number one, and then number two, speak truth to power. Or they sometimes say, “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” There’s an inherent tension between those two poles because are you trying to equally represent all sides or are you trying to specifically take a stand, presumably on behalf of the people against power? I would characterize it as the entire media broadly is trying to navigate its way through that question of goals and then trying to navigate its way through what have been profound changes in technology in the media landscape.
A lot of those changes have been caused by tech. Like I say, we in many ways are the dog that caught the bus in this industry, which is we did cause some of these changes to happen. So those changes, the system has to work through those changes. Does the system ever stabilize ever again in the same way that it had in the 1950s or 1960s? I think probably not and so as a consequence, I think the whole landscape probably will stay unsettled for a very long time. I don’t know what it’ll look like in a decade, but I think people like me are going to have to adapt just like everybody else.”
From Mark O’Connell for The Guardian: “Among Irish people old enough to remember the summer of 1982, Malcolm Macarthur is as close to a household name as it is possible for a murderer to be. He grew up in County Meath in the east of Ireland, on a grand estate with a housekeeper, a gardener and a governess. In his 20s, he received a large inheritance, and lived well on its bounty. But on the brink of middle age, he found he was going broke. At the time, the IRA was conducting a campaign of bank heists to fund their struggle. Macarthur was a clever and capable man, he reasoned, and so why should he not be able to pull off something along those lines? But he did not bring off the heist; in the effort to attain a gun and a getaway car, he murdered two complete strangers.”
Why those who are dying often experience a sudden burst of lucidity
Jordan Kinard writes for Scientific American: “For decades, researchers, hospice caregivers and stunned family members have watched as people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia suddenly regain their memories and personalities just before death. To their family members it might seem like a second lease on life, but for experienced medical workers, it can be a sign the end is near. Christopher Kerr, chief executive officer and chief medical officer at the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care in Buffalo, N.Y., has studied the lucid visions of several hundred terminally ill people. He says these events “usually occur in the last few days of life.” Such ‘terminal lucidity’ is defined as the unexpected return of cognitive faculties such as speech and ‘connectedness’ with other people.”
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Franks Mayancha and Francesca Mezzenzana write at Slate: “The story of four children’s 40-day survival after a plane crash, in a remote stretch of the Amazon rainforest in Colombia, has gripped the world’s imagination since their rescue on June 9. Traumatized by the loss of their mother a few days after the crash, the siblings were stranded, left to fend for themselves, with no immediate access to water, at continuous risk of encountering predators, venomous snakes, and poisonous plants. Conjuring images of hope and resilience in such a remote place, this story has left many in a state of admiration and surprise. But we feel that a crucial aspect of the story has been overlooked.”
What life is like inside North Korea
From the BBC: “On 27 January 2020, North Korea slammed shut its border in response to the pandemic, stopping not just people, but food and goods, from entering the country. Its citizens, who were already banned from leaving, have been confined to their towns. Aid workers and diplomats have packed up and left. Guards are under order to shoot anyone even approaching the border. The world’s most isolated country has become an information black hole. Under the tyrannical rule of Kim Jong Un, North Koreans are forbidden from making contact with the outside world. With the help of the organisation Daily NK, which operates a network of sources inside the country, the BBC has been able to communicate with three ordinary people.”
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From Patrick Whittle for AP: “Roger Payne, the scientist who spurred a worldwide environmental conservation movement with his discovery that whales could sing, has died. He was 88. Payne made the discovery in 1967 during a research trip to Bermuda in which a Navy engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds documented while listening for Russian submarines. Payne identified the haunting tones as songs whales sing to one another. He saw the discovery of whale song as a chance to spur interest in saving the giant animals, who were disappearing from the planet. Payne would produce the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970. A surprise hit, the record galvanized a global movement to end whale hunting.”
If AI software creates a new episode of Seinfeld, is it copyright infringement?
Aharon Schreiber writes: “On December 14, 2022, a new season of Seinfeld debuted on the streaming site Twitch, airing continuously, 24 hours a day, every day for a few months. Ok, not really. The AI generated Seinfeld parody “Nothing, Forever,” did run 24 hours a day until February 6, 2023, but the show was completely procedurally generated via artificial intelligence. While the show was pretty well received, with even the official Seinfeld twitter account linking to the Twitch channel, “Nothing, Forever” opens up a series of new questions regarding the intersection of copyright law and artificial intelligence. Most importantly, does Seinfeld, Jerry, the actors, NBC, or any other person or entity with rights to Seinfeld the show have a copyright claim against “Nothing, Forever?”
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From Michelle Butterfield for Global News: “For weeks, the world has been watching with interest as groups of orcas, also known as killer whales, appear to be ambushing boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. A boat captain says that after his boat was attacked for a second time he now thinks these groups of orcas know “exactly what they’re doing.” Captain Dan Kriz, a sailor with Reliance Yacht Management, had his first orca encounter in 2020. “I was sailing with my delivery crew through the Strait of Gibraltar delivering a yacht when I was surrounded with a pack of eight orcas, pushing the boat around for about an hour,” Kriz said. “We were one of the first boats experiencing this very unusual behavior.”
Tea drinking was good for the rich in the 1800s, but bad for the poor
Livia Gershon for JSTOR Daily: “The practice of taking afternoon tea spread from fashionable Dublin to upper and middle classes around Ireland in the 1800s. Women could demonstrate their families’ status with tasteful tea parties governed by rules of etiquette imported from England. Among these were that the tea must be of good quality, refreshments should be placed on a silver tray, and nothing serious or controversial should be discussed. But when it came to the urban poor and farm laborers, popular discourse was very different. As early as 1745, a treatise on tea by British writer Simon Mason promoted afternoon tea drinking as a digestive aid for elites, but discouraged “an imprudent Use of Tea, by Persons of an inferior Rank, and mean Abilities.” When it came to women who “work hard and live low,” he argued, tea “makes them peevish and unkind to their husbands.”
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Gina DeMuro writes for All That’s Interesting: “In May 1901, the attorney general of Paris received a strange letter declaring that a prominent family in the city was keeping a dirty secret. The wealthy family had a spotless reputation. Madam Monnier was known in Parisian society for her charitable works, and her son was a respectable lawyer. The Monniers had also had a beautiful young daughter, Blanche, but no one had seen her in close to 25 years. Described by acquaintances as “very gentle and good-natured,” the young socialite had simply vanished in the prime of her youth. The police made a search of the estate and did not come across anything out of the ordinary until they noticed an odor coming from one of the upstairs rooms.”
Nancy Grace Roman: The life and legacy of a NASA star
Known as the “mother of the Hubble,” Dr. Roman was the first chief of astronomy at NASA and the first woman to hold an executive position there. She was instrumental in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality. In addition to her trailblazing accomplishments, Dr. Roman left a legacy for future generations. In 2019, AAUW received a generous bequest from Nancy’s estate to ensure more girls and women can pursue scientific careers, particularly in engineering and the physical sciences. “I was told by many people that a woman could not be an astronomer,” Dr. Roman said when she was honored at the 2016 National Conference for College Women Student Leaders. “I’m glad I ignored them.”
This Dutch suburb boasts the world’s most unusual neighborhood design
From Tim Nelson at Architectural Digest: “As you wind your way through The Netherlands’ extensive network of canals, you’ll float by a whole lot of noteworthy buildings spanning from exemplars of low-country Renaissance style to architectural manifestations of modernism and the early 20th century’s De Stijl movement. Yet, for all the diversity that is Dutch design, few examples of it have inspired curiosity quite like an odd collection of concrete orbs found in one neighborhood of s-Hertogenbosch (colloquially known as Den Bosch). Though the buildings in the area may look like golf balls when viewed from the air, these Bolwoningen (“bulb houses”) are functional—albeit cramped—homes.”
Balloons in stratosphere record mysterious sounds of ‘completely unknown’ origin
From Vishwan Sankaram for The Independent: “Large 6-7-metre-long balloons were sent to the stratosphere – the relatively calm layer of Earth’s atmosphere which is rarely disturbed by planes or turbulence – by researchers, including Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories in the US. In this layer of the Earth’s outer atmosphere, scientific instruments on balloons can pick up a range of sounds that are unheard elsewhere, including the natural sounds of colliding ocean waves and thunder, as well as human-made ones like wind turbines or explosions. Researchers reported in a presentation at the Acoustical Society of America that they also managed to record strange sounds that could not be identified.“There are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” Dr Bowman said.
The untold story of the boldest supply-chain hack ever
By Kim Zetter for Wired magazine: “Steve Adair wasn’t too rattled at first. It was late 2019, and Adair, the president of the security firm Volexity, was investigating a digital security breach at an American think tank. Adair figured he and his team would rout the attackers quickly and be done with the case—until they noticed something strange. A secondgroup of hackers was active in the think tank’s network. They were going after email, making copies and sending them to an outside server. Adair and his colleagues dubbed the second gang of thieves “Dark Halo” and booted them from the network. But soon they were back. As it turned out, the hackers had planted a backdoor on the network three years earlier—code that opened a secret portal, allowing them to enter whenever they wished.”
How much is a smidgen?
From Claire Cock-Starkey for Lapham’s Quarterly: “In evidence given to Parliament’s 1862 Select Committee on Weights and Measures, a Mr. Greenall remarked on the extraordinary number of different historical weights and measures in use at that time across Britain, listing the grain, dram, drop, ounce, pound, stone, score, ton; the wool measure of clove, tod, wey, pack, sack or last; the straw measure of truss and load; the draper’s measure of inch, nail, ell and yard; the long measure and land measure of line, size, hand, foot, palm, span, pace, step, link, knot, rood, hide, rod, pole or perch, fall, chain, mile and league; plus various other scales of measurement including the strike, peck, pot, gill, pint, quart, tierce, boll, coomb, pipe, butt, tun, and score. This impressive array of measurements not only shows the plethora of competing and coexisting weights and measures in Britain but also reveals the innate human desire to create order.”
How Steve Jobs replied to a request for his autograph
