{"id":270591,"date":"2025-01-16T09:36:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T14:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=270591"},"modified":"2025-01-31T10:38:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T15:38:44","slug":"waiters-in-france-went-on-strike-for-the-right-to-grow-mustaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2025\/01\/16\/waiters-in-france-went-on-strike-for-the-right-to-grow-mustaches\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiters in France went on strike for the right to grow mustaches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Atlas Obscura<\/a>: “It\u2019s April 1907. You\u2019re an American in Paris, searching for a taste of real culture. You settle down in a quaint caf\u00e9, but before you can choose a police officer approaches and asks you\u2014not exactly politely\u2014to leave. You stagger off, confused and hungry. Around the city at that time, high-end waiters were on strike to demand better pay, more time off\u2014and the right to grow mustaches. The bristly adornments had been virtually ubiquitous among French men for decades, though many waiters, domestic servants, and priests were not allowed to have them\u2014\u201csentenced to forced shaving,\u201d as the newspaper La Lanterne<\/em> put it. Indignant waiters walked out of their fancy restaurants en masse, along with roughly 25,000 francs a day in revenue.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deepest hotel in the world is 1,400 feet underground in a former slate mine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Architectural Digest<\/a>: “Hard hats, flashlights, and hiking boots aren\u2019t the type of toiletries one is used to receiving at their overnight accommodations, but visiting the world\u2019s deepest hotel isn\u2019t your usual retreat. Known as the Deep Sleep, the property is located in Snowdonia, Wales, at the base of an abandoned slate mine. The vacation experience is among the most evident tangible examples of the old maxim, the journey is more important than the destination. When guests arrive, they\u2019re given all the equipment necessary to travel to their cabins, which are roughly 1,400-feet underground. The trip is operated by the mine exploration company Go Below Underground Adventure. A guide leads them through the massive pit, which goes for miles in a series of maze-like tunnels created by miners over 200 years. To get to the bottom, visitors climb through caverns, journey through tunnels, and even zip line at times.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: 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<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

He ate a slug on a dare and got a brain worm that paralyzed and eventually killed him<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From CNN<\/a>: “It was just a silly dare among teenage boys. What could it hurt to eat a small slug? So Australian teenager Sam Ballard grabbed the slimy creature and gulped it down. He had no idea that the slug carried a potentially deadly worm that would put him into a coma that lasted more than a year, paralyze his body and ultimately take his life. In 2010, 19-year-old Sam was drinking with Jimmy Galvin and several more of his Australian mates when a slug began crawling across Galvin\u2019s concrete patio at his home in Sydney. After downing the slug, Sam became weak and complained of severe pain in his legs. He had developed rat lungworm disease from the infected slug; the disease is caused by a parasitic worm called Angiostronjilus cantonensis. Unlike in rats, the worm\u2019s life cycle is not completed in a human. So instead of passing through the digestive tract, the worm larvae can get lost, and wind up entering the brain of the host.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/em><\/em>through my Patreon<\/em><\/a> 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 <\/em><\/em>The Torment Nexus<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mysterious tablet inscribed with an unknown language has been unearthed in Georgia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Archeology News<\/a>: “A basalt tablet inscribed with an enigmatic language has been unearthed near Lake Bashplemi in Georgia\u2019s Dmanisi region. Measuring 24.1 x 20.1 cm and made from local vesicular basalt, the artifact features 60 characters, 39 of which are unique. These symbols, arranged in seven registers, have left researchers debating their meaning and purpose. The symbols, created using a conical drill and smoothed with rounded tools, reflect a high degree of craftsmanship. Archaeologists have speculated that the writing may have recorded military spoils, construction projects, or offerings to deities, though definitive interpretations remain elusive. \u201cGenerally, the Bashplemi inscription does not repeat any script known to us; however, most of the symbols used therein resemble ones found in the scripts of the Middle East, as well as those of geographically remote countries such as India, Egypt, and West Iberia,\u201d noted researchers in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you wanted to store information for more than a hundred years, how would you do it?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the Harvard Library Lab<\/a>: “From an isolated technical and engineering perspective, IBM created a storage medium that could last much longer than a hundred years, even long beyond any reasonable definition of forever, on the first try, without that even being the goal. Since the West Coast laboratory team was exploring a novel design and process, they used extremely hardy materials and mechanisms, focusing on functional reliability above all else. Yet today, 78 years later, the parts for the RAMAC are no longer being manufactured, and the machines that fabricated those parts no longer exist. It took the collaboration of several institutions to restore the necessary hardware to make possible the recovery of data off of a single unit that survived. So many other RAMAC drives did not make it. The theoretical longevity provided by its sturdy materials and robust mechanical design could not guarantee its continued use.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Pakistani buses have “business class” seats with recliners and TVs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Acknowledgements<\/strong><\/em>: 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 <\/em>The Morning News<\/em><\/a> from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s <\/em>Curious About Everything<\/em><\/a>, Dan Lewis’s <\/em>Now I Know<\/em><\/a>, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s <\/em>The Browser<\/em><\/a>, Clive Thompson’s <\/em>Linkfest<\/em><\/a>, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s <\/em>Why Is This Interesting<\/em><\/a>, Maria Popova’s <\/em>The Marginalian<\/em><\/a>, Sheehan Quirke AKA <\/em>The Cultural Tutor<\/em><\/a>, the <\/em>Smithsonian<\/em><\/a> magazine, and <\/em>JSTOR Daily<\/em><\/a>. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com<\/em><\/p>\n

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From Atlas Obscura: “It\u2019s April 1907. You\u2019re an American in Paris, searching for a taste of real culture. You settle down in a quaint caf\u00e9, but before you can choose a police officer approaches and asks you\u2014not exactly politely\u2014to leave. You stagger off, confused and hungry. Around the city at that time, high-end waiters were on … <\/p>\n

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