{"id":284613,"date":"2026-10-13T08:54:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T13:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=284613"},"modified":"2026-10-13T08:54:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T13:54:32","slug":"a-death-and-an-obsession-with-revenge-the-bizarre-tale-of-otto-z","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2026\/10\/13\/a-death-and-an-obsession-with-revenge-the-bizarre-tale-of-otto-z\/","title":{"rendered":"A death and an obsession with revenge: the bizarre tale of Otto Z"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On a balmy, quiet evening in June 2020, Otto\u2019s elderly mother, Doria, was fading in her Munich apartment. As she lay with her eyes closed, her pale face, framed by her white hair, was calm. Otto, masked, gloved and draped in a sterile apron, dozed in a chair beside her. Otto, who sometimes goes by the name Rainer, and whose last name is only known as \u201cZ\u201d because of Germany\u2019s strict privacy laws, was a doctor who had cared for his mother for years, ever since she had suffered a stroke and moved in with him. fter he called the funeral home, Otto told me, he waited beside his mother all night and into the next afternoon before he heard a knock at the door. He was surprised to see that, rather than doctors, the two men in the hallway were police officers. They wore bulletproof vests and carried guns. He invited them inside, where they scanned the rooms. He directed them to his mother\u2019s bedroom and followed close behind, but the officers stopped him and asked him to take a seat. A tall, stylish woman approached and introduced herself as a coroner from the Munich Institute of Forensic Medicine. (via The Guardian<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wales you might be visited by someone with a horse’s skull and asked to rhyme<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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You’ll never forget the moment you first see a Mari Lwyd. She has lights or baubles for eyes. Her mane is made of colourful streamers, or holly and ivy. A white cloak falls from her skull, which is attached to a pole, which is held by a person inside it: they control the character’s mischievous nature, often snapping their bony jaw at you. The origins of Mari\u2019s name are, like the horse herself, are deeply mysterious. One Welsh translation of it, Grey Mare, connects it to the heritage of pale horses in Celtic and British mythology, many of whom can cross over to the underworld. Mari is taken around a village traditionally, often between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, She is dressed with festive lights and decorations, and is usually accompanied by an ostler. This brings the tradition closer together with Mummers’ Plays, a tradition of performances by the working classes in the 18th century. When the groups get to a house, they indulge in a ritual called pwnco: an exchange of rude rhymes with the person who lives there. (via Wales.com<\/a>)<\/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\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In some people anesthesia causes brain damage and scientists don’t understand why<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When Freddy Marquez was 12, he was hit by a motorcycle while biking and smashed his face into the pavement. He healed fast, but as adolescence reshaped his boyish features, the scar started to tug on his upper lip, leaving his mouth ajar. \u201cMom,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m going to high school. I don\u2019t want to look like this.\u201d So in September 2024, his parents found a surgeon in central Florida, where they live, to do a scar revision.On the morning of his surgery, Freddy went into the operating room around 9. His mom, Joana Jardin, settled into a waiting-room chair, expecting to drive him home in a few hours. Noon came, then 1 o\u2019clock, then 2, then 3. \u201cWhere is my son?\u201d Joana began to ask. \u201cWhere is my son?\u201d The staff couldn\u2019t tell her anything, except that she had to wait. She watched as other parents picked up their kids from surgery and left. At 4 o\u2019clock, she realized she was the only one in the waiting room. Eventually, Freddy managed to slump into a wheelchair, his eyes still closed. He was sent home. (via The Atlantic<\/a>)<\/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> 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> The Torment Nexus<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ancient Romans thought that drinking the blood of gladiators would cure epilepsy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The broken doll movement and unexpected mental interruptions of epileptic seizures have probably always been unsettling. Some cultures have explained their onset as the consequence of religious sin, others as divine intervention or a sign of sacredness. To the ancient Romans, epilepsy was a contagious disease caused by evil spirits or demonic possession, and there was only one way to cure it \u2014 with the blood of a gladiator. Ancient Rome wasn\u2019t the first place epilepsy was treated with human blood. There\u2019s evidence of its use in ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere. But the Romans were the first to look to the blood of a warrior for a cure. Drinking the \u201chot blood from the throat of a gladiator\u201d is first recommended in the Book on Medicine<\/em> in 40 C.E. and, over the next 500 years, Roman doctors experimented with exactly how to administer the cure: three spoonfuls a day for 30 days, sucking directly from a bleeding wound, filling a cup with the dripping blood of the slaughtered. (via Popular Science<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A candidate whose name is Hitler Mussolini has been elected mayor in Peru<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A businessman called Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores has been elected the mayor of a remote district in the Peruvian Andes, according to local election data. The 45-year-old, who shares two of his names with the notorious European dictators, won the race for mayor of Queropalca, in Peru\u2019s central Hu\u00e1nuco region, and will take office on 1 January. The candidate from the leftwing Ahora Naci\u00f3n party won 229 out of a total of 663 votes in elections on 4 October, according to the national office of electoral processes. Flores, who works in freight transportation, had belonged to Popular Force, the party of Peru\u2019s rightwing president, Keiko Fujimori, until 2025, according to electoral authorities. Despite the name being associated with Germany\u2019s Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, several candidates with the name have won elections in Peru. In 2021, the doctor Hitler Saavedra Casternoque was elected to parliament for the centrist party Somos Peru. In 2018, Hitler Alba S\u00e1nchez was voted in as mayor of the Andean district of Yungar, saying during his campaign that he was \u201cthe good Hitler\u201d. (via The Guardian<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may think there are only a few types of electrical outlet in the US but there are over 35<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Acknowledgements<\/strong>: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as\u00a0<\/em><\/em>The Morning News<\/em><\/a>\u00a0from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s\u00a0<\/em><\/em>Curious About Everything<\/em><\/a>, Dan Lewis’s\u00a0<\/em><\/em>Now I Know<\/em><\/a>, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s\u00a0<\/em><\/em>The Browser<\/em><\/a>, Clive Thompson’s\u00a0<\/em><\/em>Linkfest<\/em><\/a> and<\/em><\/em> Why Is This Interesting<\/em><\/a> by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy<\/em><\/em>.\u00a0If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to\u00a0email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a balmy, quiet evening in June 2020, Otto\u2019s elderly mother, Doria, was fading in her Munich apartment. As she lay with her eyes closed, her pale face, framed by her white hair, was calm. Otto, masked, gloved and draped in a sterile apron, dozed in a chair beside her. Otto, who sometimes goes by … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A death and an obsession with revenge: the bizarre tale of Otto Z”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284615,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284613\/revisions\/284615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}