{"id":284752,"date":"2026-11-03T09:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T14:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=284752"},"modified":"2026-11-03T09:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T14:40:21","slug":"he-turned-his-theft-into-a-piece-of-art-about-taking-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2026\/11\/03\/he-turned-his-theft-into-a-piece-of-art-about-taking-the-money\/","title":{"rendered":"He turned his theft into a piece of art about taking the money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Take the Money and Run<\/em> is a piece of artwork by Jens Haaning, commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg in Denmark in 2021. The artwork consists of an empty canvas, intended to act as a commentary on poor work wages. The Kunsten Museum commissioned Haaning to reproduce two of his earlier pieces in which he represented the annual wages of Austrian and Danish workers by framing piles of real kroner and euro bills, offering the artist with 532,549 Danish kroner worth of bills to use for the reproductions; instead, Haaning delivered two blank canvases to the museum. The museum demanded that Haaning return the money that was intended to be incorporated into the artwork, and in turn triggered a response from the artist: “This is only a piece of art if I don’t return the money.” (via Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The candy corn that you love (and lots of other things) are covered in bug secretions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I regret to inform you that by eating many classic Halloween candies, you are, to some extent, eating bugs. More precisely, you are eating a bug by-product that is in many cases listed on the package as \u201cconfectioner\u2019s glaze.\u201d This glaze is used on jelly beans, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Whoppers, Lemonheads, and Sugar Babies, to name just a few candies. This sounds innocent enough, until you understand that the glaze is shellac \u2014 a shiny, moisture-blocking resin that\u2019s the product of lac bugs\u2019 lifelong work. As the female lac bug pierces a tree with her needlelike mouthparts and sucks the sap out, she secretes a goo, also called lac, from a gland on her abdomen to form a cocoon of sorts. Inside her lac coating \u2014 which hardens on contact with the air much like, well, a candy shell \u2014 she spends her life feeding and laying eggs, safe from predators. If all goes well, she completes her life cycle and dies in her resinous home. (via The Atlantic<\/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

When London’s graveyards overflowed they built a railway for the dead<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The final journey for London\u2019s dead, circa 1860, was a trip on the London Necropolis Railway. The train would take the corpse and the accompanying mourners out of the city to the sprawling Brookwood Cemetery. The deceased rode first, second, or third class. Brookwood Cemetery was established in 1854 by the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. Founded in response to a crisis of overcrowding in London\u2019s churchyards, it was intended to hold all of London\u2019s dead, for the rest of time \u2014 the vast majority of them in unmarked paupers\u2019 graves. At the time, gravediggers forced as many bodies into one grave as they could, sometimes breaking apart the cadavers with pickaxes in order to make them fit. While they were at it, they could make a little extra cash by stripping down the old caskets to resell the handles and nails. Graves were reopened so often that the grass had no time to grow over them. (via JSTOR Daily<\/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

Criminal forensic evidence like blood-spatter analysis is mostly bullshit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Sara Gordon, a law professor from the University of British Columbia, recently published a trio of deep dives into a few common techniques \u2014 which often go unquestioned by judges\u2014and found them quite lacking. Consider blood pattern analysis (BPA) for example. While it has the trappings of a scientific field that draws on physics, mathematics, and fluid dynamics, the genesis of modern blood pattern analysis lies in the experimentation of a Corning Glass Works chemist working in his basement. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s not a legitimate mode of scientific inquiry, but a comprehensive 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences found that \u201cthe uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are enormous.\u201d It also concluded that the opinions of BPA experts\u2014who Gordon notes aren\u2019t subject to any peer or technical review\u2014tend to be \u201cmore subjective than scientific.\u201d  (via Nautilus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose-colored rock found in the Sahara turns out to be a 4-billion-year old piece of Mars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A rose-colored meteorite found in the Sahara Desert in 2022 has been identified as a 4.1-billion-year-old chunk of the Red Planet, a NASA study determined. The nearly two-pound meteorite was found in Mali. It was named Teghaza 001, after the salt plain where it was discovered. Study of the meteorite allowed NASA scientists to determine it was one of roughly 435 from Mars. <\/strong>Meteorites can be verified as having been part of Mars by comparing their chemical and mineral makeup to samples and data collected by NASA’s Martian missions. Age-dating of the meteorite led researchers to conclude it was about 4.1 billion years old, making it one of the three most ancient Martian meteorites found on Earth, NASA said. That provides “a rare snapshot” of the planet’s crust and formation. One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars. (via CBS News<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival Patrick Stewart talked about the eulogy he wanted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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