🎉Dovi’s Digest Volume 100🥳🎊🥂🎉
A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hi everybody!! Welcome to Volume 100(!!!) of Dovi’s Digest.
Wow. Triple digits. The big 10-oh. A century. A c-note.
I’d like to say it’s not a big deal, but in all honesty is actually is. It’s not all that hard to cobble together something one evening and send it out. But to do it consistently for 100 weeks (plus a few special editions) takes gumption. It meant staying up writing and collating till the early hours, taking time while away on holiday, sitting shivering and shaking from a high fever, and one memorable week, where I lost everything and had to get up before 5am to start all over from scratch.
Although I do sometimes make it seem like a chore, I honestly love putting together the Digest each week. I read a whole host of new articles, I learn cool new things, and then I get to disseminate that information. What a win.
So, THANK YOU to every single one of you for reading, for sharing, for commenting, for sending articles, for all the support over the last nearly two years. It would’ve been possible to do it without you, but I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed it half as much or have put so much of myself into it. On to the next 100!!!
Do you enjoy the Digest? Would you like it to get better? Then please consider sharing it, as the more articles I’m sent, the better it is. It only takes a few seconds, and all you need to do is click here 👇. Thank you!
There were ZERO correct answers to last week’s brainteaser. Well done to No one. The answer and this week’s riddle are below.
The usual smorgasbord awaits you, with articles about drunk monkeys, how cool excel actually is (it’s an amazing program), why the leap second (not day or year, second) is important, making yourself sort of immortal, why we hate uncertainty, life lessons from chess hustlers, and how eBay can be a scary, scary place. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming,
Have a great week,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
These Buzzed Monkeys Could Help Explain Why We Love Drinking
Nothing explains jägerbombs, though, sorry.
Spreadsheets Are Hot—and Cranking Out Complex Code
The venerable (and yes, super dull) piece of officeware is getting reinvented as a tool for non-coders to automate and simplify their lives.
The Wait of the World
Ditching the leap second would mean decoupling clock time from the Earth’s rotation – from day and night itself.
How To Turn Yourself Into A Fossil
Discovering the preserved remains of a once-living creature entombed within stone for millions of years is as fascinating as it is special. But Richard Fisher wonders if there is a way of increasing our own chances of being fossilised – and unearthed in ages to come.
Here's Why Uncertainty Makes You So Miserable
A case for living in the now.
Life Advice from NYC Chess Hustlers
Conning people for 60 years who think they’re very smart teaches you some things.
Inside eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Ghastly Story of a Stalking Scandal
“People are basically good” was eBay’s founding principle. But in the deranged summer of 2019, prosecutors say, a campaign to terrorize a blogger crawled out of a dark place in the corporate soul.
Quote of the Week:
"At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.
This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.” – Tyler Cowen
Facts of the Week:
The word “shampoo” comes from a Hindi word meaning “to knead”.
The Indian peafowl is the national bird of India. The Great Indian Bustard nearly made it, but there were concerns it might be misspelt.
Melville Dewey, create of the Dewey Decimal System, was such a fan of spelling reform that he spelt his first name “Melvil”.
Hotmail is so named because it contains letters HTML: it was originally HoTMaiL.
When Bill Clinton was president, he sent only two emails.
Scientists have devised a method of finding the best sperm for IVF by making them complete a tiny obstacle course.
And one of my favourite facts of all time: The samurai were officially abolished as caste in Japanese society during the Meiji restoration of 1867. The first ever fax machine - the “printing Telegraph”- was invented in 1843. And Abraham Lincoln was famously assassinated in 1865. This means there was a 22 year gap in which a samurai could’ve sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
What nine-letter English word remains a word each time you remove a letter?
Last Week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
Use the letters given to complete the grid so that four other words can be read downwards and across. Your bank of letters: A A A D D D E L L R R S S T Y Y
Answer:
Starting from the second row and going down, the words are:
radar, oddly, sales, and tryst.