A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello there 👋! Welcome to Volume 110 of Dovi’s Digest.
There are multiple things that differentiate humans from animals. Of course, there are the obvious ones like walking on two legs (for mammals [aside from kangaroos], I know birds all do it), opposable thumbs, and social anxiety. One of the more overlooked ones though is motivation. Our furry/scaly/feathered/etc companions don’t have a choice in the matter. For them it’s kill or be killed, hunt/forage or die, with a few notable exceptions (one of my favourites is that it’s been shown that bears sometimes just sit and appreciate a beautiful view or a sunset. How cute is that?). There are multiple things that motivate people to do the things they do. It can be need (like eating and sleeping), want (like seeing friends and family), or even just for the hell of it (YOLO lol). However, one of the great motivating factors for humans is spite. We all do things either because we’re told they’re forbidden, or we’re not able to, or just to make someone feel bad. Now, I won’t advocate for it, but sometimes doing things out of spite can be fun, it can give us a sense of vindication, and allows us to feel one of the best feelings a humans can experience, smugness. Most often it’s petty, like leaving a toilet seat up, or not allowing someone to cut in in traffic. But there are those who go to the ends of the earth (sometimes literally), just to give a person the proverbial kick in the teeth.
This week’s headline article is about some such people, who have not been content to only take parking spots but have gone the extra mile and built whole buildings just to piss off the objects of their ire (many pictures included). It’s very extra, but many of them I really get behind. Drop a comment below with your favourite one, or any that the article may have missed.
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!
The book list is still going strong, with many new additions. It’s meant to be shared with friends and family, with a view to having a number of great books in every genre for people to choose from.
I’ve just finished Empire of Pain (non-fiction, about the opioid epidemic), and I absolutely LOVED it. I wouldn’t have found it if it wasn’t for Daniel Rab, Ari Chipkin, and Josh Hovsha, all of whom highly recommended it. For what it’s worth, I’ll throw in my lot with them.
To view or add to the list, you can just click here.
There were TWO correct answers to last week’s brainteaser. Well done to Josh Hazan and Ariel Subotzky. The answer and this week’s riddle are below.
Sometimes people have other motivations in life, pictures of spite buildings don’t really interest them. Luckily, there are other articles, at least one of which you’re bound to enjoy. You can learn about the burgeoning (and sometimes destructive) world of crowdsourced “glow-ups” (making yourself more attractive), the maths teacher who gives classes on one of the best known *ahem* adult sites (and who has millions of views!), the story of a group of skiers who vanished (and we’re then found dead) in very mysterious circumstances, the hidden history of vegetarian Jewish cuisine (i.e. not brisket), the dangers of the “buy now, pay later” model, and the elite mountain rescue team who, when an avalanche happens, go racing towards it, not away by foot, skimobile or helicopter. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming,
Have a great week,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
Spite Buildings: When Human Grudges Get Architectural – In Pictures
Feuding brothers, thwarted lovers, and a lot of spoiled views: ‘spite buildings’ are our smallest human pettiness made manifest in bricks and mortar. Here are some of the best/worst.
In the Pursuit of Hotness
How one sub-Reddit community is defining our beauty standards — and then striving for them at all costs.
On Pornhub, Math Teacher Makes His Mark Teaching Calculus
Taiwanese math teacher Changshu explains difficult math in fully clothed and safe-for-work lessons.
Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved?
The strange fate of a group of skiers in the Ural Mountains has generated endless speculation.
A Return To Vegetarian Jewish Cuisine
Pastrami, schnitzel, gefilte fish: Jewish food isn't often known as plant-based. But there is a long tradition of Ashkenazi Jewish vegetarianism – one a new crop of chefs is reviving.
Buy Now. Pay (and Pay, and Pay, and Pay) Later.
The full effects of the “Buy Now, Pay Later” fad (ala Afterpay, Klarna, Payflex etc) are coming due – for all of us.
The Rescue Artists of the New Avalanche Age
The world’s most elite helicopter rescue team is more important than ever, as skiers and snowboarders venture further in the backcountry and climate change makes mountain conditions more dangerous.
Quote of the Week:
“Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. . . The skill to mould the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Facts of the Week:
Ewan McGregor's brother used to be a tornado pilot who flew with the call sign “Obi-Two”.
The Porgs in Star Wars were devised to cover up the vast number of puffins that kept walking into shot.
There are eight places on Earth called Puffin Island.
The Alutiiq people of Alaska made rattles from puffin beaks.
Alaska has 1000 earthquakes a month
At Seattle’s 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, one of the raffle prizes was a month-old orphan named Ernest.
The 2007 IG Nobel Prize for Cognition was awarded to scientists who proved that identical twins often can't tell which of them is which.
In 2007, the Ivory Coast government gave away a house to an employee as a prize for turning up on time.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
(Courtesy of Jade Weiner)
Brainteaser of the Week:
Three girls, Akari, Sakura and Yui, are each given a positive whole number, which they keep secret from each other. They are all told the sum of the numbers is 12. A girl is considered “lucky” if she has the highest number. It is possible that one, two or all three girls are “lucky”.
Akari says: “I don’t know who is lucky.”
Sakura says: “I still don’t know who is lucky.”
Yui says: “I still don’t know who is lucky.”
Akari says: “Now I know who is lucky!”
Who is lucky?
Last Week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
Among six children, each handshake is between a boy and a girl. Each of four children shakes hands with exactly two others. Each of the other two shakes hands with exactly three others. Do these children shake hands with each other?
Answer:
Yes. First, work out how many boys and how many girls there are in the group. There can’t be just one boy, since that would mean that only that boy can shake hands with more than one person (since handshakes are between boys and girls), and we know everyone shakes hands with more than one person. If there are exactly two boys, then the boys would be the children shaking hands with three others, and the four girls would each be shaking hands with two others. But this would mean that each girl shakes both boys’ hands, meaning that the boys are each shaking four people’s hands, which contradicts the question. Thus there are at least three boys. Repeating the above argument for girls, we deduce there are at least three girls. We conclude the group has three boys and three girls.
Now let’s work out whether the two children shaking hands with exactly three others are of the same gender.
Case 1 Let’s say they are, and let’s say they are girls. Then each would shake hands with each boy, and each boy would already have their two allocated handshakes. The third girl will have no handshakes, so this doesn’t work.
Case 2 The two children are of opposite gender. If they are, they must shake hands with each other. Here’s one way to make it work If A, B, C are girls, and X, Y Z are boys, then there are handshakes between AX, AY, AZ, BX, CX, BY, CZ.