A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Welcome to Volume 174 of Dovi’s Digest.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who want to watch sunset with a cold beverage in hand, and those who would instead watch sunrise with a warm beverage. I don’t really fall into either of those camps, I’m happy with either, but lean towards a sunset over the sea with an ice-cold gin and dry lemon in hand. There is something to be said for the calm of the early morning though, specially if you’re on a lake or river. The mist that settles over the water, the soft call of birds waking up, and a hot cup of coffee and a rusk (a sort of twice baked biscuit that is the perfect early morning accompaniment) in your hand.
As an adult I can sit and appreciate this, drink in the calm that settles over the world just before the sun rises. As a child though – not so much. It never happened exactly like this (i.e., it was later in the day), but I can easily envision my parents sitting with their coffees in the quiet when that silence is shattered by a loud plunk-splash as I started throwing rocks into the water. And not just little ones. I’d get the biggest one my grubby little hands could lift and just drop it into the water. The reason I can easily envision this is because it’s exactly what happened, except for the fact that it was early, and my parents were just watching the sunrise.
As I grew up, I graduated from big rocks to little rocks. Little flat ones. Ones that skipped across the water if you threw them just right. My dad would always be able to get more “bounces” than me, but it wasn’t about the competition – it was about the quality time I spent with him. We’d talk about anything, and sometimes just skip the rocks without saying anything at all, enjoying the company and sitting in contented silence.
While it may have not been about the competition for us, for others there is nothing BUT the competition.
This week’s headline article is about the simple pastime of rock skipping, made into sport with strict rules like no shilly-shallying or dilly-dallying (I’ve learned that these are very different forms of lollygagging), but at its core remains loyal to that childhood ideal: have fun.
Bonus! This is what a rock skipping on a frozen lake sounds like.
(If the link doesn’t skip right to it, 3:38 is where the magic happens)
In this week’s added extras:
Did you know Türkiye borders 7 countries with 7 different alphabets?
- The world’s most beautiful post offices.
- How painting walls different colours will change perception of interior spaces. You can enlarge the space, lower the ceiling, shorten the walls, and so much more.
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 TWO correct answers to last week’s brainteaser. Well done to Ariel Subotzky, and Ryan Subotzky! The answer and this week’s puzzle are below.
If the frivolity of “fun” and “enjoyment” don’t do it for you, there are more serious, adult (not that sort) articles to read. Scrub up and read about the amazing first of its kind surgery performed by a robot, kick your feet up and peruse the article about the people who get away with being joblessly employed, close your eyes and open your ears to question of whether silence is a sound within itself, learn about the doorbell for fish that is key to their migration, find out why solar energy might not be clean for everyone involved, and finally, do looks trump talent when it comes to sport endorsements? Read on to find out. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend and Shana Tova to all my Jewish readers,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
Kerplunks, Pitty-Pats and Skronkers: The World of Competitive Rock-Skipping
Skipping stones is a simple pleasure. What happens when someone wins?
The Daring Robot Surgery That Saved a Man’s Life
Two doctors, separated by thousands of miles, carried out a lifesaving operation using a robot. It’s the start of a major change in how surgery is performed.
How Some People Get Away with Doing Nothing at Work
All hail the jobless employed.
Do We Actually ‘Hear’ Silence?
An experiment tests whether our ears hear silent intervals in the same way they hear music or noise.
Ring the ‘Fish Doorbell’ To Help Fish Migrate in the Netherlands
Utrecht’s Fish Doorbell has helped thousands of fish swim upstream to reproduce.
How Solar Farms Took Over the California Desert: ‘An Oasis Has Become a Dead Sea’
Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’.
The NCAA Has a ‘Hot Girl’ Problem
The Cavinder Twins, the emerging oligarchs of women’s college basketball, aren’t the best players. But they might be the best-looking.
Quote of the Week:
“When choosing between two evils, I always pick the one I haven’t tried before.” – Mae West
Facts of the Week:
In the Philippines, it's a crime to annoy or irritate someone.
In Durham in 1350, William Standupryght annoyed his neighbours so much that they all left the village.
In Lincolnshire in 1347, Letetia Bat was accused of fornication with Roger Sweatinbed.
During the Super Bowl, the two teams produce 11 gallons of sweat between them.
39% of the fresh water in the US is used to cool power stations.
The US uses more electricity for air conditioning than the whole of Africa uses for everything.
The ash produced by coal-fired power plant is more radioactive than the waste from nuclear power plants.
A Swedish power plant has reduced its dependence on coal by burning clothes from H&M instead.
The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum switched to solar power in 2017.
Word of the Week:
Disemvowel
(ˌdɪsɪmˈvaʊəl) / dis‧em‧vow‧el
verb
(tr) informal to remove the vowels from (a word in a text message, email, etc) in order to abbreviate it. A common feature of SMS language when space was costly.
Album of the Month:
Album: Tell Me I’m Alive
Band: All Time Low
Apparently 2023 is a great time to be a pop-punk band. Ubiquitous in the 2000s, the genre faded away in the 2010s. All Time Low are one of the few bands who made it through the wilderness years unscathed. After 2020’s Wake Up, Sunshine, they’ve updated their sound and collaborated with everyone from Pale Waves to Demi Lovato. This album leans into their recent success by amping up the pop and dialling down the punk.
The band themselves have stated that many of the album’s themes were drawn from emotions and experiences they had during the pandemic. With vocalist Alex Gaskarth saying “there were a lot of themes of like, loneliness, isolation coping…positive and negative ways of coping – those bad habits we throw ourselves into to recover. The most blatant example of this is Are You There?, which is told from the perspective of someone coming down from a drug binge. The sassy piano-driven title track and Modern Love offer good counterweights to these heavy emotions. If you’re looking for good old fashioned punk sound, Kill Ur Vibe and English Blood, American Heartache will slake that thirst.
The bright and poppy choruses throughout will have you humming well after listening to the songs,
Favourite song: Lost Along the Way (a tender ballad which was predictably the album closer).
Honourable mentions: Tell Me I’m Alive, Sleepwalking
Verdict: While a fun album to listen to, it was more pop than punk which may make long-time fans a little frustrated. It was a bit of a rollercoaster, and the lack of a clearly defined genre made some songs seem like they were trying to be everything all at once. 6/10
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
(Courtesy of Josh Hovsha)
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
Find a one-syllable word that becomes a different three-syllable word when you add just one letter to the end.
Last Week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
This week’s question is inspired by a college football tradition: every time the Oregon Ducks football team scores, the duck mascot does pushups to match the team’s new point total. For example, if Oregon scores a touchdown, the mascot does seven pushups (or eight if the team gets a 2-point conversion). This goes on the entire game, so if Oregon were to score 31 points in total, the mascot will have done 101 pushups (7+14+21+28+31).
During Saturday’s game vs. Portland State, the duck had to do 546 pushups. Your job is to figure out how many points Oregon scored during the game.
Answer:
While they actually scored 81 points in the game, there were many different solutions – every score between 46 and 89 in fact. The most fun answer I found was 59 points, in which the Ducks started out with 15 safeties (two points each), kicked five field goals, and closed out the game with two touchdowns with extra points.
Thanks for reading Dovi’s Digest!