A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Welcome to Volume 180 of Dovi’s Digest.
I love compiling and writing the Digest every week. I get to read interesting (and some really not interesting) articles, see funny tweets and cartoons, and then get to share it with people. But as much as I love it, it doesn’t pay the bills, hence I have a day job. As far as jobs go, it’s a bit of a left field one. I farm and sell chillis on an industrial scale. It’s not quite what you’d expect from me as I studied accounting and have a law degree, and worked in investment banking. Yet here we are.
How I got into the field (herherher) was also not that conventional. When Covid hit, I was left jobless, and hence needed something to do with my time. For some unknown reason, I started growing a couple chilli plants, then a few more, got a few exotic breeds, and before I knew it I had about 200 plants, 20 varieties, and a full-time job caring for them. I loved working outside and getting my hands dirty. While I was doing this (the time period, not the actual gardening work), I randomly met the CEO of my company at a dinner party, we got talking, and by the end of it he offered me a job.
I grew all sorts of chillis, some ornamental, some temperamental, and among the most temperamental were the so called “super hots”. These are chillis that measure over 1 million Scoville heat units (what spiciness is measured in). To put it in perspective, Tabasco sauce is about 5,000, a cayenne hits 80,000, and habaneros can go over 300,000. Eating one is not a fun experience, although you do get a really good headrush and feel euphoric afterwards.
The reason I’m telling you all of this is that a few weeks ago, a new hottest pepper was crowned. Called Pepper X, its Scoville rating is an astounding 2,693,000 units, beating the previous holder (the Carolina Reaper) by more than 1 million. Both were created by “smoking” Ed Currie (a nice bit of nominative determinism), a Carolina based grower who specialises in superhots. Pepper X was more than ten years in the making, with him constantly crossbreeding and trying new combinations to find even hotter varietals.
This week’s headline articles (yes, plural) are of course about Pepper X, its development, and a descriptor of its flavour and aftereffects.
This is not the first time that I’ve mentioned superhot chillis. In DD20 (even before there was substack) there are two articles on them, one on the race to grow the most insanely hot pepper. But the road to fiery fame and fortune is paved with trash talk, deception, even performance enhancers. And one on Ed Currie and how the Carolina Reaper came to be.
This week’s added extras are a little more whimsical and uplifting than usual. You’ll for sure smile and become super invested in this one-minute video of a man trying to guess paint colours that have gone into a mixer, go see what your neighbourhood would’ve looked like 250 million years ago with this ancient earth map, and finally a TED Talk on learning how to draw, specially for people who say they can’t draw.
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 was ONE correct answer to last week’s brainteaser, Well done to Ariel Subotzky! The answer and this week’s puzzle are below.
Spicy food not for you? That’s okay. Find out why good flambé is a big flex, lace up and learn what makes the world’s oldest professional soccer player tick, why every political strongman may be indebted to the Nazis, scroll through the story of how people traffickers are using social media to lure young people abroad, admire the hidden maths found in art, and find solace in embracing palliative care. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
Guinness World Records Crowns New Hottest Pepper
Pepper X has been crowned as the hottest chilli pepper in the world, dethroning the Carolina Reaper chilli pepper after 10 years.
What Eating Pepper X Is Like
A burning mouth is only the beginning.
Confessions of a Tableside Flambéur
A former fine dining server dishes on how the flambé, a dying convention of French haute cuisine, became the ultimate tableside flex.
Kazuyoshi Miura: A Professional Footballer At 53 - How He Does It
The second round of the Japanese League Cup is not normally international news. But when top-division side Yokohama FC played Sagan Tosu last month, it made headlines around the world. Why?
Lawyer for the Strongman
Demagogues do not rise on popular feeling alone but on the constitutional ideas of Weimar and Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt.
The Albanian Town That TikTok Emptied
People smugglers are using social media to show a highly curated view of what people’s lives might look like if they left Albania for the UK: good jobs, plenty of money, shopping at designer stores and riding around London in fast cars. But the reality is far from that.
Maths Uncovers Hidden Patterns in These Historic Art Masterpieces
Art historians have missed something incredibly important lurking behind the canvases of art's greatest works.
A Hospice Nurse on Embracing the Grace of Dying
A decade ago, Hadley Vlahos was lost. She was a young single mother, searching for meaning and struggling to make ends meet while she navigated nursing school. After earning her degree, working in immediate care, she made the switch to hospice nursing and changed the path of her life.
Quote of the Week:
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” – Charlie Chaplin
Word of the Week:
Poppycock
Noun
/pɒpɪkɒk/pop-ee-kok
Informal
nonsense.
"He said I was talking poppycock."
Facts of the Week:
A Bedfordshire Clanger was a long pie with meat at one end and pudding at the other.
The annual Wigan pie eating contest was scandalise in 2005, when it was found that the pies were imported from nearby Bolton.
Italy holds an annual Hide and Seek World championship.
America has a National Grocery Bag Packing competition.
The only member of the Ecuadorian Olympic ski team trains on tarmac using roller skis.
Roller skating messengers were once used for the 17 miles of corridors in the Pentagon.
The most decorated U.S. Marine in history was called Chesty Puller.
One in four Americans don't know which country the US declared independence from.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
(Courtesy of Isaac Lipschitz)
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
How many triangles can you find in this image?
Last Week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
Here are eight questions about Disney—if you get ’em all right, you have officially earned your Disney Adult badge. The answers are at the bottom of the newsletter.
Name the one Disney princess based on a real person.
The director of The Jungle Book originally wanted which four people to voice the vultures in the movie?
A Disney movie did not win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which was handed out in 2002. Which movie did win?
Fill in the blank: The original five Avengers in Marvel Comics were Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, the Wasp, and _____.
Which one of the following animated movies has not gotten a live-action remake? Aladdin, Hercules, The Jungle Book, The Lion King.
Disney founded which professional sports team in 1993?
A Forbes magazine article from 2011 declared which Disney animal to be the richest fictional character of all time, with a fortune of $44.1 billion?
After Disney acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006, this Pixar owner became Disney’s largest shareholder.
Answer:
Pocahontas
The Beatles
Shrek
Ant-Man
Hercules
The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now known as the Anaheim Ducks)
Scrooge McDuck
Steve Jobs
Thanks for reading Dovi’s Digest!