Dovi's Digest Volume 207
Trolls not welcome 🚫🧌
A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Welcome to Volume 207 of Dovi’s Digest.
We’re all well aware that the internet is a toxic cesspool full of all the worst things in the world. Screens and usernames are used as masks, blocking and shielding users from the consequences of posting discriminatory trash. These keyboard warriors are also quite touchy and will unleash a stream of insults so vile that they would make a sailor blush. This is putting aside the fact that time and again, social media has been found to be detrimental to our mental health.
Which means that when I came across this week’s headline article, I was quite sceptical. Reddit, with its largely male user base and with a forum dedicated to every single topic under the sun, is the perfect breeding ground for the standard denizens of the internet. The well-known page RoastMe is dedicated to people posting pics of themselves and asking for other users to mock their appearance. Which made what I read about so surprising. As a counterbalance to this, there is a page called MaleGrooming, where men post pics of themselves, and ask for practical and helpful advice. Every post without exception is full of wholesome, useful comments about people’s appearance, giving the poster confidence and making them feel better about themselves. It’s a rare sunlit patch of the web which after just scrolling through for a few minutes made me feel a bit better about the world. After reading the article, I hope you’ll feel the same way too.
Do you know a word you think others should know about? Submit it here!
In this week’s added extras:
A great big list of beautiful and useless words.
Explore NASA's best photos of the year.
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 FOUR correct answers to last week’s brainteaser. Well done to Chaim E, Sam T, Ariel S, and Josh H! The answer and this week’s puzzle are below.
If you’re all full up with wholesome, you can read about the most commonly misread words (I was a victim of misled for many years), why the most boring man in the world is wildly popular, the robots who are coming for your wedding (this is a good thing), find out if changing the makeup of an animal to let it survive is a good thing, how lab grown diamonds are upending the industry, and finally you can learn about the polyamorous Christian utopia that made cutlery for the whole of the United States. Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
The Life-Changing Magic of Asking Kind Strangers to Rate Your Looks Online
On Reddit, a community dedicated to advice on one’s appearance has given some men some unexpected confidence – and its moderators are trying to maintain one of the internet’s few troll-free places.
Have You Been Misled by ‘Misles’?
The Linguistics Behind These Commonly Mispronounced Words
Is This the Most Boring Man in the World?
Insomniacs swear by dull narrators who put them to sleep, whether on purpose or not. (Please note this is an internet archive link as the original article is paywalled.)
The Robots Are Coming ... For Your Wedding
Congratulations. Your gift is a blast of cold fog to the face.
Should We Change Species to Save Them?
When traditional conservation fails, science is using “assisted evolution” to give vulnerable wildlife a chance.
How Synthetic Diamonds Are Upending The Industry's Status Quo
Lab-grown diamonds are causing changes in a business that is already under heavy scrutiny.
The Polyamorous Christian Socialist Utopia That Made Silverware for Proper Americans
Oneida Limited actually emerged from a 19th-century polyamorous communist Christian utopia known as the Oneida Community.
Quote of the Week:
“It’s very nice to be right sometimes.” – Nobel Prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs, after whom the Higgs boson was named, who died last month aged 94
Word of the Week:
(Courtesy of Cari K)
Pillory
pi·luh·ree·/ˈpɪl(ə)ri/
Verb
gerund or present participle: pillorying
1. attack or ridicule publicly.
"He found himself pilloried by members of his own party."
Facts of the Week:
People with Cotard’s syndrome believed themselves to be dead.
A lifetime's association of certain letters with specific colours can be caused by early exposure to Fisher-Price fridge magnets.
The world's most advanced magnet is called “the double pancake” and weighs as much as a Boeing 747.
In 1935, Vogue readers were told that pancakes “are not worth eating unless paper thin”.
The British overcook roast beef by an average of 41 minutes.
Jamie Oliver has a customised Land Rover that slow-roasts meat under the bonnet and makes butter and ice cream in the wheel drums.
Chopsticks were designed to be used for cooking, not eating.
Chicken noodle soup really does relieve symptoms of the common cold.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F? (It can contain other letters as well.)
Hint: It’s eight-letters and quite common.
Last week’s Brainteaser and Answer:
You have a 24-hour digital clock that displays hours, minutes, and seconds (for example, 09:30:23). How many times during a 24-hour period do all six digits change simultaneously?
Answer:
Three times.
When 23:59:59 becomes 00:00:00
When 09:59:59 becomes 10:00:00
When 19:59:59 becomes 20:00:00
Thanks for reading Dovi’s Digest!