Dovi's Digest Volume 23
A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual and physical needs
Hi All, and welcome to Volume 23 of Dovi’s Digest.
I received a fair amount of positive responses to last week’s preamble, which I really enjoyed writing. It went to my head a little and when I sat down to write this I had dreams of beautifully written prose, intertwined with humorous asides, similes that soared like eagles, a smattering of puns, and all tied together with one overarching topic that was neatly summed up in the last sentence. And then I thought to myself “Well, you could actually write about writing it and kill two newsletters with one proverbial stone.” So here we are. At some point I might even write that preamble.
Something that I forgot to mention last week is that the Natural History Museum announced their winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. There are some really incredible images and I urge you to go check them out. Each image has an accompanying blurb and you can easily filter them into their different categories. Here’s the link.
This week we have a relatively animal heavy edition with fat bears, dead snails and mysterious whales. There is also a heart breaking essay from a grieving sister, retro video game console design, a young website designer with a hit Covid tracker (from a few months ago, I know), and my favourite for this week, the world’s most ambitious grammar Nazi.
There were five correct answers to last week’s riddle. Well done to Josh Hazan, Shiri Berzack, Eli Berkow, Daniel Rab and Ori Tobias. The answer and this week’s one is below.
Please keep sharing the digest and the articles, it brings me joy when people share things which they find interesting, especially when said article is coming from me.
Finally, I’d like to wish a very happy 21st birthday to my Dad and his twin sister Barbara! I hope you both have many more 21st birthdays in the years to come.
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming!
All the best
Dovi
And now, the articles:
A Champion Has Been Crowned in Fat Bear Week
It’s 2020, and I’m living vicariously through these bears.
One Twitter Account’s Quest to Proofread The New York Times
In 2017, the Times dissolved its copy desk, possibly permitting more typos to slip through. Meet the anonymous lawyer who’s correcting the paper of record one untactful tweet at a time.
Mourning My Baby Brother, Fahim
In July, the dismembered body of tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh was found in his New York apartment. His sister Ruby Angela remembers him.
A Teenager’s Guide to Building the World’s Best Pandemic and Protest Trackers
Avi Schiffmann, the brains behind the web’s most popular coronavirus tracking site, just launched a protest tracking site. How did he do it?
The Woman Who Found a Snail in Her Soda and Launched a Million Lawsuits
Sixty-six years before the infamous spilled McDonald’s coffee, May Donoghue drank a ginger beer with a dead mollusc in it and changed personal-injury law forever.
The Designer of The NES Dishes the Dirt on Nintendo’s Early Days
When discussing Nintendo’s rise as a digital dreamsmith in the ‘80s, game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi get most of the limelight. But it was the hardware designed by Masayuki Uemura that served up their fantasies to millions around the globe.
On Knowing the Winged Whale
Humpbacks are some of the most watched whales in the world, and yet so much of their lives remain a mystery.
Quote of the Week:
“The people you want to reach the most are the ones who, by default, delete emails.” — Seth Godin
Facts of the Week:
A beer tap on an aeroplane would dispense only foam.
The world’s most popular beer is called snow and is virtually unknown outside China.
The US’s ninth-largest brewery has made a new beer from recycled sewage water.
In Finland, you can buy a party pack of 1000 cans of beer.
Cartoon of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
If Tim works one shift every second day, Megan works once every third day, and Rajesh works every fifth day, how often do all three colleagues work together?
Last week’s Brainteaser and answer:
A recycling dumpster holds a maximum of 27 bags of recycled materials. An apartment building puts out about nine bags of recycling every month. Two dumpsters could service how many apartment buildings in one month?
Answer:
Six.
Did someone forward you this email?
Lucky you, they obviously think you’re clever.
Is there something you particularly liked or didn’t like? Let me know at dovisdigest@gmail.com