Dovi’s Digest Volume 238
New year, fun me 🥳🎉😊
A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Happy new year and welcome to Volume 238 of Dovi’s Digest!
Once again, we inexplicably find ourselves at the beginning of a new year. Smash Mouth were really on point when they sang the words in their millennial anthem Allstar- “the years keep coming and they don’t stop coming”. The beauty and mastery of the Shrek soundtrack aside though, it does feel like it was just a few weeks ago that I was writing about resolutions, and just a few months before that about how to make effective, lasting changes in your life (as someone with zero experience as a caveat).
Something I haven’t spoken about is the nature of those resolutions. They’re always Big and Serious like quitting smoking, losing weight, or stopping having a temper. People seem to forget that resolutions don’t have to feel heavy. When I tell people my resolutions are to see more pictures in clouds, or whenever I see a fruit I haven’t tried I buy it and eat it, it’s like a little bell goes off in their heads and they remember, “oh, they can be fun! I want a fun one.” Often we get caught up in the Big and Serious things. Sometimes on our own, frequently dictated by society.
So, if you’re a resolution person, make some fun ones for this year. Try eating as many pasta shapes as possible, wearing more purple, cooking more with butter (highly recommend this btw), anything your heart desires and that makes it sing with joy.
And please, if you have any that you want to share, just hit reply on this email.
As per usual, there are the best of lists, things to do in 2025, as well as some self-help tips (if you’d like to. I refer you to the quote below which is one of my favourites.)
In this week’s added extras:
Associated Press 100 Photos of 2024: An epic catalogue of humanity
The top moments from the Olympics
52 Snippets from 2024
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 Steven K, and Jeff C The answer and this week’s riddle are below.
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
How to Strengthen Your Happiness Muscle
Psychologists call it reward sensitivity. And simple steps can help you boost your drive to seek out positive emotions and enjoy life.
How The “Two-Day Rule” Can Make Your Daily Work-Life Much Easier
This supremely simple hack can help you establish good habits, break bad ones, and guard against failure.
The 25 Best Places to Go in 2025
Trek through remote mountains, or cruise through aquamarine seas.
Advice for the Unmotivated
In virtually everyone’s career, there comes a time when motivation and interest vanish. The usual tasks feel tedious. It’s hard to muster the energy for new projects. Though we go through the motions of being good employees or managers, we’re not really “there.” We become ghosts or zombies: the working dead.
How to Not Care When People Don’t Like You
Everyone is disliked by someone. Don’t let it slow you down.
How Shaboozey's A Bar Song (Tipsy) Became The Unexpected Smash Hit Of 2024
As Shaboozey's A Bar Song (Tipsy) becomes one of the country's most celebrated tracks in 2024, what made this tribute to good-time drinking resonate so much this year?
Big, Beautiful Goals – But Can’t Be Bothered? 11 Great Productivity Tips For Lazy People
Struggling to fit everything in? Here’s how to cross off all the jobs on your list ... without really trying.
Quote of the Week:
“Each of you is perfect just as you are—and you could all use improvement.”– Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki to his students
Word of the Week:
(Courtesy of Josh H)
Curglaff
KUR-glaf
Noun
The shock felt when one first plunges into cold water
Do you know a word you think others should know about? Submit it here!
Facts of the Week:
Sheep can recognise celebrities with 80% accuracy.
Elmo is the only non-human to testify before the US Congress.
Burt and Ernie only have one eyebrow between them.
DVDs of the first few series of Sesame Street are labelled “Adult Only”.
By the standards of the rest of the animal Kingdom, human beings should be 200 times as murderous as they are.
The longest New York City has gone without a murder is 12 days.
A Chewbacca defence is a lawyer's way of confusing the other side by spouting irrelevant nonsense.
Chewbacca is 7’6”, the same height as the tallest high school basketball player in the world.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
This week I’ve shamelessly pulled the brainteaser from The Guardian:
2025 will be the only time this century that the year is a square number.
· 442 = 1936
· 452 = 2025
· 462 = 2116
In fact, since 45 = 20 + 25, we have the very nice equation:
(20 + 25)2 = 2025
2025 is also the first year since 1520 that appears in the five times table. It has been a long wait.
They asked Inder Taneja, a retired maths professor who looks for amusing patterns in numbers, for some fun ‘25’ facts. He sent me the following sum, which is equal to 25 whether you read it the right way up, or upside down, or in the mirror, or upside down in the mirror.
Today’s first puzzle is about a grid with 25 squares.
Queens and pawns
Place five queens and three pawns in the grid so that no queen is attacking a pawn.
A queen can move horizontally, vertically or diagonally. So, for those unfamiliar with the rules of chess, the puzzle is asking you to place five pieces in the grid in such a way that there are exactly three cells these pieces cannot move to, horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
Here’s a way to place four queens. But can you add a fifth? The puzzle is much harder than it looks (or it was for me.)
Christmas star
Another puzzle that is much harder than it looks, and involves a 5, and is a bit festive, is this old chestnut (roasting on an open fire). There are 5 triangles in this five pointed star. Can you draw two straight lines through the star to create an image with 10 triangles? For this puzzle, only triangles that have no lines running through them count as triangles. And it is not a trick question – there is a simple way to do it!
Last week’s brainteaser and answer:
Given the letters I, E, N, V, O, D, and C, what is the longest word you can make from them? You can use each letter as many times as you want.
Answer:
The longest word I could find is “inconvenienced,” which is 14 letters long.