Hi All, and welcome to Volume 25 of Dovi’s Digest.
I’ve tried to write this week’s intro twice, once about the U.S. Presidential Election, once completely ignoring it, with both drafts going into the proverbial bin. And for the first time, I was genuinely stuck. Thankfully, the news came to my rescue, but not in an expected way. This week, amongst all the noise, quietly and without fanfare, a record was broken. A record that stood for over two years. I am of course talking about the Baby Shark video (I won’t link it here, you can find it yourself) that this week became the most watched YouTube video of all time, overtaking Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito”, with over 7.05 billion views. To put it in perspective, if played back to back, it would take 30 187 years. Frankly, I’d rather watch compilations of old Vine’s while wondering where my twenties went.
This was sent to me by Eli Berkow, who is featured elsewhere in this week’s newsletter. However, Baby Shark has a more sinister side too. In October, three jail employees were brought up on charges for handcuffing inmates to a wall and then playing the song for two hours. And last year in Florida, a city council blared Baby Shark and Raining Tacos (I don’t know it, I don’t want to know it) all night in order to stop homeless people sleeping near an event centre.
Two weeks ago, I posted an article about a case that changed personal injury law, well before anyone spilled hot MacDonald’s coffee on themselves (Dovi’s Digest Volume 23, The Woman Who Found a Snail in Her Soda and Launched a Million Lawsuits). Yisroel Greenberg, who is a barrister in the U.K., pointed out that the story, as presented in the article, is incomplete. In his own words: “The case went to the House of Lords on a point of law: whether the facts as alleged would, if true, give rise to a cause of action. The House answered yes. But that meant the case had to be remitted back to the original court for a trial to decide whether those facts were true. In other words, was there actually a snail?
Mr Stevenson died before the case could be tried, and his estate settled out of court. So the trial never happened.
To this day, no-one can actually be certain whether there ever was a snail.”
I found this pretty darn interesting and I’m sure many of you will too. If you have something to add to an article, whether it’s a follow up, a joke or an error, please send it my way and it will go out in the next week’s Digest.
Amongst the many, many entries this week, there was only one correct answer to last week’s riddle. Well done to Dovi Joel.The answer and this week’s one is below.
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming!
All the best
Dovi
And now, the articles:
The Hide That Binds
A medical librarian’s history of books covered in human skin.
YouTubers Are Upscaling the Past to 4K. Historians Want Them to Stop (Courtesy of Eli Berkow)
YouTubers are using AI to bring history to life. But historians argue the process is nonsense.
How Ivory Coast Striker Didier Drogba Helped to Halt a Civil War
Al-Merrikh Stadium, in Sudan’s second largest city of Omdurman, is not one of the world’s great gladiatorial arenas. Yet this small ground – known as the Red Castle – became the setting for one of football’s most extraordinary tales.
Why Success Won’t Make You Happy
The pursuit of achievement distracts from the deeply ordinary activities and relationships that make life meaningful.
The Mystery of Lamelo Ball
The teams at the top of this year’s NBA draft have a chance at the most intriguing – and infamous – prospect in years.
I Hope This Email Finds You Well
Just wanted to check in!
How Harvard’s Star Computer Science Professor Built a Distance Learning Empire
David Malan, of the hit class CS50, was working to perfect online teaching long before the pandemic. Is his method a model for the future of higher education?
Quote of the Week:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Facts of the Week:
When it gets hot, normally carnivorous tadpoles become vegetarian.
The world's smallest frog is the size of a house fly.
The world's tiniest reptile is a chameleon the size of an ant.
In 2016 a new species of Ant was discovered after it was vomited up by a frog.
In 2004, a pine tree planted in memory of George Harrison died after an infestation of beetles.
Natural History museums use teams of beetles to clean the flesh off specimens.
Cartoon of the Week:
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
You have two ropes. Each rope can burn in exactly one hour. The ropes are not of the same length or width. Both ropes are also not of uniform width or thickness. The ropes are thick at certain places and thin at other places. Thus, a rope that is half burnt will not necessarily have taken 30 minutes to burn.
By burning the ropes, how do you measure exactly 15 minutes worth of time?
Last week’s Brainteaser and answer:
A frog is at the bottom of a 30 meter well. Each day he summons enough energy for one 3 meter leap up the well.
Exhausted, he then hangs there for the rest of the day. At night, while he is asleep, he slips 2 meters backwards.
How many days does it take him to escape from the well?
Answer:
28 days.
Until the 27th night, the frog would have managed to scale a height of 1 meter per day or 27 meter in total.
On the 28th day, he would have climbed 3 meters during the day thereby completing his task.
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Is there something you particularly liked or didn’t like? Let me know at dovisdigest@gmail.com