7.09.2022

When they need explaining like this, they're done

Lights out on Nittosha matchbooks prompts nostalgia in Japan

Matchbooks — the kind Nittosha is discontinuing — have matches with stems made of hard-to-burn paper, stuck together comb-like at the bottom. They’re encased in a paper cover, much like a book, with a strip for striking.

Meanwhile, matchbooks are just one more thing — like stamps, coins, beer cans, and baseball cards — I never started a collection of. 

7.07.2022

Nothing is not easy to find

A supersensitive dark matter search found no signs of the substance — yet

A massive new effort to detect the elusive substance has reported its first results. Following a time-honored tradition of dark matter hunters, the experiment, called LZ, didn’t find dark matter. But it has done that better than ever before, physicists report…

But search we must. 

Another chance to become famous that you missed

Italian man amasses collection of 12,402 different Pepsi cans


Too late now.

Somehow this sounds like a dare

A haircut is a purchase that no American consumer can source from overseas. "

From:

Want to Understand Inflation? Check the Price of Your Haircut

 

7.05.2022

On the expanding frontier of Newspeak

Scrabble players quitting competitive game after 400 offensive terms banned from words list

Mattel's global head of games, Ray Adler, said: "We looked at everything we were doing as a company and opportunities to be more culturally relevant."
Resulting in "bitter spats," say some.

"Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts…," explains Wikipedia.

Happy news for word geeks

 The Oxford English Dictionary discusses ignoramus and ignorance,

But what is an Ignotoism? Could it have still meant ‘a mistake due to ignorance’? A search of the text of the Gentleman’s Magazine for the word ‘Ignoto’ showed that there was more going on.

Oh you bet there is. 

7.04.2022

The answer is no


A MONSTER SUNSPOT JUST DOUBLED IN SIZE — AND IT’S POINTING RIGHT AT EARTH

Should you be worried?

But if you want to be worried you'll have plenty of help.
Although scientists consistently point out that people are in no danger from sunspots like AR3038, that doesn’t stop the popular media from worrying about them, especially ones that seem to grow quickly. But this is all par for the course, according to Rob Steenburgh, the head of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Forecast Office.