Over the year or so that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve collected so many cool snippets like these and it feels wasteful to sit on them in perpetuity, so I’d like to dump them all out into your inbox today and let you do with them what you please.

Thanks for reading, I hope everyone is having a pleasant autumn, and please enjoy!

Content warning: blatant and unapologetic disdain for the country of France and its cultural impact

I have never been to France and this is very much on purpose. If you asked me what I have against French people I really don’t think I could articulate any defensible reason, but I just think it’s fun to dunk on the denizens Hexagon Land.

I’m sorry, but their main cultural exports are baguettes, mimes, and snails-as-food, and you’re asking me to not make fun of their entire way of life? Tough sell buddy, good luck with that

Anyway, for the above stated reasons and also many more, I have never seen a French man in a swimsuit (thank god). But if you forced me to conjure up this image in my head (it would have to be at gunpoint jsyk), the French man would most definitely be wearing a speedo.

And as it turns out, this isn’t just because I have aberrant opinions about French people. In fact, men in France are required to wear speedos or form-fitting swim boxers in public pools (this rule does not apply to beaches on natural bodies of water).

Why? It’s not because French people are freaks1, although I’m sure that has something to do with it. Rather, the requirement exists for hygiene reasons. The idea is that someone wearing traditional swim shorts to the pool might also be wearing them out and about before they arrive at the pool, too, and during that time the swim shorts could accumulate all manner of dust, dirt, and grime that then ends up in the pool.

(I guess this rule rests on the assumption that French men are too modest to wear a speedo while walking down the street, which might be a flawed assumption if you ask me.)

Honestly, I think it’s a very interesting and not-unreasonable rule. But as someone who, as previously stated, loves making fun of the French, I am compelled to say I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a French person being concerned about hygiene. Anyway moving on

Okay, there’s this stuff called “low-background steel” and I find this absolutely fascinating. Basically, steel is made by “forcing purified oxygen through molten iron ore” and because of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II, plus the decades of nuclear testing that followed (528 detonations in total), Earth’s air today continues to be “subtly radioactive,” which causes the steel we produce with that air to also be subtly radioactive.

This subtly radioactive steel is, again, subtle, so it’s not going to give you cancer or otherwise harm your health. But even a small amount of radioactivity is a big problem for scientists who use sensitive equipment like particle detectors.

So, they need to get steel that isn’t contaminated by modern-day radiation. Where do you find that? From World War I shipwrecks, of course.

For example, there was a “fleet of 52 German battleships abandoned in the shallow waters of Orkney, Scotland,” and much of the steel from these ships has been repurposed into scientific equipment.

But for especially sensitive equipment, even WWI-era material is not good enough. You have to go back even further to find the purest stuff possible – we’re talking Ancient Rome here.

Physicists need lead for “shielding ultra-sensitive experiments from background radiation,” but lead ore is naturally radioactive, which presents an obvious problem. The radioactive isotopes in lead have a half-life of 22 years, so while it would take hundreds of years for lead mined today to lose a sufficient amount of radiation for use in scientific equipment, the Ancient Roman lead is perfect.

Ancient Roman lead is about 1,000 times less radioactive than modern-day lead, according to a Stanford physicist, so it is highly prized in the scientific community. But archaeologists and history-lovers are a little less thrilled about melting down ancient artifacts for use in physics experiments.

An archaeology grad student posed the question, “Are these experiments important enough to destroy parts of our past, to discover something about our future?“

And honestly? My answer is yes, with caveats. I’d hate to see every ounce of ancient Roman lead melted down for these purposes, but surely we can spare a few ingots, right? I’m curious to know others’ thoughts on this.

Low-background steel has been used as a metaphor in another topical area of debate - the “contamination” of the Internet by AI-generated content. Here’s a quick summary by Business Insider:

Most AI models are trained on vast datasets collected from the web. [...] But if today’s AI is trained on yesterday’s AI-generated text, which was itself trained on last week’s AI content, then models risk folding in on themselves, diluting originality and nuance in what’s been dubbed “model collapse.”

Upside-down paintings btw

Lastly, cats.

Thanks for reading! Until next time :)

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I usually like to make my posts an exploration of a few disparate topics loosely linked together in a narrative format, but this Throckmorton business is just so silly I couldn’t think of any non-insane way to segue to or from any other topics with it, so I’m just going to share it in a standalone story today.

So what is Throckmorton?

This is a term in radiology that refers to when “the male member will lie to the side of the fracture on the plain radiograph,” or in normal-people-speak, when the X-ray shows the penis pointing in the same direction of the injury.

There are even more example pictures here but it feels a little gratuitous to fill your screen with a parade of ghostly penises, so I’ll let you opt into that experience if you’d like. Up to you!

The basic idea behind Throckmorton is that “displaced hip fractures lead to a shortened and rotated leg, which tilts the pelvis to the affected side,” so seeking out the penis direction in the hip X-ray is supposed to be a sort of shortcut to the eventual diagnosis.

Medical students LOVE Throckmorton. Here’s just one example:

“The authors noted with interest that many medical students, when evaluating a patient following a fall, tended to comment on the presence of the [John Thomas] sign before seeking radiographic evidence of a hip fracture.”

Imagine going to the hospital with a hip fracture and the doctor comes in and says, “This med student will be shadowing me today and looking over your X-rays if that’s okay?” and you’re like, “Yeah, sure, whatever, can I just get something for the pain? This hurts really bad,” and they’re like, “Okay, sure, we’ll get a nurse in a second,” and then they shuffle off into the corner and you hear the med student say “Hey, before we examine the X-ray too closely, should we take a quick look at his dick?” i would scream

One person who had this experience of his genitalia being scrutinized while he was recovering from hip surgery is tennis legend Andy Murray.

In January 2019, Andy Murray released an image of his hip X-ray “clearly demonstrating an example of a negative John Thomas or Throckmorton sign where his penis pointed away from the site of injury” and people immediately noticed.

Piers Morgan decided to bring this up on Good Morning Britain, saying, “I think he revealed his X-ray picture which did actually reveal he had a massive stick.”

Little did Piers know that Andy Murray himself was watching the show at the time, leading him to send a message to the show: “Please can you stop discussing my genitals on national TV, I was heavily medicated at the time of posting.”

Anyway, Throckmorton is obviously very cool and funny, but is it actually a useful diagnostic tool in medicine? Well, one study refers to it as “one of many eponymous signs in medicine more famous for being famous than for their scientific rigueur,” which is a long way of saying no, not really.

Throckmorton is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not really an area of great concern for medical research, so we don’t have a ton of data to draw from, but one study concluded that “the supposed ‘sign’ is less accurate than the toss of a coin.”

There was a study from New Zealand that found a positive John Thomas sign in 70% of hip fracture patients, which was a promising indicator.

But then these guys from Yorkshire came along and said “the validity of this finding has not been tested for the northern hemisphere, in particular Yorkshire,” so they did their own study, and they, too, found that it was less accurate than a coin flip while also managing to work in about a thousand penis puns in doing so.

Anyway, I love everything about Throckmorton. Incredibly, I only found out about this because of my “Do you want to be friends with a crow?” poster campaign.

One of the respondents to the Google Form said if they were friends with a crow, they would name it “Throckmorton,” and I couldn’t see a name like that and not Google it. However, I did not think it would result in me having to look at an X-ray penis. But sometimes that just happens in life. I took it as a lesson and carried on, and now we are here.

Life leads you down all sorts of bizarre paths when you express your free will in unexpected ways. For me, this path led to me seeing the ghost of Andy Murray’s penis. Which path will you head down next?

As always, thanks for reading, friends, and I’ll see you next time! :)

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Earth is a big place with lots of rocks, and so many of them are precariously balanced that there’s an entire Wikipedia page about them.

Among the most famous of these PBRs are the balancing rocks of Zimbabwe, which are so popular that they appear on the southeast African nation’s banknotes. Here are the balancing rocks on the Zimbabwean 100 trillion dollar note:

You might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, 100 trillion? That’s a big number.” And you would be correct. One hundred trillion is, in fact, a big number (I took one math class in college so I know about this kind of stuff).

Zimbabwe’s 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) note was one of the highest denomination banknotes ever issued and was printed at a time of hyperinflation in the country. And while they were almost worthless while still in regular circulation, they can go for hundreds or even thousands of U.S. dollars today as a collector’s item.

The largest denomination banknote ever issued was the 100 quintillion (100,000,000,000,000,000,000) Hungarian pengő. (They also printed a 1 sextillion pengő, worth 10 times as much, but never put it into circulation.)

The 100 quintillion notes, which I am officially dubbing Big Pengős, didn’t list out all the zeroes but instead spelled out the full amount, making the Zimbabwean 100,000,000,000,000 banknotes the note with the greatest number of zeroes listed.

But even though they were too chicken to list all the zeroes, hyperinflation was still a huge problem for the Hungarians. In fact, the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate in history belongs to Hungary – in July 1946, the inflation rate was 41.9 quadrillion percent (41,900,000,000,000,000%). In other words, prices doubled every 15.3 hours.

Wikipedia has a very handy chart for all the worst periods of hyperinflation in world history:

If you’re looking to escape the nasty effects of hyperinflation, you might consider starting your own currency instead. This idea has actually been very common throughout history, and Wikipedia has a great rundown on local currencies.

Local currencies are pretty much exactly what they sound like – units of currency that can only be spent within certain geographical boundaries. Notable examples include the Ithaca HOUR or BerkShares. There’s also a great list of local currencies in the U.S. if you’re curious whether your community has ever explored this idea.

The idea behind local currencies is that they keep money within the local community and with local merchants.

If someone in Ithaca is paid with Ithaca HOURs, they have to keep that money in Ithaca, and only in the pockets of local businesses with an investment in the community. Walmart isn’t going to accept their Ithaca HOURs, but a local grocer will. And they can’t take it to Syracuse or Rochester or anywhere else - the value produced in the community stays in the community.

When it comes to revolutionary ideas about community capital, few were more pioneering than Josiah Warren. In 1827, he opened the Cincinnati Time Store, an experimental retail store founded on Warren’s theory that “the value of a commodity is the amount of labor that goes into producing or acquiring it,” and that it was unethical to charge any more for a product than was required to produce it in the first place.

Products in the Cincinnati Time Store were sold at-cost, with the price steadily increasing with the amount of time that a customer spent with the shopkeeper.

Warren literally kept a timer dial in the store to measure how long a customer took to make their purchases, which I find hilarious. If you are an indecisive shopper and you take forever to pick out the items you want to buy, it is going to cost you. As it should be.

Additionally, instead of paying for goods with money, customers paid with an agreement to perform labor in the future.

Rather than U.S. dollars, they would hand over a labor note, reading something like, “Due to Sarah Johnson, three hours labor in Carpenter’s Work, or three-twelve pounds of corn.” (At the Time Store, twelve pounds of corn was always exchangeable for one hour of labor, making this perhaps the only currency in human history that was directly tied to the value of corn.)

Though the Cincinnati Time Store got off to a slow start, it eventually became ”the most popular mercantile institution in the city.” It had a successful three-year run before Warren decided to close it in 1830, sufficiently pleased he’d shown everyone that you can engage in commerce without the “erection of any power over the individual.”

In honor of Josiah Warren and his groundbreaking Cincinnati Time Store, I am excited to announce today that I am now accepting manual labor and/or sacks of corn as forms of payment for premium subscriptions to Rabbit Cavern. Please contact me to coordinate corn shipments.

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We’ll close today’s post by going back to where we started - the treasured PBR. Another famous PBR is Krishna’s Butterball, located in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India.

I’ll let you explore that Wikipedia page on your own if you’re curious, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the one question that I know is on all of your minds: What’s the story behind the name? Can I please see images of Krishna’s Butterball from every possible angle?

Don’t worry, Wikipedia has you covered.

As always, thanks for reading, hope you’re all enjoying your summer, and I’ll see you next time!

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First of all, you should know that I operated a lot of lemonade stands when I was a kid and it always made me so happy when people bought lemonade from us (we ran an incredibly unsuccessful business so this was a rare occurrence).

So because I have this experience and I understand the excitement of getting actual paying customers for the bad lemonade I just made in my kitchen, I see it as my duty as a good community member to pass on the joy and help these kids make happy memories.

Plus, and not to be a grumpy old man about this, but it’s just really nice to see kids still doing things like lemonade stands, or even just going outside, rather than sitting in their rooms all day making deepfakes of MrBeast beating up their dad or whatever it is kids do these days.

And far more importantly, kids love weird money. Kids absolutely lose their minds when they see a $2 bill.

Usually, they start passing it around oohing and aahing like I just handed them a rare gem, and then immediately start to fight over who gets to keep it.

Many kids also say something along the lines of “I thought they didn’t even make these anymore!” Often the kids’ parents are helping them run the lemonade stand and will also echo this sentiment. This is a common myth and we’ll get into this later.

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At some point during my childhood, a $2 bill somehow came into my possession and I literally kept it inside a fireproof safe for years because I thought it was so cool, just to give you an idea of how highly kids value this stuff and the huge impact you can have on them by spending a mere $2 on a glass of lemonade.

And not to needlessly invoke capitalistic concepts during a discussion of lemonade stands (I am writing this on America’s 250th birthday, after all), but I try to think about this through the lens of return on investment: How much does this action cost me and how will the impact compare to that cost?

And in this case, of course, the cost to me is only $2, but the impact it has can be so, so huge beyond that.

Let me tell you, the moment you see how a kid’s eyes light up at the sight of one of these $2 bills, you will forget that you’ve even spent any money at all. You’d be willing to pay ten times that amount to create the same effect. You’re creating an unbelievable amount of joy for almost no money. I can go around and find five lemonade stands in a day and for only $10 I’ll have had a positive impact on five kids’ lives. You’re literally subsidizing childhood joy and it is an insane bargain. An unbelievable return on investment.

Purely from a dollars and cents standpoint, and also considering the extremely minimal amount of effort this requires on your part, I see this as one of the most effective ways to invest in the joy of your community’s children.

Anyway, I could write a hundred essays about how happy this makes me. It’s one of my favorite things I get to do in this life and I want to share this joy with all of you. Let’s learn some more about the $2 bill!

They stopped producing pennies but you don’t see anyone collecting those, do you???

The $2 bill was first introduced in 1862 and was used continuously until 1966, and as far as I can tell, it was just thought of as normal money back then. People weren’t like, “Ooh, a $2 bill!” any more than they were like, “Ooh, a $5 bill!” Just money! Nothing to see here!

But then, in 1966, three things happened: Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, England won the World Cup, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury decided to stop producing the $2 bill.

These events aren’t related to each other in any meaningful way, I just wanted to give you some context for what was going on in the world at the time. Oh, and The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds! Great stuff.

Why did the Treasury stop making $2 bills? People just didn’t use them enough. Literally use it or lose it, but instead of PTO that your employer is stealing from you, it’s a specific denomination of U.S. currency. Hope that analogy helps.

The death of the $2 bill lasted for all of ten years before the Treasury decided it was time for a comeback tour. As the reintroduction lined up with the U.S. bicentennial in 1976, it’s commonly thought that the bill was reissued to commemorate the country’s 200th birthday, but it was really just a cost-saving measure (i.e. they cost the same to print as $1 bills but they’re worth twice as much) and a fun coincidence.

Now, I don’t have sources to back this up, but I’m guessing this is where we got the myth that $2 bills are super rare. Because for an entire decade, they did in fact stop producing them and therefore become more scarce.

So, for ten years there, it was true that the $2 bill was a pretty special unit of currency, and I believe that was enough time to permanently change our cultural understanding of the $2 bill.

And by the time the Treasury started printing them again, it was far too late, and we’ve spent the last 50 years simply refusing to update our understanding of the relative scarcity of this bill. Lol.

Probably bolstering this myth of the $2 bill being extremely rare is the fact that when people do get them, they just don’t spend them. According to the coin nerds (term of endearment) at coinworld.com, after the initial batch of new $2 bills was printed in 1976, “it took nearly two decades before supplies fell to a level that required additional notes to be printed.” (For reference, they print new batches of $1, $5, etc. bills every year.)

Nowadays, we have somewhere north of 1.8 billion $2 bills in circulation. For comparison, here are the tallies for other denominations of U.S. currency (as of 2025), according to the Federal Reserve Board:

• 15.2 billion $1 bills

• 3.7 billion $5 bills

• 2.4 billion $10 bills

• 11 billion $20 bills

• 2.5 billion $50 bills

• 19.9 billion $100 bills

If you want to get in on this $2 bill nonsense (I hear all the cool kids are doing it), all you need to do is stop by the bank and ask, but be warned that they may need to order them specially for you.

I tried to withdraw a mere $100 in $2 bills and they didn’t even have that much on hand, so I had to come back another time to pick up my cash. So, if you’re hoping to make this a regular part of your lifestyle, it may make sense to order in bulk (some people go nuts with this - obligatory Casey Neistat $2 bill video).

What to expect when you’re expecting to conduct all future financial transactions using $2 bills

So, we’ve established that the $2 bill is not in fact all that rare. But cultural myths are a stubborn thing, and unfortunately, most of the world’s population is not yet subscribed to Rabbit Cavern, so you should anticipate running into people who become confused or scared by the sight of a $2 bill.

Sometimes this sadly amounts to attempts at shaming people for simply using the $2 bill. The New York Times spoke to one $2 bill aficionado who “pours roughly 7,000 notes into circulation each year” that got pulled aside by a deli owner after he made a purchase using $2s.

“Hey Mr. $2 Bill, not everyone wants your money,” Mr. Zaklad recalls him saying. “Look up your history on Jefferson and slavery.”

Sorry, does this guy think that all the other dudes on money are good people? I’ve literally never heard a single kind word spoken about Andrew Jackson in my entire life but somehow this guy has been blissfully unaware this whole time. Please, no one tell him to google “how many hundreds of slaves did george washington own in his lifetime” (once again I am writing this on America 250 Day so I am feeling super patriotic right now)

But sometimes, the consequences for attempting to spend valid U.S. currency go way beyond some weirdo in a deli insinuating that you’re a racist for liking silly money. Sometimes, attempting to complete a financial transaction using “legal tender for all debts, public and private” (I’m literally reading this off a $2 bill right now) will get you sent to jail.

There was one guy who paid Best Buy with $2 bills to install a CD player in his son’s car and ended up “handcuffed to a pole for three hours” while the police waited for the U.S. Secret Service to arrive.

Another time, a 13-year-old girl tried to pay for her school lunch using a $2 bill given to her by her grandmother and ended up being detained and threatened with third-degree felony charges.

The bill she paid with was printed in 1953, which is old enough that counterfeit detection pens don’t work on it, as the chemical properties of paper money in the U.S. were changed in 1960. So, when the pen’s marking showed up dark, she was sent to the office of the school’s police officer, who said she “could be in big trouble.”

(They made all this fuss over two whole dollars despite the fact that 82% of kids in this school district were poor enough to get free or reduced-price lunch.)

The cops took this student’s $2 bill to the bank to verify that it was real, and once they realized their mistake, they dutifully apologized to her returned her bill without apologizing, and she didn’t get to eat lunch that day because they took her money.

This took place in Texas, perhaps to state the obvious, and it turns out this whole “students being arrested for suspected counterfeit money” is actually a lot more common than you would think. But what you probably won’t find surprising at all is that when local media investigated this trend, they “could not find a single white student suspect” detained for counterfeit money. Texas btw

Personally, I have never tried using a $2 bill at any place of business that isn’t an unlicensed lemonade stand being operated by a child so I cannot attest to how this goes, but I imagine it would be stressful. I am confident the barista would think I was trying to dupe them with play money.

Silly money is fun, okay?

Slight clarification, actually: I have never tried to pay for something at an actual place of business using $2 bills, but I have left tips with $2 bills, and this always goes very well. I recently gave a server a few $2s and her reaction was, and I quote, “Sick.” People like weird money!

And people notice $2s in a way that they don’t notice other money. They just stand out, and this can be used to its advantage.

I’m gonna commit an editorial faux pas by quoting directly from Wikipedia here, but guess what, it’s my blog and I make the rules and also I’m tired, okay? Anyway:

Certain conventions and tourism/convention bureaus capitalize on the scarcity of $2 notes in circulation, encouraging convention attendees and tourists to spend the bills to illustrate to the host communities the economic impact that the conventions and tourism bring. Sometimes known as “SpendTom” campaigns, the $2 bills linger in the community as a constant reminder.

I think this is really cool! How neat to have a passive yet highly visible demonstration of the economic impact a group of people can have.

You know who else loves $2 bills? Strippers. Apparently strip clubs “often make change with $2 bills in order to allow their dancers to receive better tips.”

And now that we’ve talked about strippers, it’s time to discuss 9/11.

There’s a really touching story of a New York man, Robert, who proposed to his then-girlfriend, Myrta. But Robert didn’t have an engagement ring to give to Myrta, so he instead pulled out a pair of $2 bills. It was deeply symbolic of several things: “that this would be the second marriage for both of them, that they were two of a kind, that it would be a second chance for happiness.” They promised that “as long as they carried these twos, they would be united.”

On the morning of September 11th, Robert was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and he called Myrta to let her know that there had been an accident in the North Tower but that he was safe and would call her once he reached the street. Myrta never heard from Robert again.

Four years after the attacks, Robert’s remains continued to be undiscovered, but the NYPD found some personal effects to return to Myrta: “a wedding ring and a wallet containing a neatly folded $2 bill.”

Once she came into possession of the items, Myrta “took out her own bill, held them together, and found ‘the closure she needed.’”

Wow, this post took an unexpectedly sad turn, huh? Anyway, I love the $2 bill. I think it’s really special how something that is literally just normal money can be so meaningful in so many different ways for so many different people. I think it’s beautiful how a silly little piece of paper can put such a smile on people’s faces just because it has the number “2” on it.

We need more ways to find joy in the everyday, and more than that, to deliver joy to others, and this is literally a no-cost method to do so in the sense that it costs you no more to spend $2 using a $2 bill versus two $1 bills.

You should habitually spend $2 bills too! And literally the only thing holding you back from making this a reality for yourself is your ability and/or willingness to make a trip to the bank. I am here to tell you DO IT NOW!

(OR TOMORROW, IF YOU ARE BUSY TODAY. OR IF THE BANK IS CLOSED RIGHT NOW. REALLY, IT’S OKAY IF YOU DON’T TAKE ACTION ON THIS IMMEDIATELY, BUT IT’S JUST IMPORTANT NOT TO GET INTO THE HABIT OF MAKING EXCUSE AFTER EXCUSE AS IF EXTERNAL FACTORS ARE HOLDING YOU BACK WHEN IN REALITY THE SINGLE GREATEST IMPEDIMENT TO YOUR PROGRESS IS YOUR OWN LACK OF WILLINGNESS TO BE PROACTIVELY DILIGENT ON YOUR OWN BEHALF. ANYWAY THE BANK CAN HAVE TRICKY HOURS, SO I UNDERSTAND.)

Ok bye thanks for reading I appreciate you

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“Thought you were already a clown?” was the most common response I got from the people in my life with whom I shared this news, and to that I say, “Yes, but now it’s considered an art form rather than a complicated amalgamation of personality defects. And you are required to clap.”

Despite the fact that I had zero formal clowning experience prior to joining the troupe, this has been perhaps the least surprising personal revelation that I’ve ever shared with the people in my life. Because as it turns out, when you have a lifetime’s worth of experience being a generally clownish person, people kinda assume you were already doing that anyway.

So what have I learned during my time as a clown?

The most fundamental thing I need you to understand about the art of clown is that it is primarily about seeing the world with curiosity and wonder. When you embrace clown, you see the world in a way that you haven’t seen it since you were a kid and you allow yourself the freedom to engage with it on that basis regardless of how others will perceive you.

When my clown troupe begins our rehearsals, we often do breathing exercises together.

“Breathe in clown, breathe out reality.”

We all close our eyes and take a few deep breaths together and literally forget about the fact that the outside world exists. In this magic snippet of time in some rented rehearsal space somewhere, jobs don’t exist, emails don’t exist, traffic doesn’t exist. It’s just clown.

When we breathe out reality, we all just release whatever sound wants to come out at that moment. Collectively, it’s this big exasperated groan as we drop for a moment the responsibilities of the real world and focus on nothing but being silly for the next two hours. This exhale, where I give myself permission to briefly forget about anything and everything happening outside that room, where I allow my worries to pause, is one of the most cathartic things I get to experience on a regular basis.

You open your eyes and you see the world as if for the first time ever. You approach everything with awe. I won’t lie, my first few times doing this it kinda felt like I was just going through the motions and pretending a little bit, but the first time you’re able to really embrace this attitude it is transcendent, like, “Why haven’t I been living my life like this the entire time?”

As one clown says, “When you put on the makeup, you feel free. You can be silly and joyful. You get rid of all your inhibitions. It’s license to play. You have this great freedom to be your true self.”

But guess what? You don’t even need the clown makeup to be silly and joyful! You can just do that literally whenever you want! (Although the makeup certainly helps.)

And when you become a clown, you’ll be in very good company. Recent clowns of note include Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie, who credits his clown experience with “teaching him to be unflinching in the face of exposure, both emotional and physical,” and whose SNL “Stripper” sketch was directly inspired by an original clown bit he came up with. Try not to think about Connor Storrie in full clown makeup while you’re watching the sex scenes in Heated Rivalry.

But Mr. Storrie was just the latest in the long and proud tradition of clown, an art form which traces its roots back much further than you would expect.

Clowns are about as old as the literal Pyramids

History’s first clowns came from the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 2498–2345 BC). This was also about the same time that they started getting super into the Sun god, Ra. Imagine if they’d worshipped clowns instead? Hoping I get reincarnated into that alternate timeline. Anyway.

Clowns appear in many different cultures across the centuries, including ancient Greece and Rome as well as the indigenous cultures of the Americas.

The Heyoka in Lakota and Dakota cultures is described by Wikipedia’s editors as a “sacred clown shaman” and occupies a very important cultural role by holding a mirror to people’s actions and “forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses.”

They help people ponder important questions, ground themselves in reality, and find levity even during times of hardship. Wikipedia again: “For example, if food is scarce, a heyókȟa may sit around and complain about how full he is; during a baking hot heat wave, a heyókȟa might shiver with cold and put on gloves and cover himself with a thick blanket. Similarly, when it is freezing he might wander around naked, complaining that it is too hot.”

Lakota holy man John Fire Lame Deer gives this explanation for why Heyoka are so important to his culture:

For people who are as poor as us, who have lost everything, who had to endure so much death and sadness, laughter is a precious gift. When we were dying like flies from white man’s disease, when we were driven into reservations, when the government rations did not arrive and we were starving, watching the pranks and capers of Heyókȟa were a blessing.

The modern clown as we know it, with white face makeup and all, first came about in the 1800s and was the brainchild of one Joseph Grimaldi.

Grimaldi was extremely popular during his lifetime. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “It was claimed that a full eighth of London’s population had seen Grimaldi on stage.”

At the beginning of Grimaldi’s career, the archetypal clown character more closely resembled “a country bumpkin” than anything you’d see at the circus today. But in 1802, the world of clown was forever changed when “Grimaldi started applying distinctive face paint to make him visible from the back of London’s vast theaters.”

In addition to originating the modern clown character, Grimaldi may also be responsible for the popular conception of the clown as a tortured performer who uses their whimsical makeup to mask some deeper pain.

Smithsonian again: “As Grimaldi himself joked, ‘I am GRIM ALL DAY, but I make you laugh at night.’”

This legacy of a dual-life reality for the clown was further cemented after Grimaldi’s death, when a young Charles Dickens was tasked with editing the late clown’s memoirs.

Dickens is credited by one clown researcher “with watering the seeds in popular imagination of the scary clown—he’d even go so far as to say Dickens invented the scary clown—by creating a figure who is literally destroying himself to make his audiences laugh.”

If you’re scared of clowns I do believe you have Charles Dickens to blame:

What Dickens did was to make it difficult to look at a clown without wondering what was going on underneath the make-up: Says Stott, “It becomes impossible to disassociate the character from the actor.” That Dickens’s version of Grimaldi’s memoirs was massively popular meant that this perception, of something dark and troubled masked by humor, would stick.

But Grimaldi’s legacy isn’t all sadness and fear! In recognition of his preeminent role in clown culture, an east London church has held a clown-themed Sunday service in his honor every year since 1959.

From The New York Times:

“We can be faithful to God and also have a laugh,” Laura Luz, the church’s vicar, said in an interview, noting that, during her eight years leading the service, one clown had thrown a custard pie in her face and another had encased her in a giant soap bubble.

While Grimaldi may have been the first modern clown, he was far from the last, and the cultural impact of clowns would only intensify as the years marched on. Enter Bozo.

Bozo is a title of respect, actually

Perhaps the most recognizable clown in American history, maybe apart from Ronald McDonald (more on him later), is Bozo the Clown.

You’ll notice the caption for this image says “an iteration of Bozo” – what’s the deal with that?

Turns out Bozo clown shows were produced under a franchise model rather than syndication, meaning that instead of there being just one Bozo show that local stations paid for the rights to broadcast (i.e. how Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune works), each individual station had to produce their own unique version of Bozo to air.

There were hundreds of individual Bozos across the country. In some major metropolitan areas, you might even see one Bozo in one town and a completely different Bozo in just the next town over.

This is really interesting to me because Bozo, as mentioned, is one of the most recognizable and culturally significant clowns in American history, and yet if you grew up with Bozo and have fond memories of watching his show on TV, your memory of him is probably completely different from someone else’s memory of Bozo unless they happened to live in the same media market as you as a child.

Like, I grew up watching SpongeBob so I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if there were hundreds of different versions of SpongeBob across the country. I’d form all these memories of what my SpongeBob did on TV and what that meant to me, and then one days years later I’d make a joke to a friend like “I wumbo, you wumbo,” and they’d be like, “What the hell are you talking about?” because their SpongeBob (or Patrick, I guess) never said that.

To be perfectly clear I did not have a Bozo growing up and literally my only interaction with the Bozo IP in my entire life before writing this post was the “Bozo Dubbed Over” sketch from I Think You Should Leave so maybe I’m not really the person to opine on all things Bozo, but I digress.

Anyway, Bozo was a really big deal during the second half of the 20th century. The first person to play Bozo was Pinto Colvig, who was also the original voice behind Disney’s Goofy and Pluto, and Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, appeared as several different characters on the Boston production of Bozo.

By far the most popular local version of Bozo was WGN-TV Chicago’s Bozo’s Circus. Not only was Chicago Bozo the top Bozo, but it was also one of the most successful locally produced children’s programs in the entire history of television. The waiting list for tickets to the studio audience eventually reached ten years long, so WGN simply stopped taking reservations for an entire decade to let the list clear up.

Evidently this did nothing to quell people’s passion for Bozo. Here’s what happened when they opened the waiting list up again ten years later:

On the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.

I really cannot understate how intensely dedicated people were to Bozo. In 1967, Chicago got hit by a blizzard so bad that it has its own Wikipedia page, dumping a record-setting 23 inches of snow on the city. To this day Chicago has never received more snowfall in a single storm. Ten-foot drifts covered the runways at Midway Airport. Eighty-six people died throughout the region.

According to a National Weather Service recounting of the blizzard, “20,000 cars and 1,100 CTA buses were stranded in the snow” and the Chicago Tribune reported that “[o]ne woman who worked downtown and lived on the city’s North Side--normally a 35-minute commute--spent four hours making the trip.”

The National Weather Service again:

“Helicopters were used to deliver medical supplies to hospitals, and food and blankets to stranded motorists. Expectant mothers were taken to hospitals by sled, bulldozer and snow plow.”

[...]

“The 1967 snowstorm probably caused the biggest disruption to the commerce and transportation of Chicago of any event since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. “

And yet, despite all the death, disruption, and disorder that befell Chicago in the wake of this historic storm, seven hours after snow started to fall there were still 193 people standing in line outside Bozo’s studio, waiting to use their tickets. It was one of the only times in the show’s history that a live taping had to be canceled.

Quick tangent, but I think you’ll appreciate this – the quantity of snow that fell on Chicago was simply so immense that figuring out how to dispose of it all became a major logistical issue, forcing people to get creative.

Some railroads started loading snow onto trains that were headed south, the idea being that it would just melt in transit. This worked well, and the idea was so novel that local and national media caught wind of the story and reported on it.

The story made it all the way down to Florida where a 13-year-old girl heard about the snow trains and decided she wanted some snow to be sent to her. So, she sent a letter to the president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad asking him to send snow, and he actually agreed to do it.

From WBEZ Chicago:

“It’s just that 13-year-old Terri Hodson hadn’t realized that all of the other southbound snow was shipped in uninsulated cars — the whole point being to melt. But Quinn, possibly sensing a brilliant PR stunt but possibly out of the goodness of his heart, had the snow shipped to Florida in refrigerator cars.”

Unfortunately for Terri, the snow was absolute garbage quality by the time it got to Florida:

“I had expected it to be soft and powdery. You know, like, dripping snowflakes and it would just come pouring out of the car. Unfortunately after a week’s ride in a refrigerator car it was no longer soft powdery snow. It was quite icy.”

Anyway, it was a crazy storm, but as we can see, it was still not enough to stop people from trudging through the snow to go see Bozo. He was an icon whose legendary status transcended international borders.

Come to Brazil

There were foreign versions of Bozo all across the world, but one of the most popular was in Brazil. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but the people of Brazil were absolutely obsessed with Bozo.

Bozo had a huge cultural impact and continues to be referenced in art and media to this day. Bozo’s influence has even stretched to the political sphere – opponents of former president and wannabe dictator Jair Bolsonaro have often referred to him as Bozo to make fun of him.

One person who didn’t like this (besides Bolsonaro) was the first guy who played Bozo in Brazil, who said that calling Bolsonaro Bozo was a compliment, actually – “Bozo is a serious character, a good, honest character. They have nothing to say bad about the character.”

Now, Brazilian media reports that this dude is a huge Bolsonaro supporter, so he’s obviously biased in saying this, but to be honest, this viewpoint tracks with my experience in the clown community. Like, ever since I became a clown I have stopped using “clown” as an insult. Clowning is a respectable profession, okay? It is not an insult. Please do not disrespect my culture.

We’re gonna talk about Ronald McDonald in a second, but it would be a dereliction of my duty to you as a reader if I didn’t dig into this tiny mention of Bozo’s broader cultural impact on Brazilian media:

Don’t worry, we’re gonna keep this PG-13. Here’s a quick rundown of what erotic Brazilian Bozo (called Gozo) was all about in three images:

Gozo intro theme song:

Gozo takes calls from his audience:

(Right after this Gozo gets a phone call from an actor portraying a “14-year-old with the body of an 18-year-old” and he immediately invites her to his house)

Gozo Gets Threatened

Gozo also shares a reimagining of the Three Little Pigs where, when the wolf blows the first house down, the pigs are discovered to be having a “tremendous orgy.” Really great stuff.

(Full episode here)

Okay, I don’t have much to say about the cheeseburger clown, but you should check out the television debut of Ronald McDonald just to see how different fast food commercials were back in 1963.

This is so funny to me because these days, restaurants work so hard to make their food look unrealistically pristine in commercials. But here, the burger looks like absolute trash. They’re not even trying to make it look good. They’re showing you what you’ll get, they’re being honest about it. It’s almost refreshing.

I’m here to tell you that Pennywise is a fraud

Okay, it’s finally time to address the elephant in the room – or, I suppose, the evil clown in the room? Sorry, to be clear, there’s not an evil clown in the room with us right now. Didn’t mean to frighten you.

Scary clown media kinda took off in the 1980s and I’m not sure their/our image has recovered since.

Reasons for this sudden influx of anti-clown attitudes include but are not limited to:

• The serial killer John Wayne Gacy (aka the “Killer Clown”) who was caught and arrested in 1978;

• Stephen King’s It, which came out in 1986 and became the best-selling hardcover fiction book in the U.S. that year;

• And perhaps just the general way that people were in the 1980s? (See: Satanic panic, Presidency of Ronald Reagan, Hairstyles in the 1980s)

From a professor of psychology in 2013:

“You don’t really see clowns in those kinds of safe, fun contexts anymore. You see them in movies and they’re scary. Kids are not exposed in that kind of safe fun context as much as they used to be and the images in the media, the negative images, are still there.”

Everyone has their own reasons for being afraid of clowns, but a lot of it usually comes down to being freaked out by the face paint, being unsettled by how difficult it is to read the clown’s emotions through said face paint, and being concerned about what sort of dastardly, consequence-free behavior the clown could engage in while protected by, once again, the identity-concealing barrier of the face paint.

So maybe it’s just the face paint then? The organizers of one circus festival honed in on this theory and ran a workshop to make people less afraid of clowns, centered around getting to see what the clown looks like without the face paint before watching them transform into their clown persona.

This “process of graded exposure” was accompanied by “an explanation about clowns, what they do and where they come from,” all with the intention of demystifying the experience of clown and hopefully making it a bit less unsettling for fearful participants.

Did it work? Not sure! That wasn’t covered in the article, sorry. But I’m willing to bet the experience helped ease the minds of at least a few people, and that’s gotta be worth something.

Before we move on from scary clowns, we obviously have to address the “Great Clown Scare of 2016,” as one reporter calls it. This was very damaging to the broader clown community.

Let me just say here and now, once and for all, that horror movie clowns are not clowns, okay? If the intention is to frighten, then they are bastardizing the art form and I am mad at them.

People in the clown community are actually very serious about this. The scary “clowns” are personae non gratae and we do not own them. Clowning is a joyful art and Pennywise has no place here.

But yeah, the clown scare was a big deal. In the midst of it all, McDonald’s decided that Ronald McDonald would lay low for a little bit, which was probably driven just as much by an urge to protect their brand as it was out of fear for Ronald’s life.

Seriously, do you remember how bad it was? Target pulled clown masks off the shelves. Cities asked people not to dress up as clowns for Halloween. Theme parks told their clown employees to make sure they completely removed their makeup and costumes before leaving the premises to go home lest they get attacked in transit. It was a scary time to be a clown.

The Huffington Post reported that some Floridians decided to arm themselves when they went trick-or-treating as a result of the clown stuff, but I have a feeling that they were gonna bring their guns with them trick-or-treating anyway.

“I’ll be carrying for sure, I’m not leaving to chance,” Kimberly Kersey, who planned to take her children trick-or-treating in Palm Bay, told Florida Today. “I’m terrified of clowns already and if one messes with me or my kids it’ll be to the hospital or morgue they go.”

But mercifully, not everyone hates clowns, and some people see the potential for good in the presence of a goofy person with makeup and a red nose.

And while Kimberly here may want to send clowns to the hospital to receive lifesaving care, others want to send clowns to the hospital to be the caregivers themselves. This is the idea behind Clown Care, and it is so special to me I had to hold back tears the entire time I was researching this part.

Clown Care was first introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s. Specially trained clowns visit hospitals in full clown regalia to spend time with patients (mostly children, but sometimes adults, too) and allow them a moment of reprieve from the stressful experience of being in a hospital.

Clowns play music, tell stories, perform magic tricks, and engage in all manner of clownery to help alleviate anxiety, fear, boredom, loneliness, pain, or whatever else patients may be experiencing during their time in the hospital.

Clown Care visits have been shown to help lift patients’ moods by injecting hope and humor into the otherwise mundane routine of a stay at the hospital. Hospital staff and families of patients experience a positive effect as well.

From Smithsonian:

The January 2013 issue of the Journal of Health Psychology published an Italian study that found that, in a randomized controlled trial, the presence of a therapy clown reduced pre-operative anxiety in children booked for minor surgery. Another Italian study, carried out in 2008 and published in the December 2011 issue of the Natural Medicine Journal found that children hospitalized for respiratory illnesses got better faster after playing with therapeutic clowns.

What really stands out to me about Clown Care is the psychological impact it has on children who may be enduring the most painful experience of their young lives. And more than that, I’m touched by the responsibility that these clowns feel to be a positive presence for the children and to make a meaningful impact on their lives.

To illustrate this point, I’m going to share a series of quotes from Frank Avruch, the first person to play Bozo on syndicated television. Please spend some time with each of these quotes:

Let’s talk about your public appearances outside of WHDH, which you mentioned earlier. Shopping centers, hospitals, charity events? Which ones were the most rewarding?

Probably visiting the kids in the hospital. [...] I had a little squeaker in my glove and pretend my nose is squeaking. I would tell a child, “You know, you got a squeak too” and touch their nose and press my glove squeaker. They couldn’t get over it.

At one point, Frank broke his hip playing racquetball and had to spend almost two months in the hospital, so he had another clown (Nozo) fill in for him.

The station said, How can we put a little spin on it? So I said, kids are always nervous about going to the hospital. How about a few segments of showing Bozo in the hospital? And Nozo says, “Now let’s see how my brother Bozo is doing.” And then we’d go to the hospital. And I’m in the hospital bed – remember, I can’t get out of bed – so I put on the wig and make-up. And we talked to the kids and tried to explain, “Hey kids, if you have to go to the hospital, it’s the best place. And you don’t have to be afraid.”

Looking back, what memories of being Bozo dominate?

I think what I remember most is the – I don’t want to say adulation, but the feeling I could see in the faces of the kids when they saw me in person. Their eyes would just pop out of their heads and they just wanted to touch me. I loved being able to accomplish and to teach, as I said, to bring a lot of fresh new ideas to the kids. As I say, I loved the role that I was handed and I think I made the most of it. When I meet people today, it’s amazing. It’s 40 years later and they say, “You were part of my childhood.”

How did playing Bozo change you?

I just felt the – I guess the word is love – the love that I received from complete strangers, young and old. Parents to young kids who just stared at me with awe. It just made me realize that I better watch what I do, ‘cause it’s like people who become an idol or an icon. People look up to you and you want them to see you in the best light. And I tried to lead my life that way, so I don’t do anything I would regret, as you have with so many of the celebrities today. They get into trouble too quickly and people just jump on it. What I learned is that I have to guard this [image] and just treat it as a very special thing. It’s a relationship that I have with the public, when I go out, to make sure I put my best foot forward. I think that way it has influenced my life. But maybe I was that way before Bozo, I don’t know. [laugh]

The most important aspect of hospital clowning, in my opinion, is the way it empowers the children at a point in their life when they are feeling more helpless than they have perhaps ever been.

From a Bozo biographer:

“...a cornerstone of Bozo was that he always interacted with children on their own terms. He didn’t talk down to them or try to relate to them in a way that he wanted.”

And another hospital clown:

What’s the most important thing a clown does in the hospital?

The most important thing a clown does in the hospital is to transform the energy in the room. We are probably the only aspect in hospital that the children are in charge of. They are in charge of us. One of the things a clown can do is to be more helpless than the children, because then the children become the authorities and they help us. And we know from experience, that a child who helps us is helping him or herself.

In closing

If there’s only one thing you take away from this post, let it be this: clowns take silly very seriously.

We may play the part of the goofiest of goofballs, we may fall on our butts and get pies in our faces, but at the end of the day, it is a very serious art form.

But serious as it is, one thing clown is NOT is restrictive. Anyone can be a clown. You may already be a clown without realizing it.

We can all learn something from the core principles of clown:

• Stop taking yourself so seriously

• Embrace and nurture your inner child today and every day

• Approach the world with more curiosity, wonder, and silliness

You hear people talk so much these days about “whimsy,” and I can think of few things more whimsical than literal clowns.

So what’s stopping you? Nobody needs a red nose and makeup to be a clown. All you need is openness to the unpredictability of the world, and you can start today.

So go ahead, and I’ll see you in clown town:

“Breathe in clown, breathe out reality.”

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The three types are:

1. Basal tears, which lubricate the eye and help keep it dust-free.

2. Reflex tears, which form in response to irritation from things like onions or pepper spray. These tears can also occur in response to bright lights, hot foods, coughing, vomiting, and yawning.

3. Emotional tears, which I trust you are already familiar with. These encompass both happy and sad tears, as well as tears generated in response to anger, laughter, or pain.

Each type of tear differs significantly in its chemical composition, specifically catered to the purpose that it serves.

Emotional tears have higher concentrations of stress-inducing hormones than the other two types, so it’s thought that crying may play a biological role in balancing out stress levels.

Crying does not always come easily to everyone, but some people who have no trouble at all producing tears are professional mourners.

well yeah, i would certainly think so

What is a professional mourner? Pretty much exactly what it sounds like! These people are paid to assume the role of a grieving family member or friend and attend funerals to comfort or entertain the family of the deceased.

Professional mourning is among the oldest occupations we have – it’s mentioned in the Bible and other ancient religious texts and has been prominent in cultures from Egypt and China to India and Rome.

Back in the day, most of the people hired as professional mourners were women, and this was often one of the only paid occupations available to women at all. Men weren’t hired for these jobs as often because – and stop me if you’ve heard this one before – it was seen as less socially acceptable for them to be visibly emotional in public. Some things never change!

Professional mourners are still common in China to this day, and although it’s not as big an industry in the West, it’s still around to a limited extent.

There was a (now-defunct) company in the UK called “Rent a Mourner,” and here’s an interesting account from 2016 written by a professional mourner himself.

I was surprised to learn how much preparation goes into professional mourning jobs – they really work quite hard to embody the role of whoever they’re playing.

“One time, I needed to learn some archery, because I was supposed to arrive as a deceased archery teacher’s former protege, and there was a chance I’d actually have to fire off arrows.”

You might be wondering, how do they generate fake tears on command?

“My go-to is rewatching Schindler’s List beforehand [...] Female mourners I know will often use Titanic. A few of the women I know track their menstrual cycles to know how much effort they’re going to have to put into a good cry.”

And you might also be wondering, what happens to the tears after the funeral is over, just sitting on these faces with nowhere to go? Don’t worry, this is where the tear-drinking moths come in.

Moths have been observed drinking tears from:

• Elephants

• Horses

• Pigs

• Sheep

• Water buffalo

• Antelope

• And more!

Here’s a moth that drinks the tears of birds while they sleep (video) and here’s a species of bee that drinks sweat (commonly called sweat bees). One YouTuber asks, “Has this ever happened to you?” as a bee lands on his arm to consume his sweat, to which I respond, no, of course it’s never happened to me, are you insane?

Here’s an awesome picture of a butterfly drinking a turtle’s tears:

And the same species of butterfly drinking the tears of a crocodile:

Side note, Julia Butterflies would be a great name for a children’s television presenter.

Thankfully for us, no moth species is known to subsist primarily on human tears, but there have been some observations of this happening in nature nonetheless.

The first-ever recording of human tears becoming food for a moth was in Southeast Asia in 1966. Here, moths made a buffet of people who slept outside and left their precious eyes unguarded: herders, woodcutters, porters, and caravan travelers.

One guy conducted a really important experiment where he did all sorts of things to make himself more attractive as a source for tear-feeding moths. He refused to wash his clothes, he made himself really stinky on purpose, and he even smeared his face with the tears of a wild bovine that the moths loved to drink from.

But despite this, he found that most instances of moths drinking human tears occurred when the humans were within 10 meters of a more typical moth target, suggesting that our eyes are simply not very appealing food sources to the moths -- “certainly less so than a water buffalo,” as one researcher put it.

How does it feel to have your tears consumed by a moth? One man described the sensation as “subtle and not bothersome,” and I’m almost inclined to sign up for this experience myself when I hear him describe how the moths “gently sipped his tears in peaceful congregations.”

One species of tear-drinking bees are known to mark eyes with scents once they are done feeding, which makes it easier to find this particular set of eyes later when they become hungry for tears again.

Imagine getting biologically marked by a bee because your tears taste so good. Imagine an insect marking its territory on your eyeball. Imagine being the domain of a bug. I could never.

Personally, I try to let bugs simply do their thing when they decide to land on my body, but even I have my limits. I value my role as a vessel for symbiosis but I will not be upstaged by an invertebrate. I have self-respect, okay?

And on that anticlimactic note, we quickly arrive at the end of the post! Shorter post this week, I know, sorry! Turns out it’s a lot harder to sit at the library and read Wikipedia for three hours straight when it’s nice out.

I will be back before you know it with another post on a topic that I’ve probably not even heard of at this point. As always, thanks for reading, until next time :)

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I am absolutely obsessed with the Artemis II mission. And in particular, I am obsessed with the below photo taken by astronaut Christina Koch, known as Earthset.

It’s so cool to me that we could look at this picture right after it was taken and instantly know that it will be one of the most important photographs taken this entire century. What a special feeling.

Earthset is sort of a tribute to Earthrise, taken on Christmas Eve 1968 by astronaut William Anders. In 2018, Anders reflected on the photo fifty years to the day after taking it, saying, “We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth.”

What’s even cooler than Earthset, in my opinion, is this video that astronaut Reid Wiseman took on his iPhone as the Integrity capsule disappeared behind the Moon. It really stands out to me because we’re so used to seeing these professional-quality photographs of space stuff, but how often do you see a video of the Moon that some dad just took on his phone?

More Artemis photos! I can’t stop looking at this picture of Christina Koch looking out the window of the capsule at the Earth below. Absolutely mesmerizing. The way her braid is floating through the zero gravity air? So cool.

Anyway, I love our astronauts. I keep thinking about how generations past have looked up to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as these idols, these giants, these heroes – and now we have our own, new heroes. Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen. Your children’s children will be taught these names in school.

Anyway, we are living through an incredible moment in history, and we are seeing images created today that will live in history books for centuries. Assuming we still have books centuries from now.

And in the spirit of celebrating history and the beautiful treasure that is our shared human culture, let’s take a look back at some other photos that have been considered some of the most important ever taken.

First a few more space photos, then onto the rest of recorded human history

The first space selfie!

First image of Earth from space

Pale Blue Dot is one of my favorite photos ever taken. Do you see Earth in there? You might have to look closely.

Here’s a newer version of the photo, released by NASA in 2020, created using modern image processing techniques. You can make out our home planet a little more clearly in this one.

Pale Blue Dot was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe when it was 3.7 billion miles (about 6 billion km) from Earth as it was zooming further and further away from our Solar System.

Out of the 640,000 pixels in the full-size image, Earth’s size is less than a single pixel (0.12 of a pixel, to be exact).

The photo likely wouldn’t have been taken without the advocacy of Carl Sagan, who first started talking about taking a photo like this about a decade before it was actually taken, which really gives you a sense of the grand scale of these missions and their years-long timelines.

After the picture was taken, it took the radio signal transmitting the data nearly five and a half hours traveling at the speed of light to reach scientists back on Earth. Fast forward to today, 36 years later, and Voyager 1 is nearly one light day from our planet. It is expected to reach this monumental mark on November 15th, 2026 (mark your calendars!), nearly fifty years after the probe was launched.

We can’t talk about Pale Blue Dot without sharing what Sagan had to say about it. You are required to read the following paragraph:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Seeing the Earth from such extraordinary perspectives can have a profound effect on people. There’s a phenomenon commonly experienced by astronauts called the overview effect, where their perception of self, their perception of humanity, their perception of the entire universe is completely transformed by seeing our planet from above.

Okay, last space photo – I reaaaaally like this one because it’s like, look at that, we’re this big orb hurtling through the vastness of the universe and the only thing protecting us from the cold inhospitable vacuum of space is this pale blue line of our atmosphere. Fun, right?

Thank you for indulging me, back to Earth now

Look, it’s the first photograph ever taken! Presenting: View from the Window at Le Gras, taken in 1826 in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France.

If you live in Austin, TX, you can go see the original plate on display at the Harry Ransom Center!

Somebody on Reddit shared this “modern remake” of the image, and it’s not clear to me how this image was created (it’s from 3 years ago so I don’t feel like AI was good enough then?), but I’ll just share it here to give you a better sense of what you’re actually looking at in the image.

View from the Window at Le Gras was captured using camera obscura techniques and had a likely exposure time of eight hours to several days.1

Here’s the first photograph that includes an image of a human, taken in Paris in 1838.

The street was apparently quite busy at the time of the photo, but because the exposure was five minutes long, the only people who are actually visible in the final image are the two men in the bottom left corner, one seemingly polishing the other’s boots.

From 1860, we have the oldest aerial photograph, taken from a hot air balloon above Boston.

And the first X-ray, taken by its inventor in 1895, featuring his wife’s hand and ring.

After seeing the image, she reportedly said, “I have seen my death.” 

From 1899, the first underwater photograph, as well as the first taken by a camera designed for underwater photography:

I love this next photo – it doesn’t have any fancy accolades but it’s included on the “List of photographs considered the most important” anyway, and I think it stands out because it’s just a photo of someone having fun at a time when most photos were still very serious and/or boring.

And it gets even more fun – the photographer was only 11 years old! He would go on to take photos his entire life, but he made his living as a painter and didn’t become known for his photography until he was nearly 70.

This fella, Jacques Henri Lartigue, also participated in the painting event at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Oh yeah, did you know they used to have art competitions at the Olympics? Brb, lobbying LA 2028 to include a Substack event. I will happily accept bronze.

Migrant Mother is easily one of the most iconic photos in American history.

Did you know the photographer, Dorothea Lange, took five additional shots of the woman and her children? You can see them on the Wikipedia page, but I’ll share my favorite of the five here.

The photo was taken in 1936 but the subject of the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, wasn’t identified until 1978.

When Lange took the photos, Thompson and her family were pulled over in a pea-pickers camp after their car broke down and they were able to coast to a stop just inside the camp. Freezing rain had destroyed the crop so there was no work available for them.

Thompson did all sorts of work to support her family: “I worked in hospitals. I tended bar. I cooked. I worked in the fields. I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids.” She sometimes picked up to 500 pounds of cotton a day.

An interviewer asked her, “Did you ever lose hope?”

“Nope. If I’d’a lost hope, this country never would have made it.”

Jesse Owens Salute (1936)

Monroe (1954)

Leap Into Freedom (1961)

Chairman Mao Swims in the Yangtze (1966)

Below, in an iconic series of photos symbolic of the fight for women’s rights, we see what happened when Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor in 1967.

A year earlier, Bobbi Gibb tried to register for the race but was turned away on the grounds that women were apparently physiologically incapable of running 26 miles.

Gibbs ran the race anyway, entering the course as an unofficial entrant near the starting gates, and finished with a time of 3:21:40, beating two-thirds of the runners.

The next year, Switzer decided to run as an official competitor, registering under the name “K.V. Switzer” and having a male runner pick up her race bib for her.

Sports Illustrated reported, “She has crashed the Boston Marathon, an event for men only, having obtained an entry number through chicanery. [...] Miss Switzer pleads that she was ignorant of the rule barring women but that, uhm, uh, well, she resorted to a conspiracy just in case.”

According to ESPN, there weren’t actually any rules specifically prohibiting women from running the marathon, because “the idea of women running the 26.2-mile distance was so foreign, the rulebook made no mention of them.”

Now, let’s learn a little bit about the angry bald fella trying to tackle Kathrine. This is Jock Semple, a race official for the Boston Marathon, and he took his role very seriously. As Wikipedia’s editors note, he was “a strict traditionalist who considered the marathon to be ‘sacred’, and was infamous for charging angrily after participants he found insufficiently serious about the race.”

Sports Illustrated expands on that “charging angrily after participants” thing:

With a shriek, he clambers down from the bus and bounds after them. “He hurls not only his body at them,” Cloney says, “but also a rather choice array of epithets, which fortunately are made indistinguishable by his [Scottish accent].”

One year, a man decided to run the marathon in an Uncle Sam outfit, with an ad for storm windows on his back. The response: “Jock, lugging a tray in one hand, matched him stride for stride, dashing his face with cups of water.”

Another year, a man donned “webbed snorkeler’s shoes and a grotesque mask” to run the race, so “Jock made a flying tackle” at him, but “missed and splashed face down in a gutter.” Race officials “were barely able to dissuade the Framingham police from arresting him for attempted assault on the runner.”

“The thing that made me so damned mad,” Jock explains, “was that the guy was runnin’ with the good runners.”

Reading all this, the sanctity of the race in Jock’s mind becomes very clear.

“Jock is the guy who gets things straightened out.” At the Yonkers Marathon, for example, he darts ahead of the runners in his car, blasting away on his horn, demanding a clear road. Stop the world, he seems to cry, there’s a race coming through! “If a President’s funeral were coming from the opposite direction,” says another of his runners, John Linscott, “Jock would make it back off.”

On the topic of women’s participation in athletics, Sports Illustrated decided to quote him while retaining his Scottish accent, which was a fantastic editorial choice:

“I’m not o’poozed t’ women’s athletics. But we’re taught t’ respect laws—t’ respect rules. The amateur rules here say a woman can’t run more th’n a mile and a half.”

Also, the director of the Boston Athletic Association sharing his thoughts on women running the race:

Anyway, as you can see in the photo, Kathrine’s boyfriend shoved Jock Semple to the ground and Kathrine finished the race in about 4 hours and 20 minutes. Here is Kathrine recounting her train of thought during the experience:

I felt puke-ish, afraid that we’d seriously hurt this guy Jock Semple, and maybe we should stop and get it sorted out. But it was clear Jock was some kind of official—in fact, he turned out to be the race manager—and he was out of control. Now he’s hurt, we’re in trouble, and we’re going to get arrested. That was how scared I felt, as well as deeply humiliated, and for just a tiny moment, I wondered if I should step off the course. I did not want to mess up this prestigious race. But the thought was only a flicker.

I knew if I quit, nobody would ever believe that women had the capability to run 26-plus miles. If I quit, everybody would say it was a publicity stunt. If I quit, it would set women’s sports back, way back, instead of forward. If I quit, I’d never run Boston. If I quit, Jock Semple and all those like him would win. My fear and humiliation turned to anger.

After the race, the Amateur Athletic Union officially banned women from running in races against men. Five years later, women were accepted into the Boston Marathon as official participants for the first time. Kathrine ran the race again, and I’ll let her tell you what happened:

I finished third in that 1972 race and Jock Semple presented me with my trophy, which was broken. He apologized for that, but said, “I’ve been mad at you for five years and you deserve a broken trophy.” The next year he gave me a starting line kiss in front of the press cameras, and we became the best of friends.

As Kathrine notes at the end there, she and Jock later became friends, which is not the ending I would have guessed from looking at the photo, Here is Kathrine explaining how she warmed to Jock:

I realized Jock Semple was just an over-worked race director protecting his event from people he thought were not serious about running. Sure, he was notorious for his bad temper. And, sure, he was a product of his time and thought women shouldn’t be running marathons. But I wanted to prove him wrong on that point. Thus it was really Jock who gave me the inspiration to create more running opportunities for women. Almost every day of my life I thank him for attacking me, because he gave me this spark. Plus, he gave the world one of the most galvanizing photos in the women’s rights movement. Sometimes the worst things in your life can become the best things.

Kathrine kept running after this and would eventually complete the Boston Marathon nine times, most recently in 2017, when she was 70 years old. This was the 50th anniversary of her historic race in 1967, and she was once again assigned bib number 261.

This time, however, Kathrine was not alone. Nearly 14,000 women ran the Boston Marathon in 2017. Kathrine finished the race in 4:44:31, and her bib number 261 was retired after the race.

Kathrine is still alive today (79 years old at time of writing) and continues to have a tremendous impact on the world of women’s sports. She was a primary organizer of a women’s-only running circuit and made major contributions towards the inclusion of the women’s marathon in the Olympics for the first time ever at LA 1984.

Let’s close out Kathrine’s story with this touching quote from two-time Olympian Kara Goucher:

“I met her when I ran Boston the first time in 2009. It is fair to say that her courage to run the Boston Marathon paved the way for me to live the life that I do. Thanks to her bravery, I am living my dreams and running professionally.”

Apollo 11 Bootprint (1969)

The Red Planet (1976) – the first color photograph taken from the surface of Mars.

Look! It’s the first-ever cellphone picture, taken June 11th, 1997.

The photo was taken by a fella named Philippe Kahn, and the subject is his newborn daughter, Sophie. (Sophie will turn 29 this summer - happy early birthday to Sophie!)

Prior to taking and sharing the photo, Phillippe had been working to create a “Web-based infrastructure” for instant photo sharing for nearly a year, but he’d yet to crack the code. Thankfully, the looming deadline of the birth of his daughter gave him a nice incentive to finish the project.

“I had always wanted to have this all working in time to share my daughter’s birth photo, but I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. It’s always the case that if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.”

When his wife went into labor, Phillippe started out trying to be helpful but quickly learned that his help was not required:

“I’d gone to the Lamaze classes. And the second time I said, ‘Breathe!’ Sonia said, ‘Shut up!’ So I said, ‘OK, I’ll sit at this desk and find something to do.’”

In this case, Phillippe’s “something to do” was jury-rigging a cellphone-based contraption that enabled instant wireless photo-sharing, forever changing the way that humans communicate and transmit culture. If it was me I probably would have just fiddled with a Rubik’s Cube for 18 hours without ever coming close to solving it. Men come in all shapes and sizes. We are not a monolith.

Anyway, you can check out this 4-minute video reenacting the invention if you are curious.

Last photo! Pete Souza’s Hair Like Mine is easily one of the most iconic photos of the Obama Administration and there’s a very cute story behind it.

The young boy’s father, Carlton Philadelphia, had worked for the president for two years and was invited to visit the Oval Office with his family for a departure photo. Before they left, Carlton told Obama that each of his sons had a question.

From the New York Times:

“I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he told Mr. Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again.

Jacob did, and Mr. Obama replied, “Why don’t you touch it and see for yourself?” He lowered his head, level with Jacob, who hesitated.

“Touch it, dude!” Mr. Obama said.

As Jacob patted the presidential crown, Mr. Souza snapped.

“So, what do you think?” Mr. Obama asked.

“Yes, it does feel the same,” Jacob said.

But my favorite part of the story is what Jacob’s brother, Isaac, asked Obama. From Wikipedia’s editors: he “asked Obama about the cancellation of production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet and was told that it was financially unviable.” (Isaac was eight years old.)

And that’s it for this week! Let me just say that of all the posts I’ve ever written, this was probably the most fun to put together. Taking a visual journey through history, seeing where we’ve been, envisioning where we might go next – simply, what a joy.

Oftentimes, I feel like we move through life without a present awareness of the crucial moment in history we are living through. But you know what? Things are totally nuts right now. I don’t know if you guys have noticed? But it’s pretty bananas out there.

And what’s more, is we all play a part in what happens next. The next chapter of our existence is not written yet. You are one of the many billions of editors who get to shape our story. The most important photo of the 21st century has yet to be taken. For all we know, it could be taken tomorrow. Maybe you will take it? (Probably not, but maybe!)

The human story is newly unfolding with each passing second, and you are a character in it! Go out and play your part. As always, thanks for reading, much love, until next time :)

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Sometimes when a cat has an MBA, it actually does stand for Master of Business Administration. This was the case for Colby Nolan.

Beautiful precious Colby belonged to a deputy attorney general in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. And in 2004, the Office was investigating Trinity Southern University, a diploma mill operating out of Texas.

Trinity Southern was suspected of awarding illegitimate academic credentials to essentially anyone who had a few hundred dollars to burn, with no coursework or exams required. And to confirm their suspicions, Pennsylvania investigators submitted an application on behalf of Colby, hoping to obtain for him a bachelor’s degree in business administration for $299.

Colby’s application boasted of his ample experience:

“...the student application claimed Colby completed three courses at a community college and worked at two different retailers as a manager. Colby’s previous work experience included food prep at a fast-food restaurant, babysitting and a paper route…”

Not only was Colby’s application for a bachelor’s degree accepted, but the school also informed Colby that his impressive resume qualified him for an executive MBA (for an extra $100).

Colby heartily accepted and was awarded his degree (with a 3.5 GPA). Soon after, his owner sued the school and shut them down, which was honestly really inconsiderate to Colby and his academic aspirations. What if he wanted to get his PhD next? Now he’ll never be able to.

Colby and his educational journey was so joyful and fraudulent, which is the best combination of adjectives I can possibly conceive of. Wikipedia’s “List of animals awarded human credentials” contains many such gems.

Here we learn that Colby was far from the first kitty who tried and succeeded at getting a fake degree. In fact, Colby was simply carrying on the proud tradition of feline achievement in higher education.

Let’s take a trip back to the 1970s and meet Kitty O’Malley.

Kitty the cat received her high school diploma from Washington High Academy, which was thankfully pretty easy for her because Washington High Academy was – you guessed it – a diploma mill.

But while the task of getting her diploma was as simple as sending $25 to a sketchy address in Florida, using that diploma to gain admission to a legitimate university was a bit tougher.

Kitty’s diploma was deemed woefully insufficient for her journey to pursue a postsecondary degree, apart from the schools that didn’t require a high school degree in the first place. (One school said, “If we did require one, we certainly wouldn’t accept that one.”)

Asked what kind of reception a diploma from Washington High Academy would receive, the admissions director of one school said, “We’d tell you that you don’t have a high school degree.”

One school had a strict diploma requirement but was a bit more lax about transcripts, giving a very interesting reason for this:

The 1970s were a different time. “Schools burn down”? Like, sure, ok, I guess, but does that really happen often enough that you cite it as a reason for why you don’t need a transcript? Anyway

There’s no rule that says a dog can’t be a bartender

So we’ve established that cats can get fake degrees, but what about their canine counterparts? To answer that question, allow me to point you to a pug that is more professionally qualified than you will ever be.

Phoebe the pug holds over 250 professional and career certifications, making her “the most professionally accomplished canine ever,” according to Forbes.

Her certifications include “forklift safety, transportation of dangerous goods, pleasure craft operator, food handler, [and] responsible liquor services.”

Phoebe also received a defensive-driving certificate through an online Alberta Motor Association course, which (human) individuals usually take as a first step towards getting demerit points removed from their driver’s license.

This upset the Alberta Motor Association so much that they released what I consider to be the greatest media statement of all time: “To be clear: no dog received a demerit reduction.”

Another canine overachiever I need you to meet is Wally.

In 2004, Wally received his associate’s degree in Childhood Development from the illegitimate Almeda University. His application listed such relevant experiences as “Plays with the kids every day ... teaches them to interact better with each other ... Teaches them responsibilities like feeding the dog.”

When this ruse was publicized, Almeda got really upset and put out a press release accusing Wally’s owner of perjury (lol)

In their words:

“he completed an application that included a background of the following: Eight-years tutoring pre-K children, curriculum design and development, teaching coping skills, and volunteer coaching. Clearly, this was a series of intentional lies to establish a believable identity, not a true account of his dog’s credentials.”

The press release continued:

“Although it is preposterous to believe the accusation that Almeda would grant a degree to a person with the same skills as a dog, this doesn’t prevent attention-seekers from breaking laws and filling the web with inaccurate blogs to create this perception.”

(stealing this)

As you’ve surely learned by this point, these “animal earns college degree” stories usually begin and end there – the cat/dog gets a diploma, everybody laughs, someone gets prosecuted for fraud, we all move on with our lives. But not so for Wally.

Four years after Wally’s triumphant graduation from Almeda, his name resurfaced in the sleepy Wisconsin town of Lake Geneva.

In 2008, this town of ~7,000 was in the throes of a hotly contested mayoral election between William “Bill” Chesen and Spyro “Speedo” Condos. And it’s very important for you to know that Bill Chesen held a bachelor’s degree from Almeda University, the very same institution that counted Wally the dog as a proud alumnus.

One day, someone in Lake Geneva printed a political cartoon showing our dear Wally with a diploma in his mouth and a speech bubble that said, “I graduated with Bill Chesen.”

A copy of this political cartoon was left on a bench somewhere in Lake Geneva, where it was discovered by a woman who sat down to smoke a cigarette. When she found the cartoon, Bill Chesen happened to be nearby, so she handed it to him.

Bill was not very happy about this cartoon, believing it to be “defamatory.” But rather than just being quietly upset – this being small-town Wisconsin – Bill, naturally, called the police.

The police showed up to “keep the peace” because of the “political atmosphere and conflict between the candidates,” but ultimately no charges were filed. According to the Assistant District Attorney, “The voters were entitled to know that his degree was of questionable value.”

Anyway, Bill Chesen won the election and this is where things really started to get spicy. Let me paint you a picture through headlines:

• An Unprecedented power grab by Mayor William Chesen

• Lake Geneva’s Mayor Vows Revenge

• Mayor Chesen’s Kamikaze Death Spiral

• Lake Geneva Power Struggle Continues

• The Price of Justice or a Vendetta?

• A Shitstorm of Criticism Rains Down on the Mayor

I found a local news site, Lake Geneva News, that has a whole section of stories about this saga, neatly organized under the label “Chesen’s Coup d’etat.”

Basically, this was just some S-tier small town drama, but it was also small town drama that made the Wall Street Journal, so I’ll try to explain what actually happened to the best of my abilities.

After Bill was elected mayor, one member of the eight-person city council resigned, as they were moving out of Lake Geneva.

Vacancies on the city council in Lake Geneva can either be filled by a special election or a majority vote of the remaining members of the council. The council members opted for the latter.

By a 4-2 vote, the members decided to add none other than Speedo Condos, the chief rival of Mayor Bill, to the city council. This decision upset Bill. From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Chesen alleges the four council members hatched a plan in violation of open-meeting laws to install Mr. Condos in the seat and take over the government. In a deposition, he also charged them with wasting the time of city workers and spending a suspicious amount of time in Mr. Condos’s restaurant.

It also feels relevant to mention at this point that Bill and Speedo went to high school together, and “bad feelings between the two go back at least that far.” Bill was quoted in the Chicago Tribune, saying, “I was president of the student council; he was a jock. We didn’t pay any attention to each other.”

Anyway, in response, Bill asked the city, county, and state to all file civil charges against the four traitorous members of the council who had voted to install Speedo, but this effort was unsuccessful.

Undeterred, Bill took matters into his own hands and suspended the four members, claiming his authority from a state law passed nearly a century earlier.

Bill saw this as a courageous action on his part, aimed at defeating corruption in municipal government. Or, as he put it, “Dirty pool has been the standard. And that’s got to stop. This is Wisconsin, not Illinois. We don’t have governors sitting in prison.” (!!!)

However, others saw it differently. Dan Thompson, the president of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said, “The municipal attorneys are all buzzing about this among themselves,” (cute) and one Lake Geneva resident complained, “It’s embarrassing that this is going on. It’s stupid. It’s kid’s play. And you can quote me on that.” (they did)

It was up to the Lake Geneva Police Department to enforce the suspension, and the way this went down was simply insane.

One of the suspended members, 77-year-old Arleen Krohn, was leaving a meeting at City Hall when she was greeted by two police officers waiting for her. They served her with the suspension papers and immediately seized her electronic key to City Hall. Arleen, formerly a school crossing guard for 23 years, said, “I couldn’t believe it. What had we done wrong?”

With the eight-member council now down to four members, they lacked a quorum and could not legally conduct any business. Oops!

Bill called a meeting to try to appoint four new members to the council, but his rival, Speedo, immediately moved to end the meeting for lack of a quorum, which prompted some cheers from people in attendance.

(Let me just say that whenever small town drama gets so intense you have people cheering at city council meetings, it’s time to turn down the temperature a little bit.)

Recognizing the reality of the situation, Bill partially admitted defeat by unsuspending two of the members so the city council could actually do stuff.

At this point, the trail runs a little cold as far as “major newspapers reporting on whatever the hell is going on in Lake Geneva,” but the aforementioned Lake Geneva News helpfully came in clutch with the hopeful headline “Happy Days are Here Again?!”

The article reports that all four suspended members were eventually allowed to return to the council, and that is basically the end of the Lake Geneva coup d’etat saga. I tried to find more recent updates on what Bill Chesen is up to nowadays and whether he has attempted any more coups since then, but I couldn’t find anything. I think it’s safe to assume no news is good news on the “Bill Chesen lusting after world domination” beat.

At the very least, I can tell you that Bill is no longer mayor, and I also could not find an obituary for him, so presumably he is still around and in his 70s, somewhere in the world. If you know Bill, please send him my blog and ask him not to sue me for defamation.

Let this be a lesson to all that if you have a big ego, there are other ways to fulfill it than by playing dictator in your local government. Not everyone needs to be mayor! As Bill told the Wall Street Journal, “I’m not a good politician by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m a firm believer in what’s right is right.”

Maybe, just maybe, “what’s right” would have been letting a different, canine alumnus of Almeda University become mayor. Wally, if you’re still around, Lake Geneva needs you! After all, a dog as mayor is not unprecedented.

That’s all for this week. As always, thanks for reading! Until next time.

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Rabbit Cavern is a blog dedicated to exploring Wikipedia rabbit holes, and perhaps unsurprisingly, that results in me accruing a truly unreasonable amount of notes on all sorts of topics big and small.

And while I do my best to weave together all of these loose ends into something resembling a sensible narrative for each post I put out, I inevitably always have quite a lot of leftover content that didn’t make the cut.

And that’s where this post comes in! Every few months, I pull together all of the leftover stuff, which I lovingly refer to as “scrap,” and throw it into one big post for your (hopeful) enjoyment. Today’s post will cover everything from “Do you want to be friends with a crow?”, published in December, to “Do animals make art?”, published at the end of March.

I also like to use these posts as a way to say thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart, for reading. And this iteration of “thanks for reading” is extra special because Rabbit Cavern is (more or less) one year old!

I put out my very first post on March 7th, 2025, but I didn’t really find my groove and start putting out content that would be recognizable as my writing style until “Stupid Rat Facts” on May 16th, which was subsequently featured in The Substack Post and caused my subscriber numbers to do this:

So while the official, legal birthday of this blog was back in March, I don’t feel like it really spiritually became the Rabbit Cavern you know and love tolerate until May 16th. Happy (almost) birthday to me, then.

Anyway, I am truly astonished at how this blog has grown in the past year of writing. When I first started, I was happy if 50 people read my posts. Now, I am nearing 1,000 subscribers and I have the following achievements to my name:

• I have published 46 posts (this post is #47)

• My “Did Cheetos try to incite a rebellion in 2008?” won third place in Adam Mastroianni’s Second Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree

• I had one post kinda pop off (on the smallest possible scale of virality) just in the sense that it got 10x as many views as I usually get after it was shared on a weird forum site

This last one was especially funny for me because the top commenter on the forum site tried to redirect people to one of the Wikipedia pages I used for research, saying, “If you’d rather just read it without the attempts to be funny” (lol)

Thankfully, other commenters rushed to my defense, saying things like, “I enjoyed the author’s style, personally,” “No, this was much more entertaining to read,” and “the comedy was what got me through it, probably wouldn’t have read the Wikipedia article, fwiw.”

One commenter accused me of using AI: “it feels like the author asked an AI to do the narration for him. He made some edits here and there but the humor feels off.”

And in response, another commenter said, “Please tell me which AI writes like that by default so I can recommend it to everyone who copy-paste the obnoxious chatGPT slop answers in the comment sections.” And I have to say, this is a compliment of the absolute highest order in this day and age. I’m better at writing than all existing AI models? More people should be saying this.

Back to my Cheetos post, and a special word of gratitude for , whose exceptional Experimental History has long been one of my favorite blogs and whose writing is a big part of the reason I started my own blog in the first place.

At the end of Adam’s first blog post competition, he issued a call-to-action of sorts for the art of blog-writing, and I think about this often:

I got a lot of notes from folks who were like “I’ve been thinking of starting a blog, but I keep hesitating!” Some of those folks are among the winners! Blogging ain’t for everybody, but a lot of people seem to get close to starting one, and then they stop for bad reasons. If that’s you: don’t do that! This is your push! Post your stuff!

People get hung up because they think there are rules to this kind of thing, like “you have to post all the time.” Nah dude, post once a decade if you want to—it’s not like there’s Blog Police who will show up at your door if you don’t produce enough content. I still think about a post called “Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail” and it’s from a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2017!

I get riled up about this because I’ve seen so many people say things like “wow I never thought anything would come of this silly blog thing but it’s changed my life forever for the better.” Here’s one. Here’s another. Here’s three more. Here’s mine!

So, let me add mine to the pile: this blog has well and truly changed my life.

Writing for you all pushes me to be more creative, more curious, it pushes me to challenge myself, it has connected me to some of the coolest and most interesting people on the internet, and it has completely transformed the way that I view myself as a creative person.

Every weekend, I plant my butt down in a rotating selection of local coffee shops and I work work work until I can hardly bring myself to produce another sentence and only then do I release myself into the afternoon air to see what else the day has to offer me.

And I’ll tell you what, I’m proud of myself for sticking to a publishing schedule and producing these posts as consistently as I have, but over the past year, I’ve definitely gone through monthslong stretches where I was anything but sure of myself and near certain that I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything to write about in a given week.

No matter how many posts I put out, it never guarantees that I’ll still have what it takes to put out one more, you know? But week after week, I sit with myself and a cup of coffee, I put in my earbuds, I listen to the Sesame Street Tiny Desk Concert to wake up my silly side (this is genuinely an essential part of my writing process), and I get to work. And every week, I create something I am proud of.

So, more than just being a fun exercise in pushing myself to be more curious and granting me an outlet to express myself creatively and share it with an audience, this blog is also a permanent digital reminder for myself that, essentially, I am good enough, and I can create something meaningful even if I feel like I don’t have it in me anymore. Nary a week has gone by that I didn’t leave the cafe feeling mentally refreshed and saying to myself, “Yup, I’ve still got it.” (Please excuse me if this comes across as arrogant but I will never apologize for investing heavily in self-love and self-belief.) It is a ritual that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

So now it’s my turn to pass on the message – you should start a blog. You should share your gifts with the world. Your thoughts and words are powerful and the world will be better off for having heard from you.

Anyway, onto the post!

The first half is free for everyone but the second half will just be for paid subscribers as a token of my gratitude for their generous support. This is all stuff that I never would have included in a post otherwise, so I like to offer it as a nice little bonus to my very biggest supporters.

Let’s get into it!

Do you want to be friends with a crow?

My crow post ended up being one of the most popular things I’ve ever written, which is entirely unsurprising, because guess what? The people love crows.

Genuinely, what’s not to love about crows? They’re smart. They’re cute. They eat trash. They’re just like me fr

And yet another thing we (might) have in common with crows is – you guessed it – ritualistic punishment for transgressions.

We’re talking about crow court, of course. I’m obliged to tell you that much disagreement exists within the crow community as to whether crow court is actually real or just something us online bird freaks like to joke about, but I choose to believe. I choose to trust. However, it is ultimately up to you whether you are an adherent to the ways of crow court.

Crow court is not a well-understood phenomenon, but it is, in fact, pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Crows (apparently) gather to punish other crows for crimes against the flock (e.g. stealing food from younger crows, engaging in excessive mischief). You can think of it as an enforcement mechanism to protect the integrity of the species.

According to one source from 1838, “...they collect in great numbers as if they had all been summoned for the occasion. A few of the flock sit with drooping heads; others seem as grave as if they were judges, and some are exceedingly active and noisy, like lawyers and witnesses.”

But other sources are very insistent that crow court is fake:

Among the claims they are debunking, here are some favorites:

“According to experts, the court of the crows is held in swaying fields and open land, not in a closed room”

“the crows know the justice of Allah and they enforce it, but woe to the man who rules by self-made laws instead of the law of Allah”

What is the truth of crow court? We may never truly know!

In the course of my extensive crow research, I came across a lot of fun examples of “crow calls transliterated into the English language,” and I’d like to share some of my favorites here:

• hark-hark-hark-hark

• “It also makes very loud, liquid bubbling sounds that carry quite a distance”

• “It has a low croaking sound rather like a frog and a call that is described as a soft ‘gar-lik.’”

• “very distinctive … jabbering and bubbling sounds”

• “The voice is quite remarkable and is rather un-crow like, with strange liquid bubbling notes and high ringing sounds produced in various combinations. It also produces a thin screeched ‘aaaaauh’ that rises in inflection.”

• “a begging ‘waw-waw’” or “a nasal ‘nyuh unh’”

• “The call of this crow has been likened to the yapping of a puppy ‘cruk ... cruk ... cruk’”

• “lanky structure and distinct frog-like call” (I knew a lot of dudes in college who fit this description to a tee)

You might be wondering, “why didn’t the crow post talk about scarecrows?” Umm, because scarecrows are extremely offensive in crow culture, that’s why. How dare you?

However, the crows have given me a pass – just this one time – so I can educate you. Please sit and listen as respectfully as possible.

First of all, according to Wikipedia, scarecrows are known as “gallybaggers” on the Isle of Wight. Can any of my readers from the Isle of Wight confirm? Thanks in advance.

There’s a village in Japan where the scarecrows outnumber the humans ten-to-one (35 people, 350 sc*recrows). Many are effigies of former residents who have passed away, which compels me to say, if you weaponize my likeness against the comfort of the genus Corvus after I depart from this Earth, I will make you pay. Consider this your only warning.

Another site of importance in scarecrow culture is Joe’s Scarecrow Village in Nova Scotia.

Joe’s Scarecrow Village has an extremely weird origin story, which you might have anticipated given the unusual nature of the whole “scarecrow village” thing, but really, it’s even weirder than you think.

Basically, this retired fella (Joe) had a vegetable garden, and to keep wild animals from helping themselves to his veggies, he set up three scarecrows. The next morning, Joe woke up to find ten cars and a charter bus parked alongside his vegetable garden.

As Joe tells it, one of the nearly 50 visitors said to him, “Joe, for the love of God, never mind your garden. Put up more scarecrows. That’s what we want to see. If you can make those three, you can make more. And that’s what people want to see. Instead of these gift shops and museums and all that.”

That was in 1984. By 1989, Joe had built 46 scarecrows and drew 27,000 annual visitors. And I have to say, I really don’t understand the draw! They’re just scarecrows, and not even very impressive ones at that! Anyway, someone massacred the scarecrows in 1986, but they bounced back and kept going (run by Joe’s son) until the Village closed in 2011. RIP.

One guy designed a crow vending machine (information on how to build your own here). He believes we could use this to train crows to do tasks for us, such as cleaning up our trash after sporting events.

We could release a team of crows into any arena after a sports match; and for every popcorn carton or soda can deposited into a trash bin, a peanut would be dispensed.

This man is an ally to the crows. Check out his TED talk here.

I’ll close out the crow section with a blurb I found on some non-crow birds. This is one of those examples of “the scientists knew exactly what they were doing here,” please enjoy:

Do bubblers prevent alcoholism?

Here’s a list of notable drinking fountains in the U.S., and if you want to get even more specific than that, here’s a page specifically dedicated to drinking fountains in Philadelphia. Wikipedia is the greatest resource humankind has ever known.

Most of the leftover content I have from this post is related to Henry Cogswell, which makes a lot of sense. Dude was weird!

I get a huge kick out of reading old-timey newspapers and seeing the weird ways they chose to describe stuff. Here’s San Francisco’s Morning Call talking about how a bunch of drunk dudes tore down a Cogswell statue overnight:

Some iconoclastic spirits, probably made bold by too freely indulging in the convivialities of New Year’s day, found vent for their destructive proclivities in the small hours of the morning yesterday.

Cogswell first learned of his statue’s destruction when the reporter told him during an interview on the matter, and his reaction was equal parts upset and exasperated:

“I am not very much surprised, for in and out of season it seems as if I must be maligned and my motives impugned. They say I’m a temperance crank. I’m not. I’m not identified with any temperance society or organization, but I do believe in it, and furthermore I do not believe in people being compelled, whether they wish it or not, to go into a saloon to slake their thirst. … I have tried to benefit the city and the class in which I am particularly interested—the very poor. My efforts have been crippled, however, more or less, because I would not and will not placate those who have a ‘pull.’”

As mentioned in the post, many Cogswell statues across the country were torn down by people who didn’t like some highfalutin big city dentist telling them not to booze it up. Here’s a resident of one of those cities reflecting on why these statues failed:

“Alcohol was the indispensable cure, and its abuse was a problem,” said Vecchiarelli. “But the solution put forth by the temperance [pledge, banning alcohol] was so simple, it was doomed to fail. The temperance pledge was a tool for extremists. Excess is the problem – anything can be overdone – even Henry’s water.”

One last fun fact from researching this post: the word “blurb” was first coined by Gelett Burgess, who was one of the people that helped tear down the Cogswell statue in San Francisco. Neat!

Why did San Francisco bus stops smell like cookies in 2006?

This post, for me, was a super interesting exploration of the crucial and underappreciated role that smell plays in commerce. We, as consumers, might not think about it a lot, but brands are thinking about it constantly.

Your local furniture store wants you to smell leather when you walk in. Your grocery store pumps up the rotisserie chicken scent around dinnertime. Cinnabon emphasizes the smell of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls by placing their ovens near the door, and sales decrease significantly when the ovens are located in the back.

Cinnabon, in particular, is super obsessed with smell:

Ever wonder why you only see Cinnabon stores in malls or airports? That’s no accident, either. While the aromas would quickly disperse on an open city street, enclosed shopping centers keep the cinnamon scent close to home. As one Cinnabon franchise owner told the Wall Street Journal in 2014, “Aroma is who we are — it is our greatest asset.”

We talked a bit about ScentAir in the post. They sell smells, mostly to large commercial customers, but you, dear reader, can buy them, too.

Some favorites:

• Amalfi Coast - Smells Like: Breathtaking views of sheer cliffs, rugged shoreline and pastel villages on a Mediterranean excursion.

• Cobalt - Smells Like: Escaping to Mykonos in a pulsating paradise under cobalt blue skies.

• Cannabis Neutralizer - Smells Like: A stroll through a citrus grove on a breezy day.

The Cannabis Neutralizer scent had some great reviews:

• “This is the perfect scent for the man who smokes and the woman who doesn’t like it”

• “The label should be more discreet so guests don’t know it’s a cannabis neutralizer”

ScentAir also has car-specific scents, in case you wanted your car to smell like “Walking a stone path tucked in the flowering gardens of a secluded Malaysian resort.“

This life is available to you. This is a dream you can realize. You have free will.

ScentAir also has a stupidly large library of press releases and weird promo content, so of course I spent like three hours reading through all of it.

One favorite snippet from a ScentAir Fragrance Curator: “I love getting results for all our clients. Another casino I worked on got outstanding results from a scent we created that increased their retail sales and improved time on machine after implementation.”

Imagine creating a scent that enables people’s gambling addictions. I wish my job was that cool and depraved.

Turns out ScentAir aren’t the only ones thinking about how to worsen gambling addiction via nose power. Remember the guy who did the study on which smells are most effective at increasing penile blood flow? (Spoiler: it was lavender + pumpkin pie.) He also looked into this.

“[H]e went to the Las Vegas Hilton and picked out three slot-machine zones to study for a weekend. One zone was left unscented, while each of the other two was misted with a different agreeable odor. [...] He found little change in the neutral zone or in one scented zone, he said, but in the other scented area the amount of money gambled soared by 45 percent. And the more intense the smell, the more people bet.”

This dude is absolutely weird as hell and I have to admit I’m a little bit obsessed with him. Please do yourself a favor and read this next blurb:

And then there is Dr. Hirsch. He is a neurologist and psychiatrist who calls himself the “Jacques Cousteau of the nose” …. Eight years ago, he started the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, where he and his colleagues treat patients with smell disorders and pursue research. He thinks he became curious about smell after he was hit by a car while he was a medical student and found that for a week afterward everything smelled like cigarettes.

More fascinating work from the desk of Dr. Hirsch:

At Seafirst Bank, which has 285 branches in the state of Washington, the money that spews from its teller machines buys as much as the money from any other bank. But Seafirst believes it can make customers think its money is better than the competition’s by teasing the nose.

Starting in the next few months, it plans to test fragrances at several dozen of its A.T.M.’s. One idea is to apply a mint smell to the money itself, so it will seem newer and fresher, though Jack David, Seafirst’s marketing director, confessed that that “might be stupid.”

Hey, at least he’s being forthright about it! I, for one, can’t decide whether this is extremely stupid or not, but I think I would love it if my money smelled like stuff.

One last incredible example from the world of manipulating people with smell:

In some cases, the point is to repulse customers. Which brings up the case of the Powerful Underarm Odor.

Dr. Wysocki said that several companies in England and Australia are instilling something akin to the smell of fear into the bills they mail.

They are using androstenone, a volatile steroid found in underarm sweat and urine in humans. It is also present in pigs; males emit it to prompt mating behavior in females. About half the human population can’t smell it at all; 30 to 35 percent find it an alluring, musky smell, and the rest liken it to stale urine or outrageously powerful underarm sweat.

God, of all the things you could choose to make your bills smell like…

A full third of your customers are going to be like “this bill smells irresistible,” a bunch of them think it smells like piss, and also hordes of pigs in heat are hunting for your bills. What a world we live in.

“For people who get a bill in the mail and it stinks like human urine, I can see why they would want to get it the hell out of the house,” Dr. Wysocki said. “That’s a nasty odor.”

Let’s close this out with a bit more information on billboards in general. Here’s a crazy hyper-specific table that carefully lays out the state-by-state regulations for digital billboards in the U.S.

Once again, I am in awe at the treasure that Wikipedia is.

I also came across The Last Billboard and I thought a lot of the messages hosted on it were compelling and/or powerful. I would encourage you to take a browse through it. Some favorites:

• because we are / playthings of the gods, / playing is the most serious / of our activities

• think about / all the hours / forgotten plays / were rehearsed

• the person standing / beside you, pointing at this / billboard, has brought you / here because it was too hard / to say “I am sorry” out loud.

Do snowmen belong in museums?

I spent a lot of time reading about weird conceptual art for this post, and it was an absolute joy. Some favorites:

Detroit MONA goes kaBOOM!, 2002

The extreme to which an authorised intervention can go and yet still meet with institutional approval was shown in 2002, when the Museum of New Art in Detroit staged a show kaBoom!, with the announcement, “Over the course of the exhibition, museum visitors will be invited to smash, drop, throw and slash artworks…” The show was scheduled for two months, but by the end of the first night had been totally destroyed by visitors:

“They even destroyed the pedestals and wall shelves,” one museum staffer shrugged in disbelief. Fires were set in isolated galleries and a wrecking ball for one display had been removed from its chain and used instead as a bowling ball, taking out an installation as well as the corner of one wall. “In a twisted way, it was a wild success,” MONA’s director Jef Bourgeau says the morning after, on a surprisingly bright note as he wades through the carnage and debris. This follows the precedent of the Dadaists. At one of their shows, visitors were invited to smash the exhibits with an axe.

Black Sheep, 1994

In 1994, Damien Hirst curated the show Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away at the Serpentine Gallery in London, including his artwork Away from the Flock a disembowelled sheep in a tank of formaldehyde. In an interview, Hirst said that he did not mind what people thought of his work “so long as they get involved.” The next day artist Mark Bridger removed the top of the artwork’s tank and poured black ink into it, changed the title to Black Sheep and handed his business card to gallery staff.

And some more silly Duchamp stuff:

In 1942, for the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York, surrealists called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. He created an installation, His Twine, commonly known as the “mile of string”, it was a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works. Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate’s son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the formally-dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. When questioned, the children were told to say “Mr. Duchamp told us we could play here.”

Duchamp was a funny dude, because he was a hugely popular artist, but at one point he decided to just quit art and do chess instead.

His chess obsession was apparently so deep that Duchamp’s wife, in great distress at this new development, glued his game pieces to the chessboard.

Duchamp quotes on chess:

• “I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”

• “ ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

While in the chess rabbit hole, I also learned that legendary actor Humphrey Bogart avidly played chess via mail with American troops during World War II.

But because of the algebraic notation used to communicate moves in chess games, his mail was intercepted by the FBI due to fears that Mr. Bogart was actually sending encrypted messages overseas. Oops!

Do animals make art?

Read more

I was thrilled to find this because it falls into my favorite genre of Wikipedia page – overly specific lists of items. But this link was like catnip to me for another reason, too. You see, this topic – hidden treasures at garage sales – is personal to me.

One time, I was at a garage sale and I found a barely-used sleeping bag selling for a mere $2. Something you have to know about me is that I never go camping. I will watch camping videos on YouTube until my eyes hurt but you won’t find me outside overnight unless something has gone very wrong.

But friends, I googled this sleeping bag and found out it retailed for more than $200. And I was like, I can’t not buy this sleeping bag, right? I would be losing money if I didn’t buy this sleeping bag. I bought the sleeping bag and continue to not go camping.

Anyway, that’s my version of “finding valuable item at a garage sale and buying it for far less than it’s worth.” Unfortunately I’m about to be upstaged probably by the maximum amount possible by this next story.

Once upon a time, a man bought “a tattered painting of a country scene” at a flea market for $4. He bought it because he liked the frame, so when he got home, he removed the painting and threw it in the trash. However, when he took out the painting, something fell to the floor – a folded document which had been tucked into a corner of the frame.

Upon inspection, he realized that it was – and I promise this isn’t a National Treasure joke – a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Far from being a cheap gift shop reproduction, this was a genuine Dunlap broadside, one of the very first published copies of the Declaration, printed on the night of July 4th, 1776. About 200 copies were printed that night, and up to this point, only 24 known copies were still in existence. This man had just found the 25th.

Two years later, it sold at auction for $2.4 million, or about $5.8 million today (or about €5m or £4.4m).

Now, you might be wondering, how in the world could so many important documents go missing? They made all those copies of the Declaration and they just lost them? But as it turns out, we humans lose important stuff all the time. We are actually very good at misplacing or destroying invaluable historical artifacts and irreparably damaging the physical record of our shared cultural heritage. There’s a whole Wikipedia page for it!

If you’re a giant nerd like me you could probably spend hours perusing this page, but I get intensely mission-focused while researching for these posts, so I had to yank myself away from it, not unlike how you have to summon all your strength to pull a leashed dog away from a dead squirrel it’s trying to sniff. Anyway

Losing or destroying stuff has long been a proud tradition in various arts fields. It’s estimated that “half of all American films made before 1950 and more than 90 percent of films made before 1929 are lost forever.”

And you wanna know the main reason we lost a lot of this stuff? Was it shoddy storage practices, maybe a fire or a flood, perhaps someone accidentally taping over a Charlie Chaplin classic with their kid’s first birthday party? No, none of those – most of these films were destroyed on purpose.

Simply put, films were not thought to have much future value after their time in theaters had come to a close, so studios saw no reason to save them. Film preservationist Robert Harris:

“Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house.”

And it’s not just film – early TV broadcasts are largely lost to history as well. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that television networks began engaging in preservation rather than destruction as a regular practice.

Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992, recording over 4,500 episodes in total, but only 33 episodes from his first decade on the air survived erasure by NBC.

The first Super Bowl was broadcast by both CBS and NBC, but neither network held onto its copy for more than a few months before taping over it. Miraculously, a near-complete copy of the game exists today, but only because one man in Pennsylvania thought to record it on two-inch quadruplex tapes and threw them in his attic, where his son discovered them in 2005. It is the only known surviving copy of the game.

Most of the British television coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing has been lost, although some fragments have survived. However, considering what we can glean from the bits that are still around, perhaps this is for the best:

This is their version of “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? We’re so lucky the Brits weren’t the first ones on the Moon, they would have said something so stupid and cursed humanity to live with it forever.

Please Don’t Destroy (the art)

Although we’ve clearly established humankind’s propensity for destroying stuff that really ought not be destroyed, sometimes it’s just an accident! Sometimes people say “oops” after doing it!

In 2006, real estate billionaire Steve Wynn was selling a painting. (He’s a bad dude, so it’s okay to laugh at the misfortune that’s about to befall him.) The painting in question was Picasso’s Le Rêve, and its expected sale price of $139 million would have made it the most expensive piece of art ever sold.

The day after he agreed to sell it to another billionaire named Steve, Wynn was showing off the painting to friends when he “delivered what one of the guests would later call […] a ‘forty-million-dollar elbow.’”

That’s right, he misjudged his proximity to the painting and accidentally punctured the canvas with his elbow, creating a sizable tear. Nora Ephron was in the room and reported that after the initial shock, Wynn called his wife and said, “You’ll never believe what I just did.”

The sale was called off and Wynn had the painting repaired at a cost of $90,000, but after the elbow fiasco, its new valuation was only $85 million, a nearly 40% price drop. However, the painting would eventually be sold to its original buyer in 2013 for $155 million (an inflation-adjusted discount of about $5 million from its original price).

Guess what? Non-billionaires can be clumsy around art, too! Also in 2006, a 42-year-old Brit named Nick tripped on his shoelace at a Cambridge museum and shattered three Qing-era Chinese vases.

In a very British summation of events, he later reported, “I snagged my shoelace, missed the step and crash, bang, wallop. There were a million pieces of high quality Qing ceramics lying around underneath me.”

“I have a few household accidents, maybe drop a cup or two or smash a plate, but nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

Although Nick called his tumble a “regrettable accident,” he also deflected blame somewhat, noting his surprise that the vases had apparently “been left on an open window ledge.”

“I thought they might take a little bit better care of them.”

Thankfully, all ended up okay – Nick was unhurt and not held liable for the damages, and the vases were repaired and are back on display today (in protective cases). The only real collateral damage was the letter that Nick received from the museum director advising him “not to visit the museum again in the near future,” which is a very British way of saying “don’t even think about coming back here ever again.”

In another example of a Picasso being accidentally damaged (poor guy can’t catch a break!), a visitor to the Met in 2010 tripped and fell into The Actor, creating a 6-inch (15cm) tear in the corner of the canvas.

I can only imagine this sent the curators into an impossibly panicked frenzy, as the accident occurred just three months before the museum was set to open a special Picasso exhibition which would include “nearly all of the institution’s collection of Picasso’s oeuvre: paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and ceramics.”

But once again, the miracle workers in the conservation studio got to work and had it ready to go for the exhibition – this time, of course, behind plexiglass.

And I just gotta say, can you imagine being one of the people involved in these accidents? You trip and fall at the museum and damage a $100 million Picasso? I would scream.

I was actually visiting an art museum the day after I first read about these people and I was so scared the entire time. Just absolutely freaked the hell out that I was going to end up on this Wikipedia page myself. Thankfully all remains intact (as of now), art and dignity and all. Will update you later if this changes.

In a similar vein to the above examples, I always think it’s really funny when someone’s art is just “pile of trash in the middle of an art gallery” and the museum’s cleaning staff (correctly?) throws it away by accident.

Trash art lightning round? Trash art lightning round.

Trash art lightning round

(pulled directly from Wikipedia because I am too lazy to dig deeper on these ones)

• In the 1980s, a work by Joseph Beuys was altered when a janitor neatly cleaned up what he saw as a dirty bathtub in a German art gallery.

• In 2001, staff of the London’s Eyestorm Gallery tidied away an exhibit by Damien Hirst which appeared as a pile of beer bottles, ashtrays and coffee cups.

• In 2004, an employee of Tate Britain disposed of what appeared as a plastic bag of trash sitting next to an artwork; the bag was part of an exhibition “Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art” by Gustav Metzger.

• In 2024, a lift technician working at LAM Museum in The Netherlands threw away two hand-painted beer cans that had been on display in a glass elevator shaft. The cans were later retrieved, intact, and put back on display.

So what does this all mean for my understanding of the meaning of life?

I spent a lot of time skimming through the Wikipedia page for “List of missing treasures” and it’s just fascinating to me because there are all these priceless artifacts that have been lost over the years and simply no one has a clue where they are today.

We are talking “largest bell ever cast” and “crown jewels of Ireland” type treasures – truly insane stuff. And I think it’s incredible because so often when we hear these stories about lost treasures being rediscovered, it’s just “somebody had this sitting on the mantle above their fireplace for 70 years and never knew it had any value” or “it was just collecting dust in someone’s attic and it wasn’t discovered until after they died.”

It’s amazing to me that some of the world’s greatest mysteries could be solved by someone simply being curious about the provenance of their family heirlooms or by taking a peek into their grandma’s attic. And of course, many of these mysteries will never be solved, because the objects in question are buried deep underground and will never be found, or were already destroyed long ago. And I find that equally charming – here’s an object that was at one point an incredibly important artifact, perhaps the centerpiece of an entire civilization, and now it is dust beneath the soil.

Why are we so distraught when we hear about art being lost or destroyed? I’ll tell you what I think: art is a physical manifestation of culture, and when we lose art, it feels like we are letting our ancestors down – like we are betraying our obligation to be good stewards of the culture they worked so hard to create.

One of the most innate human urges is to make sure people in the future know we existed. In a way, our whole lives are just one prolonged exercise in saying “we were here.” And when we lose art, we lose a part of ourselves. Not as individuals, but as humanity – a collective whole.

Spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery ahead – you remember that scene at the end of the movie where the Mona Lisa goes up in flames? How did that scene make you feel? Even though you knew it was a work of fiction and the real painting wasn’t being destroyed, did you feel a bit of psychic pain? I know I did. But why? It’s a fact of life that the real-life Mona Lisa will, in fact, one day turn to dust, so what difference does it make if it happens now or thousands of years from now?

There is perhaps no theme more central to the human experience than impermanence. This sentence will end, this post will end (soon, I promise), this day will end, your life will end. It’s all a given. And that’s what gives life meaning. “Life is a blessing that ends” – I don’t know who first said those words, but it’s one of those sayings I keep coming back to whenever I need to feel a little more grounded.

Some people embrace this impermanence. Tibetan Buddhist monks create these exquisite sand mandalas, painstakingly filling out the pattern grain by grain, and once it is complete, they ritualistically destroy the art they just toiled for weeks to create.

Afterwards, they collect the sand and release it into a river so it can be dispersed back into nature, spreading the healing energies of the mandala all around the world.

“You step back and you move on. That’s just life.”

So what’s the lesson here? Give up? Do nothing, curl up into a ball, wait for death to overtake you? If you accept impermanence as an invitation to apathy, sure. But there’s another way to look at this.

Here’s what I think: you should create art. You should create a record that you existed. You should understand that even if what you’re doing right now might feel trivial, you are a member of the human race in equal standing with everyone else who has ever existed and your presence here is just as much a part of our story as any other.

One of the most important primary sources of the Stuart Restoration is a private journal kept by an English member of Parliament, Samuel Pepys, for almost a decade. Do you think he knew his words would be studied hundreds of years into the future, held in regard as one of the keys to understanding a crucial period in English history?

Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. Hardly anyone knew Emily Dickinson was a writer at all, let alone a superbly talented one, until after she died. Bach was a respected composer during his time but didn’t achieve classical music superstardom until long after he was dead. Some of the most consequential artists in human history had no idea of what they’d become. What does that mean for you?

Create art without concern for whether it survives into tomorrow. Leave your mark and accept that you may never know what becomes of it. Nothing is forever and that includes you. Whether this message lights a fire inside you or puts one out is your choice.

Thanks for reading, find meaning in the finite, go to a museum and DON’T trip and fall into a painting, etc. etc. etc. Until next time!

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Some personal favorites:

Anyone ever hear a fish honk?1

Truly the most sonically versatile species in the entire animal kingdom

Wheek!

In case you were wondering what an “orgle” sounds like: “His song seems to attract the most ladies out of anybody in our herd. We’re not sure why, but they love his song the best.” (NSFW unless you work on an alpaca farm)

Also sorry another quick detour to satisfy your curiosity on what an alpaca alarm call sounds like, link here. I can promise that it was sufficiently alarming and I literally jumped in my seat even though I knew it was coming.

Makes a lot of sense actually

Cronk? Are you for real bro?

As you can see hear, many animal sounds are silly and decidedly unmusical, but some animal sounds are so pleasing to the ear that they’ve inspired the creation of instruments. That’s right, we’re talking about the most pleasant-sounding animal of all: the pig.

Meet the Piganino. Wikipedia describes this as a “conjectural musical instrument” which is to say it was never actually built but we still have funny drawings of it so we can pretend it did.

Also known as the “Swineway” or “Porko Forte,” this instrument (would have) worked by poking pigs or pulling their tails to produce pig noises in accordance with the notes of a scale.

It’s rumored that Louis XI challenged a fella called “Abbé de Baigne” to build one of these in the 15th century, and I really tried to find more information on this, but when you Google “Abbé de Baigne” all of the results are just dubiously-sourced blog posts about the Piganino, so I suppose I’m just adding another one to the pile here. Anyway.

Re: Louis XI’s piganino, if it was actually built, one source reports that “The result is said to have been striking, but not very grateful to human ears.” So there you have it. The proud legacy of Louis XI includes the piganino and this dope nickname:

Now, if at this point you find yourself thinking, “Man, I wish there was another imaginary instrument that necessitated animal torture,” you’re gonna love this next part. Introducing the cat organ.

Similar to the piganino, this would have worked by messing with the cats’ tails in accordance with the pressing of a key.

I’m not really sure how they planned on ensuring the cats would only yowl in tune with their designated note. In all my experience with the genus Felis, individual kitties can employ a very wide vocal range, the output of which is largely dependent on whether I am holding a bag of treats or a cat carrier that will transport them to hell the vet. Anyway

Also like the piganino, there’s no record of a cat organ ever actually being built, but one physician theorized that it could be used to treat patients who had difficulty staying focused. In other words, this would have been an extremely crude early ADHD treatment. Adderall for people in the 18th century, if you will.

Essentially, this thing was so bizarre that it would be impossible for someone not to pay attention to it, so they would be cured. ADHD – poof, gone. That’s how psychiatry works, right? Here’s the good doctor in his own words:

“A fugue played on this instrument--when the ill person is so placed that he cannot miss the expression on their faces and the play of these animals--must bring Lot’s wife herself from her fixed state into conscious awareness.”

Among the other purported uses of the cat organ was “reducing the melancholy of princes by moving them to laughter,” which has gotta be the most 17th-century medical treatment I’ve ever heard.

But anyway, this literally happened in 2010 when then-Prince Charles got a huge kick out of a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” played on a cat organ made from squeaky toys. It’s unclear whether Charles had been melancholic prior to the song beginning but he clearly loved this.

Heard Mentality

Occasionally animals are involved in music production in a way that doesn’t necessitate torturing them or vanquishing their dignity. A very novel idea indeed. This is the basic idea behind the Thai Elephant Orchestra.

As NPR puts it, “The Thai Elephant Orchestra is, remarkably, just what it sounds like.”

See for yourself:

The Thai Elephant Orchestra, which “boasts it weighs three times as much as the Berlin Philharmonic,” is made up of a dozen or so elephants playing heavy-duty instruments specially designed for elephant-level strength.

This oddball group was created by Richard Lair, an elephant conservationist, and Dave Soldier, a musician/neurologist. And honestly, when you put two dudes with those job titles in a room together, it was really only going to be a matter of time before they invented an elephant orchestra.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – these elephants are being abused, right? Wouldn’t they rather be doing elephant stuff in the forest? An elephant’s evolutionary imperative is not to play a giant marimba for a crowd of tourists. I don’t know much about elephants but I know that for sure.

But worry not! The elephants are all former working elephants, as in, the orchestra is their escape from a life of working in logging camps and other comparatively awful job assignments. But don’t take it from me, here’s one of the co-founders of the orchestra:

Mr. Lair … is sensitive to any charges of exploitation. Elephants should not be ‘’incarcerated and made to do slave labor,’‘ he writes in the new CD’s liner notes. With habitat vanishing and logging banned in Thailand, however, there’s little alternative to tourist-camp work. At least, he says, making ‘’gorgeous noises of their own volition’‘ is light and pleasurable duty: ‘’What better job than to be in the prison band?’‘

As strange as this idea is, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is actually not the first time humans have made elephants play music.

In the 1850s a circus elephant named Romeo cranked a hand organ while ‘’Juliet’‘ danced, and the Adam Forepaugh and Barnum & Bailey circuses later fielded ‘’elephant bands.’‘ These ‘’probably sounded like a herd of angry Buicks,’‘ said Fred Dahlinger, research director for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis.

But the ultimate question remains – do the elephants enjoy making music? Do they even know they’re making music? Or are they just hitting objects with other objects because that seems like the natural thing to do when a human puts a mallet in your trunk?

Richard Lair again: “I’d say for about half of the elephants playing in the orchestra is just a job. But several of them genuinely enjoy it.”

Some of them are particularly proficient at their instruments of choice. Here’s Dave Soldier, the other co-founder, elaborating on that:

“Mei Kot likes to smash the hell out of a gong. Chapati is very, very good at the bass. Phong would pick up a stick and we couldn’t get him to stop. Luk Kop could play three drums at the same time. He could even set up rhythms. But he grew to be fairly dangerous, and he’s no longer with the orchestra.”

Wonderfully, the elephants can also play the harmonica. Not a special elephant harmonica, just a normal human harmonica2. Add that to the list of things elephants can do that I cannot.

The orchestra’s founders really believe that the elephants have an appreciation for properly tuned instruments and the music they create. Dave Soldier says the elephants “learn where the sweet spot on the instrument is, but no one has taught them how.”

He even ran a sneaky experiment to see whether an elephant could suss out a bad note:

Soldier conducted a test in which he planted a dissonant note on a ranat, a Thai version of the xylophone, and observed how the elephant then avoided it, preferring those that were in tune.

Okay, but surely the orchestra’s founders are biased, right? We’re still lacking empirical evidence that the noises the elephants produce can be fairly classified as music. Unless you count an entire room full of music enjoyers:

Last December Soldier investigated whether the music of the elephants could even be passed off as “genuine” music. A human orchestra in New York performed an arrangement of one of the elephants’ own compositions. The audience was then asked to guess who the composer was. To Soldier’s delight, suggestions included John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, Dvorak, Milica Paranosic, and Charles Ives.

In fairness, I don’t think someone saying “this sounds like John Cage” necessarily settles the debate of “is this genuine music” when John Cage’s best-known composition is just four minutes and thirty-three seconds of pure silence, but anyway.

The validity of the Thai Elephant Orchestra has also been (deceptively) affirmed by a real-life music critic:

“What you do is you play some of the music to your friends, to an audience,” [Soldier] says. “We did this once to a professional music critic from The New York Times, who got pretty upset with me afterwards. And you say, ‘Who’s playing? Is this music?’ And they’ll say, ‘Of course it’s music.’ So far, everyone has. You ask them to guess which group it is; that particular music critic eventually said, ‘I bet it’s a new music group from Asia.’ I said, ‘You got it.’”

Regardless of your feelings on whether the elephant sounds are music or not, Dave Soldier invites us to think a little more philosophically than that:

“I’m saying let’s spark our imagination when we think of our relationships with other animals. This appreciation for art and music seems to go far, far beyond our species.”

At time of writing, the Thai Elephant Orchestra has put out three albums, the proceeds of which “will go to a milk bank for orphaned elephants and a school to improve mahout training -- although Mr. Lair concedes that ‘profits are highly theoretical at this point.’”

The elephants are hovering right around 250 monthly listeners on Spotify as I write these words, and I am determined to be in their top 1% of listeners for the calendar year 2026. I invite you to join me in this endeavor.

Please don’t call it “monkey business” unless you’re prepared to be humbled

Guess what? Animals also make visual art. Monkeys love to paint. Who knew?

The most successful chimpanzee artist of all time was Congo, who lived from 1954 to 1964.

When Congo was two years old, a zoologist gave him a pencil and paper, and by the time Congo was four, he had made 400 drawings and paintings.

And believe it or not, this monkey had standards! He wasn’t just a simpleton making preschool-quality finger paintings. This chimp was no scrub. He had a process and he stuck to it:

Fascinatingly, if you tried to take a picture away from Congo before he had finished with it, he would scream and throw fits. However, if he considered the picture done, no amount of cajoling would persuade him to continue. The master’s work was complete. That was that.

Congo’s art (described as “lyrical abstract impressionism”) was not universally accepted and/or appreciated, but people were generally cool with it. Picasso was said to be a fan and apparently hung one of Congo’s paintings in his studio.

Here’s a Picasso/Congo anecdote that I’m pretty sure is made up but is still fun anyway:

I read, too, that Picasso was a collector of Congo’s work. This does not surprise me. The notion of a painting monkey would have appealed to the devil in him. What’s more, Congo, as an ape, could not reasonably have mounted any sort of challenge to the ultracompetitive Picasso’s self-esteem. Morris tells an excellent story of a journalist asking Picasso his opinion of Congo’s work. Picasso left the room and returned, his arms swinging like an ape’s and clutching his Congo painting, then jumped on the journalist and bit him. Artists and monkeys are brothers in arms, seemed to be the message.

In 2005, long after Congo had journeyed to monkey heaven, some of his art went up for auction alongside works by Renoir and Warhol. And while the Renoir and Warhol works did not sell, Congo’s art was sold to an “enthusiast of modern and contemporary painting,” fetching a price about 25 times greater than expected.

Just to clarify, the Warhol I’m referring to above is Andy Warhol, the human artist, not Pockets Warhol, the monkey artist.

Pockets, who just passed away aged 33 at the beginning of March, was a very successful Canadian monkey artist and his paintings surely would have sold if they were included in this auction.

And of course, a discussion of successful monkey artists is not complete without a mention of Peter, or as he preferred to be called, Pierre Brassau.

In 1964, a Swedish journalist thought it would be funny to display a bunch of monkey paintings in an art exhibition and try to pass them off as works by an emerging avant-garde French artist called “Pierre Brassau.” And guess what? He was right. This was very funny.

The intention here was to see whether art critics could tell the difference between whatever passed for “modern art” in the 1960s and a painting made by a literal monkey who “ate whole tubes of cobalt blue.”

And while one critic hilariously and correctly noted that “only an ape could have done this,” nobody else suspected they were being duped.

One critic lavished praise upon the monkey, saying, “Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.”

When the hoax was revealed, this critic was not embarrassed and instead insisted the monkey art was “still the best painting in the exhibition.” Imagine being a (human) artist in this exhibition. Imagine being somehow worse than a monkey at avant-garde art.

Now, an essential question we must pose when it comes to animal-created art is “who owns the art?”

Because, as it turns out, an animal is not considered a “legal person” so far as copyright law is concerned, so the animal cannot own the art they create. But a human also cannot own the rights to something they did not personally create3. So when an animal creates art, who owns the copyright?

Monkey see, monkey do, quite literally

In 2008, British wildlife photographer David Slater was in Indonesia to capture images of the endangered Celebes crested macaque.

The exact details have been hashed out in courtrooms over the years, but somewhere along the way, a monkey got hold of David’s camera and took a selfie.

David assumed that because it was his camera that took the picture and because he created the conditions that enabled the monkey to take a selfie in the first place, the photograph belonged to him.

But it’s really a very simple question: who took the picture? Was it you, David? Or was it a monkey? Okay, then. The monkey owns the copyright. Simple as that.

David did not think it was so simple. When various websites, including Wikipedia, posted the image, David got mad and asked them to take it down. Wikipedia said, “Sorry man, you didn’t take the picture. The monkey did.” Thus, they argued, the image was in the public domain.

Copyright law experts are mixed on this. Because, of course, the image wouldn’t exist had David not brought his camera to Indonesia, befriended the monkeys, and let one of them take hold of his camera. But despite all that, it all boils down to one essential question, which is “did he click the shutter button, or did the monkey?” That is really all that matters, and unfortunately for David, the answer to that question hands the ownership of the image to the monkey.

In 2014, the U.S. Copyright Office issued an opinion clarifying that “only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines without human intervention” and that “[b]ecause copyright law is limited to ‘original intellectual conceptions of the author’, the [copyright] office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.”

And the copyright to the image remains in the monkey’s possession to this day! Or, I guess, legally speaking, in no one’s possession, but spiritually it belongs to the monkey and it will always belong to the monkey.

So, in sum, all hail monkey artists, all hail animal artists of other species (I’m including humans in this), and never let anyone tell you something isn’t “art” just because a paint-eating chimp made it. I think that is the primary takeaway I want you to have from this post. Ok

As always, thanks for reading! Until next time :)

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This is a dhunge dhara, literally “stone faucet,” and it supplies water from underground sources to any thirsty people who arrive at its spout. Contrary to what I assumed when I first saw these things, you are not required to answer a riddle to receive water, but you can forgive me for thinking so. I mean, just look at this thing:

Hundreds of these fountains are still in use today and serve a significant portion of Nepal’s population. The dhunge dharas in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, produced 382,399 liters per day (about 100,000 gallons) in 2019.

After the devastating 2015 earthquake in Nepal, regular water service was unavailable for many Nepalese people and dhunge dharas became the sole source of water until infrastructure could be repaired.

More than just being a reliable source of clean drinking water, dhunge dharas occupy an important place in Nepalese culture as community hubs, sites of religious importance, and living testaments to their shared heritage.

And this quality is not unique to Nepal – as we look across the world, we see again and again water fountains as sources of not just water, but cultural value as well.

In Armenia, people love their pulpulaks. This very cute name comes from the combination of “pul-pul,” an onomatopoeic descriptor for the sound of murmuring water, and “ak,” meaning “water source.”

Pulpulaks are sometimes built as memorials to dead relatives, and drinking from one imparts a blessing unto the person in whose memory the pulpulak was constructed.

Pulpulaks can be social hubs, too. People will tell friends or romantic interests to meet them at the pulpulak, which I think qualifies the pulpulak as a third place? Someone should write a Substack essay about that.

Water fountains have historically been popular meeting places for people in numerous cultures, because, as it turns out, we all need water. Who knew?

Unfortunately, this also makes populations susceptible to devastation when something bad happens to that water source. Ever heard of cholera? Spoiler alert: it’s not good!

You may well already know the story, but in 1854, a London water pump was contaminated by a nearby cesspool filled with cholera bacteria. A huge cholera outbreak occurred and 616 people died.

The death count was especially high because at the time, London was very overcrowded and had insufficient water resources to serve its ballooning population. But after the tragedy of the 1854 cholera outbreak, steps were gradually taken by the government to improve this situation.

Such measures included:

1. Mandating water filtration (smart)

2. Requiring that intakes for drinking water on the Thames be moved upstream from sewage pipes (very smart)

Beyond government action, though, philanthropy was also essential to improving the water situation in London. And this is where we meet the first main character of today’s post, the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association.

Led by Samuel Gurney and Edward Thomas Wakefield, the Association was committed to doing exactly what you would expect given its name – providing free drinking fountains to the people of London.

They built their first fountain in 1859 and it was an immediate hit, being utilized by 7,000 people a day.

As you can see, this fountain was unlike the fountains we are used to today, namely in that it had a “common cup” that everyone drank from. And before you ask, yes, this was exactly as gross and unhygienic as you would think.

Mercifully, at some point between 1859 and present day, “people finally realized that common cups were completely disgusting and insane,” and we are blessed today with the freestanding streams that we are challenged to slurp out of midair. A marginally better arrangement if you ask me.

Anyway, the Association grew and grew over the years, thanks in part to its connection to the temperance movement. At this point in history, beer was generally safer to drink than water, so much so that choosing beer over water could genuinely be framed as a health-conscious decision.

Non-alcoholic alternatives like coffee and tea were simply too expensive to be viable options on the regular for most people, so the free water fountains came in clutch vis-à-vis reducing widespread societal alcoholism.

By 1879, twenty years after the first free water fountain was built in London, it was estimated by Charles Dickens, Jr. that the city had almost 800 water fountains and troughs serving 300,000 people daily, along with 1,800 horses.

Oh, right, I forgot to tell you about the horses. In 1867, the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association changed its name to the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association on account of they wanted to give the horses water too.

The reason for this was more than just the philanthropists of London being secret horse girls. Of course, before the automobile came along, horses were extremely important to the general functioning of society, so it was important to keep them well fed and hydrated. The free horse troughs have been described as Victorian-era gas stations, but it has gone unreported whether they also sold lottery tickets and Gardettos.

Now, London was not alone in wanting to feed its residents water rather than letting them all get wasted in the streets every single day. For another example of an ambitious water-based commitment to teetotalism, we must travel to the grand metropolis of Portland, Oregon.

One day, wealthy Portland businessman Simon Benson woke up and said to himself, “You know what? I’d really like it if my employees stopped boozing it up in the middle of the workday,” so he gave the city of Portland $10,000 to build twenty of these dope bronze fountains, today known as “Benson Bubblers.”

Were the Benson Bubblers successful in stopping people from getting drunk on their lunch break? Well, I asked one of my Portland-based subscribers for their thoughts on the fountains and they said, “i have heard that back in the day they were for men to rinse their beer breath before returning to work,” so uhhhh that’s gonna be a maybe.

The Benson Bubblers are still around today, and the city of Portland estimates that they dispense nearly 100,000 gallons of water daily.

Do you love beer? How about a statue instead?

If there were a Mount Rushmore of dudes who built water fountains to stop people from drinking alcohol so much, there is one man who would deserve more than anyone else to occupy a place of honor there, and that man is Henry Cogswell.

Our friend Cogswell was one of San Francisco’s first millionaires, and he made his fortune in the teeth business (dentist). Cogswell was described by one author as “not really a bad sort […] His chief fault seems to be hubris in believing that his statuary would inspire men to drink more water.” More on that later.

I’m sure I sound like a broken record at this point, but Cogswell had this incredible idea that if people had easier access to water, they wouldn’t drink alcohol so much. Cogswell wanted to build one water fountain for every 100 saloons in the United States, and while he definitely failed at this overly-ambitious assignment, he sure tried his best!

Something I should mention that has kinda gone unspoken until this point in the story is that all these donations, philanthropic as they were, could never really be described as selfless. These dudes always had an agenda to push or a message to impart. Oftentimes with the temperance fountains, the message was simply, “Drink less alcohol and pay more attention to God,” but Henry Cogswell took it one step further. His message was, “Drink less alcohol and pay more attention to God, and also to Henry Cogswell.”

You see, many of Henry Cogswell’s fountains were topped with the likeness of none other than Henry Cogswell himself.

Unsurprisingly, people did not exactly love this blatant display of vanity. It’s time for a Cogswell fountain roll call!

Rockville, Connecticut? Thrown into a lake.

Dubuque, Iowa? Toppled by an angry mob and entombed beneath a sidewalk.

San Francisco, California? Also toppled by an angry mob, called “a lynch party of self-professed art lovers.”

The good people of San Francisco haaaaated this statue. In an 1893 edition of the city’s Morning Call, it was said, “In a moment of delirium the [Board of Supervisors] allowed one of the fountains to be placed at Market and California streets, where it has suffered from contact with the world.”

I really cannot emphasize enough how much people despised these statues. In Washington, D.C., the Cogswell fountain “was considered so ugly that it led to the formation of fine arts commissions in other parts of the country to keep municipalities from having to deal with such gifts.”

The statue in question:

What do you think, does this statue deserve all the hate it has received? I will say for my own part, I don’t find it to be astoundingly ugly, just extremely forgettable. Or, as Wikipedia’s editors put it, “thousands of tourists and workers walk past daily without noticing it.”

Now, if you do find this statue very ugly but also oddly charming, you are not alone. Meet the Cogswell Society.

This eccentric group of FTC employees, founded in 1972, “found the sculpture so uniquely ugly that they assigned themselves the mission of guarding it from vandals, graffiti artists, and unappreciative bureaucrats.”

Their reason for loving the statue is as simple as “it was next door to their office building” but they’ve formed a beautiful community around their shared admiration of it.

From The New York Times:

[The Cogswell Society is] …ostensibly dedicated to “the study of man’s excesses and the lack of temperance in past and present cultures.” When last heard from, society members held monthly meetings, rarely involving water, at which they stood on one leg like the fountain’s heron, raised their glasses and pledged: “To temperance, I’ll drink to that.”

Want to join the Cogswell Society? Well, there are two problems with that. One, I don’t know whether the group even exists anymore. Two, membership is incredibly exclusive.

From a 1992 Washington City Paper article:

Infiltrating their ranks is no easy task. At any given time, there are exactly 12 active members, selected by unanimous vote of their peers. A 13th seat is kept open in the never-ending hunt for the perfect Cogswellian.

At one point, the society’s members learned of an enticing candidate who worked in the Treasury Department – the great-nephew of none other than Henry Cogswell himself – so they invited him to a meeting.

“He was so insulted that he left during the soup.”

Now, again, I have no idea whether the Cogswell Society still exists today. Many of its original members are likely dead today. Of course, it was a very small group with a barely perceptible footprint so it makes sense that if they’re still going, they would be flying extremely under the radar. But I hope they’re still around. I hope they’re still looking for their 13th member.

Because we need groups like this! Like, it’s funny that they have such strong feelings about this stupid ugly statue, but of course, it’s not really about that. It’s about friendship! It’s about community. It’s about the boys getting together for a drink after work and talking about this dumb bird statue for five seconds but then moving on to talk about much more important things. How’s your day going? How’s your family? What’s on your mind?

There have been a million Substack essays written about how we need more of this exact kind of thing and they are all right. Communities are fueled by the connections that exist within them. We sustain each other through the bonds we form. Let this serve as your call to action to go find a butt-ugly statue in your community and create a club centered around appreciation/defense of said statue.

I love you all, be kind to your neighbors, thanks for reading. Until next time :)

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This lot has sat empty for two years, turning a once-bustling corner into an “eyesore” that “mars [the] city centre,” according to local media. In the absence of urgency from developers, only stagnation lives here.

If you’ve ever lived in a city plagued by empty lots like this, you surely know the feeling: the lot drags down everything around it. Potential could grow from this tract of Earth, but instead it hosts only litter and scrubby overgrowth. The vacancy is not just contained to the lot.

If the lot owner won’t do anything with the site, eventually, someone else is sure to come along who will.

What would you do with it?

Where emptiness lives, so too does opportunity. Barry Thomas realized this. So, he planted cabbages.

On January 4th, 1978, Barry and a group of New Zealand artists showed up with a truckload of topsoil, cut the fence around the site, and dumped the soil onto the ground.

Together, they raked the soil into a square and planted 150 cabbage seedlings, spelling out the word “CABBAGE.” A fish shop next door let them borrow a hose to water the plants.

Then, Barry left. For three weeks, he enjoyed a holiday and let the cabbage patch take on a life of its own. It would be up to the Wellington community to decide what would come of the cabbage and the site as a whole.

Barry challenged the public, saying, “Whether they just leave them, or steal them, or run over them with motorbikes is part of the art because it is a reflection of our culture... It’s a unification of nature with the culture of our society.”

Wellington accepted this challenge. Artists, environmentalists, and community members flocked to the site, tending to the cabbage and bringing art of their own. The site quickly became a “soap box art corner,” attracting larger crowds than New Zealand’s national museum. Even the owner of the vacant lot expressed support for the project and said he hoped they had a bountiful harvest.

The cabbages ultimately remained for six months, culminating in a week-long festival to celebrate the harvest and the community that had made it happen.

The festival was alternately called “A Festival for Trees,” “the Last Roxy Show,” and “the Free Coleslaw Party,” and indeed featured free coleslaw made from fifty cabbages and seven bags of carrots. Leftover cabbage was sacrificially burned.

Today, the Vacant Lot of Cabbages is no longer vacant. Cabbage has not grown here for decades. But the legacy of the site lives on. It is cited as an influence on the Occupy movement and an important moment in the history of artists being embraced as social leaders. In 2012, New Zealand’s national museum purchased Barry’s archives of the Vacant Lot and described it as “an important moment in New Zealand’s art and social history.”

Why was the Vacant Lot of Cabbages such a success?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, which is that people love stuff like this because it gives them permission to be expressive, to be silly, to use their imaginations in ways they usually don’t get to.

In Wellington’s case, this urge to act out always lived inside the community – Barry and his friends simply gave people a place where that behavior was not only tolerated, not only accepted, but celebrated, expected, rewarded. They tapped into the potential of creativity as a unifying force to great success.

Barry and co. took the initiative by being the ones to actually cut the fence and plant the cabbages, but beyond that, the project was totally outside of their control. I mean, Barry literally left – he said, It’s not up to me, this belongs to my neighbors. All they did was provide a canvas on which the community was invited to paint.

The saying “You can just do things” wasn’t popularized until decades after the Vacant Lot of Cabbages disappeared, but the Vacant Lot embodies this ethos perfectly. This project obviously never would have happened if they’d asked for permission first, but because they simply exercised their free will in a way that felt right to them, they shaped the culture in ways we still benefit from today.

Marcel Duchamp walked so I could also walk

In emphasizing the importance of the observer as part of the art, the Vacant Lot of Cabbages touched on ideas that Marcel Duchamp helped bring into the mainstream years earlier. But before we talk about that, we need to talk about my time in eighth-grade art class.

Once upon a time, all of the students in my class were given a block of light green foam about the size of a small toaster. Our teacher, Mr. Conway (not his real name), told us to do whatever we wanted with the foam. He said there were no wrong answers. Evidently, Mr. Conway had arrived at this conclusion before seeing what I had in mind.

Because what I had in mind was “Art Juice.” Instead of carving the block into pretty geometric shapes like the rest of my class, I decided to simply grind the foam block into a fine dust and deposit the remains into a clear plastic two-liter bottle.

To keep the foam from getting lonely, I also shoved various found miscellany into the bottle. A small wooden cube here, a disfigured LEGO man there. It was a genuine terrarium of adolescent apathy.

Now, did I dream up “Art Juice” because I was too lazy and uninspired to think of a serious idea that would have involved carving the block into recognizable shapes? Yes. But was I mad as hell when Mr. Conway called my bluff on this and gave me a very bad grade? Also yes.

Reader, this dastardly man gave me and my Art Juice a D. D!!! Can you believe that? Probably you can, yes. I absolutely phoned it in for this one. Worse than that, actually – I texted it in, if we’re being honest with ourselves. But a D? Come on Mr. Conway, be real.

I knew that in creating Art Juice I was making a mockery of Mr. Conway and his assignment, but I also knew that “art” is a very ambiguously defined thing and it didn’t really feel like his place as a middle school art teacher to tell me that he knew how to define it any better than I did. Like, bro, I was a literal child. We all know that children can tap into an innate sense of wonder and creativity that becomes fundamentally inaccessible once you turn 18. I was the authority on this matter. Anyway

Beyond a D grade, my experience from Art Juice also earned me a lifelong resentment of my middle school art teacher (genuinely go to hell, Mr. Conway) and a recalibrated understanding of what makes art, art. And I didn’t know it then, but by intentionally submitting for consideration a piece of art that I knew in my heart of hearts was absolute trash, I was notching my place in the long, proud history of Dadaism in the United States of America.

Years before Art Juice was birthed into this wild world by my scrawny child hands, Marcel Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal to be included in an art exhibition.

The exhibition was being held by the Society of Independent Artists, a group of which Duchamp was a founding member. The Society was formed to promote avant-garde artists with minimal barriers to entry. As Wikipedia’s editors explain, “Exhibitions were to be open to anyone who wanted to display their work, and shows were without juries or prizes. In order to enter, one had to pay a six-dollar membership and entry fee.”

And that was it! You very much did not have to be an Important Artist to be included in their shows, and your work did not have to meet a certain standard. The message was simple: anyone can be an artist.

Except, it wasn’t so simple, as Duchamp learned. Signing the urinal with a pseudonym (“R. Mutt”), he submitted it to the exhibition and gave it the title Fountain. And despite the Society’s proclaimed open-mindedness to any art that came their way, they certainly did not expect anyone to submit a urinal.

Abiding by their stated policy, the Society could not reject Fountain, but they were absolutely not about to put it on prominent display, either. Here’s Duchamp to explain what happened:

No, not rejected. A work can’t be rejected by the Independents. It was simply suppressed. I was on the jury, but I wasn’t consulted, because the officials didn’t know that it was I who had sent it in … The Fountain was simply placed behind a partition and, for the duration of the exhibition, I didn’t know where it was. I couldn’t say that I had sent the thing, but I think the organizers knew it through gossip. No one dared mention it. I had a falling out with them, and retired from the organization.

Fountain and its fallout ignited immediate controversy. In a New York-based Dada journal, one artist argued, “Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

The artist continued, plainly stating, “The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”

For his part, Duchamp defended the artistic merit behind pieces like Fountain by stating they are “everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.”

Duchamp championed “cerebral art” over “retinal art,” advocating art that engaged the mind and challenged the viewer rather than catering to the eye by focusing purely on easy aesthetic values.

Apparently, Fountain may have been a tad too challenging – it was lost after the exhibition, likely thrown out by someone who thought it was garbage. Oops!

So, was Fountain art? Did it have meaning? Opinions vary here.

Of course, the organizers of the exhibition very much did not consider Fountain to be art. Many in today’s world would surely agree with them, likely including some of you reading this now. But others defend the piece, to varying degrees.

Philosopher Stephen Hicks:

The artist is not a great creator—Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object—it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling—at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on.

Duchamp biographer Calvin Tomkins shares a quote from one of the artist’s friends:

Arensberg had referred to a ‘lovely form’ and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal’s gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha or, perhaps more to the point, one of Brâncuși’s polished erotic forms.

And, listen… I don’t wanna be too mean to Arensberg here… but I really think he managed to miss the point about as much as you possibly could. He’s ascribing artistic value to a urinal that I believe was specifically chosen by Duchamp for its almost complete lack thereof. Like, no, dude – it does not evoke a classic Renaissance Madonna. It is a urinal.

Personally, I think Fountain is very similar to the Vacant Lot of Cabbages in that the artistic value does not come from the physical work itself, but from the collective public reaction to it.

The urinal, like the cabbages, was simply a catalyst for the true art to manifest itself in the public space. Both were canvases for the receivers of the art to create the art.

In the same vein, Art Juice had the effect of exposing Mr. Conway as a phony and a fraud and a likely Duchamp hater. I will be bitter until the day I die.

Anyway, over 100 years later, Fountain is remembered as one of the most important pieces of art created in the 20th century. The Independent said that with Fountain, “Duchamp invented conceptual art and severed for ever the traditional link between the artist’s labour and the merit of the work.”

In 2004, Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 art world professionals, which is rather ironic considering the whole reason it rose to prominence in the first place was precisely because it was rejected by a group of art world professionals.

Sixteen replicas of Fountain were commissioned from Duchamp and live in museums around the world today. These replicas have the unfortunate problem of being targeted by “performance artists” who think they’re doing important art themselves by urinating into the Fountain replicas.

These criminal pissers defend their acts by stating that Duchamp himself would have approved of their subversiveness. And, like… I see their point… I don’t necessarily disagree… but they really need to stop pissing in the middle of museum galleries. That is disgusting. Please stop. If you are reading this post and you have ever urinated on/in an artwork in a gallery you were most likely in the wrong. Okay. Moving on.

Frosty the Snowman is canonically Italian

Is a snowman art? Please consider your answer to this question before continuing on to the next sentence.

Okay, got your answer? Great. Now, is a snowman art if it was built by Michelangelo?

It’s not just a silly hypothetical – the Renaissance master Michelangelo, better known for the David and the immaculate ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was once commissioned to build a snowman by the Lord of Florence.

In the winter of 1494, a bunch of snow fell on Florence, and Piero de’ Medici said, “You know what would be awesome? A snowman. And I know just the man for the job.”

A Renaissance art historian noted that this “statue of snow … was very beautiful,” but as The Guardian reports, “Nothing else is known about the snowman. All that is known for certain is that it happened; it was very beautiful; and it melted.”

Do we think Michelangelo included the snowman in his professional portfolio? Was Pope Clement VII thinking about the snowman when he commissioned ol’ Mikey to paint The Last Judgment?

Snowmen have been part of human culture for hundreds of years. The earliest known documentation of a snowman is an antisemitic illustration found in the margins of a 1380 Christian prayer book in the Dutch national library.

Since then, snowman technology has advanced to such an extent that it is honestly unnecessary. Have you ever considered building a snowman with a focused ion beam? No? Please don’t tell Elsa this is an option.

Todd Simpson and his colleagues at Ontario’s Western University took it upon themselves to build the world’s smallest snowman using a technology that is more typically utilized in semiconductor manufacturing or microscopy sample preparation.

The snowman’s body is made from “three .9-micron silica spheres placed one on top of another.”

And if you, like me, have absolutely zero reference for how small that is, here are the science boys to break it down for us:

So how small is it? It is about three microns tall. By comparison, one strand of human hair is 75 microns thick and the snowman is about half the size of a red blood cell. It is estimated the smallest grains of sand are about 60 microns.

But we’ll return to the traditional method of snowman construction for today’s final tale, the greatest snowman story in human history.

It was the winter of 1511 and it was COLD. We’re talking six straight weeks of freezing weather. We’re talking “Little Ice Age” levels of chilly. And in Brussels, Belgium, the common people were not doing well. They were poor, hungry, and cold, and they wanted the government to do something about it.

The government recognized these sky-high levels of suck and said, “Yeah, you know what? We’ll help you guys out.”

Did they give them food? No. Firewood? No. Literally anything that had a material impact on their general welfare? Haha, no. They gave them a snowman festival.

The benevolent government of Brussels said, “You know what would help distract you guys from the fact that you are so, so cold and very, very hungry? Going outside in the freezing weather and burning precious calories by building funny little snow guys.”

And they did! But just not in the way that the government intended.

In what is now known as the Miracle of 1511, the good people of Brussels banded together to populate the city with more than 100 “pornographic snow sculptures, as well as graphic caricatures of prominent citizens.”

Some of the snow scenes were fairly PG, such as a snow dentist and a snow mermaid, but “[a]ll told, … more than half the scenes were sexual or scatological in nature.”

Some favorite snow citizens included:

• a snownun seducing a snowman

• snow prostitutes enticing people into the city’s red light district

• a snowman and a snowwoman having sex in front of the town fountain

• a naked snowboy urinating into the mouth of a drunken snowman.

And although this early example of political protest may well have annoyed the government, I’d argue it likely had the exact effect they intended upon the citizenry, albeit in a rather perverse way. Though it didn’t warm their bellies or their homes, the creation of a common enemy to unite against likely warmed their spirits and helped them endure the harsh winter.

I must give the disclaimer that this is pure speculation on my part – I don’t snow for sure the impact that it had – but we love a common enemy, don’t we?

It’s a story as old as time and as human as I can imagine – in the absence of support from the powers that be, we find warmth in community. And I don’t know about you, but I can hardly think of anything more artistic than that.

That’s all for this week! Go out and make some art today, whatever that means to you. Until next time, friends :)

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According to Popular Science, this inaugural lunar piss is “a frequent point of discussion in interviews about [Aldrin’s] role in the historic mission.”

Buzz is rightly proud of the urinary havoc he wreaked upon the lunar surface. But, as Popular Science continues, “what many people don’t know is that the urination did not go according to plan.”

“What’s unfortunate is that when he landed the lunar module, he landed so softly that the legs, which were designed to compress, didn’t,” Muir-Harmony explains. As a result, what was supposed to be a small step from the module to the surface was more of a giant leap. In the jolt of that surprising step down, Aldrin’s urine collection device broke. “So instead of going where it was supposed to, the liquid ended up collecting in one of his boots,” she says. “When he walked around the lunar surface he was kind of sloshing around.”

I’m not surprised this is the first time I’ve learned of this crucial detail. It makes sense that the chroniclers of human history would want to leave one of our proudest moments unmarred by the mental image of a dude with piss sloshing around in his boots.

But reader, dear reader, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you surely know that my first priority is not safeguarding the dignity of the human race. As such, we celebrate Buzz and his piss boots.

Okay, wanna hear about another dude who did something embarrassing with his bodily fluids in space? (Rhetorical question, you know what you signed up for by subscribing to Rabbit Cavern)

Meet Senator Jake Garn, Republican from Utah. I’m not gonna bore you with Senator Garn’s bio because literally the only thing you need to know about this dude is that he wanted to go to space so bad.

According to Time, “Garn once joked that if he did not get to fly on the space shuttle, he would not appropriate ‘another cent’ to the agency.”

This obsession was ongoing for years and years. In 1983, Garn reminded NASA, “I still have a great desire to go,” giving the reasoning, “...it is a necessity that Congressmen check things out that they vote for [...] It might be necessary to have a Senator kick the tire.’‘

Eventually, NASA relented. Welcoming Garn aboard the Space Shuttle in 1985, one NASA official insisted, ‘’It’s not a case of giving in. He’s just shown an exceptional amount of interest, more than any other member of Congress. It became very obvious he definitely wanted to go.’‘

In the runup to Garn’s historic mission, where he would become the first sitting member of Congress to fly in space, NASA teased that Garn would “serve mainly as the shuttle’s human guinea pig … to increase understanding of space motion sickness.”

An excited Garn said, “I am hopeful that I can fill in a few of the pieces of the puzzle in the medical department,” and oh boy, dear reader, did he ever.

Years after Garn’s flight, in an oral history interview, a NASA official reminisced that Garn “has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain.”

Translation: he vommed. He vommed so bad. Vomming is basically all he did in space.

As a result of Garn’s disastrous experience aboard the Shuttle, NASA began informally using the “Garn scale” to measure the severity of space sickness for astronauts. The NASA official continues: “...the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high.”

I find a lot of irony in the fact that this dude who only got to go to space because he pestered NASA for years and wielded his political influence for selfish personal gain did not get to enjoy one second of the experience. Hope it was worth it, Jake.

But guess what? Lots of people vom when they get up there (“up there” being space).

According to NASA, space sickness is “experienced by 50 percent or more of astronauts during the first few days of exposure to the microgravity environment of space.”

Veteran astronaut Steve Smith estimated, “I threw up, I would say, 100 times in four flights.”

Space sickness is similar to motion sickness in that it occurs when there is a disconnect between the motion of your body and your perception of the motion of your body, but these two conditions are technically exact opposites of each other.

Motion sickness on Earth occurs when your inner ear senses your body in motion but your eyes perceive a stationary environment. Conversely, space sickness occurs when your inner ear senses a stationary environment but your eyes perceive your body in motion relative to its environment.

So, both conditions are essentially just “your body and your eyes don’t agree on what is happening right now” but the inputs are direct opposites of each other.

Interestingly, the astronauts aboard the first two American space programs, Mercury and Gemini, did not experience space sickness because the design of their capsules restricted their ability to see outside. As such, they didn’t receive enough visual stimuli to sufficiently confuse their vestibular systems into vomming their guts out.

Okay, that’s enough science for one post – back to the unserious rambling that I excel at.

It’s not just astronauts that experience space sickness – the lucky ducks aboard those zero-G airplane flights get all yucked up too.

As many as two-thirds of all passengers aboard these “vomit comet” flights experience some degree of sickness.

One such passenger disgustingly related his experience, sharing that veteran vomiteers advise a breakfast of pancakes and bananas before your flight because “pancakes and bananas taste the same going in and coming out.” (I am so sorry for putting that sentence into your head, but you feel more cultured now, don’t you?)

But would you believe that an upset tummy is the least of your concerns should you find yourself blasting beyond the protective embrace of our Earth’s atmosphere? You should! Turns out our bodies aren’t really built to withstand the environment of space. Who knew?

As the BBC puts it, “[b]illions of years of evolution have adapted us to life in a stable 1G environment,” but all bets are off once you exit that environment. Everything about space is fundamentally hostile to the conditions of our existence. Humans are not designed to flourish in space, as you will soon learn.

A non-comprehensive listing of all the ways space can totally wreck your shit

Okay, let’s start with the eyeballs. Try this one on for size: when you go to space, your eyesight gets worse and it never really gets better.

Back when The Washington Post was still a functional newspaper, they reported that 80% of astronauts on long-duration missions are affected by a condition called visual impairment intracranial pressure syndrome (VIIP).

Here’s how it’s thought to work:

On Earth, gravity pulls bodily fluids down toward the feet. That doesn’t happen in space, and it is thought that extra fluid in the skull increases pressure on the brain and the back of the eye.

(This is bad for the eye)

It’s not 100% proven that VIIP explains the impaired eyesight many astronauts experience because the only way to verify it would be by performing a spinal tap in space or drilling a hole into an astronaut’s skull.

Unsurprisingly, nobody is really champing at the bit to perform either of these procedures. As a senior flight surgeon at NASA explained, “Having to anchor somebody and do a spinal tap in space is not something we would relish.”

Surveys of hundreds of astronauts have found continuing issues with eyesight following long-duration missions to space, and while your vision may bounce back to a certain extent, astronauts who sign up for these missions do so knowing that they will likely experience some degree of heightened visual impairment for the rest of their lives.

Bone density and muscle mass also suffer in the harsh environment of space. Because astronauts put almost no weight on many of their muscles and bones while experiencing weightlessness, bones become brittle and muscles atrophy quickly.

According to NASA, “[m]uscle mass can vanish at a rate as high as 5% a week,” and bones “atrophy at a rate of about 1% a month, and models suggest that the total loss could reach 40 to 60 per cent.”

As the BBC bluntly puts it, “For future Mars walkers, this is a potentially devastating effect. Imagine if one small step for mankind were to result in a broken leg.”

To counteract these effects, astronauts must engage in regular exercise, but this, too, is more challenging in space due to the lack of gravity as a form of resistance. Astronauts use specially-designed machines (sometimes named for Stephen Colbert) to get a workout comparable to what they would get back on Earth.

Upon returning to Earth, muscle mass is gradually rebuilt at a rate of about one day of recovery for every day spent in space.

Bones are a slightly more complicated matter, though: “For a three to six month space flight, says Schneider, it might require two to three years to regain lost bone -- if it’s going to come back, and some studies have suggested that it doesn’t.”

Okay, here’s one of my favorite space facts: On Earth, gravity causes blood to pool in your feet, so blood pressure is naturally higher down there than it is in your head. Without the effect of gravity, though, your blood pressure in space is equalized throughout the whole body, and as a result, blood pressure ends up being higher in your head while in space than your body is used to on Earth.

Your brain interprets this change in blood pressure as a signal that your body contains too much blood, so it responds by producing less blood until cranial blood pressure drops to a normal level. This has the incredible effect of reducing your overall blood volume by as much as 22 percent while in space.

Of course, this also means that with less blood in your body, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump it, so your heart muscle begins to atrophy. Isn’t space grand?

(Blood volume is typically back to normal within a few days of returning to Earth.)

STD stands for Space Transmitted Disease

So far, we’ve talked about a lot of things that your body loses while in space – kind of a bummer, right? Why don’t we talk about something that your body gains?

Without that pesky gravity compressing your spine, the skeleton is allowed to expand in space, and within one month, you can gain up to one inch (2.5 cm) of height. Neat!

The gain isn’t all good, though. In addition to height, your body may also gain – you guessed it! – herpes.

A 2019 NASA report found that dormant herpes viruses hiding within astronaut bodies reactivated “in more than half of crew aboard Space Shuttle and International Space Station missions.”

Here’s how it works:

“During spaceflight there is a rise in secretion of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which are known to suppress the immune system. In keeping with this, we find that astronaut’s immune cells - particularly those that normally suppress and eliminate viruses - become less effective during spaceflight and sometimes for up to 60 days after.”

Most astronaut herpes cases were thankfully asymptomatic, but the finding still represents a concerning risk for future long-duration space missions. We don’t want herpes on Mars, people!

Let’s wrap up by talking about sleep. Sadly for these brittle-boned, weak-muscled, blood-deficient, half-blind, artificially tall, vomit-covered, herpes-addled astronauts, they can’t even sleep it off when they’re feeling like garbage.

NASA reports that up to half of all crew members aboard some space missions may be taking sleeping pills, and yet they still average about two hours less sleep per night than they normally get on Earth.

In fact, “nearly half of all medication used in orbit is intended to help astronauts sleep.” (I assume the other half is herpes medication)

This sleep debt greatly affects astronaut performance. According to a Harvard Medical School professor, “Research performed on Earth suggests that some of them, after a week or two on this restricted sleep schedule, are performing at the level of someone who’s been awake for 24-plus hours.””

Sleep in space is also carefully monitored so it does not jeopardize astronaut health. Ventilator fans must always be nearby, as “warm air does not rise in space so astronauts in badly-ventilated sections end up surrounded by a bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide.”

As the European Space Agency reports, “The result is oxygen starvation: at best, they will wake up with a splitting headache, gasping for air.” (The ESA did not say what happens “at worst” but I assume it is death)

It’s not all scary and life-threatening, though – there are some silly stories of sleep in space. From NASA:

“The first night in space when I was drifting off to sleep,” recalled one Apollo astronaut, “I suddenly realized that I had lost track of ... my arms and legs. For all my mind could tell, my limbs were not there. However, with a conscious command for an arm or leg to move, it instantly reappeared -- only to disappear again when I relaxed.”

Another astronaut from the Gemini program reported waking in the dark during a mission and seeing a disembodied glow-in-the-dark watch floating in front of him. Where had it come from? He realized moments later that the watch was around his own wrist.

And that’s all I have on space! A good chunk of the notes I had for this post were leftovers from my post, “Do astronauts have alarm clocks?” so go check that out if you enjoyed this one.

Thanks, as always, for reading! Until next time :)

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No? Really? Never been curious about the scent of those personal injury attorney ads? (I am guessing burnt rubber and moral depravity)

Well, anyway, wonder no more, because the enterprising people of North Carolina answered this question for us a decade and a half ago.

If you spent the summer of 2010 anywhere near Mooresville, NC, you may have been a witness to the world’s first scented billboard, courtesy of the Bloom grocery chain.

Featuring a giant cube of steak atop the tines of an equally giant fork, this “grill-board” (hate that) emitted a scent of “a blend of black pepper and kind of a charcoal grilling smell” as rush hour commuters sped by.

Said one scent marketing consultant, “It will definitely catch your attention, because we have to breathe,” which is honestly such a great marketing strategy. Preying on our biological imperative to respirate? Genius. I never would have thought of that.

The scent was distributed via fragrance oil blasted into the surrounding environs by a high-powered fan at the base of the billboard. And did it work? Not really, no!

While it was meant to have a range of up to 150 feet (45m), the steak smell was “difficult to perceive” beyond 15 feet away, and “indistinguishable during a ride past with the windows down.”

Sorry, did the marketing whizzes forget that people usually have their windows rolled up while speeding down the highway? And this is what they do for a living? Anyway

Scented advertisements like the grill-board are, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty rare throughout history. But one other notable example appeared in San Francisco in 2006.

Once upon a time, the California Milk Processor Board said, “You know what the good people of San Francisco ought to be thinking about while they wait for their bus to arrive? Milk.”

So, “in an effort by dairy producers to make passengers thirsty for milk,” the milkheads installed a bunch of chocolate chip cookie-scented strips at select bus stops around the city and waited for the milk money to pour in. These were the same people behind the uber-successful “Got Milk?” campaign, so surely they thought this one would go just as well.

Spoiler alert: it did not! Spoiler alert: it went so poorly!

People were immediately worried that the cookie aroma might be perilous for folks with asthma and other respiratory ailments. Others raised the concern that perhaps it was in poor taste to permeate a space frequented by poor and homeless people with the smell of food.

Residents were split with regards to their feelings on the milk marketing. Reactions ranged from puzzled:

to incredulous:

to… however you would describe this exchange from an NPR report:

The milk marketing moguls had super high hopes for this campaign. One ad ed exec said, “[W]e’re trying to frighten people into thinking: I might not have enough milk. What if this happens to me at home?” Another predicted, “if it works in San Francisco, ‘it will work anywhere.’”

City officials were far less eager about the ad campaign, mostly because nobody from Big Milk told them that they were about to stink up all the bus stops with cookie smell. Here’s an MTA spokeswoman on the matter:

What they did not do is consult with anybody at our agency prior to doing that. We found out from a reporter. Apparently everybody knew besides us.

San Francisco supervisor Tom Ammiano and Schwarzenegger-heckling icon (see below) said, “[W]hat I really smell is the stink of corporate manipulation.”

In the end, the bus stop cookie smell ad campaign lasted only a single day after San Francisco officials said “absolutely not, please stop,” and ordered the milk boys to take down the cookie strips, and the bus stops have smelled like something else ever since.

My job is Smell

You might be wondering, where do innovative ideas like “steak billboard” come from in the first place?

Folks, meet ScentAir. This Charlotte-based company “provides custom scents and fragrance-delivery systems for businesses, including hotel lobbies, casino gambling floors and retail stores.”

ScentAir was founded in 1994 by “a former Lockheed Martin rocket scientist-turned-Walt Disney ‘Imagineer,’” who had been tasked with creating a citrus scent for a theme park ride. Since then, they’ve grown so much that more than 50,000 brands worldwide pay them to make their spaces smell like stuff. More than likely, their handiwork has been inside your nose without you even knowing it.

In my analysis, ScentAir basically exists to provide smell-dissemination operations that are just slightly more sophisticated than the charmingly-named “sidewalk tea”:

When Dallas Pratt worked at an outpost of Aesop in an outdoor shopping mall outside Chicago, one of her and her co-workers’ favorite ways of drawing in new customers was making a concoction they called “sidewalk tea”. They would put a few drops of scented lotion in a cup of hot water, and then they would pour it on to the slab of concrete outside the shop. As the water evaporated, the smell of the lotion would fill the air.

Smell plays a very strong role in consumer behavior. As another scent marketer puts it:

At a lot of stores, especially cheaper stores like Zara, we can smell the plastic and the materials in the wall. Subconsciously, that’s telling us something: no matter how much money is put into visual branding, this is something uncomfortable, something not safe and not good for us.

This is where ScentAir comes in. Their odor experts have engineered such memorable smells as “the smell of Shrek’s flatulence on the Universal Studios amusement park ride, the wafts of cotton candy on Katy Perry’s 2011 tour, and the dinosaur dung scent at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.”

They also worked with Snap Fitness to design “the Snap Fitness signature scent with notes that create an invigorating sensory experience.” And I am confident I am not alone in expressing the sentiment that, genuinely, the very last thing I want to have at Snap Fitness is “an invigorating sensory experience.” Good lord.

I also just want to call out that at no point in their press release did ScentAir describe what the Snap Fitness signature scent is supposed to smell like, which I feel is a wise and deliberate decision.

The composition of unique scents made for specific companies is always kept confidential by ScentAir, but it feels especially crucial to me that no one knows what they are trying to make Snap Fitness smell like.

…because, like, we all know that the “Snap Fitness signature scent” is just sweat and it will always be sweat and it will always overpower whatever sensory concoction ScentAir has dreamt up to try to mask that. I’m sorry but it will always stink there. And that is part of the experience. Anyway

ScentAir isn’t just in the business of making things smell good. As it turns out, they are also in the business of making things smell very awful in very specific circumstances. One journalist who toured ScentAir’s warehouse spotted jugs of scent juice labeled “Delta” (for their SkyClub lounges) happily coexisting alongside jugs labeled “sewage” (also for the Delta SkyClub lounges).

Some of the smells in this warehouse are unimaginably bad. As Charlotte Magazine puts it, “not all clients look for energizing citruses and relaxing florals” – some of them want that premium dead body scent.

What? Yeah, about 10% of their business comes from military contractors and hospitals that need specific terrible scents for training purposes. As a ScentAir executive put it, “Oh, we’ve got some stinky stuff.”

Hospitals pay good money for “manufactured vomit, feces, and urine,” and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin “buy similarly revolting scents for use in defense simulators to prepare soldiers for the most foul aspects of war.”

The ScentAir exec continues: “For all these years sending troops into battle, (the military was) preparing our troops for the explosions and the sounds and the lights and everything around them. But (the soldiers) were like, ‘You didn’t prepare me for the wretched smell of what it’s like to be in battle.’”

I feel obligated to mention that “dead body scent” was not specifically mentioned in this article, but what else do we think they mean by “similarly revolting scents” of “the most foul aspects of war”?

I love to imagine ScentAir having a warehouse mixup and accidentally sending the dead body scent to the wrong place. Raytheon receives something that smells like a warm springtime breeze while the Ritz Carlton gets gallons and gallons of dead body scent.

Imagine walking into a hotel lobby and instead of the light breezy smell of oranges and magnolias, you are hit with a wall of dead body scent. I would demand free room service.

In addition to these high-volume orders for big clients, ScentAir also sells candles and diffuser fragrances directly to consumers. Reader, you are only $14 away from owning a certified ScentAir candle in premium scents like “Amalfi Coast” and “Cannabis Neutralizer.”

So, I just want to be perfectly clear in emphasizing that ScentAir has the technology to create extremely realistic Dead Body Scent candles and they are choosing not to. What kind of world could we be living in if everyone had the option of keeping a Dead Body Scent candle on their bedside table? I like to imagine it would be more humble and pure of heart. However some have disagreed with me on this.1 I choose to believe in the faultlessness of my dreams anyway.

Smells like peen spirit (sorry)(this will make sense shortly)

I was nearly finished writing this post when I came across this Wall Street Journal article about companies trying to entice their employees back into the office with awesome smells.

“We know you love the flexibility of working from your apartment that contains your cat and your shower and dozens of oranges and every blanket you own, but what if the soulless cubicle farm smelled like jasmine and sandalwood? Wouldn’t you like to commute an hour in each direction just to experience that?”

Newsflash, corporate America: I own candles!!!!

Anyway, the best thing about this article is that it has the most buried lede in the entire history of journalism. About halfway down the page, I encountered the following paragraph:

Finding office-appropriate scents is key. Dr. Hirsch, for instance, says companies should avoid the combination of lavender and pumpkin pie because of its sexual-arousal effect.

Sorry whaaaaaaaat????

Right. Ok. The good Dr. Hirsch elaborates here: “We did a study looking at effects of odors on penile blood flow and found the number one that enhanced blood flow was this combination. I don’t know why.”

And from here, the article simply moves on and says nothing more about the inexplicable penis-hardening effects of lavender-doused pumpkin pie. This is why print journalism is dying.

Anyway, I found the study and read every word that Dr. Hirsch wrote about “Human Male Sexual Response to Olfactory Stimuli” and I’m so excited to share what I found here.2

First of all, the study’s participants were all residents of Chicago and its suburbs, and they “were recruited through solicitation on classic rock radio broadcasts,” so it’s unclear whether the study’s findings could be replicated with people who don’t love Bruce Springsteen and the Cubs.

Basically, this was just a study of which smells make Chicago Bears fans horny, but I feel like I already knew the answer to that one, and it is “bratwurst and disappointment.”

Before exposing the men to the smells, they asked them, “Have you ever had an odor-induced erection?” and unsurprisingly, 84% of them said no, but I am desperate to chat with the five fellas who answered in the affirmative here.

The researchers tested 30 different odors on the men, and guess what? Every single one of them “produced an increase in penile blood flow.” Science has yet to discover a smell that can make a man less horny.

I wish they would have tried the dead body smell. To see if literally any smell could reduce the Boner. Literally any stimuli. Good lord.

Our aforementioned lavender + pumpkin pie smell produced the greatest increase in penile blood flow, with a median increase of 40%. Second place was black licorice and donut (31.5%) followed by pumpkin pie and donut (20%).

(The full list of scents and their % increase on penile blood flow is listed at the bottom of the study, in case you were wondering how horny “grilled meat” makes your average Chicagoan (not nearly as much as you’d think))

The researchers shared one anecdote that I find equal parts fascinating and hilarious. One study participant slept through the entire thing, so any reaction he and his penis had to the smells was entirely innate. No conscious thought or decision-making. Simply his brain deciding which smells were sexy and which were not.

This sleeping man experienced the “greatest increase in penile-blood flow in response to the combined odors of lavender and pumpkin pie.” The researchers note, “We suspect a direct physiologic mechanism, yet we cannot rule out a possible impact of odors upon the dreams of the subject who slept through the experiment, perhaps with his dream content influencing penile blood flow.”

What was he dreaming about??? We need a follow-up study ASAP!!!!!

Anyway, two more quick facts to close out our post today:

As discussed, the researchers could not find any smell that reduced penile blood flow, but they suggest that, if discovered, “[s]uch an odor might be utilized to decrease penile blood flow in sex offenders, such as pedophiles, as part of their deconditioning or aversion training.”

Again, might I suggest dead body scent? If it’s good enough for the military, it’s good enough for pedophiles. Please do not reprint that sentence out of context. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

And lastly, the BBC reports that Dr. Hirsch also ran a similar experiment on women. While I could not find the full study, I am happy to report that “[l]iquorice and cucumber did it for the ladies, increasing vaginal blood flow by an average of 13%.”

And that’s all we have on smells for today! If anyone can procure a ScentAir signature Dead Body Scent wood wick candle for me, I will comp you a lifetime paid subscription. Thanks so much for reading, friends.

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If your reaction is anything like mine when I first stumbled across this stork’s Wikipedia page, you are likely very puzzled right now. And I am sorry for that. But confusion is a part of life. And the only way out is through. So are you ready to learn more about this bird? Okay, let’s begin.

When Wikipedia told me that our friend above, the Pfeilstorch, “constituted some of the earliest definitive evidence of long-distance migration in European birds,” I was extremely confused (as previously stated).

You’re telling me people didn’t know about bird migration before 1822? Sorry, did people not simply look up and notice birds flying away? Were they really so busy getting the Plague (or whatever it is they did back then) that they couldn’t pay a little bit more attention to the sky?

To be clear, it wasn’t that people didn’t notice the absence of birds in the winter – they just didn’t know where they went. And reader, I’m so pleased to tell you that there were plenty of stupid theories that attempted to explain the annual bird disappearance.

Popular ideas included:

• Birds turned into other kinds of birds

• Birds turned into mice

• Birds hibernated underwater

There aren’t many recurring themes in this deliberately erratic blog o’ mine, but if there’s one motif that keeps coming back again and again, it’s that old-timey people were incredibly stupid.

Like, I’m sorry, not to go back to this again, but could you seriously not conceive of the possibility that these creatures with wings might just get up and fly somewhere else? You never noticed them consistently flying south year after year? You were more inclined to think that they turned into mice than to think that the animals capable of flight simply flew elsewhere?

Idiots. Irredeemably stupid. I’d say “sorry if anyone from the 19th century or earlier is reading this right now” but I’m certain none of those numbskulls can read anyway. The invention of the printing press was wasted on you clowns.

Anyway, I don’t know where this “birds turn into mice” idea came from, but I can tell you precisely where the “birds hibernate underwater” theory originated: none other than Aristotle.

You know, that guy whose main thing is that he’s good at thinking about stuff? He’s the one who said birds hide underwater. The esteemed poet Dante called Aristotle “the master of those who know” but evidently this did not include knowing anything at all about birds.

According to one zoologist, Aristotle did consider migration as a possible explanation for why birds disappear in the winter, but he “ruled out migration rather quickly, thinking it the most absurd.”

Aristotle also considered the “birds turn into other birds” theory. Here’s a quick explanation of that, from a 1935 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report:

“Frequently one species would arrive from the north just as another species departed for more southerly latitudes. From this [Aristotle] reasoned the two different species were actually one and assumed different plumages to correspond to the summer and winter seasons.”

But inexplicably, “[h]is hypothesis that birds hibernate gained the most traction, … persisting in learned discussions for well over 2,000 years.”

(The best explanation I could find for this theory was “sometimes fishermen pulled birds out of rivers” but that’s about as scientific as it gets)

Friends, this is the danger of one guy being confidently incorrect and everyone else just going along with what he says. Aristotle had one stupid idea about birds and the advancement of ornithology simply hit pause for the next two millennia.

Eventually, an Oxford-educated Harvard professor came along and said, “Guys, we’ve had it all wrong. Birds don’t hibernate underwater.” And everyone in the scientific community said, “Oh? Where do they go instead? You’re very well-educated so we trust you.” And this man – again, a living manifestation of the very pinnacle of higher education – confidently said, “They fly to the moon.”

That’s right – Charles Morton, in “the earliest treatise on bird migration in England,” made the argument that birds did indeed migrate, but to the dark reaches of outer space rather than simply “a little bit south of here.”

In this “unique combination of ornithology and astronomy” (which is certainly one way to describe this theory), Morton “smartly reasoned that underwater hibernation would inhibit their ability to breathe,” but somehow did not see any problem with suggesting that they could breathe in the vacuum of space1.

It wasn’t until the year of our Lord 1822 that a German ornithologist observed a graceful white stork soaring through the skies, fully impaled through the neck with a spear, and confirmed what has seemed incredibly obvious to me this entire time.

The Germans inspected the spear and determined it was made of African wood (most likely from modern-day Sudan), demonstrating that the stork spent its winters in Africa before returning to Europe. This proved for the first time ever that bird migration was undeniably real and did not involve any celestial bodies beyond Earth.

As of today, about 25 instances of spear-impaled storks have been documented in Germany, but they are increasingly rare as African hunters opt for guns over spears. Alas.

I love the spear-stork story because it’s one of those facts that simply shocks me to discover. It’s like when you learn that Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year. My immediate reaction is like “oh wow, i never would have guessed that.” And I get the same reaction upon hearing that “knowledge of migratory birds” was born the same year that Brazil became a sovereign nation, or that Napoleon Bonaparte died without ever knowing about bird migration.

The idea that birds migrate seems so obvious to me as a person living in the modern era, with the benefit of all this knowledge that has been commonplace since I was born. But I never considered how that knowledge came to be in the first place, and I never appreciated the fact that this information was not a given until somebody made it so. That is the process of science and that is the beauty of discovery. And I love it! I love learning. Are you ready for more learning?

Did somebody say bird migration?

By far the longest migration in the entirety of the animal kingdom is that of the Arctic tern.

This little guy (little as in, only 10 inches/25 cm long and weighing only 100 grams) flies up to 50,000 miles (80,000 km) every year between its breeding grounds around the Arctic Circle and the southern tips of Africa and South America.

During its thirty-year lifetime, an Arctic tern generally flies a total distance equal to three round-trip journeys to the Moon2 or 60 circumnavigations of the globe.

The fact that we even have this data is remarkable in its own right, because until recently, bird tracking devices were simply too heavy to attach to small birds like the Arctic tern.

But thanks to a dainty little tracker, weighing only 1.4 grams, researchers were able to shine new light on the migration patterns of this dainty little bird.

They discovered that rather than taking a direct route from their wintering grounds to their breeding grounds, the terns instead trace a zigzagging route across the globe. Why?

They’re following the wind, of course! Much like me whenever I am outside anytime ever, Arctic terns would prefer not to head directly into the wind, so they base their migration routes around the principle of letting the wind do the work for them. Smart birds.

Speaking of dainty little creatures that require innovative solutions to be tracked:

Monarch butterflies! Their annual migration is one of nature’s most spectacular displays and I am so excited to tell you about it.

Monarchs start flying south from the northern U.S. and southern Canada in early autumn, eventually arriving in central Mexico or southern coastal California.

Now, here’s the thing - monarchs only live for about four weeks, so the northbound journey requires three generations of butterflies to traverse the whole distance.

But the journey down south is completed by a single generation of butterflies known as the “super generation,” so described because they live eight times longer than their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

To muster up enough energy for this 50-mile-a-day migration, the super generation monarchs “suppress a key reproductive hormone” and delay developing their sexual organs until the very end of their lives, when they finally produce offspring to begin the four-generation cycle all over again.

Anyway. Of course this all means that before the monarchs travel back north, an absolutely staggering butterfly orgy takes place in the mountains of central Mexico. Anyway. This is a family-friendly blog

If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely had dreams involving Anderson Cooper riding a horse through rural Mexico, curiously admiring butterflies along the way. Well, dream no more – check out this cool 60 Minutes report on monarch migration before Bari Weiss nukes it from orbit to satisfy the regime.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, at least make time for the part where Anderson Cooper eats a butterfly on national television3 warms a butterfly’s wings with his breath to grant it the power of flight once again.

You thought we were done talking about storks?

Guess what? When I first started working on this post, it was intended to have a much, much broader focus, but then I started researching storks and simply never stopped. One moment, I clicked on the Wikipedia page for “stork” and then I blinked and suddenly five hours had passed and I had fifteen pages of notes, almost entirely on storks. This is generally how my creative process unfolds.

I kept stumbling upon more and more stork facts, muttering to myself, “Oh no, not another awesome stork fact,” with the faux-reluctance of Kristen Wiig saying, “Don’t make me sing.”

You ready for a stork fact lightning round? Let’s get into it.

• White storks were occasionally mummified by ancient Egyptians

• People in the 1800s (famously stupid, as discussed) thought storks only lived in countries with republican forms of government

• Ancient Greek law was heavily stork-influenced

  • Killing a stork could be punishable by death

  • Storks, thought to take care of their aging parents, inspired an ancient Greek law called Pelargonia (from pelargos, meaning “stork”), which required Greek citizens to take care of their aging parents (hopefully not punishable by death)

• “The bird is believed to be capable of predicting the weather [according to Ukrainian folk belief]: restless behavior indicates the approach of bad weather, standing on one leg, cold weather, and clacking of the beak, a sunny day” (source)

Are you ready for something extremely cute? It turns out that storks, like crows, make great friends to the human race.

Meet Adem and Yaren. Adem is a Turkish fisherman and Yaren (“close friend” in Turkish 🥹) is his stork buddy.

Every year, Yaren flies thousands of miles north from Africa to spend six months with Adem in Turkey, where they go fishing together every morning. This friendship began in 2010 and is still ongoing as of March 2025.

These two buddies are so iconic that a statue of Adem and Yaren was built at the center of their village.

Yaren is so famous in Turkey that even his offspring make headlines:

Okay, no disrespect to Adem and Yaren, but that was actually a warm-up for the even more adorable stork friendship story I’m about to tell you.

This is Stjepan (human, Croatian, janitor) and Malena (stork, stateless, no job), and their bond is so cute it makes me want to run through a brick wall.

In 1993, Stjepan discovered an injured Malena, who had been shot by hunters and could no longer fly. Unable to migrate or fend for herself in the wild, she likely would have soon died, but Stjepan decided to take Malena under his wing (sorry)

Says Stjepan, “If I had left her in the pond, foxes would have eaten her. But I changed her fate, so now I’m responsible for her life.”

And oh boy, did he take this responsibility seriously!

Stjepan drove Malena around in his car. They would sit in his house and watch TV together. He collected twigs for her so she could build a nest. He hand-fed her chicks because Malena could not feed them herself.

“This stork is my whole life,” said Stjepan.

“She doesn’t care that my pension is small.”

“I don’t go to the coast or with friends anywhere, I always just worry about her.”

But the story gets even better. In 2001, a male stork began visiting Malena, and he would return to mate with her every spring for the next 20 years.

A radio tracking band revealed that this male stork, whom Stjepan named “Klepetan” for the knocking sound he made with his beak, traveled over 8,000 miles (13,000 km) from South Africa to see Malena every year.

Their love story grew so prolific that Stjepan claimed over a million people would watch a livestream of Malena in her nest waiting for Klepetan to return each year.

And unsurprisingly, Stjepan cared for Klepetan just the same as he did for Malena.

“When Klepetan appears in our backyard and flies to the bucket filled with fish I prepared for him, there is no money or wealth that could replace the happiness and joy that fill my heart.”

On July 7th, 2021, Malena died of old age. Stjepan had cared for her for 28 years. Malena was with Klepetan as she died, and Stjepan claims Klepetan continues to visit her grave beneath an apple tree at the local schoolhouse.

Malena and Klepetan’s bond has been described as “Croatia’s most unusual love story,” a claim which I would not dispute.

And on that very sweet note, we’re going to wrap up! Thanks for joining me on yet another adventure through the rabbit hole.

I hope you learned something that you can share with somebody in your life this week – remember, curiosity is best enjoyed with others.

Until next time!

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in my defense it really does look like he wants to eat it. and so do i, kind of

What do all these cities have in common?

Is it their cultural prestige? Their culinary excellence? Their striking views of the Adirondacks?

Negative on all three counts. No, it’s something far greater, far more lucrative for NBC, and with far more interlocked multi-colored rings. It’s the Olympics, baby.

I love the Olympics, okay? Every two years, the world’s great cities (and also Lake Placid) compete for the privilege of bankrupting themselves to host the world’s most athletic sleepover, and I eat up every second of it.

I love the obscure sports, I love seeing Bob Costas with pinkeye, I love seeing the next generation of Dancing with the Stars contestants find their footing on a global stage.

But more than anything, I love the pageantry1 and glamor of it all.

And the best part of the show is the elaborate, high-budget ceremonies the host cities choreograph to begin and end it all, with the centerpiece being the all-powerful, omniscient Olympic flame towering high above in its cauldron.

I think it’s very cute that they let the flame watch the entire Olympics from its little chair in the sky. It must be very tired after the long journey it took to get there all the way from Greece!

The very end of this torch-based journey gets lots of attention, as it typically features prominent, hand-picked figures toting the torch through the host city’s streets and into the stadium.

But the earlier parts – the vast majority of the torch relay’s route – are seldom seen or heard about by anyone besides the most devoted Olympicheads.

Thankfully, though, you are all fortunate to have one degree of separation from someone who has read the Wikipedia pages for every single Olympic torch relay that has ever occurred, and that someone (me) is going to get you up to speed on this incredible, wacky phenomenon just one month before the torch relay for Milano Cortina 2026 concludes. Let’s get into it.

The fire contains the ghosts of Olympics past, I think

I’ll start by saying that symbolism is a hugely important component of the Olympic torch relay, which is perhaps unsurprising for a process that involves lugging a torch around an entire country, mostly on foot, instead of simply asking any man, woman, or child who happens to be in the vicinity if you can borrow their lighter for a second.

Seriously, look at any city that’s ever hosted the Olympics and tell me with a straight face that these places aren’t filled with people who started smoking when they were ten years old. You simply cannot. Paris? Beijing? Squaw Valley? Anyway

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is obsessed with symbolism to an extent that I cannot adequately cover in this piece alone, but the most important thing for you to know is that the sanctity of the flame takes precedent above all else.

Do you want to guess how the Olympic torch gets ignited in the first place? If you said “harness the energy of the Sun using parabolic mirrors” then you are spot on, congratulations.

Months before the Games kick off, the Greeks hold a ceremony at the Temple of Hera, featuring a group of women dressed as Vestal Virgins saying some stuff in Greek and then lighting the first torch. Here’s a clip of the ceremony for Tokyo 2020.

What happens if it’s cloudy? Don’t worry, they’ve got a pre-lit flame ignited a few days beforehand by (you guessed it) parabolic mirrors that can be used as a backup, as seen in 2024 for the Paris Games.

Either way, the flame of the torch, and thus the eventual flame of the cauldron, will always be able to trace its source back to the concentrated power of the Sun’s rays at a ceremony in Olympia. Symbolism!

But for all this emphasis on symbolism today, the first Olympic flame was actually introduced for very practical and non-symbolic reasons.

Simply, people needed to know where the Olympics were happening, so organizers in Amsterdam (1928) placed a cauldron atop a tower at Olympic Stadium, and a new tradition was born.

Four years later, the people in charge of Los Angeles 1932 said “sure that sounds fun” and they also did a cauldron, and four years after that, the people in charge of Berlin 1936 (Hitler, etc.) said “we’ll do the cauldron, but we’re also gonna add a fun new element to emphasize the Aryan connection between Germany and Greece” and the IOC said “alright, go nuts,” and the Olympic torch relay was created.

Hitler thought the torch relay was a great way to highlight what he saw as the Third Reich’s strong link to ancient Greek ideals.

It also allowed Germany to flex its organizational and political muscle. Tracing a route through Central Europe was no small feat, and by taking on these challenges of logistics and political instability, Germany sought to increase its influence among the countries through which the torch was carried.

“Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations,” Hitler proclaimed just before the torch relay began, and over the next decade, his Nazi regime would come to dominate every single country along the route.

The torch relay’s Nazi beginnings are, from what I can tell, largely forgotten today, and no vestiges of the evil ideology remain in any part of the ceremony.

And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything problematic about being a modern-day torch relay stan – this would be very bad news for me!!!

I just think it’s interesting to peek behind the curtain and dig into the history of things like the torch relay that we usually don’t think twice about. Sometimes, though, you find Nazis behind the curtain. It happens a lot more often than you’d expect when you’re waist-deep in Wikipedia.

Anyway, should we learn about all the subsequent torch relays that had nothing to do with fascism or antisemitism? Yeah, let’s do that.

All the non-Nazi torch relays

The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled due to the aforementioned Nazis, but organizers for London 1948 were ready to go with their torches.

Following a 12-day journey from Greece to the UK, the torch arrived at Empire Stadium only 30 seconds behind schedule. And according to Wikipedia’s editors, this half-minute hold-up “may have only been in the final few hundred yards of the relay … as the pressure of the crowds on the torch carrier and their escorts reduced the pace to walking speed.”

Similarly remarkable precision was achieved four years later at the Helsinki Summer Games. In the relay’s final stages, the torchbearer followed close behind a police car whose occupants kept in radio contact with the organizers at Helsinki Olympic Stadium.

Through this correspondence, the torchbearer was instructed to speed up or slow down as needed, which led to the torch arriving at the stadium with perfect timing.

1952 also saw the first torch relay for the Winter Olympics, which were held in Oslo that year. (Summer and Winter Games were held in the same year until 1992.)

Remember how Olympic organizers are obsessed with symbolism? That part is relevant again here.

Rather than being lit by parabolic mirrors in Olympia, the flame for the 1952 winter relay was lit in a hearth in Morgedal, Norway, the birthplace of competitive skiing.

And because the source of the flame was not Olympia, the IOC said it could not be considered a true Olympic torch relay. Instead, it was pitched as an entirely distinct event that celebrated the use of torches while skiing in the dark (sure, ok, whatever you say)

The relay was conducted entirely on skis, except for the very last part where the final torchbearer had to take off his skis to go up a flight of stairs and light the cauldron. But apart from that, all skis, baby. Milan could never.

Melbourne 1956 saw perhaps the funniest prank in all of Olympic torch relay history, and maybe one of the funniest pranks of all time.

A group of Australian university students wanted to protest the spectacle of the torch relay for, among other reasons, the fact that it was invented by Nazis.

To do so, they built a fake torch out of a wooden chair leg covered in silver paint, topped with an empty plum pudding can containing kerosene-soaked underwear.

As Wikipedia puts it, “The result was a roughly torch-shaped object.”

With 30,000 onllookers cheering him on and a fake military escort in tow, veterinary student Barry Larkin paraded the flaming underwear torch through the streets of Sydney, eventually handing it to Mayor Pat Hills and quickly disappearing into the crowd.

Mayor Hills did not realize it was a prank, despite the fact that the still-wet paint now coated his hand as he began his prepared remarks to a crowd.

Soon, someone whispered in the mayor’s ear that the torch was a fake. The mayor relayed this information to the crowd, who understandably became upset. Eventually, the real torch arrived, but by then half the crowd had already gone home. Barry Larkin’s identity as the prankster remained a mystery to all but a small circle of people for decades afterwards.

Mexico City 1968 was the first time the Olympic cauldron was lit by a woman (awesome) but also saw several torchbearers injured by small explosions as lit torches came into contact with unlit ones (less awesome).

The relay torch for Montreal 1976 had one thing in common with my tummy which is that it was fuelled partially by olive oil. Organizers made this decision to emphasize the Greek origins of the Olympics, and I make this decision simply because I love olive oil.

Another unique feature of the Montreal 1976 relay was that it used satellites and lasers to transport the flame across the Atlantic.

The explanation of how this was achieved is too sciencey for me to attempt to paraphrase, so I’ll just let Wikipedia take this one:

The Games go corporate

Los Angeles 1984 was a groundbreaking Olympics, and the torch relay was no exception. First of all, the torch relay got its own logo and it was incredibly dope:

And in true American fashion, this torch relay was an absolute desecration of the traditional torch relay as the world had come to know it. USA! USA!

The AT&T Olympic Torch Relay, as it was known, was the first torch relay whose funding came primarily from corporate sponsorships. The general manager of the LA organizing committee said, “we have not commercialized the torch run,” despite that being exactly what they did. Oh well.

Fifty kilometers of the relay were sponsored by the Caesars Tahoe Palace casino, which announced it would raffle torchbearing privileges off to lucky gamblers. In addition to the torch, winners would receive a two-night stay at the casino and a $1,984 cash prize.

The Greeks got so mad about this that they said, “we will simply not light the flame.” The Greeks said, “how are you gonna do a torch relay without our special Sun flame?” The Greeks said, “parabolic mirrors? never heard of her.”

Just one week before the torch was set to be lit in Olympia, the Greeks cancelled the ceremony. In response, the president of the IOC said “we don’t even need your Vestal Virgins” and sent two students to Olympia to light their own flame.

They brought this flame all the way back to IOC headquarters in Switzerland, and with that, the Greeks lost all their leverage. The official ceremony went on as planned.

LA84 was also the first time that the privilege of being a torchbearer was extended to members of the public, rather than being restricted to people hand-selected by organizers.

Anyone could become a torchbearer for the low, low price of $3,000! (adjusted for inflation: nearly $10,000, or €8,500, or £7,500). All money raised (totaling nearly $11 million) was donated to various charities.

Also, guess what? The U.S. is very big, so this was the longest Olympic torch relay in history. It also set the precedent that torch relays should be grand tours of the entire host country rather than simply the most direct route to the stadium holding the opening ceremony.

The relay began in New York on May 8th and snaked its way across the country for nearly three months. The torch maintained a steady pace of about seven miles per hour, transported entirely on foot, as it was run for up to 20 hours per day.

Reaching Los Angeles on July 28th, the torch was handed to its final bearer, Rafer Johnson. Mr. Johnson was a gold medalist in 1960 and became the first Black athlete to light the Olympic cauldron.

But guess what? That is far from the most interesting accolade this man has. He was also – and you will never in a million years guess where this sentence is about to go next – one of the guys who tackled Sirhan Sirhan immediately after he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. (!!!!!!!)

Anyway, I found this incredible documentary footage from the 1984 relay and there are some hilarious snippets included in here. Please enjoy at your leisure. Moving on!

Atlanta 1996 marked the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympics, and guess what? The Greeks were mad they didn’t get to host it.

Greeks? Mad? At America’s Olympics? Feel like I’ve heard this one before

There was also lingering annoyance over the fact that LA84’s torch relay was turned into one giant commercial, so the Atlanta organizing committee promised upfront to “refrain from selling the honor of carrying the Olympic flame, to control and minimize commercialization of the flame or relay imagery, to prohibit any sponsor identification from appearing on the torch or torchbearer uniform, and to protect and acknowledge only one Olympic flame.”

However, corporate sponsors were still heavily involved in supporting the relay, including, for obvious Atlanta reasons, Coca-Cola, which distributed torchbearer nomination forms to customers who bought 12-packs of their soda.

Apart from the intense commercialization, though, lots of cool and funny things happened during this relay.

Things got off to a great start with this headline that I’m choosing to present upfront without context:

What? Okay, let’s explain. An opening ceremony for the torch relay was held at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the entrance of which is flanked by two giant (you guessed it) nude statues. See below:

The organizers thought that showing these giant nude pieces of metal on national television would be “an indecent way to start their torch relay” and attempted to have them covered up.

However, LA Coliseum officials were not having it, and insisted “that the anatomically correct statues were important links to the stadium’s Olympic history.”

The Los Angeles Times reported, “Unable to find fig leaves large enough, officials were still trying Wednesday to determine the material they will use.” The statues ultimately remained uncovered and America’s innocence was spoiled.

Thus began the 1996 torch relay. Okay, what else happened?

For the first time ever, the torch went to space, riding aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.

The torch was also carried for 56 continuous hours on horseback by riders from the National Pony Express Association.

Another horse-torch connection occurred, but this time to more disastrous effect. A horse carrying the torch in Nebraska got spooked by the flame, threw its rider off, and then “bolted toward a group of [150] schoolchildren.” (the kids were unhurt)

The rider was also unhurt physically but probably damaged emotionally. He had this to say: “I could have done without it, that’s for sure.”

Another torchbearer, a cyclist, was carrying the torch across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (not Galloping Gertie, the one that replaced it) when his back tire hit a grate and burst, causing him to fall and extinguishing the flame.

People thought this was so funny that he was invited to appear on Leno. The 1990s were a much simpler time.

Thankfully, this guy was also uninjured but like our horseback rider, did not escape embarrassment. He reflected on the incident, saying, “Unfortunately, there were cameras all over the place.”

When the torch went down to Georgia, it met controversy in Cobb County, where the County Commission had three years prior passed a resolution condemning “the gay lifestyle” for being in opposition to its “community standards” and “family values.”

Protestors successfully rallied for volleyball events scheduled to take place in Cobb County to be moved elsewhere, and the torch relay also avoided the county entirely.

This angered Cobb County’s congressional representative, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who said, “the homosexual demonstrators blackmailed the Olympic committee” (lol)

“statuesque, baby-faced flame attendant”

In 2000, the torch went underwater for the first time ever, as a scuba diver carried it across a popular portion of the Great Barrier Reef.

I’ll be the first to admit this defies everything I thought I knew about how fire works. So how was this possible?

Per the BBC: “The flare burns so fiercely at more than 2,000 degrees Celsius that this creates enough pressure to keep the water from entering the tube.”

In 2004, the Greeks finally got to stop being angry because the Olympics returned to Athens. But before the torch got to Athens, it went literally everywhere else.

To celebrate the occasion of another Greek Olympics, the relay traveled to every habitable continent, including, for the first time ever, Africa and South America. It also visited every city that had ever hosted the Olympics and all future cities selected to host the Summer Olympics at that point, up to the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

This global relay went so well that the IOC said “we should do this every time” and they almost immediately changed their minds after the disaster that was about to be the Beijing 2008 relay.

This relay holds the record for the longest distance covered by an Olympic torch relay, and it’s likely this record will stand forever because the relay also ended up being an unmitigated disaster.

Let’s just say it’s a lot easier to parade symbolic ambassadors of your country all around the globe when your country is the relatively uncontroversial Greece, rather than China.

The torch route was visited at several different points by people protesting China’s human rights record. Also present were activists in favor of Tibetan independence, animal rights, nudism, and legal online gambling, and I’ve just gotta say – that’s gotta be the most iconic quartet of protest movements you could ever hope to assemble. Give me a naked vegan online casino hosted on servers located in a free Tibetan state. I am ready.

Pro-China counterprotests also started showing up as the relay progressed, so any cities along the relay route had a huge security headache to deal with.

London officials attempted to handle this by surrounding the torch with “[a] protective ring of 10 Chinese flame attendants and fluorescent-jacketed police officers.” Police also confiscated Tibetan flags and ordered protestors to remove pro-Tibet apparel, despite promising earlier that they “would not intervene to prevent embarrassment to Beijing.”

But even with the high security presence, one demonstrator still broke through the protective ring and “almost wrestled [the torch] from the hands of TV presenter Konnie Huq,” who reported being “a bit bashed about“ but largely uninjured.

Next, the relay made its way to Paris, and as you can see, it did not go much better here:

San Francisco was the next stop, and huge numbers of protestors were waiting for the torch here. One large protest was led by Richard Gere and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, i.e. the power couple of my dreams.

Things got off to a very confusing start as the first torchbearer of the San Francisco leg immediately disappeared into a waterfront warehouse and remained there for half an hour.

Eventually, “a convoy of vehicles emerged from the warehouse,” but nobody knew which one carried the torch, leaving onlookers puzzled. The torchbearer was later spotted getting off a bus in a completely different part of the city,

Organizers decided on a last-minute route change in order to avoid the protests, which mostly worked but also had the side-effect of annoying all the people who had waited for hours along the planned relay route to catch a glimpse of the torch.

The San Jose Mercury News described the torch relay as “a game of ‘Where’s Waldo,’ played against the landscape of a lovely city.”

After San Francisco, the relay continued and later ended up in Seoul, where thousands of riot police were deployed along the route. Violent exchanges broke out between pro- and anti-China demonstrators, and a North Korean defector attempted to set himself on fire to protest China’s treatment of North Korean refugees.

The torch also passed through Pyongyang, where no protests were reported.

By far the coolest place (no pun intended) that the torch visited was the summit of Mount Everest. Climbers carried a torch specially designed to endure the cold, windy, oxygen-depleted environment at Everest’s peak.

This is also a great opportunity for me to express my admiration for hyperspecific Wikipedia articles like this one:

The Chinese government spent 10 months improving a 67-mile road leading to Mount Everest base camp so that torchbearers could more easily travel up to the peak. According to critics, this project damaged the permafrost in the area, but the Chinese government denied this.

Over on the Nepalese side of the mountain, the government imposed a complete communication ban on journalists and gave soldiers permission to use deadly force against any pro-Tibet demonstrators who may have made the trek (seemingly none did, unsurprisingly).

The last thing I’ll say about the Beijing 2008 relay is that for some reason, people online got really horny for one of the “tracksuit-clad security guards” guarding the torch.

Described by one journalist as a “statuesque, baby-faced flame attendant,” he “quickly became the subject of titillating discussions on forums and chat rooms where China’s female ‘netizens’, gushed about his ‘sexy mouth’, muscularity and pretty boy good looks.”

Anyway, all the crazy stuff that happened during this torch relay caused the IOC to require future torch relays to take place solely within the host country2, which makes a lot of sense.

The torch is burning as we speak

Fast facts about the London 2012 torch relay:

• Organizers designed the route in a way that the torch would come within 10 miles of 95% of the UK’s population

• Did you know? The Olympic torch traveled via zipline in Newcastle. It’s gone unreported whether the torchbearer was only there for the zipline

• There was an episode of EastEnders that featured a seven-minute live segment of character Billy Mitchell (played by Perry Fenwick) carrying the real Olympic torch as part of the relay through London

Sochi 2014:

The Sochi torch also made its way to the North Pole via Santa’s sleigh a nuclear-powered submarine, traveled to space and back aboard a Soyuz rocket, and reached the depths of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world (super fun video if you watch it at 2x speed)

The Tokyo 2020 torch relay began on March 12, 2020, which seems bad for some reason I can’t quite place. The relay was suspended less than two weeks after it began and was later restarted in March 2021.

I love the cherry blossom-inspired design of the Tokyo 2020 torches. The torches were constructed of recycled aluminum from unused shelters deployed after the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

And that brings us to today! The relay for Milano Cortina 2026 is ongoing at the time of writing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhh. Get yourself into an Olympic mindset NOW. The Games are almost upon us.

(You might be wondering why I skipped over a bunch of Olympics in here, including the most recent one. Simply, some of their Wikipedia pages were extremely boring (or even nonexistent) and had nothing interesting for me to share here. Usually, I would have spent more time doing research outside of Wikipedia to see what I could scrounge up, but with the holidays, I didn’t have quite as much time to work on this piece as I usually do. Let’s just agree to assume that the Torino 2006 relay was boring anyway!)

Anyway, thanks for reading! Your attention is your most valuable resource and I’m grateful as always that you choose to share it with me. Until next time!

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This was the question I posed, via ~50 black and white posters, to the people of my city.

And reader, the answer was a resounding yes. At the time of writing, I’ve received over 350 responses, most of them very serious about wanting to be friends with a crow and almost none of them containing jokes about Sheryl Crow or Russell Crowe or Edgar Allen Poe. Almost none.

After respondents are deemed to be worthy of crow friendship (via questions like “Have you ever physically harmed a member of the genus Corvus?” and “Have you ever emotionally harmed a member of the genus Corvus?”) I send them a comprehensive “Crow Friendship Guide” so they can embark on their journey and join our burgeoning crow-munity.

This has been a very rewarding experience for me, and I would be remiss if I did not give an enormous shoutout to whose scheme-centric Substack is one of the best blogs on this site and whose poster antics are the entire reason I was inspired to do this in the first place.

People sent me all sorts of name ideas for crows, some very cute, some very funny.

Many also deferred the matter of the crow’s name to the crow itself, which was actually the correct answer here. This is exactly what I was going for with the way I worded the question (“what would you call it” versus “what would its name be”) and these people nailed it.

There were so many of these

It was also just so exciting to see how many of my neighbors already possess an immense amount of general crow knowledge and enthusiasm. A few people responded with things like “I once rescued a crow with a broken wing and nursed it back to health” or “I have a falconry license,” and it was awesome to see how overqualified they were to simply feed a crow peanuts which was essentially the bulk of what I was pitching to them with this poster.

I did not realize I was surrounded by such an engaged bird-loving community, but the gift of the poster revealed this truth to me, and I am grateful for that.

Anyway, I’m obsessed with crows and I’ve had so much fun learning about them and their mysterious ways. This post functions both as (1) a dumping ground for all the cool stuff I’ve learned about crows this year, and (2) something I can send to my friends when they ask “so what’s up with this crow thing you’ve been on?” and I don’t have several hours to explain the whole thing to them. Welcome one and all. Please enjoy your stay.

Crows just wanna have fun

Crows are just like me in that they love to have fun. Here is a crow skiing down a roof:

Delightfully, there is no obvious survival-related reason that the crow is doing this. According to bird experts cited by Ars Technica, it is very simply just for fun.

Researchers call these shenanigans “unrewarded object exploration.” The crow doesn’t get a “reward” because nothing about this activity aids its survival. Its only reward is the fun of sliding down a roof.

However, Ars Technica continues, “this type of seemingly goofy activity might actually lead to better tool use later on.”

The bird is learning about slipperiness, after all, and we even see it figuring out that it can’t slide on the roof unless there’s enough snow underneath the lid.

I dunno team, what do we think? Can you identify the incidental evolutionary benefits of any of the following crow activities?

• crow makes cats fight

  • This video is insane

  • This seems to be a common crow behavior. Here is another example, this time with dramatic music

• Rolling around in the snow having fun, being silly geese crows

• Crow and dog playing with ball

Crows are smart

Whoever came up with the phrase “bird brains” was an idiot because these birds are extremely smart cookies.

Carrion crows can discriminate between numbers from 1-30, which makes them literally three times smarter than my human niece right now (apologies in advance for whenever you learn to read, kiddo).

Here’s a crow solving a puzzle. Here’s a crow using complex thinking to avoid threats while obtaining food (full article with explanation here).

Guess what? Crows understand analogies. I know a lot of humans who honestly have such a weak grasp of analogies so this is big.

According to Scientific American, “crows exhibit strong behavioral signs of analogical reasoning—the ability to solve puzzles like ‘bird is to air as fish is to what?’”

The science people continue: “Analogical reasoning is considered to be the pinnacle of cognition and it only develops in humans between the ages of three and four.”

Wait, so how did they even figure this out? It’s not like they just repeated “Life is like a box of chocolates” at the crow until it began wisely nodding.

Here’s an image from the experiment, and I’ll explain below how it works.

So, the middle card is the reference point to guide the crow. The crow sees two matching shapes (two plus signs) on the middle card.

The card on the crow’s right has two different shapes (circle and triangle), while the card on the crow’s left has two matching shapes (two circles).

Even though the matching shapes on the middle and left cards are different from each other (circles rather than plus signs), the crow identifies the identical condition of “two matching shapes” between the two cards and correctly chooses the card on its left.

It correctly repeats this action numerous times during the experiment. Here’s the actual video of the crow performing the experiment (and the full study here).

Pause the video before the crow makes each of its selections and see if you can also choose correctly. I am here to humbly admit that the crow absolutely destroyed me in this competition. I am officially dumber than a crow.

Okay, I love this next example. Some city-dwelling crows have been observed dropping tough-to-crack nuts onto crosswalks across busy streets so that passing cars can crush them open.

And then once the walk signal turns green, the crows swoop down to eat the nuts while traffic is temporarily paused.

Here’s a video of this happening. These birds have some serious street smarts (sorry)

One of the coolest things about crows is that they can remember individual human faces and identify whether that person is a friend or foe.

You may have heard about this in the context of the fact, “crows hold grudges,” which I’m happy to tell you is 100% true and not an urban myth. These birds will remember you (threat)

This was beautifully demonstrated by a 2011 study conducted at the University of Washington. If you’ve ever heard anything about crow intelligence in your life this is probably the study you’ve heard about. I’ve been mainlining crow content for about a month now and I can confidently say this is the most famous crow study ever conducted and it’s not even close.

Researchers trapped, banded, and released crows around Seattle while wearing distinctive caveman masks. The crows, understandably, hated being trapped and banded, so they remembered the faces of their tormentors.

Within the first two weeks after trapping, an average of 26 percent of the crows encountered scolded the person wearing the dangerous mask. Around 15 months later, that figure was 30.4 percent. Three years later, with no action towards the crows since, the number of scolding crows had grown to 66 percent. Obviously, the crows were “talking” to each other about the humans, passing on the knowledge of the threat between peers and down through generations.

The angry crows “included individuals who’d never been tagged, indicating that the grudge had been passed on.”

According to the National Audubon Society, “The caveman getup elicited scolding from crows even when the mask was partially covered with a hat or worn upside down (the birds actually turned their heads to see the face right-side up!)”

So, let this be a warning to all owners of caveman masks (or whatever this thing is) in the Seattle area. Crows will not take kindly to you.

From a 2016 report:

It’s been 10 years, and not only have the crows not forgotten, the knowledge keeps spreading. … Nearly all of the birds originally trapped by the caveman are likely dead by now, yet the legend of Seattle’s Great Crow Satan still grows.

Crows “need only one experience to form a long-lasting memory of who can be trusted and who can’t,” so it’s important you behave with diplomacy and tact while in the vicinity of our corvid counterparts.

Lonely? Consider crow friendship

The good news is that this “long-lasting memory” thing works both ways. If you are an anti-avian antagonist, the birds will treat you as such, but if you behave with benevolence towards our bewinged brethren, you will be bestowed with birdly beatification.

One famous example of this was the eight-year-old girl who was lavished with gifts from local crows, as reported by the BBC.

(Interestingly, she was also located in the Seattle area, so some of the birds who loved her may have been the very same birds who hated the cavemen.)

This child, Gabi, accidentally befriended hordes of local birds when she was four and “prone to dropping food.”

She’d get out of the car, and a chicken nugget would tumble off her lap. A crow would rush in to recover it. Soon, the crows were watching for her, hoping for another bite.

As Gabi got older, she began feeding the crows more deliberately, and they soon started rewarding her with gifts.

“The crows would clear the feeder of peanuts, and leave shiny trinkets on the empty tray; an earring, a hinge, a polished rock.“

Gifts also included such prized possessions as a broken light bulb, a faded piece of black foam, and a blue Lego piece.

The crows, unsurprisingly, have different standards than humans for what makes a good gift – “Gabi has been given some icky objects. Her mother threw out a rotting crab claw, for example.”

See also:

Gabi points out a heavily rusted screw she prefers not to touch. It’s labelled “Third Favorite.” Asking her why an untouchable object is in the favourites, she answers, “You don’t see a crow carrying around a screw that much. Unless it’s trying to build its house.”

Gabi’s reputation among the local bird population also extends to her family.

When her mother, Lisa, lost her camera’s lens cap, “She didn’t even have to look for it. It was sitting on the edge of the birdbath.”

Had the crows returned it? Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. “You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap.”

“I’m sure that it was intentional,” she smiles. “They watch us all the time. I’m sure they knew I dropped it. I’m sure they decided they wanted to return it.”

On a personal note, I am avidly attempting to befriend my local crows this winter. I will share updates as needed on this blog. Thanks for your attention to this important matter.

Guess what? I can hold grudges too

Let’s speak for a moment about the polar opposite of the benevolent eight-year-old Gabi. We need to discuss the enemies of the genus Corvus.

In the pages of Rabbit Cavern, the state of Oklahoma has only ever been associated with insane things (see: That Time The U.S. Government Terrorized Oklahoma City with 1,253 Sonic Booms) and I’m entirely unsurprised that this trend continues today.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the (human) inhabitants of Oklahoma were getting pretty bothered by the (crow) inhabitants of Oklahoma, and specifically the damage they were doing to their crops. They decided to solve this problem with dynamite.

According to Wikipedia’s editors, “A campaign in Oklahoma from 1934 to 1945 dynamited 3.8 million birds. The effect on populations was negligible and damage to agricultural crops did not decrease, and thus the campaign was halted due to its ineffectiveness.”

I am compelled to tell you that Wikipedia did not include a source for this claim but it seems like such a weirdly specific thing to make up so I’m choosing trust on this fine day. You are free to make your own judgments.

Some people in Upstate New York also tried to kill crows with dynamite in 1949 and thankfully it went so poorly for them. Like embarrassingly poorly. Like I’m sorry if any of you reading this are descendants of these failed crow killers because this story brings shame upon your family name. Anyway

Basically, these folks put a bunch of bombs in a field where they knew the crows liked to hang out – “But the plan ignored one thing: crows are smart.”

“Hundreds of sportsmen were stunned that afternoon, when the crows started roosting in a different spot, just far away enough to be out of the killing zone.”

They set off the bombs anyway, “But not a single crow was killed, they had all roosted in another plot, about a mile away from the dynamite site.”

Delightfully, “‘Operation Crow Extermination’ was described as a ‘dismal failure.’”

“The birds hoodwinked us and there is no disputing the fact,” J. Edward McGuire, president of the Falcon Sportsmen’s Club, admitted the next day.

“The crows were noisy today but had no formal comment,” the Utica Observer-Dispatch said.

“The cry of “Caw, Caw, Caw” changed to “Haw, Haw, Haw,” the Cato Citizen joked.

Now, these examples are dated – I’m not aware of anyone trying to utilize explosives against crows today – but that does not mean the threat to crows has disappeared.

I recently learned that the city of Rochester, Minnesota, has instituted a “crow abatement” program because the city has a big “crow problem” (I fail to see how crows could ever be a “problem” but ok)

According to the city’s Parks and Recreation director, ​​“The droppings are a hazard for slipping and also a public health hazard,” to which i say “get over it” and also “please be nice to the crows”

Rochester has apparently had a crow problem since the 1980s. The crow population can get up to 20,000 in the winter, and many different anti-crow strategies have been tried over the years, including “lasers, starter guns, pots and pans,” and my favorite, “a shovel found at Mayo Clinic that made awful noises.”

With regards to crow abatement, Rochester’s Post Bulletin reports, “To say it’s been an ongoing effort is like saying each spring that Cubs fans think this year might be the year.”

The newest crow battle plan involves air rifles loaded with lethal ammunition. This strategy was reportedly pushed by the Mayo Clinic, so I do regrettably have to say that the Mayo Clinic is officially an enemy of Rabbit Cavern. I am starting an enemies list and the first entity on it is in fact the world-renowned medical center Mayo Clinic. Thanks for all the lives you’ve saved i guess, but the crow thing crosses a line.

Rochester’s Parks & Rec director clarified that “Mayo Clinic staff will not be using the rifles” which I honestly think is a shame.

What better way to let off some steam if you’re an overworked ER doctor than to go up to the roof and shoot a gun? Look, I watched The Pitt, okay? I understand what’s going on in there. Let them shoot guns.

Can someone ask the city of Rochester if they’ve tried the “field of dynamite” approach? Perhaps anti-aircraft artillery on the roof of the Mayo Clinic?

Honestly they should just ask 3M to move down to Rochester, the birds will be dead in no time after they poison the water with PFAS.

Anyway, I emailed the city of Rochester to (diplomatically) ask how the crow killing was going, and they were like “it’s fine i guess” but they didn’t have any major successes to share, so I’m choosing to frame this one as a “no news is good news” kind of response.

As far as my position on the matter, I’m pretty much aligned with this resident who spoke against the crow abatement efforts in front of the Rochester City Council:

“They’ve found it very comfortable to be here. Same as us, but we don’t want them to here, because it’s an inconvenience. How dare we think that we can make these decisions and kill these animals?”

How dare we, indeed.

Anyway, that’s all I have on crows for now. Thanks for reading, and please go feed a local crow with unsalted dry-roasted peanuts. And tell it I said hi :)

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And if you’re interested in learning even more about crows, please check out this TED talk by John Marzluff, one of the world’s leading crow experts.

Welcome to another of my irregularly-timed, quarterly-ish “scrap” posts, where I share all the leftover rabbit hole content that didn’t make the cut during the last several months of posting.

Even for a blog that’s so focused on ignoring the demands of a “central unifying narrative” and “generally staying on topic,” there are numerous tangents I must avoid in each post lest my emails become so long that they cause another AWS outage. Thus, I gather all the leftover stuff in here for your reading pleasure. You’re welcome.

I also love using these scrap posts as an opportunity to thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart, for listening to what I have to say.

Guess what? I’m a person with a lot of opinions, and if I don’t have an outlet for that, I will generate enough pent-up creative energy to power 1,000 households for an entire year.

No, but seriously, writing Rabbit Cavern has become one of the most consistent joys in my life, and I owe that to all of you for giving me a reason to keep coming back and sharing more.

When I introduce myself to people and they ask what my hobbies are, I get to say, “I’m a writer,” without the moment of hesitation that used to be built in, without the persistent self-doubt holding me back.

In the eight or nine months since I started this blog, I’ve explored so many different topics that it makes my head spin. My grandpa has long instilled in me the idea that learning doesn’t stop when you leave school, that you’re never too old to learn something new, and writing for you all helps me keep that principle front and center in my life. I’m grateful for that.

I’ve also been blown away by the kind comments and messages I’ve gotten from some of you. It makes my heart sing to hear how much you enjoy and look forward to what I write.

Thanks to this blog, I’ve been on the receiving end of some of the nicest compliments doled out in all of human history, and my gratitude is boundless.

A while back, I made a folder in my Notes app simply titled “nice” to gather in one place all the wonderful messages I receive, and it contains a few dozen of the happiest screenshots I’ve ever taken.

I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to make some money from my writing, thanks to my lovely paid subscribers and the folks who have generously supported me with one-time donations on Ko-fi.

As to my gratitude for this, I am at a genuine loss for words, which is really saying something for someone who usually has far too many words to say.

Thanks to you all, I not only get to introduce myself with “I’m a writer,” but I also get to say, “I get paid for my writing,” which is a milestone I could have only dreamed of when I first started to take this passion of mine seriously.

Anyway, thanks a billion, thanks for reading my last several months of posts, thanks in advance for reading the next several months, and also thanks in advance for enjoying this post that you’re about to read now.

The first half is free for everyone but the second half will just be for paid subscribers as a token of my gratitude for their generous support. This is all stuff that I never would have included in a post otherwise, so I like to offer it as a nice little bonus to my very biggest supporters.

Let’s get into it!

Whose idea was it to sell ice?

The ice post was one of the most fun to research and write, and thankfully there are, like, a gazillion more fun things that didn’t make the cut that we get to learn about today.

If you’re interested in an exploration of where the actual ice in modern-day bags of ice cubes comes from, here’s an interesting breakdown from The Guardian (note that this only applies to UK ice-lovers).

And here’s a similar article looking at the U.S. ice cube industry. This is a long boy, I’m still working my way through this one.

One of the fascinating questions that came up as the ice industry was kicking off in the 1800s was, simply, “Who owns the ice?”

Before ice was commercialized, there were basically no rules governing the harvesting of ice, because why would there be rules governing the harvesting of ice? It’s ice. It’s free. Just get it from a pond.

But as the ice trade became more lucrative, people started to argue over who owned what ice.

In navigable waterways, ice harvest rights belonged to whoever called dibs first. But on streams and small lakes, ice ownership generally corresponded to who owned the land abutting the ice.

However, disagreements still arose in these situations, occasionally necessitating the involvement of lawyers to draw crazy ice maps like this:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lot of drama in the realm of ice ownership.

For example, what happens if ice is carried downstream by the current? Who owns that ice – the person with the rights over the area in which the ice formed, or the person with the rights over where it is now?

(I can’t find an answer to this question in my notes so you’re just going to have to live with the mystery, so sorry)

Some states made it illegal to damage unharvested ice belonging to another person/company.

One time, two ice companies in Wisconsin got into such a heated argument that one of them sent a steamship icebreaker out onto the water to destroy the other company’s ice. Insane stuff.

Miscellaneous ice stuff

• “With a good thickness of ice, around 1,000 tons (900,000 kg) could be harvested from an acre (0.4 hectares) of surface water.” (via Wikipedia)

  • “The ice-cutting involved several stages and was typically carried out at night, when the ice was thickest.”

• Here’s a cool silent amateur film of an ice harvest in 1919

• “In Texas, former ice houses are a cultural tradition. Ice merchants diversified to sell groceries and cold beer, serving as early convenience stores and local gathering places. The widespread 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores in the U.S., first known as U-Tote’m Stores, developed from ice houses operated by ice manufacturers, like the Southland Ice Manufacturing Company, in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio in the 1930s.”

Remember Wenham Lake ice? People had a lot of thoughts about this stuff.

While reading the post, did you ever find yourself asking, “Why did they need such big blocks of ice?” The BBC has the answer for us:

For ice to melt, it needs to pull heat from the surrounding environment to break the tetrahedral bonding of hydrogen atoms that gives ice its crystalline structure.

(The extraction of heat from the surrounding atmosphere is what grants ice its miraculous capacity to cool us down.)

The only place that heat exchange can happen is at the surface of the ice, which is why large blocks of ice survive for so long - all the interior hydrogen bonds are perfectly insulated from the exterior temperature.

I took a big detour into ice sculpture Wikipedia while researching and somehow none of that made it into the post. Apparently ice sculpture carving is taught in some culinary schools? Awesome

I also had the great pleasure of reading about the ice luge, which is about as cool as it sounds.

I’d definitely heard of these before and knew they were used for liquor, but did you know they are also used for oysters? I’m so sorry by the way. I’m sorry that you are now cursed with this knowledge. Buckle in, things are about to get really upsetting.

Ok let’s start with the liquor:

And now it’s oyster time! (sorry again):

The caption makes it so much worse, actually: “Lots of action, too, over at the ‘Oyster Luge,’ where intrepid slurpers waited on their knees at the bottom of a slab of ice, mouths agape, for their delivery of slippery bivalves.”

Anyway

By the time I found the ice hotel page I was like a full week into researching all things ice and was simply too tired to dig into it further, but please peruse at your pleasure if you so desire. I’m sure it is fascinating, I’m just so sick of ice

We also have ice palaces:

IMPORTANT:

There have been various ice palaces over the years but none better than the one built by Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna. This thing was truly iconic. Some notes I took:

• Built to celebrate Russia’s incredible gallant triumph over the nasty mean Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739

• Included an ice garden filled with ice trees, ice birds, and an ice elephant

• Defended by ice cannons outside the palace

  • These were apparently functional and even survived undamaged after cannonballs were shot from them

• Furnished with ice furniture, including an ice bed with ice pillows and ice sheets. There was even an ice fireplace with ice wood

• The palace was surrounded by a tall ice wooden fence

• As part of the celebrations around the ice palace, they decided to throw a mock wedding of two jesters (as one does)

  • This whole “mock wedding” thing was apparently not unusual in Russia at the time (more on that later)

• The groom in this particular mock wedding was a disgraced former prince who was stripped of his nobility after he committed the great crime of marrying a Catholic woman, which was not okay with Empress Anna. The only cool religion in her opinion was Russian Orthodox Christianity

• The bride was … a maid? Or something like that? I dunno there really isn’t a lot of info about her other than “Anna was mean to her because she thought she was ugly” and she was a “girl of the lowest ethnic class” so I won’t dwell on this. Just know everyone was mean to her

• After the wedding, the newlyweds were placed in a cage on the back of an elephant and brought to their new home at the ice palace, followed in procession by circus freaks and farm animals

• Once at the ice palace, they were locked into an ice bedroom, stripped of their clothes, and encouraged to consummate their marriage

• They survived the night only because the bride traded a pearl necklace with a guard in exchange for a fur coat.

The below note was given on Wikipedia when discussing the mock wedding, but bizarrely, I could not find much more information on this supposed tradition of mock weddings. Russian historians please chime in

HOWEVER when I went to dig into this a bit further I found something so much better…

This is one of the most bananas things I have ever seen and you HAVE to watch this – “Fake Russian SWAT teams prank couples by invading weddings, proposals”

This has nothing to do with ice but one of my sources dropped this certified Very Weird Quote: “No one over twenty-five, or under, if wise, will subject himself to the injurious and depressing influence upon the system exercised by a really cold sponge bath.”

Lastly, weird bit of ice history lore below. Ask your grandparents if this is true. Was the refrigerator industry helped out by infidelity? The world may never know.

Why is bubble gum pink?

Here’s something I thought was very fun: most countries do not require gum to have an expiration date. It simply retains its quality for so long that the government says “honestly just don’t even worry about it.” Awesome.

There was one early chewing gum patent (1869) that was marketed more as a dental health product than something you might enjoy chewing on.

It was intended to “scrub the teeth” and contained ingredients like chalk, charcoal, and powdered licorice root. Yum!

Gum bases for bubble gum are different than those for regular old chewing gum. Bubble gum bases contain higher levels of elastomers, which give the gum more elasticity.

But this is something you’ve probably already figured out yourself if you’re anything like me and have tried and failed at blowing bubbles with a stick of Extra spearmint gum. (it does not work)

Speaking of gum bases, did you know gum companies aren’t required to tell us the ingredients of their gum base? That information is considered a trade secret.

In the U.S., the FDA allows 46 different chemicals to be included in gum base, so we have a vague idea of what gum is made of, but not precisely how it’s made. There are tens of thousands of different combinations of ingredients that gum companies could be using, so it’s a genuine mystery what you are putting in your mouth.

GUM FACT: The flavoring of gum generally only comprises 1-3% of the total weight of the gum. Most of it is gum base and sweeteners

Health benefits of chewing gum:

Chewing gum also apparently helps colon surgery patients recover quicker, for reasons that I honestly didn’t really want to learn more about. All I can tell you is that chewing gum reportedly “gets digestive juices flowing.”

There’s also this:

Gum makes you fart? Has anyone tested this? Moving on

What’s the weirdest city name?

We briefly talked about the town of Dish, Texas, in this post. Quick primer: Dish renamed itself after Dish Network as part of an advertising campaign, and in return, the residents of Dish all got free TV service from Dish Network.

But it turns out there’s some weird drama afoot in the town of Dish (love it). Let’s dig in!

Dish used to be called Clark, named for the town’s founder and first mayor.

Here’s the brief, weird story behind that:

“The county judge called me one day and he said, ‘You know, we’ve got everything ready here for the election, but we don’t have a name for the town,’” he said in his office, within reach of the May 1987 issue of Playboy. “I turned to my wife and said, ‘Mary, what do you think we ought to name it?’ She said, ‘Well, you done all the work and spent all the money, why don’t you just name it Clark?’”

And the renaming of the town has a similarly weird story:

Mr. Clark said he believed the inspiration to change the town’s name came out of a rivalry he has had with the former mayor, William D. Merritt, and Mr. Merritt’s father. In a mayoral race in 2005, Mr. Clark lost to the younger Mr. Merritt by one vote. After the election, Mr. Clark pulled out the flagpole outside the town hall, explaining that his wife had bought it for him and it was coming with him. Months later, the town switched names, in a unanimous town council vote that was supported by the new mayor, Mr. Merritt.

We love a good small-town vendetta! We love a good rivalry! Anyway

Do bumper stickers cause road rage?

Oh my goodness I am absolutely bursting at the seams with great sticker facts to share, let’s get into it

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Before last summer, I never thought much about my mustache. It never struck me as anything special or uniquely praiseworthy. However, the general public disagreed with me and they have made sure I know.

I have genuinely been drowning in mustache compliments. It’s to the point where if I leave my house and don’t return with at least one new mustache admirer, I will be confused and distraught at this lack of attention.

Here are some of my favorite mustache compliments I’ve received:

• I was walking through a packed, noisy crowd of people and faintly heard an impassioned male voice exclaim, “Great mustache.” There was nothing to indicate that this compliment was directed at me rather than anyone else with a mustache in the crowd, but of course I instantly knew it was for me. Of course I knew. I’ve earned the right to be arrogant like that. Without breaking my stride, I turned my head, locked eyes with him, and delivered an emphatic “thank you.”

  • This is the sort of low-pressure male friendship that would vaporize the concept of toxic masculinity if everyone engaged in it. Bros complimenting other bros on their mustaches. I am confident incels wouldn’t be a thing if any of them knew how to grow good mustaches.

• I was walking past a playground where a young child was playing with his father. The child noticed my mustache and stopped playing with his dad to call attention to my mustache. “He has a mustache,” the child exclaimed. This is notable because for a moment, the child chose to divert his attention from his father – the most important male figure in his life – to instead pay attention to me and my mustache. For a moment, I supplanted his father. For a moment, my mustache was the most important thing in the world to him. I imagine this is what being a king feels like.

• I complimented a guy on his dope cowboy hat. I told him, “Not everyone can pull off a cowboy hat, but you absolutely can.” This dude legit looked like he was born to wear a cowboy hat. Anyway, he says to me, “With a mustache like that, you could absolutely pull off a cowboy hat,” and I just about fainted because that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me with specific regard to my mustache.

• A teen was passing me on his bike, and as he was directly alongside me, he turned his head to look at me. Without a moment of hesitation, he says, “I like your mustache,” and then turns his head back to the trail and disappears from my life forever. Keep in mind that this kid only had, like, half a second to observe my stache (while his focus was also directed towards not crashing his bicycle) before he decided to dole out this compliment.

  • The youth respect me and they are willing to risk their safety to make sure I am aware

Those were all memorable, heartwarming experiences but by far my favorite mustache compliment was this:

• I was walking down the street when I spotted a man with, genuinely, one of the best mustaches I’ve ever seen in my life. Dude looked like he was about to lead an 18th-century cavalry brigade into battle. It was unreal.

• Anyway, I spot him and I’m like, “I have to tell this man he has a zeitgeist-defining mustache,” but as I’m approaching him, he locks eyes with me and a smile creeps onto his face.

• Once I’m within arm’s length of him, the man extends his hand for the most rewarding handshake I’ve ever received in my life. And for a few seconds, we’re both just laughing and shaking hands in the middle of the sidewalk, not exchanging a single word during the entire interaction. Neither of us said a thing, but we didn’t have to. We both knew what this was about. This was the ultimate “game recognize game” moment for me, and it was the greatest indication I’ve received to date that I truly have an S-tier mustache.

Anyway, now you know. My mustache game is off the charts. A friend recently told me I was “giving Cossack”1 and she was so right.

But for all my well-deserved praise and accolades, I am far from the first person with an absolutely bangin’ stache. I stand on the shoulders of hairy-lipped giants, and today’s post is an exploration of those giants, as well as the reasons we hold them in such high regard to begin with. Are you ready? No? Too bad!

Mustache Culture is Human Culture

We can’t confidently say who owned the first mustache, but we can clearly identify the first depiction of a mustache in art. Thanks, Ancient Egypt!

Mustaches have fluctuated in popularity all throughout history. At times, mustaches have represented status, masculinity, and good style, and at other times they have represented the pinnacle of lameness.

Thankfully we are currently in a renaissance of stache appreciation after the dark ages of the 2010s when hipsters got mustache tattoos on their fingers.

Over time, mustaches have meant different things to different cultures.

In many cultures throughout many different eras, mustaches have represented strength and toughness, and have therefore been prized by members of the military.

In contrast, married Amish men opt to skip the stache in favor of a beard-only look as a symbolic commitment to pacifism. This can be traced back to the Amish community’s formation in Switzerland during a time when mustaches were closely associated with the German military.

And in the Middle East, “[t]hick, handsome mustaches have long been prized … as symbols of masculine virility, wisdom and maturity.”

But what happens if you’re a man in the Middle East who wants to be outwardly recognizable as someone with wisdom and virility, but your upper lip just won’t cooperate? Friends, meet the mustache transplant.

This is a niche cosmetic procedure where surgeons take hair from other parts of a man’s head, or perhaps the back of his thigh if he’s too bald, and relocate it to his face.

One Turkish surgeon told CNN in 2012 that he performed mustache transplants on 50-60 men every month, mostly medical tourists from the Middle East.

These transplants cost about $10,000 (inflation-adjusted) and are thankfully non-invasive enough that patients can wash their brand-new staches the following day. The only post-op directions are “don’t shave for 15 days” which is honestly a great deal. Trade accepted.

Most men come into the mustache chop shop with a specific style of stache in mind that they’d like to have on their face. One popular person to emulate has been Turkish singer Ibrahim Tatlises and I can absolutely see why.

Outside the Middle East, however, this procedure is so uncommon as to be almost unheard of.

One doctor in New Zealand said, “I’ve never heard of anyone asking for us to actually create facial hair,” and recommends against the procedure “unless it was very important to the patient.”

But it’s not just men in the Middle East who utilize the mustache as a way to show off how good at being a man they are.

In Western cultures, too, studies have shown that women like men with mustaches and perceive them to be more masculine, more sophisticated, and more mature than men without.

(I can tell you from experience that “men with mustaches are more mature” is far from universally true)

Interestingly, some studies have found that women prefer men with stubble or a five o’clock shadow over men with a full mustache or beard or men who are clean-shaven. Researchers suggest this means that women like men who are capable of growing facial hair but don’t actually grow it.

Regardless of personal preference, though, women who are looking to get married should be pleased to see more mustaches out and about. According to one study, an abundance of staches suggests the marriage market is favorable for women.

The basic idea is that mustaches telegraph positive traits like industriousness, creativity, and dominance, so when the marriage market is saturated with single men, they opt to grow mustaches to help them compete.

Conversely, “[m]en shave their mustaches, possibly to convey an impression of trustworthiness, when the marriage market is weak and women might fear sexual exploitation and desertion.”

Reporting from NPR and The New York Times in recent years suggests that the mustache may be “enjoying one of its periodic renaissances” right now, so this is all-around great news for everyone.

One man interviewed said, “The entire gender spectrum is obsessed with my mustache, as am I,” and I can wholeheartedly endorse this sentiment. We are living in a brand-new world and it is largely centered around broad-based societal appreciation of my face.

that thing real?

The Mount Rushmore of mustaches contains many deserving faces, but some of the most iconic staches in history were actually fake.

Groucho Marx (of glasses fame) simply smeared greasepaint on his face. Charlie Chaplin’s legendary toothbrush stache was a prop.

Chaplin selected his narrow stache style because he thought it looked funny, but it also wasn’t so big that it hid his facial expressions. His mustache came to be so closely associated with his persona that he lost a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest because he opted to go stache-less.

Of course, the Chaplin-style mustache is also heavily associated with Hitler, and for this reason you’ll see very few toothbrush staches out in the world today.

There are a few theories for why Hitler chose to adopt his now-infamous mustache style in the first place:

1. He used to have a Kaiser mustache but his sister-in-law hated it so much that she pushed him to trim it. Vanity Fair reports that Bridget Hitler “often bickered with her brother-in-law,” partially because “he was disagreeable, but mostly because she could not stand his unruly ‘stache.”

2. He had to trim his Kaiser stache while serving in World War I to ensure his gas mask had a good seal against his face.

3. He was a huge Charlie Chaplin fan and specifically wanted to emulate his mustache (this reason is almost definitely not it)

But did you know you don’t have to be a genocidal dictator for your choice of mustache to alter the course of history? You could also be Paul McCartney.

Paul got into a moped accident in 1965 and thankfully walked away with only a chipped tooth and a cut lip. However, this left him with a scar on his upper lip, and Paul was not a fan of this.

To cover the scar, Paul grew a mustache, which was soon copied by the rest of the Beatles and shortly thereafter also by countless other young men coming of age in the 1960s.

Here’s something new that I learned while researching British mustache culture for this piece: Americans shorten mustache to “stache” while Brits and Aussies shorten mustache (actually, moustache) to “tache.”

Why do you guys do this? Every week I find something new to quibble over with the Commonwealth nations.

And as it turns out, this is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to British people engaging in very strange behavior re: mustaches.

Whiskers Win Wars

Here’s the most fun fact you’ll learn all week: from the mid-1800s to 1916, British soldiers were not allowed to shave above their top lip, essentially making a mustache required for military service.

Why? According to a British Army officer, the regulation had its origin in “the days of the Croatian hussars, who evidently considered that a fierce moustache would assist in terrifying their enemies, much in the same way as Chinese soldiers adopted awe-inspiring masks as part of their uniform.”

It’s unclear whether these mandatory military mustaches had this menacing effect as intended, but what is clear is that many soldiers loathed the facial hair requirement.

It was argued that “clean-shaven British infantry had fought and conquered under Wellington and other great leaders, and that apparently neither Marlborough, Napoleon, or Wellington had failed to win battles because they clean-shaved.”

One soldier was even court-martialed for refusing to cultivate a stache, for which he offered “the ingenious excuse that by profession he was an actor, and that if he grew a moustache it would spoil his upper lip and militate against his success when he returned to the stage after the war.”

The mustache requirement was eventually abolished, but facial hair (or its absence) has long been a distinctive trait in militaries worldwide.

According to one historian who wrote a book on the history of facial hair, beards and mustaches were so common in the early 19th century that they “signaled the difference between soldiers and civilians.”

So strict was this dividing line that “It was considered bad form for civilians to presume an ornament on the lip.”

Nowadays, you can thankfully sport a mustache without it coming across as stolen valor. But rest assured that some groups still take their facial hair very seriously.

Meet the Handlebar Club of London. These hairy lads bond over the shared experience of having a handlebar stache and only a handlebar stache.

To be clear, “The Handlebar Club is opposed to beards of all forms” and “fines are issued to members who allow their sideburns to merge with their moustache.”

Technically, the only requirement for membership is “a hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities.”

But in practice, if you don’t mesh well with the boys, your prospects may be slim: “Some people have turned up here with decent moustaches but just haven’t fitted in. Unpleasant types. You know the sort. We usually end up politely asking them to leave.”

While the Club’s official activities include competitive facial hair-growing events and activism against anti-mustache discrimination, it seems their primary directive may simply be chilling:

Asked to describe what takes place at their meetings, most members coyly twirl at their moustaches and mumble something about “administrative matters”. Most of them see the get-togethers as a pursuit of what they call “hirsute hedonism.”

Adorably, the boys have group chants that they practice as a Club, one of which insists “being kissed by a smooth face is like ‘meat without the salt.’”

I’ve never been on the receiving end of a mustache to the face, so I can’t offer my own perspective here, but I’ll defer to someone who seems to have a little more experience, as reported by NPR:

In the end, it does seem to me that the main appeal of these groups centered around facial hair is the simple joy of friendship.

Said the organizer of the North American Beard and Moustache Championship:

“The best thing about all of this is just it’s kind of an excuse to get together with your buddies that have facial hair.”

Cute! I can certainly attest that us boys with a “dirty top lip” make use of that shared trait as a shortcut to friendship, and it frequently bears fruit, as one mustached man relates:

“Just about everyone I’ve met who has facial hair like this is just a terrific guy ... someone sort of has the spark to do something inventive between their nose and their chin, and they’re a pretty good person on the inside, too.”

Let this be your sign to befriend or hype up any mustachioed individuals you encounter in the course of your day today. The world will be a more wholesome place for your simple, golden utterance of “Great stache, brother.”

Thanks for reading! See you next time :)

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