Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.05.11
Dear friends,
Wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day today, especially if you’re missing your mother or mothering. (I thought this Bluesky thread was lovely.)
The (hilarious) hacked crosswalk audio in Palo Alto sent me down a rabbit hole and the crosswalk button user manual is fascinating reading. They use Ogg Vorbis sound files! (Another victory for open source I guess?)
“According to herself and The New York Times, in 1908 Tice was the first woman in Greenwich Village to bob her hair.”
Louis Lingg wrote “"Hoch die anarchie!" (Hurrah for anarchy!) on the cell stones in his own blood”.
“Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash.”
After the German Peasants’ War, “Sixty-two citizens of Kitzingen were blinded by the Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach so that those who had not seen him as their lord ‘should see him no more’.” [LRB]
“Ever since an accident on June 13, 1922, Osborne had hiccupped nonstop. The condition persisted for more than six decades, only ending in 1990, a full 68 years after it began.” [Smithsonian]
“In doxastic addiction, the core type of unresponsiveness involves an inability to properly factor in evidence that a trusted source of testimony is unreliable.”
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin