Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.05.11
Dear friends,
It’s a Saturday, so I did some regular weekend cleaning and tidying today, and the whole time kept thinking about Wages Against Housework. I feel this link has been making the rounds lately, but it’s an absolute banger of a read.
Did you know there’s a prize for refusing prizes? It’s the Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal.
“In Austria and Switzerland, for instance, 1 Zentner is still considered the equivalent of 100 kilograms, that is, the Austrian/Swiss Zentner is twice as heavy as a German Zentner.” There should be a mystery novel that depends on this difference, right?
In the eighteenth century it was believed that badgers’ right legs were longer than their left legs, and so they ran better along the sides of hills.
Hari-Kuyō is a festival in Japan where seamstresses and other needleworkers can bring their broken needles and pins to shrines and temples to thank them for their service.
Some plants, including Zanthoxylum piperitum (sansho) and Allium fistulosum (Welsh onion) supposedly either won’t grow where they are planted or will wither away if their roots or seeds were given away or stolen.
If you want to read a Wikipedia entry where each sentence is more bonkers than the last, may I recommend to you that of Maria Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin)? She was mauled by a bear (not in Russia, while working for a circus in the U.S.); worked as a riveter in World War II, and claimed Pat Nixon appeared to her in a dream.
It’s absolutely worth it to sign up for the monthly Project Gutenberg newsletter, so you can be the first to know when interesting new books are added to the collection, such as PROF. E. H. CRANE’S Manual of Instructions TO UNDERTAKERS or Animated cartoons, by Edwin George Lutz.
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin