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It’s been a busy summer, and the large shortfall in donations last month has been demoralizing, so we’re taking a week off to rest and recuperate. The curated links section will be (mostly) silent, and behind the scenes we’ll be taking a brief break from our usual researching, writing, editing, illustrating, narrating, sound designing, coding, et cetera. We plan to return to normalcy on the 11th of September. (The word “normalcy” was not considered an acceptable alternative to “normality” until 14 May 1920, when then-presidential-candidate Warren G. Harding misused the mathematical term in a campaign speech, stating that America needed, “not nostrums, but normalcy.” He then integrated this error into his campaign slogan, “Return to Normalcy.” Also, the G in Warren G. Harding stood for “Gamaliel.”) While we are away, on 06 September 2023, Damn Interesting will be turning 18 years old. To celebrate, here are the first emojis to ever appear in the body of a Damn Interesting post: 🎂🎉🎁 If you become bored while we are away, you might try a little mobile game we’ve been working on called Wordwhile. It can be played alone, or with a friend. If you enjoy games like Scrabble and Wordle, you may find this one ENJOYABLE (75 points). Launch Wordwhile → And, as always, there are lots of ways to explore our back-catalog. View this post ▶
We’re not going to post things on Twitter X anymore. The new owner keeps doing awful stuff. If you have enjoyed our mostly-daily curated links via the aforementioned collapsing service, we invite you to bookmark our curated links page, or follow us a number of other ways. Rather than linger any longer on this tedious topic, here are some home-grown dad jokes. If there is any order in this universe, the comments section will fill with more of the same. Q: What is the flavor of a chair? Do you even know the meaning of the word ‘rhetorical?’ Don’t answer that! My friend bought an alarm clock that makes loud farting sounds in the morning. He’s in for a rude awakening. You’re right, these ARE my orthopedic shoes. I stand corrected. I want a good game of hide and seek, but skilled players are hard to find. Like tight sweaters, corporate acquisitions are hard to pull off. I was offered a job at the mirror factory. I could see myself working there. Did you hear about the farmer in Colorado raising cannabis-fed cattle? The steaks are high. Q: What is the best stocking stuffer? I used to be addicted to soap, but I’ve gotten clean. I finally worked up the courage to tell my hot female coworker how I felt. She felt the same. So we turned down the thermostat. The universal remote: This changes everything. Q: How fast are donkey trucks? It smells like death in there, and not in a good way. My dad demanded that I go fetch some water from that deep hole in the ground. He means well. Calendar makers: Your days are numbered. A: I enjoy cooking with ghee, but I don’t buy it, I make my own. I will not rest until I find a cure for my insomnia. I bought my wife a new refrigerator. I can’t wait to see her face light up when she opens it. Did you hear about the hilarious thing that happened at the mandatory meeting? I guess you had to be there. Remember that sweet grandmother on Twitter who thought that ‘lol’ meant ‘lots of love’? “Sorry to hear about your uncle passing. lol.” Yesterday, we were standing at the edge of a cliff. Since then we have taken a huge step forward. We had to cancel the big game of tag because somebody got hurt. It was touch and go there for a while. “Of course you can count on me,” said the abacus. IBS is genetic, you know. Runs in the family. My grandfather once told me, “It’s worth investing in good speakers.” That was some sound advice. Extreme camping is in tents. The solar panel company wouldn’t let me pay for the installation. They said it was all on the house. I was chopping herbs all day, and now my hands are quite fragrant. I’ve got too much thyme on my hands. A weather balloon measures about 4 feet in diameter (adjusting for inflation). A: Have you ever had a flatulence-based tea? Like a German dietitian, I tend to see the wurst in people. I don’t care for rulers. That’s where I draw the line. Why did the farmer propose to his horse? He wanted a stable relationship. I still think whiteboards are one of mankind’s most remarkable inventions. The Earth has successfully rotated around its axis. Let’s call it a day. My daughter dropped a brand new tube of toothpaste and it made a big mess. She was crestfallen. You’ve got to hand it to customs agents: Your passport. My friend tried to steal a box of lipstick for us, but she accidentally grabbed a box of glue sticks. My lips are sealed. Elevators: They take things to a whole other level. A friend gave me an expired pack of batteries. They were free of charge. Comedy: To taste a bit like a comet. A: How many times do I have to apologize? My wife said that the battery in my hearing aid needed to be replaced. That was difficult to hear. I asked the ski lift operator if I could get a free ride to the top of the mountain. He didn’t take me up on it. What makes a sentence a tongue twister? It’s hard to say. If you visit Mexico, remember to use the word “mucho.” It means a lot to them. There are more hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water than there are stars in the solar system. To whoever discovered the number zero: Thanks for nothing. View this post ▶
In the late 17th century, natural philosopher Isaac Newton was deeply uneasy with a new scientific theory that was gaining currency in Europe: universal gravitation. In correspondence with a scientific contemporary, Newton complained that it was “an absurdity” to suppose that “one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum.” The scientist who proposed this preposterous theory was Isaac Newton. He first articulated the idea in his widely acclaimed magnum opus Principia, wherein he explained, “I have not yet been able to discover the cause of these properties of gravity from phenomena and I feign no hypotheses […] It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained.” Newton proposed that celestial bodies were not the sole sources of gravity in the universe, rather all matter attracts all other matter with a force that corresponds to mass and diminishes rapidly with distance. He had been studying the motions of the six known planets–Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus–and by expanding upon the laws of planetary motion developed by Johannes Kepler about eight decades earlier, he arrived at an equation for gravitational force F that seemed to match decades of data: Where m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects, r is the distance between their centers of mass, and G is the gravitational constant (~0.0000000000667408). But this is only an approximation; humanity may never know the precise value because it is impossible to isolate any measuring apparatus from all of the gravity in the universe. Fellow astronomers found that Newton’s theory seemed to be accurate–universal gravitation appeared to reliably forecast the sometimes irregular motion of the planets even more closely than Kepler’s laws. In 1705, Queen Anne knighted Isaac Newton to make him Sir Isaac Newton (though this honor was due to his work in politics, not for his considerable contributions to math or science). In the century that followed, Newton’s universal gravitation performed flawlessly. Celestial bodies appeared to adhere to the elegant theory, and in scientific circles, it began to crystallize into a law of nature. But in the early 19th century, cracks began to appear. When astronomer Alexis Bouvard used Newton’s equations to carefully calculate future positions of Jupiter and Saturn, they proved spectacularly accurate. However, when he followed up in 1821 with astronomical tables for Uranus–the outermost known planet–subsequent observations revealed that the planet was crossing the sky substantially slower than projected. The fault was not in Bouvard’s math; Uranus appeared to be violating the law of universal gravitation. Newton’s theory was again called into question in 1843 by a 32-year-old assistant astronomer at the Paris Observatory, Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier had been following the Uranus perturbations with great interest, while also compiling a painstaking record of the orbit of Mercury–the innermost known planet. He found that Mercury also departed from projections made by universal gravitation. Was universal gravitation a flawed theory? Or might undiscovered planets lurk in extra-Uranian and intra-Mercurial space, disturbing the orbits of the known planets? Astronomers around the world scoured the skies, seeking out whatever was perturbing the solar system. The answer, it turned out, was more bizarre than they could have supposed. Continue reading ▶
An American Indian man on horseback stood outlined against a steely sky past midday on 05 October 1877. Winter was already settling into the prairies of what would soon become the state of Montana. Five white men stood in the swaying grass on the other side of the field, watching the horse move closer. Four wore blue uniforms, another in civilian attire. One of the uniformed men was tall and stout, with bright blue eyes and a large, curling mustache. He watched the proceedings with an air of self-importance. The surrender of the man on horseback might have been inevitable, sure, but it was nevertheless a nice feather in his cap. Perhaps his superiors would finally grant him that promotion after this whole affair was over. The other four men were more apprehensive. All of them were experienced in fighting American Indians on the frontier, but this opponent had been different. One man, with a full, dark beard and right arm missing below the elbow, looked at the approaching chief with grudging respect. The man had lost his arm in the American Civil War 15 years earlier, so he knew battle well. And in his opinion, the man across the field was a tactical genius, a “Red Napoleon.” Despite overwhelming odds, this Red Napoleon had wormed his way out of battle after battle, somehow always coming out on top. Continue reading ▶
More in travel
25 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in March 2025 1) On average the seat moquette on a New Routemaster bus lasts 7.3 years before replacement. Used moquette is recycled by foreign aid charities. 2) Only 0.003% of Elizabeth Line journeys result in Delay Repay payments even though 1.7% would be eligible. 3) In 2024 the bus routes generating the most advertising revenue through the use of full-coverage vinyl wraps were the 137 (£465,000), the 8 (£427,500) and the 103 (£388,000). 4) For fare payment, Oyster cards were overtaken by contactless cards in February 2018, by smartphones in August 2022 and by smartwatches in December 2024. 5) The thickness of the printed tube map has decreased from 0.17mm in June 2016 to 0.09mm in December 2024. 6) Only three Croydon trams have been officially named - Dame Janet Wiseman, Femi Mahmood and Henry Banks CBE. 7) The oldest passenger lift still in use on the Underground is Lift 3 at Caledonian Road which was installed on 17th October 1936. The newest is the mezzanine lift at Paddington's new Bakerloo line entrance. 8) There are 5017 ULEZ cameras in London, of which 143 have each raised more than £1m in fines. 9) According to traffic counts, the busiest Cycleways over the last twelve months have been C3, C5, C2, C6, CS7, C57, C1, C4, C58 and C90. 10) Since April 2024 there have been 612 incidents involving bus lanes blocked by dockless e-bikes causing a total of 185,263 lost passenger hours. 11) Last year 7% of contactless journeys were incomplete (either no touch-in, no touch-out or both). 12) The middle carriage of a 5-car Overground train is 18mm wider than the other carriages to accommodate air cooling power systems. 13) For taxi drivers learning The Knowledge the most northerly Point of interest is Wood Green Highway, the most easterly is Trinity Buoy Wharf, the most southerly is Streatham Masonic Lodge, and the most westerly is Acton Waitrose. 14) During the financial year 2021/22 there were 16,738 incidents of roadworks on London's roads, 32% of which have subsequently been re-dug by the same utility company. 15) In 2023 the tube station with the highest recorded number of mouse sightings on its platforms was Piccadilly Circus. The peak time of day for sightings was between 10pm and 11pm. 16) Colours considered for the six new Overground lines, but not used, include Primrose Yellow (Pantone 115), Robin's Egg (Pantone 304), Heliotrope (Pantone 513), Laundry Grey (Pantone 421), Lobster Cardinal (Pantone 184) and Hepzibah's Shawl (Pantone 437). 17) Potholes on London bus routes are repaired on average 16 weeks before potholes on other roads. 18) The widest gap between the train and the platform on the London Underground is 279mm at Tower Hill (westbound). The narrowest is 3mm at Colindale (northbound). 19) The bus route with the greatest difference in air quality between its termini is the 14 (Russell Square 22.7µg/m3 NO2, Putney Heath 3.6µg/m3 NO2). 20) In 2024 the Woolwich Ferry operated 18,851 northbound river crossings and 15,964 southbound river crossings. 21) 17% of TfL office staff work from home at least two days a week, and 23% at least three days a week. 22) The Silvertown Tunnel contains eighteen '20' speed limit signs and sixteen '30' speed limit signs because the limit changes midway as traffic passes between the boroughs of Newham and Greenwich. 23) 56% of Underground tunnels now have 4G mobile coverage. This is anticipated to double by 2029. 24) The passenger display screens inside the 94 new Piccadilly line trains will be limited to showing adverts no more than 33% of the time. 25) A scrolling London bus map is expected to be added to the TfL Go app in March 2026.
I live in downtown NYC. I wouldn’t consider FiDi a particularly cool neighborhood. Geographically speaking, I could probably be further from the scene—I’m not in the burbs!—but socially speaking, I haven’t broken in. To be honest, I could not be less interested. Yes, there is occasional FOMO. While I moved here for work, when I […] The post Letting go of the scene appeared first on Herbert Lui.
31 unblogged things I did in March Sat 1: The world is still reverberating after Trump and Vance admonished Zelensky in the White House yesterday, and you can sense that 2025 is going to be a turning point in geopolitical history but not in a good way. Sun 2: Fish and Ships, the smart chippie just west of Victoria Park, has folded and been replaced by yet another cafe doing yet more coffee. Daytime refreshment is increasingly where it's at. Mon 3: Last month I told you about the Algerian visiting London who'd spotted one of his father's poems inscribed by the Millennium Dome and contacted me via Flickr to try to find precisely where it was. I'm delighted to say that I got a message after he'd flown home saying "I was able to find the location thanks to your message! My father was really happy to see that it was still there :)", so hurrah for the internet. Tue 4: If you upgrade your broadband contract in March they let you skip the 1st April price increase. Also, when your 24 month contract expires it's March again. Wed 5: The salon at 733 Leytonstone High Road is called Gent's Barber Shop, an apostrophe error repeated three times across multiple signage. They got Men's Haircuts right on the price list but also claimed these cost 15£, so I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Thu 6: A film crew had taken over a street on the eastern edge of the City with a long-armed camera raised in the middle of the street to film what looked liked a police chase along the balconies of the Middlsex Street Estate. Unfortunately I missed the action, merely hanging around for quarter of an hour during a reset, but I now want to know what they were filming and whether I'll ever see it. Fri 7: I walked to a nearby tube station to get my Senior Railcard discount added to my Oyster card. The member of staff looked mildly peeved and said "oh I suppose so", before adding it swiftly and professionally. I won't say where this was, but it is the station I most associate with passive aggressive signage. Sat 8: My body has decided to celebrate my upcoming birthday with a massive blister on my left foot. I managed a five mile walk in the Essex countryside no problem, thankfully, but decided against the eight mile option. Sun 9: There's a colourful poster in the waiting room at Croxley station which says "You are Loved & Wanted in London". This might be a warm, comforting and inclusive message were it not for the fact Croxley is not in London so it looks creepy and weird. If you're responsible for slapping up TfL posters, perhaps don't thoughtlessly post Mayor of London propaganda in Hertfordshire. Mon 10: This new chess programme on BBC2 is very poor, all personality-obsessed and over-excitable with confected tension and barely any focus on the chess. Bring back The Master Game! Tue 11: On the Scott Mills Breakfast Show they were discussing the songs people wanted played at their funeral, then a few records later played the song I want played at mine. It's barely two minutes long so would slot in perfectly at the start. Wed 12: BBC4 have started repeating The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin again, and this brought hundreds of people to the blog keen to find out where in Ealing his house was located. Great! Super! Thu 13: Following a Windows update, my laptop has started showing a row of browser thumbnails every time I accidentally hover over the taskbar. This annoying feature is the default behaviour but previously I'd managed to find a cunning registry tweak which stopped it. Alas they've now nullified the tweak so it's inescapable. What's wrong with giving us choices rather than a single prescribed option? Fri 14: It's been several years since the legendary hot cross bun ceremony was held at The Widow's Son in Bromley-by-Bow, mainly because the pub's suffered repeated ownership crises, but in good news it's open again so things should be up and hanging again this April. The owner said hi anyway. Sat 15: I went for a walk up the Olympic Park and got lucky beneath the cycle bridges, spotting my first kingfisher since 2021. It skimmed low above the river for at least 100m, like a sharp blue dart, and I suspect it was looking for brunch. Sun 16: Walking through Stepney I assumed the gleaming gold-fronted bakery on Ben Johnson Road must be a gentrified interloper but it is in fact the same business as before - Johnny Walls - now focusing on pastries and drizzled treats rather than a traditional but lacklustre selection of pasties and loaves. Mon 17: Had a 40 minute phone chat with my nephew about life and stuff. This never normally happens (and should probably be more normal). Tue 18: I was going to write a post about fractional addresses, having spotted a cafe at 1½ Ardleigh Road in Hackney, but then my 60+ card turned up so I wrote about that instead. Another day. Wed 19: Today, striding across sunny Farthing Downs, was the first "I've worn too many layers I need to take one off" day of 2025. Thu 20: Last time I visited Crewe Market Hall I feared for its commercial success, the sense of tumbleweed being palpable. But I walked in tonight and every table was packed with happy punters enjoying food and drink, and all because Thursday Night is Quiz Night (from 7pm, hosted by The Cat). This is what successful community engagement looks like. Fri 21: I spotted a new Silvertown Cycle Shuttle bus out doing driver training near City Hall. The bus you saw at the press junket might have had a snazzy blue vinyl wrap but this had a bog-standard red exterior, as hijacked off route 323. Sat 22: Merton council are celebrating the borough's 60th birthday with community parties and a festival. The only borough which isn't 60 tomorrow is Harrow which is 90. Sun 23: On a packed purple train speeding into Paddington, a kind younger gentleman offered me a seat. Sigh, I thought, how does he know I've just turned 60? It's not the first time it's happened, the first being when I was 58, but I really don't need a seat (yet) thanks, so feel free to hold off for several more years. Mon 24: On the radio travel news I heard about delays on the M67 in Denton, and previously that would have gone right over my head but this time I was thinking "ooh, I know where that is, just past the station and the KFC approaching that giant roundabout", and this is how travel broadens your mind. Tue 25: Does anyone know why a pub in Rotherhithe might be rammed with hockey players on a Tuesday evening? Wed 26: Some BBC Sounds programmes I've enjoyed this month: a 2 hour Johnnie Walker tribute on what would have been his 80th birthday; X-Man - an 8 part series psychoanalysing the fantasy roots of the Elon Musk origin story; a '5 years on' documentary using archive clips to document the 3-month emergence of Covid; a 60th anniversary look at what the children in the Sound of Music did next. Thu 27: I bought fish and chips at the splendidly traditional Uncle Jim's Fish Bar in Plaistow. While I was waiting at least two youths came in for a kebab but left when they spotted the sign saying Cash Only, and I don't know how the business survives in this modern age. Fri 28: A new Brambly Hedge walking trail is being added on Chingford Plain, looping round Connaught Water with 17 delightful wooden hedgehog sculptures to spot. Author Jill Barklem lived locally in Loughton. The official launch will be in the summer once they've finished the all-weather path, but given the lack of rain recently the usual mudbath is absent so you could delight your toddlers now. Sat 29: If you're wondering where my final Bow Roundabout roadworks update is, they still haven't removed the cones in the contraflow lane, three weeks after everything else vanished, despite everything looking fully complete. Rest assured a lengthy write-up will appear eventually. Sun 30: I was waiting at Bus Stop M this morning when a 276 bus approached and pulled over. I boarded and the conversation went like this... Driver: You're supposed to hold your arm out. Me: But it's not a request stop. Driver: Are you telling me how to do my job? Me: Are you telling me how to do my bus stop? Mon 31: I managed to write today's post by tethering my laptop to my mobile, opening up a blank Blogger window, de-tethering to save on data usage, writing for hours, then finally tethering again and pressing publish. Links and photos will follow after I'm reconnected.
A couple of years ago, I published a post on how I thought AI would disrupt writing, editing, and marketing. I wrote, “The notion that people won’t get replaced with A.I., but people who work with A.I., rings true in each of these fields.” One reason this happens is because AI simply makes an individual […] The post AI and living tutorials appeared first on Herbert Lui.
I got home yesterday after watching the eclipse, put the kettle on and opened up my laptop. No internet. Well that's annoying, I thought. My BT Hub was displaying the dreaded red ring of doom, a bit like an eclipse in itself, and rebooting it didn't help. OK that's more annoying, I thought. I hoped it would sort itself out because it usually does on the rare occasions it ever happens. I gave it an hour but no, the red ring remained. Annoying! I gave BT a call to see what was up and they sent me a text message which led to a website, because that beats employing people. We're aware of a fault, they said, which was annoying. We're working on fixing it, they added, which was somewhat reassuring. But then I saw the "estimated fix time" and clocked that it was Tuesday evening. Annoying doesn't even cover it. Not Saturday evening or Sunday evening or Monday evening but Tuesday evening! It might be an overestimate of course, but they were suggesting I faced three whole days without the internet, so you can imagine my annoyance. My laptop was suddenly an isolated computer like it was 1995 or something. Also I could no longer do any streaming, so my TV options were live only or anything I'd recorded, ditto 1995. I turned the radio on and read the paper again, somewhat annoyed. I could of course take my laptop to a cafe and use their wi-fi, but that's not especially realistic on a Saturday evening. Usually I try piggybacking on a neighbour's wi-fi but those are all secure connections these days so annoyingly that no longer works. They switched my landline to 'Digital Voice' a while ago so that's gone down too. I do at least have a smartphone which'll keep me connected and online and everything, but it's not the same as a laptop, it's annoyingly inefficient. In particular a smartphone may be good for accessing written content but it's hopeless for generating 1000 words of thoughtful comment with links and photos. You would not believe how long it's taken me just to write this much - it's been frustratingly annoying. So you're not getting a proper blogpost today, nor probably tomorrow, nor likely again until BT fix whatever's wrong. Sorry, I had today's post all planned but it'd be far too complicated to actually write so all you're getting is this annoying apology. I hope normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. I'll probably come back later and fill this gap in with the missing post, hopefully. In the meantime I'm rediscovering all the things I can still do without the internet, and you can go away and do something else too. Don't be annoyed. You all lost an hour overnight what with the clocks going forward, so if nothing else I've just saved you five minutes.
