News
The Wild History of the Beloved 'Addams Family' Pinball Machine
Relevant because Wednesday, duh. But also because it's your favorite pinball machine lol, and is just a neat history in general. The use of rudimentary 90s AI to manage the phantom flipper is fascinating too. Did you ever watch the new Wednesday show on Netflix?
Fun camel facts
Relevant because hump day 🐫🐪 I really need to learn more about the physiology of the whole "sealable nostrils" thing. Is it autonomic? Or conscious? I feel like hippos do this too....in case you were wondering, outside of land animals, penguins have a gland under their eyes that secretes excess salt, so they can also drink salt water with no ill effects. And less fun, but imagining an angry camel charging you at 40mph is terrifying.
Why Alaska is Home to America’s Easternmost Point
Okay, we're losing the Wednesday theme here, but geography is such a trip sometimes. Other fun facts include that if you start out in the center of Detroit and drive South the first country you'll hit is Canada, the largest country bordering France is Brazil (courtesy of French Guiana), and the closest state to Africa is Maine.
Garlic ice cream
Have you had this??? I saw a mention of it and I'm having a hard time imagining the flavor. There are recipes and we technically have an ice cream maker thing I think, this may need to happen at some point purely so I can understand it. Sauerkraut cake 2.0! There will be no rainbow sprinkles if I do, though, that is where I draw the line.
The Gauss Summation
This came about because of a trivia question I saw where they asked you to give the total sum of adding every number between 1-100 in under 30 seconds, and someone was like "Easy peasy, if you add 100+1 it's 101, 99+2 is 101, 98+3 is 101, etc. so you just need to do 101*50 and you're set" and my mind. was. blown. Maybe this is super basic math that I've just been clueless about my entire life, but it's so cool. I sincerely hope some niche situation occurs one day where I can put this to use and feel super accomplished lol.
The first taquería in the world to get a Michelin star
A continuation of taco Tuesday, with bonus Mexico City connection ahead of your trip :)
Why Sourdough Tastes Different Based On Its Environment
I did end up down a brief food science rabbit hole, where I learned that sourdough terroir is a thing??? (I mistyped "sourdough terror" when I was initially searching for more info and was not disappointed by the results.) It makes perfect sense, but was not ever something I would have consciously thought about. SCIENCE. The "Quest for Sourdough" website was also great, the fact that the Puratos Center for Bread Flavour in Belgium exists and is basically just a library of sourdough starters from around the world is fabulous. Also that in the online recipe library you can name your recipe whatever you want, which seems like such a sweetly human thing to go around naming your bread starters and then compiling thousands of those names and their recipes from around the world.