If you watched Superbowl 59 yesterday, you most likely saw Tom Brady’s wrist shine brighter than the sun.Turns out it’s a $740,000 piece with 338 yellow sapphires, 338 diamonds, and an 18k yellow gold case.
Category: Pop Culture
Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people
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Dyatlov Pass incident
In 1959, nine experienced Russian skiers died under mysterious circumstances, referred to as the Dyatlov Pass incident. Bodies found in different locations with varying amounts of clothing and an array of injuries. The facts made for ripe speculation: stumbling on a secret government project, a sadistic murderer, American spies, and the supernatural.
In 2021, Douglas Preston covered the history of the investigations, and modern science may have solved it. The likeliest culprit? An Avalanche.
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Texas blade shop owner refuses to add Nazi symbol to knife
Texas blade shop owner refuses to add Nazi symbol to knife.
What stands out about this incident:
- how emphatic on what he would not do “I won’t re-Nazify shit.”
- offered the woman an out to “add a modern German forestry seal… de-Nazify shit.”
- how nonchalant the woman was with her request
The shop, https://www.thebladebartx.com/, is located in Edom, TX, and one of the owners, Jonathan Sibley, competed on Forged in Fire.
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The Wiki Game
A fun way to explore Wikipedia: The Wiki Game. Click article links to navigate from one article to another. It’s timed and scored like golf.
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Red envelopes for Lunar New Year
Here’s some good background on those red envelopes, Hongbao, shared on Lunar New Year
The modern concept of hongbao emerged in early 20th-century China. Elders would give money wrapped in red paper to children during the Lunar New Year as a talisman against evil spirits, known as sui (祟).
But the gift giving traditions go back to about 200 BCE, way before Santa flew across the world.
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Do dogs watch TV? Yes, but…
From Sian Cain in The Guardian, You’ve always wondered, here’s the answer: do dogs actually watch TV?
“We watch TV for enjoyment, for emotional realism, for whatever personal preferences we have,” Mowat says. “I think dogs watch TV because they’re checking if it is real.
“There’s a reason why dogs go over and sniff the butts of the animals on the screen – they’re looking for the realism and wondering whether it’s worth paying attention to.”
Get your dog a Letterboxd account.
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Quantifying baseball caps in Justin Bieber videos
Craig Robertson of Flip Flop Fly Ball, noticed something interesting in Justin Bieber music videos–the Biebs wore different baseball caps in different videos. Craig meticulously watched the videos, took notes and made an information visualization of his findings of baseball caps in Justin Bieber videos. Screenshots included!
Interesting: 20% of MLB teams (that’s 6 teams) are featured in the videos. Craig notes he didn’t include shorter, promotional trailer videos in his sample. The numbers would increase quite a bit if he had.
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Jimmy Fallon and Jeremy Lin
“Bank this off the back booooooaarrrrd”
I love this. Being a Pearl Jam fan, any reference to the band in pop culture is amusing. Jimmy Fallon takes the tune of Jeremy, changes the lyrics to reference Knicks star Jeremy Lin, complete with Eddie Vedder’s Jeremy video look and spooky lighting and does a good job.
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I’ll see your truth and raise you satire
Too often, we’re sensitive to truth and doing the right thing, or in the case of the New York Times, forget our purpose.
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts†that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner eloquently, in her best Jonathan Swift form, states, “no shit”.
…we here at V.F. are looking for reader input on whether and whenVanity Fair should spell “words†correctly in the stories we publish.