A Miami sophomore and a multimillion-dollar scam

From New York: "It was the summer of 2023, and Matt Bergwall, a skinny 21-year-old University of Miami student, was lounging in an infinity pool in Dubai. Beside him was his girlfriend, a blonde Zeta Tau Alpha. The silver Cuban link chain on his wrist glistened as he held his phone high to snap a selfie, the city’s artificial palm-shaped islands splayed out along the horizon beneath them. Over the next few days, they swam in the pool and posed on their hotel balcony, posting a steady stream of pictures to Instagram. In one, he leans back on the edge of the pool, finger to the sky. None of Bergwall’s friends at school had a firm grasp of how the sophomore had money for the Tesla he drove or the Gucci he wore or, for that matter, the room in Dubai. But who could care when Bergwall was pitching in for yachts on Biscayne Bay?"

Why some Christmas nativity scenes in Spain have a tiny figure taking a poop

From Wikipedia: "A Caganer is a figurine depicted in the act of defecation appearing in nativity scenes in Catalonia and neighbouring areas such as Andorra, Valencia, Balearic Islands, and Northern Catalonia. It is most popular and widespread in these areas, but can also be found in other areas of Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy. The name "El Caganer" literally means "the pooper". Traditionally, the figurine is depicted as a peasant, wearing the traditional Catalan red cap and with his trousers down, showing a bare backside, and defecating. The exact origin of the Caganer is unknown, but the tradition has existed since at least the 18th century. According to the society Friends of the Caganer, it is believed to have entered the nativity scene during the Baroque period."

The Nazis sent a journalist to prison and then he won the Nobel Prize

From The Atavist: "The first time Carl von Ossietzky disappeared inside a prison, a crowd of supporters cheered him on. It was a sunny Tuesday in May 1932. Several friends had escorted the journalist across Berlin. They fastened black, red, and gold streamers to their cars and departed from the west-side offices of Die Weltbühne (The World Stage), the left-leaning magazine Ossietzky edited. Fourteen months earlier, the 42-year-old editor had been charged with treason for publishing an article about the German Air Force’s rearmament efforts, which were in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Ossietzky became a symbol for the German peace movement—and for those opposed to fascism. “If you want to fight effectively against the corrupt spirit of a nation,” he told a Die Weltbühne contributor, “you must share its fate.”

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. And I appreciate it, believe me!

How one of the most annoying Christmas novelty songs became an unlikely hit

From the New York Times: "On a cold and snowy night in November 1978, the members of Randy Brooks’s country band, Young Country, found themselves stranded after a gig at the Hyatt Hotel on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. The brakes on their van were frozen. With nowhere to go, Mr. Brooks and his bandmates went back inside to watch the next act, a bluegrass group fronted by the husband-and-wife duo of Elmo Shropshire and Patsy Trigg.That simple twist of fate would change the fortunes of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Shropshire and Ms. Trigg, and give the world one of the most enduring — and polarizing — Christmas songs ever recorded.Elmo & Patsy invited Mr. Brooks, then a 30-year-old aspiring songwriter from Dallas, onstage that night to play one of his novelty tunes. He’d written it the year before, after hearing a holiday song by Merle Haggard that annoyed him."

A lone dolphin in the Baltic Sea appears to be talking to himself

From Forbes: "When you are alone, especially for long periods of time, do you talk to yourself? If so, you’re in interesting company because a male Atlantic bottlenose dolphin who has been living alone in the Baltic Sea for more than three years, appears to be talking to himself. Bottlenose dolphins are highly social oceanic mammals that live in large fisson-fusion groups known as pods. Although gregarious by nature, some bottlenose dolphins are quite adventurous, and can set off on their own to live in foreign waters. This apparently is what happened five years ago. Local people living on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Denmark noticed a solitary male bottlenose dolphin had arrived and apparently was making the channel his home. Such a sighting was rare because such a dolphin had never been spotted in the area before."

He trained a bird to pick up money and bring it back to his apartment

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy's Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova's The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com