He got $5M from Goodnight Moon's author and lost it all

Albert Clarke was a rascally nine-year-old when he inherited the estate of Margaret Wise Brown, his next-door neighbour, who had no children of her own. Ever since, as “Goodnight Moon” has drifted toward the center of America’s collective consciousness, he has floated on the fringes of society. No steady job. No fixed place of abode. Dozens of arrests. Rarely has his life traced a path through terrain even remotely resembling the world of Brown’s stories. Over the years, that world has yielded to him nearly $5 million. Today, he has $27,000 in cash. “I’m an inept bungler when it comes to business matters,” Clarke says, as ash drops from his cigarette into the folds of his trousers. “If it wasn’t for the fact that Margaret Wise Brown left me an inheritance, who knows? I could’ve been a homeless person. I could’ve been a poor, broken-down homeless person.” Clarke and his children have moved seven times in the past five years, their household a jumble of cardboard boxes and photos taped to the walls. (via Joshua Prager)

David Bowie borrowed his name but he is said to be one of the worst singers of all time

Norman Carl Odam known professionally as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, is an outsider performer who is considered one of the pioneers of the genre that came to be known as psychobilly in the 1960s. As a teenager he combined his interests in outer space and the American west to create the name "Stardust Cowboy", adding the word legendary because "I am a legend in my own time." He recorded his signature song "Paralyzed" in 1968. He played dobro and bugle, while T-Bone Burnett played drums. The track features unintelligible snarls, growls, and similar vocalisms, surrounded by frantic strumming on acoustic guitar, Burnett's equally frantic drumming, and occasional slurred yelps of the song's title, "Paralyzed!" The words that are uttered change with each performance, and are occasionally intelligible. (via Wikipedia)

A young boy's life was saved by a piece of rotten eggplant from South Africa

Like many other kids, Hudson Campbell was no stranger to ear infections. But his were incredibly persistent. Antibiotics usually seemed to help initially, but once the course was over, the infections would come roaring back. Born in 2017, by age 2, he had already gotten ear tubes surgically implanted to drain the excess fluid the infections produced. A second set of tubes inserted in 2020 fell out within weeks—his infected ears had too much fluid in them. That fall, doctors took a sample of bacteria growing in Hudson’s ears. The result was troubling: The bacteria were Mycobacterium abscessus. Frequently resistant to antibiotics, not many known drugs can fight the pathogen. The infection threatened his hearing, but also, if it spread, could quickly make its way beyond his ears. The bacteria did spread, next infecting Hudson’s mastoid bone, a part of the skull located behind the ear. Back in Nebraska, a pediatrician had a bold idea: Enlist a virus to fight off the aggressive bacteria. (via Nautilus)

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. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.

Using your cellphone too much? Buy this six-pound solid metal case for it

The 6 Pound Phone Case weighs as much as a gallon of paint and is machined from a block of stainless steel. Chunky, dense and sharp-cornered, it's designed to be inconvenient and to encourage less phone use. The design is by Matter Neuroscience and started as a joke. Now it's a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign; if it completes, your $210 pledge will get you a case for any modern iPhone. It also comes with an "I hate my phone" sticker. The site states: "We're wired for face-to-face connection, not endless scrolling. Our brains have 6 feel-good neurotransmitters, only 2 of which are easily activated by your phone (dopamine and serotonin). The other 4 (cannabinoids, testosterone, opioids, and oxytocin) are activated more easily IRL, and with other people." A brass model is also available; it's slightly heavier, and costs $500.(via BoingBoing)

No one knows who created a gigantic geoglyph of an aboriginal hunter in the Australian Outback

In 1998 in the Australian Outback, 36 miles from the tiny town of Marree, an almost two-mile long drawing of a man appeared in the dessert. The satellite image on the left was taken on May 27, 1998, and the image on the right was taken on June 12th. Sometime in between, a figure of an Aboriginal hunter was plowed into the ground. No one noticed it until July, when a set of faxes were sent to Marree, and a local pilot went out to take a look. Who drew the Marree Man? It wasn't the local Aboriginals, who own the land. A local man who had a tractor and was said to have access to the then-new technology of GPS was suspected. An American flag was found on the ground at the work, throwing suspicion on American defense workers. An Australian artist said he did it, but his story wasn't that credible. Tour operators were suspected, because they would have profited from the art. We may never know exactly who carved the geoglyph. (via Neatorama)

A group of Amish men lift and carry a giant barn

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