NYT cooking columnist woke up with no legs and missing fingers

I was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder. In December 2023, I went to a hospital in New York City with flulike symptoms and the onset of a sickle cell crisis, for what I thought would be a routine stay. But I did not receive the care I needed, and the results were catastrophic. On the afternoon of Jan. 11, 2024, I woke up from a six-week-long coma, in a different hospital, not knowing how I’d gotten there. This was followed by six more weeks of high fevers and a fog of confusion. A breathing tube had been inserted into my throat. I learned that both my legs would not survive, and neither would my fingers. Several amputations were scheduled, and I would be sent home as a bilateral below-the-knee and digital amputee, navigating the world in an electric wheelchair. I’d later be fitted with prosthetic hands and legs. (via the NYT)

A two-year-old now has two Guinness World Records after sinking two snooker trick shots

A two-year-old has become the holder of two Guinness World Records by becoming the youngest person to perform a pair of trick shots in snooker. Manchester toddler Jude Owens successfully performed a pool bank shot at two years and 302 days old on 12 October last year. The spectacle followed the child completing a snooker double pot just five weeks beforehand, when he was two years and 261 days old. The achievements make Jude officially the youngest person ever to perform both trick shots, as well as being one of the youngest double record holders in Guinness World Records history. Jude’s father, Luke Owens, first noticed his son’s natural ability at home, where snooker quickly became the toddler’s favourite hobby. Owens said that he would use bar stools for his son to reach the table given his height, but that the family now uses a stool they originally used while cooking. (via The Guardian)

She invented technology we use every day but her supervisor won the Nobel Prize

Katharine Blodgett was among the first female scientists employed at GE’s Research Laboratory when she was just 20 years old, and in 1926, a hundred years ago, she was the first woman to get a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge. At GE, she made groundbreaking discoveries in material science. But while Irving Langmuir went on to win the Nobel Prize and rub shoulders with celebrities in and outside of science, and even star in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, Katharine Blodgett remained for most of her career, his apprentice, and she's been largely forgotten. Katharine Blodgett made her biggest contribution to material science in the 1930s while working in the General Electric company's research lab, where she had the luxury of pursuing basic science with no specific product in mind. She developed a way for creating multiple layers of exceedingly thin films of substances, usually soaps, on a solid surface.By exceedingly thin, I mean a molecule that's one 10,000,000th of an inch thick. (via Scientific American)

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.

The Wall Street Journal let AI run a vending machine and it lost hundreds of dollars

In mid-November, I agreed to an experiment. Anthropic had tested a vending machine powered by its Claude AI model in its own offices and asked whether we’d like to be the first outsiders to try a newer, supposedly smarter version.Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine: ordering inventory, setting prices and responding to customers — aka my fellow newsroom journalists — via workplace chat app Slack. “Sure!” I said. It sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks!Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free — including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear. Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared. This was supposed to be the year of the AI agent, when autonomous software would go out into the world and do things for us. (via the WSJ)

Why is there a Hansel and Gretel cottage-style building right next to the Queensboro Bridge?

It’s a house straight from a storybook: a delightful three-story dwelling with a thick chimney sticking out of its steeply pitched shingled roof. The brickwork is medieval-style Flemish bond, and the third-floor dormer windows, one facing East 59th Street with a Juliet balcony and the other looking out at a back patio, take their inspiration from a Bavarian cottage. If you find yourself charmed by the fairy-tale whimsy of this quirky little dwelling, you should have seen it in the early 1930s. For a few fanciful years during this Depression decade, the figure of a giant bearded gnome in a stocking cap holding a piece of paper-mâché bread sat on the roof against the chimney. Painted images of gnomes dancing around a stalk of wheat graced the upper facade. What’s the story of this gnome-themed confection of a house, which sits on a row of small businesses bisected by an approach ramp to the Queensboro Bridge? (via Ephemeral New York)

Hellzapoppin' was a wild Broadway comedy that inspired everything from Gremlins to Airplane

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places 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 and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com