She wanted a 15th child and then came the felony charges

MaryBeth was 25 when she married a pilot named Bob Lewis. The couple had five daughters. When the girls neared adulthood and empty-nest syndrome kicked in, MaryBeth wanted more children. In her late 40s, she used in vitro fertilization to give birth to twin girls. And she wasn’t done. Despite medical mishaps, miscarriages and raised eyebrows from friends, she kept going, and going, eventually giving birth to her 13th child at the remarkable age of 62. But to bring this last set of twins into the world, MaryBeth went further — she tricked an I.V.F. clinic, a judge and even her own husband. These deceptions left MaryBeth, who is now 68, potentially facing a yearslong prison sentence. She has lost her job and is barred from her children’s school. She has dropped nearly 70 pounds from the stress and cries herself to sleep at night. Over two years, MaryBeth has spent more than $500,000 fighting for her freedom and for custody of the twins who she maintains are her 14th and 15th children. (via NYT)

There's an orchestra in Boston that consists of people typing on manual typewriters

One night in 2004, Boston-area artist Tim Devin was presented with the gift of a child's typewriter at a bar. His typing eventually annoyed the waitress who asked him to stop, whereupon he responded "It's OK, ma'am. I'm the conductor of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra." Thinking there was something to the idea, he assembled a group of interested performers on the night of October 20th, 2004 in Somerville, Massachusetts. An office setting was quickly decided upon as an overarching theme for live performances. The members (usually numbering between four and eight people) perform wearing white shirts and neckties, engage in typical workplace banter and write office-themed lyrics to satirical or comedic effect. The typewriters are utilized in a rhythmic fashion while melodic elements are supplied by the vocalists. The group uses several varieties of manual typewriters from such manufacturers as Underwood, Smith Corona, Hermes, Remington and Royal. (via Wikipedia)

This grumpy and condescending museum guide is surprisingly popular

On a recent autumn evening in Düsseldorf’s Kunstpalast museum, the guide Joseph Langelinck paused next to a Renaissance sculpture of a man with a wooden club and challenged his flock of 18 visitors to name the mythical hero depicted. “Hercules?” a woman in the front row proposed in a soft voice. “If you know the answer, why can’t you tell us in a way that those at the back can hear you, too?” Langelinck admonished the visitor, before challenging her to name the 12 labours in chronological order. A non-answer elicited an eye roll and a tut. “The museum advertises Langelinck’s tours, which cost €7, as “grumpy” and “highly unpleasant”, though that might still be an understatement. Over the course of the 70-minute walk, the ponytailed art historian points fingers into visitors’ faces, tells them off for checking their phones or sitting down, and berates them for their general ignorance, all while stomping through the palatial corridors of the Kunstpalast at breakneck speed. (via The Guardian)

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 garbage trucks in Taiwan play a tune to remind people to bring out their trash

I visited Kaohsiung in 2016 and traveled to the countryside outside the city. Kaohsiung is one of the cleanest cities I have ever been to. Litter was rare to see, there were few public trash cans, and the waste and recycling trucks were… different. One night I heard music from what I thought was an ice cream truck. Wrong. It was a bright yellow garbage truck making its way through the streets collecting household waste. The trucks come several times during the week. Residents take their waste and recycling out to the trucks. Household waste is separated into categories – recyclable, nonrecyclable, and organic. People must purchase special bags for nonrecyclable garbage. Residents are required to make sure that recyclable items are given separately to the truck that collects recycling. A tune (traditionally Für Elise or The Maiden’s Prayer) to remind you to bring your waste to the curb. (via Auburn Sustain)

The humble mustard seed has become the unlikely superstar of molecular biology

In November of 1956, after weeks of protests and calls for free elections in Hungary, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the uprising. Well over a hundred thousand people fled the country seeking asylum. Among them was a young geneticist named George Rédei, who headed for the border with a small vial of seeds tucked in his pocket. The seeds belonged to a spindly weed in the mustard family called Arabidopsis thaliana. Today, that weed is widely regarded as a botanical superstar. Arabidopsis has been the focus of some 100,000 research papers. Its seeds have flown around the Moon; it is the go-to plant for experiments on the International Space Station. And when the scientific community decided which plant should be the first to have its genome sequenced,  Arabidopsis  emerged as the winner. This year marks the 25th anniversary of when the world got its first glimpse at that genome, launching the much-studied plant toward even greater fame and scientific value. (via Knowable)

China just broke the record for the most drones in a light display

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