~feeds_feedburner_com | Bookmarks (190)
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True Love - Futility Closet
The 1937 edition of Webster’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language contains this peculiar entry: jungftak...
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R.I.P. - Futility Closet
Wha lies here? I Johnny Dow. Hoo! Johnny, is that you? Ay, man, but a'm dead...
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Straightforward - Futility Closet
D.C.B. Marsh proposed this problem in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1957: “Solve a3 – b3...
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The Dim Effect - Futility Closet
In 2006, German entomologist Jochen-P. Saltin discovered a new species of rhinoceros beetle in Peru, which...
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Race to the Bottom - Futility Closet
In the 1970s, San Francisco painting contractor Bill Holland discovered he could save money on business...
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In a Word - Futility Closet
chirk v. to be or become cheerful adiaphorous adj. doing neither good nor harm nugae n....
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Watercolor - Futility Closet
Absolutely hands down one of the most beautiful places to see from space is the Caribbean....
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Seasick - Futility Closet
Swedish botanist Elias Tillander (1640–1693) was so “harassed by Neptune” during a trip across the Gulf...
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Cameo - Futility Closet
In his Schilderboeck of 1604, Flemish artist Karel van Mander writes that his contemporary Marcus Gheeraerts...
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Silicon Affinity - Futility Closet
In 1952, British computer scientist Christopher Strachey taught the Manchester Mark 1 computer to write love...
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Startup Costs - Futility Closet
On April 11, 1916, inventor Louis Enricht invited a group of reporters to his Long Island...
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Inventory Control - Futility Closet
In 2015 British computer scientist Chris Patuzzo produced a self-enumerating pangram — a sentence that itemizes...
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Liberty - Futility Closet
There is pictorial license in the same way that there is poetic license. … It is...
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Capacity - Futility Closet
In the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” a small furry alien species is...
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Unquote - Futility Closet
“When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.” — Goethe
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Helmet Crash - Futility Closet
A problem proposed by Mel Stover for the April 1953 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal:...
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Feats - Futility Closet
This just caught my eye — a feat attributed to the Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda,...
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Double Duty - Futility Closet
I just came across this arresting sentence in The Satanic Verses, of all places: “Turn your...
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Assimilation - Futility Closet
He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples...
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Shining Sea - Futility Closet
Early European colonists were staggered at the abundance of fish in the Chesapeake Bay. William Byrd...
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Self-Seeking - Futility Closet
There is nothing contradictory in imagining causal chains that are closed, though the existence of such...
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The Biter Bit - Futility Closet
Amsterdam artist Hendrik de Keyser’s 1615 sculpture Screaming Child Stung by a Bee was probably inspired...
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Catch 22 - Futility Closet
From reader Chris Smith: Pick a three-digit number in which all the digits are different. Example:...