Silly Stories From Now and Then

If you’ve stopped reading the “real” news that’s depressing AF, don’t worry—we guarantee these stories won't keep you informed about anything.

Birds Aren’t Real, For Real

Why the heck would a research team go to all the trouble of acquiring preserved bird bodies and converting them into drones? you might ask, reasonably enough. There are a few different answers from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, and they are varying levels of Yikes.

Their nominal reason is to study how birds fly. When artificial bird-bots weren’t quite doing the trick, they got the idea to reverse-engineer some dead birds instead, potentially revealing insights into formations and flight patterns that allow migrating birds to conserve energy. This knowledge could be applied in the aviation world as well. Also, the research team has presented ways in which the bird-drones (called “ornithopters”—shudder) could help with monitoring wild areas, including surveying for poachers and deforestation.

Just when you thought, “Okay, no issues with any of that!” we get to the really good part: the drones could also, researchers note, be expanded for use by the military. It’s not that bird-like drones are a new or original idea. Militaries have been trying to perfect them since the Cold War. Usually, though, the drones are just that, machines through and through. Not bird-robot psyborgs... Psybirds.

Fortunately, it should take a while to develop these feathered freakshows from the “barely aloft” phase to “seamlessly blending in with their surroundings.” They’re not exactly passing the birdie Turing test at this point. So why am I unable to stop picturing a Hitchcockian scene of getting dive-bombed by a bunch of pigeon-drone-spies? And why aren’t they calling them psybirds?! Whoever is making these branding decisions needs to reconsider. If you need me, I’ll be over on the Birds Aren’t Real Instagram page.

A Tattoo Won’t Make It True :(

Kris Cook has been a fan of Newcastle United Football Club for as long as he can remember. He travels to watch games, he wears the jersey proudly, and sometimes after a few rowdy pints he’ll sing the NUFC chant with his mates as they weave down the sidewalk: Tell me ma, me ma, We won't be home for tea. We're going to Wembley, Tell me ma, me ma!

Strictly speaking, I made up everything before the chant. But I can’t be too far off, considering what Kris did earlier this year. While getting some other tattooing done, he decided on a whim to get “Tell me ma, me ma, NUFC Cup winners 26/02/23” tattooed on his leg. 

The slight hitch is that in doing so Kris had pre-celebrated his team’s victory. Newcastle’s first major game in 24 years happened three days after he got the tattoo, and they were beaten by Manchester United 2–0. Not only did they lose this one, they haven’t won a major trophy since 1969. 

Optimism is an admirable trait, but when it’s in permanent ink on your body, maybe look before you leap? Or find out before you fuck around? "I have always loved [Newcastle] but I didn't think I'd be walking around with that on my leg for the rest of my life,” Kris told the BBC. (That’s…that’s kind of how tattoos work, friend!) Not that Kris’s enthusiasm appears remotely dampened. "As long as they win something I don't care,” he added, “so I can kind of get away with it a little bit. It’ll happen next year, or the year after.” (Unless, of course, you jinxed it for all eternity by getting this very uncalled-for tattoo.) You know what, though? I hope we all find something to believe in as heartily as Kris Cook believes in NUFC.

The Long Arm of the Claw

Carowinds is an amusement park in North Carolina. The park features “over 60 thrill rides, family rides, and roller coasters,” in addition to Carolina Harbor, the largest water park in the Carolinas, according to its website. Pretty sure this is a photo in the dictionary under “kid heaven.” But for one, as-yet-unnamed 13-year-old, the countless attractions—the Carolina Goldrusher, the Fury 325, the Electro-Spin—proved less enticing than an as-yet-unidentified toy inside a claw-operated vending machine. 

Here’s what we know. A little while after lunchtime on a Sunday, the boy climbed inside the machine, which was filled with plush toys. Authorities were alerted that he was stuck in there before 2pm. A medical response team arrived rapidly, unlocked the machine, checked the boy for injuries, and released him to his guardian. Claw Kid was subsequently banned from the park for a year for his attempted theft. 

This reporting, frustratingly, leaves more gaps than it fills. How did Claw Kid get in there? Which of those plushies was he trying to get his paws on? Was this a dare situation—and if so, is there another kid out there who has video evidence of the heist-gone-wrong?

All things considered, it’s not unheard of for children to find their way to the inside of these machines. A young Australian girl had to be rescued from one last December. But to be fair, she was four years old. For a kid more than three times her age to pull the same stunt, it feels like there should be a little bit more of a story. Maybe we’ll get to hear it when Claw Kid writes his memoirs.

Bizarre May 15th trivia to share with your coworkers when you get bored

Eat Cookies, Punch Nazis

May 15 is
National Chocolate Chip Day!

Needless to say, we can’t talk about chocolate chips without talking about chocolate chip cookies. So here’s how chocolate chip cookies happened. In 1938 a lady named Ruth Graves Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn with her husband in Massachusetts, whipped up the first-ever batch of “Toll House cookies.” Fearing her guests might get bored with her same old desserts, she took her regular butter-cookie recipe and performed some kitchen witchery involving a chopped-up bar of Nestlé’s semi-sweet chocolate. A star was born!!!

Most versions of this story claim that Wakefield put chocolate in her cookies more or less on a whim and didn’t expect the adoring response they received. I’m calling bullshit on that. In addition to owning an inn, the woman was a dietitian. She knew exactly what she was doing. Whomst among us simply invents the world’s favourite cookie by accident?

However, the following year, she sold her recipe to Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate. And it’s Nestlé that really milked those bad boys for all they’re worth. In the midst of World War II, the confectionary giant started selling cookie-ready chocolate drops, and by 1943 it was advertising “Toll House Cookies” as your heroic soldier boy’s “one weakness.” Magazine ads urged women back home to bake and mail as many chocolate chip cookies as possible to strengthen the troops in body and spirit.

Which leads us to conclude that the humble chocolate-chip cookie deserves some credit for its role in overthrowing historical fascism. Sure, German soldiers had meth, but the Allies had meth and chocolate chip cookies. Do military advantages get more wholesome than that?

May 15, 1940

A Big Mac Backstory


Back when Maurice “Mac” and Richard “Dick” McDonald opened McDonald's Famous Barbeque in San Bernardino, California, they offered a carhop system, meaning waiters would bring the food out to people in their cars. They boasted this was part of “McDonald’s Speedee [sic] Service System,” and they offered a decently varied menu. 

Fast-forward a few years, and the McDonalds had discerned that most of their profits came from just nine items. So they pared the menu down to those items only, from “Tempting Cheeseburger” and of course “Golden French Fries” to “Delightful Root Beer” and “Full-Flavor Orange Drink” (what even is that?). In the process, they reorganized for efficiency, which is the speedee way of saying that they fired all their carhops, created an assembly-line kitchen, and replaced the washable dishes and cutlery with paper versions. PSA: This is your brain on owning the means of production. 

But the brothers’ business sense perhaps wasn’t quite as sharp as it initially seemed. A milkshake-machine salesman named Ray Kroc visited around 1954 and, while he was impressed by their operation, visions of little Speedees expanding their way across the country danced before his eyes. When he purchased the rights to franchise McDonald’s, Dick and Mac didn’t even bother to retain the rights to their own name. The pair attempted to continue operating their original San Bernardino restaurant, renaming it “Big M” (with a thinly disguised version of the Golden Arches), but Ray was having none of it. He opened a McDonald’s around the corner, and before long Big M was forced to shut its doors. Considering the global hypercapitalist empire its founders missed out on, I wouldn’t blame them for being salty. Speaking of which, I think I need some fries.

May 15, 1718

Puckle Up, Losers

You would think the first "machine gun" would have been designed by some military expert, right? Not quite. It was dreamed up by the British lawyer and writer James Puckle, one of the eighteenth  century’s many big-brain geniuses who, being a white dude, could not be convinced that there were tasks he was totally unqualified for. You do you, buddy!!

The puckle gun was designed for use on colonial ships. While it could fire faster than some other contemporary weapons, certain mechanisms were deemed “clumsy” and “undependable.” These being poor qualities in a gun, it was rejected by the British military. Not that that stopped Puckle from getting it patented.

The really awesome thing about Puckle is that he tried to attract investors through that most beloved bludgeon of the British empire, racism. He was fond of sharing that the gun could fire two different types of bullets: round ones, to use against “Christian enemies,” and square ones, believed to be more harmful, to be used against non-Christians—meaning, in effect, against Muslims. The damage inflicted would “convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilisation,” Puckle claimed.

That’s a chillingly cruel statement, and wouldn’t be at all funny if the puckle gun was ever actually used against human beings. But there’s no evidence that it was. Despite Puckle’s marketing efforts it flopped so spectacularly that only two of his guns are known to have been produced—and during the one (failed) colonial expedition that brought puckle guns, they were never fired.

The worst puckle-related injuries we know of were the sick burns lobbied at anyone silly enough to buy in. One leaflet commented that the gun had “only wounded those who held shares therein.” More recently, researcher T.W. Lee summarized that Puckle's 1718 patent “contains more rhetorical fervor than technical rigor.” Sounds about white.