January 29
Better Than News
Yakuza Pope is a 2019 thriller film about a modern yet devout Pope who finds himself at war with the Yakuza.
Steely Kubrick is a American rock band and film production company comprising Steely Dan and film director Stanley Kubrick.
The Pompadour of Love is a pompapdours-only hair salon franchise.
"AI is Here to Stay" is a song by HAL 9000 and Harry Connick Jr.
Kelp! is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Tweetles and the soundtrack to their marine biology exhibit of the same name.
Are You Sure
• ... that Nobel award-winning chemist Fritz Haber greeted World War I with enthusiasm, and that Haber played a major role in the development of the non-ballistic use of chemical warfare in World War I, leading the teams developing chlorine gas and other deadly gases for use in trench warfare, and that Haber was on hand personally when it was first released by the German military at the Second Battle of Ypres?
• ... that When Herring Met Salad is a 1989 American romantic comedy film about a chef (Billy Crystal) and a restaurateur (Meg Ryan) which follows the their lives from the time they meet in Chicago just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years of opening new restaurants in New York City; and that the film addresses but fails to resolve questions along the lines of "Can men and women ever open a restaurant together?"
• ... that scientist, theologian, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg wanted to present a new idea every day in his youth, until around 1730, when he changed his mind, believing that higher knowledge is not something that can be acquired, but that it is based on intuition, and after 1745, he believed that he received scientific knowledge in a spontaneous manner from angels?
• ... that mathematician Samuel Eilenberg is responsible for the Eilenberg swindle, a construction applying the telescoping cancellation idea to projective modules?
• ... that James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young NFT is a nichtfungibletokenroman written in a modernist style, and that it traces the intellectual and financial awakening of young Stephen Dataloss, Joyce's fictional alter ego, whose surname alludes to the loss of data, which undermines the non-fungible token economy?
Beyond Plausible
I Am Legend is a 1954 post-apocalyptic biographical crime horror novel by American writer Richard Matheson about the Kray twins, identical twin zombie criminals who prey on the living.
The Lord of the NFTs is an epic fantasy NFT film about a software developer (Sauron) who creates the One NFT to maximize return on investment from Men, Dwarves, and Elves.
Pastel Packin' Mama is a 1943 American neo-Western art thriller film starring Ruth Terry and Robert Livingston.
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1688: Astronomer, philosopher, theologian, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg born. In later life he will receive scientific knowledge in a spontaneous manner from angels.
1810: Mathematician Ernst Kummer born. Kummer will contribute to abstract algebra; in ring theory, he will introduce the term ideal.
1888: Artist, musician, author, and poet Edward Lear dies. Lear is remembered mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form he popularized.
1926: Theoretical physicist Mohammad Abdus Salam born. He will share the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory.
1933: Mathematician and academic Paul Sally born. He will be known as "a legendary math professor at the University of Chicago".
1934: Chemist Fritz Haber dies. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. Haber also did pioneering work in chemical warfare, weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I.
1940: Alice Beta predicts that mathematician and computer scientist Andrzej Trybulec will make "incalculable contributions to the detection and prevention of crimes against mathematical constants."
1941: Mathematician and computer scientist Andrzej Trybulec born. He will develop the Mizar system: a formal language for writing mathematical definitions and proofs, a proof assistant which is able to mechanically check proofs written in this language, and a library of formalized mathematics which can be used in the proof of new theorems.
1989: Premiere of When Herring Met Salad, an American romantic comedy film about a chef (Billy Crystal) and a restaurateur (Meg Ryan) which follows the their lives from the time they meet in Chicago just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years of opening new restaurants in New York City. The film addresses but fails to resolve questions along the lines of "Can men and women ever open a restaurant together?"
Topic of the Day
NFTs
NFT, the Wrath of God is a 1972 epic historical drama film about Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of NFT investors down the Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of apes, El No Fungiblo.
Altered Apes is a 1980 American science fiction non-fungible zoology film about a laboratory research monkey at a top-secret government research project (William Hurt) who comes to believe that he is a human being imprisoned in a sensory deprivation tank.