A list of curious facts
One: The Beatles made brilliant music together and also… art? The quartet co-created a psychedelic painting during their Japan tour in 1966. Confined to their hotel rooms because of death threats from Japanese nationalists, they were going stir-crazy. Happily, some of their fans had sent them art materials—which inspired them to paint ‘Images of a Woman’—with each Beatle in charge of their own quadrant.
As you can see in the lead image, the final result is a bit, er, abstract—which brings us to this excellent tidbit: “The piece was untitled for decades until a journalist commented that McCartney's contribution resembled a woman's genitals.” Our fave image is not the painting per se but this photo of the boys working earnestly on their art project:) FYI: The painting recently sold for $1.7 million at auction. (BBC News)
Two: Have you heard of the term ‘duo euthanasia’? That’s when a couple chooses to die together. The most recent case was that of former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt and his wife Eugenie—who died “hand in hand” at the age of 93. While it sounds romantic, there is a rigorous vetting process in Netherlands:
It requires that individuals willingly request the termination of their life in a manner that is “well-considered,” with a sign-off from a doctor that they are experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement.” Another physician then has to agree that the person qualifies, and doctors can choose whether they are involved in the procedure.
In the case of the van Agts, he had never recovered from a brain haemorrhage—and her medical condition was kept private. Only 29 couples opted for ‘duo euthanasia’ in 2022—but the numbers are growing, especially for older people:
An accumulation of age-related complaints can lead to unbearable and hopeless suffering. The expectation is that if doctors are increasingly willing to provide euthanasia when there is an accumulation of old-age complaints, the number of duo euthanasia [cases] will increase.
Washington Post (paywalled) has more on the lifelong love shared by the von Agts. You can see them in happy days below.
Three: This is more of an icky fact. We’ve all heard of pornographic deep fakes of women—which use AI to create highly sexualised content without their consent. The new trend in digital harassment is no less creepy—but entails the exact opposite. A movement called ‘DignifAI’ is using tech to cover up scantily clad women—to essentially slut-shame them:
“We’re putting clothes on degenerate women for fun, come join. The goal is for people to see that a degenerate lifestyle is ultimately fruitless.” The thread also includes links to specific tutorials for people to use the program Stable Diffusion for this purpose, as well as instructions to “include the name of the [woman] in the post so anons can @ them,” making it clear that the goal of the campaign is targeted humiliation.
An example: ‘before’ and ‘after’ images shared this caption: “When given pictures of thirst traps, AI imagines what could’ve been if they’d been raised by strong fathers.” Even celebrities like Miley Cyrus aren’t exempt from this misogynistic trolling—as you can see below. (Rolling Stones, paywall, Yahoo News)
