A list of curious facts
One: Of the great painters, Salvador Dali has left behind the best memorabilia—from Hallmark cards to ‘Lobster telephones’... and Air India ashtrays. That’s back in the day when the Maharaja was cool, and you could smoke on planes. They looked like this—a weird mish-mash of a serpent, two elephant heads and a swan:
Btw, Dali was paid for his services with a real baby elephant—which sounds kinda cool but probably wasn’t much fun for the poor thing (see: Lead image). Also: The ashtray is kinda ugly… just saying. (CN Traveller)
Two: The great challenge of boiling an egg is that the white cooks at 85°C and the yolk at 65°C. It’s hard to achieve the perfect consistency for both. Italian researchers have discovered a new method called ‘periodic cooking’. This involves placing the raw egg in hot water and cold water—switching every two minutes for a total of 32 minutes. The result is an egg with a higher nutritional content—has a nice soft yolk—but without the runny, undercooked white. BBC News has both the details and results of a home test—if you really want to work that hard on cooking your eggs.
Three: The Royal Shakespeare Company is wading into the world of video games—with a twisty version of ‘Macbeth’:
Lili is set in a “stylised, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life”... Everyone is under surveillance while the gameplay melds live-action cinema with an interactive format, allowing players to make choices that will decide Lili’s destiny. The witches, instead of going “double, double, toil and trouble/ Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”, have been reimagined as hackers, and surveillance cameras and cyber-infiltration tools will take players deep into the storyline.
Okay, wow! Also raising expectations: Zar Amir—winner of Cannes Best Actress award—stars as Lady Macbeth aka Lili. Check out the screenshot below. (The Telegraph)
Bonus fact: Get ready for a new Dan Brown novel starring his Da Vinci daredevil— Robert Langdon—the first since 2017. The plot:
In ‘The Secret of Secrets’, Langdon travels to Prague to attend a lecture by noetic scientist Katherine Solomon, who is also his partner. Her latest book promises to upend long-held beliefs surrounding human consciousness, but then a murder turns things upside down, and Katherine goes missing. On top of all that, Langdon becomes the target of a powerful organization.
Sounds excruciatingly familiar. The announcement came with its own cringe promo vid. (Associated Press)
