A list of curious facts
One: Can’t afford a Lambo car? How about a Lambo baby stroller? The carmaker now offers a whole new level of stupidity luxury for the cash-flush parent: the Reef AL Arancio—a limited-edition collab with British baby brand Silver Cross. There are only 500 of these all-black bad boys—which cost a mere $5,000! Point to note: Lamborghini is way late to the kiddie party—Bentley already has its own line of strollers and tricycles called the Bentley Trike. Our take: It’s perfect transportation for baby Darth Vader. (FastCompany)
Two: Imagine drooling over delicious khana—but at a great distance! Researchers at Ohio State demo-ed an intriguing—but seriously unattractive—device that lets you do just that:
Dangling from his lip are what look like five or six sauce packets that you’d add to instant ramen. The packets feed into a little tube slipped into his mouth. When miniature pumps in the packets receive a signal from a sensor dipped into a fluid far away, they get to work. In this case, the researchers’ aim was to accurately transmit the taste of a glass of lemonade.
The process is called “microfluidics”—which has been successfully tested with the flavors of coffee, fried eggs, cake, lemonade and fish soup. As to why you would need to taste something that you can’t exactly eat asap: “[M]aybe you’d like to taste recipes in a cookbook before you commit to making them. Maybe someday there might be a button on online grocery shopping services so you could virtually taste test different hot sauces before buying them.” Maybe we don’t need technology to solve problems that don’t exist? (New York Times)
Three: Move over train, hello big-ass boat! The folks who own Orient Express are getting ready to launch the world’s largest sailing yacht called the Orient Express Corinthian—which will set sail in June, 2026. As with the rail gaadi, the boat is also all about uber-luxury travel—with Michelin-starred chef Yannick Alléno, a 1930s speakeasy and a Parisian-style cabaret hall inspired by the Moulin Rouge! Reservations open March 25. Waiting for Kenneth Branagh to stage his next Hercule Poirot outing on its decks. (Robb Report)
Bonus fact: Scientists are atrocious Star Wars nerds—and love saddling new species with names of their favourite characters (see: this wikipedia page). There’s the Mexican moth called Wookia chewbacca—even an extinct species named Xenokeryx amidalae. Our fave is the Skywalker gibbon—which was discovered in 2017. Sadly, there are only 150 left in the wild. FYI: Its Chinese name is far prettier: tianxing—which means ‘heavenly movement’ in tribute to its graceful swinging through the trees, as you can see below. (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
