three-ring or alas and alack

Atlas Obscura has an interesting, involved biography of the complicated and convoluted live of Mad Monk Rasputin’s daughter, Maria.

The entire article is a rewarding read and not to reveal too many spoilers, after being transplanted from rural Siberia to Saint Petersburg for cultural refinement and fleeing the Revolution after her father’s mysterious assassination, Rasputina first found work in a cabaret act in Bucharest, all the while continuing a rapport with her murdered father through séances—who apparently offered dubious romantic advice, carrying on with a confidence-trickster who impersonated an impoverished Romanov family member. In the mid 1930s, Rasputina immigrated to America and worked as a lion-tamer, until being mauled by a bear put an end to that career-path. Afterward, she worked as a riveter in a Los Angeles shipyard during World War II while publishing her life story until compelled to retire due to her age, though still hale and hearty. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rasputina supplemented her pension by giving psychic-readings, complete with trance visitations of candid First Lady Betty Ford.

bellhop or to infinity and beyond

Gizmodo offers a challenging but rather intriguing primer on the nature of infinity—which is not a number itself or some threshold, unless posited as the point at which parallel lines verge together, and the idea that infinity is amenable to being doubled or tripled through a quantum mechanical demonstration that makes a classic thought experiment seem not so rarefied or cheeky.  In 1925, mathematician David Hilbert pondered the following brain-teaser: supposing there is a grand hotel with an infinite number of rooms which is always booked and has no vacancies, but a guest desperately begs in the lobby for a room for the night. The hotel staff can still oblige, despite the occupancy and the infinite inconvenience, since in a countable infinity, there is always a +1, by have the guest in room number one move into room number two, and so on. By a countable infinity, and there are several different types of infinities, Hilbert means an enumerated set, that one could walk the corridors counting off room after room—though one might never reach the end—and also room-service is not logically bamboozled as they know the new whereabouts of every visitor and N+1. Then suppose an infinitely large tour bus with an infinite number of guests pulls up in the parking lot. No problem still, says management, as everyone in an odd numbered could move to an even numbered one and the vacated rooms—bogglingly, free up accommodations for the infinite number of new arrivals. This shifting works, logically and in quantum states where vacancies are created, because the countable infinity—once taking on more guests, while still assigned to a numbered room, Hilbert’s Hotel becomes another sort of infinity—the kind that is innumerable, something that can’t be counted in a discrete way because there always room in between—like the number of points on a line—being infinite and a point being that which has no part, something dimensionless. Paradoxical things may appear only academic when first puzzled to their conclusions but it is pretty astounding and reassuring to find that there is potentially real application for these concepts.

peacock throne

Dangerous Minds has a very nice tribute to the the flaired back wicker peacock chair—known as the Philippine or Manila but originating in China, that was reserved for the select and makes an appreciable seat of authority and smartly frames the subject. Popular from the mid-twentieth century onwards, the exotic chair was part of the furniture for the parlours and studios of American celebrities and public-figures—perpetuated by iconic photographs of the owners sitting—as if commissioning for a portrait. Though not a wicker peacock chair—relatives and neighbours had them, I do remember growing up with a papasan in the living room—which was just as brilliant, classic and more comfortable, I imagine.

5x5

steckdose: a comprehensive overview of the world’s plugs and electrical sockets with some interesting historical background

up-market: manufacturers respond to the middle-class dearth in buying by creating more luxury lines of their standard-issues

swedish fish: arcade veteran Activison scoops up Candy-Crush maker

the adventures of harry mudd: Star Trek spin-offs that were never produced, via Neatorama

sequential hermaphroditism: one of the oldest trees in Europe is in parts changing genders