Jon Hancock
Funnily enough, I used to have a copy of this. Never really took to it. My aunt and uncle bought it for me, but I never found out why they chose such an odd dictionary instead something a bit more normal.
Interloper - Futility Closet
The first edition of the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary (1987) contains a fictitious entry, presumably to catch content thieves: hink, hinks, hinking, hinked. If you hink, you think hopefully and unrealistically about something. Phony or not, this is a useful word. If it’s adopted widely enough, perhaps the dictionary entry will bootstrap itself into legitimacy.
Beast of ExmoorHappy Pi day, me luvvers. Just remembered I told the fantastic #FutilityCloset about the Kate Bush Conjecture a few years ago. It's still here:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/04/28/kate-bush-conjecture/
Happy Pi Day #piday2026 #katebush
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/04/28/kate-bush-conjecture/
Happy Pi Day #piday2026 #katebush
The Kate Bush Conjecture - Futility Closet
Many thanks to reader Colin White for this: In her 2005 song “π,” Kate Bush sings the number π to its 78th decimal place, then jumps abruptly to the 101st and finishes at the 137th. The BBC’s More or Less advanced the “Kate Bush conjecture”: that the digits that Bush sings are contained somewhere in the decimal expansion of π — just not at the start. The conjecture is true if π turns out to be a “normal” number, meaning essentially that all possible sequences of digits (of a given length) appear equally often in its expansion. π hasn’t been...
Hacker NewsRound the tree, yes, but not round the squirrel
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/01/02/round-and-round/
#HackerNews #RoundTheTree #SquirrelStory #FutilityCloset #HackerNews #Curiosity
Round and Round - Futility Closet
‘I had quite a bit of fun playing hide-and-seek with a squirrel,’ he said. ‘You know that little round glade with a lone birch in the centre? It was on this tree that a squirrel was hiding from me. As I emerged from a thicket, I saw its snout and two bright little eyes peeping from behind the trunk. I wanted to see the little animal, so I started circling round along the edge of the glade, mindful of keeping the distance in order not to scare it. I did four rounds, but the little cheat kept backing away from...
drawnonglasswhy #boston gets a massive #xmas tree from #novascotia every year: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2019/01/07/podcast-episode-231-the-halifax-explosion/
Podcast Episode 231: The Halifax Explosion - Futility Closet
In 1917, a munitions ship exploded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, devastating the city and shattering the lives of its citizens. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the events of the disaster, the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima, and the grim and heroic stories of its victims. We’ll also consider the dangers of cactus plugging and puzzle over why a man would agree to be assassinated. Intro: In 1989 an unmanned Soviet MiG-23 flew all the way from Poland to Belgium. In 1793 architect Sir James Hall fashioned a model of Westminster Abbey from rods of...
Gosh, this really is quite, uh, something.
"A passage from Irene Iddesleigh, by Amanda McKittrick Ros, arguably the worst novel ever written"
Purple Haze - Futility Closet
A passage from Irene Iddesleigh, by Amanda McKittrick Ros, arguably the worst novel ever written: ‘False woman! Wicked wife! Detested mother! Bereft widow! ‘How darest thou set foot on the premises your chastity should have protected and secured! What wind of transparent touch must have blown its blasts of boldest bravery around your poisoned person and guided you within miles of the mansion I proudly own? ‘What spirit but that of evil used its influence upon you to dare to bend your footsteps of foreign tread towards the door through which they once stole unknown? Ah, woman of sin and...
"In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction."
In a Word - Futility Closet
manducate v. chew congustable adj. having a similar flavor deturpation n. a making foul gazingstock n. a thing gazed at with wonder Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a 50-foot brick wall covered with used chewing gum. Begun in the 1990s, the wall now bears an estimated 180 pieces of gum per brick. In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction. Washington state governor Jay Inslee called the “gum wall” his “favorite thing about Seattle you can’t find anywhere else,” but in fact Bubblegum Alley, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is...
Futility Closet: "Lahaina Noon"
Shaun GriffithDone the right way, it isn't indoctrination, but challenging what we think we know, and knowing when to accept what we think we know, until we know more.
Thinking - Futility Closet
The problem of indoctrination is this: in a modern democratic society, the desired goal of education is that each student develop a set of beliefs that are rationally grounded and open to change when challenged by better-grounded beliefs. In order to develop such students, however, it would seem that they must acquire a belief in rational methods of knowing which must itself be beyond challenge, i.e., held in a manner inconsistent with its own content. Thus, students must be indoctrinated in order not to be indoctrinated: a pedagogical dilemma or paradox. — Charles James Barr Macmillan, “‘On Certainty’ and Indoctrination,”...
Futility Closet: "Retro Cinema"
Retro Cinema - Futility Closet
The 1984 action comedy Top Secret! contains an odd sequence set in a Swedish bookstore. Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, and Peter Cushing acted the entire scene backward, and the filmmakers then reversed this performance to produce a dreamlike atmosphere in which impossible things happen. The scene required 17 takes and four dogs, co-director Jim Abrahams told ScreenCrush. “Each dog stopped being hungry.”