#TodayILearned that today was the launch day of an Audemars Piguet/Swatch collaboration #watch called the “Royal Pop” and there were lines outside Swatch stores worldwide. It was so chaotic at so many locations that stores closed down for the safety of their staff. Fights broke out, lines were cut, police was called. Masses of people were herded out of malls.

All this for a pocketwatch (yes, it’s a pocketwatch/lanyard watch, not a wristwatch) that sells for $400, and is a mass-market, non-limited-edition product.

I guess I just don’t get it. Why? Wait a month and get it online, maybe?

#swatch #chaos

The third highest-ranking person (highest-ranking woman) in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy is a high-ranking Chinese cadre and has, as a result, been accused of "collaborating" with China

https://lemmy.ml/post/47317710

#TodayILearned that Erik Fleming, the man who supplied the massive amounts of illegal ketamine that eventually killed Matthew Perry, was actually a licensed drug counselor, a secret addict himself, as well as a failed Hollywood director whose biggest IMDB credit is a couple of episodes of "America's Funniest Home Videos" back in the 1990s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/arts/television/matthew-perry-drug-addiction-counselor-sentenced.html

Did you know? 🤔

Tunisia is located in Africa.

https://openfactbook.org/countries/tunisia/

#Tunisia #WorldNews #GlobalData #Facts #TodayILearned

TIL: Here’s a look at the EEWWW! Surprising, shocking, and oddly practical substances secretly shaping what we eat and drink. Crushed insects, fish bladders, and even wood pulp? Some of the food ingredients hiding in everyday eats are stranger than fiction. #foodhistory #Foodculture #FoodCultureBites #FoodIngredients #food

https://foodculturebites.com/whats-really-hiding-in-your-food-ingredients/

#TodayILearned

#TodayILearned that the US government originally planned on displaying George Washington's corpse in a crypt in the basement of the just-completed Capitol Building, with a glass floor directly above it for viewing. Despite Washington clearly stating in his will that he wanted to be buried on his estate in Mt. Vernon, Congress tried to move the body in 1800, 1816, 1824, 1829, and 1830, but partisan bickering prevented the votes from passing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Tomb_(United_States_Capitol)

#TodayILearned that during the last couple of years of "Happy Days," when everyone stopped watching and the show went completely off the rails, there was an entire episode in which the Fonz travels to the American South in order to combat racism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI1HxoqASfQ

Today I Learned that using quoted URLs in \(\LaTeX\) is quite tricky, and that `\detokenizer` is your friend.

I was trying to have a `\footnote` that pointed to the ALMA papers which are refereed, and that are published in the astronomy collection of the NASA Astronomy Database System (ADS) [1], and I was getting errors while trying to use
HyperRef's `\url` and `\href` commands, in particular a Runaway error inside footnote and href.

In the end, there were several issues that made LaTeX hickup on it.

The first one, the URL was not fully quoted, and needed to change `(` and `)` to their quoted versions,`%28` and `%29`, respectively, because the parenthesis were also considered suspect.

The second one, and is the main source of issues, is that `%`, in LaTeX, is the character for line comments: anything in the line after `%` is treated as a comment, unless it is in a verbatim environment… or inside `\detokenizer`.

Third, even with `\detokenizer{https://url.tld/%20quoted%20url}`, you might get issues.

So, what solved the issue?

🧵 1/2

#TIL #TodayILearned #LaTeX #HyperRef #HRef #XURL #detokenizer #LaTeXQuirks