Vacation Mode, On!

Hi!

Today is the last Friday in August, which means that summer is coming to a close here in the northern hemisphere. And specifically for me and my family, it means school is starting soon. So I’m taking some time off next week to go on a vacation (okay, a staycation). I’ll still be sending out emails to all of you, but expect a re-run every day Monday through Thursday, and… well, I have no idea what I’ll do Friday yet. 

And as you can guess, it’s the Friday before my time off, so I’m already in vacation mode, and don’t have much to share with you today. So I’m going to hop right into the Week in Review. Let’s go!

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: The $10,000 Cantaloupe: It’s not any more ridiculous than very expensive wine, right?

Tuesday: Picasso vs. Titanic: Copyright law can be weird.

Wednesday: A Def Vacation: I will not be visiting this on my upcoming vacation.

Thursday: The Man Who Beat the Lottery (and Still Lost): A great scam that, well, isn’t much of a scam. But unfortuantely, it was scammy-feeling, and therefore, didn’t work.

And some other things you should check out:

Some long reads for the weekend:

1) “The Instagram Account That Shattered a California High School” (New York Times, 43 minutes, August 2023). This isn’t an easy read at all — it’s harrowing on many levels. 

2) “The True Crime Junkies and the Curious Case of a Missing Husband” (Vice, 24 minutes, August 2021). The subhead: “A woman pleaded on Facebook for help finding her husband. A group of true-crime enthusiasts popped up to help. Then things took a dark turn.” 

3) “The Man Who Never Was” (Esquire, 18 minutes, May 2010). The subhead: “How Todd Marinovich, engineered from birth to be the greatest quarterback of all time, lost his way.” (This is via Longform.org, a now-defunct website that licensed some longform articles from magazines, so if you have broken images, etc., that’s why.)

Have a great weekend!

Dan