Sideswipe: August 28: Couch with a view

The only thing that could make this any more student would be a road cone. Spotted near Canterbury University.

Vanity plate quiz

In October 1996, Parade magazine in the US published the results of a vanity licence plate contest that received more than 7,000 entries. Here are the 10 winning plates:
1. IRIGHTI
2. RUD14ME?
3. HAHAHAHA
4. XQQSME
5. IM12XL
6. ULIV1S
7. AXN28D+
8. VAN GO
9. H2OUUP-2
10. TI-3VOM
What are their meanings? Answers below:

Know it all? How bout these?

1. The sound of a car door closing with a solid 'thunk', has been engineered using psychoacoustics to sound much more robust than it actually is.
2. In 2016, Microsoft set up a Twitter chatbot that could learn to converse based on what people told it. It was using swear words by the next morning.
3. The members of Duran Duran had a pastime of taking part in Duran Duran lookalike contests and winning them.
4. While a group of crows is a murder, a group of ravens is merely an unkindness.

New nostalgia

(Via

Off the Tracks

)

Time for some…self-reflection

The mirror has been around for a longer time than one would think and the creation of them was a dangerous career. "The glassmakers at Murano in Venice jealously guarded the tricks of their trade, as did the Venetian government; spilling trade secrets was punishable by death, and if a glassmaker dared to leave Murano, their family was sometimes held hostage in attempts to hasten their return," writes author Katy Kelleher. Later on, in 1547, two Venetian glassmakers were assassinated when they tried to move to Germany. The Venetian glass-making trade was somehow made even more dangerous by the fact that the workers were using toxic materials such as mercury. "Workers who inhaled mercury fumes might develop behavioral and personality changes," writes Kelleher, citing that they may suffer from failing kidneys, shaking hands, a loss of memory, depression, and more.
(Via "The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors" article for Longreads.)

Vanity license plate answers

1. Right between the eyes 2. Are you the one for me? 3. Ha ha ha ha. 4. Excuse me. 5. I'm one to excel. 6. You live once 7. Accentuate the positive. 8.Van Gogh. 9. What are you up to? 10. Move it [reversed].