Sideswipe: Daikon People

Vaccine-inspired cocktail

The owners Of Backdoor Bodega bar in Georgestown, Malaysia, switched to packaged cocktail orders as a way to survive, and came up with the idea of the vaccine-themed drinks as the pandemic dragged on. "Our boredom boosters are formulated with proven efficiency to combat and eliminate any pandemic-induced lockdown boredom and sobriety," a colourful online drinks menu reads. There's Sinosour (a play on China's Sinovac vaccine), ExtraGineca (named after the AstraZeneca shot and combining a potent blend of gin and dry bitters) and of course the Pfizermeister.

Edit wars

Sometimes, even experienced Wikipedians lose their heads and devote every waking moment to edit warring over the most trivial thing on the online encyclopaedia. It's a place where mansplainers can while away the hours when they're done with Twitter. Here are some examples:
1. Was this Caesar salad invented in Mexico in 1924, or in ancient Rome? Is it named after Caesar Cardini or Julius Caesar? Is it spelled Caesar, Cesar, César, or Cesare? If you add tomatoes is it still a Caesar or is it something called a "Letchworth salad"? A slow-motion edit war stretching out over one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 years is surely the best way to find out.
2. Is JK Rowling's name pronounced like "rolling", or to rhyme with "howling"? Rowling is on record claiming she pronounces her name like "rolling". An irate editor argues that this is a "British" pronunciation and the "American" pronunciation of her name should also be noted. This is slightly ridiculous as she is English, and therefore of course will pronounce it in an English manner. Cue endless spats on talk pages over whose arguments are "more cogent", and multiple reversions. Issue finally resolved (sort of) by very, very, very obliquely implying that she pronounces her name "rolling", rather than stating that that is how her name is pronounced. Edit war was brief, but, astoundingly, other people have since logged on and made the same complaint. Perhaps it rhymes with "Trolling"?

Every letter counts

Early super spreader

Typhoid Mary is a term used for people who spread disease. Here's how Mary Mallon got her nickname and went viral. At the turn of the 20th century, scientists knew about contagion, but the concept of an asymptomatic carrier was completely new. Mary Mallon, a cook, was the first asymptomatic carrier health officials knew about. A number of wealthy families had been stuck down with typhoid and inspectors at the time were looking for actual sick people or bacteria in the water supply. George Soper, who had been investigating typhoid outbreaks in well-to-do families, realised one family had hired a new cook, who no longer worked with them. Soper had his suspicions. He was able to trace Mary's employment history back and found that typhoid outbreaks had followed Mary from job to job. From 1900 to 1907, Soper found that Mary had worked at seven jobs in which 22 people had become ill, including one young girl who died with typhoid fever shortly after Mary had come to work for them. Soper tracked Mary down to her current place of employment with a family. He found that two of the household's servants were hospitalised, and the daughter of the family had died of typhoid. Soper confronted Mary in the kitchen and asked her to give samples of her urine and stool. This infuriated Mary. Grabbing a carving fork from the table she chased him out of the house.