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This headstone from ancient Greek city of Alexandria Troas, near Istanbul, is now in the Louvre. The epitaph for the stocky young man has recently been translated and it reads: “Passer-by, Aphrodisios is my name; I’m a citizen of Alexandria Troas and a leader of the chorus. I die a most pathetic death because of my wife, the dirty adulteress (whom Zeus will destroy). Her secret lover Lychon – a member of my own family! – slaughtered me, still in my youth. He threw me from the heights like a discus. I was twenty years old, so full of beauty, when the Moirai spun my fate and sent me as a delight to Hades.”
That’s pretty cool
We’re having a mild winter on the underside of the globe but the other hemisphere is hot as Hades. Now science has come to the rescue with the coolest paint ever. Literally. According to The New York Times: “The paint’s properties are almost super-heroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit (4.5°C) cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler (10.5°C) at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40%. It is cool to the touch, even under a blazing sun,” Dr Ruan said. “Unlike air-conditioners, the paint doesn’t need any energy to work, and it doesn’t warm the outside air.”
It’s the little things in a marriage
A reader writes: “My husband of 10 years likes to listen to the playlist Apple Music made for him based on his interests while working from home. He also has his Apple Music account hooked up to all the Google speakers in the house. At one point we realised that what I listen to via the speakers sometimes shows up on his list, but also random stuff neither of us listened to. So now whenever I’m mad at him, I will play the most unhinged, crap music via one of the speakers on the low volume for hours, so that the Apple algorithm thinks he’s interested in it and will mix it into his playlist. It annoys him and so far, he hasn’t figured out it’s me.”
The most efficient sexual harassment
This is apparently a classic mistranslation of the German pork dish Schweinshaxe into English via Chinese. Happens all the time. The characters are interpreted as “groper” or “pervert”, which is the slang for “salted pork knuckle’, explains Craig Norman from Tadley, UK. “Chinese is a logographic language, where each character represents an idea or meaning, unlike other scripts, which rely on phonetics to spell out a word. As the characters have many readings (sometimes they’re used to approximate foreign words with little regard to semantics), and because the characters are often used as compounds to expand the meaning, mistranslations often happen. An excellent example of this is the infamous Star War: The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West, a pirate copy of Revenge of the Sith, where the subtitles are based on a mistranslation of the Chinese subtitles.”
The truth about bonds
There’s nothing more Kiwi than your landlord trying to keep your bond to pay for neglected repairs. National’s grand gesture to renters – enabling the under-30s to access their Kiwisaver to pay their bond – may sound helpful, but those with lived experience of the landlord/tenant relationship aren’t so sure. Louise Hutt Tweets: “One time, my landlord was withholding my bond because they wanted me to come back and mow the lawns ...four weeks after I’d moved out.” Emma worked as a professional cleaner for more than five years – her landlord tried withholding her bond because the property wasn’t clean enough. Once, Graham lost his bond for not cleaning the outside of the windows on a second-floor flat. Phoebe’s landlord wanted to take money out of her bond because (six weeks after she moved out) there was a dead moth in the toilet. Mine used my bond to pay to steam clean the carpets and then ripped them up. I saw him the next day chucking them in a skip…Even after the Christchurch earthquake, a renter had this experience: “Landlord/property agency insisted we leave the house spotless, carpets cleaned and large garden area tended to for the bond return … the house was demolished a few weeks after we moved out.”
The state of it…
The state of our housing market…
The state of our housing market. pic.twitter.com/jgYskn7rV5
— Dylan Bentley (@crdylanbentley) July 14, 2023
The state of our food prices…
$7.36 worth of Kumara pic.twitter.com/QyiqQKjqTe
— Jack Kevorkian (@kevorkian82) July 15, 2023
The state of our film-making…
Whānau Mārama: The New Zealand International Film Festival launches in Auckland this Wednesday. We've pulled together a selection of NZ trailers here which we hope will inspire you to get out and immerse yourself in a big screen experience this winter. https://t.co/nrWthoAEt8 pic.twitter.com/bEGWH94rAt
— NZ On Screen (@nzonscreen) July 16, 2023
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