Friday Flames | 4.5.24

A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about contact lenses that harvest energy from tears, the wedding at the end of a 70-year courtship, and Scandinavian egg wars.

Above all else, we at WTFGUHQ are committed to journalistic integrity. If we tell you, for example, that a pre-Easter egg shortage wreaked havoc along the Norway/Sweden border, we want you to feel secure knowing that story is accurate. Without a universal appreciation for the pursuit of truth, and for speaking that truth to power, the ideals of representative democracy—nay, of all human interaction—are doomed. Doomed!

You can imagine, then, the torturous guilt we’ve lived with since we (okay, Doug) erroneously reported on Wednesday that Ramadan, Easter, and Passover coincided this year for the first time since 1991. The article Doug referenced was actually two years old, and Passover doesn’t begin until April 22.

There are no excuses for this unforgivable descent into editorial malfeasance, but Doug blames the cicadas. Seriously! Is anyone else freaked out that billions of grotesque, whining vermin will rise up from the dirt, spray torrents of pee at 10 feet per second, and bang each other for months until we rake up their corpses? As miraculous as this planet is, the cicada thing is a pretty glaring design flaw.

Anyway, we regret the error. As we (okay, Doug) process our shame, we are at least comforted to learn that referring to cicadas as “zombies” was absolutely accurate.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle this week:

• In the blink of an eye A team from the University of Utah says its new “smart contact lenses” have a flexible silicon solar cell and can convert tears to energy.

• The 70-year itch Last week, 88-year-olds Elaine Hall and Roland Passaro got married 70 years after they met in high school.

• Kids these days Guinness is the most popular beer among Boomers and Gen Xers, but Millennials would rather drink White Claw.

• A 105-year-old eclipse chaser Laverne Biser saw his first solar eclipse in 1963, when he was 44 years old. 61 years later, he’ll travel to see his 13th.

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This week on the podcast

April’s got a lot of weird stuff going on.

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Currently reading

Magda just started My Murder by Katie Williams, about a woman who is the clone of her previous self who was murdered by a serial killer. She’s intrigued by and enjoying the writing so far. What a weird premise for a book!

One of Doug’s old blogger friends recommended We All Want Impossible Things, by

Catherine Newman

. Months before he died of cancer, Jim Valvano famously advised that if you can laugh, think, and cry at least once every day, “that’s a full day.” So far, this book has been useful for all three.

Currently watching

Doug abandoned the Road House remake when it was clear that it’s charmless dreck with no reason to exist. Re-watch the vastly superior original instead. Then make time for the brilliant Anatomy of a Fall, which is really about the anatomy of a marriage and how difficult it is for anyone to build a genuine, lasting intimacy with anyone else.

The question isn't really what Magda is watching—which is mostly videos about cats and cake decorating—but what Mike's watching while Magda's gone for the weekend to see the eclipse. Probably a bunch of sci-fi movies containing a lot of punching and jump cuts, of which Magda is not a huge fan.

Currently cooking

Magda made a pavlova for the first time for Easter (see below). She followed the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, subbing in potato flour for the corn starch and adding the sugar in a dozen parts instead of two. Everyone was so happy with it that they've requested one for Christmas with pomegranate seeds on top.

One of Doug’s core memories as a kid in his mother’s kitchen is the mustard chicken recipe that was one of the staples in her primary meal rotation. So when he came across this recipe with spinach, artichoke, and orzo, he make a big pot of it and Prousted out all week.

Next on the podcast

Scary Mommy founder Jill Smokler is launching a new media platform, pondering next steps for caring for her mother, and still processing the fallout of a divorce that was entirely too public.

Thanks for reading, and watch out for the zombie pee bugs.

Magda and Doug