TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee")

17 January 2026

Found on a Scotland beach. At home it started giving off smoke and a burning smell

Here are several comments from the Minerals subreddit thread:

Around the baltic sea, but also north sea, phosphor remains from bombs of the world wars are found on the beaches and are mistaken for amber and cause injuries because it starts burning. So now that you know that and you can take some precautionary measures, you could have some fun with that one.

Does it smell like almonds? Keep it in water. If it has white phosphorus in it, it will have a smoky layer on the surface and give off a faint mist like a model train engine. It will smell like astringent almonds. The stuff is the most extreme substance that I've ever handled by far and I've worked with nuclear weapons. White phosphorus makes a brine with the water like Satan's piss. Leave it out in the sun. Ultraviolet will convert it into red phosphorus which is stable albeit slowly. The real nightmare is that it heat upon contact with air, melts into a paste like soft butter, eventually drips like candle wax and everything it has touched is about to burst into flames as hot as he sun. White phosphorus is truly the stuff of nightmares. I took on the responsibility of handling 100g of it a few years ago and I regretted every second of it for the months it took me to convert it into 60g of red P I keep as a reminder to never do that again.

Just another little thing to add here. White phosphorus is also extremely toxic. It's a little more toxic than potassium cyanide. Where the median lethal dose for white phosphorus is between 50-100mg, vs 140mg for potassium cyanide.

After reading the comments, the original poster left a followup:

Once the hazardous waste team arrived, they took a small sample and ran some tests. Nothing showed up on their equipment to confirm what it was. They then burnt a small sample in their mobile fume cupboard and seemed satisfied that it was phosphorus.

I think they made contact with other specialist teams that deal with unexploded ordnance. They then took the decision to burn the rest. Initially they set up a small stove and gauze but the small sample they lit burnt straight through the gauze and damaged the stove. The decision was then taken just to burn the phosphorus on the ground. They touched it with a naked flame and off it went. Continued burning for nearly 10 minutes. Can see much damage it could have done if indoors (or in a jacket pocket!).

Every day I blog I learn something.

Related: Evidence of Israel's unlawful use of white phosphorus in Southern Lebanon (Amnesty International, 2023)

A dangerous guide to beachcombing (Chemistry World)

Dilbert

I'm reposting this cartoon from 2012 and will take this occasion to make note of the recent death of Scott Adams. I think I blogged my first Dilbert cartoon in 2009, and since then have inserted occasional others when the blogging day involved too much doomscrolling and I needed a mental health break.

I have been occasionally reprimanded by readers for not ghosting the Dilbert cartoons because of Scott Adams' political and sociological viewpoints. These matters were addressed in this week's New York Times report about his death:

“Dilbert” was a war cry against the management class — the system of deluded jerks you work for who think they know better. Workers posted it on their cubicles like resistance fighters chalking V’s on walls in occupied Paris. But their bosses posted “Dilbert” in their offices too, since they also had a boss who was an idiot. In the Dilbertverse, “It’s turtles all the way up,” Mr. Adams explained to me when we met. The bottom rungs are filled with put-upon competent workers, oppressed by an infinite bureaucracy of people upholding a system that isn’t actually based on actual expertise.

Maybe Mr. Adams was an early Trump supporter because “Dilbert” was itself proto-MAGA. The strip’s everyday resentments and cynicism added up to a now-familiar worldview. “There’s no such thing as expertise. It just doesn’t exist,” Mr. Adams said...

Mr. Adams thought this extended even to issues like international trade. “In these big complicated situations, no one really knows if we have a good deal. It’s best just to negotiate from ignorance and hope the other side gives in,” he told me. “In the real world there is a fog. In a world where nobody knows, the loudest person is going to get the most.”

From his point of view, I had lived so long among the well-credentialed languishing in abstract thoughts that I was fooled into thinking complex problems required expert solutions. “In your movie,” by which he meant my perception of reality, “there’s a big incompetent guy who doesn’t know the details,” he told me. “I’m telling you it’s the best thing possible. When President Trump acts without all the information and his facts are not accurate, he’s operating on a higher level, not a lower level. He’s operating in the real world.”

Ars Technica made note of evidence of racism and atheism:

In his last two decades, Adams shifted increasingly from the world of comics to politics, where he became increasingly vocal—and abrasive—about his conservative views and his support for Donald Trump.

In the final years of his life, these attitudes cost him most of what he had built with Dilbert. For instance, in 2022, as Rolling Stone recounts, “over 75 newspapers dropped Dilbert after Adams introduced the strip’s first Black character, which he then used as a prop to mock ‘wokeness’ (the character identified as white and LGBTQ+ for work purposes).”..

Adams eventually relaunched the strip as the subscription-only Dilbert Reborn, which he said was “too spicy for the general public.” He focused more on his business and political books, including one on Donald Trump and the importance of “persuasion” over facts.

I mostly stopped blogging Dilbert cartoons when the series went subscription-only. But I don't regret having included the cartoons in TYWKIWDBI. I'll repost some old ones after this post, and I'll offer here some links to other ones I've particularly enjoyed in the past.

Dilbert and Dogbert tackle Christmas

The Man Who Could Not Summarize

Don't Insult a Robot

People are just fish + time

Sapiosexual defined

Zoom fatigue

I'll file this under politics instead of humor

"Wherefore" means WHY - and Juliet wasn't on a balcony

"From Middle English wherfor, wherfore, hwarfore, equivalent to where- (“=what”) +‎ for. Compare Dutch waarvoor (“what for, wherefore”), German wofür (“for what, what for, why”), Danish and Norwegian hvorfor (“wherefore, why”), Swedish varför (“wherefore, why”)."

Juliet is not asking the moon where Romeo is - she's bemoaning the fact that he is a Montague and she is a Capulet: Why did you have to be a Montague?

It drives me crazy every time I hear a performance (typically high school or amateur productions) in which Juliet asks "wherefore ART thou Romeo?" instead of the proper "wherefore art thou ROMEO?"

*sigh* The tribulations of an old English major...

Reposted from 2020 to add this interesting bit from The Shakespeare Guide to Italy:

There is no "balcony" in Romeo and Juliet. None whatsoever. Not only is the word absent from the play, it isn't a word to be found in any other play, Italian or not, by the same playwright. For that matter, the word "balcony" is not found in any of the poetry ascribed to the playwright either.

The playwright's descriptions in Romeo and Juliet are clear: Juliet appears in every case, by the author's own words, at her "window."

More about this book later.

Addendum: A tip of the blogging cap to reader Kolo Jezdec, who offers this article from The Atlantic: Romeo and Juliet Has No Balcony.

Reposted from 2021

Cleaning out some old "Dilbert" saves

Reposted from 2022.

Dilbert

Reposted from 2012.

If you're known as a competent engineer...

Reposted from 2013.

A double dose of Dilbert

Reposted from 2021 because it's still funny.

Greenland Defense Force

Trump has claimed that Greenland's defense consists of two dogsleds. That is not true. This video shows an alternate reality that is equally likely to be true.

13 January 2026

"Sinnerman" (Nina Simone)

While watching Hunt for the Wilderpeople a couple nights ago, I heard this song in the soundtrack, and remembered hearing it in The Thomas Crown Affair. Found more information at Wikipedia:

"Sinner Man" or "Sinnerman" is accepted as an African American traditional spiritual song that has been recorded by a number of performers and has been incorporated in many other of the media and arts. The lyrics describe a sinner attempting to hide from divine justice on Judgement Day. It was recorded in the 1950s by Les Baxter, the Swan Silvertones, the Weavers and others, before Nina Simone recorded an extended version in 1965...

Simone learned the lyrics of this English song in her childhood when it was used at revival meetings by her mother, a Methodist minister, to help people confess their sins. In the early days of her career during the early sixties, when she was heavily involved in the Greenwich Village scene, Simone often used the long piece to end her live performances.

Reposted from 2016 to add the lyrics;

Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
We got to run to the rock
Please hide me, I run to the rock
Please hide me, run to the rock
Please hide here
All on that day
But the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I ain't gonna hide you there
All on that day
I said rock
What's the matter with you rock?
Don't you see I need you, rock?
Good Lord, Lord
All on that day
So I run to the river
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', all on that day
So I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day

So I run to the Lord
Please hide me, Lord
Don't you see me prayin'?
Don't you see me down here prayin'?
But the Lord said
Go to the Devil, the Lord said
Go to the Devil
He said go to the Devil
All on that day
So I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', ran to the Devil
He was waitin', all on that day
I cried, power, power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)

Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Well, I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day
So I ran to the Lord
I said Lord, hide me
Please hide me
Please help me, all on that day
He said, hide?
Where were you?
When you oughta have been prayin'
I said Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', all on that day
Sinnerman, you oughta be prayin'
Outghta be prayin', sinnerman
Oughta be prayin', all on that day

Up come power (power, Lord)

Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
(Power, Lord)
Hold down (power, Lord)
Go down (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na

Woah, ho

Ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha, oh Lord
Nu, nu, nu
No-no-no-no, ma-na-na-na-na, don't you know I need you Lord?
Don't you know that I need you?
Don't you know that I need you?

Oh, Lord
Wait
Oh, Lord
Oh, Lord, Lord

"Life in a Day" - a crowdsourced movie

"What happens when you send a request out to the world to chronicle, via video, a single day on Earth? You get 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. Producer Ridley Scott and Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald took this raw material -- all shot on July 24, 2010 -- and created Life in a Day, a groundbreaking, feature-length documentary that portrays this kaleidoscope of images we call life.

"Life in a Day is a documentary film project born out of a partnership between YouTube, Ridley Scott Associates and LG electronics, announced on July 6, 2010. Users sent in videos of themselves on July 24, 2010, and then Ridley Scott produced the film and edited the videos into a film with director Kevin MacDonald and film editor Joe Walker, consisting of footage from some of the contributors. The completed film is 94 minutes 57 seconds long and includes scenes from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 140 nations. The completed film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2011 and the premiere was streamed live on YouTube. The film's music was written by British composer and producer Harry Gregson-Williams, along with Matthew Herbert. The film's opening song, written by Herbert, was performed by British singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding. On January 24, 2011, National Geographic Films announced that it had received the distribution rights for the film."

The video embedded above is from the full-length movie. Here is the Wikipedia entry. Not super-duper great, but quite interesting for concept and for execution.

Addendum: A tip of the blogging hat to an anonymous reader who found the video to replace the trailer I had originally embedded, and also found the 2020 Life in a Day movie online at YouTube Videos:

Age-restricted probably for the scenes of women in labor/giving birth.

Nasogastric tube insertion into the brain

A lethal complication in a patient who who had undergone microscopic transoral transsphenoidal surgery for a pituitary tumour. That's already more information than most readers want to know, so I'll just provide the link to the Science Direct article with information from a 2021 publication in Interdisciplinary Neurosurgery.

I had to look this up

Apparently the phrase on the podium is real rathe than faked. And it appears to be an official Homeland Security creation:

The podium sign link leads to the "Worst of the Worst" page at the Department of Homeland Security, but the phrase is not explained there.

The obvious implication would be "if you do something bad to our people, we will do worse to all of your people" but the historical context was unfamiliar to me. Googling the phrase resulted in lots of hits. There is a very detailed commentary at the Ask Historians subreddit; here is an excerpt -

Several variants of this post are going around online, and the majority of them seem to attribute this supposed Nazi quotation to the Lidice massacre of 1942, which was committed by the German occupation authorities in the 'Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' in response to the assassination of the deputy governor of the province, Reinhard Heydrich, by British-backed Czech commandos in Prague ("Operation Anthropoid") on 27 May 1942. Heydrich survived the initial attack, but later succumbed to his wounds on 4 June. The (unfounded) suspicion that Heydrich's assassins had been given shelter by the villagers of Lidice led to that village's siege and subsequent sack and destruction on 9 June 1942. All male villagers aged 15 and up were executed by German forces, whereas female villagers and underage boys were fed into the concentration camps, mainly the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

So this is where the "One of ours, all of yours" supposedly comes from: "[You kill] one of ours, [we kill (or capture)] all of yours". And that's where the history ends — because that phrase was never used by the German government. The Lidice massacre was not something that they particularly propagandized [EDIT: they did issue public statements notifying the public that the town was "razed to the ground", the women "interned in a concentration camp", the children "transferred to suitable institutions"; though my point was that they didn't make up fancy catchphrases to propagandize the deed.], and propaganda directed at the villagers was unnecessary, because they were to be the victims of armed force anyway. The young sketch artist and famous Holocaust victim Petr Ginz only noted the Lidice massacre in his diary on 13 June (four days late), implying that there was an information delay (through the rumor mill) that there definitely would not have been had Lidice been widely and purposefully advertised.

There are more comments from other Redditors at that link.

There are other links, but what I have not seen is an official declaration from the Trump administration on why the phrase was chosen and what implications are intended. If anyone sees such on Truth Social or such, please add a comment to this post.

12 January 2026

Not a flying carpet

This photo was called an "accidental optical illusion" when it was posted at Reddit. I think that's a very apt description. Apart from the flag shadow paralleling the board, there's also the flagpole shadow oriented reasonably well re the microphone boom. Very cool illusion.

Reposted from 2011 to accompany the next post.

These cubes are NOT MOVING

An incredible optical illlusion. I tried covering up the arrow prompts with paper, but the cubes still "move".

Sadly I've never understood how to embed a gif, so I have to settle for embedding a YouTube video of this gif. Gif at Cliff Pickover's X page, via Nag on the Lake. The resolution (and duration) are better at the original.

If you enjoyed this, spend an hour or two browsing my other 89 optical illusion posts.

William Faulkner disagrees with Cormac McCarthy's prose style. And vice-versa.

I'm posting this for any other English majors who may be followers of this blog. I've been an avid reader of Faulkner since my collegiate years (1960s) and of Cormac McCarthy in my adult years. The obviously contrived but clever "conversation" in this video will be enjoyed mostly by those familiar with both prose styles.

A tip of my blogging cap to John Farrier at Neatorama. Leave it to a librarian to find cool stuff like this.