Friday Funnys! WackyWisdom!

Huck & Finn 😎 🐺

Ok, Chuck, you’re up! Photo by Noah Kocherhans on Unsplash

Edición Ciento Veinticinco (125)

¡Hola, amigos! ¡Qué pasa! (What’s happening?) 🇪🇸 🇺🇸

A wise man once said…. and so we begin.

Wake, wakey! 🤗

Welcome, wonderful wunderkinds, to another week of wondrous, whimsical, wonky, wobbly, wiggly whatnot, wrapped with wisdom. 😎

Wackadoodle Walking Man and Whippersnapper Will (Huck & Finn) are waggish to wrangle another workaround from you. 😜

Whoop, whoop, let’s go! 👍

• A what-if or wish, without willpower and wherewithal, only leaves you wondering and will not produce wins. Work is needed to weave it all together. Huck

• Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. John Wooden

ICYMI

Have you heard…

Here’s everything that didn’t make it into this week’s newsletters, but we immediately sent it to the group chat.

• A raccoon in Virginia broke into a liquor store, got into the whiskey, and passed out on a bathroom floor near a toilet. It’s been a tough go for Rocket since the Guardians of the Galaxy movies ended.

• Google’s Al chatbot Gemini was the year’s top trending search term, according to Google. In related news, your parents think you’re the best, and everyone they know is asking about you.

• About $100.000 worth of snails were stolen from a farm in northeastern France. More than ever, detectives must follow the trail of evidence.

• Venmo was down for most of Wednesday night. So, that one friend who never sends their share of $14 for drinks might have an excuse this time.

• A New Zealand man who was arrested for allegedly swallowing a $19,000 Faberge egg pendant had it pass through his system after six days. Police were stuck, but there was eventually movement in the case. MorningBrew

• If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. W.C. Fields

Works for me. Haha!

• A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men. Willy Wonka

Still wondering?

The age-old question, “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” is one of the most famous tongue twisters in the English language. While it’s designed to trip up the speaker, it also sparks curiosity about the potential wood-chucking prowess of this familiar creature. Let’s delve into the origins of the phrase and explore the science-based (yet still hypothetical) answer.

Highlights: Cracking the Woodchuck Code

• The Name Game: The term “woodchuck” likely originates from an Algonquian word like “wuchak” or “wejack,” referring to the animal itself, and has nothing to do with chucking wood.

• The 700-Pound Answer: The most widely cited hypothetical answer suggests a woodchuck could chuck about 700 pounds of wood, based on the amount of dirt it moves when digging its burrow.

• Reality Check: Woodchucks, also known as groundhogs, are burrowing animals that excel at moving soil, but they do not actually chuck, throw, or otherwise manipulate wood. Ithy.com

Why not a puzzle?

World Cup trivia/MorningBrew

Now that the World Cup draw is out, it’s time to start thinking about which games you want to attend next summer. In this quiz, we’ll give you the name of a US venue set to host World Cup games, and you have to name the city it’s located in.

1. AT&T Stadium

2. Mercedes-Benz Stadium

3. NRG Stadium

4. Levi’s Stadium

5. Lumen Field

6. Hard Rock Stadium

The answer is at the end of this article.

• If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around. Will Rogers

For waning attention spans? Warning: wages as well

The new frontier of video entertainment is the microdrama, where the plots are wildly contrived and quality absolutely does not matter.

A crash course in cutting-edge media. Microdramas are mobile-first episodic narratives filmed in vertical format, like a TikTok or Instagram Reels. They are essentially feature films shot for around $200,000 total and then divided into ~2-minute installments:

• Viewers can binge a few “episodes” before being prompted to sign up for an account at a specific microdrama app. In the US, the leading contenders are DramaBox, FlareFlow, and ReelShort.

• The business model echoes that of “freemium” mobile games. To advance through the narratives, viewers have to watch ads or make in-app purchases.

Hollywood invasion

The format took off in China-where it’s called “duanju”-and made $7 billion last year, surpassing the country’s domestic box office for the first time, according to Variety.

In 2024, US revenue for microdrama reached $819 million, which is projected to rise to $3.8 billion by 2030, according to Variety. That’s less than half of what the US box office brought in last year.

But Hollywood could use all the supplemental income it can get:

• Last week, the New York Times reported that none of the 25 dramas released in North America over the last three months has become a hit.

• Even well-reviewed, high-quality movies featuring renowned stars can’t get traction. Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love brought in $2.8 million in ticket sales during its debut weekend. After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts, made $3.3 million after a month of playing in the US and Canada.

Microdramas eschew big names and heavy production values, and rely on workaday actors and writers. “It’s really saving a lot of people’s bacon,” Nick Ritacco told Variety. He’s starred in 40 microdramas.

But it may upend Tinseltown: Microdrama work is non-union, and the production companies behind it proudly use AI to keep content flowing at rapid rates. The genre will probably never get its own Oscar category. Puck News called microdramas “the street drug of the content economy.” MorningBrew

• If I could kick the person in the tail that causes me the most problems, I could not sit down for a week. Will Rogers

Being our own worst critic has some value after all?

When I left the beach with Finn and Becky recently, I again marveled at how the power of the sea and tides had altered the sands. What came to mind was the “wisdom of the waves.”

Who knew that was said once by someone else? I surely didn’t.

The Wisdom of the Waves

The concept of “The Wisdom of the Waves” is a philosophical approach that emphasizes the importance of embracing the natural flow of life and the impermanence of circumstances. It suggests that by accepting the ebb and flow of life, one can find peace and fulfillment. This idea is often associated with the teachings of Alan Watts, who used the metaphor of waves to illustrate the idea of being present in the moment and not trying to control the outcome. The wisdom of the waves encourages individuals to let go of the need for perfection and to find joy in the present moment, rather than fixating on past regrets or future worries. Amazon

A most worthy gem, Mr. Watts. Thank you.

We appreciate you visiting. Enjoy your weekend.

¡Muchas gracias por leer! 🙏

Puzzle answer.

1. Dallas (Arlington, TX, specifically)

2. Atlanta

3. Houston

4. San Francisco Bay Area (Santa Clara, specifically)

5. Seattle

6. Miami (Miami Gardens)