Bookish (and not so bookish) thoughts // 23 September, 2016

‘Bookish (and not so bookish) thoughts’ is hosted by Christine at Bookishly Boisterous – go say hi!

1. Having had to use one quite a bit recently to assemble furniture, I wondered why the allen key is called the allen key. Some guy with the surname ‘Allen’ was the first one to patent it (but not necessarily invent it) and that’s why it’s called an allen key. This is a lesson for those who want to be famous for a thing: you don’t need to invent first, just patent first.

2. The abomination that is this truly hideous sandal/ugg boot hybrid. Hands off our ugg boots. And oh, how about some bedazzled Crocs?

3. I love interesting/relatively unknown/useless tidbits of information, so this tweet about St John’s Ambulance was right up my alley. I even went and did some further reading about it here.

St John's Ambulance are a service organisation for an order descended from the Knights Hospitaller, active during the First Crusade #WhoKnew

—
Kris Holt (@KrisHolt1) September 18, 2016

4. Does anyone else hate Apple iOS 10? My phone now has more functions than I can poke a whole tree at. I especially hate the new “Raise to Wake” function, which meant that literally just picking up my phone would wake the screen. You can turn that off like this. I’m probably really late on this, but oh well.

5. My mum and I found and killed three redback spiders in my yard last weekend. I still get creeped out thinking about them. I won’t lie, I hate spiders. My ex always told me I was arachnophobic, but I think my fear of spiders is perfectly rational, thank you very much.

6. THIS IMPORTANT TWITTER NEWS. And I can confirm that it is in effect:

This gif does not count towards the character count. I love that. https://t.co/wiC4n6o2kT

—
Heather (@heather_c3) September 20, 2016

7. I need a go-to drink. Now taking suggestions (opinions on the Rusty Nail welcome).

8. 2016 has been a weird and sad year. This week we farewelled Brangelina, the greatest of celebrity portmanteaus.

9. I loved this Book Riot article about what it means to be human, and how that is looked at in science fiction. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while after reviewing a bunch of films about artificial intelligence, so I like that I now have a bunch of new books on the topic to investigate.

10. Some more delightful global warming news.

11. Some genuinely delightful news about the screen adaptations for Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ series. I guess it’s time for a reread.

12. Here’s a clip of a (possibly drunk or scared) Kiwi (the bird, that is, not the fruit or a person from New Zealand).