Letting Strangers Wake You Up

And I don't mean being kicked as you slump in a doorway, sleeping off a binge. Meet Wakie, the app that lets strangers call you and tell you it's time to get out of bed. NextWeb:

No, can't see any opportunity for mischief there. Screenshot from The Next Web:

It got $1 million in the latest fundraising round. As one of the comments notes, apps are turning into concept art.

LITERATURE This Guardian piece is . . . beautiful.

The author, in his defense, quotes his book extensively, insisting it has the lyricism of Keats and Fitzgerald. The thread - which is seven miles long - ends with the site's editor closing comments because he said the author drew in details about people in (the critic's) personal life." Over an ebook. About detectives. Who are stuffed animals.

YOU HOGS You should not go to Food Festivals and you are a boorish drunk glutton if you do. Slate:

Except that there wasn't a riot at the food festival, and the "Locust" riot was caused when a character stomps on a child, and then everyone turns on the killer, but on the other hand, the character was named Homer Simpson, and Homer liked pork, so it almost fits.

Probably. It's also temporary. A half-million dollars to be a backdrop for an ad seems like a lot of money. The situation was described thus in the Paris Review:

Oh, for heaven's sake. Save your productive righteous vindictive anger for something that contains actual harm.

No, one mustn't. One might, and one probably will.

They painted a town for a commercial and then they cleaned it up and went away. If it had been for something other than a beer ad - say, if the town had been gussied up to look like a Library, or sold for a festival whose objectives and philosophy matched or flattered the town's self-image - there would be no hysterics. No Roth quotes.

NO SIGNAL Here's a novel idea.

HISTORY If you're unfamiliar with the nomenclature or history of the Danish Kings of England, this is a good places to start: ancient Ring Fort discovered.

Didn't last long, alas. Forkbeard is an interesting name, but his father had one that was more enduring. Yes, it's named after him. But what did it mean?

Wikipedia has this: