Some weeks, the news cycle serves up such a delightful buffet of weirdness that you wonder if reality is finally getting bored with subtlety. This is one of those weeks.
Let’s start with the ridiculous: Vice Admiral Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt, who serves as Master of the Household to the Sovereign and essentially anticipates King Charles III’s every need, found himself following the monarch around London Climate Week with a portable fan during a British heatwave. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast. Here’s a man with one of the most prestigious titles in the royal hierarchy, and his job that day was glorified air circulation. Though honestly, it beats his predecessors’ gig—the Groom of the Stool didn’t earn that name by standing around looking decorative.
Then there’s the jaw-dropping wedding that has Nigeria talking: Two sets of twins with identical first names actually married each other. Taiwo and Kehinde Oguntoye wed Taiwo and Kehinde Adediran in a ceremony so symmetrical it feels like fiction. The Adediran sisters initially resisted—understandably saying “No, we don’t want to date twins!”—but the Oguntoye brothers won them over. Even master of ceremonies Dupe Aduroja Giwa, working in the Ibadan region famous for its twin births, had to admit: “I have never seen this in my life.”
On the culinary front, natto is taking the world by storm, one gooey mouthful at a time. These fermented Japanese soybeans are slimy, sticky, and smell like a locker room mixed with yeast, yet exports have tripled in eight years. Like kimchi before it, foreigners are developing an acquired taste for the stuff. American Wesley Smith, 47, summed it up perfectly: “You know how cheese can smell like dirty socks”—a comparison that somehow makes the food sound more appealing.
The dream job award goes to Austin Franklin, 29, and Kevin Akoto, 26, who are being paid $50,000 to watch every World Cup game from a fishbowl studio in New York’s Times Square. Akoto quit his job and his partner for the gig. His partner didn’t take it well, but his employer? “The employer took it well,” he told AFP.
And finally, somewhere in rural Normandy, a lottery winner is about to miss out on 13 million euros ($14.7 million) because they haven’t claimed their April winnings. They have until midnight Monday or it’s gone forever. Somewhere out there, an unknowing multimillionaire is living their worst financial thriller.
