A Fake Turk and Some Real Jelly

Apparently in 1809, a hoax of an autonomous chess machine developed in 1770 beat Napoleon Bonaparte in chess. I kid you not. And there were more of these things, then a real one. Wow. I present to you a fake Turk, but a real doozy. I also found this and the quote makes it for me: "We conducted a variety of tests and figured out it was jelly." See, the Germans would have known. No charlatan chess Turk would have done to the Kaiser what it did to Benjamin Franklin. These fun little things I've found.

A quick and topical update that I forgot after my anecdote on the alleged atomic bomb test in North Korea: I should never have learned Spanish, or at least tiny fragments of Spanish I can use piecemeal to confound Spanish speakers of the world. I went home the other night, before the big one was dropped over and under the DMZ, and bumped into three Koreans. One addressed me in Spanish, of all things, and I managed to answer and maintain a small dialogue that saw me going back to their home with them. Apparently, the one who spoke Spanish had spent four years in Chile. I forget why, probably to one day bring me into some rotten lunacy with him and two pals. Suffice it to say, for now, that the incident was odd, uncomfortable, fantastic, and hilarious. You go sit in a basement where the Korean speaking man to your right keeps saying Taekwando and hitting his chest. This being performed when he isn't doing things like feeding you seaweed with canned tuna in it or maybe some dried squid in chili sauce instead. He'll grab onto you a lot too, just to emphasize things and be friendly (very Korean). You'll try to speak Spanish, which you can't, because it's better than your attempting to speak Korean, which you certainly cannot do. The lanky and quiet third member of the party that picked you up will collapse to the floor with his phone and just giggle when he can. Little fits all for him. How is your night going to go? Ridiculous. That's how.