Sideswipe: August 30: Dropping like flies

The phrase "dropping like flies" typically doesn't imply good news about whatever's doing the dropping. At best, it means a lot of people are leaving something: Tour de France cyclists falling behind. At worst, it means living things in a given category - say, bees - are dying at an alarming rate. Early mentions of the phrase involved extreme weather. "Men, women and children are dropping like flies throughout Greater New York," Iowa's Muscatine Journal reported during a lethal heat wave in July 1901. "Prostrations are running up into the hundreds." Flies were the ideal candidate to illustrate the concept of falling ill or dying, in Merriam-Webster's words: "Over a short period of time and in large numbers." For one thing, they don't live for very long. The lifespan of the housefly typically caps out around four weeks, and fruit flies don't last much longer than that. Cluster flies congregate in groups where there's heat, and many find their way into people's toasty homes to hibernate Many of them never end up making it back outside, instead dying from exhaustion as they try - and fail - to escape around your windows and other entry points. In other words, they basically drop ... like flies.

Ruined by the internet

1. Attention spans.

2. Privacy.

3. Romantic relationships. People on social media spread oodles of toxicity and make you overthink every little thing, it's insane.

4. Conspiracy theories. Used to be something interesting to hear or wonder about. You would randomly or rarely meet an actual conspiracy theorist or see one in a movie. Now everyone has an aunt or uncle or friend who has just gone off the deep end and it's just sad.

5. Welcome to the Internet! Could I interest you in everything all of the time? A little bit of everything, all of the time? (Via Reddit)

There is nothing left

The Manchester Mummy

Hannah Beswick lived at a time when premature burials were a real possibility. In fact, Beswick's younger brother was in a coffin and ready for burial when someone noticed he was alive. So Beswick went the extra mile to avoid the same fate for herself, making arrangements with her doctor, Charles White, to not bury her until some time had passed and she was dead for sure. However, the way Beswick's will was worded, there was a financial incentive for Dr White to do things another way. When Beswick died in 1758, White carried out her wishes to not be buried immediately. To make that experience palatable, White embalmed her, using an ancient technique that dried the corpse out completely. And she was not buried for another 110 years! Beswick got her wish about not being buried too early, but she ended up a mummy, or what we may call a restless corpse.