Yeah, last week's issue went out with a return address labeled "S-Sylum" instead of "E-Sylum". Thanks to those who reported the problem - it was just a weekly manual chore where a typo creeped in.

This week I continued working through a backlog of content ideas and submissions that didn't make the cut for earlier issues. So some of these articles aren't so new anymore, but they're still interesting and worth reading.

Pulling up to a pharmacy drive-through window this week I saw I had a co-pay of $4.63 for an eyedrop prescription. I checked my pocket and didn't have exact change. Curious to see if/how my change would be rounded, I handed the woman a $5 bill. Being owed 37 cents change, I expected either 35 or 40 cents. I got 45 - two dimes and a quarter. Maybe they were just out of nickels, but for a fleeting second there it felt like a stick-it-to-the-man victory.

On Friday night I went to see The Odyssey with my daughter and oldest son. Three hours of film and not one ancient coin-spotting to report. But it was a good film played to a packed house. It was nice to see a crowd coming out for a movie. The air outside still smelled of smoke, the forest fire aftermath that's been affecting much of the east coast.

In the that-never-happened-when-I-lived-in-Pittsburgh department, at lunchtime Saturday I pulled into a parking spot at a nearby shopping center and the car parked in front of me was a Rolls Royce.

Here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week. The first profiles someone I knew early in my career. He has other claims to fame but his long-lasting techno-cultural contribution is the emoticon, the text-based forerunner of emojis.

The second one hits close to home. Interviewing my mother while compiling a family history I learned about the day they brought me home from the hospital. A nurse brought a baby to my mother and she said, "That's not my baby." The nurse replied that of course it's her baby and my weary father said "C'mon, let's go home." Then my mother said, "My baby has blond hair." The baby in the nurse's arms had black hair. The nurse harrumphed and walked out, coming back a while later with a blond baby.

How a Carnegie Mellon professor accidentally paved the way for emojis (https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2026/07/17/emoji-communication-text/stories/202607140052)

Men sue hospital after DNA tests showed they were switched at birth 38 years ago (https://apnews.com/article/dna-birth-switch-hospital-lawsuit-41e56f62fd6b8bb0afce8afc479ce7a8)

Italian teenagers discover 1,800-year-old Roman luxury house underneath their high school gym (https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/italian-teenagers-discover-1-800-year-old-roman-luxury-house-underneath-their-high-school-gym)

Making Crazy Horse: The Role of a Lifetime (https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/07/making-crazy-horse-the-role-of-a-lifetime/)

Keeping Cool: The Air Conditioner That Changed America (https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/keeping-cool-the-air-conditioner-that-changed-america/)

audi ZERØ: one sphere and four tubes redefine the electric car through radical geometry (https://www.designboom.com/technology/audi-zero-one-sphere-four-tubes-electric-car-radical-geometry-wini-camacho/)

Behind the Pages: How Your Favorite Newspaper Ends Up On Your Screen (https://blog.newspapers.com/behind-the-pages-how-your-favorite-newspaper-ends-up-on-your-screen/)

The Fossil Words That Exist Only in Idioms (https://wordsmarts.com/fossil-words/)

No one really knows what they're doing (https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2026/07/18/lindsey-graham-founding-fathers-churchill/stories/202607170005)

Beyond lithium: how sodium-ion batteries could change the world (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02150-y)

Pixel: a biography (https://aeon.co/essays/a-biography-of-the-pixel-the-elementary-particle-of-pictures)

The 25 most influential works of American culture (https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2026/07/15/25-most-influential-works-american-culture/)

The Future of Pittsburgh History (https://pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/the-future-of-pittsburgh-history/)

-Editor