19 Comments

Stories like these bug me (in a good way) because they get in my brain about what other apocrypha exists.

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author

I think we both do a lot of debunking and mythbusting, and I also think that's a service to humanity.

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Apr 22Liked by Andrew Smith

Man, this is one story I wish were true - what a twist it would be to know that "bugs" were that literal.

Also, as I did before, I first read the post title as "Fist Bugs" and now I'm extremely disappointed that I'll never learn more about this phenomenon.

Are "fist bugs" a very localized disease where you develop bugs inside your finger joints?

Are "fist bugs" a type of weapon like "brass knuckles," and you go around punching people in the face with a handful of bugs?

We'll just never know!

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This sounds like a challenge for #nestexpressed

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Apr 22Liked by Andrew Smith

That's unacnny. I just clicked "Publish" on today's Nest Expressed piece as you wrote that comment.

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author

This brings up another use of the term "bug" I completely forgot about until just now: clearly you have bugged my home with monitoring devices!

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Apr 22Liked by Andrew Smith

I will neither confirm nor deny that allegation.

But yes.

Damnit!

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Prune juice in Dr. Pepper appears to be one.

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author

I'm so sick of Big Dried Fruit telling us what to do and what to drink.

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Apr 22Liked by Andrew Smith

It doesn't bother me at all that the terminology predates the '40s. I loved zooming in on her note and reading her words and the procedures and their timestamps. You can visualize what their day was like and someone back there in the computer finding the moth and bringing it to her. And then her keeping it!

Have you ever looked into or written about the origin of gremlins?

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author

The phrase?

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Apr 23Liked by Andrew Smith

Yes, and the origin of it as a concept? Inexplicable minor, temporary, weird idiosyncrasies or glitches or, again, bugs, exhibited by machines. And the extension of the idea into energy. Like the energy exchanged between machine and operator. For example I heard a story, allegedly true, btw, about people who worked in an office and there was a machine like a copier or something that worked fine most of the time but only seemed to malfunction while being used by one particular employee, a guy who always said he hated the machine. So the machine hated him back.

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I'm all in! This is perfect. Thanks, Ryan.

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Apr 22·edited Apr 22Liked by Andrew Smith

Hopper ended up becoming one of the first female members of the U.S. Navy to obtain the rank of Admiral.

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author

She was awesome.

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Unfortunately the story is overblown. There are plenty of examples of 'bug' for a design defect in a machine before 1950. Hopper was making a neat pun on a well-known existing term, not inventing a word.

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Hey, that's what I said too!

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Do you believe that you are of monkey origin, and why are you upset when I remind you of what you think is that you are monkeys.... The points placed have their meanings, you can fill their place according to your deficiency.

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