Every year, in a small Welsh town, there is a race between riders on horseback and runners on foot. Evidently he above subject came under some discussion in a bar, and a bet was made, which resulted in a challenge people have recreated every year since. The race features dozens of horses versus a similar number of runners, and while a horse usually wins, it is always pretty close, and SOMEtimes, sometimes a human runner wins.
The race is 22 miles long. It is shorter than a standard human marathon. This is so that it is fair to the horses. A typical marathon is 26 miles long. A healthy distance for a horse to undertake in a single day for the purpose of travel is between 20 and 30 miles, but only if they walk at least part of the way. The years a human runner has won the race, the weather has been hot, as heat also favors human runners.
Interestingly, if the race is only ten to fifteen meters, 30 - 45 feet, a human can also win against a horse, which takes longer than a human to get up to full speed.
This fact of human capability for pursuit hunting and distance running is also part of why we have partnered with dogs for so much of our time on this planet. Dogs and wolves also engage in pursuit hunting, and sled dogs in particular can run miraculous distances due to some very interesting biological processes.
“There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.”
Seeing your country portrayed in hollywood movies is deeply unsettling
Because they go “hm, what does our target audience, americans, think they know about this country?” which means that in the best case scenario its turned into a tourism brochure and in the worst case its a barren wasteland devoid of culture filled with terrorists
You ever feel like something is simultaneous utterly unnecessary and completely essential at the same time? That’s how I feel about those bowls in this rendition
My favourite fact about chess ever is how Garry Kasparov, a Russian grandmaster and former world chess champion, once said during an interview:
“Well, in the past, I have said that there is real chess and women’s chess. Some people don’t like to hear this, but chess does not fit women properly. It’s a fight, you know? A big fight. It’s not for women.”
Only for Kasparov to get absolutely obliterated by Judit Polgar, a Hungarian woman, a few years later.
Another fun fact: Judit Polgar, at the time of receiving her grandmaster title in 1991, was the youngest player to EVER receive the title at only age 15. Judit Polgar is straight up a chess legend. She was also the youngest player to ever be inducted into the FIDE top 100, ranking 55 at only age 12.
Judit has defeated numerous other chess legends, such as Anatoly Karpov, Viswanathan Anand, and Boris Spassky, all former world chess champions. She has even won a match against Magnus Carlsen, who is the current world chess champion as of 2021. When I tell you this woman is a beast I mean she is RUTHLESS.
Famously, in 1994, during a match with Judit Polgar, Garry Kasparov cheated, taking back a move after realising it was losing, even though this is very much against the rules of chess. At the time, Judit was only 17. Imagine being so good at age 17 that you make the world champion cheat!
Anyways. Stan chess legend Judit Polgar because she is a beast!!!!!
Yet another fun fact: her sister, Susan Polgar, is ALSO a chess grandmaster and was women’s world champion in 1996!
And, their sister Sofia Polgar, is ALSO a chess international master! Meaning that all three Polgar sisters are chess masters!
also, she’s Jewish! Bobby Fischer refused to play her because of this. She played in the men’s league, and at the height of her career was 7th in the world
Note, the reason for this is that their father, a researcher, decided to perform an experiment with the goal of proving that innate talent is not as much a factor as work - that ‘genius’ can be taught, essentially.
He literally looked for a wife who would help him with this. He found a woman who was interested by the idea and agreed to marry him and have his kids so they could be his experiment.
He decided on chess as the medium for the experiment because it has clear goals and rankings. He himself was not especially good at chess, nor was his wife. He taught his daughters chess from a very young age - at age five, his first daughter, Susan, won a local competition against people more than twice her age.
I’m not saying their accomplishments aren’t their own - they absolutely are! These are three phenomenal ladies who have brilliant skill. But their unusual upbringing is the root of why all three of them are chess champions.
What I would like to know is how he encouraged them to love chess, rather than making it feel like a chore to them. Because that is the most important key, I feel. It won’t help if you start a kid on something young but go about it in a way that leads to them resenting it! And he very easily could have raised three daughters who wanted nothing more than to hurl a chessboard at his head. Somehow, he didn’t, and *that’s* the interesting part to me.
Yeah, I see a lot of people in the notes and tags saying stuff like “imagine how much IQ that family has” or “they must have some crazy chest genetics”. Which is funny since they were actually born with the purpose of disproving the idea that talent is a genetic trait and that things like IQ are racist, abelist, and sexist ideas made up to inflate the egos of white cis men.
