Royal Mint's new tribute coin to H.G. Wells includes a quote he didn't say, and depicts his famous tripods as having four legs

Guardian:

Intended to mark 75 years since the death of the author, the coin has already been criticised for depicting the “monstrous tripod” featured in The War of the Worlds with a fourth leg, and for giving his Invisible Man a top hat, which the character never wore. Then the Wells expert Prof Simon James spotted the quote chosen for the edge of the coin: “Good books are warehouses of ideas.” James and his fellow academic Adam Roberts, a vice-president of the Wells Society, could source no such quote in Wells’s writing

...

The error echoes a previous literary mistake by the Royal Mint: the £10 Jane Austen bank note was printed with the quote, “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” – a line spoken not by Austen but by her character Caroline Bingley, who has no interest in books at all.

Ten funny tweets

In case you wondered what a contested dunk contest looks like pic.twitter.com/zyt7318AZy

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) February 4, 2020

Forgot to share one of my favorite birds in NZ. The Kereru! Or the swole pigeon pic.twitter.com/x9yJoBP5RP

— Rob, Coin Flip Games (@CoinFlipGames) February 3, 2020

It's very strange that the cast of Clerks were once the lowest of the low in the American job market but, in the gig economy of 2020, to be a layabout in a video store seems like a magical dream of privilege

— Abby Denton, a Drink for All Ages (@mizabitha) February 2, 2020

Kids and their bios these days pic.twitter.com/sQXvEiTo1L

— Dave Jorgenson 🥛 (@davejorgenson) February 5, 2020

I once asked the head of an herbarium to help me with ID of 3000+ yr old grass bundles. He said “I think I can find a specialist to help you but just know that botanists who study grass are insane” 😂

— Liz (@Notrohe) February 6, 2020

Lol and that Onion story ran 16 years ago today https://t.co/CB35PTQ2gs

— Peter Bonilla (@pebonilla) February 4, 2020

to be fair, i did meet my wife on the iowa caucus app so it’s not all bad news

— Bob Vulfov (@bobvulfov) February 4, 2020

25. anime george washington 2020 pic.twitter.com/L2XDLeM4Nk

— 🚧𝔎𝔦𝔞𝔫/𝔈𝔡𝔡𝔦𝔢!🎀[semi-hiatus] (@oblivionbay) December 29, 2019

A Very Important Gif.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/hZhJF7UVvp

— Our Game Magazine (@OurGameMagazine) February 4, 2020

Look at those happy tails!🦊 pic.twitter.com/92Qb2yTbev

— Andrew (@ANDREW1ALBERTT) February 1, 2020

*More funny posts.

"With Second-Worst Pass Rate In More Than 30 Years, Almost Everyone Fails California Bar Exam"

ATL:

According to a press release from the State Bar of California, the overall pass rate for the February 2019 exam was 31.4 percent, while the pass rate for first-time takers was 41 percent.

...

This isn’t half bad considering the February 2018 results were a record low.

"Since the mid-1990s, it’s estimated that at least 100,000 Japanese men and women vanish annually"

NYP:

“It’s so taboo,” Mauger tells The Post. “It’s something you can’t really talk about. But people can disappear because there’s another society underneath Japan’s society. When people disappear, they know they can find a way to survive.”

These lost souls, it turns out, live in lost cities of their own making.

The city of Sanya, as Mauger writes, isn’t located on any map. Technically, it doesn’t even exist. It’s a slum within Tokyo, one whose name has been erased by authorities. What work can be found here is run by the yakuza — the Japanese mafia — or employers looking for cheap, off-the-books labor. The evaporated live in tiny, squalid hotel rooms, often without Internet or private toilets. Talking in most hotels is forbidden after 6 p.m.


...

A shadow economy has emerged to service those who want never to be found — who want to make their disappearances look like abductions, their homes look like they’ve been robbed, no paper trail or financial transactions to track them down.

Nighttime Movers was one such company

"Just six weeks after launch, Microsoft's Kin, the social phone we wanted to love, is dead"

"Microsoft never confirmed (or denied) that only 500 Kins were sold"