Entries for November 2015
There is much to say about the recent events in Syria, Beirut, and Paris, but, closer to home the news, that more than half of the governors of US states say they would refuse to help Syrian refugees seems like a new low in good old fashioned American xenophobia and stupidity.
By late Monday, states refusing Syrian refugees included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
As @drwave put it, “what a bunch of assholes”. In linking to this piece, The Islamic State wants you to hate refugees, Dave Pell from NextDraft notes:
From everything I’ve read, taking a strong anti-refugee position is closer to collaborating with ISIS than standing up to it.
Having your racist aunt call for closing our doors to innocent people fleeing terrorism and death on her Facebook page is one thing, but to see dozens of elected officials and Presidential candidates calling openly and proudly for it, I just don’t know what to say. I was going to say that it’s unprecedented, but this sort of thing is deeply embedded into the fabric of America, from slavery to the Jim Crow laws to our treatment of Native Americans to the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Have we learned nothing?
Born in 1915, Clara Cannucciari survived the Great Depression and, when she was in her 90s and with the help of her grandson, made a YouTube series about meals and cooking techniques used in that era. Watch as Clara cooks a 3-course Poorman’s Feast, a relatively rare treat in those lean times.
The series aired several years ago and Clara has since passed away, living until the age of 98.
The two oldest living people in the world, American Susannah Mushatt Jones and Italian Emma Morano-Martinuzzi, were both born in 1899, making them the last living human links to the 1800s. The USA Today profiled both women back in June. Here are the oldest people in the world right now:
Susannah Mushatt Jones; 6 July 1899; 116 years, 134 days
Emma Morano-Martinuzzi; 29 November 1899; 115 years, 353 days
Violet Brown; 10 March 1900; 115 years, 252 days
Nabi Tajima; 4 August 1900; 115 years, 105 days
Kiyoko Ishiguro; 4 March 1901; 114 years, 258 days
Since it includes the entire year of 1900, the 19th century has four total survivors. A couple more years and our living connection to that era will be gone.
Update: Susannah Mushatt Jones died in May 2016, leaving Emma Morano-Martinuzzi as the oldest living person as well as the last person alive who was born in the 1800s.
Update: The NY Times, reporting on Jones’ death, contains a small error (italics mine):
Mr. Young said Ms. Jones’s presumed successor is a 116-year-old woman from Italy named Emma Morano. Ms. Morano, who was born in November 1899, is the last person alive who is verified to have been born in the 19th century. The next-oldest American, Mr. Young said, is “only 113.”
Morano-Martinuzzi is indeed the last verified person to be born before 1900, but there are two others (Violet Brown and Nabi Tajima) who were born in the 19th century. Since the first century AD began on Jan 1, 1 (and not 0) and ended on Dec 31, 100, each subsequent century follows the same pattern. So the 19th century includes the year 1900 (but “the 1800s” do not). If you’re interested enough to read further, Stephen J. Gould wrote a whole book about this issue back in 1997 called Questioning the Millennium. Anyway, a little pedantry to annoy your loved ones with.
Update: Emma Morano died on April 15, 2017, aged 117 years, 137 days. She was the last documented human born in the 1800s still alive and the fifth oldest person ever.
She cooked for herself until she was 112, usually pasta to which she added raw ground beef. Until she was 115, she did not have live-in caregivers, and she laid out a place setting for herself at her small kitchen table at every meal.
That leaves Violet Brown and Nabi Tajima as the last two living humans born in the 19th century.
Update: And we’re down to one last living link to the 19th century…Violet Brown has died at 117 years old.
In an interview with the Jamaican Observer to celebrate her 110th birthday, she said her secrets to living to such an old age were eating cows feet, not drinking rum and reading the bible.
“Really and truly, when people ask what me eat and drink to live so long, I say to them that I eat everything, except pork and chicken, and I don’t drink rum and them things,” she said.
(via @robertsharp59)
From Vox, a quick video summary of the war in Syria and the rise of ISIS.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, has its origins in Iraq, but the group as we know it today is in many ways a product of Syria’s civil war. That war is much bigger than ISIS, but it is crucial for understanding so much that has happened in the past year, from terror attacks to the refugee crisis. And to understand the war, you need to understand how it began and how it unfolded.
See also Syria’s civil war: a brief history.
Someone on Twitter said this is the best piece about the upcoming Star Wars movie, and I think he’s right. But it’s not so much about Star Wars specifically as it is about how Hollywood studios are trying to build infinite series of movies.
These new movies won’t just be sequels. That’s not the way the transnational entertainment business works anymore. Forget finite sequences; now it’s about infinite series. […] Everywhere, studio suits are recruiting creatives who can weave characters and story lines into decades-spanning tapestries of prequels, side-quels, TV shows, games, toys, and so on. Brand awareness goes through the roof; audiences get a steady, soothing mainline drip of familiar characters.
Forget the business implications for a moment, though. The shared universe represents something rare in Hollywood: a new idea. It evolved from the narrative techniques not of auteur or blockbuster films but of comic books and TV, and porting that model over isn’t easy. It needs different kinds of writers and directors and a different way of looking at the structure of storytelling itself. Marvel prototyped the process; Lucasfilm is trying to industrialize it.
Harry Potter could be a great infinite series, but it’ll be interesting to see if Rowling is interested in heading in that direction. Ditto Middle-earth and Tolkien.
Tom Harman recently rode an Amtrak train from NYC to San Francisco, taking little videos of the scenery outside all the while. He edited that footage into this 5-minute video.
This, friends, is the Eco Log 590D, which cuts down trees and turns them into logs with the quiet efficiency of Homer Simpson eating donuts.
While the Eco Log 590D is terrifying in its methodical nature, for true tree-killing malevolence, there’s still no beating the DAH Forestry Mulcher. I mean, when Skynet finally goes online, forget the almost-cuddly-in-comparison Terminator…if the machines truly want to wipe all organic matter from the Earth, they’ll probably build a bunch of nihilist robotic People Mulchers. (via digg)
In the ruins of Herculaneum, a Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, a carbonized loaf of bread was found. The British Museum had chef Giorgio Locatelli recreate the recipe as best he could.
Things start to get really interesting around 3:25, where Locatelli tries to recreate the unusual markings found on the bread…that hanging string around the edge is a little genius.
Watch as skier Ian McIntosh hits an unexpected trench on one of his first turns down an extremely steep mountain and tumbles 1600 feet in less than a minute. Actually, don’t just watch…put your headphones on and listen: McIntosh was mic’d up while falling and you can hear the whole thing. (via devour)
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were great friends. When Edison died, arrangements were made for a test tube containing his last breath to be delivered to Ford. The test tube now resides in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.
This long interview with former Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher is a goldmine of rock star swagger, a master class in not giving a shit, and the dictionary definition of unfiltered. I mean:
Am I aware of a hierarchy? I’m aware that Radiohead have never had a fucking bad review. I reckon if Thom Yorke fucking shit into a light bulb and started blowing it like an empty beer bottle it’d probably get 9 out of 10 in fucking Mojo. I’m aware of that.
I used to put us at number seven. It went The Beatles, the Stones, the Sex Pistols, The Who, The Kinks… who came in at six? I don’t know. We were at seven. The Smiths were in there, The Specials. Where would I put us now? I guess I’d probably put us in the top 10. We weren’t as great as the greats but we were the best of the rest. We did more than The Stone Roses could fucking even fathom. We’re better than The Verve: couldn’t fucking keep it together for more than six months at a time. If all the greats are in the top four, we’re in the bottom of the top four, we’re kind of constantly fighting for fifth, just missing out. Just missing out on the top four, I’d say.
He just has opinions on everything and everyone and says them on the record:
I fucking hate whingeing rock stars. And I hate pop stars who are just… neh. Just nothing, you know? “Oh, yeah, my last selfie got 47-thousand-million likes on Instagram.” Yeah, why don’t you go fuck off and get a drug habit, you penis?
This one just made me laugh:
My fragrance? Oh it’s coming, it’s coming. Toe-Rag it’s going to be called. And the bottle’s going to be a massive toe.
Ahhhhhhh, I can’t stop quoting:
I guaran-fucking-tee you this: The Stone Roses never mentioned “career” in any band meetings. Ever. Or Primal Scream, or The Verve. Oasis certainly never mentioned it. I bet it’s mentioned a lot by managers and agents now: “Don’t do that, it’s bad for your career.” “What? Fuck off!” Like when we went to the Brits and we’d won all those awards and we didn’t play. The head of the Brits said, “This’ll ruin your career.” Fucking, wow. I say to the guy, “Do you know how high I am? You know who’s going to ruin my career? Me, not you. Bell-end. More Champagne. Fuck off.”
Ok, that’s enough. Just go read the thing.
Michael Specter has a truly fascinating piece in the New Yorker about CRISPR, a relatively new genetic tool for editing genes that geneticists are very excited about.
With CRISPR, scientists can change, delete, and replace genes in any animal, including us. Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis. One group has replaced a mutation that causes cataracts; another has destroyed receptors that H.I.V. uses to infiltrate our immune system.
The story has everything: the cheap copy/paste of DNA, easily editable mice, pig Hitler, “destroyer of worlds” overtones, and an incredible tale of science that could actually revolutionize (or ruin, depending on who you talk to) the world. I was shocked at how easy it is to do genetic research nowadays.
Ordering the genetic parts required to tailor DNA isn’t as easy as buying a pair of shoes from Zappos, but it seems to be headed in that direction. Yan turned on the computer at his lab station and navigated to an order form for a company called Integrated DNA Technologies, which synthesizes biological parts. “It takes orders online, so if I want a particular sequence I can have it here in a day or two,” he said. That is not unusual. Researchers can now order online almost any biological component, including DNA, RNA, and the chemicals necessary to use them. One can buy the parts required to assemble a working version of the polio virus (it’s been done) or genes that, when put together properly, can make feces smell like wintergreen. In Cambridge, I.D.T. often makes same-day deliveries. Another organization, Addgene, was established, more than a decade ago, as a nonprofit repository that houses tens of thousands of ready-made sequences, including nearly every guide used to edit genes with CRISPR. When researchers at the Broad, and at many other institutions, create a new guide, they typically donate a copy to Addgene.
And CRISPR in particular has quickened the pace. A scientist studying lung cancer mutations said of her research:
“In the past, this would have taken the field a decade, and would have required a consortium,” Platt said. “With CRISPR, it took me four months to do it by myself.”
Also recommended: Radiolab’s podcast on CRISPR from back in June.
Englishman and writer Richard Grant moved from lower Manhattan to rural Mississippi. He wrote a book about the experience, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta.
On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters-blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta’s lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families-and good reasons for hope.
Grant shared a bit of what’s in the book for the NY Times.
Mississippians were generally puzzled by our arrival, but warm and welcoming. As we were unpacking, an African-American tractor driver stopped by and talked for an hour. On the second day, a white family from Pluto came over with a bottle of wine and a selection of guns to shoot. Cathy Thompson, a labor and delivery nurse, had bought an AK-47 for stress relief during menopause. “I don’t know what women in New York do,” she said in a fast-paced drawl. “Probably see a therapist, or get on meds. I got my AK and a T-shirt that said, ‘I’m Out of Estrogen and I Have a Gun.’”
It soon became apparent that a) we held very different political views and b) this was not going to be a problem. Noting our lack of furniture, Cathy went through her storage areas and produced two beds, a couch, a kitchen table and chairs, two armchairs and two wingback chairs. “Y’all can have this stuff on permanent loan,” she said. “And I noticed y’all just have the one vehicle. That’s going to get inconvenient out here, so I want you to drive our Envoy whenever you need to, and think of it as your second vehicle. I’ll show you where the keys are.”
In 2007, a cruise ship called the Balmoral was brought into the dry docks to be extended. Like, they cut the ship in half and added an entire new section to it, like putting an extra slice of bologna on a sandwich. I totally didn’t know this was a thing you could do to a boat. (via @MachinePix)
Update: Ships can be cut apart and widened as well. (via @timotimo)
Photographer Thomas Child took these images of Peking (now known as Beijing) in the 1870s and 1880s. This is of a Buddhist lama and his student:
And this one shows travelers on the Silk Road…according to Child, the camels “carry coal and lime into the City from the Western Hills, and merchandise between Peking and Mongolia”:
And this one is the Great Wall:
Red Bull spared no expense in shooting this video with BMX rider Kriss Kyle…I’ve never seen a BMX course quite like this one. (thx, nick)
Here is one of the original architectural drawings done for the Empire State Building by William Lamb:
Scott Christianson wrote a brief piece (taken from his new book 100 Documents That Changed the World: From the Magna Carta to Wikileaks) on how the building was designed and built. The whole thing happened incredibly fast: the first architectural contract was signed in September 1929 and after only 410 days of construction, the building was opened in May 1931.
Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street, writes about the ever-changing neighborhoods in NYC.
I think there’s more to these “the city is dead now” complaints than money. People have pronounced St. Marks Place dead many times over the past centuries — when it became poor, and then again when it became rich, and then again when it returned to being poor, and so on. My theory is that the neighborhood hasn’t stopped being cool because it’s too expensive now; it stops being cool for each generation the second we stop feeling cool there. Any claim to objectivity is clouded by one’s former glory.
Harvard graduate student Christopher Carothers recently travelled to North Korea and, because he was an American white man who spoke Korean, he was able to talk with some everyday North Koreans. The conversations he had make for fascinating reading.
Our tour group visited a local high school in a city north of Pyongyang. The students were disappointed when none of us could name three female North Korean heroes from their revolutionary history.
I didn’t mind their patriotism, and their curiosity was refreshing. But when asked how I liked Pyongyang, what could I say? Usually I just said polite things and was rewarded with beaming faces. But was I being fair to these young adults? Doesn’t intercultural exchange require some basic honesty? I told Jong Ho that I liked Korean people and appreciated how clean and grand their capital was.
“However,” I went on gingerly, “I have to admit that Pyongyang is a poor city and out of touch with the modern age. Even a poor provincial capital in China wouldn’t be envious.”
He took this in for a minute and looked thoughtful.
“It’s okay,” he said with a smile, “I’m very glad to meet you.”
Carothers chatted with his tour guide about politics:
“Who will be the next leader of America?” she asked. I explained about our two parties and gave her my best guess.
“But even if the party switches from Democratic to what are they called, Republicans, relations with Korea are always so tense. Why? Why does a big country like America continue to provoke a small country like Korea? No one wants war. We always say we are ready for war, but no one wants war. I don’t understand politics.”
“What American provocations do you mean?” I asked, curious. “Didn’t the Great Marshal Kim Jong Un threaten to turn Seoul into a sea of flames?”
“Well, he’s responding to American military exercises. Always with the military exercises with the South.”
“I think, uh, many countries do military exercises,” I tried to explain. “Some are defensive. Honestly, many Asian countries including South Korea are concerned about China’s growth and the North getting nuclear weapons and so have asked to work with the U.S.”
“The U.S. has many nuclear weapons. Isn’t it … hypocritical?”
“Maybe. But should a country that can’t provide electricity properly in its capital really have nuclear weapons?”
“I see,” she said quietly.
The whole thing is well worth a read. Some of the photos accompanying the article were taken by Christian Petersen-Clausen, who also recently visited North Korea as a tourist. (The photos at the top of this post were taken by Petersen-Clausen as well.) Keegan Hamilton interviewed him about his photos at Vice.
He said one surprise from the trip was that many North Koreans seemed “pretty damn aware” of life in the outside world. He saw people in Pyongyang using smartphones, which are connected to the country’s propaganda-filled “intranet” and blocked from calling foreign countries, but says he was told it was relatively easy for people to procure Chinese or South Korean SIM cards. Foreign media, smuggled into the country on USB sticks, was also reportedly common.
“They watch Chinese and South Korean soap operas, they see the cars, the fashion, everything,” he said. “It’s basically rubbed in their faces how poor they are, while at the same time they can’t talk about that.”
Tyler Cowen on Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and our selective preference for some religious beliefs over others.
Loyal MR readers will know that I am myself a non-believer. But what I find strangest of all is not Ben Carson’s pyramids beliefs, but rather the notion that we should selectively pick on some religious claims rather than others. The notion that it is fine to believe something about a deity or deities, or a divine book, as long as you do not take that said belief very seriously and treat it only as a social affiliation or an ornamental badge of honor.
To the non-believer, the Scientologist’s belief in thetans and the vengeful sky god of Christianity are both equally implausible.
The University of California, Santa Barbara library is digitizing its collection of wax cylinders from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over 10,000 audio files from the collection are now available online.
The UCSB Library, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Grammy Foundation, and donors, has created a digital collection of more than 10,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections. To bring these recordings to a wider audience, the Library makes them available to download or stream online for free.
This searchable database features all types of recordings made from the late 1800s to early 1900s, including popular songs, vaudeville acts, classical and operatic music, comedic monologues, ethnic and foreign recordings, speeches and readings.
(thx, greg)
Kurzgesagt’s newest video is about all the stolen video content on Facebook and the social network’s continued indifference to and profit from content creators, particularly small and independent creators.
Facebook just announced 8 billion video views per day. This number is made out of lies, cheating and worst of all: theft. All of this is wildly known but the media giant Facebook is pretending everything is fine, while damaging independent creators in the process. How does this work?
Hank Green wrote an essay in August called Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video.
According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic. And no wonder, when embedding a YouTube video on your company’s Facebook page is a sure way to see it die a sudden death, we shouldn’t be surprised when they rip it off YouTube and upload it natively. Facebook’s algorithms encourage this theft.
What is Facebook doing about it?
They’ll take the video down a couple days after you let them know. Y’know, once it’s received 99.9% of the views it will ever receive.
From Zain Khalid at McSweeney’s, The Four Horsemen of Gentrification: Brine, Snark, Brunch, and Whole Foods. From the book of Millennials of the New Standard Greenpoint Bible, chapter 6, verse 1:
Then I saw when the Landlord broke one of the rent-controlled seals. I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Gentrify.” I looked, and behold, a green horse, and he who sat on it had a mason jar; and a fedora was his crown, and he went out pickling and to pickle.
The teaser trailer for Pixar’s sequel to Finding Nemo is out. I’m excited for this one. Nemo was my favorite Pixar movie for a long while, until Wall-E came out. (via devour)
In 1977, when Stoney Emshwiller was 18 years old, he recorded himself interviewing his older self. This year, Emshwiller sat down to answer those questions. The result is wonderful. He’s raising funds to turn the interview into a longer film which he describes as “My Dinner with Andre but with a touch of Birdman”. (via bb)
Update: I had forgotten this link from 3 years ago where 12 year old Jeremiah McDonald from 1992 interviews 32 year old Jeremiah McDonald. (thx, robert)
From Julia Kim Smith, The Real Wi-Fi Of Baltimore, a look at the names of wifi networks in various neighborhoods of Baltimore. Some favorites:
Abraham Linksys
NSA Surveillance Van
Fuck Off
Bill Wi The Science Fi
There was even a Wu Tang LAN sighting. Note: about 4 years ago, my wireless network was called hamsterdam. Currently: surfbort.
A quick but fascinating look at the fast fashion retailer Zara.
Fashion used to be sold in four seasons. Zara wants you to buy for one-hundred-and-four. New clothes arrive in every store twice a week — days known by fans as “Z Days” — and fuel the need to turn over your wardrobe.
The brand’s global distribution centre, also in Spain, moves 2.5 million items per week. Nothing remains warehoused longer than 72 hours.
The integration and feedback incorporated into their system is impressive. The knockoffs, not so much. Lots of parallels to Facebook here, not the least of which is both companies’ founders are among the richest people in the world.
In a photo set on Flickr, Alan Taylor compares the 1963 and 1991 editions of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever and notes many changes to make it more progressive and inclusive, particularly with regard to gender roles. For instance, in this one, Mother is joined by Father in the kitchen:
And in this one, “beautiful screaming lady” becomes “cat in danger”:
(via fusion)
Katherine Rosman recently wrote an article for the NY Times called How Organic Avenue Lost All Its Juice about a small NYC-based chain of juice stores recently going out of business. The piece is also a quote gold mine reflecting the zeitgeist of contemporary Manhattan.
“I kind of freaked out,” she said. “I was distraught. I lost my yoga for a minute.”
There is an admitted emperor’s new clothes quality to paying $25 for a lunch of vegetable shavings and a smoothie made of Swiss chard, cashew milk and Himalayan salt.
You can’t build a long-term business off what Gwyneth Paltrow likes.
A lot of vegans I know are now making stews out of meat bones and dairy.
Everyone is talking about coal and charcoal.
Bleeeeeaauuuckk. See also your detoxing juice cleanse is bullshit.
Update: Some locations are reopening, but shared this mainly for the headline: Organic Avenue Is the Jon Snow of Overpriced Juice Chains.
Colossal notes that artist Ed Fairburn has produced a bunch of new work (previously). Love these.
This is one of the freakiest atmospheric happenings I have ever seen: a fallstreak hole from Victoria, Aus.
It is believed that the introduction of large numbers of tiny ice crystals into the cloud layer sets off this domino effect of evaporation which creates the hole. The ice crystals can be formed by passing aircraft which often have a large reduction in pressure behind the wing- or propeller-tips. This cools the air very quickly, and can produce a ribbon of ice crystals trailing in the aircraft’s wake. These ice crystals find themselves surrounded by droplets, grow quickly by the Bergeron process, causing the droplets to evaporate and creating a hole with brush-like streaks of ice crystals below it.
More photos of this particular hole can be found here.
My pal-in-syndication Dave Pell of Nextdraft has a podcast with Phil Bronstein called What Hurts. Pell writes in today’s newsletter:
On my podcast with Phil Bronstein, we focused on the adrenaline culture — people and journalists so anxious to publish the answer, they have no time for facts or context. The podcast is getting pretty good: Listen on our site, or subscribe to the podcast in your favorite app: What Hurts: The Need for Speed.
This is a Japanese trailer for The Force Awakens. It’s similar to the most recent trailer released in the US, but it contains a bunch of new footage. Still no Luke. (via @gavinpurcell)
The Protopiper is a hand-held fabrication device that turns tape into hollow tubes for prototyping large objects at 1:1 scale like cabinets, couches, microwaves, or whatever else you wish.
The key idea behind the device is that it forms adhesive tape into tubes as its main building material, rather than extruded plastic or photo-polymer lines. Since the resulting tubes are hollow they offer excellent strength-to-weight ratio, and thus scale well to large structures.
Love this…it’s like a low-tech 3D printer. (via prosthetic knowledge)
Newer posts
Older posts
Socials & More