RW GTA
Street racing surges across US amid coronavirus pandemic
By ANDREW SELSKY
Jaye Sanford, a 52-year-old mother of two, was driving home in suburban Atlanta on Nov. 21 when a man in a Dodge Challenger muscle car who was allegedly street racing crashed into her head-on, killing her.
She is one of the many victims of a surge in street racing that has taken root across America during the coronavirus pandemic, prompting police crackdowns and bills aimed at harsher punishments.
Experts say TV shows and movies glorifying street racing had already fueled interest in recent years. Then shutdowns associated with the pandemic cleared normally clogged highways as commuters worked from home.
Picasso 103
Picasso painting sells for $103 mn in New York: auction house
Pablo Picasso’s “Woman sitting by a window (Marie-Therese)” sold Thursday for $103.4 million at Christie’s in New York, the auction house said.
The painting, completed in 1932, was sold for $90 million, which rose to $103.4 million when fees and commissions were added, after 19 minutes of bidding, Christie’s said.
The sale confirms the vitality of the art market despite the Covid-19 pandemic — but also the special status of Picasso, who was born in 1881 and died in 1973.
Super Cat
Einstein Gone Wild
Newly discovered letter reveals Albert Einstein’s views on birds, bees, and physics
by John Anderer
MELBOURNE, Australia — No single individual may be more synonymous with the term “genius” than Albert Einstein. Born in Germany, but forced to flee Europe during the Nazi occupation, Einstein ended up becoming one of the greatest physicists of all time. Now, a letter he wrote in 1949 has been discovered, revealing some of Einstein’s thoughts on various topics.
In the letter, Einstein discusses possible connections between physics, biology, and wildlife. In other words, can scientists make new breakthroughs by studying how animals such as birds and bees move and fly around? This letter may date back over 70 years, but modern physicists are still debating that question.
Moreover, recent discoveries pertaining to migratory birds actually appear to corroborate what Einstein wrote all those years ago. In short, Einstein was correct in theorizing that animals can provide us with some clues about how physics works.
The Flynt File
‘Fuck This Court’: We Obtained Larry Flynt’s FBI File and It’s Pretty Wild
The 322-page file contains a litany of events from John DeLorean’s cocaine bust to an alleged effort by Flynt to blow himself up in front of the Supreme Court.
When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt died on Feb. 10 at the age of 78, it signaled the end of an era where a misogynistic smut peddler could be viewed as a kind of antihero.
It’s hard to laud someone who built his empire by unabashedly treating women like pieces of meat, but as a First Amendment warrior, Flynt won important legal victories while sticking his thumb in the eye of the powers that be.
Over the decades, Flynt took on America’s morality police or anyone he felt to be hypocritical on matters of sex, engaging in what the Washington Post once referred to as “Dirt Bag Journalism.” This involved offering millions to anyone who could prove an extramarital affair with a high-ranking government official, such as in 1998, when he took down then-House speaker designate and staunch Clinton impeachment backer Bob Livingston. In 2017, Flynt offered $10 million for information leading to Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.
Many know Flynt best from the Oscar-winning 1996 Milos Forman film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” in which he was portrayed as a rakish rogue by Woody Harrelson. The movie went a long way toward softening Flynt’s image as a tawdry yet charismatic freedom fighter, while sanding off the more grotesque aspects of his personality.
To the FBI, he was a person of interest.
Cerne Abbas
The Mysterious Origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant
On a hillside ages ago, people inscribed a naked man with a twenty-six-foot-long erect penis. Why did they do it?
By Rebecca Mead
The sun was still low in the sky on the spring morning last year when Martin Papworth, an archeologist for the National Trust, arrived in the village of Cerne Abbas. Setting off along a wooded path at the foot of Giant Hill, he carried in each hand a bucket loaded with excavation tools. Cerne Abbas, in a picturesque valley in Dorset, about three hours southwest of London, is an ancient settlement. At one end of the village, beneath a meadow abutting a burial ground, lie the foundations of what was, a thousand years ago, a thriving abbey. Close by is a spring-fed well named for St. Augustine, a monk who was sent by Rome in the sixth century to convert Britain to Christianity, and who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. According to legend, he caused the spring to stream forth by striking the ground with his staff. Atop Giant Hill lies an earthwork, possibly dating from the Iron Age: a rectangular enclosure, known as the Trendle, that may have been a temple or a burial mound. The object of Papworth’s interest was another mysterious man-made part of the landscape: the Cerne Giant, an enormous figure of a naked, armed man, carved into the chalk of the hillside.
The Cerne Giant is so imposing that he is best viewed from the opposite crest of the valley, or from the air. He is a hundred and eighty feet tall, about as high as a twenty-story apartment building. Held aloft in his right hand is a large, knobby club; his left arm stretches across the slope. Drawn in an outline formed by trenches packed with chalk, he has primitive but expressive facial features, with a line for a mouth and circles for eyes. His raised eyebrows were perhaps intended to indicate ferocity, but they might equally be taken for a look of confusion. His torso is well defined, with lines for ribs and circles for nipples; a line across his waist has been understood to represent a belt. Most well defined of all is his penis, which is erect, and measures twenty-six feet in length. Were the giant not protectively fenced off, a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member and take in the idyllic vista beyond.
Colorado River Redux
Reconnecting the Colorado River to the Sea
Binational Water Conservation Making the Colorado River More Sustainable for People and Birds
By Jennifer Pitt
The Colorado River is flowing again in its delta. This is a big deal for a river that has not flowed through its delta in most years since the 1960s, resulting in an ecosystem that is severely desiccated and devastated.
Thanks to commitments from the United States and Mexico in the Colorado River binational agreement—Minute 323 – 35,000 acre-feet of water (11.4 billion gallons) dedicated to create environmental benefits will be delivered to the river from May 1 to October 11. The expectation is that this will create and support habitat for birds like the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Yuma Ridgway’s Rail, and Vermilion Flycatcher, and give life to the many plants and animals in this ribbon oasis of green in the midst of the Sonoran Desert.
The Secret Scream
Revealed: The Secret History Behind Edvard Munch’s The Scream
A previously unnoticed sentence etched in a top corner of the painting has scholars debating who wrote the words, and why they might’ve done it
By Nick Mafi
Edvard Munch’s The Scream was completed by the Norwegian artist in 1893. Photo: Getty Images/Oli Scarff
There are perhaps a handful of paintings so iconic, they’ve come to represent images of our time: Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Picasso’s Guernica, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and Munch’s The Scream are a few that come to mind. So well researched are these works, that nearly nothing new is left to explore with them; we visualize them in the same way as a can of Coca-Cola or McDonald’s Golden Arches. But what happens when something new, something previously unnoticed grabs our attention? For The Scream, Edvard Munch’s best-known painting, a tiny inscription consisting of eight words, written in pencil, at the upper left corner of its frame is getting attention like never before.
“Could only have been painted by a madman”: Eight words written in Norwegian have stirred a debate among scholars and art fans alike, raising the question, “Who wrote these words?” Some have argued it could only have been Munch who inscribed the ominous sentence, while others contend it must’ve been the hand of a vandal who etched them onto the canvas. But it’s not just who scribbled the words into the top of the painting, but why? Before concluding this, we must consider the artist in question.
The da Vinci Bear
Da Vinci’s ‘Head of Bear’ drawing seen fetching up to $16 mln
A drawing of a bear’s head by Leonardo da Vinci is seen fetching up to $16.7 million, potentially setting a record, when it heads to auction in July, Christie’s said on Saturday.
Measuring 7 cm (just under 3 inches) squared, “Head of a Bear” is a silverpoint drawing on a pink-beige paper. The auction house says it is “one of less than eight surviving drawings by Leonardo still in private hands outside of the British Royal Collection and the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth”.
It will lead Christie’s “Exceptional Sale” on July 8 in London with a price estimate of 8 million to 12 million pounds ($11.14 million – $16.71 million).
Next Up
The music festival refusing to bow to Covid
Belgrade (AFP)
Pulsating crowds, booming open-air sound systems, megastars lapping up the adoration of thousands — music festivals are fast receding into distant memory thanks to Covid, but one event in Serbia is refusing to yield.
The Exit Festival — one of Europe’s biggest with organisers saying 200,000 attended in 2019 — is aiming to become the first such event to go ahead in Europe since the pandemic began.
Other big names on the circuit like Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and Hellfest have already cancelled this year because of the virus.
But Exit spokesman Sanjin Djukic claimed medical experts had agreed it was possible to hold the event safely if visitors produced vaccination certificates or negative test results.
“We can say with absolute certainty that visiting Exit will be a lot safer than going into a bar or getting on a bus,” he told AFP.
Barbershop
Seventh Heaven
Barbershop quartets are more than meets the ear
by Jonathan Rowe
Don’t let a century’s worth of pop culture fool you — the best of the best barbershop quartets have five voices.
Sure, four striped-shirt, straw-hatted, bow-tied bodies — but five voices. The second tenor sets the stage with a lead melody line, which the first tenor lays a high harmony on. The baritone singer handles mid-range, while the bass, the deepest voice of the four, lays a solid foundation. But when the overtones of these four pitch-perfect voices unite and merge, an invisible fifth voice emerges from the ether, an everywhere-but-nowhere aural apparition not unlike the effect of Buddhist monks chanting in a massive ancient temple. This unified fifth-voice phenomenon is known as harmonic coincidence, though it is nowhere near a coincidence, accident or fluke.
Summoning what former Barbershop Harmony Society President Art Merrill calls, “the voice of the angels,” takes well more than four peppy singers with dreamy voices. In fact, should one of the four mortals as much as drift off-pitch, the heavenly house of cards drops.
Alpha Betas Red Head Intervention Map!
Going French
See Fewer People. Take Fewer Showers.
Some people said they started bathing less during the pandemic. As long as no one complains, they say they plan to keep the new habit.
By Maria Cramer
Robin Harper, an administrative assistant at a preschool on Martha’s Vineyard, grew up showering every day.
“It’s what you did,” she said. But when the coronavirus pandemic forced her indoors and away from the general public, she started showering once a week.
The new practice felt environmentally virtuous, practical and freeing. And it has stuck.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Ms. Harper, 43, who has returned to work. “I like showers. But it’s one thing off my plate. I’m a mom. I work full-time, and it’s one less thing I have to do.”
The pandemic upended the use of zippered pants and changed people’s eating and drinking habits. There are now indications that it has caused some Americans to become more spartan when it comes to ablutions.
Parents have complained that their teenage children are forgoing daily showers. After the British media reported on a YouGov survey that showed 17 percent of Britons had abandoned daily showers during the pandemic, many people on Twitter said they had done the same.
Lounging, Diving, Floating, Dreaming
Dive Into the History of the Swimming Pool in Photography
A new book is filled with iconic images of pools from the last 100 years
For the better part of the last century, photographers of all kinds have been drawn toward pools, whether for the way their reflective forms are captured by cameras or their role in social gatherings. The resulting images are the subject of Pools: Lounging, Diving, Floating, Dreaming: Picturing Life at the Swimming Pool ($65, Rizzoli), edited by writer Lou Stoppard.
“I’ve wanted to do this book for years, so I’ve been collecting great pool photographs for a very long time,” Stoppard tells AD. “Part of this was to show the way that the swimming pool has remained a seductive place for photographers as years have passed. It sounds negative to call it a trope, but in a way, it is. Pool pictures litter the history of photography.”
Tarantino To The Rescue
Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema Sets Reopening Date
More good news for LA moviegoers: Revival house New Beverly Cinema has set a reopening date of June 1 per its Twitter account. No further details were provided about the cinema’s upcoming schedule.
The 300-seat theater opened in 1929 at Beverly Boulevard near LaBrea Boulevard in Los Angeles. The two-time Oscar winner Quentin Tarantino subsidized New Beverly owner Sherman Torgan to the tune of $5K per month to keep the location open; Torgan, who passed away in 2007, owned the theater at 7165 Beverly Blvd since 1978. Tarantino became the new landlord in the wake of Torgan’s passing, holding the line on developers who yearned to turn the venue into a Supercuts. In 2014, Tarantino became head curator with a mandate that only 16MM and 35MM prints would be shown, and jettisoning the digital projector installed by Torgan’s son Michael. The cinema reopened in December 2018 after year long enhancements.
Endangered Wings
from The Washington Post via MSN
America is running low on chicken. Blame covid-19, a sandwich craze and huge appetite for wings.
by Reis Thebault
Randy Estrada holds up his Popeyes chicken sandwich, shortly after the fast food chain introduced the menu item in 2019, which The Washington Post dubbed the Year of the Chicken Sandwich. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
It’s not like we weren’t warned. The doomsayers predicted this months ago: “A MASSIVE CHICKEN WING SHORTAGE IS BREWING,” blared the headline of one trade publication in early February.
But it turned out to be so much worse.
Bloomberg News, on Thursday: “Fried-Chicken Craze Is Causing U.S. to Run Low on Poultry.”
In other words, not just wings, but chicken in general. Or, as Bojangles put it in a recent tweet about their tenders: “we’re experiencing a system-wide shortage 🙁 But they will be back soon!”
It seems the poultry paucity has arrived, heralded by a series of fast-food executives describing in earnings calls their stores’ struggles to stock enough chicken — nuggets, tenders, wings, patties, all shapes and sizes — to keep pace with legions of peckish Americans.
Onboard With No Place To Go
Trapped Aboard an Abandoned Cargo Ship: One Sailor’s Four-Year Ordeal
The MV Aman was seized near the Suez Canal in 2017. Years later, its chief mate was still on board, all alone.
By Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw
SUEZ, Egypt—Chief Mate Mohammad Aisha awoke to the groans and tremors of a cavernous cargo ship listing hard to starboard. He staggered through the darkness up five flights of stairs to the bridge and shined his phone’s flashlight on the navigation dials.
The MV Aman was tilting 10 degrees, its 330-foot-long hull taking on more than 6 feet of water. Three miles from the nearest ship, Mr. Aisha knew that if the 3,000-ton boat went under, it would suck him, the only person on board, into the Red Sea.
This was a crisis. It was also Mr. Aisha’s best chance to escape.
For months, the 29-year-old Syrian had been the last sailor still living on a cargo ship, abandoned two years earlier near the mouth of the Suez Canal and being detained by the Egyptian government. They had refused to let him disembark but couldn’t keep him on the ship if it was sinking, he reasoned.
He activated an emergency beacon and shouted “Mayday! Mayday!” into the radio. Hours crawled by before a military patrol arrived to whisk him to land.
Ten days of interrogations in military and police stations later, Mr. Mohammad was right back where he started, returned to a deserted ship whose hull had been repaired. It was Oct. 27, 2019, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
Eli Broad Gone
Eli Broad Dies: Billionaire Businessman, Philanthropist, Founder of L.A.’s Broad Museum Was 87
By Tom Tapp
Businessman, philanthropist and art collector Eli Broad, who left an indelible imprint on Los Angeles’ cultural scene, died today at age 87.
Broad died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following a long illness, according to Suzi Emmerling, spokeswoman for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
Broad made his fortune building single-family homes. A New York native, he parlayed a loan from his in-laws into a homebuilding empire. He and Donald Bruce Kaufman founded KB (Kaufman & Broad) Homes in Detroit in 1956 when Broad was barely 20 years old. The firm went on to become the largest independent builder of single-family homes in the United States. It built more than 600,000 homes in the postwar boom, many of them in Southern California. He later bought Sun Life Insurance, morphing it into annuities giant SunAmerica. He sold it for $18 billion in stock in 1998. He was the first person to develop two Fortune 500 companies in different industries.
Another New ORC
Scientists Spot Yet Another Unexplained Ring-Shaped Radio Structure In Space
A new Odd Radio Circle (ORC) appears to span a million light years, and contains a clue that could explain these ghostly structures.
Scientists have spotted yet another bizarre, gigantic, and unexplained circle-shaped radio structure in outer space, a discovery that contributes to “exciting times in astronomy,” reports a new study.
The bubble is the latest example of an Odd Radio Circle (ORC), an aptly named type of spectral ring that debuted in a 2020 paper led by Western Sydney University astrophysicist Ray Norris. Norris and his colleagues detected four of these enormous circles eerily glowing in faint radio wavelengths far beyond our galaxy.
Now, scientists led by Bärbel Koribalski, a research scientist at CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility, have discovered a fifth ORC that appears to span about one million light years.
This structure, named ORC J0102–2450, also looks like it has an elliptical galaxy at its center, a feature it shares with two of the ORCs found by Norris’ team. Koribalski and her co-authors, including Norris, said the presence of the galaxies is “unlikely a coincidence” and may help explain the origin of these ghostly rings, according to their forthcoming study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, which is available on the preprint server arXiv.
ORCs have flown under the radar for decades because they are extremely dim, but new and advanced radio telescopes, such as the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), are sensitive enough to spot the huge bubbles.
Thank you, Mr. Hockney
New David Hockney Billboards to Brighten 4 Cities in May
Two suns will appear in four cities during the month of May — the real sun in the sky, of course, but also the chrysanthemum-like depiction of it in a video by the British artist David Hockney. The 2½-minute animation will be broadcast on digital billboards in Times Square in New York and prominent locations in London, Tokyo and Seoul.
Hockney’s dawning of a new day in a color-saturated landscape springs from his experience in early mornings looking out the kitchen window of his house in Normandy, France, where he has lived since 2019, carefully observing and creating art from his surroundings.
The Origin of Medina Spirit
Tales from the Crib: Medina Spirit
by Kellie Reilly/Brisnet.com
A newborn who needed help, a $1,000 yearling whose small breeder had to sell, a cheap recruit for a hardscrabble talent scout, a juvenile purchase inspired by friendship – Medina Spirit’s story is ready-made for cinema.
And that’s even before his improbable rise for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. Outlasting his higher-profile stablemates Life Is Good and Concert Tour on the trail, Medina Spirit is Baffert’s last remaining hope for a record-breaking seventh Kentucky Derby (G1) win in 2021.
Medina Spirit was bred in Florida by Gail Rice, whose tiny broodmare band varies from one to four at a given time, including partnerships. His dam, Mongolian Changa, was a $9,000 yearling purchase by Gail’s former husband, trainer Wayne Rice.
“what-the-hell-is-going-on-and-how-did-I-get-here”
Andrew McCarthy Recalls the Heady Days of the Brat Pack
The Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire star has a new memoir, Brat: An ’80s Story.
It had been narrowed down to four actors for the two lead roles. We were broken into pairs. I was teamed with an impossibly handsome young actor named Rob Lowe who was auditioning to play my rich roommate and the son of the woman with whom my character would have an affair. The film was called Class.
I was back in the dizzy and disorienting world of “what-the-hell-is-going-on-and-how-did-I-get-here,” which suited my character perfectly. Rob and I were sent off to spend an hour together in an effort to create chemistry while the other pair of actors were put through their paces. We wandered through the nearby Water Tower Place, where I was soon to shoot a memorable (at least to me) love scene in a glass elevator.
Rob had recently costarred in his first film, Francis Ford Coppola’s soon to be released movie adaptation of The Outsiders. He held forth from a place of Hollywood experience as we drifted over the polished marble of the mall, killing time. He spoke of Tom and Matt and pasta dinners with Francis. I was unsure just who he was talking about, but nodded my head anyway. I wondered how much of Rob’s banter was simply whistling in the dark and how much was a belief in his destiny, while another part of me simply envied his apparent ease and confidence. I said little. While a charming bravado may have been Rob’s preferred method of making himself ready, mine was to go quiet and become hyper-observant—both of those around me and of myself. I don’t believe either one of us thought to actually rehearse the scenes together.
Summer of Soul
See the Transcendent First Trailer for Sundance-Awarded, Questlove-Directed Documentary Summer of Soul
By Jim Vorel
After a triumphant premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, music documentary Summer of Soul is headed to Hulu on July 2 in conjunction with Disney’s new BIPOC Creator Initiative. The film is the feature filmmaking debut of none other than Roots legend Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, cataloging a powerful but sadly forgotten chapter in American musical history—the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969. As the synopsis reads:
In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten-until now. SUMMER OF SOUL shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never-before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Ray Baretto, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach and more.
Malaise Motors
Malaise Motors Is Your Safe Space to Love Cars That People Hate
Malaise-era cars haven’t had a huge fanbase, but it does exist!
Facebook car groups can be a hot mess. Half of them seem like they’re full of dunderheads asking the same easily Googleable basic questions, and the other half is full of know-it-alls who lambast anyone who doesn’t align completely with their tastes. It’s easy for a group to become toxic or boring, then fade away into nothing. Malaise Motors is, refreshingly, neither.
The Malaise Motors Facebook group is dedicated to cars from the “Malaise” era, which this group defines as 1972 to 1995.
What is Malaise, you ask? To make a long story short, the U.S. had a horrible air pollution problem in the 1960s and ’70s – smoggy air was a common sight in many American cities. The Clean Air Act of 1972, created to clear up hazy skies, introduced limits on how much pollution engines could emit. The side effect, though, is that these emissions restrictions also severely limited output from engines.
Suddenly, a 350 horsepower V8 was now making 160 HP because the era’s automotive technology couldn’t really reconcile making power without making pollution. The group considers the mandate of OBDII, the universal computerized diagnostic system virtually every car made since ’96 has, as the end of Malaise. The group calls OBDII the “beginning the modern era of engine management and emissions control.”
Go YOLO!
Welcome to the YOLO Economy
Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.
Some are abandoning cushy and stable jobs to start a new business, turn a side hustle into a full-time gig or finally work on that screenplay. Others are scoffing at their bosses’ return-to-office mandates and threatening to quit unless they’re allowed to work wherever and whenever they want.
Big Ganjafoot
What Does Bigfoot Have to Do With a Murder at a Pot Farm?
In Hulu’s “Sasquatch,” director Joshua Rofé investigates whether the mythical creature was really responsible for a triple homicide in 1993
In 1993, investigative journalist David Holthouse was working on a cannabis farm in California’s Emerald Triangle, a region consisting of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties that’s famous for its marijuana production, when a frightened man told him he had discovered three bodies torn limb from limb. This wasn’t a ripoff, the man insisted; the weed was trampled over but intact. The perpetrator of this horrific crime, he claimed? Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot, the mythical ape-like creature said to roam the forests of North America.
Hulu’s new three-part docuseries Sasquatch follows Holthouse as he sets out to investigate what really happened that night, and what begins as an intriguing look at American folklore and the surprisingly large groups of people who believe they’ve had Sasquatch encounters of their own quickly evolves into something far more sinister. (Spoiler alert: Bigfoot didn’t do it.) A cannabis farm might conjure up images of genteel hippies and back-to-the-landers, but Holthouse and director Joshua Rofé quickly find themselves caught in a world full of AR-15-wielding dope growers, racism against Mexican migrant workers, and yes, several unsolved murders. It’s a sobering reminder that we don’t need to invent cryptids to get our scary-story fix; there are plenty of human monsters walking among us.
Singles Party With Prince
All 85 Prince singles, ranked 4 u from worst 2 best
By MIKAEL WOOD, POP MUSIC CRITIC
When Prince died five years ago this week, he left behind one of the richest, deepest, smartest, funniest, most beautiful and most complicated collections of work that pop music has ever known.
And it hasn’t stopped growing since he passed.
Prince believed in sprawl, as he demonstrated with double and triple albums and with an internet storehouse of music he invited his fans to wander. Since his death, the artist’s estate has issued multiple LPs and box sets of material pulled from the famous vault at his Paisley Park complex in suburban Minneapolis.
Yet Prince was also devoted to the concise pleasures — and to the market-exciting potential — of a hit single. In his career as a solo act and as the frontman of the Revolution and the New Power Generation, he placed 47 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100, all of them before digital streaming opened up pop’s flagship chart to viral flukes.
Botanical Depression
The Dark Side of the Houseplant Boom
American culture is becoming more and more preoccupied with nature. What if all the celebrations of the wild world are actually manifestations of grief?
Story by Megan Garber
Sindha Agha
It started, as so many of life’s journeys do, at IKEA. We went one day a few years ago to get bookshelves. We left with some Hemnes and a leafy impulse buy: a giant Dracaena fragrans. A couple of months later, delighted that we had managed to keep it alive, we brought in a spritely little ponytail palm. And then an ivy. A visiting friend brought us a gorgeous snake plant. I bought a Monstera online because it was cheap and I was curious. It arrived in perfect condition, in a big box with several warning labels: perishable: live plants.
Where is the line between “Oh, they have some plants” and “Whoa, they are plant people”? I’m not quite sure, but I am sure that we long ago crossed it. I would read the periodic news articles about Millennials and their houseplants and feel the soft shame of being seen. But I cherished our little garden. Potted plants have a quiet poetry to them, a whirl of wildness and constraint; they make the planet personal. I loved caring for ours. I loved noticing, over time, the way they stretched and flattened and curled and changed. I still do.
Jim Steinman Gone
Singer Bonnie Tyler Remembers ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ Composer Jim Steinman: He Wrote “Some Of The Most Iconic Rock Songs Of All Time” – Update
By Greg Evans
Jim Steinman, the composer and lyricist whose roster of hit records included the huge Bonnie Tyler hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” was remembered by the singer as the “true genius” behind “some of the most iconic rock songs of all time.”
“I am absolutely devastated to learn of the passing of my long term friend and musical mentor Jim Steinman,” tweeted Tyler, whose other hits composed by Steinman included “Holding Out For A Hero.”
“Jim wrote and produced some of the most iconic rock songs of all time and I was massively privileged to have been given some of them by him. I made two albums with Jim, despite my record company initially thinking he wouldn’t want to work with me. Thankfully they were wrong…”
Deadline confirmed Steinman’s death with the Connecticut state medical examiner earlier today. The composer, lyricist and producer whose roster of hit records began with Meat Loaf’s smash 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell, was 73. A cause of death has not been disclosed.
They Did It In A Minute
Why Scientists Want to Shorten the Minute to 59 Seconds
Time might be running out.
We like to say nothing is certain in life but death and taxes, but the truth is even our planet and the universe are constantly imposing changes on us.
That includes this new suggestion from scientists: We should consider shortening the minute to just 59 seconds, at least for one “negative leap second” that will better line us up with Earth’s real rotation.
This is on the heels of a year marked by many shorter-than-average days, following several years in which Earth has rotated faster than maybe ever before. What’s going on?
First, you might wonder why tiny portions of individual seconds make any real difference. The truth is they don’t for most people, or even most applications. But for some, like scientists and specially tuned scientific instruments, the differences must be accounted for. Something simple like a clock that just sets itself and “sheds” the extra or missing partial second each midnight could detract from research or regulation of important functions.