The Water Wars
from the LA Times via Bristol Herald Courier
One of LA’s oldest community gardens thrived for decades. Then the water wars began
For more than 40 years, Italian, Mexican, Croatian, Filipino, Indonesian and Laotian gardeners have built productive mini-farms on the parcels. Jason Neubert / Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — The old Italian men pass their mornings near the top of the hill, tending thick grape vines and rows of fava beans, smoking crumbling Toscano cigars, staying out of the house. If you try to call Francesco “Frank” Mitrano at home, his wife will brusquely tell you that he’s at “the farm.”
The farm is a patch of soil by the 110 Freeway, where he harvests enough tomatoes from his crop to make spaghetti sauce for his family’s weekly Sunday dinner. “Twenty-one people,” he exclaims.
A half-century ago, Filipino seafarers re-created a piece of the old country on this weedy hillside in San Pedro.
Italian fishermen quickly joined them, as did others with horticultural skills honed all over the world — Mexico, Laos, India, Japan, Indonesia, Croatia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Arizona and Lawndale.
More than 250 parcels are connected by a maze of trails and pipes and hoses. Avocado trees soar as high as 60 feet. Giant banana leaves, ratoons of sugar cane and bright orange guavas — set amid a jumble of sheds, trellises, fences and retaining walls — give the hill the look of a rural village carved from jungle.
The community garden — thought to be the oldest in Los Angeles — grew quietly and off the grid, with unlimited water and little oversight.
But now, in a time of drought, it faces an existential crisis after the city drastically cut its water supply.
Though the heavy rains helped last year, the plots they have nurtured for decades are getting thirstier every day.
Mitrano, 83, barrel-chested with a burl of a nose and a sail rigger’s forearms, sneered at the hose that dribbled at his feet.
“No hay presion,” said Mitrano, using Spanish, the lingua franca of the garden. There is no water pressure.
Andrew Solomon On Suicide
Preventable Tragedies
Anthony Bourdain was almost inconceivably high-functioning; the gap between public triumph and private despair is treacherous. Photograph by Mike Coppola / Getty
The pattern of highly accomplished and successful people committing suicide is transfixing. It assures the rest of us that a life of accolades is not all that it’s cracked up to be and that achieving more will not make us happier. At the same time, it reveals the fact that no one is safe from suicide, that whatever defenses we think we have are likely to be inadequate. Kate Spade’s handbags were playful and fun. Her quirky look was unmistakable and bespoke exuberance. Anthony Bourdain was almost inconceivably high-functioning, and won so many awards that he seemed ready to give an award to his favorite award. High-profile suicides such as these cause copycat suicides; there was a nearly ten-per-cent spike in suicides following Robin Williams’s death. There is always an upswing following such high-profile events. You who are reading this are at statistically increased risk of suicide right now. Who knows if Bourdain had read of Kate Spade’s suicide as he prepared to do the same thing? We are all statistically more likely to kill ourselves than we were ten years ago. That increased vulnerability is itself depressing, and that depressing information interacts with our own unguarded selves. If life wasn’t worth living for people such as Bourdain and Spade, how can our more ordinary lives hold up? Those of us who have clinical depression can feel the tug toward suicide amped up by this kind of news. The gap between public triumph and private despair is treacherous, with the outer shell obscuring the real person even to those with whom he or she had professed intimacy.
There has long been an assertion popular in mental-health circles that suicide is a symptom of depression and that, if we would only treat depression adequately, suicide would be a thing largely of the past. We learn of Kate Spade’s possible marital woes as though marital woes rationalized a suicide. It is true that, in someone with a significant tendency to suicide, external factors may trigger the act itself, but difficult circumstances do not usually fully explain someone’s choice to terminate his or her own life. People must have an intrinsic vulnerability; for every person who kills himself when he is left by his wife, there are hundreds who don’t kill themselves under like circumstances.
Life On Mars Found
NASA Mars rover discovers ‘building blocks’ for life: 3-billion-year-old organic matter
by Doyle Rice
The “building blocks” for life have been discovered in 3-billion-year-old organic matter on Mars, NASA scientists announced Thursday.
Researchers cannot yet say whether their discovery stems from life or a more mundane geological process. However, “we’re in a really good position to move forward looking for signs of life,” said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a NASA biogeochemist and lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
The findings were also remarkable in that they showed that organic material can be preserved for billions of years on the harsh Martian surface.
The material was discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover, which has been collecting data on the Red Planet since August 2012. The organic molecules were found in Gale Crater — believed to once contain a shallow lake the size of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee.
Karma
Plot Twist: The Strange Story of Douglas Parkhurst
He became a hero in the last moment of his life—but did he redeem himself?
By Steve Huff
It was the first day of June, the unofficial beginning of summer, and a maroon car was careening across a Little League baseball field in Sanford, Maine’s Goodall Park. Players rushed to get out of the way as the driver—police later identified her as 52-year-old Carol Sharrow— barely missed them, curving toward home base then away again. She was looking for an exit and spotted a gate. More kids were in danger on the other side.
A witness named Justin Clifton later told a Maine news station what happened next. He said he “saw the car pull out of the […] and this guy had some kids with him.”
Clifton said that when the car “came to the gate, the older guy pushed the kids right out of the way. He took the hit for the kids.”
So, Douglas Parkhurst, age 68, died taking that “hit for the kids.” The Vietnam vet was the hero of the moment and a tragic one at that. A man who in photos appeared ruddy, fit for his age, with a winning smile. It was a moving, powerful story.
For the second time in five years, Douglas Parkhurst’s name was in the news along with the phrase “hit-and-run driver.”
The first time was a very different story.
Kate Spade Gone
Fashion Designer Kate Spade Found Dead In Apparent Suicide
by AMY HELD
Kate Spade, the designer who built a billion-dollar brand of luxury handbags and accessories, was found dead in her Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan on Tuesday. She was 55. Bebeto Matthews/AP
New York Police Department officials said that police received a call around 10:30 a.m. and that officers found Spade unconscious and unresponsive in the bedroom of her Park Avenue apartment. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
“It was a suicide,” NYPD spokeswoman Arlene Muniz told NPR, without providing further details.
The exact cause of Spade’s death will be determined by a medical examiner.
von Furstenberg III
Fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg is ready for her third act
Photo: Photo For The Washington Post By Jesse Dittmar
NEW YORK – After more than 45 years in fashion, Diane von Furstenberg has been looking for a graceful exit. She is 71, and she has designed a lot of frocks. But the one that matters most is the classic wrap dress, a few yards of slinky jersey that manage to flatter not all but most figures. It’s not cheap, but it isn’t terribly expensive. It has a knack for being appropriate in a multitude of situations. And it comes with its own empowering narrative: that women can have dominion over their own reality with a single sexy, authoritative dress.
That’s a heck of a lot more than most fashion brands have done for women.
The dress landed her on the cover of Newsweek in 1976. It made von Furstenberg – who married and divorced a European prince and dazzled this city’s disco society – even richer and more famous. It gave her independence.
But now, von Furstenberg is ready to be done with fashion. “I don’t want to do another color palette,” she says. “I’ve had three acts. The first was the American Dream, the young girl coming to New York, the wrap dress, blah, blah, blah. The second: I started over. Now, I’ve been thinking, now is the time for the third act. How do I turn this into a legacy, so the legacy will last after me?”
Whopper Juniors and Chocolate
Macon woman turns 105, credits chocolate
BY WAYNE CRENSHAW
MACON, GA – Virginia Pair Witherington puts it simply when asked her secret to living to 105, and not looking near her age to top it off.
“Because I take care of myself,” she said among a din of noise as she celebrated her birthday with friends at La Parrilla Mexican Restaurant on Sunday. She turns 105 on Monday.
She worked 30 years as a bookkeeper for the Macon Water Authority, among other places. Her late husband, Joe Witherington was Macon’s first engineer, said Mary Ussery, who says Witherington “adopted” her about 12 years ago. They have been close friends ever since.
“Nana gives really good advice,” Ussery said. “She lives by her philosophy. She’s kind to everyone. She’s the most graceful person I’ve ever met.”
Ussery said Witherington has previously credited her long life to living well and eating a lot of chocolate. She also loves Whopper Juniors and pizza.
Crucifixion Find
How Jesus Died: Rare Evidence of Roman Crucifixion Found
Credit: Jared I. Lenz Photography/Getty
The body of a man buried in northern Italy 2,000 years ago shows signs that he died after being nailed to a wooden cross, the method used for the execution of Jesus described in the Christian Bible.
Although crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment for criminals and slaves in ancient Roman times, the new finding is only the second time that direct archaeological evidence of it has been found.
A new study of the skeletal remains of the man, found near Venice in 2007, reveals a lesion and unhealed fracture on one of the heel bones that suggests his feet had been nailed to a cross. [8 Alleged Relics of Jesus of Nazareth]
Renting Your DNA, Cool!
from the San Diego Union-Tribune
Need a little extra money? You’ll soon be able to sell and rent your DNA
By Gary Robbins
A technician at a Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment lab in Denver extracts DNA for whole genome sequencing. Such testing could revolutionize everything from medical care to agriculture. (P. Solomon Banda / AP)
Feel like earning a little extra money and maybe improving your health at the same time?
Consumers will soon be able to sell or rent their DNA to scientists who are trying to fight diseases as different as dementia, lupus and leukemia.
Bio-brokers want to collect everything from someone’s 23andMe and Ancestry.com gene data to fully sequenced genomes.
The data would be sold or rented to biomedical institutes, universities and pharmaceutical companies, generating money for consumers who share their genetic secrets.
$100k Levi’s
Vintage pair of Levis, 125 years old, go for close to $100,000
The vintage look just got a whole lot more expensive. A buyer in Southeast Asia has purchased a pair of 125-year-old Levis for almost $100,000.
And you thought your jeans cost a pretty penny.
The jeans, originally bought in 1893 by Solomon Warner, a storekeeper in the Arizona Territory, have a drastically different look than today’s Levis. Warner’s jeans had but a single rear pocket, a button fly and no belt loops — remember, men favored a good set of suspenders back in the day.
The denims, size 44 with a 36-inch inseam, suggest that Warner was no small man.
Warner, it turns out, had a colorful history that had nothing to do with his jeans. He established one of the first stores selling American dry goods in Tucson, and survived being shot by Apaches in 1870.
Bigravity
Bigravity: A Hidden ‘Gear’ for Gravity?
Physicists come up with alternate explanation of gravity that may implicate dark energy, which comprises 70 percent of our universe.
by Yuen Yiu
An artist’s conception of our universe, where gravity (the green grid) is trying to keep everything together and a mysterious dark energy (the purple grid) is trying to tear everything apart. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Two physicists from Montana State University in Bozeman propose a way to test an existing theory of gravity where a hidden “gear” may explain the mystery of dark energy — an unknown substance that makes up 70 percent of our universe.
The paper, published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, suggests that astronomers may be able to test models of bigravity — a theory in which there are two different components of gravity, as suggested by its prefix — using X-ray, radio and gravitational wave measurements of neutron stars.
An Ever-Expanding Universe
Scientists have known since at least the 1990s that our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. But this doesn’t make sense, because gravity — an attractive force like a rubber band — is supposed to cause our universe to contract or at least slow down the expansion.
“It’s like if you took a ball and threw it up in the air, but instead of falling back down, it just kept going up faster and faster,” said Andrew Sullivan, a physicist from Montana State University and author of the paper.
Scientists theorized that some other force must be responsible for ripping the universe apart, and “dark energy” became the placeholder term for the mysterious force.
Little Demon
Listen: Little Caesars worker calls 911 after admittedly shooting attacker in mask
HOLLY HILL, Fla. – A Little Caesars pizza employee who admittedly shot an attacker wearing a demon mask is heard on a 911 call that was released Tuesday, saying, “Please help me. I think he’s dying.“
The employee is heard sobbing as he talked to the dispatcher.
Listen: 911 call in Little Caesars attack
“He tried to stab me with a pair of scissors. He hit me in the face with a big piece of wood,” the employee said during the call. “I’m bleeding all over the place.”
Tsar Ivan The Terrible And His Son Attacked
Famous Russian painting damaged in vodka-fueled attack
MOSCOW (Reuters) – One of Russia’s most famous paintings, which depicts Tsar Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son, has been badly damaged after a man attacked it with a metal pole after drinking vodka.
The canvas, “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581,” was completed by renowned Russian realist Ilya Repin in 1885 and portrays a grief-stricken tsar holding his own son in his arms after dealing him a mortal blow, a historical incident whose veracity some Russian nationalists dispute.
The gallery in central Moscow where the painting was displayed, the State Tretyakov Gallery, said a man had attacked the canvas just before closing time on Friday evening.
It said he had somehow got past a group of gallery employees, picked up one of the metal security poles used to keep the public back from the painting, and struck its protective glass covering several times.
“As a result of the blows the thick glass … was smashed,” the gallery said in a statement. “Serious damage was done to the painting. The canvas was pierced in three places in the central part of the work which depicts the figure of the tsarevich (the tsar’s son).”
Punk Rock Porn
The Punk-Rock Porn Movie That Lays Waste to the Patriarchy
Acclaimed queercore filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s ‘The Misandrists’ centers on the men-overthrowing Female Liberation Army. And it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
by NICK SCHAGER
“Pornography is an act of insurrection against the dominant order,” states Big Mother (Susanne Sachsse), the matriarch of an all-female boarding school, in The Misandrists, and those familiar with the work of writer/director Bruce LaBruce (Otto; or Up with Dead People, Gerontophilia) will immediately recognize it as a sly proclamation of his own philosophy.
For the past thirty years, whether helming short or feature-length productions, or working as a writer and photographer, LaBruce has pushed boundaries with a pure, unadulterated transgressive spirit. An assured filmmaker who rose to prominence as a vanguard of 1990s queercore cinema, he’s akin to a more extreme John Waters, blending philosophy and comedy with explicit sexual material in order to poke, prod and reproach any and all status quos.
Having spent much of his career making films about—and with—gay male actors, LaBruce turns his strict attention to the fairer sex with his latest, although it’s not fairness that his female protagonists are after, but rebellion and domination. Playing like the bonkers bastard child of The Beguiled and Cecil B. Demented, The Misandrists (debuting in New York on May 25, and L.A. on June 1) situates itself in Ger(wo)many circa 1999, at a remote institution of revolutionary learning run by Big Mother, the charismatic leader of the Female Liberation Army (FLA), who sports long bleached-white locks and two crutches to help her get around. At this forested place of higher learning, Big Mother tends to a group of girls committed to the cause of overthrowing the hegemonic capitalist patriarchy and establishing a system in which women don’t simply stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their male compatriots, but cast them aside in order to establish an estrogen-infused new world order.
The Oldest Tree In Europe
Oldest European Tree Found—And It’s Having a Growth Spurt
A Heldreich’s pine discovered in southern Italy has been thriving in a remote part of a national park for 1,230 years.
By
Scientists determined the age of this 1,230-year-old Heldreich’s pine, nicknamed Italus, using a novel combination of tree-ring analysis and radiocarbon dating. PHOTOGRAPH BY GIANLUCA PIOVESAN
A craggy pine tree growing in southern Italy is 1,230 years old, making it the oldest tree in Europe that has been scientifically dated.
Moreover, the ancient pine seems to be living it up in its old age, researchers reported last week in the journal Ecology. Examinations show that the tree had a growth spurt in recent decades, where larger rings were added to its trunk even though many trees in the Mediterranean region have been experiencing a decline in growth.
The discovery shows that some trees can survive for centuries even when subjected to extreme changes in climate. This ancient pine, for example, would have germinated in a cold period during Medieval times and then lived through much warmer temperatures, including periods of drought. (Find out how scientists brought a 32,000-year-old plant back to life.)
Wrong Astronomy
The Popular Creation Story of Astronomy Is Wrong
The old tale about science versus the church is wide of the mark.
In the early years of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler argued that the universe contained thousands of mighty bodies, bodies so huge that they could be universes themselves. These giant bodies, said Kepler, testified to the immense power of, as well as the personal tastes of, an omnipotent Creator God. The giant bodies were the stars, and they were arrayed around the sun, the universe’s comparatively tiny central body, itself orbited by its retinue of still tinier planets.
This strange view of the universe held by Kepler, the innovative astronomer who set the stage for Isaac Newton and the advent of modern physics by freeing astronomy from the perfect circles of Aristotle and working out the elliptical nature of orbital motion, was held by a number of early supporters of Nicolaus Copernicus and his heliocentric (“sun-centric”) theory. Kepler’s view was the view that science—repeatable observations of the stars and rigorous mathematical analysis of the data gleaned from those observations—demanded. It was also the Achilles’ heel of the Copernican theory. Astronomers who maintained that the Earth sits immobile, at the center of the universe, attacked the giant stars as an absurdity, concocted by Copernicans to make their pet theory fit the data. The story of this “giant stars” view of the universe has been all but forgotten.
Bowie Outside Rehearsal
The Return of the Second Incarnation of The Funk
George Clinton & Parliament Just Ambushed Us With a New, Digital-Only Album, Their First Since 1980
If you’re in the frame of mind that funk has been asleep for approximately the last 38 years, you’ll be pleased to know it’s awake now: George Clinton and Parliament just dropped their first new album since 1980, a surprise, digital-only recording called Medicaid Fraud Dogg, streaming now. Clinton, the deeply influential forefather of funk (and all its winding genre successors), formed Parliament in the early ‘70s as part of his famed Parliament-Funkadelic collective. The group teased this release earlier in the year with a single called “I’m Gon Make U Sick O’Me,” but their most recent LP was 1980’s Trombipulation. Medicaid Fraud Dogg, as the title might suggest, examines the shortcomings of America’s modern medical institutions—in the most funky way possible.
In April, the groovy maestro also announced he’ll be retiring from touring. But don’t worry, Clinton is still currently on the road as part of the international Parliament-Funkadelic 2018 tour, the dates for which you can find on the Parliament website. This weekend’s May 26 show at the famous Greek Theatre in L.A. will kick off the final leg of Clinton’s touring excursions, wrapping up a year from now in May 2019, according to a press release.
Much of today’s hip-hop, rap R&B and trap music can be traced back to sounds defined by the legendary Clinton and his groovy cooperatives. As he recently pointed out in an “Ask Me Anything” Reddit thread, he’s following that funk lineage, listening to “Flying Lotus, Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Z’s new album, Tra’Zae, and all that shit coming out of Atlanta. All that trap shit. I’m trapped in it.” Fragments of hip-hop and rap can certainly be heard on Medicaid Fraud Dogg, such as the Scarface-featuring “I’m Gon Make U Sick O’Me,” though Clinton also retains his distinctly funky warp, recognizable in his music as early as Parliament’s 1974 record Up For The Down Stroke.
$17 Billion Holy Grail, Waiting For Retrieval
‘Holy Grail Of Shipwrecks’ Found Near Colombian Coast, Woods Hole Says
By Mark Pratt, The Associated Press
A Spanish galleon laden with gold that sank to the bottom of the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago was found three years ago with the help of an underwater autonomous vehicle operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the agency disclosed for the first time.
New details about the discovery of the San Jose were released on Monday with permission from the agencies involved in the search, including the Colombian government.
“We’ve been holding this under wraps out of respect for the Colombian government,” said Rob Munier, WHOI’s vice president for marine facilities and operations.
The exact location of the wreck of the San Jose, often called the “holy grail of shipwrecks,” was long considered one of history’s enduring maritime mysteries.
The 62-gun, three-masted galleon, went down on June 8, 1708, with 600 people on board as well as a treasure of gold, silver and emeralds during a battle with British ships in the War of Spanish Succession. The treasure is worth as much as $17 billion by modern standards.
Permanent Resident Alien Asteroid
Alien asteroid is first known ‘permanent resident’ from outside our solar system
by Doyle Rice
Image of stellar nursery NGC 604, where star systems are closely packed and asteroid exchange is thought to be possible. Asteroid 2015 BZ 509 emigrated from its parent star and settled around the sun in a similar environment. (Photo: NASA / Hubble Heritage Team)
Hey bub, you’re going the wrong way.
The solar system’s first known “resident” that came from interstellar space — an asteroid orbiting backward around Jupiter — has been discovered, scientists announced Monday.
“How the asteroid came to move in this way while sharing Jupiter’s orbit has until now been a mystery,” said Fathi Namouni, lead author of the new study and a scientist at the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France.
The planets and most other objects in our solar system travel around the sun in the same direction. This asteroid is different — moving in the opposite direction in “retrograde” orbit.
[ click to continue reading at USAT ]
“Beyond The Streets”
Beyond Banksy: This Massive LA Exhibition Dramatically Expands the Story of Graffiti
The Roger Gastman-curated “Beyond the Streets” trains a light on the studio work of famed street artists.
Walking through “Beyond the Streets,” the sprawling, adventurous show of diverse work by street artists housed in a 40,000-square-foot warehouse north of LA’s Chinatown, the opening scene of the seminal street art documentary Style Wars flickered into my mind. In it, a group of young New York graffiti artists stand in the street anxiously waiting for a subway train to pass on the elevated tracks above them. As cars emerge from their underground lairs freshly decorated with graffiti, the artists cheer for joy—a joy not shared by aggravated commuters as the spray-painted trains continue their slow journey across the city.
In its way, “Beyond the Streets,” curated by graffiti historian Roger Gastman, marks the arrival of that lumbering journey to a new destination, one where the venue has shifted along with the assumed reaction of the urban audience.
New York in the 1970s offered little hope for its youth. Bombing the trains afforded some of them a fleeting glimpse of fame as their masterpieces trudged along the tracks. For decades, graffiti and street art remained linked to vandalism, gang violence, crime, and blight, associations deliberately cultivated by municipalities, politicians, and the media, all of whom had their own reasons for making this urban art form a visual scapegoat for the societal ills of which it was merely a symptom.
Old Man vs. Wheel Clamp – Old Man Wins
Creepy Clown Sex
Teen Dresses As Clown And Stabs Boyfriend During Sex. Here’s The Creepy Text She Sent Him Before The Attack.
A 19-year-old mother was sentenced to 11 years behind bars after dressing up as a clown and repeatedly stabbing her boyfriend during sexual intercourse.
Zoe Adams stabbed her then-boyfriend, then-17-year-old Kieran Bewick, after sending him a text stating that men are only good as a “human sacrifce.”
“I don’t think about males unless said male is strapped up and being used as a human sacrifice – you should be grateful you are not part of it,” reads the text message.
The duo were apparently engaging in some sexual fantasy of Adams’ in July of 2017 in Wigton, Cumbria. Bewick, who suffers from a fear of clowns, was supposed to be tied up during the sex but negotiated to have Adams only use a pillow to place over his face as she was dressed as a clown.
During the trial, Adams claimed she didn’t remember the encounter but noted that her stabbing Bewick was an “overreaction” to him kissing her neck.
“I did stab him – but I overreacted,” Adams told the court.
“I have always had a fear of clowns and Zoe knew this. This will now only increase my fear of clowns,” he added.
Tim Horton’s, Public Restroom
Woman Furiously Shits On Floor Of Tim Hortons, Throws It At Employees
by Samer Kalaf
A woman in Canada was so incensed about something Tim Hortons employees did or didn’t do that she dropped her pants, took a dump on the floor, threw it, grabbed some napkins to wipe her ass, threw those too, and left.
There is no pixelation in this sped-up LiveLeak video. You are going to see everything that this woman, full of rage and previously turds, does to forever sully the floor of this Tim Hortons located in Langley, British Columbia.
What’s particularly baffling, aside from the obvious, is the other customers who don’t really react to what’s happening. Maybe that’s because the tasteful barrier has censored most of it, or maybe it’s because there’s really nothing to do when a human decides to take a spiteful shit and fling it.
Welcome To The 50-year Rage Cycle
Why are we living in an age of anger – is it because of the 50-year rage cycle?
From passive-aggressive notes on ambulance windscreens to bilious political discourse, it feels as though society is suddenly consumed by fury. What is to blame for this outpouring of aggression?
by Zoe Williams
‘Unprocessed anger pollutes the social sphere. Every outburst legitimises the next.’ Illustration: Ben Boothman at Agency Rush
A neighbour objected to a young couple from Newcastle being naked in their own home. “We are sick of seeing big bums, big boobs and little willy,” was the core message of the note, crescendoing to: “We will report you both for indecent exposure.” It is such a small thing, banal, without consequence. It connects to no wider narrative and conveys nothing but the bubbling discomfort of human beings living near each other. Yet when Karin Stone (one of the nakeds) posted the note on Facebook, 15,000 people pored over it. An Australian radio show interviewed her. I have got to be honest, I am heavily emotionally invested in the story myself and I do not regret a second of the time I have spent reading about it.
There is a through-line to these spurts of emotion we get from spectatorship: the subject matter is not important. It could be human rights abuse or a party-wall dispute; it does not matter, so long as it delivers a shot of righteous anger. Bile connects each issue. I look at that note, the prurience and prissiness, the mashup of capital and lower-case letters, the unlikeliness that its author has a smaller bum or a bigger willy, and I feel sure they voted for Brexit. The neighbours are delighted by their disgust for these vigorous, lusty newlyweds, I am delighted by my disgust for the neighbours, radio listeners in Australia are delighted. We see rage and we meet it with our own, always wanting more.
There was the mean note left on the car of a disabled woman (“I witnessed you and your young able-bodied daughter … walk towards the precinct with no sign of disability”); the crazed dyspepsia of the woman whose driveway was blocked briefly by paramedics while they tried to save someone’s life. Last week, Highways England felt moved to launch a campaign against road rage, spurred by 3,446 recorded instances in a year of motorists driving straight through roadworks. Violent crime has not gone up – well, it has, but this is thought mainly to reflect better reporting practices – but violent fantasies are ablaze. Political discourse is drenched in rage. The things people want to do to Diane Abbott and Luciana Berger make my eyes pop out of my head.
Art From Autism
The World’s Earliest Artists May Have Been Autistic, Scientists Say in a New Study
Could human artistic creativity be an evolutionary development?
Photo taken on June 16, Detail of a replica of “La Caverne du Pont-d’Arc”, or Chauvet cave. Photo: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images.
Autistic humans may have been some of the world’s earliest artists. In a paper published in British academic journal Open Archaeology, scientists have identified a link between 33,000-year-old cave drawings, autism, and the survival of pre-historic humans during the Ice Age.
According to medical researcher Barry Wright and archaeologist Penny Spikins, the wintery conditions of the Ice Age contributed to the natural selection of individuals on the autism spectrum. The pair’s paper posits that autistic humans’ ability to concentrate on complex tasks for long periods of time helped them memorize their surroundings and recognize elaborate patterns—both essential skills for finding food.
“We suspect that the early development of inherited autism was in part an evolutionary response to ultra-harsh climatic conditions at the height of the last Ice Age,” Spikins told the Independent, “Without the development of autism-related abilities in some people, it is conceivable that humans would not have been able to survive in a freezing environment in which finding food required enhanced skills,” she said.
Tom Wolfe Gone
How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe
Michael Lewis delves deep into the archives of the legendary reporter turned novelist to discover what made the man in the white suit the voice of a journalistic generation.
Tom Wolfe, in his New York City study, in 2012. He started wearing white suits in 1962 because it was the custom in summer in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Photograph by Gasper Tringale.
I was 11 or maybe 12 years old when I discovered my parents’ bookshelves. They’d been invisible right up to the moment someone or something told me that the books on them were stuffed with dirty words and shocking behavior—a rumor whose truth was eventually confirmed by Portnoy’s Complaint. The book I still remember taking down from the shelf was Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. The only word in the title I understood was “the.” The cover showed a picture of a bored-looking blonde housewife nestled in the lap of a virile black man. It seemed just the sort of thing to answer some questions I had about the facts of life. It didn’t. Instead, it described a cocktail party given in the late 1960s for the Black Panthers by Leonard Bernstein in his fancy New York City apartment. I’d never been to New York City, or heard of Leonard Bernstein, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and had only a vague notion of who or what a Black Panther revolutionary might be—and none of that turned out to matter. The book started out with this weird old guy, Leonard Bernstein, rising from his bed in the middle of the night and having a vision of himself delivering a speech to a packed concert hall while being heckled by a giant black man onstage beside him. I remember thinking: How would anyone know about someone else’s bizarre private vision? Was this one of those stories that really happened, like Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak to beat the Dallas Cowboys, or was it made up, like The Hardy Boys? Then, suddenly, I felt as if I were standing in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment watching his waiters serve appetizers to Black Panthers:
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. THESE ARE NICE. LITTLE Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts. Very tasty. Very subtle. It’s the way the dry sackiness of the nuts tiptoes up against the dour savor of the cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Panthers eat out here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts this way, and asparagus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi, all of which are at this very moment being offered to them on gadrooned silver platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons?”
Were the books grown-ups read supposed to make you laugh? I had no idea but …
Why Dogs Are Cooler Than Guns
Wolverine Sloth Yum
Giant sloths with wolverine-like claws used to roam America, and humans hunted them
by Doyle Rice
Human footprint inside a sloth track. This composite track is part of a trackway in which the human appears to have stalked the sloth. (Photo: Matthew Bennett, Bournemouth University)
Although it sounds like a grade-B science fiction movie, fossils that our ancestors once hunted and fought giant ground sloths.
For the first time, scientists have uncovered fossilized footprints of ancient humans at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, a new study reports. And at the same site, those newly discovered human footprints were actually inside footprints of giant ground sloths — tall, fearsome creatures with sharp claws.
Scientists say this is evidence that the humans followed closely behind, or even “stalked” the sloths during the hunt.
“The White Sands trackway — a series of tracks and footprints — shows that someone followed a sloth, purposely stepping in their tracks as they did so,” said study lead author David Bustos, the park naturalist who discovered the trackway 10 years ago.
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