H sapiens disappearis
Where did they all go? How Homo sapiens became the last human species left
At least nine hominin species once roamed the Earth, so what became of our vanished ancestors?
Just 300,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – at least nine species of humans wandered the planet. Today, only our own, Homo sapiens, remains. And this raises one of the biggest questions in the story of human evolution: where did everyone else go?
“It’s not a coincidence that several of them disappeared around the time that Homo sapiens started to spread out of Africa and around the rest of the world,” says Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. “What we don’t know is if that was a direct connection.”
There are many theories around the disappearance of our human cousins, and limited evidence to decipher exactly what happened. But recent studies are providing tantalising clues.
Brain Reading
The Devices That Will Read Your Brain—and Enhance It
In the not-so-distant future, wearable computers will read brain waves and offer suggestions in real time to improve performance in everyday activities
You’re feeling distracted and can’t get your work done despite a looming deadline. Your headphones detect your lack of focus and suggest you take a break, while a headband beams signals to adjust your brain activity and energize you. Crisis averted.
That’s the future technologists imagine, and a variety of devices are being developed to enhance the brain’s performance in day-to-day life.
Right now, the market for devices that can read brain activity and translate it into actions is in its infancy. But, thanks in part to Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink, which is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces—or BCIs—that can record data from thousands of brain cells, investment and interest in these devices have soared in recent years.
New wearable devices designed to provide feedback during day-to-day activities build on implantable BCIs used for medical interventions, as well as decades of research into how the brain works. Efforts on implantable devices focus on restoring function. Applications aimed to allow communication and movement have been in development for decades to help paralyzed patients, and researchers have made major leaps with implantable devices in recent years, including giving voice back to the voiceless.
50 Years Off The Grid
“The architectural embodiment of ridiculousness”
SPHERE AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
My night in front of the world’s largest LED screen
The moment I first laid eyes on the Sphere, from a cramped window seat on approach over the Las Vegas Strip, my airplane precipitously plunged what felt like between 90 and 300 feet. This was the variety of turbulence that makes people gasp and clutch their armrests, that threatens to pop open the overhead bins. It seemed a fitting welcome: The Sphere had already coaxed me into seat 26A on a flight partway across the country, and now it was pulling me toward its unmistakable, shimmering orb-ness with a final gravitational tug.
Thinking this way about a building is ridiculous, I know. But have you seen this thing? Quite literally, the Sphere is a large arena—a futuristic entertainment venue for concerts and other Vegas spectacles. But such a description undersells the Sphere’s ambitions. It is the architectural embodiment of ridiculousness, a monument to spectacle and to the exceedingly human condition of erecting bewildering edifices simply because we can. It cost $2.3 billion; it’s blanketed in 580,000 square feet of LED lights; it can transform its 366-foot-tall exterior into a gargantuan emoji that astronauts can supposedly see from space. This is no half dome and certainly not a rotunda. This is Sphere.
The Castle of Knowledge
Incredibly Rare First English Astronomy Book, Published 467 Years Ago, Sells for Thousands
By SWNS
A 467-year-old astronomy book—which was the first ever to be written in English—has fetched 10,000 pounds (approx. $12,000) at auction.
The “incredibly scarce” first edition of “The Castle of Knowledge“ by Welshman Robert Recorde was found in an old box of books by antiques experts. It was the first astronomical text to be published in English in 1556 and is believed to be the oldest surviving example of its kind in existence.
The historical book—published before famous Italian astronomer Galileo was even born—went under the hammer at Hansons Auctioneers in England on Wednesday, Nov. 1. It sold for 10,000 pounds to a private international buyer.
Diesel’s Disappearnce
One of the Greatest Inventors of Our Time Disappeared. This New Book Explores Why.
Douglas Brunt on writing “The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel”
Imagine the shock if an inventor and businessman who had the ears of countless world leaders and military commanders suddenly went missing. That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way — in 1913, while in the midst of a sea voyage, inventor Rudolf Diesel vanished while en route to London.
In the hundred-plus years since Diesel’s disappearance, there’s been a lot of speculation about what might have happened to him— and whether his disappearance was the result of foul play, a terrible accident or something entirely different. In his new book The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I, Douglas Brunt explores Diesel’s life and impact on the world and offers an intriguing solution to the mystery that surrounded Diesel’s exit from the world stage.
InsideHook spoke with Brunt about Diesel’s life and legacy, the unlikely directions his research went in and the early days of electric cars.
FakeGPT
Is Anything Still True? On the Internet, No One Knows Anymore
New tools can create fake videos and clone the voices of those closest to us. ‘This is how authoritarianism arises.’
Creating and disseminating convincing propaganda used to require the resources of a state. Now all it takes is a smartphone.
Generative artificial intelligence is now capable of creating fake pictures, clones of our voices, and even videos depicting and distorting world events. The result: From our personal circles to the political circuses, everyone must now question whether what they see and hear is true.
Gunung Padang Re-write
A Prehistoric Pyramid May Have Just Rewritten Human History, Scientists Claim
The pyramid of Gunung Padang in Indonesia began construction in the deep past, a new study claims, and was built by an unknown ancient people.
The pyramids of Egypt are staggeringly ancient. By the time of Cleopatra, they were already thousands of years old. But new research claims that another pyramid might have them all beat, potentially rewriting the history of human civilization.
A team of researchers say in a new study that Gunung Padang, a pyramid in Indonesia, is at least 16,000 years old, roughly 10,000 years older than the pyramid of Djoser in Egypt, long thought to be the world’s oldest.
The researchers, who hail from a collection of universities and institutions in Indonesia, say this makes Gunung Padang “potentially…the oldest pyramid in the world.” In contrast, ancient Egyptians are believed to have begun construction on the Djoser pyramid roughly 5,000 years ago. The new research indicates that Gunung Padang is a highly complex, prehistoric pyramid that sheds “light on the engineering capabilities of ancient civilizations during the Palaeolithic era,” also known as the Stone Age.
Gunung Padang is a pyramid-shaped mound of terraced earth adorned with ancient stone built on top of an extinct volcano. It has long been acknowledged as an ancient site, but just how old has been a matter of some debate. Most estimates have placed it under 2,000 years old, but Indonesian geologist Danny Hilman Natawidjaja—one of the study’s co-authors—has long claimed that the site is much older. A decade ago, Natawidjaja’s claims caught the attention of then-President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who set up a task force to study the pyramid, which included Natawidjaja.
Deanes EIPIC Gone
Michelin-starred restaurant closes because it’s too expensive
After 26 years in business, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is closing due to costs becoming too expensive – for both customers and the restaurant operators.
Deanes EIPIC, the flagship fine dining restaurant of an empire started by Northern Irish chef Michael Deane in the 1990s, won its first Michelin star within a year of opening as Deanes in 1997.
However, this month the company announced Deanes EIPIC will be closing by the end of 2023 due to increased price sensitivity among customers and the impact of Covid, Brexit and the cost-of-living crisis. A relaunch is planned with a new “value for money” focus.
Head chef Alex Greene, a finalist on the UK TV show “Great British Menu,” tells CNN Travel he sees the move as symptomatic of a growing trend in the hospitality industry.
Never Try To Rob and Former MMA Fighter
Don’t Drink When You’re Drunk – That’s Important
FRIGHT KREWE Renewed
‘Fright Krewe’: Animated Horror Series Renewed for Season 2 at Hulu, Peacock
By Joe Otterson
The animated horror series “Fright Krewe” has been renewed for Season 2 at Hulu and Peacock, Variety has learned exclusively.
The 10-episode first season was released on Oct. 2. The second season is expected to launch in 2024, though an exact premiere date has not been set.
The series hails from creators Eli Roth and James Frey and DreamWorks Animation. According to the official logline, “An ancient prophecy and a Voodoo Queen put misfit teens in charge of saving New Orleans from the biggest demonic threat it’s faced in almost two centuries. But, honestly? Saving the world might be easier than becoming friends.”
The main voice cast of “Fright Krewe” consists of Sydney Mikayla as Soleil, Tim Johnson Jr. as Maybe, Grace Lu as Missy, Chester Rushing as Stanley, Terrence Little Gardenhigh as Pat, and Jacques Colimon as Belial. The recurring cast in Season 1 included: Vanessa Hudgens, Josh Richards, X Mayo, Rob Paulsen, JoNell Kennedy, Melanie Laurent, Chris Jai Alex, Reggie Watkins, Cherise Boothe, Keston John, Grey Delisle and Krizia Bajos.
For When The Bad Guys Are Chasing You
Aliens Inside
Anomalies Deep Inside Earth Are Wreckage of Crashed Alien World, Scientists Propose
The long-lost remnants of the planet Theia are far beneath our feet.
Scientists have proposed that the wreckage of a long-lost alien world is buried about 1,800 miles under our feet, reports a new study. This mind-boggling hypothesis suggests that strange anomalies in Earth’s interior may be relics of a world that smashed into our planet some 4.5 billion years ago, and that similar ancient remnants may lurk inside other celestial bodies.
The infant solar system was much wilder and more tumultuous than it is today, with lots of crashes between small embryonic worlds called protoplanets. Scientists have long suspected that an ancient protoplanet known as Theia, which could have been as large as Mars, hurtled into Earth in this period. This catastrophic collision ejected debris from Theia and Earth into space, where it eventually coalesced into the Moon, so the theory goes.
Boom Bust
A Forgotten Bust Found Propping Up a Storage Shed Could Net $3 Million for a Tiny Scottish Town
The auction record for a Bouchardon bust was set in 2012 by the Louvre.
A 18th-century bust created by artist Edmé Bouchardon, who served sculptor to French King Louis XV, and was later bought by a Scottish local government for just a few pounds may soon be sold for millions to benefit public programs—but not before the public has had its say.
Scotland’s Highland Council will allow members of the local community to voice their opinion on the fate of the multimillion-dollar bust, currently held by the Invergordon Common Good Fund. The port town in eastern Scotland has a population of fewer than 4,000.
In 1930, Invergordon Town Council spent £5, roughly $500 today, on a marble sculpture of Sir John Gordon, an 18th-century Scottish landowner and political figure, by the French artist Bouchardon.
Sotheby’s, which is acting on behalf of the Council, recently received an offer of more than $3 million for the bust, an amount the auction house believes represents close to peak value. The record for a Bouchardon bust is €3 million (about $3.2 million), which the Louvre paid at French auctioneer Aguttes for the bust Marquis de Gouvernet in 2012. As part of any deal, the council is requiring that the buyer provide a museum-quality replica.
Fun With Cars and Cliffs
Big Books
How Has Big Publishing Changed American Fiction?
A new book argues that corporate publishing has transformed what it means to be an author.
By Kevin Lozano
n 1989, Gerald Howard had been a book editor for about ten years, and his future filled him with dread. His primary fear, he wrote in a widely read essay for The American Scholar, was “a faster, huger, rougher, dumber publishing world.” He had entered the industry during a time of profound change. In the course of a few decades, American publishing had transformed from a parochial cultural industry, mostly centered on the East Coast, into an international, corporate affair. Starting in the nineteen-sixties, outfits like Random House and Penguin were seen as ripe targets for acquisition by multinational conglomerates like RCA and Pearson, which wanted to diversify their revenue streams, whether through oil, textbooks, calculators, or literary fiction. These parent companies changed the business of books, inciting an arms race that encouraged publishers to grow larger and larger, consolidating and concentrating the industry into a few giant players. Howard’s career had overlapped with this period of flux, and he saw before him a brutal, profit- and growth-obsessed landscape, inimical to his work. Corporate publishers like Penguin moved and grooved “to the tune of big-time finance,” he wrote. This dance was no “fox-trot; it’s a bruising slam dance,” he observed. “From down here on the shop floor, the results often look ludicrous and disastrous.”
Last year, shortly before the antitrust trial that successfully blocked a planned merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, Howard, who had recently retired, wrote for Publishers Weekly looking back on how the industry had changed in the course of his career. The slam dance had continued, its pace only more harried. The corporate houses had grown exponentially since the eighties, and swallowed up their competitors. Trade publishing was dominated by an even smaller group of companies that exerted an immense influence on the reading habits of Americans. When Penguin merged with Random House, in 2013, Howard took to calling the resulting behemoth Cosmodemonic Publishing. The scale of the company, the thousands of employees and hundreds of imprints, were, he says, “simply too large and abstract for a mere editor to get his head around.”
Devil 12/P Pons-Brooks
Rock on: ‘Devil comet’ will bring its horns swooping by Earth this summer
Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks does not pose a threat to the planet, but there’s a chance it will be visible to the naked eye this June.
By Denise Chow
Comet chasers: Give the devil his due.
A comet with two distinct “horns” of gas and ice, earning it the nickname “devil comet” is speeding through the inner solar system and may be visible to the naked eye in the spring when it reaches its closest point to Earth.
The celestial object, formally known as Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks, does not pose a threat to the planet. Instead, the cosmic interloper provides an opportunity for skywatchers to try to spot the comet as it nears Earth on its 71-year orbit around the sun.
Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks will reach perihelion, or the point in its orbit closest to the sun, on April 21, 2024. Shortly after that, on June 2, the comet will pass closest to Earth. During that time, if conditions are clear and skies are dark enough, astronomers have said that the comet may be bright enough to see with the naked eye.
‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Fright Krewe’
In coming-of-age horror shows ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Fright Krewe,’ the scares are rooted in everyday life
BY TRACY BROWN
Many coming-of-age stories are reminders that being a teenager is a terrifying time.
Is your crush going to notice you today? (Do you even want them to?) How long until your classmates forget about the time you accidentally called your math teacher “mom”? Is your future really going to be decided by how you score on one test? Do people talk about how your hobbies are weird or — even worse — boring?
Adolescence can be a fraught time when these everyday dilemmas feel like the end of the world, which makes it a gold mine for stories that blend these metaphorical monsters with supernatural ones. Just look at shows from “Stranger Things” to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Timed to America’s favorite spooky season, two new teen-led horror shows launched earlier this month: DreamWorks’ New Orleans-set animated series “Fright Krewe,” first season available now on Hulu and Peacock, and Sony Pictures Television’s “Goosebumps,” a new adaptation of R.L. Stine’s popular book series, streaming on Hulu and Disney+. New “Goosebumps” episodes land Fridays.
Downtowns Near Dead
America’s Downtowns Are Empty. Fixing Them Will Be Expensive.
Lonely sidewalks and closed storefronts inspire proposals to recast office districts into neighborhoods where people live, work and raise families
MINNEAPOLIS—Downtown streets were so crowded in the 1960s that developers conjured up a maze of elevated walkways between buildings, providing winter-proof avenues for office workers who filled the central city Monday through Friday.
Stores, fast-food spots, bakeries and barber shops lined the covered, temperature-controlled walkways, which linked new glass skyscrapers sprouting one after the next. Workers racing to cubicles in the morning kept to the right to avoid crashing into each other, recalled convenience store clerk Monica Bray.
Bray sees only a trickle of passersby these days and lots of empty storefronts. Downtown streets also are quiet, leaving plenty of room for homeless people, police and the occasional tourist. “It’s spooky,” she said.
For decades, downtown office districts across the U.S. powered local economies, generating commerce, tax revenue and an aggregation of ambition, talent and disposable income. Many cities riddled with half-empty office buildings hope to survive the new remote-work era without bulldozing swaths of downtown and starting from scratch.
Mothman, Wampus Cat, and Raven Mocker
Haunted Appalachia? These ancient mountains witnessed the birth of man and monster
The supernatural creatures said to roam these forests are intimately tied to the landscape, which is older than most of life on Earth.
BY OLIVIA CAMPBELL
From the Mothman, Wampus Cat, and Raven Mocker to the Grafton and Flatwoods Monsters, the Appalachians are teeming with supernatural creatures. TikTok is flooded with stories of #hauntedappalachia. And many people believe the high rate of mysterious phenomena in the Appalachian Mountains, a 2,000-mile range that spans Newfoundland to northern Alabama, is due to their geological age.
How old, you ask? Older than Saturn’s rings. Older than the ozone layer. Older than sexually reproducing organisms. Old enough to remember when days on Earth were shorter than 24 hours. The rocks at the core of the Appalachians formed nearly 1.2 billion years ago when all the continents were still one.
“About 750 million years ago, the supercontinent began to thin and pull apart like warm taffy because of expansion of the continental crust,” Sandra H.B. Clark, U.S. Geological Survey research geologist eloquently explained in the story of the birth of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. When the continents eventually broke off, a deep basin from the Carolinas to Georgia filled with seawater. (The rest of the mountain range shoved off to become the Scottish Highlands.)
I Will Survive
Good.
Teens Want Parents to Track Their Phones and Monitor Their Every Move
An upbringing filled with anxiety has Gen Z sharing their location via apps
Teenagers have long balked at telling parents where they are. Now, they’re asking their parents to track them.
Every generation experiences its set of traumas, but social media and real-time news—with vivid images about the pandemic, war and other disasters—have heightened these anxieties among young people. And lots of them are closer to their parents than previous generations have been.
Members of Gen Z, ages 11 to 26, say they use family location-sharing apps to bolster a sense of security. Downloads of Life360 doubled in the U.S. since 2021. The app now has more than 33 million monthly active users in the U.S. and another 20 million internationally. Even more teens share their location using Apple’s Find My, Google’s Family Link,
Snapchat’s Snap Map and GPS-equipped smartwatches.
Gen Z respondents to a recent survey from Life360 said they share their location when they drive, when they go on dates and when they attend concerts and other large gatherings. Many keep location sharing on at all times.
Chief Broom and Flower Moon
The Long, Strange, Beautiful Road to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
My father-in-law and my late husband, both accomplished actors, wished for a time when Hollywood would make movies about real Native Americans. Now my daughter is living it.
It’s 1985, and I am 24—a few years removed from smoking cigarettes in front of the Baskin-Robbins in Brooklyn Heights.
I’m in Georgetown, South Carolina, and I jump off the back of the production van and directly into the path of two men wearing Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots. I recognize the older one, his silver hair braided with red ribbon, as the actor Will Sampson, who played Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He is with his son Tim, with whom I will fall in love.
We are filming a PBS miniseries, Roanoak, and Will again plays the role of chief. At six feet, seven inches, he is a commanding presence.
Before becoming an actor, Will, a full-blood Muscogee, or Creek, had been a rodeo rider, a lineman, and an artist. The Cuckoo’s Nest producers had heard about a “big Indian” and tracked him down. After a few days on set of hurry-up-and-wait, Will had gotten back in his pickup and driven away—fuck this noise. But he’d been cajoled back and made history. (The movie remains one of only three to have won the Big Five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.)
Death Valley Alive
from The Los Angeles Times via MSN
‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Death Valley gleams with water, wildflowers and color
Story by Christopher Reynolds
Death Valley is still wet. And only a fortunate few seem to be getting the best of it.
Two months after a storm that dropped a year’s rainfall in a single day, flooding roads, destroying trails and closing down the park, the national park’s Oct. 15 reopening revealed a strange place made stranger.
The famously flat and dry Badwater Basin now is home to a sprawling but temporary lake, visible from water’s edge and 5,575 feet above at Dante’s View.
Between sand dunes at Mesquite Flat, you might stumble on a puddle or a pond. In Mosaic and Golden canyons, where floodwaters surged in August, scattered boulders and silt have reshaped the narrow passages, hinting at violence just concluded. Across the plains and slopes, you see more green than usual and sometimes yellow and orange wildflowers, apparently blooming out of seasonal confusion.
The Art Thief
Inside the Hunt for the World’s Most Prolific Art Thief
Stephane Breitwieser is believed to have stolen hundreds of artifacts, worth a total of $2 billion
BY RALPH JONES
Get lost in the suspense of “The Art Thief.”
From the moment he read about him, Michael Finkel knew he wanted to tell Stephane Breitwieser’s story. He remembers looking at newspapers and small websites, wishing to learn French at the time, discovering the Frenchman’s story and becoming hooked. Breitwieser, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence, is the most prolific art thief in the history of the world.
Three things about Breitwieser intrigued Finkel: the insane quantity of his conquests, the fact that the thief never hurt anyone during his crimes and that he professed to steal art not for money but for love. “Whose heart doesn’t melt a little bit right there?” Finkel says over Zoom.
It’s impossible, a French journalist friend warned him. Breitwieser doesn’t talk to the press. This simply solidified Finkel’s resolve. “Game on,” he said to himself. Breitwieser became the author’s inspiration to learn French as quickly as possible. He wrote letters to the thief, beginning in 2012, and moved to France. It was years before Breitwieser returned Finkel’s letters, but when he did, the pair spoke at such length that Finkel was able to write a book about the man. Breitwieser’s story is so extraordinary that, Finkel tells me, he has sold the movie rights and is fantasizing about Timothee Chalamet playing the lead.
The Roast Is Done
The age of the comedy roast is over
Satirical annihilation has become a sanitised ritual
The spotlight beams down on the stage, illuminating the faces of the evening’s celebrities, who are seated in a semicircle like ancient oracles of comedy. At the centre of it all is the roastee — the guest of honour — who will soon be subjected to a brutal barrage of jokes. “James Franco…” started Natasha Leggero’s demolition job 10 years ago. “Acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing — is there anything you can do?” Then there was Gilbert Gottfried’s audacious pivot at the Hugh Hefner Roast, held just two weeks after 9/11, which descended into the “filthiest joke ever told”.
But as much as these moments underscore the art form’s past audacity, they also highlight the pallor that has settled over it. Once a platform for such biting wits as Don Rickles and Joan Rivers, the comedy roast has become a sanitised ritual, a showcase of quips that hardly go beyond the skin. Perhaps the last time we heard a roast joke that truly shocked was in 2019, when Blake Griffin took the mic to thank Caitlyn Jenner “on behalf of black men everywhere” for giving her daughters “daddy issues”. Since then, roasts have transitioned into an assembly line of safe, formulaic jokes that don’t even scratch the surface.
Yet looking at the roast’s decline, perhaps it’s understandable that nowhere in the entertainment world is the existential crisis over the rise of AI more palpable than in comedy. After all, there is no field of creative endeavour that’s become more dependent on cliches, groupthink and repetition. But while the malaise is widespread, the roast, in particular, looks set to be an early casualty.
Vesuvius Scroll Decoded
A 21-Year-Old Just Solved a 2000-Year-Old Mystery In ‘World-Historical’ Breakthrough
21-year-old Luke Farritor became the first person in millennia to read the text on an ancient scroll using machine learning.
A 21-year-old computer scientist named Luke Farritor just became the first person in nearly 2,000 years to read words from a papyrus scroll that was buried under more than 60 feet of volcanic ash after the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
Farritor used a machine learning program to pinpoint the Greek word for “purple” in one of the hundreds of carbonized scrolls that were unearthed in Herculaneum, a town that was obliterated by the eruption along with its more famous neighbor, Pompeii.
The scrolls were found in 1752 during excavations of an ancient villa in Herculaneum that may have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Excavators at that time quickly realized that the singed and fragile works disintegrated when they were unrolled, and so left most of them bound in their original form.
Rube Goldberg Wild
Suzanne Somers Gone
Suzanne Somers, Three’s Company and Step by Step Actress, Dead at 76
The actress passed away “peacefully at home” surrounded by loved ones, PEOPLE confirms
By Bailey Richards and Andrea Mandell
Suzanne Somers, best known for her roles on Three’s Company and Step by Step, has died.
Somers died on Sunday morning, PEOPLE confirms. She would have been 77 on Monday.
“Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years,” Somers’ longtime publicist R. Couri Hay wrote in a statement shared on behalf of the actress’ family.
“Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family,” the statement continued. “Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th. Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”