October 1, 2019 in 2,859 words

The President is every failure of Western civilization embodied in one man.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) September 30, 2019

_{• • • to set a mood • • •}

_{^{• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •}}

The “Kodanago” was an evil spirit who supposedly inhabited public telephones and wreaked conversational havoc by saying terrible things in both participants’ voices.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 29, 2019

How a Newspaper Article Saved Thousands of Black Gospel Records From Obscurity

_{A professor in Texas collects and digitizes rare recordings from across the country.}

_{The Soul Stirrers, Sam Cooke (left), JJ Farley, SR Crain, RB Robinson, and Paul Foster (right), in 1950.}

FOR THE LAST DOZEN YEARS, in the basement of a university library in Waco, Texas, a small team of audio engineers has been busy trying to save black gospel music. On a typical day, after delicately removing a scuffed vinyl record from its tattered sleeve, an engineer cleans the disc, places it onto a specialized turntable, and drops the needle. A moment later, an exhilarating music rises from the speakers, filling the small room with voices not heard in half a century. Once the song has come to an end, the audio file is loaded into a digital archive, and the record joins thousands of LPs and 45s that are stacked wall-to-wall in a climate-controlled room at Baylor University.

The current effort to preserve gospel recordings began in 2005, when Robert Darden, a journalism professor at Baylor, published an op-ed in The New York Times. He wrote that innumerable black gospel records, particularly from the “Golden Age” of the mid-1940s to the mid-70s, were at risk of being lost, whether because of damage or neglect. It was getting harder and harder to track down LPs of popular artists like the Soul Stirrers (who at one time featured a young Sam Cooke), to say nothing of 45s from largely obscure groups like the Gospel Kings of Portsmouth, Virginia. “It would be more than a cultural disaster to forever lose this music,” Darden wrote. “It would be a sin.”

_{The Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, released this album of civil rights music in 1962.}

Soon after publishing the op-ed, Darden was contacted by an investment banker named Charles Royce. Royce confessed he didn’t know much about gospel music, but the opinion piece had convinced him that preserving it was a worthwhile endeavor. “You figure out how to save it,” he said, according to Darden. “Send me a plan, and I’ll pay for it.”

the crisis facing classic gospel music while working on his book, People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music. He had previously worked as the gospel music editor for Billboard, and had written extensively on the genre, yet he often struggled to find the music he covered. “I’d been frustrated time and time again throughout the writing of the book, when I would write about a very important gospel song that had been influential in the history of gospel music, in some cases in popular music, and I couldn’t listen to it,” Darden says. “I’d go to the used record stores, and online, and everywhere I knew, and there just simply would not be a copy available.” …

Mark Twain served as a Kentucky senator for eight hours during the Great Neglect of 1874, and described the experience as “somewhere between being a rabid dog and the hand that feeds it.”

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 30, 2019

Kiefer Sutherland Revives Jack Bauer on ‘Last Week Tonight’ to Call Out Compounding Pharmacies (Video)

_{John Oliver also brings out Ru Paul, Jimmy Kimmel, Kristen Bell, David Schwimmer, Michael Bolton and Method Man for main story segment}

_{THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.}

Kiefer Sutherland can’t seem to escape Jack Bauer. Though he last retired the character in 2014 for a revival of “24,” the character just does not want to die. And as Sutherland found out on the latest “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” it followed him to a most unusual place: a medicine bottle.

For the main story segment on “Last Week Tonight” Sunday, John Oliver took on the topic of compounding pharmacies, which will mix specialty, custom medications for patients in need.

But naturally, there’s a lack of oversight and regulations among these pharmacies, including some that are mass producing medication when they shouldn’t be. One pharmacy got caught in the act when they used celebrity names to pad out the number of patients.

Among them were: David Schwimmer, Jimmy Kimmel, Ru Paul, Michael Bolton, Method Man, Sarah Marshall (as in Kristen Bell’s famous old character. You didn’t “forget” did you?) and of course, Jack Bauer. So Oliver got all of the above to speak out against these practices, with Sutherland as Bauer throwing out a very specific demand. Because if you don’t: …

Auf wiedersehen, Walter! Why Britain booted out the Bauhaus

_{The hard lines and sharp corners of the architectural evangelists were too much for 1930s Britain – which Walter Gropius called a ‘land of fog and emotional nightmares’. Here’s what the UK could have looked like}

_{Radical … Marcel Breuer’s Sea Lane House in Angmering-on-Sea, West Sussex; it is featured in Beyond Bauhaus.}

A pair of sleek white apartment blocks rise above the trees of Windsor Great Park. Their sharp concrete balconies and horizontal strip windows embody all the promise of modernity, just a stone’s throw from the spires of Eton and the turrets of Windsor Castle. As the developers of the complex put it in 1935, this was to be “the housing method of the future”, a place kitted out with all the latest mod cons: tennis and squash courts, swimming pool, skittle alley, Turkish bath and cinema room. With the option of housemaid service, as well as stabling for horses alongside the garage, it was billed as a place “for those who care for the country, whose manner of living is intelligent, and whose social standards are high”. The problem was, you had to like modern architecture, too – and most people in Britain didn’t.

Isokon 3, this heady vision for Windsor designed by Bauhaus maestro Walter Gropius, never happened because the British public wasn’t ready for it. Despite the best efforts of its developer, Jack Pritchard, who received the blessing of King George V for the buildings to be erected overlooking his castle, there simply wasn’t enough demand for this new functionalist, wipe-clean world, freshly imported from the continent. Despite seductive brochures offering “all the amenities of living that are to be found in a really comfortable country house … at a price which is very much less than the cost of living in a country house of your own”, the project never got off the ground. Neither did a similar Gropius-designed scheme in Birmingham.

_{Seductive … Gropius’s design for Isokon 3, Windsor.}

The delicate watercolour renderings and sales brochure are all that remain of the dream, now on show at the RIBA in a new exhibition, Beyond Bauhaus: Modernism in Britain 1933–66, marking the centenary of the radical German art school and its impact on British architecture. The show casts a necessarily broad net, given our introverted island wasn’t particularly receptive to the radical cocktail of machine-made functionalism, abstraction and socialism. Gropius was joined in London by artist László Moholy-Nagy and designer Marcel Breuer for just three years, taking refuge from Nazi Germany in the first (and only) Isokon apartment building in Hampstead, before they all moved on in 1937. It is painfully symbolic that the first items in the exhibition are the menu cards from their farewell dinners, and a photograph of them happily leaving Britain for the US. …

6 Totally Bonkers Criminal Plots That Actually Happened

Most “wacky” crimes aren’t that interesting when you look beyond the headline. Sure, “Man Breaks Into Bodega, Shits In Cash Register” is a funny sentence, but where do you go from there? But every now and then, someone commits a crime so spectacularly weird that it will convince you that the walls of reality are breaking down as we merge with the 1960s Marvel Universe. How else can you explain how …

6. The Politician Who Faked His Death In A Scuba Accident

In 1980, New Jersey state senator David Friedland was arrested for colluding with corrupt union officials to defraud the Teamsters’ pension fund. Which is pretty standard for New Jersey, where the legislature is located in the basement of a strip club and the governor’s mansion is a bullet-riddled houseboat puttering toward international waters. But even for Jersey, Friedland’s dedication to corruption was astonishing. First he agreed to rat on his co-conspirators in return for immunity, then he used his time in witness protection to work on a different scheme to defraud the Teamsters. This guy was like the Hamburglar of pensions.

He was soon facing re-arrest, since the feds kindly ask that you not use witness protection to continue your crimes. So in 1985, Friedland decided that his best move would be to fake his own death. And how should he fake-die? Via scuba accident, of course. And honestly, it would really drive engagement in local politics if every special election was triggered by a fugitive official’s zany scheme. More people would be able to name their state rep if he occasionally exchanged gunfire with the city comptroller.

When Friedland disappeared from a boat in the Bahamas, divers failed to turn up a body, and the FBI was unconvinced by his friends’ story that he’d seemed depressed and had taken a bunch of painkillers before going for a nice scuba. When you’re facing jail time, you need a better cause of death than “probably taken by merpeople,” so the agency launched a manhunt. He was eventually caught in the Maldives in 1987, where he wasn’t really trying that hard to hide. The ex-senator was a prominent local personality who owned a chain of scuba shops and even posed for a postcard. He was arrested and quickly cut a deal to become a jailhouse snitch, because you just can’t keep this guy from sleazin’. …

THE LEGACY OF THE FLOPPY STILL LOOMS OVER WINDOWS

We no longer use floppy disks on the vast majority of computers, but a recent Old New Thing blog post from Microsoft sheds light on one of their possible unexpected legacies. It seems Windows disk cache items expire after two seconds, and as the post explains this has its origin in the development of MS-DOS 2.0.

Disks, especially floppy disks, are slow compared to computer memory. A disk cache is a piece of memory into which the operating system puts frequently loaded items to speed up access and avoid its having to repeatedly access the disk. They have an expiry time to ensure that the cache doesn’t become clogged with data that hasn’t been needed for a while.

IBM PC floppy drives didn’t implement any form of notification for a disk eject, so it became quite possible for a disk to be ejected while the operating system still believed cached data from it to be valid. Thus a pair of Microsoft engineers tried their hardest to swap floppy discs as fast as they could, and it was discovered to be an impossible task in under two seconds. This became the cache expiry time for a Microsoft OS, and thus we’re told the floppy’s legacy lives on as more than just the ‘save’ icon. …

Tesla’s Smart Summon feature is already causing chaos in parking lots across America

_{Is Smart Summon ready for prime time?}

Tesla’s new “Smart Summon” feature is already causing confusion — and some minor fender benders. It’s another example of the real-world complications that arise from Tesla’s willingness to beta test features using customers.

Smart Summon is the new name for Tesla’s autonomous parking feature, which enables a Tesla vehicle to leave a parking space and navigate around obstacles to its owner. Tesla owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving option on their car received it as part of the version 10 software update that went out last week. Using just a smartphone, you can “summon” your car to you from a maximum distance of 200 feet, as long as the car is within your line of sight.

So, @elonmusk – My first test of Smart Summon didn't go so well. @Tesla #Tesla #Model3 pic.twitter.com/yC1oBWdq1I

— Roddie Hasan – راضي (@eiddor) September 28, 2019

Videos of Tesla owners testing the new feature have already began popping up on social media over the weekend, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s kind of a mess. One Tesla owner tweeted about “front bumper damage,” while another claimed their Model 3 “ran into the side of [a] garage.” A video of a near collision with a speeding SUV left the owner feeling their test of Smart Summon “didn’t go so well.” Another Tesla was filmed seemingly confused by pedestrians and other cars as it tried to make its way across a Walmart parking lot.

Tesla warns owners to be careful with using Smart Summon because it’s not a fully autonomous feature. “You are still responsible for your car and must monitor it and its surroundings at all times and be within your line of sight because it may not detect all obstacles,” the fine print on Tesla’s website reads. “Be especially careful around quick moving people, bicycles and cars.” …

Video Goodnesses
_{and not-so-goodnesses}

As Trump’s foreign interference scandal snowballs, his supporters in Congress stand by their man, and Roy Wood Jr. breaks down what’s being done to protect the whistleblower’s identity.

_{THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.}

The President spent his weekend demanding to meet the Ukraine whistleblower, going after Rep. Adam Schiff, and retweeting dubious statements from supporters.

_{THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.}

Seth takes a closer look at the president accusing Democrats of treason as Republicans flail in their attempts to defend him from impeachment.

_{THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.}

On the latest Deep Cuts, Hasan discusses why the redemption of politicians like George W. Bush as well as former Trump administration members has happened so quickly. Hasan also shares the platform he would run on if he ran for president, the essential items needed for an Indian picnic, and the one rapper he would tell his grandkids about.

_{THANKS to Netflix and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj for making this program available on YouTube.}

液体化した猫はおよそ何リットルなのか調べました。I examined how many liters Liquid Maru was.

Hjálmar, the Icelandic space program’s first and only probe, inspired an animated cartoon series in which the anthropomorphized spacecraft dispensed social advice, cooking suggestions, and helpful tips on how to handle madmen.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 25, 2019

FINALLY . . .

California’s Saltiest Lake Is Chock-Full of Bizarre Roundworms

_{Life finds a way.}

_{Extremophile expert Amir Sapir checking out some nematodes at Mono Lake.}

IF YOU’RE HUMAN, THE WATERS of Mono Lake aren’t for you. Besides being an otherworldly strain of beautiful, the Californian body of water is salty and very basic, with a pH of 10—the equivalent of detergent—in addition to levels of arsenic around six times what is considered safe for drinking. No fish live in the lake, but some animal life finds a way, namely ones that thrive in the toughest conditions (known collectively as extremophiles). Mono Lake’s inhabitants have names that refer to their hostile home: brine shrimp and alkali flies. Now, another hardy species can be added to Mono Lake’s list of aquatic denizens—nematodes, including a new, arsenic-adoring species from the genus Auanema.

The creature, described in the journal Current Biology, is a roundworm with a couple of unique evolutionary traits, chief among them the capacity to survive more than 500 times the amount of arsenic that is fatal for humans. But James Lee, a nematologist formerly of the Sternberg Lab at the California Institute of Technology, which conducted the research, wasn’t all too surprised to find them.

“What’s remarkable about extremophilic nematodes—in fact all extremophilic species—is how much they have to reveal about resilience, and the innovative strategies they use to survive on this planet,” he says.

_{Mono Lake is as beautiful as it is inhospitable to most creatures.}

The newly discovered species of Auanema has a few other evolutionary tricks up its oral cavity. It has three sexes—female, male, and hermaphrodite. Lee says that the male and female Auanema may help preserve genetic diversity in established populations, while the hermaphroditic worms are uniquely suited to trailblazing into new areas, since they reproduce solo. The nematodes are also viviparous, meaning that instead of laying eggs like most nematodes, they have live births. …

Pipelayers in some parts of Scotland still use specially trained mice, called “tunnel-bugs”, to explore and identify flaws in the system.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 25, 2019

_{Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Maybe. Probably Not. Groundhog Day.}

_{About the last week… it’s been complicated. I have a part-time job that seems to take more and more of my time as well as a not-so-skilled friend who is moving out of a townhouse that required a lot of cleaning and attention and moving into a house that requires lots of little things fixed. I’ll create posts when I have the time.}