• • • to set a mood • • •
Ed. This is the first time cobbling up these errant ramblings barely uninteresting at all things on my new computer. Hopefully I’ll catch all the metters I lix up.
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
In Edwardian London, the “rumble stick” was what young noblemen used to establish dominance over rival dandies
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 18, 2017
Toward a Better Understanding of South Asia’s ‘Living Bridges’
Human and plant, working together.
The living bridges are vital in the rainy season.
ON THE BORDER OF INDIA and Bangladesh, bridges can build themselves. Under the dripping green overgrowth, root systems—guided by human hands, historically the indigenous Khasi and Jaintia people—twist and tether together gradually, forming structurally sound “living bridges” across ravines and rivers. Earlier this year, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) analyzed the famous, remote bridges to see how they take shape over centuries.
India’s Meghalaya State is one of the wettest places on Earth, with nearly 500 inches of rainfall in the average year. Bridges are more than helpful, they’re downright critical in monsoon season, when the rain can turn meandering rivulets into torrents in the region’s varying topography. That topography makes traditional construction challenging, as well, so living bridges have grown to fill a critical need. And the people who make and maintain them know the ins and outs of the process.
“Construction techniques make use of the specific adaptations of growth of aerial roots of Ficus elastica,” says Wilfrid Middleton, an architect at TUM. “This is important—all living architecture techniques must reflect the trees from which they are grown.”
Some bridges are made using bamboo scaffolds, while others are made only with aerial roots.
F. elastica is, as its name suggests, is a rubber tree native to Southeast Asia. The new research, published in the journal Nature, examined and mapped 74 different living bridges in the area, all made from the roots of the rubber tree. The tree’s aerial roots—spindly, vine-like feelers that latch on to anything nearby for support—are directed by people over rivers by bamboo or palm stems, which form a sort of scaffolding for the plant to follow. Once a guided root grows across to the opposite bank, the root walkway and railings begin to thicken. This is not an overnight process; nurturing seedlings into towering trees and guiding their growth can take generations. …
The fluorescent lighting in this unremarkable-looking government office building is said to make dolls come alive
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 18, 2017
An Angry Letter Reveals the Fiction of the Two Trumps
The president’s allies have long asked the public to distinguish between the president’s tweets and his official acts.
For most of the impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump has passed on opportunities to mount a formal defense of his conduct. Initially, the White House complained that House Democrats were not affording him chances to defend himself. Once they did, he eschewed them, declining to participate in House Judiciary hearings, and refusing to allow testimony from witnesses who (his allies claimed) might vindicate him.
Trump hasn’t been silent, of course—he’s railed against the inquiry publicly, and complained loudly in his somehow ever more prolific tweets. Today, however, on the eve of a vote that’s almost certain to impeach him, the president directly involved himself in a way he hasn’t since early October—when his White House counsel vowed that the administration would not cooperate—in the form of a remarkable letter.
The six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a wild ride. The president veers among incoherent semantic lament (“You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”), bald-faced lies (about former Vice President Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine), self-righteous whining (“You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection”), and atrocious misrepresentation of history (“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials”).
In other words: It’s more of the same. Much more. (At least his letter to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was brief.)
For the most part, the letter is a farrago of common complaints the president has issued in rallies and on his Twitter feed. The president may be most comfortable at 280 characters, but he can expand to six pages given the opportunity. But even though the substance is recycled, the letter is notable because it’s an official communication, on White House letterhead. …
The Secret Plan to Force Out Nixon
A newly released diary shows House Republican leaders pledging to oust the president months before he resigned. Why did they back down?
In January 1974, House Minority Leader John Jacobs Rhodes posed a surprising question to Barber Conable, the fourth-ranking House Republican. He wanted to know what Conable thought “of the possibility of contingency plans in the event that it was disclosed that Richard Nixon in fact was personally involved in the cover up of Watergate affairs to the extent that he was in fact impeachable.”
Rhodes assured Conable that he didn’t know of any new, damning evidence, but with the Judiciary Committee set to convene the first impeachment inquiry in more than a century the following week, he was worried. Rhodes “felt we could ill afford not to consider the possibility that further disclosures would compromise the President beyond redemption,” Conable recorded in his diary. “The Republican members of the House,” Rhodes had told him, “were the only coherent group which could call on the President to protect his place in history, the welfare of the country, and the survival of the Republican Party, by resigning rather than facing an inevitable conviction in impeachment.”
In this previously unreported exchange, the leader of the House Republicans was apparently asking for his pledge that he would join him in pushing Nixon out of the White House. “I said to him,” Conable noted a little while later, “that if he was asking me if I would be willing to stand up and be counted among those who would go to the President and demand such a resignation, that he could count on me.” Rhodes admitted that this was all he was after at that point. “The whole thing was kept quite vague,” Conable recorded for history, “but I got the impression that he was testing me to find out if my willingness to stand up and be counted was sufficient so that he would be able to call on me when and if the time comes.”
Barber Conable died in 2003, but until now, his diary—including his many entries on Nixon, Watergate, and the impeachment crisis—has remained largely hidden from researchers. …
5 Dumb Ways People In Trump’s Orbit Are Trying To Cash In
The Trump presidency has attracted a dizzying array of grifters, from reinvented D-list celebrities to YouTuber conspiracy theorists to furious podcasters screaming into the void. But while most of the leeches connected to Trump have used him to make a name for themselves in the usual ways, like becoming Fox News contributors, joining conservative think tanks, and/or going on terrible speaking tours for terrible books, a few in his orbit have resorted to far more moronic attempts at cashing in. Look at how …
5. We Dodged A TV Show Starring Michael Avenatti And Anthony Scaramucci
Of all the myriad characters the Trump presidency has thrust into the public eye, none have been more sleazily reptilian than Michael Avenatti and Anthony Scaramucci. Avenatti represented Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against the president, and claimed he would run for the office himself before facing charges of extortion, fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion. Scaramucci vomited out profanity and nonsense as the White House’s shortest-tenured director of communications before somehow moving down a peg to Celebrity Big Brother 2. They have shown themselves to be lacking in both professional ability and basic human morality. So obviously someone floated the idea that they should star together on TV.
No, it wouldn’t have been a reality show that accompanied our two lovable miscreants as they took on the most sordid nightlife that Hackensack, New Jersey has to offer. The concept that “prominent television agent” Jay Sures ran up the flagpole at CNN and MSNBC was that Avenatti and Scaramucci would face off and debate contentious issues of the day. It was much like the old show Crossfire, except both men would be firing blanks.
Alas, the Scum v. Scum extravaganza never graced the homes of the 200 or so viewers who wouldn’t immediately change the channel. If for some reason you absolutely need more of Natty and The Mooch, you can still listen to Scaramucci’s spectacularly uninformative podcast. And depending on the regulations wherever Avenatti gets sent to serve his potential 300-year sentence for multiple affronts to human decency, he might sketch you something on a napkin for like 20 bucks. …
What Happens to Your Domain When You Die?
I’ll leave the chore of worrying what becomes of these premises to the schlub who gets the rights to clean all the crap out of my shed. My web host tells me this dump is currently worth $1,076.
No matter how many sci-fi movies depict it, we’re not going to be able to achieve eternal life by uploading a digital version of our consciousness to the cloud anytime soon.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t leave traces of yourself behind on the internet. If you have a website or blog, it could continue for as long as the hosting site exists and your financial obligations to the site are met, promising some small taste of immortality. But what exactly happens to your domain if, when you leave this planet to meet that great processor in the sky, there’s no one to pay the upkeep? Can you will your small corner of the internet to someone else the same way you can physical property? We looked into it, and here’s what we found.
What happens if you do nothing
If you make no special plans to pass your domain on to someone else after you die, your domain will simply expire at some point. Your hosting company will attempt to contact you when it’s time to renew your commitment, and if you don’t reply, the domain will enter a grace period, usually followed by a redemption period (during which only the original registrar can make the site live again). It will eventually be deleted and become publicly available for someone else to purchase.
This might not be a big deal if your website was just a hobby or something that wouldn’t have lasting value. If your domain is attached to a money-making site, or a site with significant traffic, it would make sense to leave it to someone else. …
Absolutely Fabulous s02e02 "Death" from Michael on Vimeo.
Four Guys Asked Their Neighbor If They Could Walk Her Dog. They Got A Letter Back From The Dog.
“In a day and age where people don’t really know or speak to their neighbors it was really nice for them to break down that barrier,” the dog’s owner told BuzzFeed News.
When Jack McCrossan and his three mates moved to the English city of Bristol, they were pretty bummed to discover one thing: Their landlord wouldn’t allow them to get a dog.
The guys had all grown up with dogs and missed the company of a four-legged friend.
So when they spotted a doggo looking at them from their neighbor’s window one evening, they had an idea: write to their neighbor and offer their services as doggy caretakers.
“If you ever need someone to walk him/her, we will gladly do so,” they wrote. “If you ever get bored (we know you never will, but we can dream) we are more than happy to look after him/her. If you want to come over and bring him/her to brighten our day, you are more than welcome. If you want to walk past our balcony windows so we can see him/her, please do.”
Noting that they feared the letter might come across as a bit strong, they simply explained that they missed having a dog around. “The adult life is a struggle without one,” they wrote, signing off as “the boys from number 23.”
They probably didn’t predict what would happen next. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Every November, Northern India experiences some of the most dangerous air pollution levels in the world. Typical pollution sources like car exhaust, construction dust, and industry emissions are partially responsible, but there is another factor that makes Delhi’s air deadly. A policy was enacted in 2009 and it is wreaking havoc on the lungs of residents in India’s capital city. To learn what it is and what’s being done to stop it, make sure to watch the video above.
One day before the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump, VICE News asked Democrats about the partisan nature of the vote.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
The President sent a six page letter to the Speaker of the House on Tuesday, slamming her for actions he perceives as partisan and illegal.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign traded jabs with the Bernie Sanders campaign after photos leaked showing the young Mayor dining with big money donors in an exclusive “wine cave” in Napa, California.
Mudskippers gets what they gets and don’t throws the fits.
These Cincinatti manhole covers conceal what 19th-century Catholic priests once described as "Hell's Dollhouse"
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 19, 2017
FINALLY . . .
A Sea Lily Fossil in Utah Just Solved an Evolutionary Mystery
“This tears off one branch in the tree of life and rearranges it another way.”
A sea lily, spotted off the Northwest Guam Seamount.
IN THE EARLY 1980S, TOM Guensburg was working as a geologist for Getty Oil, but he was thinking like a paleontologist. Getty had a private geological library, and one day, while poring over a geologic map of Utah,Guensburg spotted what could be a gold mine for fossil hunters. He’d noticed an area in the Great Basin with extensive swaths of ancient, fossil-studded rocks. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, only that he might find something extraordinary. “Of course, this was a gamble,” he says. “But it paid off.”
Guensburg, who returned to academia and is now a research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, has prospected the lands of the Great Basin in a series of visits from the 1980s until the present. On several of these trips, he collected specimens of crinoids, often called sea lilies, with unusual arms. Modern sea lilies resemble flowers fastened to the seafloor, crowned with a pinwheel of frilled arms, but researchers have never known exactly how the lilies evolved from earlier, armless echinoderms, a phylum that includes starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars. Guensburg’s unusual specimens, which he deemed Athenacrinus broweri, helps solve that mystery, according to a recent paper in Cambridge University Press.
As soon as Guensburg left Getty Oil, he convinced Daniel Blake, his former advisor and a paleontologist at the University of Illinois, to join him on a road trip to Great Basin National Park. The dry and mountainous wilderness, which crosses from Utah into Nevada, is a cragged kind of beautiful: towering mountains approximately 13,000 feet high, ancient bristlecone pines, and fossilized sea creatures dating back to 480 million years, when Utah was a shallow tropical sea. As soon as the duo got to Great Basin, they knew “there had to be some good stuff,” Guensberg says.
Guensburg discovered the Athenacrinus somewhere around Confusion Range in western Utah.
Guensburg returned to the site a handful of times over the next decade, venturing into empty land in the high desert populated not by people but coyotes, jackrabbits, and golden eagles. “It’s really the middle of nowhere,” he says. The closest town, Baker, Nevada, is 60 miles away and has a single restaurant. “If you get into trouble, there’s nobody to get you.” Over the years, he collected six specimens of the ancient sea lily he would come to call Athenacrinus broweri. The oneGuensburg remembers best was nestled in some exposed rocks on the other side of a mountain ridge. He wrapped it in paper towels and stashed it in his pack. …
No one seems to know why this ancient German church steeple resembles a goat-headed phallus
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 19, 2017
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? I have absolutely no idea.