Jesus wants to write an editorial condemning Trump, but he’s afraid he’ll lose the support of evangelicals.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 26, 2019
• • • to set a mood • • •
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
Beginning in the 1930s, Wisconsin department stores featured a holiday character named Papa New Year, who assured those who sat on his lap that the new year would be less troublesome than the last.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 28, 2018
How an English Energy Crisis Helped Create Champagne
Desperate English bottle-makers turning to a new fuel resulted in a sparkling innovation.
This Champagne inspector wears a mask to protect her face from shattering bottles.
IN THE EARLY 17TH CENTURY, the kingdom of England was in the grip of the world’s first energy crisis. Decades of population growth, rapid urbanization, countless foreign wars, and myriad voyages of discovery to the New World under the capricious Tudors decimated the country’s forests and its timber supply.
King James I was terrified. No trees for timber meant no ships for the navy, and no navy meant leaving the country wide open and undefended against England’s enemies—which, at this time, was pretty much all of the rest of Europe. This lack of timber was nothing short of an existential threat to England itself.
A panicked Royal proclamation was swiftly issued in 1615 to stem the tide. It bemoaned the increasing dearth of good old English wood, “great and large in height and bulk” with “toughness and heart,” which is “of excellent use for shipping,” and it set out a series of drastic restrictions for its use for anything but absolutely essential purposes. In particular, the proclamation explicitly forbade that anyone should be so wasteful as to “melt, make or causeth to be melted or made, any kind, form or fashion of Glass or Glasses whatsoever, with Timber, or wood, or any Fewell made of Timber of wood.”
In this 18th-century print, English workers make bottles in “A Glass House.”
No timber as fuel to make glass? The country’s glass-makers were outraged. They had been burning timber for centuries to make their product: an almost alchemical process of using fearsome heat to melt a mixture of potash and sand. What on earth were they to do now? …
Mark Twain’s unpublished story, “The Incident of Scoundrel’s Notch”, was based on Twain's growing paranoia that he was—or had been—the Headless Horseman.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 28, 2018
A brutal year: how the ‘techlash’ caught up with Facebook, Google and Amazon
Privacy scandals and antitrust issues dogged social media giants and the online retailer saw a rise in employee organizing.
The tech industry found itself on the receiving end of increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the public
What goes up must come down, and in 2019, gravity reasserted itself for the tech industry.
After years of relatively unchecked growth, the tech industry found itself on the receiving end of increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the public and attacks from its own employees.
“The whole year has been brutal for tech companies,” said Peter Yared, chief executive officer and founder of data compliance firm InCountry. “The techlash we have seen in the rest of the world is just now catching up in the US – it’s been a long time coming.”
From new privacy legislation to internal strife, here are some of the major hurdles the tech industry has faced in the past year.
Elections intensify scrutiny
Facebook and Instagram ads were linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process.
As the 2020 presidential race intensified, tech companies faced a growing backlash over the campaign-related content they allow on their platforms.
In October, Facebook quietly revised its policy banning false claims in advertising to exempt politicians, drawing fierce criticism from users, misinformation watchdogs, and politicians. Following the change in policy, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren took out advertisements on Facebook purposely making false statements to draw attention to the policy. …
Nobody Listened
Boxes with the Amazon logo turned into a frown face are stacked up after a protest against Amazon in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough on November 14, 2018 in New York City.
Despite the privacy concerns, labor strikes, and reports that Amazon is selling literal trash on its platform—in the face of all of the myriad reasons shoppers should have avoided buying through Amazon this year—the company still made a killing this season.
The company said this week that the 2019 holiday season was record-shattering. The number of items delivered through its Prime same-day or one-day services almost quadrupled. More than half a billion products were ordered in the toys, fashion, home, and beauty categories. And most depressingly, the company said it was a record year for Amazon devices and Alexa, with tens of millions of the products ordered worldwide. Moreover, the company added that people bought “millions more Amazon Devices compared to last holiday and the best-selling devices worldwide included Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Echo Show 5.”
Despite whatever Amazon would like you to believe, privacy is not—as it has claimed—foundational to its always-on, always-listening devices. The company’s products are steeped in privacy scandals, everything from eavesdropping employees who listen in on private conversations to the ability for Amazon workers to discover a user’s home address. Alexa has mistakenly recorded a private conversation and sent it to someone who shouldn’t have heard it. The fact that they’re always on means they’re recording even children, a fact that has troubled lawmakers. And yes, you can ask the robot to delete recordings after a specified period of time, but the responsibility falls on you to do so and comes with the loaded expectation that the robot will perform as it’s supposed to.
That’s to say nothing of ongoing strikes over Amazon’s labor requirements and conditions in its warehouses. Or of Amazon’s system that shuffles in third-party sellers with verified brands, creating a chaotic shopping environment that’s evidently serving up actual garbage and rotten or expired goods. Or of the company’s Ring products, which have been dogged by information security mishaps, privacy concerns over its extremely problematic relationship with the cops as well as the way Ring data is shared with law enforcement and the fact that Amazon is amassing a veritable surveillance state. …
6 Conspiracy Theories That Had ‘Yikes’ Real-World Effects
If you wanted wild-eyed conspiracy theories back in the day, you had to physically subscribe to a magazine about Dwight Eisenhower inventing masturbation to destroy the American family. These days, social media has made it easier than ever to hear totally insane things and then decide that, for some reason, you want to believe them. And the craziest theories have a disturbing way of spilling over into real life. Like how …
6. QAnon Killed A Mafia Boss
In March 2019, Gambino family boss Francesco “Frankie Boy” Cali was shot dead outside his Staten Island home. That might sound like a normal morning in Staten Island, but this was the most high-profile mob killing since 1985. Naturally, the death sparked a media frenzy, with fears that a new Mafia war could erupt. But the truth turned out to be much weirder. The dude was killed by a QAnon believer.
Anthony Comello pulled the trigger for reasons that would require several skeins of red string to explain, but we’ll try to give you the gist. QAnon holds that President Trump is waging a secret war against an elite conspiracy of high-ranking cannibalistic pedophiles, but he needs the public’s help, which is why one of his allies posts regular anonymous updates as “Q.” Logical enough, right?
So what did Cali supposedly have to do with any of this? It’s not clear! Comello somehow identified him as a member of the “deep state” and decided to perform a citizen’s arrest. He’d tried that before with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who famously snatches children while swooping over the city on leathery bat wings, and Maxine Waters, a dangerously violent criminal mastermind cunningly disguised as an elderly politician.
None of those attempts worked out, but Comello hadn’t succeeded at doing anything illegal yet, so he was free to turn his attention on Frankie Boy, who lived near him. Frankie Boy, having no idea what was going on and having a certain set of conditioned responses, reached for his gun as Comello approached, so Comello shot him 10 times before fleeing. Thankfully, he was arrested before this could spark a mob war, but on the downside, this does leave us defenseless against Chuck Schumer’s legion of goat-masked death troopers. …
Archaeologists discover remains of vast Mayan palace in Mexico
Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years old
Ancient Mayan palace unearthed in south-east Mexico.
Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.
The building in Kulubá is 55 metres long, 15 metres wide and six metres high, and appears to have been made up of six rooms, said Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
It is part of a larger complex that also includes two residential rooms, an altar and a large round oven. Archaeologists have also uncovered remains from a burial site, and hope forensic analysis of the bones could provide more clues about Kulubá’s Mayan inhabitants.
An archaeologist cleans some of the building uncovered in Kulubá.
The palace was in use during two overlapping eras of Mayan civilisation, in the late classical period between AD600 and AD900, and the terminal classical between AD850 and AD1050, said Alfredo Barrera Rubio, one of the lead archaeologists at the site. …
The promise and perils of a secret impeachment vote in the Senate
CLOAK & DAGGER
Working it out a deux.
It’s no secret that a presidential impeachment trial in the US Senate, whatever evidence is or is not presented, will end with Donald Trump’s acquittal. Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell has promised it.
But if the vote were conducted in secret, it seems, 30 or more Republican senators would find the president’s dealings with Ukraine violated the Constitution. Or so said former Arizona senator Jeff Flake in September.
Former GOP senator @JeffFlake at #TribFest19 – "I heard someone say if there were a private vote [on impeachment in the Senate] there would be 30 Republican votes. That's not true. There would be at least 35."
— Nicky Woolf (@NickyWoolf) September 26, 2019
Ever since, academics and pundits have been discussing the merits and drawbacks of a secret vote, while laying out the logistical path for approving cloaked ballots.
Procedurally speaking
Senators could approve a secret impeachment vote if they wanted to. Impeachment trial rules are up to the senators and must pass by a simple majority—51 out of 100 members.
Republicans are now in the majority and have 53 votes. If they all toe the party line, McConnell can more or less design whatever trial he thinks will best advance his stated goal of acquitting the president. That wouldn’t include a secret ballot: McConnell is looking to vocally signal his party’s enduring support for Trump, not offer politicians an opportunity to vote their conscience. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
From luxury dogs to global warming, Ronny Chieng breaks down everything that was stupid in 2019.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
小さな箱への入り方がわからないはなと、余裕で入るまる。Hana doesn’t know how to get into the small box, but it is too easy for Maru!
In an early manuscript, Pinnochio began life as Tunnelpeter, a renegade toy who escaped into the Catacombs of Rome and was borne on a palanquin carried by uniformed rats.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 28, 2018
FINALLY . . .
The Irish Pigged Out on Pork in a ‘Mammoth’ Iron Age Building
The guests brought swine from far and wide, and left dozens of carcasses behind.
A reconstruction of the Iron Age roundhouse at Ulster, where archaeological evidence suggests massive feasts were held.
IN MANY OF THE WORLD’S most memorable holiday traditions, communities gather around a large pile of meat—whether it’s turkey and roast ham, seven kinds of seafood, or haggis to honor the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Recently, scientists analyzed dozens of bones found at the site of a historic Iron Age roundhouse in Ulster, Northern Ireland, and found that pig was the delicacy of the day. They concluded that the porkers had come from far and wide, and had likely fed the guests of an epic provincial feast.
The new research has hinted at a use for the massive circular structure at Navan Fort, which was built on a site that has been settled since the Neolithic Age. “People have suggested it’s a feasting hall,” says Richard Madgwick, an osteoarchaeologist at Cardiff University and a lead author of a new paper that describes the team’s findings in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. “For this period, it would be an absolutely mammoth building. One of the largest that’s known.”
Today, Navan Fort is a distinctive mound in the Irish landscape. Reconstructions of the roundhouse are adjacent to the site.
The 1st-century BC roundhouse measures over 130 feet across, and contained the remains of some 35 animals. Madgwick studies feasting in prehistoric Britain, where mega meals offered a means of community bonding—as well as a chance to eat as much as you could, in a gastronomic marathon.
Previously, Madgwick described how ancient Brits schlepped pork to Stonehenge from far-flung parts of the Isles. But the presence of pork at that particular site was less surprising. “Stonehenge differs from this work because Stonehenge’s pigs were raised in an era where pigs were everywhere. It would’ve been way easier,” he says. “That’s not the case for the Iron Age. Pigs are a very peripheral species at the time.” …
The Rasclava, a doughnut-like dish popular in Baltic states, supposedly contains unclaimed souls, and has been condemned by the Catholic Church for over 500 years. The methods for harvesting this essential ingredient vary according to the baker.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 28, 2018
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? I have absolutely no idea.