Sometimes you can spend so much time staring at your phone you forget about the beauty all around you, so be sure to Google that.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) January 21, 2020
• • • to set a mood • • •
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
These Japanese assassin’s teacups, known as “murderer’s manners”, contain hidden chambers and porous sides that allow poison to seep into the tea.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 22, 2019
How to Make Sense of an Undrowned Town
Residents of Celles in France were evicted so their village could be flooded. Then, it wasn’t.
A graffitied former home beside the lake.
IN THE 1950S, CELLES WAS a tiny, nondescript village in the Salagou Valley in southern France, an area known for its dark red soil and dry climate. Most of its 63 inhabitants were farmers and winegrowers whose families had lived in the area for generations.
Then, local government decided the inhabitants of Celles would be evicted so the whole area could be drowned.
At the time, France was facing a viticulture crisis: the wine market was saturated, and prices were low. Local authorities hoped that creating a reservoir in the area would allow farmers to diversify their crops and move away from wine production. They chose the Salagou Valley.
Between 1959 and 1968, the inhabitants of Celles were pushed to sell their homes to make way for the reservoir. Those who didn’t were expropriated, their houses left empty.
In 1968, the dam on the Salagou River was finally finished. The water crept up slowly, covering the red clay landscape. But just short of the village, it stopped. In the original plans the water was supposed to rise to the 150-meter altitude mark. But in the end it stopped permanently at 139 meters, 4 meters lower than the village. …
The town of North Tarrytown, New York (now called Sleepy Hollow), hires “Sentinels of Democracy”, complete with ceremonial musket, to guard polling places against the Headless Horseman.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 21, 2019
America’s Most Powerful Medical-Debt Collector
Treatment at a military hospital can leave you tens of thousands of dollars in debt—and hounded by the federal government.
In the autumn of 2012, Ricardo Gonzalez Jurado was 25 feet off the ground, balancing on metal scaffolding as he sawed a stack of wood. Gonzalez Jurado owns a Central Texas yoga retreat—an oasis deep in the woods where he’s built a cluster of small houses for customers seeking a few days of bodily and spiritual cleansing. That day, he was precariously constructing a large, hollow pyramid—intended as a meditation room—out of the mountain cedar that grows all over his land.
Suddenly, the saw snagged on Gonzalez Jurado’s clothing. He jumped back instinctively and stepped off the metal platform. Plummeting toward the pyramid’s wood floor, he tucked his knees to his chin, so that his heels took the brunt of the impact. There was a loud crack, then searing pain radiating up his left foot. He dragged himself out of the pyramid and called an ambulance.
He asked to be taken to a nearby hospital in San Marcos. But because of the height from which he fell, he told us, the paramedics instead took him to the Brooke Army Medical Center, or BAMC, a trauma center about 50 miles away that was better equipped to handle his injuries. Located on Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, BAMC is the flagship of the military health system—a network of 37 hospitals and medical centers that are meant for soldiers, but that also treat civilians to give military doctors experience with the variety of injuries they might face when deployed to a war zone.
The doctors at BAMC explained to Gonzalez Jurado that he had fractured his heel bone and would need surgery. They inserted three pins in his heel, making a slanted “H” shape. Gonzalez Jurado called the doctors’ work amazing. After three days, he was out of the hospital and on his way to a full recovery. Soon, however, he would learn that treatment at a military health facility can come with a catch.
Before the surgery, Gonzalez Jurado, who is uninsured, had asked how much the procedure would cost, and he said the doctors told him they didn’t know. (BAMC told us, “Before any unplanned surgery, as in the case of trauma, it is exceptionally difficult to determine what charges may be incurred, as a variety of procedures may be necessary.”) About a month later, he received his bills from the hospital. They totaled more than $28,000. Gonzalez Jurado was taken aback. He hadn’t asked to go to BAMC, and he couldn’t afford to pay the hospital a giant lump sum. He negotiated a deal with the hospital to pay in increments. But even after years of on-time payments, he only sank deeper into a billing nightmare. His account was sent to a collections agency, and he said the federal government garnished his tax refund as a penalty for supposedly underpaying his bill. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: The federal government is one of the most unforgiving dept collectors around.
THE BATTLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION
The Disintegration of the American Presidency
The president’s job is to oversee the whole of the executive branch, but under Trump the inverse is happening.
On January 13, 2020, a political scientist named Daniel Drezner tweeted a screenshot of a Washington Post article, along with a cheeky comment: “I’ll believe that Trump is growing into the presidency when his staff stops talking about him like a toddler.” The screenshot showed a quotation about handling the president from a former senior administration official: “He’d get spun up, and if you bought some time, you could get him calmed down, and then explain to him what his decision might do.”
Drezner’s tweet was part of a lengthy thread. A very lengthy thread. The tweet, in fact, was the 1,163rd entry in a thread that began back in April 2017, with the same comment appended to a screenshot from The Washington Post: “Trump turns on the television almost as soon as he wakes, then checks in periodically throughout the day in the small dining room off the Oval Office, and continues late into the evening when he’s back in his private residence. ‘Once he goes upstairs, there’s no managing him,’ said one adviser.” Drezner had highlighted the quotation from the adviser.
The “toddler-in-chief thread” is surely the most quixotically lengthy Twitter thread in the history of the American presidency. Every time a White House adviser or a Republican member of Congress speaks about Trump in a news story as though he or she were talking about handling a small child, Drezner tweets the relevant passage with the same sentence, adding it to the thread.
Each entry separately documents a news story in which someone—usually a member of the executive branch—talks about managing the president, not the other way around, and talks about doing so in an explicitly infantilizing fashion. The collection is now the subject of a forthcoming book.
The thread is a source of humor, but Drezner is onto something profound. Whereas the president’s job is to supervise the White House staff and the executive-branch agencies that report to the White House, in the Trump presidency the inverse is what’s really happening most of the time, and people don’t even bother to pretend otherwise. …
5 Temper Tantrums That Spiraled Out of Control
Telling a child “No” comes with inherent risks. Still, even if one with limited self-control and the wrath of a viking gets wild, no one expects it to have massive legal, financial, or even potentially lethal consequences. Everyone was shocked, for example, when …
5. A Five-Year-Old Burned Down A Duplex
Most parents are just trying their best in a horrifying world of snot and YouTube, so they don’t need the judgment of strangers. But you have to admit that the mother of this Ohio child made some very questionable choices. Like whatever led police to state that all of her children should have “charges filed on them, or if not all, they’re all on probation.” In this instance, she went shopping after an argument with her five-year-old son, apparently leaving him at home unsupervised. Oh, he had also threatened to burn the house down. Guess what happened while she was gone?
It wasn’t exactly a tough case to crack, as the boy was seen running from the burning building with a lighter in hand, hopefully in slow motion while accompanied by the Kidz Bop version of “In The Air Tonight.” The local police chief assured the public that the boy wouldn’t face criminal charges, but did suggest that he might have to attend a “fire prevention course,” beginning with some Remedial Frankensteining.
“Fire bad.”
The duplex had to be completely torn down. Which kinda sucked for the other family living in it, who had nothing to do with the whole mess. …
UNRELATED: Some Maniac Is Still Gluing Hats To Pigeons’ Heads
So I’m out in the field on a ride along with parking enforcement, and what do I see? It appears to be a pigeon with a sombrero…. pic.twitter.com/SOjPKw8nQ0
— Sabra Newby (@sabrasireen) January 15, 2020
The return of the Fiat 500e, and its outsized meaning for EVs
The last of the first-gen Fiat 500e electric minicars left US dealerships in 2019. But it’s coming back in about a year with an updated style and an expected range of about 125 miles. That’s not a lot, but relatively consistent with a breed of small Euro-chic EVs like the Honda E, BMW i3, and Mini Cooper SE. Besides, small electric cars like the Fiat 500e might be the only segment that Tesla is ceding to the competition.
We’ll have confirmed details in early March when the new Fiat 500e debuts at the Geneva Motor Show. In the meantime, the media is speculating a boost power and an increase in range to about 125 miles.
Here’s where things get interesting. Fiat boss Olivier Francois told Autocar last month that the new electric 500 would sit on a new, bespoke electric-car platform. That platform could be shared by other small Fiat EVs, including a model inspired by the highly customizable, multi-pack Centoventi concept that we just saw at CES. It will also be used for a gas-hybrid 500 variant, which arrives first. (We’re showing images of that model on this post.)
The platform will also be leveraged for future Jeep and Maserati all-electric powertrains. …
Scientist Alan Turing’s degree, medal and memorabilia recovered in Colorado
• Computer pioneer’s things taken from British school in 1984
• Items seized after woman offered them for loan to university
Alan Turing was persecuted for his homosexuality and died in 1954, aged 41, his death ruled a suicide.
The British scientist Alan Turing’s Princeton doctoral degree, OBE medal and other items of memorabilia have been recovered in Colorado, 35 years after they were taken from Sherborne School in Dorset.
Turing, a great of British science, was persecuted for his homosexuality and died in 1954, aged 41, his death ruled a suicide. His reputation has since been fully restored and celebrated.
In July 2019 a member of the government committee which decided he should appear on the new £50 note, Dr Emily Grossman, wrote in the Guardian: “His contribution to science is clear.
“[He was] the father of computer science, a significant influence on the modern field of artificial intelligence and most importantly, his work at Bletchley Park during the second world war led a team of code-breakers to crack the German Enigma code.”
In 2008, the Princeton Alumni Weekly named Turing the college’s second-most influential graduate, behind only James Madison, the fourth American president who was one of the authors of the US constitution. Six years later, in The Imitation Game, a film directed by Morten Tyldum, Turing was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
On Friday, in court filings reported by the Boulder Daily Camera and other outlets, federal officials said they had recovered and were seeking the forfeiture of Turing’s degree certificate, the medal and photos, reports and letters from his time at boarding school. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Throughout human history, doomsayers — people predicting the end of the world — have lived largely on the fringes of society. Today, a doomsday industry is booming thanks to TV shows, movies, hyper-partisan politics, and the news media. With the country’s collective anxiety on the rise, even the nation’s wealthiest people are jumping on board, spending millions of dollars on survival readiness in preparation for unknown calamities.
We sent Thomas Morton to see how people across the country are planning to weather the coming storm.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
John Oliver explains what type of news should – and shouldn’t – warrant a push notification.
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
Former GOP strategist Rick Wilson shares why he believes Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party and offers Democrats campaign advice in his book “Running Against the Devil.”
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Is breaking the law illegal? Now that President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is underway in the Senate, we may soon find out.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Let’s take it off like we’re on eraser duty.
”すきまる”のための装置を開発しましたが、全体的に滑りが悪く、改良の余地有。I developed “Gap Maru device”. However, improvement is necessary because it is not smooth.
There is a 6’x6’ patch of astroturf in Sweden which has its own officially designated ambassador to the United Nations
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 22, 2018
FINALLY . . .
9 Years Later, Furry Friends—and Foes—Are Returning to Fukushima
Few of them seem to miss the missing humans.
Japan’s charismatic raccoon dogs are back in business. Only wild boars are appearing in greater numbers.
NUCLEAR FALLOUT IS OFTEN CHARACTERIZED by its human toll: the immediate casualties, the complete exodus from the region, the radioactivity that continues to permeate the lives of those affected, and the surrounding area, for years afterward. But less attention is paid to the affected animals, which generally exist beyond the scope of human disaster protocols.
Now, an extensive photographic survey has revealed the resurgence of animal populations in Fukushima, Japan, where nearly a decade ago a nuclear disaster forced living creatures—human and bestial alike—to flee en masse.
Statistically speaking, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was the worst of its kind since the 1986 reactor failure at Chernobyl. Over 15,000 people were killed as a result of the Fukushima disaster—a tripartite chain reaction in which a hard-hitting earthquake roiled Japan’s shores, which begat a tsunami, which triggered a nuclear meltdown. Over a million homes suffered serious damage, according to Japan’s agency for reconstruction.
But as with the recent bushfires in Australia, it can be difficult to measure the toll on animal life, which often suffers significantly more harm than humans do. …
The Widow Maker of Foul Glamorgan was feudal Ireland’s first supercomputer
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 22, 2018
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? Probably, maybe.
And now everybody is looking up the meaning of the word Roberts referenced — pettifogging — which Merriam Webster defines as: placing undue emphasis on petty details
— Athena Jones (@AthenaCNN) January 22, 2020
‘