• • • to set a mood • • •
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
Continental Commander Cerberus Magog thought he was fighting the British. What he found his forces confronted with was far more horrifying
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 22, 2017
The Aftermath of a Fire at the Museum of Chinese in America’s Archives
Staff are hopeful after the first recovery effort found 150 boxes in a salvageable state.
The retrieval efforts began on January 29.
ON THE EVENING OF JANUARY 23, Yue Ma, the director of collections at the Museum of Chinese in America, was on her way home from work when she got a phone call from a colleague. A fire had broken out at 70 Mulberry Street, the home of the museum’s archives, where Ma has kept careful watch for 13 years. As soon as Ma stepped off the train, she got in her car and drove straight to back to Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. When she arrived, around midnight, flames were coming out of the windows on the fourth floor of the building. “I was so shocked,” she says. “We thought our collection could be destroyed.”
The fire burned throughout the night and into the next day, battering the historic building, which also houses the Chen Dance Center, a senior center, and other community groups, according to The New York Times. Nine firefighters and one civilian suffered minor injuries. Museum officials, after learning they might not have access to the building for three weeks, feared their collection of 85,000 objects might be destroyed, not from the fire but the water used to extinguish it. But on January 29, that city workers began recovering boxes that appear to be salvageable, Gothamist reported. 150 boxes—fewer than earlier estimates—were recovered on the first day of retrieval, Ma says. It’s a small fraction of the entire archive, the fate of which still hangs in the air as the recovery process continues and water seeps in.
A box removed from 75 Mulberry Street.
Approximately 40 of the boxes recovered showed clear signs of water damage, Ma says. They were immediately shipped to Allentown, Pennsylvania to be frozen and freeze-dried, a process that prevents future damage. These boxes were the worst-hit in part because they contained paper documentation, including books, photographs, and magazines, Ma says. The other boxes contained a potpourri of history. “We found porcelain dishes from Chinese restaurants and costumes and a stage prop from a Cantonese opera,” Ma says.
While museum officials wait for the city to announce when the next retrieval process will be, Ma keeps thinking of different objects in the collection that remain in the building. “We have a Chinese typewriter machine, which is really rare and might be one of two in America, and we have paper sculptures, which are probably damaged by water,” she says. “And we have rare books, letters, family histories, materials from businesses and grocery stores, school records, and immigration materials.” But Ma says she’s also been thinking about what has been saved, such as flight logs from Hazel Ling Yee, the first Chinese-American woman pilot, which were recently transported from the archives to go on display at the museum’s main building on 215 Centre Street. …
These Hong Kong storekeepers use trained chihuahuas to ward off shoplifters. Sometimes it works
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 22, 2017
Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity
In the field of political forecasting, almost nothing is a matter of certainty, and almost everything is a matter of probability. If Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders — who currently leads the field in Iowa and New Hampshire, and appears to be consolidating support among the party’s progressive wing, while its moderates remain splintered — his prospects against Donald Trump in November would be far from hopeless. Polarization has given any major party nominee a high enough floor of support that the term “unelectable” has no real place in the discussion. What’s more, every candidate in the race brings a suite of their own liabilities Trump could exploit.
That said, the totality of the evidence suggests Sanders is an extremely, perhaps uniquely, risky nominee. His vulnerabilities are enormous and untested. No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders would be insane.
Sanders has gleefully discarded the party’s conventional wisdom that it has to pick and choose where to push public opinion leftward, adopting a comprehensive left-wing agenda, some of which is popular, and some of which is decidedly not. Positions in the latter category include replacing all private health insurance with a government plan, banning fracking, letting prisoners vote, decriminalizing the border, giving free health care to undocumented immigrants, and eliminating ICE. (I am only listing Sanders positions that are intensely unpopular. I am not including positions, like national rent control and phasing out all nuclear energy, that I consider ill-advised but which probably won’t harm him much with voters.)
Not every one of these unpopular stances is unique to Sanders. Some have won the endorsement of rival candidates, and many of them have been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, Sanders’s closest rival. In fact, Sanders seem to have overtaken Warren in part because she spent most of 2019 closing the ideological gap between the two candidates, which made Democratic Party elites justifiably skeptical about her electability, thereby kneecapping her viability as a trans-factional candidate. Sanders probably wasn’t trying to undermine Warren by luring her into adopting all his policies, but it has worked out quite well for him, and poorly for her. …
What Does Nate Silver Know?
The famous data journalist thinks the media are making the same mistakes this year as they did in 2016.
IN NOVEMBER, I visited FiveThirtyEight’s offices in New York on picture day. For journalists who style themselves as nerds, the formal photo shoot was a mild form of torture. Nate Silver, the site’s founder, donned a blazer, forced a smile for his headshot, then snuck away to get back to work on the site’s 2020 primary forecast. Though FiveThirtyEight now has a staff of about 35, covering sports, pop culture, and more, the site’s essential element is still the elaborate models Silver himself builds to predict elections.
Silver, a former management consultant and professional poker player, got into the political-forecasting business in 2007, after growing frustrated by coverage of the Democratic primary on cable news. He could scarcely believe how bad the analysis was—based on little more than hunches and hoary wisdom, and either ignoring opinion polls or misusing them to create false narratives of momentum.
Exasperated by the guesswork of pundits, Silver championed the more objective science of polling. He aggregated polls, grading and weighting them to predict the outcome of the election—an egalitarian project that sought to replace the opinionating of insiders with quantitative analysis of voter sentiment. Silver’s wonky assurance seemed of a piece with the professorial cool of Barack Obama, whose victory he predicted in 2008, and again in 2012, when FiveThirtyEight correctly forecast the results in every state.
Then came 2016. Like most journalists, Silver initially underestimated Donald Trump, dismissing his chances of winning the Republican nomination. It was a rare embarrassment, one that Silver attributed to losing sight of a fundamental principle: Trust the polls. Trump had consistently led in surveys of GOP voters, but Silver had succumbed to the conventional wisdom that the interloper couldn’t possibly prevail. …
Historical Deaths You Can’t Help But Laugh At
We all hope that when our time comes, we go out gentle into that good night. Or perhaps we go out into that good night on a flaming motorcycle, unsuccessfully trying to jump a fireworks factory. Either way is good. But that’s assuming we have any control over our own deaths. But we need to remember that the Universe is a raging asshole with a flair for the dramatic and precisely zero chill. Look at how …
5. An Unnamed Man Was Eaten Alive By A Mouse
In 1875, a factory worker spied a mouse running across her worktable, causing her to scream (which, fair play, we’d all do). Her cries caught the attention of an unnamed gentleman who stepped forward and caught the mouse in his hands. But he didn’t have a great grip, so the mouse escaped and scurried up and around his body … and into his agape mouth, whereupon it slid down his throat.
With no place to go, the mouse then did what all mice do when they’re trapped: It began to dig. The mouse shredded the man’s insides, causing him to expire several hours later “in horrible agony.” It isn’t reported what happened to the mouse, but if we had to guess, it came out looking a lot fatter than when it went in. …
‘This was supposed to be reparations’ Why is LA’s cannabis industry devastating black entrepreneurs?
Black merchants affected by the war on drugs are denied licenses and thrown into debt as white owners thrive.
Lanaisha Edwards rented this Beverly Grove storefront for her planned cannabis store that was eventually rejected by the city.
A Los Angeles government program set up to provide cannabis licenses to people harmed by the war on drugs has been plagued by delays, scandal and bureaucratic blunders, costing some intended beneficiaries hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
Black entrepreneurs and activists across LA told the Guardian that the city’s embattled “social equity” program has left aspiring business owners on an indefinite waiting list, causing potentially irreparable damage to their families’ finances and preventing them from opening marijuana shops they have been planning for years.
Fewer than 20 of the 100 businesses on track to receive a license through the program appear to be black-owned, according to estimates from advocates, who say the community most disproportionately targeted by marijuana arrests is again facing discrimination. And even some of those applicants now face precarious futures.
Meanwhile, the existing LA industry is thriving – with many white business owners at the helm.
“How do you get to come and make millions of dollars off of our misery?” said Lanaisha Edwards, a south LA native who had applied for a cannabis license through the program. “The war on drugs destroyed so many families. We should at least get to come out on the other end and create some wealth out of it. But it’s not gonna happen the way this is going.” …
Real Men Fear Soy
A viral claim that plant burgers would make men grow breasts plays into long-held beliefs about power and sex
Burger King’s inaugural commercial for the Impossible Whopper, the plant-based burger it launched internationally in November, is dominated by burly men biting down and experiencing aggressive disbelief. In a hidden-camera scenario, loyal consumers of the Whopper are deceived, receiving an otherwise-identical burger whose patty has been forged from soy by the company Impossible Foods. True to the brand name, the men appear incredulous. Two are only able to process their emotions by swearing.
This is a [bleep] cow,” one man splutters. (It’s censored, but he clearly says fucking.)
Not to be outdone, the baritone narrator replies, “No [bleep] cow.”
The tension in the commercial derives from the divide between fast-food consumer bases, which skew male, and vegan consumer bases, which skew decidedly less so. Yet the manly Burger King customers ultimately come away open-minded—if not altogether converted—and say they’re more inclined to order an Impossible option tomorrow. Though it’s never addressed head on in the ad, there’s a clear subtext of sexual stigma: Are they really man enough to eat a soy burger?
Among at least some vegan-curious men, plant-based proteins are inextricably tied to gender. Thought-leading bros like the podcast guru Joe Rogan and the pop/clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson have turned to all-meat diets, fueling an eating trend that appeals to a sense of purity or natural order, despite knowing the burden of their choices on the planet. Taken to an extreme, some men believe that the primary ingredient in the Impossible Whopper and countless other vegan products will literally turn them into women. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Author Charles Yu explains the plot of his new book “Interior Chinatown” and airs his frustrations with Asian stereotypes in Hollywood.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Hasan recently interviewed 2020 presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders for Patriot Act’s episode on aging and retirement in America. Watch as Hasan and Bernie continue their conversation to further discuss the Senator’s presidential campaign, foreign policy in the Middle East, student loan forgiveness, and how he plans on working with Republicans if he becomes president.
THANKS to Netflix and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj for making this program available on YouTube.
LSSC Nursery Rhymes presents a brand new patriotic song to sing with your kids.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Me commentary on an epic Duck vs Tiger showdown.
まるとはなと節分。February 3rd is the day of Setsubun.
Setsubun: The day before the beginning of spring in Japan.
The “ghost snowblowers” of Surrey continue to disturb residents, and no one has taken responsibility
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 21, 2017
FINALLY . . .
The Belgrade Book Collection That Survived War, Fascism, and Neglect
One family has kept it going—and growing—since 1720.
The collection comprises volumes from all over the world, including this handwritten holy book, composed on parchment in an Ethiopian monastery.
VIKTOR LAZIC PAUSES IN FRONT of the first glass case on the ground floor of a small museum in Belgrade, Serbia. A parched manuscript lies below.
“This is made of rice,” he tells the group of visitors he’s showing around. “It’s a book from China, which you can eat if you are very hungry.” He gestures to the adjacent case, which contains a book from Thailand. “Then there is a book I don’t recommend you eat,” he says, with a smile and a flourish. “This is made from the dung of an elephant.”
The group titters.
Lazic is a 34-year-old writer, translator, and lawyer. He’s also a former president and trustee of the civil-society organization Adligat, which administers this vast and vibrant private collection of books that’s been in his family for nine generations. Founded by an ancestor in northern Serbia, the collection is divided into two parts: a book and travel museum, where the tour is taking place, and a museum of Serbian literature.
Lazic is leading the evening’s guests through a one-hour tour of the family home and library, where just a fraction of the million-plus books in the collection are currently displayed. The collection, spanning time and space, includes books from India, Algeria, Ethiopia, and Indonesia; books made from bamboo sticks, silk, and sheep foetuses; miniature books and scrolls; first editions and signed copies. …
This abandoned snow fort may date back to the mid-1800s
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 21, 2017
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? Hopefully, maybe.