• • • to set a mood • • •
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
This 1950s-era kit for Communist-hunters contained—among other things—a crucifix, a sprig of wintergreen, and a corncob pipe blessed by Dwight D. Eisenhower.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 20, 2018
For Sale: A Sprawling Carriage Factory and the House on Its Roof
A Syracuse rooftop still holds some pretty puzzling real estate.
The rooftop house, pictured here on the left, goes way back. Embiggenable.
HARVEY A. MOYER GOT INTO the carriage-making business about a quarter-century before the Ford Motor Company started making cars. It was a hard time to bet on the horse-hauled market. Moyer, who eventually got into the luxury automobile business himself, operated out of a vast brick factory complex in Syracuse, New York, at a time when other manufactures were revving up production to try and keep pace with rivals. More than a century after Moyer’s business ran out of gas, his old factory is up for sale. It comes with a storied history and a mysterious house perched on top.
Moyer mainly trafficked in handmade, horse-hauled vehicles. The H. A. Moyer Carriage Company set up shop in 1876, and the first building in Moyer’s industrial compound in Syracuse—which would eventually sprawl across some 200,000 square feet—went up in 1880, according to the Preservation Association of Central New York. By the first decade of the 1900s, when automobiles started bumping their way into the mainstream, Moyer expanded the factory’s footprint and broadened his business to so-called “horseless carriages.” He peddled a humble number of cars each year, built one at a time. But as Henry Ford and other manufactures began sending cars rolling off assembly lines—which led to zippier production and lower prices for customers—it was clear that Moyer was getting left in the dust.
Moyer’s carriages were advertised in circulars like this one from June 1887.
After the Moyer business went defunct, the complex became home to Porter-Cable, which still manufactures power tools. Later, it was home to the Penfield Manufacturing Co., and produced mattresses and box springs. The factory’s most recent owner, Yiorgos Kyriakopoulos, purchased the facility around 2005 and used it as a parking garage for a vast collection of vehicles.
Kyriakopoulos died a few years ago, and his estate is looking to offload the property, says Martin McDermott, a real estate salesperson at JF Real Estate who is overseeing the sale. The property is listed at $1.625 million, which includes all of the buildings and 2.2 acres of land. …
The final resting place of Old Miseryguts, the riverboat that was supposedly powered by hellfire and brimstone.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) November 20, 2018
‘Designed to wake people up’: Jonathan Jones unveils major public work at Hyde Park barracks
Stones have transformed 2500 sq metres of the barracks’ courtyard – reframing the site’s colonial history – in a work designed to be worn away.
Emu print or colonial logo? Jonathan Jones’ installation untitled (maraong manaóuwi).
From 1819 until 1848, Hyde Park barracks housed some of Sydney’s convict labour force, their toil helping to displace and decimate the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. When Aboriginal people resisted the British colonisers, former and serving convicts sometimes joined armed soldiers and free settlers in murderous retaliation.
The barracks remains a Unesco world heritage-listed museum, and this weekend will reopen with new, immersive audio and visual technology telling its history inside.
The outside of the structure has been reinvented, too. Wiradjuri-Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones’ new public art installation – untitled (maraong manaóuwi), which means emu footprint in Gadigal – required a team of a dozen people to cover 2500 sq metres of the courtyard with stones, to symbolise shared black and white history.
In a design repeated on each square metre of the courtyard, workers have used stencils to embed white stones in the shape of what might be interpreted as an emu’s footprint – but which is also reminiscent of the colonial broad arrow printed on convict uniforms. …
Related: Hyde Park Barracks Reopening: How Sydney Living Museums is changing the way we look at history
Sensory immersion: Local Projects created a museum for the future, where present and past collide in an experiential symphony.
When Hyde Park Barracks reopens in February 2020, it will deliver a whole new museum experience – one in which visitors don’t just read about history, but are immersed in it.
It’s one thing to read about the conditions that Australia’s early convicts endured. But to really understand what life in Sydney was like in the first half of the 19th century, you have to be able to feel it. …
The Hidden History of Sanders’ Plot to Primary Obama
Democrats’ previous president and maybe their next one have a particularly fraught relationship.
When Bernie Sanders mounted his initial Senate run in 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama came to Vermont to campaign for him.
BERNIE SANDERS got so close to running a primary challenge to President Barack Obama that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him.
It took Reid two conversations over the summer of 2011 to get Sanders to scrap the idea, according to multiple people who remember the incident, which has not been previously reported.
That summer, Sanders privately discussed a potential primary challenge to Obama with several people, including Patrick Leahy, his fellow Vermont senator. Leahy, alarmed, warned Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager. Obama’s campaign team was “absolutely panicked” by Leahy’s report, Messina told me, since “every president who has gotten a real primary has lost a general [election].”
David Plouffe, another Obama strategist, confirmed Messina’s account, as did another person familiar with what happened. (A spokesman for Leahy did not comment when asked several times about his role in the incident.)
Messina called Reid, then the Senate majority leader, who had built a strong relationship with Sanders but was also fiercely defensive of Obama. What could you be thinking? Reid asked Sanders, according to multiple people who remember the conversations. You need to stop. …
Unrelated: ‘The Daily Show With Trevor Noah’ Gives Mike Bloomberg And His Pips A Few Hits During The Democratic Debate
Trevor Noah
One of these things is not like the other, as tonight’s Democratic presidential candidates debate featured the debut of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been furiously spending his way into the scrum.
Bloomberg’s stalking of the candidates field has thrown a chaotic fray into panic mode, as he’s been spending, spending, spending in advance of Super Tuesday. To his competitors, that means he must be stopped now at tonight’s Maginot Line.
So far, Bloomberg has gotten a warm and fuzzy greeting from his on-stage companions, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah gave him a few online kicks as well.
…
The Boy Scouts Of America Runs Out Of Pedophile Funds, Declares Bankruptcy
The Boy Scouts of America is all about learning how to survive. And over the past century, it sure has created a lot of survivors, with 7,819 documented cases of suspected abusers and 12,254 of underaged victims, and those numbers are still rising. So now, with the help of the government, the organization is finally taking drastic steps to safeguard what is most important to them, making sure Adult Boys Scouts won’t be getting their hands on their sweet, innocent funds.
Thanks to direly needed adjustments to local state laws regarding sexual assault, the Boy Scouts of America, where you earn your Eagle Scout badge by pretending not to see the rampant child molestation, is being overwhelmed by hundreds of new lawsuits from abused former Boy Scouts. But afraid they’ll run out of money long before they’ll run out of victims, the Boy Scouts have officially filed for bankruptcy, as it will allow them to make payouts through a trust instead of loud, public lawsuits.
While the Boy Scouts has done much good for its 130 million members over its lifetime, it’s hard to feel bad for an organization that has knowingly covered up for its abusers since day one. As early as the 1920s, the Boy Scouts have been keeping lists of known “degenerates” who they were letting take kids into the woods. These “Perversion Files” were supposed to keep tabs on molesters and make sure they never Scouted again, but were never voluntarily shared with law enforcement or parents, only made public in 2012 when an Oregon court ordered the Boy Scouts to do so — after also ordering them to pay out $18,5 million in punitive damages.
Instead, the Perversion Files were only seen by Scout members who had earned their sexual predator coverup badge, the kind of people who wrote back to concerned local chapter heads: “I agree that sleeping in the nude and showing boys pornographic books indicated very poor judgment with dealing with Cub Scouts. I do not know, however, that this is a serious enough offense to refuse registration.” Or as another top BS executive, when asked under oath if he was aware of the “problem of scouts being molested by adult leaders,” put it: “Not quite sure it’s a problem.” As a result, rampant abuse with little oversight continued throughout the Boy Scouts’ existence, leading to the sorry state of affairs today where thousands of men can’t tie an Alpine Butterfly knot without their hands trembling or hear the unzipping of a tent flap without PTSD flashbacks. …
We’ve Vastly Underestimated How Much Methane Humans Are Spewing Into The Atmosphere
Tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped in ice cores from Greenland suggest we’ve been seriously overestimating the natural cycle of methane, while vastly undervaluing our own terrible impact.
Methane is an ‘invisible climate menace‘ – roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapper than carbon dioxide – and while some of this atmospheric gas is produced naturally, new research indicates humans are responsible for far more of it than we thought until now.
Before the industrial revolution, when humans began to extract and burn fossil fuels on the regular, natural methane emissions were an order of magnitude smaller than current estimates, the study suggests.
Today, this means our own methane emissions might be up to 40 percent higher than suspected.
“Our results imply that anthropogenic methane emissions now account for about 30 percent of the global methane source and for nearly half of [all] anthropogenic emissions… ” the authors write.
Over the past three centuries, methane emissions have shot up by roughly 150 percent, but because this atmospheric gas is also produced naturally, it’s been difficult to tell exactly where the emissions are coming from. …
Fashion Institute apologises for ‘clearly racist’ show
A New York City-based fashion college has apologised after a catwalk show was labelled racist.
Models were asked to wear prosthetic ears, lips and bushy eyebrows for a collection run by fashion design students at the event in Manhattan.
The accessories were criticised online after an African-American model said she would not wear the “clearly racist” items at the event on 7 February.
The Fashion Institute of Technology said the matter was being investigated.
“Currently,” its president Joyce F Brown said in a statement, “it does not appear that the original intent of the design, the use of accessories or the creative direction of the show was to make a statement about race. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
This violinist played her violin while undergoing brain surgery so surgeons would know she could still perform.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Can we have an honest discussion about the Happy Birthday song?
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
If it fits in my cheeks, I eats! Wild hamsters roam the graveyards of Vienna in search of fresh flowers and candle-wax, sometimes with hilarious consequences!
THANKS to BBC Earth for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Me commentary on a bunch of drunk blokes having a swimming race after downing vodka. Source video is from an Estonian TV show (i.e it’s a sketch). Looks like it was made in a darkly comical manner to address drinking and swimming, which you should not do of course ya dickheads!
In The Know panelists discuss how Alcoholics Anonymous wreaks havoc on the friendships of Americans by turning the ‘life of the party’ into a sanctimonious bore.
In 1960s Moscow, the most stylish item you could wear to a party was a necklace of exquisitely crafted porcelain jellyfish.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) November 20, 2018
FINALLY . . .
The ‘Pie Designer’ Baking Up a Diverse Vision of America
Lauren Ko is as American as mango pie.
Ko’s American pies represent a broader slice of the country.
WHEN LAUREN KO SAYS SHE’S a pie designer, she often gets quizzical looks—until she opens Instagram. Her account, Lokokitchen, which functions like a baker’s portfolio, is flush with a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of colors, geometric patterns, and scrumptious fillings that make one thing clear: Her pie game is on another level.
Ko’s colorful creations have won her big-name acclaim—she’s been featured in The Washington Post, Vogue, and Martha Stewart. But her most recent project, My American Pie, tells the stories of Americans from all over the country, from the verdant hills of Kentucky to the lively shores of Rockaway Beach in New York City. Working with the collaboration lab ResidNYC, Ko took stories sourced by the lab and baked them into a celebration of America’s diversity.
“The traditional image of an American is usually Caucasian with blonde hair and blue eyes,” says Ko, “but there are lots of people who identify as American.”
Ko’s pie is tinged with sapphire blue, which is inspired by the colors of the Honduran flag and her Chinese grandmother’s porcelain.
Ko kicked off the series on Instagram last July with her own pie, which she filled with mango, a nod to her picking the fragrant fruit as a kid. In her post, she’s vulnerable about growing up in a multicultural household. “I’m not just Chinese, I’m not just Honduran and not just American, but all of that plays and factors in together to create my own story,” Ko says. …
Ed. What a cool place to end today.
A little-known Senate rule—last invoked on this day in 1874—allows the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrange and preside over boxing matches on the Senate floor
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 20, 2017
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? Not saying ‘no’, probably.