Is @FARK's @DrewCurtis a master prognosticator? A time traveler? Or is there another explanation?https://t.co/7TwljO7rXJ
— TruthOrFiction.com (@erumors) May 7, 2020
wales has fallen pic.twitter.com/uQHMZEOiOV
—
(@2damntrans) May 7, 2020
• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Preserving Ukraine’s Soviet Past, One Mosaic At a Time
“We’re trying to collect everything before it’s gone.”
The mosaic panel “Blacksmiths of the Present,” on a wall at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in Kyiv, was created in 1974 by artists Galina Zubchenko and Grygoryi Pryshedko.
ON A SUNNY SPRING DAY IN KYLV, Ukraine, two people stand before a massive mosaic on the side of the Institute for Nuclear Research, stepping back a few feet to take it all in. It’s rare for people to stop and take notice; most locals walk right past this artwork—wearing coronavirus masks, of course—oblivious to its dizzying array of textures, materials, and colors. Images of two working men span the width of the building, each several stories high, their bodies a rich spectrum of browns and grays. Their gaze is on the red-hot core of a star in the center of the building—a rainbow of orange and yellow rays emanating to the edges of the panel, titled “Blacksmiths of the Present.”
Across Ukraine, there are hundreds of works of art like this one. Big, bold, and bright, they convey variations of the communist propaganda that was spread across the country during Soviet times. For better or worse, they also tell the story of Ukraine’s history.
To Lubava Illyenko, it’s a story worth saving.
Born in Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Russia, Illyenko moved to Ukraine when she was 14 years old. Today she’s an art historian writing her doctoral thesis at the University of Augsburg in Germany, with a focus on Ukraine’s Soviet mosaics.
A mosaic panel from the 1970s, on the main building of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry. The artists were Stepan Kirichenko, Roman Kirichenko, and Nadiya Klein.
She’s also involved with a project to catalog these mosaics that’s supported by Izolyatsia (“isolation” in Russian)—a nonprofit organization that aims to create systemic changes in Ukraine via cultural initiatives. Originally located in a former insulation-materials factory in Donetsk, Ukraine, Izolyatsia was founded in 2010 by a businesswoman named Lyubov Mikhailova. It was forced to move to Kyiv in June 2014, when the territory was seized by armed representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. …
Depressed Cat Just Going Through Motions Of Destroying Couch https://t.co/cEL6GgZVL1 pic.twitter.com/GERXUvwgML
— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 8, 2020
Their States Are in Crisis. They’re Declaring Victory Anyway.
For the Republican governors reopening their economies, “bad news may be around the corner.”
Five Republican governors proudly declared victory over the coronavirus this week and offered up their response as a model for other states to follow. States can have it all, their message seemed to be: both a healthy populace and a thriving economy.
Yet of these five states—Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming—at least four are seeing an increase in positive test results or contain hot spots for new cases. “It’s way too early to do a victory lap,” Ross Brownson, an epidemiology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told me. “There’s no measure that any public-health expert would come up with that would say this is a success.” The governors’ decision to stay “open for business” in recent weeks—as they phrased it in a Washington Post op-ed—as well as their choice to begin loosening the mostly limited restrictions they had in place, will almost certainly result in an increase in coronavirus cases, public-health experts told me.
Most of the states limited only select parts of their economy, and all of them began lifting local restrictions during the first week of May. Theirs is an understandable urge: Small businesses are going under, and people are struggling to pay their mortgage and afford groceries. Many are feeling the economic devastation of the virus, without actually seeing its public-health impact. But experts worry that they’re reopening their economies much too fast, and without the necessary precautions. “It would feel really good to go back to our normal lives,” Lynn Goldman, an epidemiologist and the dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, told me. “Unfortunately, though, these efforts to go back to normal prematurely are going to result in second waves of the epidemic.” …
Trevor Noah on the pandemic: ‘It’s been especially hard on Donald Trump’
Late-night hosts discussed the president’s complaining as well as his refusal to wear a mask while visiting a mask factory.
Trevor Noah on Trump: ‘He spent three years not preparing for a pandemic because he was distracted by all the scandals he created.’
Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s inability to follow safety precautions and his willingness to let Americans die to protect the economy.
Trevor Noah
Trump must be feeling invincible: not only did he raw dog the air at a mask factory, he did an interview with an outlet other than Fox News. pic.twitter.com/cGS3idLFlG
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 7, 2020
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah spoke about the coronavirus pandemic being hard on everyone but “it’s been especially hard on Donald Trump” as he’s used to playing golf and travelling around “like an ignorant Dora the Explorer”.
On a trip to Arizona, the president left Air Force One and proceeded to try to shake the hand of a greeting official but instead opted for an awkward back slap. “What is the point in avoiding a handshake if you then wipe your hands all over the other guy’s suit?” Noah asked. “At that point you’re just using him as a corona napkin.”
Trump also refused to wear a mask while visiting a mask factory. “The mask would literally the least distracting thing on his head,” he said.
During an ABC News interview, Trump claimed that he wasn’t preparing for the pandemic because of the “hoaxes” created by his detractors. “He spent three years not preparing for a pandemic because he was distracted by all the scandals he created,” he said.
Trump has also blamed Barack Obama for he inherited. “It feels like anytime Trump needs an excuse, his go-to is Obama,” he said. “He’s probably been doing this since he was a kid.” …
RELATED: Why Doesn’t Trump Wear A Mask
On Tuesday, Donald Trump visited an Arizona mask-making factory as part of his Douchnozzle PR Tour 2020, where he made the conscious decision not to wear a mask. It’s a confounding choice, at least at first blush, why a person would forgo wearing protective gear at a place where you manufacture protective gear. Sure, even if you grant that Trump didn’t need one as he claims, doesn’t it still kind of signal to the workers, “Hey, I don’t care about the thing you do here.” It’d be like if a vegan went to a meat-packing plant, not to protest or as a form of activism, but just to enjoy the ambiance.
Trump not wearing mask but goggles at Honeywell facility. Other aides not wearing masks at all. Sign in facility says “face mask required in this area.” pic.twitter.com/Uq7Fr2ioeS
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 5, 2020
But when you begin to put yourself in Trump’s shoes and matching tiny gloves, things start to make sense. Trump, above all else, is afraid to look weak. He can’t look weak. He’s President Macho-Big-Boy. It’s all he has. So even though he’s a noted germaphobe — to the point where he will insist people leave the room if they cough — wearing a mask in public is not an option for him.
We’ve written before about this administration forgoing protective masks in an effort to look brave or saintly. Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask when visiting the Mayo clinic last week. But while Pence has since apologized for his actions, Trump will never and can never do the same. It’s the same reason Mussolini would rip his shirt off Hulkamania-style while skiing:
It’s unbridled machismo in lieu of a plan, and right now, Trump doesn’t have much of a plan to keep coronavirus from messing with his reelection chances.
There’s also a narcissistic aspect to it for sure. Trump wants every camera to see the full brunt of his bronzer-smeared face. …
PHOTOSHOP TIME:
ENHANCE pic.twitter.com/yk3rY0kRti
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 7, 2020
I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough
Then came a pandemic during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Caitlin Flanagan
THE GOOD THING about having Stage IV cancer is that nobody thinks you’re bellyaching when you complain about it. It’s a field day for the discontented. You get to wander around muttering to yourself, “Stage IV cancer! Could it get any worse?”
Rilke taught us not to seek the answers but to love the questions. Good advice. Now I’m stuck in my house muttering, “Stage IV cancer during a pandemic! Could it get any—oh, never mind.”
I’m one of the people all of this social distancing is helping to stay alive, so far. I belong to the group of people—the infirm, the weak—who certain conservatives have said should offer themselves up to the coronavirus. I’m part of the “cure” that mustn’t be worse than “the problem,” according to Donald Trump. Glenn Beck seems to think we should show our patriotism by volunteering to be killed by the virus rather than “kill the country.”
I’ve come close to dying a few times, and I’m not afraid anymore, just sad. I’m like a war correspondent or an assassin—all I need is the call, and I’ll be gone in the night. I wish I had something helpful to say, now, about fear; for a long time, I was so terrified that I could hardly breathe. Somehow, you get used to it.
But if I die from the coronavirus, it will be one more unnecessary American death. Every epidemiologist in the world warned us the pandemic was coming, yet we were totally unprepared. And even after governors and public-health experts performed the astonishing feat of getting huge numbers of Americans to stay home, Trump continued to undermine them.
In March, he got bored and floated the idea that we’d all be sprung by Easter. In April, Central Park became a field hospital and refrigerated trucks were moving through New York City. Easter—victory over death—came and went. We tuned out the president, and listened only to experts. The experts said we weren’t getting out anytime soon. …
RELATED: Why Some of Us Thrive in a Crisis
For the lonely and misanthropic, these times bring surprising solidarity.
I KNOW A WOMAN, very nearly a misanthrope—I’ll call her Stella—who lives alone and is convinced that everyone in the world has a better life than she. Stella’s days are often consumed by the kind of envious depression that only a solitary of her stripe can experience. Years of psychotherapy have persuaded her that she alone can break her isolation, yet she is unable to act on what she knows. But a few weeks ago, as everyone everywhere was being put under house arrest, I called to see how she was doing and, in a voice clear as a bell, she said, “Fine, I’m fine.” Startled, I asked, “How come?” Equally startled, she said, “Because we’re all in this together.”
Ah, I thought, that’s it. Inequality had always been her bête noire. Now that we were facing a threat of illness and death from which no one was exempt, the playing field felt level to her. A privileged life wouldn’t necessarily save a person any more than a desperate one would condemn another. I understood. I have long thought that social inequality is the bane of human existence. To me, equality, more than justice or liberty, is what we crave.
Still, I thought, it was curious that my friend was able to throw off the compulsion of her solitary state so quickly, connecting herself so fast to the crisis at hand. And very soon I saw the phenomenon replicate itself in others like her—loners who sped into public service faster than altruism could explain. These were people who trusted no one, joined nothing, signed nothing; yet here they were making masks, checking on neighbors, bagging groceries. What, exactly, was motivating them now to assume an attitude of solidarity?
In puzzling over this question, I’ve found myself thinking of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg more than once. Ginzburg came from a dysfunctional family and very young she learned that self-protection required the cultivation of an inner distance from others. Eventually it took a heavy toll. In adolescence, she developed a “stony-faced” (her word) hauteur that made her feel unreal to herself, and soon enough it made everyone around her seem unreal as well. In time she became sealed into an emotional anomie that hardened with the years. …
Everyday Stuff America Sucks At (Compared To Everybody Else)
There are a lot of not great things about the great U.S. of A. But we’re not talking about the big stuff like healthcare or gun control or deciding which handsy uncle gets to become the next de facto Emperor of Planet Earth. We’re here to point out all the unnecessary stuff America sucks at compared to the rest of the world, the kind of things that should make us consider cancelling the Fourth of July because we’re generally terrible at wiping our butts. Speaking of which …
7. Americans Continue To Be Too Uptight To Use Bidets
As per the teachings of the Canadian Americanologist Chad Kroeger, the true American Dream is to have a brand new house on an episode of Cribs and a bathroom you can play baseball in. Yet despite all that room to spare in these cavernous halls of cleansing, Americans are still real anal about not installing bidets.
Bidets have been in use for centuries by the kind of cultures who don’t like the idea of digging into your recently soiled buttcrack with only the gossamer promise of a cartoon teddy bear keeping your hand from being streaked by your own effluents. But from time immemorial, English-speaking countries have had an inbred aversion to anything French, and aside from putting an ashtray onto someone’s back during a threesome, bidets are about as decadently French as things can get. A reputation that was only strengthened during World War II when American GIs encountered these poop chute cleaners in French brothels, linking immorality to the innocent gift of feeling like you’re being cleansed by the trumpeting cherub atop a Roman fountain.
As a result, Americans still tear through toilet paper at a rate of 36.5 billion rolls or 15 million trees a year, a dependency that didn’t need to happen if its pilgrim pooper Puritanism hadn’t scorned a cleaning tool much more copacetic to colons and the climate than those moist towelettes that lie about being biodegradable. …
RELATED: Your Bathroom Will Be Fit For Royalty After You Get These Accessories
This piece was written by the Cracked Shop to tell you about products that are being sold there.
Your bathroom is a sacred space. Hallowed ground. Don’t let it be just any old room of ceramics. We’ve rounded up some of the coolest bathroom accessories around so you can make your whiz palace a, well, palace. …
‘His head wasn’t in the world of reality’: how the plot to invade Venezuela fell apart
Deeply flawed from the start, the audacious plan to overthrow Nicolás Maduro unravelled spectacularly.
Jordan Goudreau, a green beret turned security contractor who plotted to overthrow Maduro.
As get-rich-quick schemes go it was unusually complicated. Invade a foreign country you know little about. Abduct its president to the US. Collect a $15m bounty from the US government – and maybe an even bigger payoff from the people who then seize power.
The plan to overthrow Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and bundle him off to Florida to face drug trafficking charges seemed foolproof to a former US army staff sergeant, Jordan Goudreau, as he mapped it out in a luxury Miami apartment in late 2019. The 43-year-old Canadian-American was certain his years as a green beret in Iraq and Afghanistan had prepared him for the task.
And for the opponents of Maduro he was addressing, it must have sounded convincing – even after the failure of a previous coup attempt in 2019.
Representatives of Juan Guaidó – the opposition leader recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate president by the US and most of its allies – signed a fat contract engaging Goudreau to overthrow Maduro.
But in interviews with the Guardian, a senior opposition figure said they grew to doubt Goudreau and eventually broke with him months before he launched a disastrous raid this week that echoed the botched 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. …
Zero-waste warriors: meet the people whose household rubbish fits in a jam jar
From making their own toothpaste to foraging locally for edible plants, more and more people are learning to cut the amount of rubbish they throw out. Here’s how they do it.
Ander Zabala with his jar that contains all the waste his household of two produced in January.
Ander Zabala, recycling manager for Hackney council, London
Through my work, I have seen the huge amount of waste and recycling that we produce. Watching an incinerator for half an hour shocked me and made me want to take action. I was standing on a balcony wearing a full body suit and goggles watching gigantic grabbers emptying waste from trucks. The scale is so shocking and you realise how tiny we are compared to the amount of waste we create. I don’t want to contribute to that wastefulness and it has made me want to take action.
In 2018, I did the Zero Waste Week challenge and then kept going. I set myself a goal for 2019 of not having any waste collected. I made that commitment on social media, so I felt invested. Instead of using a bin, I put my waste in a jar each month so that I could see what I was throwing away. I also reduced the amount I was recycling.
I look at waste from a data perspective. At the end of 2019, I opened all the jars of non-recyclable waste I was keeping. They weighed a total of 5.72kg for the year. The average London house produces 10kg of waste a week, compared with my household’s weekly average of 0.11kg. So our waste was 99% less than the average.
My husband and I get a veg box delivery from Riverford every week. I buy most other things loose from my local corner shop and other bits from a nearby Bulk Market and Turkish supermarket. I bring my own containers and bags to fill with cereals, flour, pasta, rice, tofu, sugar, coffee beans, lentils, spices and more. I also refill my shampoo, washing-up liquid, laundry liquid and toilet cleaner bottles. I also get bottle refills of wine from a local shop.
At first I felt a bit weird taking my own containers, but it forces you to explain what you are doing to people around you. …
Turns Out A 1993 ‘Simpsons’ Episode Eerily Predicted The Exact Ways In Which 2020 Would Be Catastrophic
WE CAN’T BEELIEVE IT EITHER
It references some of the most terrible things we’ve experienced this year: an epidemic and, improbably, bees.
Shit the simpsons really did predict 2020 pic.twitter.com/dadM5jvLrB
— Eddie D’ohgrou (@didgeridougrou) May 6, 2020
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Within the last few years, some funeral directors have invested in more eco-friendly alternatives to traditional burials and flame cremations. One of these methods is a process known as Alkaline Hydrolysis, or water cremation.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
If the UK government wants to start easing the country’s lockdown restrictions, it needs to get contact tracing right. But what does that mean? What would successful contact tracing even look like? Josh Toussaint-Strauss tries to find out with a little help from Oxford Professor and infectious disease epidemiologist, Christophe Fraser, and the Guardian’s UK technology editor, Alex Hern.
COVID-19 survivors who were critically ill describe frightening experiences in the intensive-care unit. “I was positive they were trying to kill me,” one young patient says. Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/video/arc…
Llamas may hold the key to curing coronavirus, and one Dutch restaurant is giving us a glimpse of what our post-corona future might look like.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
The President won’t be photographed wearing a mask, won’t push states to follow the White House’s own reopening guidelines, and is waging a war on information as he prepares to launch a bizarre “Star Wars”-inspired phase of his reelection campaign.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth takes a closer look at the Trump administration testing themselves, but not you, for COVID-19.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
The Taoists observed that humans tend to act in ways that are counterproductive. And in their attempts to alter the natural way, they only make things worse. All these strivings, rules, ethics, values, surely are invented to benefit humanity. But according to the ancient Taoist sages, we should get rid of them all.
Why?
Because all these manmade ideas only remove us further from the natural flow of life. Trying to alter what nature has intended, is like swimming against the stream: it’s exhausting and gets us nowhere.
This video is about not trying to change the world, to gain the world.
FINALLY . . .
Art Challenge: Readers Draw Places They’ve Never Seen
Some of your creations are even more extraordinary than their real-life counterparts.
A vision of the Swing at the End of the World in Ecuador in oils, by Alexandrea Farquhar. Embiggenable.
A FEW WEEKS AGO, WE set out a challenge: Draw a picture of a place from Atlas Obscura using only a written description for reference. The results were beyond impressive. We received submissions from readers young and old, experienced artists and casual doodlers, each with a unique take on one of places in the challenge.
We saw submissions that came pretty close to matching the real thing, and others that were something completely fanciful and new. They came in a variety of mediums, from pencil to ink to oils, such as Alexandrea Farquhar’s beautiful oil painting of the Swing at the End of the World, above.
While we couldn’t include all of the artwork we received, we’ve compiled a few of our favorites here—followed by images of the actual place. If you still want to try the challenge yourself, stop scrolling now! We’d love to see what you create in the forums or by email to places@atlasobscura.com. Thanks to everyone who participated—keep an eye out for future Obscura Academy challenges!
Fly Geyser
On the edge of Black Rock Desert in Nevada, this otherworldly hot spring formed around the site of an improperly-sealed test well. If a large rock with multiple cone-shaped geyser spouts weren’t strange enough, the mound is covered in algae that color the surface bright red and green. Some of our readers it as tall and skinny, others short and squat. And one young artist put his math skills to work determining the geyser’s proportions. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
Good times!
In that case, as a Nation, you are fucked. https://t.co/UndjBrxPci
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 7, 2020
Need something more barely uninteresting at all to do?
Right now there’s one bird sitting on what appears to be a bunch of eggs. The other bird seems to be looking for something tasty to kill.
Ed. Yes, that’s a cut-and-paste of another day.