• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
A Border Town Is Now Isolated From Both the U.S. and Canada
Ever since COVID-19 shut down the border, Point Roberts has been neither here nor there.
From Maple Beach in Point Roberts, Washington, locals have a clear view of Canada to the north. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
ON A CLEAR SATURDAY MORNING in July, I called the Saltwater Café in Point Roberts, Washington. The café is usually crowded with dozens of customers seated inside and out on the patio, taking in the view of the Gulf Islands across the Salish Sea and enjoying the salty breeze from the beach across the street. “On a normal weekend, you can’t get a seat,” said owner Tamra Hansen. But on the morning she talked to me, just one table was occupied; business has been down 75 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Across the U.S., businesses and communities are struggling. But Point Roberts is in a unique position—not just figuratively, but geographically. Located on the tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, the town falls entirely below the 49th parallel, the line that separates Canada and the U.S. To reach the closest town in the mainland U.S., Point Roberts residents must cross into Canada through a border checkpoint at the northern end of town, drive about 25 miles, then cross back into the U.S. through yet another checkpoint near Blaine, Washington.
Usually, those crossings are a mere formality; before the pandemic, it wasn’t uncommon for U.S. and Canadian citizens to cross the border several times a day for sports practices, shopping trips, and visits. But since officials restricted cross-border travel in March, Point Roberts’ roughly 1,000 full-time residents find themselves unexpectedly isolated, estranged from their usual lifestyle. Now, the invisible line dividing the two countries stands in the way of what was once an easy drive, and after four months of the pandemic, people on the Point miss the things they used to take for granted. “It’s very odd to be seven minutes away,” said Jessie Hettinga, a Point Roberts resident. “That was your life, but now, that’s not a possibility.”
It’s a common misconception that Point Roberts was a mistake; people often assume that when the U.S. and Great Britain signed the 1846 Oregon Treaty, which established the 49th parallel as the border between the two nations’ territories, land surveyors didn’t realize they were carving off Point Roberts from Canada. But the choice was intentional, meant to serve as a strategic advantage for the U.S., said Mark Swenson, treasurer of the Point Roberts Historical Society and author of Point Roberts Backstory, a history of the town. …
The Return of Anonymous
The infamous hacker group reemerges from the shadows.
AT THE END OF MAY, as protests against the police killing of George Floyd got under way, reports started to circulate that the shadowy hacker group Anonymous was back.
The rumors began with a video depicting a black-clad figure in the group’s signature Guy Fawkes mask. “Greetings, citizens of the United States,” the figure said in a creepy, distorted voice. “This is a message from Anonymous to the Minneapolis Police Department.” The masked announcer addressed Floyd’s killing and the larger pattern of police misconduct, concluding, “We will be exposing your many crimes to the world. We are legion. Expect us.”
The clip generated a wave of renewed enthusiasm for Anonymous, particularly among young people. Twitter accounts associated with the group saw a surge of new followers, a couple of them by the millions.
At the height of its popularity, in 2012, Anonymous had been a network of thousands of activists, a minority of them hackers, devoted to leftist-libertarian ideals of personal freedom and opposed to the consolidation of corporate and government power. But after a spate of arrests, it had largely faded from view.
Now a new generation was eager to join. “How does one apply to be a part of Anonymous? I just wanna help out, I’ll even make the hackers coffee or suttin” an activist in the United Kingdom joked on Twitter, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. …
Homicides rise across US cities amid pandemic and economic crisis
The exact reason for the rise is unknown, but economic hardship could force people to turn to crime, experts say.
Data in July found data that compared to 2019, murder was up a combined 23% to a total of 2,219 murders in the 23 largest American cities.
As the United States struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic and attendant economic disruption, another problem may be looming – murder rates have risen in many of America’s largest cities.
Murders are up by double-digit percentages in cities across America, including New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, according to crime statistics, while some smaller cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida, have also seen significant increases.
Rates of homicide and gun assault began to increase in late May, according to data from the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice, and while the murder rate is still low compared with previous decades, the evidence is clear: the situation is worsening.
Last year was particularly low for murder, but even compared with the last five years, 2020 has seen a serious increase.
“Overall it is pretty unquestionable that there is more violence, we’re hearing that anecdotally and it’s certainly what the data is showing too,” said Charles Ransford, senior director of science and policy, at Cure Violence Global, an organization which trains outreach workers to intervene and mediate conflict in communities which have a high rate of violence. …
On dangerous ground
Stemming evictions is the first step to preventing homelessness, but in light of the pandemic, will it be enough?
The date of Aug. 11 has been looming in Ruy Arango’s mind for months. It’s an expiration date — the day when the last of the state’s emergency policies protecting Coloradans from eviction will expire. The housing-justice advocate kneads his knuckles, leans forward and says, “We are looking at an eviction crisis the likes of which this country, I don’t think, has seen yet.”
In Colorado, the end of Governor Jared Polis’ eviction moratorium and its subsequent eviction-filing extensions have coincided with a massive reduction in federal aid provided to people via the CARES Act. On July 31, the Act’s $600-a-week unemployment benefits stopped, though many people remain dependent on such relief funds to pay rent and utilities, among other household necessities like food and medicines. (It’s unclear as of press time if a new benefits package will be passed by Congress, and what it will include.)
For many who remain un- or under-employed, coupling the revival of evictions with this additional loss of income draws the prospect of homelessness closer than ever. It’s an alarming confluence of events, says Boulder City Council member Adam Swetlik, considering financial hardship is the primary reason people in the county become unhoused.
Rental assistance has already been the number-one request from Boulder County residents to assistance organizations during the pandemic. Lawyers, politicians and social justice advocates alike are calling for a re-extension of the governor’s eviction moratorium, as preventing eviction is the most effective way to prevent homelessness. In the meantime, the network of localized community resource teams, fundraising experts, coordinated county and city services, and hard-working neighbors like Arango that’ve been keeping thousands of Boulder County residents from eviction are determined to continue their work for the foreseeable future. …
4 Old-Timey Diet Fads That Were Pure Insanity
Every day, it seems like new health crazes that promise to help you lose weight fast. Whether it’s shady teas sold by influencers, diet books from celebrities who should know better, or companies who double-pinky swear that their new burger is so healthy, it’s technically a vegetable.
The thing is, though, while it might seem like open season for the grifters today, this is nothing compared to what health-conscious consumers had to endure in the past …
4. “Eat the air!”
When you’re trying to lose weight, you generally have to eat less. However, breatharianism is a fad that took this simple fact to the extreme while also killing some people.
To the uninitiated, breatharianism is the belief that through mediation and the like, you can train your body to survive on nothing but air. That’s no food, no drink, no nothing. It’s been around in various forms since the ’70s, but it really came to prominence in the 90’s thanks to some high-profile influencers like Jasmuheen, aka Ellen Greve, who was the movement’s biggest figure thanks to her popular book “Living on Light” — which is a reference to how breatharians ‘feed’ on nutrients in the air, a practice known as ‘pranic nourishment.’
Her fame really topped out in 1999 when, after years of talking about how she didn’t require food, 60 Minutes arranged for her to sit on-camera in a guarded room and demonstrate her beliefs to the world. She lasted four days before the experiment had to be halted due to medical reasons, i.e., that between the dehydration, high blood pressure, and kidney failure, she was slowly dying while, presumably, waiting for the camera to run out of video.
Oddly, between this and the interview where she admits eating food, her profile wasn’t harmed among her followers.
The same could not be said for an earlier high-profile breatharian, Wiley Brooks. Brooks was caught in 1983, either ordering a chicken pot pie in a hotel restaurant or buying Twinkies from a 7-Eleven (depending on who you ask). It was enough to cause people to walk out of his breatharian organization, which considering how many calories these people consume, must’ve been a sight to behold.
Despite the insanity and the numerous, numerous deaths associated with people attempting this ‘diet,’ breatharianism still occasionally makes a reappearance in the news — but thankfully, it’s not taken very seriously … For now. …
RELATED: Robot Trucks Will Soon Screw Up The U.S.A. (And Nobody’s Talking About It)
Do you remember when Game of Thrones was still airing, how sometimes there’d be a multiple-episode arc about subtle political machinations being reversed and then counter-reversed only to later learn that the counter-reversal was actually part of the original plan and you wanted to scream “Oh my god! There are ice demons like ten miles away, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING?” Well, that’s how I feel about an issue that is going to fundamentally reshape American society, but instead of cold dead guys, it’s robot cars.
While this column isn’t about the threat posed by Transformers, it is about a robot apocalypse that’s going to ravage the Midwest. I know, I know, the last thing you want to hear about right now is another imminent doomsday — aren’t global warming and COVID-19 and murder hornets and measles and the ever-present specter of thermonuclear war and the possibility of hyper-intelligent toilet lampreys enough?
Well, it’s likely you haven’t heard too much about this particular apocalypse because it’s not a sexy blood-and-guts kind. Instead of armies of Terminators hunting down handfuls of survivors for their sweet sweet spinal fluid, it’ll look like this:
Driverless semis. Something we all know is coming but nobody talks about, like the upcoming global crisis of climate refugees or whatever DC’s next movie is. Now, before I go any further, let me address something: statistically, if you’re reading this, you live in a major metropolitan city, most likely on a coast. You probably think owning large predatory cats is something relegated to a handful of weirdos in Tiger King and not just part of everyday life in the weird semi-urban, semi-rural hinterlands that make up, by area, most of the country’s living area. You’ve probably never met a trucker. When you think “trucker,” you probably think of a tubby guy listening to “Convoy” on repeat while hauling MAGA hats from Big Bill’s Racism Barn to a county fair where the hats will be rolled in suet and deep-fried to perfection.
And, yeah, sure, there is that element. But live in the Midwest long enough and you’ll meet a LOT of truckers, and the vast majority of them are good people who just want a job where they don’t have to talk to people and nobody to judge them when they poop in a Wendy’s bag. There are so many truckers, in fact, that it makes stereotypes kind of useless — but I’m still going to employ them for jokes because comedy is hard. Check out this map from NPR showing the most common jobs in every state as of 2014:
Some folks have taken issue with how NPR aggregated this data, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are between two and three million truckers in America (and many more jobs that will be adversely affected by increasing automation of the shipping industry). And believe me when I say that there will come a day, probably sooner than we all expect, when virtually every single one of those truckers becomes obsolete. …
The belief that demons have sex with humans runs deep in Christian and Jewish traditions
Incubus, a male demon, was said to prey on sleeping women in mythological tales.
Houston physician and pastor Stella Immanuel – described as “spectacular” by Donald Trump for her promotion of unsubstantiated claims about anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19 – has some other, very unconventional views.
As well as believing that scientists are working on a vaccine to make people less religious and that the U.S. government is run by reptilian creatures, Immanuel, the leader of a Christian ministry called Fire Power Ministries, also believes sex with demons causes miscarriages, impotence, cysts and endometriosis, among other maladies.
It has opened her up to much ridicule. But, as a scholar of early Christianity, I am aware that the belief that demons – or fallen angels – regularly have sex with humans runs deep in the Jewish and Christian traditions.
Demon sex
The earliest account of demon sex in Jewish and Christian traditions comes from the Book of Genesis, which details the origins of the world and the early history of humanity. Genesis says that, prior to the flood of Noah, fallen angels mated with women to produce a race of giants.
The brief mention of angels breeding with human women contains few details. It was left to later writers to fill in the gaps. …
The dark side of wellness: behind a Netflix series on a murky industry
Do trends such as essential oils and fasting live up to their promises? Netflix’s (Un)well searches for answers with believers, skeptics and scientists.
A still from (Un)Well from an episode on tantric sex.
“Wellness”, like its signature vague branding, has a loose, unfixed meaning. It can describe the pursuit of greater stability. It can mean a $4.2tn, high-growth industry of products and services from goat yoga to health boutiques to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop jade vaginal eggs. It can indicate a never-ending burden for women – the rebranding of “having it all” for 2010s consumer feminism. The gauzy, overused umbrella of wellness now encompasses a vast universe of practices, products and refashioned belief systems, with varying risks and scientific grounding, which have surged in popularity over the last decade on social media and internet forums.
(Un)well, a six-part Netflix docuseries, delves into this murk of wellness – sometimes promising, sometimes scammy, occasionally dangerous – to examine this expansive, lucrative web of wellness, and the confusing sludge of information online. “There’s a lot of conflicting information and misinformation out there, and there’s not a lot of hard data and testing done,” executive producer Erica Sachin told the Guardian on the motivation behind the series, which was filmed over the course of 2019. “We felt like it was the perfect time to look at this industry that’s blowing up and try and help to sort out some of the fact from the fiction.”
Similar to The Business of Drugs, another explanatory Netflix docuseries which explores the economics of narcotics through capsule episodes delineated by drug type, (Un)well breaks down wellness through six specific trends: essential oils, tantric sex, consumption of human breast milk, fasting, ayahuasca and bee-sting therapy. The conclusions and narrative depend on the trend at hand; the first episode devotes considerable time to the two main businesses, doTerra and Young Living, hawking an emblematic product of the wellness craze: essential oils. Both companies do over a billion dollars in annual sales; both are multi-level marketing firms who cultivate networks of believers and concentrate profits at the top. (The series references a lawsuit alleging a pyramid scheme, which is illegal, against Young Living.)
Essential oils offer a clear entry into the double-edged sword of wellness: how a practice with some legitimate health benefits can be warped into a big-business cure for our age of anxiety. The use of essential oils – aromatic substances derived from plants – has been around for centuries, and studies suggest certain oils offer minor benefits to sleep (lavender) or headaches (peppermint). On small levels, it can make a huge difference; the series follows Julie Marshall and her autistic daughter Sarah, 15, as they seek aromatherapy with essential oils as a last-ditch effort to treat Sarah’s insomnia, which exacerbates her mood swings and frustration. The family exemplifies a central tenet of wellness’s appeal: “People are anxious and exhausted from the medical field and the pharmaceutical industries, and they’re looking to take control of their own health,” said Sachin. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Ægteparret Lightbody ankommer til Battle Creek kuranstalt i sommeren år 1907. Sammen håber de på, at kunne rense deres krop og sjæl for både sygdomme og plagsomme minder fra en fælles tragedie. De underkaster sig, den fantastiske helseguru doktor Kelloggs mildest
TRANSLATION: Gteparret Lightbody for those arriving to the Battle Creek Kuranstalt in the summer of 1907. Together with the på, at kunne rense deres krop and sjæl for både sygdomme and plagsomme less fra en fall wearie. De underkaster sig, the fantastic helseguru doctor Kelloggs mildest.
Ed. Nice job there, Google Translate.
TikTok has become the latest battleground in D.C., but how risky is the app?
THANKS to Showtime and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Kanye West struggles to lock in his candidacy, Vladimir Putin claims Russia created a coronavirus vaccine, candy companies plan for Halloween, and Trump weighs in on bringing back college football.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Only Donald Trump is weird enough to have beef with the mail. Here’s a look at what it’s all about and an idea for how MAGA-heads can help revitalize the USPS.
Seth takes a closer look at the president trying to undermine the integrity of the election by sabotaging the post office because he knows he can’t win in November with a majority of votes.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Here’s me commentary on the third episode of robbery fails. Cheers!
まるが今までで一番気に入ったロード。Maru seemed to like this shoji road.
FINALLY . . .
Columbia: Guatapé
The Andean town where every single building is decorated with a brightly colored frieze.
Colorful houses of Guatapé. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
IN GUATAPÉ, EVERY BUILDING IS a work of art. Residents paint their houses and businesses in gorgeous bright colors, and decorate the bottom of every building with fresco-like panels called “zocalos.” It’s sometimes called the most colorful town in the world.
With its steep and windy streets and bright colors, Guatapé is ridiculously photogenic, but it’s the zocalos that make it distinctive. Some friezes are simply cute: Sunflowers, doves, and sheep are popular. Other zocalos advertise businesses: bread loaves on a bakery, sewing machines outside a clothing store. The most complicated tell stories—several panels showing a journey—or commemorate history: musical instruments marking the house of a famous local musician.
The zocalo tradition seems to have started about a century ago—no one seems sure when or why—but it has accelerated in recent years. Today it’s rigorously maintained because it helps make Guatapé one of the most popular vacation towns in Colombia, and a favorite day trip from Medellín, the city two hours to the west. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
In your fantasies, how does it happen?
Reply below. Use your pronouns.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) July 6, 2020
