July 23, 2016 in 3,939 words

It must be the weekend

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 23RD- THE DEATH OF A LEGEND

This Day In History: July 23, 1948

“To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man.” – James Agee

David Wark Griffith is arguably the single most important individual in the development of film-making as an art-form. Charlie Chaplin, another film pioneer of incalculable importance, called Griffith “the teacher of us all.” Griffith was a visionary who recognized and exploited film not only as an expressive medium, but also as a catalyst for social change.

Born on January 22, 1875, in Crestwood, Kentucky, Griffith was the son of a Confederate Civil War veteran nicknamed “Roaring Jake.” His father died when he was ten, leaving the family in debt-stricken poverty. Griffith had little formal education but was a voracious reader and had his heart set on becoming a playwright. Towards this end, he left home to travel the country acting in minor productions. He was not only learning the actor’s craft but how to tell a story – and sell it to the masses. …

Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy

DONALD J. TRUMP, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew.

Any one of these characteristics would be disqualifying; together, they make Mr. Trump a peril. We recognize that this is not the usual moment to make such a statement. In an ordinary election year, we would acknowledge the Republican nominee, move on to the Democratic convention and spend the following months, like other voters, evaluating the candidates’ performance in debates, on the stump and in position papers. This year we will follow the campaign as always, offering honest views on all the candidates. But we cannot salute the Republican nominee or pretend that we might endorse him this fall. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.

Why are we so sure? Start with experience. …

Bill Maher recaps an eventful week in American politics and reflects on the Republican National Convention in his monologue from the July 22, 2016 episode of Real Time.

Bill welcomes Democratic activist and actress America Ferrera for a conversation about her work as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton and the critical role of Latino voters in this election. Panelists Ana Marie Cox, Ian Bremmer, and Rep. Jack Kingston also join the discussion.

In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher reflects on Donald Trump as a quintessential man of the ’50s, whose old-fashioned sensibilities about women and minorities may resonate with his fans, but are incompatible with modern society. Original air date: July 22, 2016.

THANKS to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher for making this program available on YouTube.

The Democrat That Republicans Really Fear Most

^{Delegates in Cleveland answer a nightmare question: Would they take four more years of Barack Obama over a Hillary Clinton presidency?}

It was a question no Republican here wanted to contemplate.

The query alone elicited winces, scoffs, and more than a couple threats of suicide. “I would choose to shoot myself,” one delegate from Texas replied. “You want cancer or a heart attack?” cracked another from North Carolina.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have each been objects of near histrionic derision from Republicans for years (decades in Clinton’s case), but never more so than during the four days of the GOP’s national convention. Republicans onstage at Quicken Loans Arena and in the dozens of accompanying events have accused President Obama of literally destroying the country in his eight years in the White House. Speakers and delegates subjected Clinton to even harsher rhetoric, charging her with complicity in death and mayhem and then repeatedly chanting, “Lock her up!” from the convention floor.

But what if Republicans were forced to pick between them? What if the choice on the ballot this fall were not Clinton or Donald Trump but a Clinton presidency or four more years of Obama? Which would they choose? …

10 Bizarre Ways Famous Brands Got Their Names

Some brands use the names of the founders of the company, while others use wordplay or acronyms based on what the company does. Some, however, have names rooted deep in history. They either represent how the company came to be or call on people and legends from hundreds of years ago.

10. Volkswagen

Volkswagen means “Car of the People” in German, and there’s a good reason it has such a name. The Volkswagen came into existence as a spearhead of the Nazis’ plans to make good on their promise to look after the average citizen. Cars were only reserved for the social elite, so Hitler proposed an affordable car, allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits of the rich.

The problem was that even when constructing cars for the elite, the German car production wasn’t at its best. Therefore, Hitler and some designated officials poured a lot of effort into getting factories to produce the first Volkswagen. Eventually, a first model called the KdF (Kraft durch Freude—“Strength through Joy”) was made in 1938, and Volkswagen continued to see production until the present day. …

Hillary Clinton Utters Words She ‘Never Thought’ She Would Say About Ted Cruz

“I never thought I would say these words, but, Ted Cruz was right,” Hillary Clinton admitted during a rally Friday in Tampa, Florida.

Clinton, who is poised to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president next week, praised the conservative Texas senator for encouraging people to “vote your conscience” during his much-criticized speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. While Cruz did congratulate Donald Trump for securing the GOP presidential nomination, he did not endorse the billionaire businessman.

“Something has gone terribly wrong when someone says ‘vote your conscience’ and gets booed,” the former secretary of state told the large gathering of supporters. …

Watch Rosie O’Donnell Skewer Donald Trump in ‘Daily Show’ Parody

^{Comedian gets revenge on mogul in ‘Very Very Incredible Deal’}

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Get More: The Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,The Daily Show Video Archive

Rosie O’Donnell exacted some revenge against Donald Trump by narrating a new video that parodies the Republican presidential nominee’s rise to power. Like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal before it, Thursday’s Daily Show introduced voters to Trump’s “Very Very Incredible Deal.”

“Earlier tonight, before Donald Trump accepted his party’s nomination, delegates viewed a short film about Trump’s life work and overall fantastic-ness, and realizing that you may have missed this important information, we bring it to you now, just slightly edited for clarity,” Trevor Noah said before introducing the video.

The parody comically mapped the history of Trump, from his birth nine months after the nuclear attacks on Japan and his training at the New York Military Academy – although he didn’t go to Vietnam “due to a sudden tragic diagnosis of heel spurs, a condition so debilitating it spread to his brain” – to his real estate empire and his career in “fake business,” The Apprentice. …

10 Ways The US Unwittingly Aided Terrorism

Terrorism is one the main threats to the Western way of life. Several violent terrorist groups—from ISIS to Al-Qaeda—are vying for control of the Middle East. Although the US has tried to bring peace to the region for decades, many of its measures have only worsened the problem.

10. Training Radical Forces

After perpetrating the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qaeda became the target of antiterrorist measures and their leader, Osama bin Laden, became one of the most wanted men in the world. However, the history of bin Laden and Al-Qaeda goes back to a violent power struggle in Afghanistan several decades ago.

In 1979, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan, sending the country into turmoil. Throughout the 1980s, the Soviets maintained a presence in Afghanistan and the CIA was permitted to do anything to overthrow the Soviet puppet government. From 1985 to 1992, the CIA operated camps to train 12,500 Afghan rebels in sabotage and guerrilla warfare. …

Making It Easier for Former Inmates to Work in L.A.

^{The city plans to prohibit some employers from asking job applicants about their criminal record.}

Los Angeles is getting closer to prohibiting certain employers from asking about criminal histories in their hiring process. The city’s move would expand on a state law that bans such questions on applications for local- and state-government jobs by extending it to segments of the private sector. It would also bring much-needed relief to the thousands of former inmates who live in the county, many of whom have trouble finding work. In 2012, more than 14,000 Los Angeles residents were released from state prisons, accounting for 30.5 percent of the state’s total releases. Just over half of those released will return to prison within three years, according to estimates from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“I can tell you that we’re on the tail end of implementing a ban-the-box policy here in Los Angeles,” Angelina Valencia, city councilman Curren Price’s communications director, wrote in an email. In June 2014, Price introduced a motion to remove any questions about an individual’s criminal record from job applications for any city agency, private employer within city limits, and those who have contracts with the city. Valencia expects the city attorney to release the ordinance by August or September.

The proposed ordinance, the Fair Chance Initiative, will complement other efforts to address the employment and training needs of city residents with criminal backgrounds. Mayor Eric Garcetti has vocally supported the national ban-the-box movement and the city’s initiative. He established an Office of Reentry last year and, last April, ordered city agencies to prioritize former inmates and other “underemployed communities” in filling 5,000 new city jobs over the next three years. A new $9 million partnership between the state department of transportation and the city will create transitional employment and training for as many as 1,350 Angelinos on probation or parole, according to the mayor’s office. That’s a small but meaningful portion of the 60,000 residents released from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department on average each year, according to the JFA Institute. …

‘It’s disturbing’: author of book found in Munich shooter’s home sees pattern

^{Psychologist Peter Langman wrote the book Why Kids Kill and says it’s common for shooters to want to study others but there’s no one reason for killing}

The Munich teenage shooter who killed nine people and injured 27 in a mass shooting in Germany on Friday, appears to have fit a pattern of other mass murderers who researched shootings, according to the psychologist whose book was found in the gunman’s home.

“It’s a little disturbing,” said Dr Peter Langman, who was unaware that the Munich shooter had a copy of his book until the Guardian called him at his home in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “I don’t know quite what to make of it, I don’t know why he had it,” he said.

The Munich shooter, whom locals have named as a “lazy” German of Iranian ancestry, may have been trying to figure out his own thoughts, the psychologist said. “There must be some desire for self understanding,” said Langman, who has spent decades studying the psychology of school shooters, and has written several books and maintains an online research archive on school shooters. …

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 23RD- DELLA SORENSON

This Day In History: July 23, 1918

On July 23, 1918, an infant named Viola Cooper died from unexplained causes, and during the next several years there were several more unexplained deaths in Dannebrog, Howard County, Nebraska. Many of the deceased were children, though one was an elderly woman and another was a young man. All of the victims had one thing in common – a tie to a woman named Della Sorenson, a nondescript 25-year-old Nebraska housewife.

Wilhelmina Weldam, Della’s mother-in-law, was her second victim in 1920. A few months later in September, she went after her own immediate family, poisoning her husband Joseph and her daughter Minnie within two weeks of each other. …

Scraped, Splattered — But Silent No More. Finally, The Dinner Plate Gets Its Say

Plates have long had a seat at the table, but they’ve suffered in silence – quietly bearing the indignities of everything from barbecue sauce to mustard stains.

Until now.

In February 2016, Brooklyn-based comedian Brandon Scott Wolf created an Instagram account called “Empty Plates of New York,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Wolf posts pictures of empty plates after eating meals around New York, describes the meal, and then includes a “quote” from the plate. (“Life can get messy, but thankfully I always find my way to the dishwasher,” muses Lawrence, a brown plate from Midtown.)

“Plates have voices as well,” Wolf tells The Salt. As of this writing, his account has 2,098 followers. …

Invisibilia: The Unbearable Lightness Of Footwear

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Invisibilia podcast and program, which is broadcast on participating public radio stations.

Walking among the California redwoods, drifting blank-brained on a break from college, I got to thinking about shoes. I can’t say why, exactly. Perhaps it was because they were touching my feet.

My own shoes were performing admirably, I must admit. I was trudging on mud and bugs and roots and who knows what without feeling much of anything.

And that, I realized in a flash, was a problem. Not that I had been stepping on gross stuff and snuffing out the lives of little things that, frankly, may not have deserved it. The problem was that I really couldn’t tell.

Life and death and dog poop — it all basically felt the same underfoot. …

The 7 Dirtiest Tricks Politicians Use To Make You Like Them

In a perfect world, all voters would have the time and intelligence to sit down and pore over a politician’s background and stances on issues. But this is America, dammit, and we like our news the way we like our food: fast and kind of disgusting. That’s why every election, politicians keep serving us up the same crap — stuff that has nothing to do with their ability to lead. And we keep swallowing it down as if Burger King just released a new Frankenfood.

#7. Using Someone’s Death To Advance An Agenda

I graduated high school and college with a woman called Kate Steinle. If that name sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because last year she was shot and killed by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco. Since then, some politicians, particularly Donald Trump, have used her death to try to provoke fear in people that all undocumented immigrants are in fact rapists and killers, as if crossing a border without permission acts as the necessary serum to turn Dr. Jekylls into Senor Hydes.

^{The guy from Fantasy Island tried to warn us.}

…

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie review – absolutely fatuous, thank God

^{Some were trepidatious about this belated big-screen outing for the fashionista sitcom. In fact, post-referendum, the timing couldn’t be better … and neither could Joanna Lumley}

Sixty is the new 40, 90 is the new 70 and Jennifer Saunders’s Edina and Joanna Lumley’s Patsy are back – along with Edina’s very elderly mum, played by June Whitfield. The less-than-dynamic duo make a characteristically wobbly and hungover reappearance in heels, champagne flutes in one hand and cigarettes in the other. No nonsense about vaping.

It’s as if they showed up here through a worm-hole from the 1990s – arriving in 2016 for our summer of non-love, making a game entrance in a country where the recent referendum has caused depression in the hearts of fully 100% of those who voted. Patsy and Edina are here on an honourable mission to cheer us up – bless them. And a fair bit of the time they succeed.

It’s impossible to watch Joanna Lumley’s pursed-lip expression of disdain and suppressed nausea without laughing and the same goes for Saunders’s childlike pout of dismay and incomprehension. It’s always very funny when they have to run. Half-way through the film they make a mad and semi-logical dash to the south of France, using a budget airline. Not needing a visa was a bit of a boon. …

Absolutely Fabulous and the Curse of the Endless Party

^{Over its two-decade history, the British comedy has made an absurd comic spectacle out of the inevitability of women aging.}

The 1990s were something of a golden decade for portrayals of women segueing angstily into middle age, Smirnoff bottle in one hand, self-help book in the other. In 1995, CBS premiered Cybill, a zingy sitcom starring Cybill Shepherd as a twice-divorced actress facing the twilight of her mediocre Hollywood career with the help of her best friend Maryann (Christine Baranski), a fabulously wealthy, comically drunken divorcee. In 1996, Helen Fielding published Bridget Jones’s Diary, the first-person account of a hapless, luckless 30-something who subsists on Chardonnay, Marlboro Lights, and cheese while pratfalling from one public shaming to another. But before either of those, all the way back in 1992, there was Absolutely Fabulous.

The BBC sitcom started life as a skit called “Modern Mother and Daughter” on French and Saunders, a comedy sketch show, with Jennifer Saunders playing a middle-aged woman who acted like a teenager and Dawn French playing her teenage daughter, forced by her mother’s emotional and financial immaturity to be the grown up. This evolved into the first six-episode season of AbFab. It was written by Saunders, who played Edina Monsoon, a needy and pathologically shallow PR professional endlessly making a fool of herself alongside her best friend Patsy (Joanna Lumley), an impossibly glamorous fashion editor who also appeared to be an alcoholic and drug-addicted vagrant. Julia Sawalha now played Edina’s teenage daughter, a frumpy, stolid 16-year-old whose denunciations of her mother (“you’ve been getting dressed for three hours and you still look like a bloated citrus fruit”) became one of the highlights of the show.

At the core of Absolutely Fabulous was a paradox. On the one hand, the show skewered all the societal pressure on women to be desirable, fashionable, and, above all, young. On the other, its comedy was entirely based on audiences finding Edina pathetic, nasty, and redundant. The first-season episode “Fat” revolves around Eddy’s increasingly desperate and ridiculous attempts to lose a large amount of weight in a week; the same season featured “Birthday,” essentially a 30-minute tantrum thrown by Edina over the idea of turning 40. As the show continued, popping up only intermittently between 1996 and 2012 with revivals and Christmas specials and anniversary episodes, Edina only got older, and more desperate. The new film Absolutely Fabulous finds her facing 60 or thereabouts, still falling plastered out of taxis, and sadder than ever. All she ever wanted, she cries, is “to not be fat and old, and to keep the party going.” …

10 Dark Secrets Of The Russian Empire

In 1547, Grand Prince Ivan of Moscow declared himself tsar of Russia. He is now better known as Ivan the Terrible. For almost 400 years, the tsars ruled one of the largest empires in history, stretching across forest and steppe. Opaque and brutal, the mighty Russian Empire hid all sorts of dark secrets.

10. The Wild East

Not too long after Columbus discovered America, the Russians began colonizing Siberia. The initial expansion was driven by merchants like the powerful Stroganov family, who were hungry for priceless furs.

Their agents were Cossack mercenaries who expanded Russian power with extraordinary cruelty. When the Sakha chief Dzhenik revolted, he was skinned alive and then his baby son was suffocated with the skin. The Aleut Islanders attacked tax collectors in 1764, so the Russians burned 18 villages and massacred hundreds. …

Engineer Discovers Something Amazing in Da Vinci’s ‘Irrelevant Scribbles

Never assume that Leonardo Da Vinci’s doodles are meaningless. That, at least, is the takeaway of a new study out of the University of Cambridge, which shows that a page of Leonardo’s scribbled notes from 1493—previously dismissed as “irrelevant” by art historians—is actually the first written demonstration of the laws of friction.

It is widely recognized that Leonardo had an exceptional grasp of friction centuries before the modern science of “tribology” was codified. In his mock-ups of complex machines, the Renaissance inventor incorporated friction into the behavior of wheels, axels, and pulleys, recognizing its role in limiting operation and efficiency. But exactly when and how Leonardo first developed his ideas on friction has been a mystery.

Now, a detailed chronology put together by Cambridge manufacturing engineering professor Ian Hutchings pegs Leonardo’s eureka moment to a tiny, yellowing scrap of paper inked in 1493. Held in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, this notebook page was actually a subject of academic debate years ago, because of the faint sketch of an old woman near the top, followed by the statement “cosa bella mortal passa e non dura,” which translates to “mortal beauty passes and does not last.” But the sketches beneath these ominous words were dismissed by the 1920s museum director as “irrelevant notes and diagrams in red chalk.” …

What the Hell Is This Freaky Mutant Google’s AI Made?

Look at the dog-hand. Look at it.

Were you on the internet yesterday? Do you remember Graham, the wide, fleshy, multi-nippled creature of your nightmares disguised as a way to raise awareness for road safety? Of course you do because HOW COULD YOU FORGET ABOUT GRAHAM:

Well, Twitter user and all-around mindfucker Bryce Durbin has, against all odds, one-upped the original Graham, because he gave it the Google DeepDream treatment. Fuck.

That car crash body is the most horrifying thing since DeepDream so I combined them to scare the shit out of myself pic.twitter.com/OMdbFaNHff

— Bryce Durbin (@dicebourbon) July 21, 2016

…

THAT TIME A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT RAN OUT OF FUEL MID-FLIGHT- THE GIMLI GLIDER

On July 23, 1983, in the small town of Gimli, Manitoba, Captain Robert Pearson and Co-Pilot Maurice Quintal expertly glided a 100-ton Boeing 767 carrying 69 people to a safe landing without engines, air brakes or flaps, and minimal control of the aircraft.

Bad Math

The flight plan for Canada 143 that day began with a short jaunt from Montreal, Quebec to Ottawa, Ontario. Right from the beginning, the crew realized the plane had a faulty fuel control: “A computer known as the Fuel Quantity Information System Process manages the entire fuel loading process. . . . But the FQIS was not working properly on Flight 143.”

With FQIS out-of-order, the ground maintenance crew had to calculate the amount of fuel needed, in a process called “dipping the tanks.” …

Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)

A new study placed GPS tracking devices on house cats, and turned up some interesting findings. While most cats stay in the vicinity of their homes, others travel much farther away, to the surprise of their owners.

With the help of beloved Late Show character Cajun Pope, Stephen takes a look back at the finest moments from this election season, aka: the Hungry For Power Games.

THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.