• • • an aural noise • • •
word salad: Cosmic Dust – Metamorphose. Released December 4 2020. Eucalyptus Network – EUCA012. Eucalyptus Network is happy to present a fresh EP by Cosmic Dust! Damian Gallau aka Cosmic Dust is gracefully playing with liquid breaks and organic vibes in psychedelic space, showing you the cycle of life through his unique sound.
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
How German Librarians Finally Caught an Elusive Book Thief
For decades, often using a fake identity, he stole antique maps worth thousands of dollars each.
He was frustratingly skilled at slicing up maps. Embiggenable. Explore at home (there’s more than one library in Trier and I may have selected the correct one).
ON THE AFTERNOON OF FEBRUARY 21, 2006, Norbert Schild sat down at a desk in the reading room of the City Library of Trier, in western Germany, and opened a 400-year-old book on European geography. Working quickly, Schild laid a piece of blank white paper on top of the book, took a boxcutter from his lap, and discreetly sliced out a map of Alsace from pages 375 and 376.
Schild hadn’t noticed that the desks of two librarians, who were normally tasked with locating books for readers, were raised about three feet above the floor—giving them a clear view of his movements. They approached Schild and asked him what he was doing.
“It was worth a try,” Schild told them. He tossed his library card down on the table and hurried out of the building, taking the map with him.
Stunned, the librarians went to the director of the City Library, Gunther Franz. A mustachioed specialist in the history of the book, Franz gathered two witnesses from the reading room and filed a police report. He also emailed German libraries with a warning. Schild had introduced himself as a historian, Franz wrote, and was of medium height with a stocky build, unkempt blond hair, prominent jewelry.
Almost 300 miles away, at a library in Oldenburg, a small town close to the North Sea, Klaus-Peter Müller read Franz’s email. His face went pale. He knew Norbert Schild. …
Iowa Is What Happens When Government Does Nothing
The story of the coronavirus in the state is one of government inaction in the name of freedom and personal responsibility.
A nurse holds a swab taken from a patient for testing at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
Nick Klein knew the man wasn’t going to make it through the night. So the 31-year-old nurse at the University of Iowa ICU put on his gown, his gloves, his mask, and his face shield. He went into the patient’s room, held a phone to his ear, and tried hard not to cry while he listened to the man’s loved ones take turns saying goodbye. When they were finished, Klein put on some music, a muted melody like you might hear in an elevator. He pulled up a chair and took the man’s hand. For two hours that summer night, there were no sounds but soft piano and the gentle beep beep beep of the monitors. Klein thought about how he would feel if the person in the bed were his own father, and he squeezed his hand tighter. Around midnight, Klein watched as the man took one last, ragged breath and died.
“I still don’t know if I’ve fully processed everything that’s going on,” Klein told me the day before Thanksgiving, as we talked about what the past few weeks and months at the hospital have been like. And with COVID-19 infections skyrocketing in his state, he added, “I don’t know when I will.”
To visit Iowa right now is to travel back in time to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in places such as New York City and Lombardy and Seattle, when the horror was fresh and the sirens never stopped. Sick people are filling up ICUs across the state. Health-care workers like Klein are being pushed to their physical and emotional limits. On the TV in my parents’ house in Burlington, hospital CEOs are begging Iowans to hunker down and please, for the love of God, wear a mask. This sense of new urgency is strange, though, because the pandemic isn’t in its early days. The virus has been raging for eight months in this country; Iowa just hasn’t been acting like it.
The story of the coronavirus in this state is one of government inaction in the name of freedom and personal responsibility. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has followed President Donald Trump’s lead in downplaying the virus’s seriousness. She never imposed a full stay-at-home order for the state and allowed bars and restaurants to open much earlier than in other places. She imposed a mask mandate for the first time this month—one that health-care professionals consider comically ineffectual—and has questioned the science behind wearing masks at all. Through the month of November, Iowa vacillated between 1,700 and 5,500 cases every day. This week, the state’s test-positivity rate reached 50 percent. Iowa is what happens when a government does basically nothing to stop the spread of a deadly virus. …
“In a lot of ways, Iowa is serving as the control group of what not to do,” Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, told me. Although cases dropped in late November—a possible result of a warm spell in Iowa—Perencevich and other public-health experts predict that the state’s lax political leadership will result in a “super peak” over the holidays, and thousands of preventable deaths in the weeks to come. “We know the storm’s coming,” Perencevich said. “You can see it on the horizon.” …
Smart concrete could pave the way for high-tech, cost-effective roads
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco averages more than 100,000 vehicles daily.
Every day, Americans travel on roads, bridges and highways without considering the safety or reliability of these structures. Yet much of the transportation infrastructure in the U.S. is outdated, deteriorating and badly in need of repair.
Of the 614,387 bridges in the U.S., for example, 39% are older than their designed lifetimes, while nearly 10% are structurally deficient, meaning they could begin to break down faster or, worse, be vulnerable to catastrophic failure.
The cost to repair and improve nationwide transportation infrastructure ranges from nearly US$190 billion to almost $1 trillion. Repairing U.S. infrastructure costs individual households, on average, about $3,400 every year. Traffic congestion alone is estimated to cost the average driver $1,400 in fuel and time spent commuting, a nationwide tally of more than $160 billion per year.
The Purdue engineering lab has installed smart technology in three Indiana interstate highways.
I am a professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and the director of the Center for Intelligent Infrastructures at Purdue University. My co-author, Vishal Saravade, is part of my team at the Sustainable Materials and Renewable Technology (SMART) Lab. The SMART Lab researches and develops new technologies to make American infrastructure “intelligent,” safer and more cost-effective. These new systems self-monitor the condition of roads and bridges quickly and accurately and can, sometimes, even repair themselves. …
The Obamas To Produce Comedy Series Roasting Trump’s Sheer Incompetence
As President Trump prepares to leave the White House in January, which new reports say may actually happen sans the brute force of federal marshals, our country approaches a period of unprecedented national reckoning about the sheer incompetence and stupidity of our leader for the past four years. While this collective healing will look different for everyone, resulting in tough conversations, grassroots activism, and maybe a few good, cathartic screams into the ol’ pillow, for former President Barack Obama, and former first lady Michelle Obama, this healing will reportedly come in the form of producing a brand new Netflix comedy/documentary series via their production company, roasting 45’s sheer incompetence for the nation to see.
A collab between the Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and TruTV’s infamous know it all, Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything fame, the show will allegedly “go inside the machine of government and introduce viewers to the civil servants who make it work,” according to Deadline. Entitled The G Word With Adam Conover, the show, which is loosely based on Vanity Fair reporter Michael Lewis’ 2018 book, The Fifth Risk, “will ask whether government is a dirty word or a trusted institution.” After the shitshow that has been the past four years, I think we have our answer loud and clear. Oof. Despite probably telling us what we already know about how our nation’s gross mismanagement, especially after four years of Trump, Netflix has seemingly started promoting the series, which is set to being production next year, alongside some, erm, very minimalist cover art. Thinking ahead!
So reader, in honor of the Obama’s new (and likely iconic) series, we please make roasting 45 an official national past time? Asking for a friend, of course. …
RELATED: New Monolith Spotted in California, Quickly Destroyed By ET-Dissing Right-Wing Vandals
Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, and three times is definitely the work of aliens — well, at least in the case of the mysterious monoliths that keep popping up around the world. Yet another triangular metal structure has been spotted atop a hiking trail in central California, sparking confusion, annoyance, and a whole lot of tourists, the LA Times reports. Similar to the structures that appeared then inexplicably vanished in southern Utah and Romania over the past few weeks, the new monolith first made headlines on Wednesday, with hikers climbing approximately two miles to the peak of Pine Mountain Loop in San Luis Obispo County to see the slab for themselves.
“I think it disappeared from Utah and landed right here in Atascadero,” hiker Blake Khun told local Fox affiliate, KKFX while seemingly climbing the trail.
Yet just like its predecessors, the figure didn’t last long. Soon after it made headlines, right-wing vandals who seemed to see the structure as a threat to Jesus (?) tore down the monolith, replacing it with a wooden cross, Vice News reported, further proving why we just can’t have nice things. …
Tires Are a Hidden Environmental Nuisance
The pollution that cars emit goes beyond what spews from their tailpipe.
The storm unleashed one evening in late November 2018. The first splashes of rain wet the streets of Oakland, California. Then, a crescendo of water pounded roofs, drops glancing off gutters with metallic pings. As the stormwater sluiced over sidewalks and streets, it erased the boundary between land and sea, carrying branches, plastic bottles, motor oil, and more into San Francisco Bay.
At 10:30 that night, an industrial slough near the Oakland Coliseum roared to life. The slough wasn’t particularly noticeable, hidden behind chain-link fences. But the vast surrounding parking lot made it perfect for measuring the stuff scoured from the city streets by rain. All the water falling across five square kilometers of mostly impervious pavement ran through this choke point. Huddled in rain gear on an overpass, a research team from the San Francisco Estuary Institute, or SFEI, was ready for the cascade. As a stream of cars carrying concertgoers rolled out of the coliseum parking lot, the researchers used sampling rods to sip nearly 70 liters from the stream of stormwater below.
Later, the team discovered a shocking amount of rubbery black fragments in their samples. Over three years, as they tested water at 12 stormwater outlets and sediment at 20 sites around the bay, they found much the same. Some 7.2 trillion synthetic particles are washing into San Francisco Bay each year, says Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist at SFEI and the study lead. “Almost half those stormwater particles—so a really high percentage—were rubbery particles that we think are mostly coming from tires.”
In California, where most commuters cling to their cars, conversations about the environmental impact of automobiles usually involve what spews from tailpipes. Electric vehicles are sold as the solution for car emissions. But SFEI’s work has expanded the debate about vehicles’ environmental impacts to include tires that shed particles near bodies of water. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
John Harris and John Domokos revisit parts of the Midlands and north-west England that they’ve been chronicling for years, and talk to people about the aspects of the Covid era that can’t be captured in charts and graphs – from mental health to the silencing of musicians, to life without work. One thing is clear: this crisis will last well beyond the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine
Forget Groundhog Day. Donald Trump can’t stop re-living Election Day.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Former presidents try to set an example for Americans by offering to get vaccinated publicly, while some Democratic leaders get caught disobeying their own COVID control orders.
Just like Elvis Presley, who got vaccinated for polio at the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, Stephen Colbert invites former presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush to demonstrate their confidence in the Covid-19 vaccine by getting their inoculations LIVE on A Late Show.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Big News discusses the latest chaos in Trump’s legal battles and the CDC director’s comments on the coming dark winter with Peacock news host Mehdi Hasan. Watch the full segment on CBS All Access.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Here’s me commentary on the age old practise of flirtation. This video is demonetised because YouTube and advertisers can’t handle comedic explorations of the primitive human condition ay. It’s too confronting for their glossy, shiny, robotic one-dimensional worldview.
箱入りまるさんは別の生き物に見えたのか、最初はちょっと戸惑っていたみり。Boxed Maru may have looked like another creature to Kitten Miri. She was a little confused.
FINALLY . . .
The Surprising, Controversial History of Tofu
The origin of the original plant-based meat is clouded with multiple theories.
‘An Elegant Party’ (detail) by Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100–1125 AD) via Patricia Ebrey’s Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999). Embiggenable.
PLANT-BASED MEATS ARE EXPLODING on the American market. Over the past two years alone, we’ve seen a 37.1% surge in their sales, with even more dramatic growth projected for 2020. Burger King credits their best quarter in four years to their new Impossible Whopper, and Dunkin’ Donuts easily doubled expected sales for their Beyond Meat sandwich. Understandably, competitors are now scrambling to add plant-based options to their menus. In a matter of moments, meat alternatives have left the fringe and burst onto the American mainstream.
Given the sudden and ongoing nature of the way this trend has been covered in the West, one might be forgiven for assuming that vegan meat is a new invention. This assumption, however, would be wrong; humans have been creating meat-alternatives for two millennia. The basic facts are not disputed: Tofu is the first plant-based meat, and the ancient Chinese discovered it. Step outside these basic facts, however, and you enter a realm of controversy. There are three competing narratives for how tofu came into the world, and the debate is far from over.
The most famous version of the story is that Prince Liú Ān (179–122 BC) of the Han Dynasty invented tofu. In some versions of the tale, the prince created the dish in an attempt at producing an elixir of immortality. (It did not grant eternal life, but its deliciousness was a worthy consolation prize.) In other versions of the tale, the prince produced the dish as an easily consumable source of nutrition for his ailing grandmother. While these both make for good stories, they are unlikely to be true: The historical records of ancient China are not above embellishing on behalf of the well-born. Case in point, this same prince also mastered alchemy, sprouted wings, and permanently escaped death via divine intervention. We should view Liú Ān’s invention of tofu with the same skeptical lens we use for Kim Jong-il’s invention of the hamburger.
An alternative theory is that the Chinese appropriated the cheese-making techniques of visiting Mongolian tribes, and applied these methods to soy-milk. According to tofu historians William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, this theory is credible for a few reasons: First, if one were to subject soy-milk to certain cheesemaking techniques, one would produce something approximating tofu. From there, it would only be a matter of refinement. Second, the Chinese were generally not in the business of raising animals for milk, and so they would have had no independent knowledge of how to produce curds. Meanwhile, just to the north of them, there were Mongolian tribes who relied on milk-bearing animals for survival. These Mongols could produce an elaborate variety of dairy products. If Chinese people discovered tofu without Mongolian intervention, the process of curd production was discovered twice in the same region. Therefore, one could argue it is more parsimonious to assume that visiting Mongols simply showed their tricks to their Chinese neighbors. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: The story of tofu shows that while meat-alternatives are often portrayed as strange newfangled treats for crunchy Americans, they are actually just the latest iteration of two millennia of multicultural innovation.
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
ONE MORE THING:
Retweet this for a full pardon.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 3, 2020
The Trump Presidential Library will be a deleted Twitter account.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) November 7, 2020
