• • • an aural noise • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii
Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide.
An ancient Pompeiian may have enjoyed this meal of braised duck. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
IN THE AUTUMN OF 79 AD, PLINY the Younger wrote a letter to the Roman historian Tacitus, detailing the early stages of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. From his villa in Misenum, across the Bay of Naples from the volcano, he described seeing a dark cloud, shaped like an umbrella pine tree, filling the sky over the mountains flanking the northern edge of Sarno River plain. What followed was something that no one in the region was prepared for. A day after Pliny observed that dark cloud, a small tavern in a northeastern section of Pompeii collapsed, along with the rest of the town, under the weight of pumice and ash. This was later followed by a fast-moving pyroclastic surge of hot gas, volcanic debris, and ash that signaled the volcano’s final devastating blow: Those who stayed behind in Pompeii and Herculaneum were killed instantly by this infernal wave of heat, estimated to have been as high as 900° Fahrenheit. The barkeep of this tavern was one of these poor souls. He didn’t make it out of the establishment in time and perished in the cot where he slept, along with a dog and a man who had taken refuge inside the tavern with them.
The thermopolium’s counter with animal frescoes and embedded dolia. Embiggenable.
In December 2020, archaeologists at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii announced that they had found the remains of these two men and the dog as they were excavating this ancient food establishment, known as a thermopolium. Located in Regio V, on the western edge of the unexcavated northeastern section of Pompeii, the well-preserved thermopolium’s counter, ceramic storage containers (known as dolia), and wall art offer some of the most pristine and moving finds to be discovered in recent years at the site.
To begin, the space’s large masonry counter was adorned with frescoes depicting scenes of daily life inside the venue, such as the flagons and cooking implements hung above the bar and the image of a porter making a delivery, as well as a portrait of a Greek sea nymph riding a seahorse and images of mallards, a chicken, and a dog. Leaning against the bar were several ceramic wine jars, known as amphorae, which originally housed locally produced and imported Greek wines. Lastly, some of the dolia contained the bones of several types of animals and one dolium contained remains belonging to one of the men (in the case of the latter, it’s likely they were placed there by 18th-century looters).
The human remains found at the site belonged to the barkeep and one other person. Embiggenable.
As a classical archaeologist whose research centers on food and food preparation in the Roman Mediterranean, I am overjoyed by finds like these, as the information obtained from them shines a bright light on the daily lives of classes of Roman society that are poorly represented in ancient literary sources: slaves and average, working Romans. Spaces like this thermopolium provide archaeologists like me with a realistic portrayal of what Roman food culture was like in comparison to sensational portrayals of Roman food culture, such as those found in satirical literary sources like Petronius’s “Trimalchio’s Banquet” or portrayed in opulent frescoes like those adorning the dining-room walls of the House of the Vettii, an exceptionally well-preserved luxury domus. …
Somewhere in Disney’s vaults, former employees claim, is a 1957 short film commissioned by the Air Force in which Mickey and friends acclimate the public to the presence of extraterrestrial visitors.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 26, 2021
Agra, India: John Hessing’s Tomb
Also known as the “Red Taj Mahal.”
John Hessing’s Tomb. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
JOHN HESSING WAS A DUTCH traveler turned army officer who served the Scindia Marathas in Agra at the turn of the 19th-century. He was eventually in charge of defending Agra Fort and during a battle with the British in 1803, he was killed. Just as the original Taj Mahal was built as a symbol of love by emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, this monument was commissioned by Hessing’s widow, Ann, in his memory.
This smaller version of the Taj Mahal mirrors much of the same design as its predecessor. Visitors can see typical Mughal-style engravings, arches, domes, and symmetrical designs. Unlike the original, however, the structure is much tighter with a simple square layout. Hessing’s tomb was designed using red sandstone rather than white marble. At the entrance to the tomb are two inscriptions in Persian: one expressing his wife’s grief and the other marking the year of his death.
Hessing’s tomb reflects the interactions of different cultures that occurred prior to British imperial rule. Hessing was incorporated into the local Hindu kingdom and given a high position of authority to defend the kingdom against European powers. …
For most of the 20th century, Scottish landowners could claim a tax break if they could prove their livestock were beset by hobgoblins.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 26, 2021
Death threats and intimidation of public officials signal Trump’s autocratic legacy
As the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump approaches, federal officials are investigating threats to attack or kill members of Congress. This comes in the wake of the Capitol riot, when a mob stormed the building where members of the House and Senate were preparing to certify the presidential election. Some rioters reportedly threatened the lives of elected officials in both parties.
When the House took up impeachment proceedings, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives reportedly felt afraid to vote to impeach Trump – even fearing for their lives. A video also captured a group accosting Republican Lindsey Graham, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, screaming that he was a “traitor” after he declared that Joe Biden had been lawfully elected president.
These threats do not simply reflect increased levels of anger and depravity among individual Americans. Rather, they appear to be evidence of a more systemic use of fear and intimidation in U.S. politics, seeking to force fealty from Republicans and reinforce the authoritarian turn that defined Donald Trump’s leadership.
Engagement in public life in the U.S. has always carried risk, with public officials of both parties, journalists and even movie stars often the target of death threats and intimidation.
With the advent of social media and the Trump presidency, however, the risks for public officials have grown substantially. As a professor of human rights and a practitioner of democracy-building and the rule of law, this trend symbolizes the depth of deterioration of democracy in the U.S. …
The Pandemic Is Finally Softening. Will That Last?
With vaccination racing the spread of COVID-19 variants, America could be at a tipping point.
Now that many health-care workers have been vaccinated, the easy part of the contest has ended.
In the past week, a new picture has emerged in COVID-19 data: The pandemic seems to be receding from its high-water mark in the United States. The most dependable metric of COVID-19’s spread—the number of people currently in the hospital with the disease—is in its first sustained, week-over-week decline since September, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Hospitalizations fell in the past week in every state but Vermont.
The number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 is falling too. New cases declined in every region of the country last week. Cases even seem to be ebbing in the coronavirus epicenters of California and Arizona, though the Sun Belt remains a hot spot. In the past two weeks, only two states—New York and Virginia—have set a single-day record for new cases. (In contrast, 13 states set a new record three weeks ago.)
In other words, the numbers are finally moving in the right direction. But while the trajectory of the pandemic is encouraging, the overall level of infection is staggering.
“We are entering what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus,” President Joe Biden declared in his inaugural address. The same day, the United States reported that 4,409 people had died of COVID-19, the highest toll of any day so far. Hospitalizations might be falling nationwide, but they remain twice as high today as they were at the peak of the previous two surges. In the South, new cases have fallen from their peak, but they are more numerous today than they were when the month began; in the Northeast and West, new cases exceed their level on December 1. …
What Happens to the Space Force Now?
President Biden is inheriting one of Trump’s pet projects.
The headquarters of the United States Space Command was supposed to be based in Colorado. Since then-President Donald Trump revived the command in 2018, the state had been its temporary home, and last February, when the search for a permanent location was still on, he had teased that the current arrangement could win out. “I will be making a big decision on the future of the Space Force as to where it is going to be located, and I know you want it,” Trump said at a rally in Colorado Springs last February. “You are being very strongly considered for the space command, very strongly.”
The Space Command is not the same thing as the Space Force, which was created in 2019 (and which, by the way, is not the same thing as NASA, either). The Space Force trains service members, some of whom serve under Space Command. But in Trump’s mind, they are wrapped up together, as one of his signature accomplishments. Space is cool and flashy, and who doesn’t love Mars? When Trump mentioned the Space Force at a rally, the crowd erupted in cheers. A new Space Command headquarters would, in theory, help cement part of his legacy—Trump, the president who made space great again.
Instead, Trump leaves behind a small controversy. On the day he was impeached for the second time, his administration announced that the headquarters would not stay in Colorado, but would relocate—to Alabama.
The Air Force, the department overseeing the search, had twice recommended Colorado over other sites under consideration, in late 2019 and again this year, according to a former senior defense official who served in the Trump presidency. (The Atlantic agreed to grant the official anonymity in order to speak about internal deliberations.) But when then-Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett came to the White House with that recommendation earlier this month, Trump ordered officials to go with Huntsville. …
5 Bizarre Truths About Being A Roomba Owner
This last weekend I was going through some old boxes that have been locked away in deep storage for the last two years. I moved around a lot, and anything that didn’t fit into a couple of suitcases got stowed away. There’s always something so nostalgic about going through your forgotten stuff: old books, vintage video games, boxes of photographs, that one favorite jacket that was always a little too warm — it’s kind of like going through a time capsule of who you were just a few years ago. There was one discovery, though, that brought tears to my eyes.
Peeling back layers of packing paper, I found him. My robotic son. My Roomba …
5. Roombas Are Weird And We Like Them, Or Maybe We’re Just A Little Lonely
For those who are uninitiated into the strange world that is Roomba ownership — these little robot vacuums are really weird. They have a strange way of slowly building an emotional connection with their owner, and I can’t really explain why. There’s been a lot of research about this phenomenon. There was a study done out of Oxford in 2017 that people who were lonely and socially isolated were able to very easily develop a bond with their robot companions, reducing some of their feelings of loneliness. Now don’t misunderstand my story and think that I’m just some socially isolated sad boi who developed a friendship with his Roomba like Tom Hanks’ character did with a volleyball in Cast Away. I mean, I’m not going to say I don’t talk to my Roomba, though. He works hard and deserves praise whenever he does a job well done, but that’s just common courtesy, right?
…
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Roomba owner. I don’t use it anymore. It scares the hell out of the birds, you have to arrange and pick up things so it doesn’t get stuck and it gets itself stuck all the time anyway. It takes less time and effort using a manual vacuum cleaner.
Dept. Of Homeland Security: ‘Has Anybody Seen A Blue Folder?’ https://t.co/8ij37G8mXQ pic.twitter.com/J707ggSqe3
— The Onion (@TheOnion) January 27, 2021
RELATED: 12 Strange Things That, Somehow, Happened Very Recently
You might have thought that the flow of weird news stopped with Trump’s removal of office, but you would have been wrong, if so. Apparently, there’s a minimum threshold of weirdness the universe is working hard to meet, at least judging by all this:
12
Source: BBC
11
Source: Sky News
10
Source: Detroit Metro Times
10
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Paleontologists Say Baby Tyrannosaurs Were As Big As Medium-Sized Dogs #WhatDoYouThink? https://t.co/y2OpiCILj8 pic.twitter.com/Tnvz84m08w
— The Onion (@TheOnion) January 27, 2021
RELATED: A Grim Loophole A Korean King Used To Kill His (Serial Killer?) Son
Being a god-king parent can’t be easy. You try disciplining a kid who both knows that they’re a divine gift from the heavens and that spanking their ascended ass is a mortal sin? But what do you do then when, say, that same kid grows up to become a psychopathic serial killer? According to King Yeongjo of Korea, to properly punish them, all it takes is a little thinking outside of the box. Then telling your kid to get into that damn box.
According to most historians, King Yeongjo of the illustrious Joseon (or Choson) Dynasty was a great monarch. A strict Confucian, he ruled Korea for most of the 18th century under the principles of law, order, and divine right. By other accounts, he was also a cold and distant dick to his children in the way only a strict Confucian can be. And that was exactly not the parent-son relationship needed by Crown Prince Jangheon, today better known as Crown Prince Sado, after receiving the name by his father for being such a sadistic sad sack. Likely suffering from severe mental illness, Sado’s sanity started to sink at an early age. Already an anxious and insecure wreck by the time he turned 15, things only got worse when Yeongjo tried to cure him of his weaknesses by appointing him Korea’s regent — and then pointing out how he’s doing everything wrong.
By his mid-20s, Sado had completely lost his mind, often showing signs of sexual deviance and plunging into violent fugue states. A very dangerous affliction — especially since no one was allowed to interfere with his’ divine body.’ So when Crown Prince Sado started randomly killing palace staff and walking around with their severed heads, nobody could do anything about it aside from some light tutting. And that included the king who was a strict observer of these religious rules — and probably didn’t want to start a ‘let’s start killing royals for good reasons-precedent either. …
CIA file on Russian ESP experiments released – but you knew that, didn’t you?
Declassified memo details two Russian scientists’ 1980s research, claiming one ‘perfected his method’ of extra-sensory perception.
The reports of the Russian ESP experiments sound like a storyline from the cult TV series The Prisoner.
In a recently declassified memo, CIA agents in 1991 described two Russian scientists who were conducting experiments on extrasensory perception, known as ESP, which is the ability to gain information, or influence physical objects, using only the mind.
The memo said one of the Russian scientists had “perfected” his methods.
A short document was published on Monday on the Black Vault, an online archive of declassified government documents typically obtained through public records requests filed by the site’s founder, John Greenewald.
It is unclear what purpose the declassified document served, but it details the bizarre research of two Soviet scientists who performed ESP experiments in the 1980s.
One, Konstantin Buteyko, was described as having “perfected his method” of ESP by conducting experiments in which he would put a volunteer in the middle of a room that had two concave mirrors on opposite sides. The document noted that researchers believed “the mirrors focused psychic energy”.
A medical specialist would “concentrate on transmitting psychic energy to the patient as well as empathetically experiencing the patient’s discomfort” in an attempt to “transmit bioenergy” to the patient and help them control or cure various diseases ranging from asthma to heart disease. …
RELATED: A Physicist Has Worked Out The Math That Makes ‘Paradox-Free’ Time Travel Plausible
No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists.
As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place?
It’s a monumental head-scratcher known as the ‘grandfather paradox’, but in September last year a physics student Germain Tobar, from the University of Queensland in Australia, said he has worked out how to “square the numbers” to make time travel viable without the paradoxes.
“Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system,” said Tobar back in September 2020.
However …
Ed. There are now two places I swear I’ve never been that I had striking memories about the first time I struck view of them.
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
From wasted doses and limited appointments to wealthy people gaming the system, America’s COVID vaccine rollout has been a disaster across the board.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Trump and Fox were the perfect match, but the love didn’t last. Now, they’re getting divorced.
Today, impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin read aloud the single charge against the former president, kicking off impeachment proceedings in the Senate where Democrats will aim to sway at least 17 of their Republican colleagues to vote to convict the former president for inciting violence against the government of the United States.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Here’s me commentary and insightful thoughts on the Godzilla vs Kong trailer that dropped the other day.
まるもはなもチビの頃によく遊んだこのおもちゃ。前のは壊れてしまったので、2代目を買いました。Maru&Hana played a lot with this toy when they were kittens.The old toy broke, so I bought a new one.
FINALLY . . .
What to Say if Someone Wrongly Claims ‘99% of People Survive COVID’
The stat has become extremely popular with both celebrities and your COVID-denying friends on Facebook. Here’s how to push back.
Ed. Not being on Facebook in the first place. Story over.
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that everyone reacts differently to a crisis—especially when public health and safety are involved. While some of us are trying to do everything we can to keep ourselves and our communities safe and healthy, others are… not doing that. Instead, weddings, birthday parties, vacations, and family gatherings continue to chug forward as though half a million people in the U.S. haven’t died from a disease with a spread that’s still very much out of control.
There are a few ways someone might justify their less-than-conscientious behavior. We’ve probably all heard (or even said!) the lines sometime in the very-long-ago-feeling past of early 2020, about being more worried about spreading the virus than getting infected ourselves, because the virus was not that different from the flu in terms of experience or mortality. But as science and experience later proved, COVID turned out to be very much not like the flu; even “mild” infections were much more serious, uncomfortable, or long-lasting, and the number of people who have died from it is about eight times higher than the worst flu season of the last ten years. COVID spread is a huge concern, not just because the infection is serious but because the U.S. does not have the hospital capacity to give urgent care to the number of people who can get seriously ill from COVID in a freely-moving society.
But the most insidious excuse for unsafe pandemic behavior drops the pretense of caring about COVID-19 spread entirely. Instead, it relies on COVID-19’s supposedly low mortality rate: “99 percent of people who get COVID don’t die. Why should I wear a mask at AutoZone/cancel my winter getaway to Tulum/reschedule my bachelorette party for an illness everyone survives?”
It’s tempting to think this way. It’s comforting to imagine that COVID-19 is a slightly puffed-up version of the common cold that nearly everyone is able to shrug off unless there’s something like, really wrong with them. That “99 percent” is also an easy stat to remember, which makes it fun to parrot—especially in the comments section of an Instagram post or Facebook album when there’s some good old-fashioned public shaming going on.
When someone brings COVID’s “low” mortality rate into the conversation, however, they’re missing a few major pieces of the puzzle, deliberately or not. The biggest one? The “99 percent” stat just isn’t true …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
ONE MORE THING:
Activism Halted After Realization Wallet Across Room https://t.co/D0wAqmXNVh pic.twitter.com/osw3ulZSet
— The Onion (@TheOnion) January 26, 2021
