• • • an aural noise • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Tiberius, Imperial Detective
In ancient Rome, murder was a private business, unless the emperor took an interest in the case.
A 17th-century Swiss etching of Emperor Tiberius on horseback, by Matthäus Merian the Elder. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
This story is excerpted and adapted from the new book A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon, PhD, published by Abrams Press ©2021.
LIKE ALL THE BEST DETECTIVE STORIES, THE story opens with the body of a woman being found in Rome in the early hours of the morning, around A.D. 24. The sun was rising, the birds were singing, and a woman’s crumpled body was lying on the ground. The body was that of Apronia, the wife of the praetor Marcus Plautius Silvanus, and she had fallen, somehow, from a high bedroom window and not survived the fall. This was suspicious. Apronia was the daughter of Lucius Apronius, who was a very important man in Rome. He had enjoyed a very successful military career in Germany and Dalmatia, and had jointly put down a revolt in Illyricum. For this act, he had been granted the right to wear Triumphal Regalia, which was a really special outfit. Being the daughter of a man who was allowed to wear the special outfit was a bit like being the daughter of Brad Pitt; everyone wanted to marry Apronia so they could hang out with her dad. Her dad had chosen Silvanus, who was a man doing well for himself. He was a praetor, which is just below consul in terms of prestige, and the fact that he married the daughter of Apronius suggested that he was a man on the up.
Unfortunately for Silvanus, Apronia died painfully, hitting the Roman ground hard. Even more unfortunately for Silvanus, Apronius did not believe that his daughter, his good Roman daughter of excellent stock, had simply stumbled and fallen out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night by accident because that is a ludicrous thing to happen. Nor did Apronius, and please imagine here the most clichéd upstanding Roman man you can, a straight-backed, no-bullshit military man in his fine purple toga, think that his daughter had deliberately defenstrated herself, which was Silvanus’s version of events. He believed that Silvanus had pushed her. He believed this strongly enough that he wanted Silvanus prosecuted for it. And he wanted this taken all the way to the emperor—Tiberius.
A typical villa of a wealthy Roman family.
Now, you’ll note that we have already diverged from what we may expect the narrative to be. In our murder mystery stories, the dead woman is found in the prologue and chapter one opens with the grizzled alcoholic detective examining the crime scene; but no police will appear to investigate Apronia’s suspicious death. There was no representative of the state of Rome who would get involved in this case until Apronius took it to the emperor because, as far as the Romans were concerned, the murder of wives, children, husbands, or really anyone at all was absolutely none of their business.
This is a useful demonstration of how fundamentally differently we view the role of the state to the Romans, and how we differentiate between public and private business. To most of us, it is obvious that the state has a responsibility to keep its people safe, and that it uses the apparatus of the police and the justice system to do this. When someone is murdered, the police investigate, the prosecution service prosecutes, and the prison service takes the murderer away and keeps them locked up until they are judged to be safe. The relatives of the victim aren’t expected to get involved because murder is a public business. The state has two broad functions here: It dispenses justice and punishes the wrongdoer, thus rebalancing the scales of justice, and it protects the people of the state by identifying a cause of harm and preventing it from causing further harm. In much the same way, the state is also now expected to make sure that rotten food isn’t sold in shops and substances judged to be dangerous, like heroin, aren’t freely available. We pay taxes so the state will keep us safe. On the other hand, we don’t expect the state to be getting all up in our bedrooms, legalizing who women can have sex with or rewarding women with public honors for having children. That’s private. …
PODCAST: A Memory Made in Malawi
Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.
IN THIS EPISODE OF THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST, we flip the focus from the memorable places we visit to the memorable people we meet on our adventures. …
RELATED: The Mystery of the Mummified Bishop and the Fetus in His Coffin
Remains hidden with this Swedish “founding father” likely belonged to his grandson, but questions linger.
During examination of Peder Winstrup and his coffin a few years ago, researchers discovered the remains of a stillborn fetus, wrapped in linen and placed between the Swedish bishop’s lower legs. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
Ed. That caption begs the question: Are there also people with upper legs, or don’t we just call those things arms.
IN LIFE, PEDER WINSTRUP WAS a man of both god and science, and a practical politician who advocated for his city of Lund, in what is now southern Sweden. In death, the 17th-century bishop is still providing assistance—as well as a puzzle, hidden in the folds of his funerary garb, that researchers are only now beginning to solve.
“This founding father, in one way, still lives, still contributes to modern society, through his coffin, through his body,” says Per Karsten, director of the Lund University Historical Museum. “It’s a mini-universe of the 17th century. With deepest respect, he is a unique medical archive that we can return to, over and over again, to ask new questions. And he will have the answer.”
In 2012, when Lund Cathedral officials decided to relocate Winstrup’s remains from the crypt, Karsten and his colleagues were able to analyze the coffin’s contents, including with CT scans and X-rays. They found that he had been laid to rest on a bed of fragrant lemon balm, hyssop, juniper, and other plants, which may have helped ward off decay. The bishop’s body had mummified naturally, perhaps from being kept in a cold, ventilated environment for weeks before his funeral. His remains, the plant material, and preserved textiles in his coffin have given researchers unprecedented insight into 17th-century diets and illnesses, the evolution of tuberculosis, and even insects common in Sweden at the time but now rare. (Nearly 50 invertebrates were present in the coffin, including Sweden’s oldest known bedbug.) But there was something else buried with the bishop: Someone had hidden a five- or six-month-old human fetus between Winstrup’s lower legs, beneath his vestment.
The remains of Peder Winstrup, bishop of Lund in the tumultuous 17th century, mummified naturally, perhaps due in part to herbs and other plants placed beneath his body.
For years, researchers speculated that the stillborn child had belonged to a servant in the Winstrup household, or perhaps even the undertaker. Now, ancient DNA analysis has shown that the fetus belonged to the Winstrup lineage, and was most likely the bishop’s grandson. …
The FBI is breaking into corporate computers to remove malicious code – smart cyber defense or government overreach?
The FBI’s latest cybersecurity moves bring the government into new territory – inside privately owned computers.
The FBI has the authority right now to access privately owned computers without their owners’ knowledge or consent, and to delete software. It’s part of a government effort to contain the continuing attacks on corporate networks running Microsoft Exchange software, and it’s an unprecedented intrusion that’s raising legal questions about just how far the government can go.
On April 9, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas approved a search warrant allowing the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out the operation.
The software the FBI is deleting is malicious code installed by hackers to take control of a victim’s computer. Hackers have used the code to access vast amounts of private email messages and to launch ransomware attacks. The authority the Justice Department relied on and the way the FBI carried out the operation set important precedents. They also raise questions about the power of courts to regulate cybersecurity without the consent of the owners of the targeted computers.
As a cybersecurity scholar, I have studied this type of cybersecurity, dubbed active defense, and how the public and private sectors have relied on each other for cybersecurity for years. Public-private cooperation is critical for managing the wide range of cyber threats facing the U.S. But it poses challenges, including determining how far the government can go in the name of national security. It’s also important for Congress and the courts to oversee this balancing act. …
Low-Skill Workers Aren’t a Problem to Be Fixed
The label “low-skill” flattens workers to a single attribute, ignoring the capacities they have and devaluing the jobs they do.
Recently, I was mesmerized by a prep cook. At a strip-mall Korean restaurant, I caught a glimpse of the kitchen and stood dumbfounded for a few minutes, watching a guy slicing garnishes, expending half the energy I would if I were doing the same at home and at twice the speed. The economy of his cooking was magnetic. He moved so little, but did so much.
Being a prep cook is hard, low-wage, and essential work, as the past year has so horribly proved. It is also a “low-skill” job held by “low-skill workers,” at least in the eyes of many policy makers and business leaders, who argue that the American workforce has a “skills gap” or “skills mismatch” problem that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Millions need to “upskill” to compete in the 21st century, or so say The New York Times and the Boston Consulting Group, among others.
Those are ubiquitous arguments in elite policy conversations. They are also deeply problematic. The issue is in part semantic: The term low-skill as we use it is often derogatory, a socially sanctioned slur Davos types casually lob at millions of American workers, disproportionately Black and Latino, immigrant, and low-income workers. Describing American workers as low-skill also vaults over the discrimination that creates these “low-skill” jobs and pushes certain workers to them. And it positions American workers as being the problem, rather than American labor standards, racism and sexism, and social and educational infrastructure. It is a cancerous little phrase, low-skill. As the pandemic ends and the economy reopens, we need to leave it behind.
The general policy prescription, however, is that we need to leave “low-skill workers” behind. Forget about being essential! These are the millions of Americans without the credentials and chops to succeed in tomorrow’s economy, any number of white papers, panels, and conference colloquiums will tell you. Indeed, the Obama White House, as part of its Upskill Initiative, posited that roughly 20 percent of American workers need to address their on-the-job “deficiencies” to “realize their full potential,” fretting that 36 million people “cannot compare and contrast information or integrate multiple pieces of information,” per one test.
This description, like so many descriptions of “low-skill workers,” is abjectly offensive, both patronizing and demeaning. …
Today Now!: Save Money By Taking A Vacation Entirely In Your Mind https://t.co/A0UGA6Rfeh pic.twitter.com/2TFLC8nGKJ
— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 27, 2021
UNRELATED: Petition To Rename Washington DC’s ‘Ronald Reagan Washington Airport’ After JoJo Siwa Goes Viral
Move over, former President Ronald Reagan — teen superstar, and oversized hairbow/apparent traction alopecia enthusiast, JoJo Siwa is coming for your eponymous Washington DC airport gig – at least if petitioning teens have their way. Last week, zoomers officially began carrying on the national past time that is dunking on Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics championing, HIV/AIDS crisis overlooking legacy, launching a viral petition to rename Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after a true American hero, the glitter-clad YouTuber and children’s musician.
Accompanied by a simple description asking “why on earth is there an airport named after this war criminal,” the petition, entitled “Rename Ronald Reagan Airport to Jojo Siwa Washington National Airport” has garnered more than 4,700 signatures – roughly 300 away from hitting the goal of 5,000 backers — since emerging on Change.org last week, with fans flocking to express their support for the proposed change. “Ronald Reagan rigged the economy for the rich and screwed over everyone else. Jojo Siwa was on Dance Mom’s and I like her better. Plus she’s gay,” wrote one donor. “I don’t know who JoJo Siwa is, but I know she didn’t fire 11,000 striking air traffic controllers,” added another.
Now, I know some of you are probably wondering the same thing as the commenter above – who the hell is JoJo Siwa and why do people want her to replace Ronald Reagan as the namesake of Washington DC’s airport? Well, aside from not enacting mandatory minimum sentencing drug laws nor finding herself allegedly entangled in several EPA scandals, Siwa has proven herself to be a true American hero over her 17-ish years in the spotlight. A singer, dancer, and social media influencer, Siwa has garnered more than 33 million followers on TikTok and 12 million YouTube subscribers with her original songs, like her 2x Platinum anti-cyberbullying banger, “Boomerang” and fast-talking vlogs, including one in which she wraps her Tesla Model X in images of her face. The teen is also a successful entrepreneur who was worked with high-profile companies like Claire’s and Nickelodeon to cultivate a brand worth “millions,” according to Forbes, her business prowess even landing her a spot on Time magazine’s 2020 list of most influential people. Aside from her professional endeavors, Siwa is also an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQAI+ community after coming out to her fans as pansexual and introducing them to her girlfriend earlier this year.
I can’t believe what Taytum and Oakley did to my car! I think it’s pretty epic what do you think?
Ed. I just signed the petition.
New Census Study Finds That 40% Of U.S. Population Is Filler https://t.co/VZ7o4V3pla pic.twitter.com/Jc0ikcCYMq
— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 27, 2021
UNRELATED: Robert Liston, The Surgeon Who Killed Three People in One Operation
19th-century surgeon Robert Liston, “The Fastest Knife in the West End,” lopped off body parts at blinding speeds. This inevitably led to a few small mistakes, like when he accidentally cut off a guy’s balls and the time he killed three people in a single leg amputation. Here’s a look at what can go wrong when your surgeon is essentially a human Slap Chop. …
‘Nomadland’ Wins Best Picture At Oscars #WhatDoYouThink? https://t.co/Y4BmV6LRLv pic.twitter.com/osBjzQq1FA
— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 26, 2021
I failed at van life. Here are the 11 biggest mistakes I made.
Living on the road was a dream turned nightmare. Here are my regrets and what I did wrong, from the vehicle I chose to problems I didn’t prepare for.
Van life wasn’t the dream I hoped it would be.
My fascination with van life started on a summer road trip with my college roommates. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “to live like this all the time?”
For several years afterward, I took more road trips and spent hours looking through Instagram pictures and YouTube videos of other people’s van-life highlight reels.
When I finally began living on the road, I fell in love with cruising over the summit of a mountain, waking up in my cozy bunk, and sipping coffee while the world was waking up. But this lifestyle involved more downsides than I ever saw on social media.
Eventually, I realized this nomadic life just wouldn’t work for me. Here are some of the mistakes I wish I’d avoided:
I chose my vehicle without thinking about which would be best for my needs
One of the earliest and most crucial decisions is picking the right vehicle.
The options blew my mind: Westfalias, Sprinters, sketchy white cargo vans, truck campers, truck tops, trailers, vintage RVs, buses of all sizes, and much, much more.
But instead of researching and considering my practical needs, I came into my vehicle in a series of accidents.
While working a seasonal job in Wyoming, I totaled my Corolla hitting a deer. A grandparent died suddenly, and I bought his truck. My seasonal job ended, and I decided that I was going to do this van-life thing, no matter how unprepared I felt. So I jumped in and bought a camper top.
My truck/camper top pairing has certain advantages, like a cab-over for storage space, excellent clearance, four-wheel-drive, towing capacity, and a huge backseat for friends and gear.
But I didn’t think about street parking an 8-foot-3 vehicle next to short trees or overgrown bushes, getting warnings from the city and complaints from neighbors, or being unable to access my camper from my car and vice versa. …
My Straight Kid is Flying the Gay Flag on Social Media — And I Want Her to Stop
Your Other Dad says you might not really know what she’s signalling.
Dear Other Dad –
My child, who says she’s not gay, posted photos of herself with the gay pride flag on Instagram because she said it will get her more followers. We have gay family members and I think her post does not respect what they went through in real life. It just exploits being gay for likes. Should I make her take the photo down?
— Tired of Social Media
This past winter, I heard from multiple parents that their children were adding images of themselves to a rising tide of social media posts that feature LBGTQ hashtags, acronyms, slogans, and symbols. Several said that their kids told them that queer-themed posts were more likely to get lots of likes and comments. And some said they feel this wave of representation is simply a form of attention-seeking. This week I look at the first of two questions on this topic.
When I read my 15-year-old the question, she was unfazed. “Your generation just didn’t talk about this stuff the way we do,” she said (delivering the understatement of the year). She agreed that some kids probably do just hop on the same bandwagon as their peers but she was really skeptical about the notion that they’re necessarily lying just for attention; kids today are freer to consider all their options, and, as result, many are constantly recalibrating who they are.
For most kids, these identity questions arise long before actual sexual contact, so they’re guesstimating based on past and present thoughts, feelings, and attractions. Unlike my generation, their peers are less likely to believe that there is only one acceptable orientation for their gender or to believe that one’s orientation is forever fixed. These are huge shifts in mindset — no wonder parents are having trouble getting their heads around it. Most of us just weren’t raised thinking that way.
It is true, mom, that it would not be great if your daughter is consciously claiming to be something she isn’t, especially if this is motivated solely by a desire for social validation. Do keep in mind, though, that this is an archetypal high school behavior and one that long predates social media — it just now has a bigger platform. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
For VICE’s Zeke Spector, putting a piece of tape over the webcam was just good practice; one never knows who may be looking in. But with the seemingly endless amount of digital meetings for work and family hangouts, Zeke had become somewhat complacent putting back on the tape after every use.
So he was absolutely terrified when he received an email that claimed it had been recording him in a compromising situation and would release the video to all his contacts unless he paid a ransom in Bitcoin.
Zeke began his adventure down another rabbit hole to see how feasible a webcam attack is and explore the underbelly of cybercrime that results in millions of dollars in losses a year.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Vaccine demand in the United States has gone down significantly, and a massive surge in coronavirus cases devastates India.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Prayers up for Fox News’s three-day burger ban fear-mongering campaign.
Hot Take talks exclusively with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen about his house arrest, the bombshell Trump tax investigation, the 2024 Republican candidates, and more. Plus, an inspiring Shawshank Redemption moment.
Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out The News is Now Streaming, only on Paramount+.
Seth takes a closer look at the House GOP leader stonewalling a commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection and conservatives coming up with an insane new lie about Joe Biden.
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 a critical analysis of the concept of composure.
みりに、グルーミングしてもらう気持ちよさを体験してもらいたい！I want Miri to know how comfortable brushing is!
FINALLY . . .
The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?
TOWARDS THE END OF A conversation dwelling on some of the deepest metaphysical puzzles regarding the nature of human existence, the philosopher Galen Strawson paused, then asked me: “Have you spoken to anyone else yet who’s received weird email?” He navigated to a file on his computer and began reading from the alarming messages he and several other scholars had received over the past few years. Some were plaintive, others abusive, but all were fiercely accusatory. “Last year you all played a part in destroying my life,” one person wrote. “I lost everything because of you – my son, my partner, my job, my home, my mental health. All because of you, you told me I had no control, how I was not responsible for anything I do, how my beautiful six-year-old son was not responsible for what he did … Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of your cancerous, evil, pathetic existence.” “Rot in your own shit Galen,” read another note, sent in early 2015. “Your wife, your kids your friends, you have smeared all there [sic] achievements you utter fucking prick,” wrote the same person, who subsequently warned: “I’m going to fuck you up.” And then, days later, under the subject line “Hello”: “I’m coming for you.” “This was one where we had to involve the police,” Strawson said. Thereafter, the violent threats ceased.
It isn’t unheard of for philosophers to receive death threats. The Australian ethicist Peter Singer, for example, has received many, in response to his argument that, in highly exceptional circumstances, it might be morally justifiable to kill newborn babies with severe disabilities. But Strawson, like others on the receiving end of this particular wave of abuse, had merely expressed a longstanding position in an ancient debate that strikes many as the ultimate in “armchair philosophy”, wholly detached from the emotive entanglements of real life. They all deny that human beings possess free will. They argue that our choices are determined by forces beyond our ultimate control – perhaps even predetermined all the way back to the big bang – and that therefore nobody is ever wholly responsible for their actions. Reading back over the emails, Strawson, who gives the impression of someone far more forgiving of other people’s flaws than of his own, found himself empathising with his harassers’ distress. “I think for these people it’s just an existential catastrophe,” he said. “And I think I can see why.”
The difficulty in explaining the enigma of free will to those unfamiliar with the subject isn’t that it’s complex or obscure. It’s that the experience of possessing free will – the feeling that we are the authors of our choices – is so utterly basic to everyone’s existence that it can be hard to get enough mental distance to see what’s going on. Suppose you find yourself feeling moderately hungry one afternoon, so you walk to the fruit bowl in your kitchen, where you see one apple and one banana. As it happens, you choose the banana. But it seems absolutely obvious that you were free to choose the apple – or neither, or both – instead. That’s free will: were you to rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the same, you’d have been able to make a different one.
Nothing could be more self-evident. And yet according to a growing chorus of philosophers and scientists, who have a variety of different reasons for their view, it also can’t possibly be the case. “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept” in his endorsement of Sam Harris’s bestselling 2012 book Free Will, which also makes that argument. According to the public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, free will is an anachronistic myth – useful in the past, perhaps, as a way of motivating people to fight against tyrants or oppressive ideologies, but rendered obsolete by the power of modern data science to know us better than we know ourselves, and thus to predict and manipulate our choices. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
