• • • an aural noise • • •
word salad: Downtempo-Chillout-Psychill-Dub-Electronica-THEMISTOKLIS XAFIS, aka I.X.O.P. is a Greek musician born in the city of Thessaloniki. His productions are wings of the mind able to translate its magic visualizations of electronic sounds in space.
• some of the things I read while eating breakfast in antisocial isolation •
There’s Gold In These Here Strange Squiggles
Mining operations at one of Russia’s largest gold deposits includes a method that leaves twisty tracks on the landscape.
In Russia’s resource-rich Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), dredging for gold near the Aldan River leaves behind a long curve of maze-like squiggles. Embiggenable. Explore at home.
CURVING ACROSS A landscape colored in chartreuse and bronze, a strange arc of squiggles looks like the work of some very confused burrowing animal. This curious, maze-like feature in East Russia was, however, created by humans and their machines. The site is part of the sprawling Kuranakh ore field, which stretches nearly 600 square miles and represents one of the country’s largest gold deposits.
Mining operations in the area, located in the Central Aldan District in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), have been ongoing since the deposit’s discovery in 1947. Since the mid-1960s, large-scale open-pit mining has carved a signature into the landscape (see pits visible in lower portion of large image below). But the squiggly maze shown above represents another approach: placer mining with gold dredges.
Perhaps the earliest form of gold mining, going back millennia, placer mining is simply the act of collecting bits of gold that have piled up relatively loosely. This happens most often in stream and river beds. The squiggles in the satellite image above, taken in September 2019, follow the course of an old tributary of the Aldan River. Over time, the placer deposit became buried by sediment, so miners use dredging equipment to collect it. The gold dredges dig up the sediment and sort out large rocks and other undesirable material, leaving them behind in long, snaky lines of tailings as the machinery moves, Roomba-like, back and forth over the landscape. …
PODCAST: Wonders in Your Backyard
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 hear from you, our listeners, about the strange and wondrous places in your towns, such as the world’s largest tin soldier, the home of the first public beach, and a phone connecting us to people we’ve lost. …
40 Years Later: The Denialism That Shaped The AIDS Epidemic
It’s been four decades since the first U.S. AIDS cases were reported. Some people who experienced the early years of the crisis say the effects of denialism have carried into the COVID-19 pandemic.
RELATED: ‘They Learn to Parrot What They Know They’re Supposed to Say’
True inclusion requires viewpoint diversity, the educator Erin McLaughlin argues, and children should be taught how to think—not what to think.
Erin McLaughlin, an educator in Pennsylvania, believes that, in school and in life, people should study what others think and why. But in her estimation, many educational institutions that purport to value diversity and inclusion fail to treat viewpoint diversity—which she defines as “the recognition that nobody’s worldview is complete, and that no one marker of identity actually defines the way we see the world around us”—as a vital part of civic education. Her mission: to persuade educational institutions to put viewpoint diversity at the center of their cultures and curricula.
McLaughlin strives to do just that in her job as a high-school English teacher. While working on a master’s degree in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, she began to build a theoretical and practical framework around her ideas. She has developed what she calls the Viewpoint Diversity Curriculum, which poses questions such as “Can I go beyond my personal experience?” and “Can I find a way to constructively connect with the other side?”
I came across the graphic version of her curriculum while reporting about diversity-education initiatives in schools. Earlier this year, I argued that the Black Lives Matter at School initiative in a Chicago suburb offered some valuable instructional material but also crossed from education into advocacy. McLaughlin’s curriculum embraces the goals of diversity and inclusion while insisting that educators should teach children how to think for themselves, not what they should think. “If other people matter,” she argues, “then so do their viewpoints.” I recently spoke with McLaughlin by phone. The following transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Conor Friedersdorf: Everyone grasps why instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic are important. Why does teaching viewpoint diversity in K–12 education matter?
Erin McLaughlin: Teaching kids what to think instead of how to think is dangerous. Advocacy-based teaching deprives them of the skills [they need] to reach their own conclusions. Instead they learn to parrot what they know they’re supposed to say to get a good grade. Kids are really good at that, but it doesn’t translate to actually believing what they are saying or knowing why it’s supposed to be important. When you present students with different viewpoints, they develop critical skills, learn how others think, and understand why they came to a given belief. …
NRA Denied Bankruptcy Claim #WhatDoYouThink? https://t.co/iKRSV4ebZd pic.twitter.com/2muYnnTWT1
— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 17, 2021
More Than 1,000 Feral Cats Have Been Released To Fight Chicago’s Rat Problem
Well, folks, it seems a local Chicago animal welfare group has taken a page out of the Disneyland book of pest control, releasing more than 1,000 feral cats onto the streets of the Windy City to tackle the city’s latest vermin problem – an onslaught of rats. Proudly bearing the number one spot on pest control company’s list of “rattiest cities,” the Tree House Humane Society has taken an unusual approach in attempting to rectify their community’s rodent issue, sending in a vicious army of adorable kittens, The Hill reported.
Drawing upon cats that aren’t suited for life in a home, animal shelter and for whatever reason, can’t return to their original colonies, are employed to do what they do best, catching rats as a part of the apparently highly lucrative Cats at Work program, working on behalf of businesses or properties that request and are approved to have an animal.
“Property and business owners provide food, water, shelter, and wellness to the cats who work for them,” their website explains. “In most cases, our Cats at Work become beloved members of the family or team.” …
Possible Lightning Strike Kills 18 Wild Elephants #WhatDoYouThink? https://t.co/gUf30zKbPk pic.twitter.com/ub6iKYSkht
— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 18, 2021
Mist on the Water: The crash of Delta flight 723
An investigator examines the wreckage of Delta flight 723, as a Boeing 747 and a Boeing 707 taxi across the airport in the background.
On the 31st of July 1973, a Delta Air Lines DC-9 on approach to Boston, Massachusetts slammed into a seawall at the foot of the runway, spewing burning wreckage across the airport and killing 88 of the 89 people on board. The lone survivor was a Leopold Chouinard, who clung to life despite severe injuries, becoming a Bostonian folk hero in the process — but, tragically, he died in hospital four months after the crash, leaving no one left alive who could tell the story of Delta flight 723.
That story began with an approach that was dangerously rushed, an unseasonable mid-summer fog, an incorrect mode setting, and a series of small coincidences and errors that put the DC-9 on a collision course with the seawall. It was also a story of a rescue gone awry, with the burning plane sitting on the runway threshold for nine minutes while the controller, blissfully unaware of the disaster, kept clearing more planes to land. The tragedy exposed flaws in cockpit technology, pilot procedures, and air traffic control services — but also highlighted some of the ways in which the aviation industry in the 1970s was reluctant to grapple with the causes of human error.
N975NE, the aircraft involved in the accident.
In 1972, Delta Air Lines merged with the struggling regional carrier Northeast Airlines, in the process acquiring a large number of routes, planes, and pilots. Among these acquisitions was a regular service between Burlington, Vermont and Boston, Massachusetts, which today would be operated with a small turboprop, but in 1972 used a jet: the Douglas DC-9, a workhorse of short-haul routes across the United States. By July 1973, Delta had just finished overhauling the cockpit instruments and radio systems on the DC-9s it acquired from Northeast to bring them into line with the rest of the fleet, and former Northeast pilots had recently undergone training on the changes.
Among those pilots were Captain John Streil, 49, an experienced pilot with over 14,800 hours; and First Officer Sidney Burrill, who had 7,000 total hours but was quite new to the DC-9. On the 31st of July 1973 they were to fly Delta flight 723 from Burlington to Boston, along with a cockpit observer: another former Northeast pilot, 52-year-old Joseph Burrell, who had been on leave for six years due to mild Parkinson’s disease, and was now familiarizing himself with company procedures in preparation for his re-certification.
The flight to Boston from sparsely populated Vermont was not supposed to be heavily booked. But before the flight could leave Burlington, the airline provided the crew with some unwelcome news: a stopover would be added in Manchester, New Hampshire, where a number of Delta passengers had been stranded after weather conditions caused the cancellation of their flight to Boston. Flight 723 would be asked to add a stopover to its already short journey in order to pick them up.
Route of Delta flight 723, with an unscheduled stopover.
By the time flight 723 departed its stopover in Manchester at 10:50 a.m., there were 83 passengers and six crew on board, including the three pilots and three flight attendants. There had been 84 passengers, but businessman Charles Mealy concluded that due to the delay caused by the stopover in Manchester, he could get to his meeting in Boston faster by car. During taxi to the runway he asked to be let off, and the pilots returned to the parking area so he could disembark. It would prove to be the best decision Mealy ever made. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
The Couch Reports celebrates excellence in corporate tax avoidance with the 113th Annual Golden Couch Awards!
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Reporters find President Biden’s personal Venmo account, a former Navy pilot says his squadron consistently sees UFOs, and South Carolina’s death row inmates have to choose between electric chair or firing squad.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distanchg Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth takes a closer look at Trump threatening to abandon his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani amid his criminal investigation and Congressman Matt Gaetz’s wingman pleading guilty and promising to cooperate with prosecutors.
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.
FINALLY . . .
5 Gruesome Secrets Declassified by the Soviets
Thousands of people killed for different unbelievable reasons. The Soviets had their fair share of state secrets.
Embiggenable.
IT HAS BEEN EXACTLY 30 YEARS SINCE THE fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Ever since, many documents have been resurfacing, documents that have been classified under Soviet rule. Here are five of the most gruesome secrets that the Soviet Union hid for years.
Stalin sent 5,000 people to die on Cannibal Island
As we knew, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sentenced millions of people to death by cramming them into gulags or deporting them to distant regions. Very distant. But what you didn’t know was that in 1933 he sent over 5,000 people to Cannibal Island.
These were so-called socially harmful people who once arrived on the island of Nazino in Siberia and had to undergo the torture of hunger. The island was isolated and had only a forest and a swamp. Faced with this sterile environment, the prisoners were tasked with clearing and sowing nearly 550 hectares of land with rye before winter.
To survive, they had to stock up on enough wood for construction and heating. Abandoned and starving, these victims of Stalinism had only one option: eat the corpses and hope to survive or push people to die faster than expected to be able to eat. So, yes, Cannibal Island does its name justice, unfortunately.
The KGB loved castration
…
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
