January 15, 2019 in 2,680 words

‘Climate of panic’: bombings in Brazil reveal growing power of gangs

_{^{Wave of attacks in Ceará state exposes how poverty, lack of policies for young people and creaking prison system add up to perfect storm}}

_{Above: The remains of a burnt-out vehicle after an attack in Fortaleza. The wave of such attacks in Ceará state shows no sign of letting up.}

Antonio Carlos da Silva was returning home to the Lagoa Redonda district of Fortaleza when two armed men drove past in a black car, ordering businesses to shut and residents to go inside and turn off the lights. Da Silva spent the next day indoors with no drinking water as a wave of unrest engulfed the north-eastern Brazilian city.

“There’s a climate of panic and people are terrified to go out. It’s like you’re a prisoner in your home and even then not safe,” says Da Silva. “These attacks are worse than in the past; they’re attacking shopping centres, bridges. No one knows how it will end.”

Now in its third week, the wave of bomb and fire attacks on bridges, banks and other infrastructure across Ceará state shows no sign of letting up, with two bridges blown up and a school bus set on fire during at least eight attacks on Sunday.

It is seen not just as a direct challenge to the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, but also as stark evidence that Brazil urgently needs penal reform and alternatives to the tough-on-crime policies he is promising.

“This crisis was entirely predictable. This is the fourth year we’ve had such attacks. We were sitting on a barrel of gunpowder and it just needed someone to light the fuse,” says Renato Roseno, congressman for the Socialism and Liberty party (PSOL), adding that poverty, “medieval prisons”, the war on drugs, and non-existent policies for marginalised young people make the state “fertile recruiting ground” for criminal gangs. …

Earth’s magnetic field may not be flipping

_{While the magnetic field is changing, geology suggests our poles won’t trade places.}

_{It doesn’t look like anything to me.}

Going back millions of years into Earth’s history, our planet’s magnetic field has frequently gone its own way. The magnetic north pole has not only wandered through the north, but it has changed places with the south magnetic pole, taking up residence in the Antarctic. Going back millions of years, there’s a regular pattern of pole exchange, with flips sometimes occurring in relatively rapid succession.

In those terms, our current period of pole positioning is unusually long, with the last flip occurring nearly 800,000 years ago. But the magnetic field has grown noticeably weaker since we started measuring it more than a hundred years ago. The poles have wandered a bit, and there’s an area of even more dramatic weakening over the South Atlantic. Could these be signs that we’re due for another flip?

Probably not, according to new research published with the refreshingly clear title, “Earth’s magnetic field is probably not reversing.” In it, an international team of researchers reconstructs the history of some past flips and argues that what’s going on now doesn’t much look like previous events.

Flipping out

The work relies on reconstructing the global magnetic field tens of millions of years ago. Whenever rock is formed—from sediment deposits or volcanic eruptions, for example—the Earth’s magnetic field influences how small particles of magnetic materials line up within the newly formed rock. That influence gets locked into place as a magnetic signature in the rock, one we can read today. Combine that with rocks we can get dates on, and it’s possible to tell what Earth’s magnetic field was doing in the distant past.

But, as we mentioned above, the Earth’s magnetic field isn’t entirely uniform; it changes location and can develop weak points. To get a more complete picture, the researchers pulled out data on the magnetic field’s strength and orientation from around the globe. This was then plugged into a global model, which took locational information into account to build an estimate of the entire magnetic field’s strength during the period of two reversals. …

Awful though he was to behold, Ectorious “Pumpkin-Hound” Habakuk’s eerily compelling poetry made a lasting impression on Victorian men of letters.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 15, 2019

For Sale: A Penny Worth a Fortune

_{In 1943, copper was supposed to be preserved for the war effort.}

_{A relic that should have never existed.}

MOST PENNIES ARE WORTH A single cent, but one very special 76-year-old coin up for sale this week will net far, far more than that.

Copper pennies issued in 1943 look, in most ways, like any other you might find on the street, but they were never supposed to be made. That year, pennies were to be struck from steel, in order to preserve copper for things such as shell casings and telephone wire, which were vital to the American military effort in World War II. Diligent as the mints were, some leftover copper (or bronze, technically) planchets from 1942 snuck into the coin presses and were struck into pennies in the new year. The few copper pennies that emerged in 1943 were obscured and protected by the millions of “steelies.”

Just 10 to 15 of these mistake coins are believed to be in circulation today. One of them hits the auction block this week at Heritage Auctions, in Orlando, Florida.

With a handful of coppers emerging from mints around the U.S., word of these rarities began to spread, along with a false rumor that Henry Ford would provide a free car to anyone who could supply him with one of the pennies. Eager to save face, the Treasury Department deflected collectors’ inquiries with a firm form letter: “In regard to your recent inquiry,” the Treasury insisted, “please be informed that copper pennies were not struck in 1943. All pennies struck in 1943 were zinc coated steel.” …

These early guided weapons were powered by tiny, suicidal warriors lionized by ancient Chinese manuscripts as “gods of the small death”.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 15, 2019

5 Famous Magazine Covers With Crazy Stories You Never Knew

Remember those things called “magazines”? They were like websites, except they didn’t contain viruses, and some really cool ones had comics. Anyway, some magazines got really famous on account of these things called “covers” — though as it turned out, these were sometimes more interesting than the content the magazines themselves held. For example …

5. Time‘s “Family Separation” Cover Didn’t Depict A Family Separation

Last year, it was revealed that border police were separating asylum-seeking families, imprisoning the children in their own specialized, horrific tiny prisons. The media responded with the appropriate level of fire and fury, and President Trump soon signed an executive order halting the practice (in theory, at least). As part of the media storm, Time published this cover, in which Trump brings a young girl to tears.

_{Though we’re guessing Mr. No-Such-Thing-As-Bad-Publicity still hung this one in his office.}

One slight problem: After a journalist tracked down the identity of the girl (Yanela Sanchez) in the original photo from which she was ‘shopped, it was revealed that she wasn’t a victim of the family separation policy. In fairness, Time wasn’t the only outlet to use this photo to illustrate the very real horror of the policy, which was likely a result of it having been uploaded to Getty Images with a caption suggesting that they might have been separated. But you’d think that Time would maybe invest some, um, time into getting the full story before handing the “FAKE NEWS!” crowd an easy win.

It’s shameful that dems and the media exploited this photo of a little girl to push their agenda. She was not separated from her mom. The separation here is from the facts. Dems should join POTUS and fix our broken immigration system. #ChangetheLawshttps://t.co/Y6KrTp4Ulk

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 22, 2018

Time soon came out defending the cover, arguing that it never meant to portray a real-life family separated by Mayor McCheese, and was merely an artistic representation of the policy. This explanation would sound a lot better if A) they hadn’t already issued a retraction for an article inside the magazine which described Yanela as having been separated from her parents by border police, and B) there weren’t dozens of photos that they could’ve used instead.

Like this one!

_{But hey, you do you.}

If you’re in the mood for a burger, you should avoid McDreadful’s, the controversial fast-food chain founded and operated by Banksy.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 14, 2019

The Life and Legacy of Vietnam’s Sacred Giant Turtle

_{Hanoi’s Hoàn Kiếm Lake was once home to both legendary and real chelonians.}

_{A relief at Ngọc Sơn Temple depicting the legendary turtle with a sword on its back.}

THERE IS A LEGEND THAT Vietnamese children learn in school about one of their country’s most revered heroes, a magic sword, and a giant turtle. As the tale goes, a 15th-century landowner known as Lê Lợi gained strength from a heaven-sent blade and drove out the occupying Ming army. Crowned emperor, he later went boating on a lake in present-day Hanoi—but his leisurely trip was interrupted by a large, golden turtle that emerged from the water to retrieve the weapon.

Lê Lợi renamed the lake, today a famous Hanoi landmark, “Hồ Hoàn Kiếm,” or “Lake of the Returned Sword.” The blade was never seen again. But the sacred chelonian, today known as the Hoàn Kiếm turtle or the Golden Turtle, has maintained a curious, high-profile presence in Vietnam.

A symbol of the country’s independence and longevity—even seen as a deity that has protected its capital—the turtle is immortalized in art and architecture around Hanoi. Tháp Rùa, or Tortoise Tower, is a late-19th-century building that sits on an islet on Hoàn Kiếm Lake. Nearby is Ngọc Sơn Temple, featuring a magnificent entrance with a relief of the Hoàn Kiếm turtle swimming away, sword on its back.

But the Hoàn Kiếm turtle also has a status as a kind of Vietnamese Loch Ness monster, a centuries-old cryptid that has captured imaginations and sent the city into a frenzy from time to time.

_{View across Hoàn Kiếm Lake with Tháp Rùa, also known as Turtle Tower.}

Many Vietnamese believe the urban myth is kept alive to delight tourists. But anecdotal accounts of giant turtle sightings increased over the past few decades, according to the biologist Matthew P. Bettelheim. “Some who saw it said it was a monstrous turtle—some even said it was the Golden Turtle itself,” he writes in a 2012 article in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Bibliotheca Herpetologica. For those in the latter camp, any sight of it was a sign of good luck. …

Chinese spies once constructed an entire opera hall in the middle of the Gobi desert for “Operation Seven Tridents”. The hall is still used today.

— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 14, 2019

Reports: Police Defuse Gas Station Standoff by Having Robot Deliver Vape Pen to Suspect

_{Police footage of a standoff resolved by a robot (seen below the pump closest to the pickup truck) that fulfilled the suspect’s demand for a cigarette by delivering a vape pen.}

A six-hour standoff between police and a 40-year-old man who allegedly splashed gasoline on the floor of a Novato, California, convenience store “while threatening to burn it down” and later fled to a nearby Safeway ended when police defused the situation with a robot carrying a vape pen, the Sacramento Bee reported Sunday, citing reports by the Bay City News, KGO, KPIX, and Marin Independent Journal.

Caught On Camera: Suspect seen trying to allegedly set Novato convenience store on fire after dousing floor w/ gasoline. #abc7now @NovatoPolice pic.twitter.com/PP6Xm8mbhT

— Cornell Barnard (@CornellBarnard) January 13, 2019

According to the Bee, the suspect (identified by police as Juan Roman) appears to have been angry with some kind of problem at the pumps early on Saturday morning before he attempted and failed to ignite a gasoline-soaked floor mat at the convenience store. Police also said he was angry over family issues, the Bay City News wrote.

“I said sir you have to pre-pay for gas,” Circle K assistant manager Sanjeeb Kumar told KGO. “He got so angry he took a gas can from his pick up and poured it all over the store.”

Following the failed attempt to set the Circle K ablaze, the suspect fled to the Safeway location in a pickup truck. The Journal reported that after responding police notified by staff at the first location saw what they believed to be a firearm in the man’s vehicle, the situation resulted in “a mass response including Novato and San Rafael police, with crisis negotiators and a SWAT team, and the Novato Fire Department.” …

Video Goodnesses
_{and not-so-goodnesses}

Drunk History’s Derek Waters watches a reenactment of the Civil War according to Donald Trump, including the rise of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking problem.

As the government shutdown hits Day 24, the New York Times drops a shocking report on an FBI investigation into Trump’s Russia relations, while the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidates enter the field.

_{THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.}

Working hard for Russia or hardly working for America?

The President had a beautiful view of the snow-covered White House grounds this weekend. But no one to share it with.

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

Seth takes a closer look at accusations that Trump worked for a foreign government and the federal government’s ongoing shutdown.

_{THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.}

Randy’s weed farm gets a thumbs-up from a very qualified agricultural inspector: Towelie.

_{THANKS to Comedy Central and South Park for making this program available on YouTube.}

Mary Shelley comes up with the story of “Frankenstein” to impress her cool writer friends and winds up creating a timeless horror classic.

_{THANKS to Comedy Central and Drunk History for making this program available on YouTube.}

夕食後はタワーの上で寛いでいることが多いはな。目が合うと「ニャー」と呼びつけられます。After dinner, Hana relaxes at the cat tower. When her eyes meet with me, she meows and calls me.

FINALLY . . .

Everyone’s a victim

_{New campaign seeks to educate both sides when it comes to identity theft}

In 2004, Luz Gonzalez filed her taxes and got her refund, just like she had done every year since becoming a permanent resident and getting a Social Security number at age 19. But three months later, she received a letter from the IRS accusing her of not reporting $23,000 of income and telling her she owed the government $4,000 in taxes and fines.

“When you get a letter from the IRS, it’s scary,” says Gonzalez, who quickly realized she was a victim of identity theft, most likely because she had lost her ID at a nightclub the year before.

Gonzalez called the IRS and told them someone else was using her identity to work. In turn, the agency told her to file a police report, fax it in, and the extra income and associated fines would be cleared from her record.

“But I was intrigued about who did it, I wanted to know,” she says.

She went to the Social Security Administration and found out that someone was using her identity to work at a nearby Taco Bell. What’s more, they had given an address, which was close to Gonzalez’s North Denver home.

“So I went,” she says, admitting it probably wasn’t the smartest idea at the time. When she got there, she says there were a lot of people hanging out but the woman using Gonzalez’s identity wasn’t at home. She assumes most of them were undocumented.

She told the guy who answered the door, “Look, I don’t want any problems, but I’m Luz Gonzalez and a girl in this house is using my information. Tell her to stop, because I already did a police report and I don’t know what’s going to happen. Just tell her to stop.’”

Then Gonzalez left and never tried to find the woman again. …

_{Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Maybe. Probably Not? Groundhog Day.}