to set a mood • • •
Simultaneously while playing the above, Eastern Sun’s Rapture at Sea was streaming on my Pandora feed. This is like going outside without actually going outside.
Little-known Marvel Comics crime-fighter Saltpeter met his end after regulatory boards realized that he was actually modeled after a serial killer.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 17, 2019
The Egyptian Egg Ovens Considered More Wondrous Than the Pyramids
A hatching system devised 2,000 years ago is still in use in rural Egypt.
Farmers still use the same techniques developed 2,000 years ago.
MANY ASPECTS OF EGYPTIAN CULTURE impressed the ancient Greeks, including their mathematics, papyrus-making, art, and egg-hatching. Aristotle was the first to mention that last innovation, writing that in Egypt, eggs “are hatched spontaneously in the ground, by being buried in dung heaps.” But 200 years later, the historian Diodorus Siculus cast Egyptian egg-hatching as wondrous. In his forty-book-long historical compendium Library of History, he wrote:
The most astonishing fact is that, by reason of their unusual application to such matters, the men [in Egypt] who have charge of poultry and geese, in addition to producing them in the natural way known to all mankind, raise them by their own hands, by virtue of a skill peculiar to them, in numbers beyond telling.
Aristotle and Diodorus were referring to Egyptian egg incubators, an ingenious system of mud ovens designed to replicate the conditions under a broody hen. With lots of heat, moisture, and periodical egg-turning, an egg oven could hatch as many as 4,500 fertilized eggs in two to three weeks, a volume that impressed foreigners for centuries. Western travelers mentioned the wondrous structures constantly in their writings about Egypt. In 1750, French entomologist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur visited an egg incubator and declared that “Egypt ought to be prouder of them than her pyramids.”
Ancient Egyptian mural depicting food offerings (1422-1411 B.C.). Chicken did not become a feature of Egyptian diets until the fourth century B.C.
Egg incubators were quite a late invention, considering Egypt’s long history. According to Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, chickens were not a native bird of the Nile valley. They probably came from Asia—where they were domesticated from wild fowls 10,000 years ago—through Mesopotamia, or perhaps via trade ships that sailed to East Africa. It was only during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which lasted from 323 to 30 B.C., that chicken became a staple feature of Egyptian diets, says Ikram. In order to have a regular supply of chicken meat, Egyptians developed the first egg incubators. …
This 19th-century mathematician built a computer whose inner workings were based on the movement of frogs.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 17, 2019
A Pretty, Seaside Town in England Vanquished Its Giant Fatberg
It took several weeks, protective masks, and elbow grease. Oh, and also pickaxes.
Things weren’t so pretty underground. A colossal fatberg snaked roughly 210 feet through a sewer pipe near the shore of Sidmouth.
IT LOOKED AND SOUNDED A bit like the inside of a cave—dark, damp, dripping—but it smelled to high heaven. When flashlight beams fell across gray-brown mounds rising from the floor, the light wasn’t striking stalagmites, but waterlogged heaps of gloopy, congealed wipes, oil, and grease that snagged and languished in the pipes.
The sewer in the seaside town of Sidmouth, England, was clogged by a fatberg. It was squishy, rank, and hefty: When it was discovered back in December, the local utility company South West Water estimated that it snaked 210 feet underground, making it the largest they’d ever encountered, and among the closest to the shore. “Thankfully it has been identified in good time with no risk to bathing waters,” Andrew Roantree, the utility’s director of wastewater, said in a statement at the time. Roantree forecasted that it would take about eight weeks to clean up the mess, but officials noted that the combination of heavy rains “and the sheer volume of fat in a confined space could cause delays to the removal timeline.”
Crews dropped down into the sewer near the shore.
Over the past several weeks, “workers have braved exceptionally challenging conditions to break up the beast,” officials from the water company said in a release. They pulled on masks and descended down through the manhole via a winch, except when the water levels were dangerously, disgustingly high. Wielding pickaxes or jets, BBC reported, the crew chipped or blasted away at the chunks until the slurry could be funneled into tanker trucks waiting above ground and enjoying a much more enviable view.
Getting to the fatberg required a bit of sewer spelunking.
It took 36 truckloads—each of which carried 3,000 gallons of gunk—but the team has finally slain the beast. …
Saint Boromir of Sansón was the only saint to have been de-canonized for financial irregularities.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 16, 2019
Around the World in 105 Cows
A book of bovine beauty shots seeks to revive the human-cattle bond.
The Sakha Ynaga is perhaps the most metal cow in existence.
While Werner Lampert was living on an alpine pasture, he discovered that cows have an insatiable appetite for, among many things, poetry. Each morning, he’d clamber up a small hill to the pasture where his bovine neighbors were grazing. There, he’d read aloud the works of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin. The cows would gather around him, listening attentively until he finished delivering the poem at hand. “When I stopped … they would soon scatter,” writes Lampert. “But the next morning they would be there waiting for me again.”
According to Lampert, cows and humans share a special relationship—one that goes way deeper than impromptu poetry readings. That’s why he partnered with a team of photographers to journey around the globe documenting the many breeds of cattle that populate the planet, as well as the humans who look after them, work with them, worship them, and eat them. His forthcoming book, The Cow: A Tribute, is an epic ode to the stunning diversity of cows and the many ways in which they’ve helped humans thrive over the past 10,000 years. From the skyward-pointing horns of Ethiopian Raya-Azebo cattle to the spellbinding eyes of Austrian Montafons, The Cow offers a comprehensive, striking mosaic of the global bovine body and soul. (Yes, Lampert asserts, cows have souls.)
You should probably make this ridiculously stunning Grauvieh picture the background of whatever device you’re reading this article on.
With the help of cows, writes Lampert, humans have been able to successfully inhabit even the most extreme environments. In parts of northeast Siberia, temperatures can dip as low as -90 degrees Fahrenheit. But, with thick, white hair covering its compact body and udder, the gritty Sakha Ynaga can still produce plenty of milk. The Sakha people rely on this high-fat beverage for nourishment and medicinal purposes, and use the Sakha Ynaga’s dung as insulation to keep their homes warm throughout the harsh winter. …
This Elizabethan brothel became renowned for the quality of its IT department.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) January 11, 2019
10 Ridiculous People Who’ve Tried to Cure Homosexuality
Despite the fact that it’s never worked, the idea of homosexuality being “curable” remains a common myth among the evil and stupid. But here’s something those shitty idiots never considered: If it’s possible for words to make you straight, that implies the reverse is also true. Which means all it would take was a single code phrase, such as seven Hemsworths sharing a pie in a bathtub, to infect you with gay forever. Now that you’re gay, or simply much gayer, here are ten heroes who believe they can get you back to normal.
It’s important to establish that I have the same contempt for gay conversion as I do for Bill Cosby’s relationship advice. Both are ridiculous in a dark, tragic way, and both also take up several feet of shelf in my library.
You might be wondering, ladies, why a man with such a proud, adventurous history in heterosexuality would own so many books on curing gay. Is my shaved, muscled body filled with forbidden urges barely held back by a mountain of literature? The explanation is far more simple.
You see, I spend most days in my library, combining perfumes and chemicals in the hopes of finding a mixture that will make me invisible to dogs. With my lack of scientific background or method, it will certainly be my cause of death. And when they find me, the books surrounding my unscented corpse will give forensic psychologists something to study and debate for generations.
10. Mike Haley
Mike Haley was a gay man for 12 years, but managed to crawl his way out of the lifestyle with the help of God and Jeff Konrad, whom he met in 1985 at a gay gym. Mike, according to this book’s foreword, followed a man out to the parking lot, only for him to shut Mike down by saying he wasn’t a homosexual anymore. He claimed he was cured by this Jeff Konrad — who, speak of the devil, walked up to them at that very moment!
Think of the odds! Two formerly gay men and one soon-to-be-formerly gay man running into each other in the parking lot of a gay gym, and all they do is discuss the glory of God’s majesty. Why, if honesty wasn’t such a valued principle among Christian anti-gay activists, I’d almost say the story was made up and they actually spent the afternoon just soaking in the interior of Jeff’s pet grooming van.
In 2004, Mike published 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality, which debunks the gay lifestyle with the smugness of a debate nerd and the shriveled myopic perspective of the 4chan account that nerd uses to agree with himself. For 200 pages, Mike sets himself up with easy questions and then annihilates himself in the debate. For instance, he might “ask” something like, Um, I heard God destroyed Sodom for inhospitality, not homosexuality? Then he will dunk that dipshit. You see, in Hebrew (um, heard of it?), the word yada has two meanings, both of which, based on your foolish question, are too complicated for your puny brain. Mike seems like the kind of guy who tells himself he’s not gay because the Aramaic word for penis can also mean “totally allowed toothbrush.”
Mike is clearly most comfortable when he’s making himself look like a moron, but not all of the questions are contentious. Sometimes he’ll just ask himself things like “What’s the deal with lesbians?” and make some guesses. The book really demonstrates the problem with a collection of entirely hypothetical questions. There’s no follow-up discussion to anything. You never know if he’s right. What I mean is, he never asks himself, “Hey, I tried your answer to the last question and God didn’t take my gay away. Why is that, Mike? Are you and God, and forgive me for putting this so bluntly, dumb as shit?” …
Apple’s new ad highlights everything wrong with the company right now
SQUARE HOLE ROUND PEG
A nice computer for a drab office.
Yesterday (April 2), Apple released a new ad targeted at corporate customers.
The three-minute segment is pretty funny and well done, and you can watch it here:
But after it’s over, you’re probably left with some questions. The ad features a team frantically putting together a pitch for their product, a new type of pizza box. Did their pitch succeed? What exactly made those Apple products they used to put it together so special? And why aren’t all pizza boxes round?
The small irony in this ad is that Apple does in fact use a round pizza box design, much like the one in the ad, in its own office cafeterias. It even holds a patent for the design.
Quartz has asked Apple if it’s ever thought of licensing its design out to other pizza makers, but we’re guessing that there’s a reason why few pizza boxes deviate from the traditional square shape: it’s far cheaper to mass produce, ship, and put together. While Apple’s design could potentially have its benefits—maybe it could be made of completely recycled cardboard (we’ve asked), as Apple does apparently care deeply about the environment—it appears that the box, like just about everything Apple focuses on these days, is an over-engineered solution to a problem that had already been solved in a less expensive way. …
The Cold War-era drink that rivals cola
Created as an alternative to Coca-Cola and Pepsi at a time when Western goods were prohibitively expensive, Kofola is now widely popular in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
As a third dessert option was being squeezed on to the kitchen table in front of four sufficiently full young men, all too polite to refuse a final helping, I reflected on how fortunate I and my companion Marco were to be visiting Bratislava with friends who grew up in the city. Marek and Kubo were back in their home town from Barcelona and Prague for a short time only, and so their mothers were keen to feed them – and their two lucky guests – while they could.
That evening we’d gorged on the sweets from my friends’ childhoods: buchtičky se šodó, a doughy vanilla cake with just a touch of rum, and šišky s mákem, sweet dumplings made from potato, sugar, butter and poppy seeds. It was when a dark and dense beverage was passed around in plastic bottles that Marco, the designated driver for the evening, looked as though he could take no more.
This was my first introduction to Kofola. Although it resembles a stout beer, Kofola is non-alcoholic, and originates from the second half of the 20th Century when Czechoslovakia was a Soviet satellite state. Created as an alternative to Coca-Cola and Pepsi at a time when Western goods were prohibitively expensive, the drink has since gone on to become a national favourite in the now-independent countries of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The syrup that forms the foundation of Kofola was invented in the late 1950s by Zdeněk Blažek, a scientist who had been commissioned by the state to create an alternative to American cola brands, using ingredients available in Czechoslovakia. The result was Kofo syrup, a mixture of fruit and herbal extracts that forms the base of Kofola. Some historical accounts say that Blažek and his team came up with the recipe for Kofo syrup (which remains secret to this day) when experimenting with ways to use the waste generated from roasting coffee, but while Kofola is caffeinated, these accounts are unsubstantiated. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
The Galápagos Islands are supposedly one of the most pristine locations on the planet, but plastic pollution arriving by sea is threatening this unique habitat and wildlife. Leah Green travels to the islands to see how our reliance on plastic is affecting even the most remote of locations, and to see how the archipelago is hoping to lead the worldwide fight against plastic.
Donald Trump continues his decade-long vendetta against windmills, citing shaky scientific reasoning and aesthetic concerns.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler wants to see it all … the Mueller report, that is.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth takes a closer look at some of the crazy insane stuff the president said in a speech to a group of Republicans.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
久しぶりにブランコを出しました。Maru got on the swing after a long absence.
FINALLY . . .
Is consciousness a battle between your beliefs and perceptions?
Now you see it… Magician Harry Houdini moments before ‘disappearing’ Jennie the 10,000lb elephant at the Hippodrome, New York, in 1918.
Imagine you’re at a magic show, in which the performer suddenly vanishes. Of course, you ultimately know that the person is probably just hiding somewhere. Yet it continues to look as if the person has disappeared. We can’t reason away that appearance, no matter what logic dictates. Why are our conscious experiences so stubborn?
The fact that our perception of the world appears to be so intransigent, however much we might reflect on it, tells us something unique about how our brains are wired. Compare the magician scenario with how we usually process information. Say you have five friends who tell you it’s raining outside, and one weather website indicating that it isn’t. You’d probably just consider the website to be wrong and write it off. But when it comes to conscious perception, there seems to be something strangely persistent about what we see, hear and feel. Even when a perceptual experience is clearly ‘wrong’, we can’t just mute it.
Why is that so? Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) shed new light on this puzzle. In computer science, we know that neural networks for pattern-recognition – so-called deep learning models – can benefit from a process known as predictive coding. Instead of just taking in information passively, from the bottom up, networks can make top-down hypotheses about the world, to be tested against observations. They generally work better this way. When a neural network identifies a cat, for example, it first develops a model that allows it to predict or imagine what a cat looks like. It can then examine any incoming data that arrives to see whether or not it fits that expectation.
The trouble is, while these generative models can be super efficient once they’re up and running, they usually demand huge amounts of time and information to train. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Maybe. Probably? Definitely Not. Groundhog Day (or something else just as pointless).