Southwest passenger arrested for masturbating 4 times during flight
‘How to Murder Your Husband’ author on trial for husband’s death
Nike Wants to ‘Destroy’ Unauthorized NFTs—How Will That Work?
Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims [study]
A physician didn’t shower for 5 years. Here’s what he found out.
Experts push for genetic testing to personalise drug prescriptions
People sometimes avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix others’ problems. For example, only 2.6% of individuals in a pilot field study provided feedback to a survey administrator who had food or lipstick on their face.
She noticed grey smoke billowing from the chimney of the house next door. Next, she says, came the sore throats, headaches, and tight lungs. Remmers had no history of respiratory issues, but by 2016 she ended up in the emergency room in the middle of the night when she had trouble breathing. The far-reaching consequences of woodsmoke pollution
‘Forever chemicals’ found in fast food wrappers
Fashion accounts for up to 10% of global carbon dioxide output—more than international flights and shipping combined. It also accounts for a fifth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced globally each year. […] Eighty-seven percent of the total fiber input used for clothing is ultimately incinerated or sent to a landfill.
The speed of sound has been measured on Mars for the first time, and it’s very different to Earth’s. The results was achieved by firing bursts of 30 laser shots over a period of 10 seconds at target locations.
Experience: I let a baby bird nest in my hair for 84 days
Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can
Digital Curator — AI library for machine learning TensorFlow, the computer service Google Cloud Vision and custom trained neural networks were used for the automatic detection of the depicted iconographic motifs.
Handwashing and Detergent Treatment Greatly Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load on Halloween Candy Handled by COVID-19 Patients — From the candies not washed posthandling, we detected SARS-CoV-2 on 60% of candies that were deliberately coughed on, 60% of candies normally handled with unwashed hands, but only 10% of candies handled after hand washing.
“You hit the gym at 4:30 in the morning, go to work and then you get wasted”
The latest edition of the DSM-5, sometimes known as “psychiatry’s bible,” includes a controversial new diagnosis: prolonged grief disorder. [NY Times]
Modern research methods have made it possible to trace quotations to the most accurate sources. […] Because it capitalizes on Big Data and other technological advances, the Yale Book can claim an authoritativeness that is unsurpassed. Hundreds of famous misattributions have been corrected — and probably thousands of misquotations as well. The Yale Book can legitimately claim to be the most accurate, thorough, and up-to-date quotation book ever compiled.
In maglev innovation, Chinese researchers transfer power wirelessly to moving train
I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW — Zodiac Killer cipher is cracked after eluding sleuths for 51 years
Scientists believe there could be an ‘anti-universe’ next to ours – where time runs backwards
Feedback networks, unstable oscillators, shaky fat quivering filters, distorted mayhem, a bunch of labels in Japanese, a bunch of switches and knobs and a tape recorder – Bentō is a delight of software madness. It’s a delicious meal of noise.
Mike Tyson Is Making Pot Edibles in the Shape of a Bitten Ear
We considered the concept of the discrepancy between a patient’s desired time in bed (TIB) and total sleep time (TST), which we termed the DBST. The DBST could be a possible new sleep index due to its relation with insomnia severity, depression, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, or preoccupation with sleep.
Even Moderate Ambient Light During Sleep Is Harmful – Increases Risk for Heart Disease and Diabetes
(Why) Is misinformation a problem?
This observational study recorded the frequency of same-aged, adult human groups appearing in public spaces through 2636 hours, recording group formation by 1.2mn people via 170 research assistants in 46 countries across the world. […] ~50% more female-female than male-male pairs are observed in public spaces globally
Is information the fifth state of matter?
The Limitless Potential of Virtual Influencers on TikTok
Cryptocurrencies: The Power of Memes — The byzantine premium arises because of confusion around the apparent complexities of blockchain. Investors read confusing, jargon-laden articles and become convinced that smarter people than themselves are investing, so they should too.
Researcher uses 379-year-old algorithm to crack crypto keys found in the wild. It takes only a second to crack the handful of weak keys.
A $4 Billion Hedge Fund Is Shorting Tether’s Stablecoin
The 18 Minutes of Trading Chaos That Broke the Nickel Market Nickel prices usually move a few hundred dollars per ton in a day. For most of the past decade, they’d traded between $10,000 and $20,000. Yet the day before, the market had started to unravel, with prices rising by a stunning 66% to $48,078. Already at an all-time high by 5:42 a.m., it lurched higher in stomach-churning leaps, soaring $30,000 in a matter of minutes. Just after 6 a.m., the price of nickel passed $100,000 a ton. Miners, traders, and manufacturers often use the market to make short bets—that is, to make money when prices fall. And when those wagers move violently in the opposite direction, they can be hit with huge margin calls, or requests to put down more cash to back their trades. The head of one London metals brokerage recalls feeling sick as he watched the moves, realizing what the spike in prices would mean for his company, the market, and the global metals industry. Nickel’s 250% price spike in little more than 24 hours plunged the industry into chaos, triggering billions of dollars in losses for traders who bet the wrong way and leading the London Metal Exchange to suspend trading for the first time in three decades.
In less than 6 hours after starting on our in-house server, our model generated 40,000 molecules that scored within our desired threshold. In the process, the AI designed not only VX, but also many other known chemical warfare agents that we identified through visual confirmation with structures in public chemistry databases. Many new molecules were also designed that looked equally plausible. These new molecules were predicted to be more toxic, based on the predicted LD50 values, than publicly known chemical warfare agents. By inverting the use of our machine learning models, we had transformed our innocuous generative model from a helpful tool of medicine to a generator of likely deadly molecules.
Officials intend to reserve the first 100 or more retail licenses to sell marijuana in New York for people who have been convicted of related offenses, or their relatives. [NY Times]
Healthy and cancerous cells emit different ’smells’ ants can distinguish between
Studies show that both women and men want longer foreplay than they generally experience
individuals largely lack insight into the quality of their judgments, which is particularly problematic because they cannot reliably discriminate between lies and truths.
Tyrannosaurus rex may have been three species, scientists say
algae with three sexes that all mate in pairs identified in Japanese river
How low can you go? Kakonomics describes the situation where both parties prefer to give and receive a low-quality product. They ”connive on a low-low exchange”, and trust in each other’s untrustworthiness.
HBO was hit with a class action lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that it shares subscribers’ viewing history with Facebook, in violation of a federal privacy law.
Those wishing to publish a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night need to request permission, pay for rights, and then credit the artist appropriately. Otherwise, there’s risk of fines. […] According to European Copyright Law, such monuments are protected for the lifespan of the work’s legal creator—plus 70 years. The Tower’s creator, Gustave Eiffel, died in 1923, so in 1993 it re-entered public domain, but there’s still un petit problème: The lights installed by Pierre Bideau didn’t ignite until 1985, which means nighttime images and videos that feature his choreographed light show are still protected under the law.
Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches [Thanks Tim]
The FDA needs to take another look at laser-based ‘vaginal rejuvenation’
Here, we present continuous electroencephalography (EEG) recording from a dying human brain
With a few exceptions, musical taste has been researched via likes or preferences of certain types of music. The present study focuses on disliked music
The elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency
Distraction is no longer a relief from tedium but its metronome
“I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible. I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn’t send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came.” [Stephen Hawking on time travel, M-theory, and extra terrestrial life, 2012]
One of the two main hypersonic prototypes now under development in the United States is meant to fly at speeds between Mach 15 and Mach 20, or more than 11,400 miles per hour. This means that when fired by the U.S. submarines or bombers stationed at Guam, they could in theory hit China’s important inland missile bases, like Delingha, in less than 15 minutes. President Vladimir Putin has likewise claimed that one of Russia’s new hypersonic missiles will travel at Mach 10, while the other will travel at Mach 20. If true, that would mean a Russian aircraft or ship firing one of them near Bermuda could strike the Pentagon, some 800 miles away, in five minutes. China, meanwhile, has flight-tested its own hypersonic missiles at speeds fast enough to reach Guam from the Chinese coastline within minutes. [NY Times]
The post-modern novel “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” by David Markson (1988) pre- sents the reader with a very challenging non-linear narrative, that itself appears to one of the novel’s themes. Using a combina- tion of text analysis, entity recognition and networks, we plot repetitive structures in the novel’s narrative relating them to its critical analysis. [PDF]
Suicide Club (secret society): 30 members riding the San Francisco cable cars naked and making post cards commemorating the event was perhaps the best known [prank]
Cacophony Society: According to self-designated members of the Society, “you may already be a member.”
AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and more trustworthy [images]
Exploring the ownership of child-like sex dolls
How animals heal themselves ― and get high
A child’s TikTok stardom took an alarming turn when an adult fan came to her door with a gun. But her parents haven’t stopped her from posting. [NY Times]
How do we know Google is dying?
Our ability to process information during decision-making doesn’t drop off until age 60, according to new findings that challenge the widespread belief that mental speed starts to decline in our 20s. […] “People become more cautious in their decisions with increasing age” […] it is possible that age may affect other tasks differently, such as those relying on memory. [more]
To make an Olympic ski jump, China clad a hillside in steel and blanketed it with artificial snow. To construct a high-speed rail line linking the venues and Beijing, engineers blasted tunnels through the surrounding mountains. And to keep the coronavirus at bay, workers are conducting tens of thousands of P.C.R. tests on Games participants every day. Hosting the Winter Olympics is costing China billions of dollars, a scale of expenditure that has made the event less appealing to many cities around the world in recent years. More and more of them have concluded that the Games are not worth being left with a hefty bill, white elephant stadiums and fewer benefits from tourism than they had hoped. But China looks at the Games with a different calculus. Beijing has long relied on heavy investments in building railway lines, highways and other infrastructure to provide millions of jobs to its citizens and reduce transportation costs. […] Perhaps most important of all to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the Olympics are a chance to demonstrate to the world his country’s unity and confidence under his leadership. [NY Times]
How “Fake” My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins Lyrics Ended Up on Spotify
Excessive Bell-Ringing By Priest Takes Its Toll On Italian Community
Have we finally found the recipe for making rain? — Research suggests electric shocks could be key to growing raindrops
One in three Americans have high levels of toxic weed-killing chemical in their bodies
Two chemists from the University of Copenhagen have studied which chemical substances are released into liquids by popular types of soft plastic reusable bottles. “We were taken aback by the large amount of chemical substances we found in water after 24 hours in the bottles. There were hundreds of substances in the water – including substances never before found in plastic, as well as substances that are potentially harmful to health. After a dishwasher cycle, there were several thousand.” […] They detected more than 400 different substances from the bottle plastic and over 3,500 substances derived from dishwasher soap. A large portion of these are unknown substances that the researchers have yet to identify. But even of the identified chemicals, the toxicity of at least 70 % remains unknown.
how recycling pee could help to save the world
People See Political Opponents As More Stupid Than Evil
A nursing mom was shocked to discover her armpits were leaking milk. “it’s totally normal for the breast to have tissue that extends into your armpit.”
Sleeping for an extra hour every night can help you lose weight, study finds
Casual sex, also referred to as a hookup, has been associated with a range of negative emotional outcomes for women, including regret, anxiety, depression and social stigma. Gender differences were found for both sexual motivations and emotional outcomes of casual sex, with women generally having more negative emotional outcomes than men.
The somatosensory homunculus shows an exaggerated human figure that illustrates the proportion of the brain devoted to the sense of touch in each part of the body. Until recently, these homunculi have been male due to the lack of information on the female somatosensory cortex. Based on more current brain research, the authors present the first sculpted 3D female somatosensory homunculus
“The left hemisphere analyses lifeless parts; the right synthesises the living Gestalt whole.” Here we go again with lateralization nonsense.
It has been said that (in some cases) court judges are more lenient on those accused of crimes if the date of the court hearing falls on the defendant’s birthday. But can things also work in the reverse direction? What if, for example, the judge’s favorite football team have just lost a match?
SpaceX just lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm
At the time of the American Revolution the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ themselves did not yet exist… they originally referred to the respective seating positions of aristocratic and popular factions in the French National Assembly of 1789.”
The Messinian salinity crisis was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of nearly complete desiccation (drying-up) from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic refilled the Mediterranean Sea.
Russian teenager, 16, sentenced to five years for alleged plan to target FSB building in Minecraft
The black death, which plagued Europe, West Asia and North Africa from 1347 to 1352, is the most infamous pandemic in history. Historians have estimated that up to 50 percent of Europe’s population died during the pandemic. Now, a new study demonstrates that the plague’s mortality in Europe was not as universal or as widespread as long thought.
“My original starting point with grey squirrel was taste. But it’s also great for the environment,” says Paul Wedgwood, one of Scotland’s leading chefs, whose restaurant on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile has had grey squirrel on the menu since 2008. “It’s mellow, nutty and a bit gamey. It’s just a really nice flavour, and it’s easy to match. Anyone who’s doing rabbit could just easily swap in squirrel”
British tourist reunited with false teeth he lost while vomiting in Spain 11 years ago
Kleptomaniac New Zealand parrot steals GoPro, films airborne escape
Virginia Police Used Fake Forensic Documents To Secure Confessions From Criminal Suspects
Florida sheriff halts Facebook comments because too many crimes reported
Over 500 mobile apps are now using the term ‘metaverse’ to attract new users
Rock Band to Release 1,000 30-Second Songs to Trick Spotify Royalty Payout
Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market
Florida home to be sold in novel non-fungible token deal
Family’s lawsuit says DNA ancestry kit revealed daughter was conceived with wrong sperm The man who helped raise Ms Galloway along with her mother, Jeanine, was not her biological father because another man’s sperm was used during a fertility procedure.
North Korea Missile programme funded through stolen crypto, UN report says
Facebook whistleblower confronts Boston Dynamics first generation human infiltration unit prototype + Trump vs Trump [Thanks Tim!]
Crows trained to clean up cigarette butts on Swedish streets
People tended to reveal 26% (Study 8) to 30% (Study 7) of other people’s secrets. […] people revealed approximately 18% to 27% of secrets about someone committing emotional in!delity or planning a surprise […] people revealed secrets at almost a coin-”ip (approximately 30% to 46%) when they were about hurting someone, lying to someone, and physical self-harm [PDF]
Researchers have used an MRI scanner to guide a magnetic “seed” through the brain to heat and destroy cancer cells. It consists of ferromagnetic thermoseeds, which are basically 2mm metal spheres, that are guided to a tumor using magnetic propulsion generated by an MRI scanner and then remotely heated to kill nearby cancer cells.
North Korea hacked him. So he took down its Internet. He found numerous known but unpatched vulnerabilities in North Korean systems that have allowed him to singlehandedly launch “denial-of-service” attacks on the servers and routers the country’s few internet-connected networks depend on.
Facebook said on Wednesday that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature would decrease the company’s 2022 sales by about $10 billion and Facebook loses users for the first time in its history
The Plan to Put Bitcoin in Mouse DNA With a Genetically Engineered Virus BitMouseDAO has exactly two investors and almost no money, but they do have a wild idea
‘I Cloned My Dog—They Have Completely Different Personalities’
Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay
The Secrets of Space Invaders “The speeding up of the space invaders was just a function of the way the machine worked,” he explained. “The hardware had a limitation—it could only move 24 objects efficiently. Once some of the invaders got shot, the hardware did not have as many objects to move, and the remaining invaders sped up. And the designer happened to put out a sound whenever the invaders moved, so when they sped up, so did the tone.”
Trump coin […] It could be yours, for just $0. (Plus $9.99 shipping and handling.)[NY Times]
More and more vultures eat their prey butt first […] That approach exposes a vulture to even more bacteria than they’d get from regular old rotting meat. […] A recent study found that vultures have tons of microbes on their faces (528 different species, on average) but shockingly few in the gut (around 76 types). In fact, the only bacteria that survive in a vulture’s gut are the really nasty ones.
Unattractive faces are more attractive when the bottom-half is masked, an effect that reverses when the top-half is concealed
Hahahahaha, Duuuuude, Yeeessss! The dynamics of mistypings and misspellings […] strengthen the meaning (e.g., ‘huuuuuge’), imply sarcasm (e.g., ‘suuuuure’), show excitement (e.g., ‘yeeeessss’), or communicate danger (e.g., ‘nooooooooooooo’). We will refer to words that are amenable to such lengthening as ‘stretchable words’.
A neurologist, at age 55, developed an irrepressible urge to rhyme after a series of strokes and seizures. His pronounced focus on rhyming led him to actively participate in freestyle rap and improvisation. More: How a Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old Into a Rap Legend
Why Is Everyone Smoking Toad Venom? […] Bufo is the venom of the Sonoran desert toad, Bufo alvarius, which contains the molecule 5-MeO-DMT, one of the most potent psychotropic drugs ever discovered. Related: Dogs that have attacked toads have suffered paralysis or even death.
Militarized Dolphins Protect Almost a Quarter of the US Nuclear Stockpile […] For protection against enemy divers, dolphins will swim up to the infiltrator, bump into them and place a buoy device on their back or a limb using their mouth. The buoy then drags the outed diver to the surface for easy capture.
Facebook’s Libra is still dead — Diem to be sold off for spare parts [Diem was the rebranding of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project] The intellectual property will consist of some trademarks, a website and the open-source code for a mediocre permissioned blockchain and various helper projects.
I’m the author of the best-selling book System Design Interview-An Insider’s Guide. 11 days ago, two fraudsters hijacked the “Buy Now” button on Amazon, fulfilling all orders with a different book.
How to Download Everything Amazon Knows About You (It’s a Lot)
Canadian Restaurant Ordered to Close After Accepting Dog Photos Instead of Vaccine Proof
Legislator dies using medical suicide law he helped pass
YouTuber Accused of Crashing a Plane for Views. Now the Feds Are Investigating
Investors are paying millions for virtual land in the metaverse — Yorio tells CNBC her company sold 100 virtual private islands last year for $15,000 each. “Today, they’re selling for about $300,000 each, which is coincidentally the same as the average home price in America,” she said.
The Federal Reserve took a key step in weighing the creation of its own digital currency
The height of skyscrapers is limited by physical, economic and regulatory barriers, but we should want to overcome them and build taller. Here’s how we can do it.
AI unmasks anonymous chess players, posing privacy risks
Scammers put fake QR codes on parking meters to intercept parkers’ payments
I found that those who called themselves feminists reported having more recently masturbated than non-feminist women. In addition, I found that in partnered sexual encounters, feminists were more likely to participate in anal play, as well as engage in more kissing, cuddling, and massage than non-feminists. I also found that feminist women were more likely to receive oral sex than non-feminists.
Walmart Plots ‘Super Intense’ Crypto, Metaverse Push, Filing Suggests
Customers are more likely to tip when paying by cash rather than by credit
New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is actually a form of learning
Rat who detected land mines in Cambodia dies in retirement
The Torso Murderer: Jack the Ripper Wasn’t the Only Serial Killer Stalking London in 1888
A Personal Catalogue of the World’s Most Storied Bookstores
Multi-rider vehicle retention apparel (In which the passenger attaches him/herself to the front-rider with Velcro)
Marlon Bundo, the famous Pence family bunny who made history, dies
Tarrare was a French showman and soldier, noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits […] he would swallow corks, stones, live animals […] he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards, and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing.
He pops a Viagra, straightens out the bed cover, showers and, when he’s ready, calls for Anne. […] The missionary position no longer works for them — David has put on weight and would be too heavy. Instead, he often lies behind Anne and puts one leg between hers, the other to the side. […] During oral sex, David stops just when Anne is on the verge of climaxing. […]
Even with Viagra, David can’t always have a full erection, but they usually have intercourse regardless; sometimes he has a dry orgasm, where he doesn’t produce enough semen to ejaculate. […]
David and Anne are in their 80s now, and they recently told me that at this stage of life, sex is the best it has ever been.
Why was there less lightning during COVID lockdowns? The decrease coincided with a drop in humans emitting aerosols.
Heating Up Testicles With Nanoparticles Can Work as Male Contraception
Female dolphins have a fully functional clitoris
Animals Laugh Too: UCLA Study Finds Laughter in 65 Species, from Rats to Cows
USC team shows how memories are stored in the brain, with potential impact on conditions like PTSD. Contrary to expectations, the study in larval zebrafish shows synapses in one part of the brain are eliminated and new ones are created in a different region when memories are formed. These major structural changes could account for memory formation.
Sony is working on a 3D Scanner that will allow users to put real-world items into video games
Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith were both carriers of the recessive methemoglobinemia (met-H) gene. As a result, four of their seven children exhibited blue skin
How do they keep blood flowing during heart transplant?
You’ll receive medication that causes you to sleep (general anesthetic) before the procedure. Your surgeons will connect you to a heart-lung bypass machine to keep oxygen-rich blood flowing throughout your body. This machine does the work of your heart and lungs while they are stopped.
Your surgeon will make an incision in your chest. Your surgeon will separate your chest bone and open your rib cage so that he or she can operate on your heart.
Your surgeon then removes the diseased heart and sews the donor heart into place. He or she then attaches the major blood vessels to the donor heart. The new heart often starts beating when blood flow is restored. Sometimes an electric shock is needed to make the donor heart beat properly.
related { In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig | NY Times }
quote { Ginny Hogan }
Brussels Airlines makes 3,000 unnecessary flights to maintain airport slots
Uber rider stuck on I-95 hit with $600 bill
Fintech Is a Scam — A Listicle in Eight Parts
FBI arrests suspect in bizarre, years-long manuscript theft scheme
Rather than being highly selective, people appear to have a tendency to push relationships forward, even when things are not going well.
‘90 Day Fiancé’ star retires from selling farts after heart attack scare — Matto was rushed to a hospital with chest pains she feared were symptoms of a heart attack. After undergoing a battery of tests, including blood work and an EKG, Matto was told that her pain was the result of her steady diet of gas-inducing beans and eggs.
Which way does water flow in the Bosphorus? It flows both ways. Simultaneously.
No convincing scientific evidence that hangover cures work
Logic’s song ‘1-800-273-8255′ may have led to hundreds fewer suicides, study finds
SpaceX will take humans to Mars within 10 years, Elon Musk predicts Previously: Asked when he sees this happening, Musk pauses for a long moment, as if calculating all the variables—federal regulations and production schedules, test-flight targets and bathroom requirements. “I’ll be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years,” he finally says.
the military has four extra telephone buttons that they don’t tell us about [..] AUTOVON phones thus feature a full 4×4 keypad, with the rightmost column typically in red and used to prefix dialed calls with a precedence level. […] calls were placed at “routine” priority, but “priority,” “immediate,” “flash,” and “flash override” were successively higher precedence levels reserved for successively more important levels of military command and control.
When thieves stole three tonnes of oysters from French shellfish farmer Christophe Guinot, he came up with a solution: planting secret notes inside oyster shells to help police track down the thieves. ‘You’ve won your weight in oysters!’
The heaviest drinkers in the animal kingdom are punier than you might expect. Elephants, for example, are massive, but they are relative lightweights—they lack a gene for alcohol metabolism. Humans actually rank pretty highly, thanks to our ancestors’ propensity for picking fermented fruit off the ground. But to find the real champs, you have to think smaller. You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Get a Hamster Drunk
After three hours of tests and more than 100 flushes, the team detected droplets smaller than 3 mm in size at a height of 1.5 m above a toilet or urinal (face height for many people) and found that the droplets persisted at that height for more than 20 seconds after the flush. The 10 quirkiest stories from the world of physics in 2021
I stepped out of an East Side funeral home into the bright June sunshine. I examined the white plastic bucket containing my mother’s ashes, and then I raised my arm to hail a cab.
One pulled up, but something made me wave it on. I stuffed the bucket into my backpack, loaded the pack onto my back and started walking.
For the next hour or so, I took my mother on a tour of some of the monuments of our New York lives.
Past the old Drake Hotel, where we would duck in to grab a handful of mini-Swiss chocolate bars from the cavernous bowl in the lobby.
Past Saks Fifth Avenue, where we would squeeze into the tightly packed elevators operated by “elevator men” calling out the floors in deep baritones.
Past the MoMA sculpture garden, which my mother’s first New York apartment overlooked.
Past the Pierre Hotel, where my mother had conned the receptionist into giving her a room when she ran away from home as a teenager.
Past the long gone Auto Pub in the General Motors Building, where my parents threw the best birthday party of my life.
Past the old Rumpelmayer’s on Central Park South, where my mother would take me for vanilla ice cream sodas on special days.
Into Central Park and onto the park drive, which my mother hectored many a taxi driver into taking to “save time.”
And, finally, home to the empty apartment on the Upper West Side.
Thanks, Mom, for sharing these things with me. How pleased I was that day to return the favor.
Anti-5G necklaces found to be radioactive
US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say — Within weeks, Walter Reed researchers expect to announce that human trials show success against Omicron—and even future strains
Oil-Sniffing Dogs Are Helping Humans Spot Spills
After 22 years of digital evolution, high-end movie effects are approaching a plateau near perfection. “We went from pulling off what seemed to be impossible, to a sort of inability to create surprise” in the movie industry, says John Gaeta, who helped craft the bullet-time effect. He was a visual-effects designer on the first three “Matrix” films; now he is making things for the metaverse.
