Category: Uncategorized

While plumbing the archives at the Cincinnati Art Museum, curator Hou-mei Sung uncovered what appeared to be an ordinary bronze mirror (prior to the development of glass mirrors, people often used polished bronze to see their reflection). After closer inspection, she realized that when a light was shone on it, the mirror revealed a hidden image of a spiritual figure surrounded by rays. Often called a “Magic Mirror,” this extremely rare work is part of a small collection of similar objects that date back to the Han dynasty (202 BCE to 220 CE)—only a few similar Buddhist pieces from China and Japan are thought to exist.

via Colossal

The Statue of Liberty’s disembodied arm stood in Madison Square from 1876 to 1882. It had been agreed that Frédéric Bartholdi would create the statue while the United States paid for the pedestal. Americans were a bit behind in offering donations, so Bartholdi sent along the arm and torch to help inspire contributions. It took six years of benefit concerts, auctions, souvenir photos, and other mementos, but the full statue was finally dedicated on Liberty Island on October 28, 1886.

via Futility Closet

Also, I learned that the structure holding up the various pieces of the statue was designed by a guy named Gustave Eiffel, who later built a pretty famous tower in Paris. And the arm of the statue was damaged in a massive explosion at a munitions depot on nearby Black Tom Island in 1916 — an explosion that much later was proven to be an act of sabotage by German secret agents.

Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

On May 13, a month to the day after Elon Musk filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying he intended to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, Musk announced that the deal was on hold, “pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” At the time, some observers said they saw Musk’s concern as an excuse to either back out of the takeover deal or negotiate a lower price, since the value of Twitter’s stock had already fallen by more than 30 percent between when he announced his acquisition plan and when he put the deal “on hold.” On Friday, Musk filed a new statement with securities regulators saying the offer had been terminated because Twitter was “in material breach of multiple provisions of [the purchase agreement,] including making what Musk alleges were “false and misleading representations” about the state of Twitter’s business. The termination notice also states that Musk believes Twitter could suffer a “material adverse effect” on its business because of its under-counting of spam accounts.

On Tuesday, Twitter fired off its own salvo in the ongoing battle over the company’s future: a lawsuit in the Chancery Court of Delaware, where the company is registered, aimed at getting Musk to follow through on his offer. In the complaint, Twitter alleges that Musk “refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.” Despite a legal commitment to buy the company, Twitter says Musk “apparently believes that he—unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law—is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.” The Twitter lawsuit doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to Musk’s behavior: among other things, it says his attempt to get out of the deal is “a model of hypocrisy,” because he said one reason he wanted to buy the company was to get rid of spam, but then suggested in his termination notice that the amount of spam was the reason he was cancelling the deal.

“When the market declined and the fixed-price deal became less attractive, the lawsuit states, “Musk shifted his narrative, suddenly demanding ‘verification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform, and claiming a burning need to conduct ‘diligence’ he had expressly forsworn.” The claims that Musk makes in his termination notice, about Twitter allegedly misrepresenting the state of its business, “are pretexts and lack any merit,” the company’s lawsuit adds. Twitter also accuses Musk of breaching the merger agreement repeatedly, alleging that he has “purported to put the deal on ‘hold’ pending satisfaction of imaginary conditions, breached his financing efforts obligations in the process, violated his obligations to treat requests for consent reasonably and to provide information about financing status, violated his non-disparagement obligation, [and] misused confidential information” provided by Twitter.

Continue reading “Twitter takes Elon Musk to court over failed acquisition”

Here’s a handy service — only hires atheists and non-Christians. via Bruce Sterling’s Tumblr

A fascinating sociological study of what happened when Queen Victoria became a widow and her mourning period interrupted the London Season — the period in which eligible bachelors tried to find eligible young ladies to marry. That interruption led to more intermarriage between peers and commoners, and that in turn helped change the economic landscape in Great Britain forever.

Peers courted in the London Season, a matching technology introducing aristocratic bachelors to debutantes. When Queen Victoria went into mourning for her husband, the Season was interrupted (1861–1863), raising search costs and reducing market segregation. I exploit exogenous variation in women’s probability to marry during the interruption from their age in 1861. The interruption increased peer-commoner intermarriage by 40 percent and reduced sorting along landed wealth by 30 percent. Eventually, this reduced peers’ political power and affected public policy in late nineteenth-century England.

On Sunday, June 26th at about 4 in the morning, I became a grandfather. It seems strange to type those words, in part because it makes me feel really old 🙂 but it’s true. And as soon as I saw little Quinn Leanne Hemrica, I fell in love! I know every parent and grandparent says this, but she was and is perfect — even when she is crying. Caitlin had a pretty rough labour, but she toughed her way through it, and I thought she looked fantastic even after all that.

Continue reading “Introducing Quinn Leanne Hemrica”

Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Twitter had filed a lawsuit against the government of India in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore, challenging a recent decree that ordered Twitter to take down content and block a number of accounts. Twitter obeyed the order, removing the content and blocking the accounts, according to the Times, but then filed the suit in an attempt to overturn the order. A source who spoke with the Times said Twitter isn’t trying to invalidate the law under which the order was issued, but instead argues that the government interpreted it too broadly. A TV network in New Delhi reported that the suit alleges the order was “overbroad, arbitrary, and disproportionate,” and that the content in question is either political commentary, criticism, or otherwise newsworthy, and therefore should not be removed.

It’s not known which specific tweets or accounts are the subject of the order, in part because India’s laws forbid platforms from talking about the takedown orders they receive, or any of the content they refer to, or the reasons for the order. Last year, the Indian government ordered Twitter to remove tweets by Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit group that promotes democracy around the world. The group noted that internet freedom was declining in India, and included maps whose borders the government of India disputes. Tweets from Rana Ayyub, an Indian journalist, and Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of a fact-checking organization, were also subject to a similar order, as were accounts belonging to a number of political parties and groups.

Other accounts ordered to be blocked allegedly made “fake, intimidatory, and provocative tweets” that some took to be accusing the Indian government of genocide. In a number of cases, Twitter simply blocked access to tweets from within India, using what it calls its “country withheld” tool, a form of geo-blocking. In February of last year, in one of the largest such moves, Twitter removed more than 500 accounts (after initially refusing the order) and used geo-blocking to hide others, because of remarks those accounts made about Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. At the time, Twitter said it refused to remove any accounts belonging to journalists, politicians, or activists because it believed doing so “would violate their fundamental right to free expression.”

Continue reading “Twitter goes to court in India over free speech”

Public Domain Review highlights a document from 1875, written (and illustrated) by the ship’s surgeon on a British Arctic expedition

When the British Arctic Expedition set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875, the explorers hoped to reach the highest latitude, and perhaps even approach the ever-elusive North Pole. It was believed that, should they successfully pass through Smith Sound, between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island, they would encounter an Open Polar Sea free from troublesome ice. With this primary goal, three steamships set out across the stormy Atlantic only to immediately become separated by a violent cyclone, reconvening at Disko Bay on the western coast of Greenland some weeks later. Perhaps they could have interpreted this early inconvenience as a sign of the winter to come, or a warning that the Arctic waters are rarely kind. Regardless, the captains pressed on.

In Shores of the Polar Sea, Edward L. Moss, an artist and esteemed Royal Navy Surgeon, records this journey from his first-hand seat in the belly of HMS Alert. A mixture of intimate journal entries, miscellaneous engravings, and sixteen chromolithographs, the book provides a unique, often surreal, retelling of life on the ice. Moss prefaces his work with a modest appeal: “Whatever may be the artistic value of the Sketches — and they lay claim to none — they are at least perfectly faithful efforts to represent the face of Nature in a part of the world that very few can ever see for themselves.”

We went to a wedding that was held at the Notawasaga Inn north of Toronto, so of course I brought my kayak and put it in just south of the resort, near a dam. I didn’t have time to go downstream and have Becky come and get me afterwards, so I paddled upstream through the golf course that is part of the resort. It was pretty shallow, but it was a great paddle.

My aunt, who lives in Burlington, was out of town so she let us stay at her place after Quinn was born, so that we could be close (but not too close). And since the Burlington bay was right there, I thought I might as well throw the kayak in there and paddle up the coast a bit. Beautiful calm day.

Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer

Last Friday, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision nullifying Roe v Wade, the almost 50-year-old court case that enshrined legal access to abortions in the United States. The decision was widely expected, thanks to a story that Politico published in May, based on a draft opinion that was leaked anonymously. The advance notice allowed more than a dozen states to pass “trigger laws,” which in some cases made abortion illegal as soon as the official Supreme Court decision was released. This has raised the potential for legal action against women who are seeking to terminate a pregnancy, and fears that content shared via social apps—including apps designed to help women track the progress of their menstrual cycle and their potential fertility—and through social platforms, and even web searches, could be used to try to incriminate them.

This isn’t an idle fear: In 2017, Latice Fisher, a Black woman, went to a hospital in Mississippi after losing a pregnancy at home in the thirty-sixth week. Because she admitted during a gynecological exam that she was pregnant, but never returned for a followup visit, medical staff gave police her medical records, and they started an investigation. Since Fisher had also voluntarily given police her phone, Wired noted that prosecutors were able to access her search history on the device, including a web search she conducted for misoprostol (medication that can be used to trigger an abortion). Although there was no evidence that Fisher had ever used the medication, the district attorney’s office nevertheless used the search as evidence that she had killed her fetus, and she was charged with second-degree murder (the case was eventually dropped).

“Those seeking, offering, or facilitating abortion access must now assume that any data they provide online or offline could be sought by law enforcement,” the EFF wrote in a statement following the court’s ruling nullifying Roe. The Washington Post noted that “a Google search for a reproductive health clinic, online order for abortion pills, location ping at a doctor’s office and text message about considering ending a pregnancy could all become sources of evidence.” The Post advised those searching for abortions to use encrypted private messaging apps such as Apple’s iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal. The latter was the most secure, the paper said, because Apple has a key that allows it to decrypt iMessages, so law enforcement could force it to do so, and WhatsApp shares data with its parent company, Meta. The paper also recommended using web browsers in incognito mode, and leaving a phone at home when visiting clinics.

Continue reading “Tech platforms, data, and the aftermath of Roe v Wade”

Public Domain Review highlights a document from 1875, written (and illustrated) by the ship’s surgeon on a British Arctic expedition

When the British Arctic Expedition set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875, the explorers hoped to reach the highest latitude, and perhaps even approach the ever-elusive North Pole. It was believed that, should they successfully pass through Smith Sound, between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island, they would encounter an Open Polar Sea free from troublesome ice. With this primary goal, three steamships set out across the stormy Atlantic only to immediately become separated by a violent cyclone, reconvening at Disko Bay on the western coast of Greenland some weeks later. Perhaps they could have interpreted this early inconvenience as a sign of the winter to come, or a warning that the Arctic waters are rarely kind. Regardless, the captains pressed on.

In Shores of the Polar Sea, Edward L. Moss, an artist and esteemed Royal Navy Surgeon, records this journey from his first-hand seat in the belly of HMS Alert. A mixture of intimate journal entries, miscellaneous engravings, and sixteen chromolithographs, the book provides a unique, often surreal, retelling of life on the ice. Moss prefaces his work with a modest appeal: “Whatever may be the artistic value of the Sketches — and they lay claim to none — they are at least perfectly faithful efforts to represent the face of Nature in a part of the world that very few can ever see for themselves.”

We spent a week at Otter Lake with family, and one day I paddled out in the kayak to find a mother loon on the nest, hidden among the bulrushes on a tiny island. As I got closer, I could see the father about 300 yards away — and then suddenly he dove, and within about two seconds he was right beside me, standing up on his feet and paddling around hooting, clearly trying to get me to leave, which I did.

The next day when I went out for a paddle, I saw the two adult loons and thought at first something had happened to the nest, but then as I got closer, I saw a tiny little lump of feathers on the mother’s back. And as I followed them (at a respectful distance) the little lump of feathers slid into the water and started paddling around with his mom and dad. Very cool.

The Gros Michel — the Big Mike — used to be the standard commercial banana, until a bug wiped it out in the 1950s. The same thing could happen to the Cavendish variety, since it is also a genetic clone

I am here for the Gros Michel—the OG banana that was the standard across the United States from 1870, when it sold for $2 a bunch in Jersey City, until the late 1950s, when the ruinous fungus Panama disease all but wiped it out.

I am on a quest across New York City for the Gros Michel, the Big Mike, the banana that launched a thousand pratfalls. Online, people speak of it in revered digital tones: “I am absolutely dying to try one,” one banana forum user writes, promising to pay “an arm and a leg” for them. Another claims they are so delicious that regular Cavendish bananas are disgusting by comparison. Today, the banana is virtually gone from the consumer market in the United States—finding it will be at best a challenge, and perhaps impossible.

It wasn’t always the case: The Gros Michel was once everywhere. When America fell in love with the banana, this is the fruit that captured its heart. The alchemist who first produced the banana split used a Gros Michel; the chemist who produced artificial banana flavor allegedly had it in mind as well. When Eddie Cantor sings “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” it is Big Mike he’s singing about.