From Maxine Bernstein for Oregon Live: “Husband-and-wife chauffeurs are accused of stealing $34 million from wealthy publisher Win McCormack over seven years. Sergey Lebedenko and his wife, Galina provided rides to McCormack through their limousine service and then made unauthorized charges of up to $34 million to his American Express card.The couple used the money to buy lavish vacation homes and a $1.5 million executive jet. While executing search warrants at the couple’s homes, federal agents seized more than $100,000 in cash and 150 ounces of gold bullion worth about $300,000. It is the largest alleged heist against a single person in the history of Oregon.”
The US government created a battle plan in case of a zombie invasion
From Thaddeus Morgan for History: “The United States may have one of the largest armies on earth, but even the Pentagon has taken no chances at being caught off-guard by an unusual foe. In fact, in 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense released a strategy to combat a potential zombie apocalypse. While the potential opponents might be fictional, the military took it seriously. In fact, the first line of the Counter-Zombie Dominance Plan, or “CONPLAN 8888-11,” states, “This plan was not actually designed as a joke.” The origins of the plan can be traced to training exercises held in 2009 and 2010, during which young officers realized the potential upsides to planning for a hypothetical zombie attack.”
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Actor Ryan Gosling created a key scene in the movie Blade Runner: 2049
From Andi at Cohost: “The baseline test is pre-memorized text the replicant has been assigned. The replicant’s job is to ignore the questions and instead listen for any words or phrases from the baseline text. The questioner says, “What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked”. K must reply “Interlinked” and not respond in any other way. That scene was actually written by Ryan Gosling, based on a training technique for actors called “dropping in.” Tina Packer and Kristin Linklater developed it in the early 1970s to create an emotional connection to words for Shakespearean actors.”
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A deep-sea exploration company thinks it has found Amelia Earhart’s plane
From Stephen Smith for CBS News: “Amelia Earhart’s disappearance over the central Pacific Ocean 87 years ago remains one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history. Countless theories about her fate have emerged in the decades since, but now a deep-sea exploration team searching for the wreckage of her small plane has provided another potential clue. Deep Sea Vision, a Charleston, South Carolina-based team, said this week that it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra” aircraft. The company posted sonar images on social media that appear to show a plane-shaped object resting at the bottom of the sea.”
When he was 11, Martin Scorsese drew storyboards for an epic film about Rome
From Open Culture: “Young Scorsese described his Cecil B. Demille-like production as “A fictitious story of Royalty in Ancient Rome,” and though he didn’t give us character names, he made sure to specify the film’s actors, casting Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Virginia Mayo, and Alec Guinness, among others. As for Scorsese’s own role, The Independent noted that “he has given himself a bigger credit as producer-director than any of the stars.” Reproduced in David Thompson’s series of interviews, called Scorsese on Scorsese, the drawings’ impressive level of detail demonstrate a precocious eye for shot composition and the dramatic perspectives that characterize his mature work.”
Scientists have found that Alzheimer’s can pass from one patient to another
From Michael Peel for the FT: “Scientists have shed new light on how Alzheimer’s spreads through the brain and found the first evidence of transmission between people, via a now-banned human growth hormone.The study, published in Nature Medicine, looked at a small group of people who were among at least 1,848 patients treated between 1959 and 1985 with a growth hormone extracted from cadavers.Some of the overall cohort had already died from the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) brain disorder because their hormone infusions contained infectious proteins called prions. The results indicate parallels between the evolution of Alzheimer’s and CJD.”
How ancient civilizations could have moved massive stones
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipty engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me.