Category: Newsletters

From NBC News: “A Russian chess player is under investigation after allegedly being caught on camera spraying her opponent’s board with what authorities said was a substance containing mercury as part of an attempted poisoning ahead of a match last week. Amina Abakarova faces a possible lifetime ban and potential criminal proceedings, Russian authorities said, after the incident during a tournament in the Caucasus republic of Dagestan. The Russian Chess Federation issued a statement Wednesday on what it said was “an attempt to poison a participant in the championship of the Republic of Dagestan in Makhachkala,” referring to Dagestan’s capital. It said Abakarova has been temporarily suspended from all competitions under the authority of the national federation, pending the conclusion of a criminal investigation. A 34-second surveillance video purports to show Abakarova walking around what looks like a room with chessboards set up for a tournament and appearing to rub something on one of the boards, before walking away.”

The Voynich Manuscript has baffled scientists for 500 years

From The Atlantic: “In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969. Its 234 pages contained some 38,000 words, but not one of them was readable. The book’s unnamed author had written it, likely with a quill pen, in symbols never before seen. Did they represent a natural language, such as Latin? A constructed language, like Esperanto? A secret code? Gibberish? Scholars had no real idea. And there were otherworldly illustrations: groups of naked women who held stars on strings, like balloons, or stood in green pools fed by trickling ducts and by pipes that looked like fallopian tubes. Many of the women, arms outstretched, seemed less to be bathing than working, almost like plumbers.”

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The strange saga of Kowloon Walled City, once the most densely-populated place on earth

From Atlas Obscura: “The most densely populated city on Earth had only one postman. His round was confined to an area barely a hundredth of a square mile in size. Yet within that space was a staggering number of addresses: 350 buildings, almost all between 10 and 14 stories high, occupied by 8,500 premises, 10,700 households, and more than 33,000 residents. The city’s many tall, narrow tower blocks were packed tight against each other—so tight as to make the whole place seem like one massive structure: part architecture, part organism. There was little uniformity of shape, height, or building material. Cast-iron balconies lurched against brick annexes and concrete walls. Wiring and cables covered every surface: running vertically from ground level up to forests of rooftop television aerials, or stretching horizontally like innumerable rolls of dark twine that seemed almost to bind the buildings together. Entering the city meant leaving daylight behind. There were hundreds of alleyways, most just a few feet wide.”

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Continue reading “Russian chess player accused of trying to poison opponent”

From Atlas Obscura: “They come when a boat is quiet, the posse of adolescent orca whales looking to rumble. Finding the propeller still, they crash into it like semi trucks, each animal a monochromatic, five-ton torpedo on a mission of destruction. Although killer whales are often observed interacting with boats, sea life, and ocean detritus there’s no clear explanation why gangs of young males suddenly began ramming boats around Portugal, Spain, and France this summer. Since July, they’ve sunk or damaged at least three. Researchers believe the behavior may be a temporary cultural fad—the cetacean equivalent of the ice bucket challenge or rickrolling—and it’s not the first killer whale trend to go viral. Orcas, like other whale and dolphin species, have culture, behaviors that are socially shared and learned within a population. Some are transmitted from older generations to younger ones. Others are shared “horizontally,” between members of the same age group.”

A rare neurological disorder makes people think they are seeing monsters

From the New Yorker: “After he recovered, Werbeloff was eager to be around people again, and he spent a night clubbing. In the shifting red light, he looked at a friend’s face and realized that the right side looked odd. It seemed to stretch outward, like Silly Putty being pulled, and a dark, rough patch was visible around the friend’s right eye. Werbeloff blinked and looked away, and his friend’s features briefly returned to normal. Then the distortions appeared again. In the weeks that followed, Werbeloff started to notice similar unsettling changes in everyone he looked at. “If they were smiling with their teeth very visible, then, on the right-hand side, the canine tooth would elongate,” he told me. Even his own face in the mirror looked malformed on the right. He had long known that his ability to recognize faces was so poor that it bordered on prosopagnosia—face blindness—but now he wondered whether he suffered from something else.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

Son of Russian spies feels relief after becoming a Canadian citizen

From the BBC: “The son of Russian spies has spoken of his relief after a court decided to let him keep his Canadian citizenship. Alexander Vavilov had his citizenship revoked after his parents, who worked for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, were arrested in 2010. He was born in Canada, and until their arrest he believed his parents were Canadian too. Mr Vavilov was born Alexander Foley in Toronto on 3 June 1994 to Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Donald Howard Heathfield – or so he thought. Their real names were Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov and they had moved to Canada using false identities, in order to establish a “deep cover” that would allow them to travel the world and spy for Russia’s KGB. In Canada, they seemed like a normal, happy young family. Mr Vavilov’s older brother Timothy was born just four years before, also in Toronto. At one point, his parents started up their own diaper delivery service.”

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Continue reading “How young killer whales learn to become hooligans”

From Book of Joe: “A  study by Susan Diem and others of how CPR is portrayed on TV found that it was successful in 75% of the cases and that 67% of the TV patients went home. In reality, a 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of CPR found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. Of the 92% of the 95,000 patients who did not survive more than a month, most did not survive the initial episode of CPR. Of those who did, even if CPR was successful in restoring spontaneous heartbeat and cardiac function sufficient to maintain perfusion and blood pressure for up to 30 days, that time was spent in ICUs hooked up to all manner of monitors, intubated, on a ventilator, and for the most part with little or no spontaneous brain activity and function.”

M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie Trap is based on a real sting operation

From GQ: “The loose inspiration for Trap is Operation Flagship, a plan hatched by the U.S. Marshals Service’s Fugitive Investigative Strike Team in 1985. They needed to catch a bunch of fugitives in Washington, DC. In order to keep both costs and risks down, they planned an elaborate sting operation to lure in wanted men: F.I.S.T. sent letters to the last known addresses of over 5,000 fugitives, telling them that they had won two free tickets to an upcoming Washington Redskins game against the Cincinnati Bengals, plus an opportunity to win additional tickets to the Super Bowl. They targeted a big upcoming Washington Redskins home game against the Cincinnati Bengals on December 15, 1985. Then, they invented a new TV network, Flagship International Sports Television, that would be giving out free tickets to celebrate their supposed launch.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

Did the world’s oldest message in a bottle just wash up on a beach in Ocean City?

From The Inquirer: “Amy Smyth Murphy was taking an early morning stroll on the beach in Ocean City the other week when she spied a distinctive looking bottle by the water’s edge. Intrigued, she picked up the corked green vessel and saw paper inside. She decided to take her find back to her mom’s beach house so she and her relatives could explore it together. With the aid of a corkscrew, her niece Avery Smyth’s nimble fingers, and nephew Jack Smyth’s assistance, they were able to coax the message out of the bottle. Given the other clues so far — the likely age of the bottle, the Klemms — Smyth Murphy said she feels pretty sure the 76 refers to 1876.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “CPR only works about three percent of the time”

From the Smithsonian: “Al Cantello’s unlikely journey into the secret world of spies began in late 1959, when he received a phone call from a mysterious individual asking him to meet at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. For reasons the Olympic javelin thrower couldn’t quite articulate later, he agreed to the clandestine conference. When Cantello arrived, he found a darkened room with so many shadows that he felt like he’d wandered onto the set of a B movie. Cantello said he didn’t know the man’s name and was uncertain which intelligence agency he represented—or, for that matter, if he was working for the U.S. or the Soviet Union. But it’s likely the man in the hotel was there on behalf of the CIA. The agency was watching the meet and was interested in recruiting Soviet athletes, particularly those of Ukrainian origin, who might defect.

Fugitive known as ‘El Diablo’ found working as a Mexican police officer 20 years later

From Fox News: “American detectives used social media to track a fugitive to Oaxaca, Mexico, 20 years after he allegedly shot a man dead outside an Ohio bar, and learned that he’d picked up an unexpected new job, becoming a police officer himself. Antonio “El Diablo” Riano, now 62, was charged with first-degree murder, arrested in Zapotitlan Palmas and handed over to U.S. Marshals in Mexico City on Thursday. Riano fled Ohio after allegedly shooting 25-year-old Benjamin Becarra on Dec. 19, 2004, outside the Roundhouse Bar in Hamilton, Ohio. Witnesses said Riano and Becarra got into an argument inside the bar – when the dispute moved outside, a security camera allegedly caught Riano fatally shooting the other man in the face. When Riano was arrested in Mexico he was found to be working as a police officer, and a photo snapped as he was taken into custody shows him wearing his police uniform.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Some Olympic athletes were recruited by the CIA in 1960”

From Substack: “The problem of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Cambodia is a grave legacy of the Khmer Rouge period, with landmines and cluster munitions posing threats to the personal safety of people and communities, but also contaminating land that could otherwise be used for housing, agriculture and other infrastructure. After 25 years of demining, the dangers still persist, although incidences of death and injury have been falling over time. Apopo’s mine-sniffing rats are a pivotal part of addressing this issue. These African rats are much larger, about the size of a cat, and can live for up to eight years. What makes these rats ideal for mine detection is their extraordinary sense of smell, which they use to detect explosives.”

He passed himself off as an oil magnate and conned people out of billions

From the New Yorker: “When she left, she passed by the couple’s twin Mercedes-Benzes. She saw the men at a nineteen-twenties-themed club luncheon, wearing top hats and tailcoats. Turner seemed to especially relish dressing up and mingling with bigwigs. At one fund-raiser, he reportedly bought a table for ten thousand dollars, then raised his paddle at the auction and pledged a hundred thousand more.When the first heat of summer arrived, West Palm Beach emptied out. As soon as Maria returned, this past August, she called up Turner to arrange a drink. His number wasn’t working, which seemed odd. Then one of her friends told her to Google “Alan Todd May.” Maria was soon staring at a mugshot: May, the man in the photo, was slimmer, and his hair was darker, but he was clearly the person she knew as Jacob Turner. He had escaped from a federal prison almost five years earlier, she read, while serving a twenty-year sentence for an oil fraud that had netted him millions.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “The amazing mine-sniffing rats of Cambodia”

From Reuters: “A family of Russian sleeper agents flown to Moscow in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War were so deep under cover that their children found out they were Russians only after the flight took off, the Kremlin said on Friday.”Before that, they didn’t know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “And you probably saw that when the children came down the plane’s steps that they don’t speak Russian and that Putin greeted them in Spanish. He said ‘buenas noches’.” Among those released in the prisoner swap were the so-called illegal sleeper agents – the Dultsevs, a husband and wife who were convicted by a court in Slovenia of pretending to be Argentinians in order to spy, who were flown back to Russia with their two children.”

The little-known, informal and underground financial system known as Hawala

From False Positive: “Imagine that you are a textile merchant somewhere along the 6,000 kilometer stretch of the ancient Silk Road. The last thing you want to do, in such a dangerous environment, is carry cash on you. Hawala is an Arabic term roughly meaning to change or to transfer. It refers to a system in which networks of brokers (hawaladars) facilitate the movement of value from one geographic location to another. Nobody really knows when Hawala was first used. But there is evidence from the 6th century that Muhammed, the founder of Islam, was familiar with at least some version. Similar systems, with equally ancient roots, have existed in India (Hundi), Thailand (phoe kuan), and China, whose term Fei-Chien translates to flying money. And they have collectively come to be referred to as different varieties of “underground banking.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “They found out their parents were Russian double agents”

From the New York Times: “Before the media vans took over Main Street, before the environmental testers came to dig at the soil, before the doctor came to take blood, Katie Krautwurst, a high-school cheerleader from Le Roy, N.Y., woke up from a nap. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. Her chin was jutting forward uncontrollably and her face was contracting into spasms. She was still twitching a few weeks later when her best friend, Thera Sanchez, captain of one of the school’s cheerleading squads, awoke from a nap stuttering and then later started twitching, her arms flailing and head jerking. Two weeks after that, Lydia Parker, also a senior, erupted in tics and arm swings and hums. Then word got around that Chelsey Dumars, another cheerleader, who recently moved to town, was making the same strange noises, the same strange movements, leaving school early on the days she could make it to class at all.”

A psychiatrist who specializes in addiction says 12-step programs like AA don’t work

From NPR: “Since its founding in the 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous has become part of the fabric of American society. AA and the many 12-step groups it inspired have become the country’s go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These recovery programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors and widely praised by reformed addicts. Dr. Lance Dodes sees a big problem with that. The psychiatrist has spent more than 20 years studying and treating addiction. Dodes tells NPR’s Arun Rath that 12-step recovery simply doesn’t work, despite anecdotes about success. There is a large body of evidence now looking at the AA success rate, and the success rate of AA is between 5 and 10 percent. Not only, it’s harmful to the 90 percent who don’t do well. AA is never wrong (according to AA) so if you fail at Alcoholics Anonymous, then it’s you that’s failed.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “When dozens of teenagers suffered mysterious seizures”

From The Guardian: “Since those early days of the war, with the help of a motley group of intrepid friends, Marushchak has achieved something quite extraordinary. He has organised the evacuation of dozens of museums across Ukraine’s frontline – packing, recording, logging and counting each item and sending them to secret, secure locations away from the combat zone. Among the many tens of thousands of artefacts he has rescued are individual drawings and letters in artists’ archives, collections of ancient icons and antique furniture, precious textiles, and even 180 haunting, larger-than-life medieval sculptures known as babas, carved by the Turkic nomads of the steppe. “At times,” said Chuyeva, “he has been doing almost unbelievable things” – putting himself into extreme personal danger for the sake of often humble-seeming regional museum collections on Ukraine’s frontline.”

How Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher in 1885

From Neatorama: “Cochrane’s husband met his untimely demise leaving her and their two children to fend for themselves. Given that it was also in the 19th century, being a widow with two children to feed and raise, life wasn’t going to be rainbows and skittles. Despite not having a formal education in the sciences, Cochrane had been exposed to her civil engineer father and her grandfather, who had first patented the steamboat. And so, she looked for a problem that needed an urgent solution. Cochrane was fed up with chipped, nicked, or cracked dishes and utensils, and she wondered why nobody had ever thought of inventing a machine that could do all of that labor for her. With the help of the local mechanic George Butters, Cochrane was able to invent the first dishwasher and she filed her patent in December 1885 for the “Cochrane Dishwasher”. Then came the equally challenging part of the whole process: actually selling the machine.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “They defy death to help save works of art in war-torn Ukraine”

From ESPN: “In the summer of 2018, inside a national arena that felt more like a small-college gym, the NBA commissioner shot free throws with the president of Rwanda. It was a meeting of disparate men with complementary motives. Adam Silver, a lawyer and NBA lifer who grew up in a wealthy New York suburb before presiding over one of the most progressive leagues in sports, was in Rwanda to build on a mission to extend the NBA’s reach to every corner of the world. Paul Kagame, a former rebel general credited with stopping one of the worst atrocities in modern history but who for years had been assailed as a dictator who smothers opposition through arrests, disappearances and killings, was looking to forge a partnership that would boost Rwanda’s economy and, critics say, distract the world from his human rights record.”

A physicist explains why he would rather fight a horse-sized duck than 100 duck-sized horses

From Wired: “First, this duck could obviously not fly. You can just imagine how big the wings would have to be for a 3,000 kg bird. It’s not going to happen. But the problems aren’t just with flying. What about the duck’s legs? A duck-sized duck has two approximately cylindrical legs. Looking at the duck image, I measure a leg radius of about 0.005 meters. What is the compression pressure in these legs for a normal duck? It would be weight of the duck divided by the total cross-sectional area. If we ramp this up to our horse-sized duck, what happens? The mass increases and so does the radius of the leg. The horse-sized duck is 6.85 times larger than a duck. The leg would also be 6.85 times larger. This would give a horse-duck compression pressure close to 100 times the pressure of a normal duck. I think this duck would just sit there quacking – but really loud quacks. I could just toss some rocks at it until I was declared the winner.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “How the NBA got into business with a ruthless African dictator”

From the New York Times: “Challenged by his friend, the swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, Harry Prieste shinnied up a 15-foot flagpole at the end of the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, and stole the official flag. The Irish linen flag came home with Prieste to Los Angeles, the fruit of his athletic prank and further evidence of his presence at the seventh Summer Olympiad, where he won the bronze medal in platform diving. For 77 years the flag was stored in a suitcase during Prieste’s years in swimming and diving shows, as a vaudeville comedian, a tumbler, a banjo player, a circus juggler and an Ice Follies performer. He did not regard the flag as valuable or worth returning until a reporter told him at a United States Olympic Committee banquet three years ago that the International Olympic Committee had been unable to find the missing Antwerp flag, the first one with the five rings. ”I can help you with that,” he said. ”It’s in my suitcase.”

She fell 14,000 feet without a parachute and somehow survived

From ESPN: “Each step that Emma Carey takes is a size six miracle. She has no feeling in her legs, no sense of when her feet land or they’re in the air. That means her legs give her brain zero feedback, so she has to think about where her legs are going but never feels where they are. There’s a little bit of a hitch in her gait, where her legs are just a tad mechanical going up and down. But it’s not even noticeable until she specifically says to watch for it. Most people would have no idea that she is paralyzed from the waist down, or that she survived the unthinkable: In June 2013, Carey went skydiving for the first time and fell 14,000 feet out of a helicopter into an empty cow pasture in Switzerland, with two tangled parachutes and her instructor passed out on her back.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “He stole the Olympic flag and returned it when he was 103”