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From Lori Emerson: “In need of a practical way to overcome social isolation; communicate emergencies, weather, and crop prices, farmers began to take advantage of the growing ubiquity of both telephone sets and barbed wire fencing. They would hook up telephones to wire strung from their homes to a nearby fence; at the time, telephones had their own battery which produced a DC current that could carry a voice signal; turning a crank on the phone would generate an AC current to produce a ring at the end of the line. These networks had no central exchange, no operators–and no monthly bill. Instead of ringing through the exchange to a single address, every call made every phone on the system ring. Soon each household had its own personal ringtone…but anyone could pick up. Reportedly, the quality of the signal traveling over the heavy wire was excellent, but weather would frequently cause short circuits.”

An elite rock climber lost his vision so he found a way to climb blind

From the Washington Post: “Molly Thompson craned her neck so she could make out the man climbing the tower of red rock. Squinting into the desert sun, she tried to identify a crack he could grab on to or a ledge wide enough for his foot. The climber, struggling to keep his grip, was her husband, Jesse Dufton. His left arm trembled from the effort. His foot probed for a more secure hold, but found nothing. “A little bit higher there should be a foothold,” Molly said into a headset. When Jesse extended his foot again, it missed the tiny outcropping. He returned his foot to its original position and tiptoed on three millimeters of quartzite, 200 feet above the ground. He did not look down. He did not look anywhere. Jesse has advanced rod-cone dystrophy. Put another way: He is completely blind. And another: He is one of the world’s few elite blind rock-climbers.”

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Continue reading “Farmers used to use barbed-wire fences as a phone network”

From Afar: “Gary Beeck’s island had all the basic ingredients of a tropical daydream: swaying palms, epoxy-clear water, a blond frill of sand fading to jungle. But a surge of trepidation hit when Beeck, a retiree from Perth, Australia, neared the uninhabited island off Sumatra’s volcano-pocked coast in May. Later that day, the boat and crew that carried him would return to shore; Beeck would stay behind, alone. Beeck had booked a “castaway” stay on the island though the travel company Docastaway. For 12 days and with just a few basic survival supplies, he planned to live off wild coconuts, plus whatever food he could catch and forage. During the drive to the boat launch that morning, a local guide had offered a final chance to purchase provisions before leaving civilization behind—there were ripe mangoes, sweetly starchy bananas. He said no. Later, and only when it was too late to change his mind, Beeck would reconsider.”

The world’s oldest hotel has been operating for more than 1300 years

From Moss and Fog: “The oldest hotels in Europe have nothing on Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan, a traditional Japanese Ryokan that has been family run for an astonishing 52 generations. Operating since 705 AD, the hotel has all its hot water sourced directly from the local Hakuho Springs. Guests can still enjoy the same hot spring baths that visitors have been using for over a thousand years. It is located at the foot of the Akaishi Mountains, in Yamanashi Prefecture. In addition to being the oldest operating hotel, it may also be the world’s oldest continuously-operating business. Although the facilities are much younger, the business has operated continuously for over 1300 years. The Nishiyama Hot Spring is said to have had many commanders of the warring period visiting it. Amidst the unification of Japan, it is said that Tokugawa Ieyasu visited twice.”

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Continue reading “Some people are paying to be left alone on a deserted island”

From Cracked: “According to Lucy, she was driving home from MGM one evening when “all of a sudden, I heard music!” The beat was really thumping so Lucy looked down to turn off the car radio — except it wasn’t on. The music got louder as she drove, understandably freaking her out as she realized the groove was coming from inside her mouth. The next day on the studio lot, Lucy told the story to Buster Keaton, as one does. Keaton told her to chill, explaining the phenomenon of receiving AM radio through teeth fillings. On a drive home via an alternate route, Ball’s bridgework once again picked up a signal. She described the pulses in her mouth: Da da da dut! Da da da dut! Her pearly whites continued to vibrate with dots and dashes, which she now identified as Morse code. Eventually, Ball claims, her whole jaw was vibrating “and then I got the hell out of there.” She rushed into the MGM security office the next morning, and according to Ball, “they found an underground Japanese transmitting radio station!”

Smedley Butler foiled a high-level plot to overthrow the US government in the 1930s

From Damn Interesting: “In the early 1930s, a secret collection of prosperous men are said to have assembled in New York City to discuss the dissolution of America’s democracy. To assist them in their diabolical scheme, the resourceful plotters recruited the assistance of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, a venerated, highly decorated, and considerably jaded former Marine. It was the conspirators’ earnest hope that their army of 500,000 Great War veterans, under the leadership of General Butler, could overpower the US’ feeble peacetime military and reconstitute the government as a more economical fascist dictatorship. After Butler revealed the plot, MacGuire and the wealthy men he allegedly represented all denied involvement in any such plot, referring to such suggestions as “a joke, a publicity stunt.” But the investigative HUAC committee concluded that there was indeed compelling evidence of a plot.

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Continue reading “Lucille Ball said she caught Japanese spies with her teeth”

From Poles.org: “Born in Pittston PA, Faustin H. Wirkus was destined for the life of a coal miner, but he ran away at 18 and joined the Marines. In 1925, while he was a gunnery sergeant, he was appointed Marine administrator of La Gonave in order to halt internal disputes among the 12,000 natives on the small island. La Gonave had had a king named Faustin, so when Wirkus arrived the natives knelt before him, and Queen Ti Meminne pronounced him the reincarnation of the late ruler. Wirkus became king and wore a two-foot crown. He was admitted to voodoo rituals and was said to have acquired a deeper knowledge of black magic than any other white man of his time. However, officials of Haiti, which claimed jurisdiction over La Gonave became jealous and forced Wirkus to abdicate in 1929. He resigned from the Marines the same year.”

Queen guitarist Brian May has spent a decade fighting to save the badgers

From Scientific American: “Brian May has many strings to his guitar. The musician, who is still touring with his rock band Queen, is also an astrophysicist, specializing in 3D stereoscopic images of distant bodies. And to the UK public, he’s also a passionate campaigner for animal rights. After abandoning his PhD at Imperial College London in 1974 to follow his musical passions, May finally returned to complete his doctorate in 2007. Soon after, the rock star embroiled himself in a polarizing scientific row over whether the European badger was causing mass infection of cattle with bovine tuberculosis. Each year, the problem costs the UK government more than £100 million (US$130 million) and leads to the slaughter of more than 20,000 cows. In a BBC documentary airing in the United Kingdom on 23 August, May describes his decade-long research project to understand what is behind bovine TB.”

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Continue reading “The US Marine who became the king of a tropical island nation”

This is my last newsletter for CJR, as I am moving on from my job as the magazine’s chief digital writer. (In case the headline doesn’t make any sense, it comes from a Douglas Adams book, in which he describes how all the dolphins suddenly vanished from the Earth, leaving behind the message: “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”). As I reflected on the last seven years or so of writing about the intersection of media and technology, I started to think about what (if anything) has changed since my first CJR piece was published in October 2017—an essay headlined “The 140-character president,” about Donald Trump’s obsession with what was then known as Twitter.

Obviously, some things have changed quite a bit. Trump is no longer president (although he is trying hard to regain that position), and Twitter—now known as X—is owned by Elon Musk, the billionaire who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. Much has been written (by me and just about everyone else) about Musk’s problem-plagued acquisition of the platform, and the changes he has made to it; it is reportedly hemorrhaging money and scrambling for both users and revenue. None of this is particularly new—the old Twitter under co-founders Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams also seemed to be continually scrambling for money and users. The reasons have changed, however: Musk, who maintains that his guiding principle is to enable free speech, has enabled many of the worst kinds of speech, including white supremacy, racism, and misogyny. This has (not surprisingly) led to an exodus of both users and advertisers.

These days, one popular conspiracy theory is that Musk is a Russian stooge who is trying to help Trump get re-elected, a theory based in part on rumors about Russian troops in Ukraine using Musk’s Starlink for internet access and whispers that Putin-adjacent sources helped fund the purchase of Twitter. (The evidence for this is circumstantial—at best.) Russia’s involvement in a variety of nefarious projects (or rumors thereof) has been a consistent theme since I started writing for CJR. An early taste of that came in November 2017, when I traveled to Washington and sat in on a series of congressional hearings looking into whether Meta (then known as Facebook), Google, and Twitter had allowed Russia and Russian-aligned agents to use their services as the foundation of a gigantic disinformation campaign. Did this happen? Yes, at least in a limited way. Did it affect the outcome of the 2016 election? Opinion remains divided, but some of the smartest people in the field say no, it likely did not.

Continue reading “So long, and thanks for all the fish”

From Vox: “Don Poldermans was a prolific medical researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, where he analyzed the standards of care for cardiac events after surgery, publishing a series of definitive studies from 1999 until the early 2010s. One crucial question he studied: Should you give patients a beta blocker, which lowers blood pressure, before certain surgeries? Poldermans’s research said yes. European medical guidelines recommended it accordingly. The problem? Poldermans’s data was reportedly fake. After the revelations, a new meta-analysis was published in 2014, evaluating whether to use beta blockers before non-cardiac surgery. It found that a course of beta blockers made it 27 percent more likely that someone would die within 30 days of their surgery. One provocative analysis from cardiologists Graham Cole and Darrel Francis estimated that there were 800,000 deaths between 2009 and 2013 compared to if the best practices had been established five years sooner.”

A shark’s case of indigestion revealed that a murder had been committed

From Now I Know: “In April of 1935, a fisherman named Bert Hobson caught a 14-foot tiger shark off the coast of Coogee Beach in Sydney. Hobson’s brother ran the local aquarium, so he brought it there — he figured the shark would make for a good exhibit. But the shark didn’t seem too happy. After a few days in which it seemed to adjust to its new home, the shark became irritable and began behaving erratically. It repeatedly rammed the walls of its tank before sinking to the bottom and swimming in lazy, irregular circles. Then it threw up, and what came out was a human arm. Upon closer inspection, there was something strange about this arm. It appeared to have been severed from its owner by a knife, not teeth. The arm had a distinctive tattoo, so the police asked the press to share a description in hopes that someone would recognize it, and someone did. Edwin Smith said his brother, James, had such a tattoo and had gone missing a few weeks earlier.”

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Continue reading “Faked research may have caused almost a million deaths”

From The New Yorker: “Everyone hopes for a miracle. And in Kenya—where evangelical Christianity is so popular that the President frequently prays with preachers during official events—the more miracles a pastor performs, the more followers he will gain. Some swiftly build large congregations and become multimillionaires. In 2018, Halua Yaa, a woman in the coastal town of Malindi, heard about a pastor named Paul Mackenzie, who, it was said, could heal the sick. Mackenzie ran a Pentecostal church called Good News International Ministries, on a spacious compound in Malindi, where he also lived. He urged his followers to avoid television, sports, and other secular pastimes, to refuse Western medicine, and to take their children out of school.”

She was an advocate for the disabled but she probably never actually existed

From IGN: “On March 4, 2019, the accessibility community mourned a prominent advocate: Susan Banks. Banks’ partner, Coty Craven, announced her passing on social media platforms such as Twitter/X. The industry lamented the loss of an individual that helped raise awareness for accessibility in games, particularly for Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. However, in the years since Banks’ alleged death, mounting evidence and accounts from those close to her work suggest that she was not the person she claimed to be. In fact, some are convinced that Banks may never have existed at all. Her various jobs are said to have included being a professional model, an asset manager at a financial firm, and a professor of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, all before the age of 30. IGN reached out to Gallaudet University’s Deaf Studies program, and they said nobody by the name of Susan Banks was ever employed at the University.”

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 “A pastor led his followers into the woods. Hundreds have been found dead”