{"id":261917,"date":"2024-06-12T14:41:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T19:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=261917"},"modified":"2024-06-18T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T15:29:08","slug":"he-wants-to-be-the-first-man-in-olympic-synchro-swimming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/06\/12\/he-wants-to-be-the-first-man-in-olympic-synchro-swimming\/","title":{"rendered":"He wants to be the first man in Olympic synchro swimming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From the New York Times<\/a>: “As you watch the U.S. Artistic Swimming team practice for the Olympics \u2014 their bodies upside down, their legs scissoring in the air in perfect time, like frenzied offshore wind turbines \u2014 you will notice two things. First, the sport is much harder, and possibly even more insane, than you thought. Second, in a discipline whose enthusiasm for homogeneity is reflected in its pre-2017 name, synchronized swimming, one of the athletes in the pool is very much not like the others. His name is Bill May, and he is the only man on the team. A rule change in 2022 cleared the way for men to compete in the sport at this summer\u2019s Paris Games. That means that this is May\u2019s first and, realistically, last chance ever to fulfill his lifelong dream. He is 45 years old.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dick Van Dyke is almost a hundred years old but planning a cross-country tour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Deadline<\/a>: “As the star of cultural touchstones from\u00a0The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0Mary Poppins<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0Chitty Chitty Bang Bang<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0Diagnosis Murder<\/em>, Van Dyke has been on screen for as long as almost everybody can remember. His received his first lifetime achievement award 30 years ago. The legend label is not new. Perhaps he struggles to accept it because it implies a finality, that your work is complete and you\u2019re now a part of the past, not the present. Van Dyke does not consider himself done. \u201cI\u2019d still like to do a one man-show,\u201d he says. He certainly wouldn\u2019t be short of material. Van Dyke has been working for more than 70 years now, across film, theater and TV. The biggest screen moments of his career were celebrated in the recent CBS special\u00a0Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic<\/em>, a very sweet variety show involving heartfelt tributes and a parade of performers giving their takes on Van Dyke\u2019s most famous musical numbers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: 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<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

He was sentenced to prison for his role in a flood in Missouri, but was he wrongfully convicted?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Now I Know<\/a>: “In the spring of 1993, it rained in the Midwestern United States. That\u2019s not unusual, but that year, it rained a lot, and didn\u2019t seem to ever stop. The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and many of their tributaries flooded. In total, the Great Flood of 1993, as it is now called, did nearly $30 billion in damages and claimed dozens of lives. One man \u2014 James Scott \u2014 is in prison for his role in the disaster. Scott was born in 1969, in the suburbs of Quincy, Illinois, a city of about 40,000 people that sits on the banks of the Missouri River, bordering the state of Missouri. His early life made him known to area authorities; he committed a number of crimes, including burning down his former elementary school. By the time the floods started, he had spent time in six different prisons. That summer, he was out on parole, once again living outside of Quincy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Scientists have traced the origin of the modern horse back over 4,000 years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Phys.org<\/a>: “The horse transformed human history\u2014and now scientists have a clearer idea of when humans began to transform the horse. Around 4,200 years ago, one particular lineage of horse quickly became dominant across Eurasia, suggesting that’s when humans started to spread domesticated horses around the world, according to research published in the journal Nature<\/em>. There was something special about this horse: It had a genetic mutation that changed the shape of its back, likely making it easier to ride. Pablo Librado, an evolutionary biologist at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona and co-author of the new study said that genetic diversity was evident in ancient DNA samples the researchers analyzed from archaeological sites across Eurasia dating back to 50,000 years ago. But their analysis of 475 ancient horse genomes showed a notable change around 4,200 years ago.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spent almost a decade living on an abandoned cargo ship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Associated Press<\/a>: “Abdul Nasser Saleh says he rarely got a good night\u2019s sleep during the near-decade he spent working without pay on a cargo ship abandoned by its owner at ports along the Red Sea. By night, he tossed and turned in his bunk on the aging Al-Maha, he said, thinking of the unpaid wages he feared he\u2019d never get if he left the ship. By day he paced the deck, stuck for the last two years in the seaport of Jeddah, unable to set foot on land because of Saudi Arabia\u2019s strict immigration laws. Saleh\u2019s plight is part of a global problem that shows no signs of abating. The United Nations has logged an increasing number of crew members abandoned by shipowners, leaving sailors aboard months and sometimes years without pay. More than 2,000 seafarers on some 150 ships were abandoned last year. The number of cases is at its highest since the U.N.\u2019s labor and maritime organizations began tracking abandonments 20 years ago.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a 250-year-old German shoe maker became a multibillion-dollar empire<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Bloomberg<\/a>: “For centuries, Burg Ockenfels was home to medieval knights angling to control traffic along the Rhine River. Today the stone castle flaunts two round towers, a row of Renaissance-style statues and a courtyard that looks out over hills and farms. To visit, you take a train from Bonn to the sleepy village of Linz, then climb a long, steep hill until you reach the compound\u2019s elaborate gate. From there, the place looks something like Xanadu, the mountaintop palace in Citizen Kane. Since the 1990s, the property has belonged to Christian Birkenstock, the seventh-generation scion of the German footwear dynasty. Out front, the mailbox has a camera and buzzers for 19 corporate entities with \u201cBirkenstock\u201d in their name. When Birkenstock capped off a decade of explosive growth with an initial public offering, Christian and Alex became billionaires.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frying an egg in Dubai doesn’t require a stove<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Dubai \ud83d\ude04pic.twitter.com\/EZ41rRwuY7<\/a><\/p>— Figen (@TheFigen_) June 8, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>