{"id":262675,"date":"2024-07-31T08:35:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T13:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=262675"},"modified":"2024-07-31T08:36:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T13:36:07","slug":"they-defy-death-to-help-save-works-of-art-in-war-torn-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/07\/31\/they-defy-death-to-help-save-works-of-art-in-war-torn-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"They defy death to help save works of art in war-torn Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Guardian<\/a>: “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\u2019s frontline \u2013 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\u2019 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. \u201cAt times,\u201d said Chuyeva, \u201che has been doing almost unbelievable things\u201d \u2013 putting himself into extreme personal danger for the sake of often humble-seeming regional museum collections on Ukraine\u2019s frontline.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher in 1885<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Neatorama<\/a>: “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.”<\/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\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

He lives in a 230-square-foot earthquake shack in San Francisco and loves it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the San Francisco Standard<\/a>: “On the northern slope of Bernal Hill sits a tiny blue shack that has been a place of refuge for more than 115 years. It was built in 1906 with a speed and efficiency unfathomable in present-day San Francisco, one of 5,300 miniature emergency homes the city constructed within six months of the great earthquake and fire to shelter the newly houseless through the winter. David Benzler, an artist and sign painter, has lived in the blue shack on Folsom Street for nearly 15 years. The 230-square-foot free-standing house is laid out with a sharp and efficient geometry: There are two main spaces, each roughly the same size, and two smaller cubbies in the rear: one a bathroom; the other, a closet. The front room holds the sun-dappled art studio and kitchen. Benzler insists that, given the choice, he wouldn\u2019t opt for more square footage. \u201cI\u2019m like a lizard or a shark. If you put them in a bigger cage, they just grow to fit their habitat.\u201d<\/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

John Larroquette says he was paid in marijuana for narrating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From USA Today<\/a>: “A low-budget movie calls for some creativity. John Larroquette narrated the prologue of the 1974 horror movie “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” without pay \u2014 at least not in the traditional sense. Larroquette, 75, confirmed longstanding rumors that he was paid by late director Tobe Hooper in marijuana. “He gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the (recording) studio and patted him on the back side and said, ‘Good luck to you!'” Larroquette recalled. Larroquette said he and Hooper sparked a friendship years earlier in 1969 when the director was filming a project in Colorado, where he was bartending at the time. They later reconnected when Larroquette moved to LA to begin his acting career.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to get into the Olympics even if you’re not very good at a sport<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Now I Know<\/a>: “Elizabeth Swaney\u2019s Olympic resume is short: she competed in the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea in the halfpipe, a freestyle skiing competition. Watching a video of the games, you can see that Swaney just casually makes her way down the course, doing a total of no tricks getting a total of 31.40 points, putting her in dead last by a large margin. Swaney was trying her best. She just isn\u2019t an Olympic-caliber halfpipe skier. So how\u2019d she make it to the South Korean games? She found a loophole. To qualify for the halfpipe competition, skiers need to compete and succeed in championship events sanctioned by the International Ski Federation. Success, though, is a low bar. First, you need at least one top-30 placement in at least one event, and second, you need enough top-30 finishes to amass at least 50 points across all the events you participate in. And in halfpipe, that happens to be very easy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired cops hunt down the thieves who don’t return their rented shipping pallets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the Wall Street Journal<\/a>: “Wooden pallets keep global supply chains humming, carrying everything from soda cans to washing machines. Yet millions of these portable platforms go missing every month, either lost, stolen or broken. <\/strong>Finding them is an additional load for the multibillion-dollar industry. While the product costs only around $20 each and is typically made of sawed wooden planks held together with nails, suppliers like Brambles own hundreds of millions of pallets. Replacement costs can quickly run to millions of dollars each year. Enter the \u201cpallet detectives\u201d\u2014former law-enforcement personnel on Brambles\u2019 payroll. Their job is to track down leads and hunt out stray pallets so they can be returned to the Australian company, which has a market value of about $14 billion, making it about the same size as Campbell Soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Olympic bicycle race in 1928 featuring penny farthings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Penny farthing race in 1928. This should be brought back for the next Olympics. It\u2019s brilliantly bonkers. \ud83d\udeb4\ud83e\udd47pic.twitter.com\/iWRDAbPHCn<\/a><\/p>— James Melville \ud83d\ude9c (@JamesMelville) July 29, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>