from Bruce
Anecdotes
Mishaps
• African-American jazz great Duke Ellington once sleepily stumbled out of his sleeping car at a train station during a tour, then he joined a line of men climbing aboard a bus. The men turned out to be criminals, and the bus was taking them to prison. Fortunately, his road manager saw what had happened and chased down the bus with his car. It took a while, but eventually he managed to convince the driver that Mr. Ellington was not a criminal, but a respected music composer and conductor.
• Around 1914, while performing in New Orleans, Ma Rainey sang, “If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’, look what a hole I’m in.” At that moment, the stage she was standing on collapsed. (Fortunately, no one was hurt.) In 1935, after touring and recording for decades as a professional singer, Ma Rainey retired and lived in Columbus, Georgia. On 22 December 1939, she died. The coroner listed the great blues singer’s occupation as “Housekeeper.”
• At times, costumes create problems on stage. Ballet dancer Anthony Dowell was once dancing with Antoinette Sibley when the hook of his costume caught on her tutu. They had to run offstage to get unhooked. While he was dancing with Natalia Makarova, the same thing happened. Afterward, the stage manager said that he was tempted to pour a bucket of water over them because they looked like two dogs in heat.
• Actress Maud Gill once wore a large picture hat on stage. Before one performance, a mouse got into the hat, and Ms. Maud put on the hat and unknowingly carried the mouse with her on stage, where the mouse’s desperate attempts to escape entangled it in her hair. She was forced to take off the hat on stage, and the audience gasped at her taste in hairstyles.
Money
• When Fred Smith was an undergraduate at Yale University, he wrote a paper for an economics class that proposed the overnight delivery service that became FedEx. The overnight delivery service would have its own planes, depots, posting stations, and delivery vans. His professor gave him a C and wrote, “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” Mr. Smith started the company anyway, and like many or most beginning companies, it ran into financial difficulties. At one point, FedEx had only $5,000 in its checking account, and it had to pay a $24,000 jet fuel bill. Mr. Smith took the $5,000, flew to Las Vegas, played blackjack, and won $27,000. In 2012, FedEx was worth approximately $28 billion and Mr. Smith was worth approximately $2 billion.
• A maggid (a traveling teacher-preacher) spread the word that in the World-to-Come, those who are wealthy in this World will be poor, and those who are poor in this World will be rich. Hearing this, a poor man asked the preacher for a loan so he could start a business in this World, saying that since he would be rich in the World-to-Come, he would repay the maggid there. The maggid listened, smiled, then pointed out a flaw in the poor man’s logic: If the maggid lent the poor man money in this World to start a business and the business prospered, then he would be rich in this World, and therefore poor in the World-to-Come. How then could the man repay his debt to the maggid?
• Operatic tenor Leo Slezak bought and fell in love with a 200-year-old peasants’ cottage, which he had remodeled. At first, the architect tried to convince Mr. Slezak to tear down the peasants’ cottage and build a new house, but after the cottage was remodeled, the architect admitted that he had been wrong because it really did make a beautiful house. Still, the architect wrote in Mr. Slezak’s visitors’ book, “When a fellow’s got money, but the brains of a louse, / He’ll buy an old ruin to make it a house.”
• Some opera fans are impoverished. In New York, a group of fans desperately wanted to hear Adelina Patti (1843-1919) sing in La Traviata, so they purchased the maximum number of tickets they could afford: one. Each fan watched 20 minutes of the performance—the first used the ticket as he entered, then got a “pass-out check” as he left the theater and handed it to the next fan. To keep everyone honest, the fans agreed that whoever stayed longer than 20 minutes would have to pay for the entire ticket.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Start Again"
Album: START AGAIN
Artist: The Follies
Artist Location: McAllen, Texas
Info: Do-It-Yourself Punk Band from the Rio Grande Valley
Angela Ink - guitar
Bob E Ink - drums
Seems - vocals
Xavi - bass
With co-host Angela Ink.
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for five-track EP
Genre: Pop Punk.
Links:
START AGAIN
The Follies on Bandcamp
Rice Beans and Revolution on YouTube (Follies Videos)
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Ukraine
Sean Hannity Cleverly Trolls Donald Trump (Jimmy Kimmel Live)
Now that Trump is out of office, Sean Hannity has been going hard at President Biden, but the truth is, he has been speaking in signals and sending very cleverly coded messages. Narrating the brazen and unchecked hypocrisy we are being bombarded with every day. He’s been saying things that seem to be about Biden but are quite cleverly about someone else.
Grandpa Savkovych of Romanivka (Operator Starsky)
Other Links:
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, happy defective rooster afternoon.
World Central Kitchen Destroyed By Russian Missile
Chef José Andrés
Russian missiles raining down on central Kharkiv, Ukraine yesterday killed two people and injured 18. Among the latter group were workers at celebrity chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, a charitable effort which has fanned out across the country to feed those effected by the war there.
WCK CEO Nate Mook announced the terrible news on Twitter writing, “An update I hoped I’d never have to make. I’m at a @WCKitchen restaurant in Kharkiv, where less than 24 hours ago I was meeting with their amazing team. Today, a missile stuck. 4 staff were wounded. This is the reality here—cooking is a heroic act of bravery.”
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been hammered by Russian shelling all week with dozens killed, including at least three children.
Amid the destruction, Andrés himself posted an update on the WCK staff: “To everyone caring and sending good wishes to the team in Kharkiv, thank you, the injured are fine, and everyone is ready and willing to start cooking in another location.”
He ended with, “Many ways to fight, we do it with food!”
Chef José Andrés
Weekend Box Office
“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”
“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” got off to a less than magical start in its first weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters. The third installment in the Harry Potter spinoff opened to $43 million in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.
It was enough to secure the film the top spot on the box office charts, but it’s also a low for the franchise. The first film had a $74.4 million debut in 2016 and the second, “The Crimes of Grindelwald” opened to $62.2 million in 2018. “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” which Warner Bros. released in 4,208 locations in North America, also carries a $200 million production price tag.
In its second weekend, “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” fell 58% and earned an estimated $30 million to take second place, according to Paramount. The film has grossed $119.6 million to date. Third place also went to Paramount with the action-adventure “The Lost City,” starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.
“Father Stu” came in fifth place behind “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” A24's stealth hit that just keeps getting bigger. This weekend the buzzy interdimensional film starring Michelle Yeoh played on 2,220 screens — its widest release yet — and earned an additional $6.2 million. Its overall gross is sitting at $17.7 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” $43 million.
2. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” $30 million.
3. “The Lost City,” $6.5 million.
4. “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” $6.2 million.
5. “Father Stu,” $5.7 million.
6. “Morbius,” $4.7 million.
7. “Ambulance,” $4 million.
8. “The Batman,” $3.8 million.
9. “K.G.F.: Chapter 2,” $2.9 million.
10. “Uncharted,” $1.2 million.
“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”
Rejects 54 Math Textbooks
Florida
The Florida Department of Education on Friday announced that it blocked 54 mathematics textbooks from being used as instructional materials in classrooms, citing "references" to critical race theory.
The board said that it rejected 54 math books out of 132 submitted for review — roughly 41 percent of the total — and added that the texts were removed from consideration because "they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT."
Critical race theorists have examined how the legacy of racism continues to reverberate through laws and policies that exist today. Over the past two years, conservatives have systematically targeted the discipline, alleging that its teachings divide Americans — despite it generally not being taught at the grade school level and almost exclusively in collegiate settings.
Among other issues raised by the board were the inclusion of social-emotional learning (SEL) and elements of the Common Core. SEL has been identified by many on the right as a "gateway" for critical race theory concepts, pointing to programming that emphasizes controlling emotions and maintaining thriving relationships.
Florida
Bids Adieu to Jodie Whitaker
Doctor Who
We’re getting awfully close to the finish line, folks. Doctor Who put out its second holiday special today, Legend of the Sea Devils, and its the penultimate episode to Jodie Whitaker’s time as the Thirteenth Doctor. And just as Legend came to an end, BBC put out a teaser for the third 2022 special that heavily builds it up as her final adventure before a new actor (and not so new creative hands) take reign of the franchise.
The finality of Whitaker’s Doctor is something that can’t be ignored, and the teaser for the final special very much plays that up, closing out on the Doctor preparing to regenerate into another actor. Not only is there the return of the Daleks, Cybermen, and the Master (Sacha Dhawan), the special is also bringing back some old friends. Janet Fielding’s Tegan Jovanka, a companion to the Fourth and Fifth Doctors (respectively Tom Baker and Peter Davidson) is returning, as is Sophie Aldred’s Ace, companion to Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor. Presumably, their reunions with the Doctor will be equally fun and tearjerking as they get one final hurrah in the sci-fi series.
Showrunner Chris Chibnall to Doctor Who News that this feature length special—written by him and directed by returning director Jamie Magnus Stone—will mark Whitaker’s last turn as the Doctor before the 14th kicks off a new era. He teased that this final special would “contain a plethora of treats and surprises for audiences and fans, not least the return of two of the most beloved companions in the show’s history...For the BBC’s Centenary, we’ll be celebrating the past, present and future of Doctor Who, in a fittingly thrilling, epic and emotional send-off for the Thirteenth Doctor.”
Doctor Who
Professor’s Saga
Israel
Oded Goldreich was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest honor, a year ago. But the computer science professor only collected the prize this past week after overcoming a repeated public assault by Israeli nationalists over his opposition to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
The year-long saga has shined a light on attempts by nationalist forces in Israel to impose their narrative on mainstream Israeli life and to stifle opposing views.
That narrative, which sees the West Bank and its Jewish settlements as part of Israel and largely ignores the occupation, has become increasingly entrenched in Israel, endangering prospects for Palestinian independence. Anti-occupation actors meanwhile are often painted as enemies of the state and have been targeted with legislation that hobbles their activities.
“It’s Made-in-Israel McCarthyism,” said Avner Gvaryahu, a co-director of Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group for Israeli soldiers. “There is a large number of organizations, journalists and politicians whose main project in recent years is stifling dissent.”
Israel
Removes Pirate Websites
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo's crackdown on dodgy content now extends to digital bootleggers. TorrentFreak has discovered that the search engine no longer lists results for some major pirate websites, including The Pirate Bay, 1337x and Fmovies — look for anything from their domains and you'll come up empty-handed. Streaming and stream-ripping sites like Flixtor and 2conv also produce no results, while other pirate outlets (such as RarBG) may only turn up one result instead of the hundreds of thousands you see elsewhere.
The site for the video download tool YouTube-dl also produces no results despite recent defenses of its legality. While the RIAA has portrayed YouTube-dl as a piracy tool, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, GitHub and others found that it doesn't rip DRM-protected material.
We've asked DuckDuckGo for comment. As TorrentFreak says, though, liability for copyright violations might be an issue. The company removed pirate "bangs" (shortcuts for pirate sites) as far back as 2018, and competitors like Google and Microsoft are already downranking piracy-related results. A move like this could protect DuckDuckGo against costly copyright battles.
DuckDuckGo
Ancient Shipwreck
Dead Rats
Rat skeletons found on the ancient wreck of a cargo ship that sunk off the coast of Israel are providing valuable new historical insights, according to researchers from the University of Haifa.
Skeletons of dead rats on the ship labeled the Ma'gan Mikhael B, dated to between 648 and 740 C.E., have helped the team learn more about the life of the vessel that once sailed the Mediterranean.
Sierra Harding, a zooarchaeologist on the project, said the remains are the oldest and only direct evidence of a ship rat infestation on an ancient shipwreck in the Mediterranean.
She explained some of the remains are of black rats, a species that traveled with traders to the Middle East from South Asia and India more than 2,000 years ago.
However, using dental morphology, they discovered that other rats were "exotic to the area." Preliminary findings show that they could have originated from Tunisia or Corsica in the central Mediterranean.
Dead Rats
Man Breaks Record
Spider-Man: No Way Home
By now, we all know how much that Spider-Man: No Way Home is both a pretty good movie and also one that got basically the entire multiverse to go to a theater and see it. Some saw it once, some saw it probably two or three times, if they had the time and money to allow multiple rewatches. But for one particular fan, seeing Tom Holland swing webs with Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire a handful of times wasn’t enough.
The Guinness Book of World Records has reported that Florida man Ramiro Alanis went and saw No Way Home in theaters 292 times. Starting from December 16 and stopping at March 15, the total runtime equates to 720 hours, or basically an entire month. Ramiro isn’t sure how much he spent on tickets overall, but he thinks it’s around $3400. For three months until theaters stopped showing it, he was watching it back to back, equating to almost 12 and a half hours of movie. At this point, he said that he could recite the film’s dialogue with the movie...which he did, out loud during his final screening, in an empty theater. Not a bad party trick, if nothing else.
Per Guinness rules, he also had to watch the movie from start to end; no sleeping or bathroom breaks (11 of his watches were disqualified because of said breaks), no checking his phone, and he had to stay through to the credits, which he was already used to. He then had to hold onto his ticket stub and got a statement from a theatre employee confirming he watched the film. Juggling all of that with his family and career as a personal trainer wasn’t easy, and he admitted that late night viewings in particular were the hardest ones due to headaches after seeing the movie four times earlier in the day.
For Alanis, the aim was to reclaim his title of attending the most cinema productions of the same film; he first acquired it in 2019 by seeing Avengers: Endgame 191 times. (The previous record holder belonged to Joanne Connor in Australia, who saw Bohemian Rhapsody 108 times in early 2019.) In 2021, though, his record was broken by one Arnaud Klein, who saw the French comedy-fantasy film Kaamelott: The First Installment 204 times in theaters. After his grandmother Jauny passed in 2019 before he could earn his Guinness title, he wanted to break the record in her honor. “She was my #1 fan,” he told Guinness, “and I want to remain the record holder.” Now that he’s got his title, he’s pretty dead set on holding onto it, and gave a warning to anyone looking to try and come for his crown: “If anyone tries to break my record again, I want them to think twice before attempting it.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home
How Plants Turn Predator
Carnivorous Plants
Toward the end of the 19th century, lurid tales of killer plants began popping up everywhere. Terrible, tentacle-waving trees snatched and swallowed unwary travelers in far-off lands. Mad professors raised monstrous sundews and pitcher plants on raw steak until their ravenous creations turned and ate them too.
The young Arthur Conan Doyle stuck closer to the science in a yarn featuring everyone’s favorite flesh-eater, the Venus flytrap. Drawing on brand-new botanical revelations, he accurately described the two-lobed traps, the way they captured insects, and how thoroughly they digested their prey. But even his flytraps were improbably large, big enough to entomb and consume a human. Meat-eating, man-eating plants were having a moment, and for that you can thank Charles Darwin.
Until Darwin’s day, most people refused to believe that plants ate animals. It was against the natural order of things. Mobile animals did the eating; plants were food and couldn’t move—if they killed, it must only be in self-defense or by accident. Darwin spent 16 years performing meticulous experiments that proved otherwise. He showed that the leaves of some plants had been transformed into ingenious structures that not only trapped insects and other small creatures but also digested them and absorbed the nutrients released from their corpses.
In 1875, Darwin published Insectivorous Plants, detailing all he had discovered. In 1880, he published another myth-busting book, The Power of Movement in Plants. The realization that plants could move as well as kill inspired not just a hugely popular genre of horror stories but also generations of biologists eager to understand plants with such unlikely habits.
Today, carnivorous plants are having another big moment as researchers begin to get answers to one of botany’s great unsolved riddles: How did typically mild-mannered flowering plants evolve into murderous meat-eaters?
Carnivorous Plants
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