Neighborhood, Worlds, Airplanes, Nightmares, Gold
The Lost Neighborhood Under Central Park
Vox | 20th January 2020
The ghost of Seneca Village, a historical black neighborhood that was evacuated and demolished to make way for Central Park, haunts Manhattan. Plates and toothbrushes, discovered through recent archeological research, indicate that Seneca Village was in fact a prosperous and integrated community. The newspapers lied, presenting it instead as a vulgar shanty-town, so that its destruction would not trigger a public uproar. (8m15s)
Parallel Worlds Probably Exist. Here's Why
Veritasium | YouTube | 6th March 2020
An explanation of quantum mechanics and how it (theoretically) leads to parallel worlds. Though the math can get complicated, the animated simulations of electron probability wavelengths and Schrödinger's Cat make it marginally easier to comprehend. "Branching is happening many many times a second just because of radioactive decays in your body. When the world branches here, does it branch instantly far away? The answer is: it's up to you." (19m59s)
The Rise and Fall of Pan Am
Business Insider | 15th February 2020
What happened to Pan Am? Why did "The World's Most Experienced Airline," an icon of aviation style, go bust? The answer involves the Yom Kippur War, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and a terrorist attack above the skies of Lockerbie, Scotland. What was once the second most recognized logo in the world is now limited to the set design of mid-century period films. (11m5s)
The Nightmare Artist
In Praise of Shadows | 31 Jan 2020
The horrifying paintings of Polish artist Zdislaw Beksinski, whose work combined Freudian nightmares with fragments of World War 2 and Holocaust imagery, also serving as a key inspiration for the modern heavy metal aesthetic. "A corpse plays the violin. A ruined dancer poses. The faces shift this way and that way, until the argument could be made that they are no longer faces at all." (13m56s)
Beautiful Video of the Week
A gold statue is overgrown by ethereal vines and insects
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