Long of memory, short of attention span.

tw: broken right rib 5 tw: broken right rib 6 tw: broken right rib 7 tw: broken right rib 8 tw: broken right rib 9 tw: broken right rib 10 tw: broken right rib 11 tw: broken right rib 12 tw: broken cervical vertebra 1 tw: broken cervical vertebra 2 tw: broken cervical vertebra 3 tw: broken cervical vertebra 4 tw: broken cervical vertebra 5 tw: broken cervical vertebra 6 tw: broken cervical vertebra 7 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 1 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 2 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 3 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 4 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 5 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 6 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 7 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 8 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 9 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 10 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 11 tw: broken thoracic vertebra 12 tw: broken lumbar vertebra 1 tw: broken lumbar vertebra 2 tw: broken lumbar vertebra 3 tw: broken lumbar vertebra 4 tw: broken lumbar vertebra 5 tw: broken sacrum tw: broken coccyx tw: broken left humerus tw: broken right humerus tw: broken left radius tw: broken right radius tw: broken left ulna tw: broken right ulna tw: broken left scaphoid bone tw: broken right scaphoid bone tw: broken left lunate bone tw: broken right lunate bone tw: broken left triquetral bone tw: broken right triquetral bone tw: broken left pisiform bone

tw: broken right pisiform bone tw: broken left trapezium tw: broken right trapezium tw: broken left trapezoid bone tw: broken right trapezoid bone tw: broken left capitate bone tw: broken right capitate bone tw: broken left hamate bone tw: broken right hamate bone tw: broken left metacarpal 1 bone tw: broken left metacarpal 2 bone tw: broken left metacarpal 3 bone tw: broken left metacarpal 4 bone tw: broken left metacarpal 5 bone tw: broken right metacarpal 1 bone tw: broken right metacarpal 2 bone tw: broken right metacarpal 3 bone tw: broken right metacarpal 4 bone tw: broken right metacarpal 5 bone tw: broken left proximal phalanx 1 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 2 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 3 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 4 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 5 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 1 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 2 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 3 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 4 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 5 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 5 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 2 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 3 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 4 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 5 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 2 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 3 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 4 tw: broken left distal phalanx 1 tw: broken left distal phalanx 2 tw: broken left distal phalanx 3 tw: broken left distal phalanx 4 tw: broken left distal phalanx 5 tw: broken right distal phalanx 1 tw: broken right distal phalanx 2 tw: broken right distal phalanx 3 tw: broken right distal phalanx 4 tw: broken right distal phalanx 5 tw: broken left innominate bone tw: broken right innominate bone tw: broken left femur tw: broken right femur

tw: broken left patella tw: broken right patella tw: broken left tibia tw: broken right tibia tw: broken left fibula tw: broken right fibula tw: broken left calcaneus tw: broken right calcaneus tw: broken left talus tw: broken right talus tw: broken left navicular bone tw: broken right navicular bone tw: broken left medial cuneiform bone tw: broken right medial cuneiform bone tw: broken left intermediate cuneiform bone tw: broken right intermediate cuneiform bone tw: broken left lateral cuneiform bone tw: broken right lateral cuneiform bone tw: broken left cuboid bone tw: broken right cuboid bone tw: broken left metatarsal 1 bone tw: broken left metatarsal 2 bone tw: broken left metatarsal 3 bone tw: broken left metatarsal 4 bone tw: broken left metatarsal 5 bone tw: broken right metatarsal 1 bone tw: broken right metatarsal 2 bone tw: broken right metatarsal 3 bone tw: broken right metatarsal 4 bone tw: broken right metatarsal 5 bone tw: broken left proximal phalanx 1 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 2 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 3 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 4 tw: broken left proximal phalanx 5 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 1 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 2 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 3 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 4 tw: broken right proximal phalanx 5 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 1 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 2 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 3 tw: broken left intermediate phalanx 4 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 1 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 2 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 3 tw: broken right intermediate phalanx 4 tw: broken left distal phalanx 1 tw: broken left distal phalanx 2 tw: broken left distal phalanx 3 tw: broken left distal phalanx 4 tw: broken left distal phalanx 5 tw: broken right distal phalanx 1 tw: broken right distal phalanx 2 tw: broken right distal phalanx 3 tw: broken right distal phalanx 4 tw: broken right distal phalanx 5

tw: bruising

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.

Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.

Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.

The record label will never put her name on the album.

Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.

The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.

Carol could do it on the first try.

She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.

But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.

That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.

She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.

Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.

She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.

The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.

For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.

Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.

And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.

But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.

Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.

tell yourself things you do not believe. it feels stupid at first but I've done this for years and now I believe it when I say "I'm good at this" or "I love myself" or "I deserve good shit!"

make a note of every mundane good thing that happens to you. mental or literal notes! could be as little as "the sky is a nice shade of grey, it's calming" or "I ate a piece of fruit today, I'm looking after myself" or "I talked to a friend". again, feels stupid at first, but I genuinely believe this is part of why I have so many "good days". trick your brain into storing things in your long-term memory that you wouldn't otherwise remember.

they're coming from someone who had multiple daily panic attacks for half a decade. someone who genuinely felt like he did not deserve to live. someone who hated himself so much he convinced himself he was irredeemably evil. someone who loves being alive these days, even though it's difficult sometimes.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

One day, there was a wedding in King Charles VI's court

The bride was marrying for the second time, after the death of her first husband

Whenever a widow remarried, it was custom to organize "charivari", basically a sort of mock parade meant to ridicule/make fun of someone who acted in defiance of social norms (like a widow who refused to stay single)

Musicians were invited to the royal mansion of Saint-Pol, and everyone - including very high ranking members of French nobility - started dancing at the sound of trumpets and flutes (pretty normal so far)

Hugonin de Guisay, a friend of the King, convinced the King and five other companions to bring life to the party by dressing themselves as "savages"

Costumes of linen are directly sewned to their clothes (why)

The costumes are covered in pitch, feathers and pieces of rope, to make them appear "hairy and hirsute from head to toe" (classic savage look)

Masks are placed on their faces, also covered in pitch feathers and rope.

Here's a recreation of what the costume could have looked like ! Sexy 😎

The King forbids anyone from using torches in the room where everybody dances. Good call, considering what they're wearing is like, probably the most inflammable piece of clothing imaginable

The duke of Orléans, brother of King Charles VI, and the duke of Berry arrive with four knights, bearing six torches, not knowing about the royal order

All of them are already quite drunk, as they spent the first part of the night in a tavern

Suddenly, the six "savages" burst into the room

They start howling like wolves and hurling obscenities at the crowd

The duke of Orléans, intrigued and drunk, goes to inspect the dancing savages with a torch in hand

His torch accidentally lights the linen costumes on fire

The dancers have a lot of trouble avoiding the fire, because evereybody except the King had the amazing idea to all tie themselves with a metal chain (I have zero explanation for the chain)

When everybody realizes the King is among the savages, the Queen understandably faints

Jeanne de Boulogne, duchess of Berry, then 14 years-old, immediately envelops the King in her dress and skirt

The King narrowly escapes death thanks to Jeanne

One of the burning lord, Ogier de Natouillet, manages to break out of the metal chain and throw himself in a water tank used to wash drinking cups (where he belongs)

Yvain de Foix attempts to reach the door, where two servants wait for him with a wet cloth, but burns to death before that

One chronicler, a monk of Sait-Denis, writes that "four men are burned to death, while their genitals fall to the ground, creating a great outpouring of blood" (???)

Only two dancers survive: the King and Ogier de Nantouillet

Hugonin de Guisay, who convinced the King and his companions to dress up, died from his injuries three days later, "cursing and insulting his comrades, both dead ones and living ones, until his last breath"

The consequences of this were absolutely devasting.

The public image of the King's Court was severely impacted. It was seen as a place of extravagant entertainment and moral decline.

The King and his brother had to do penance in front of the people of Paris

The King's mental health significantly worsened. Charles VI was already said to have had an episode a few years before, in which he murdered a few of his companions thinking them to be enemies. The Ball of Burning Men seems to have shocked him deeply.

The episode was used to decry the "Armagnac", a political faction lead by the duke of Orléans and his family.

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleufagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Character A approached Character B in an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation but it turns out that no one has ever approached Character B for an alliance before and they are now super smitten with Character A and even more invested in being "allies" than in defeating their shared enemy.

Character A: we will make our enemy regret being born! 🥂