STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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An Entire Ghost Town Is for Sale in the Sierras for $925,000

Today could be the day your realize your long-time dream: to chuck your phone in the garbage disposal, cut ties with humanity, and move out West to pursue a solitary life of drinking beer on wooden front porches and gazing at starry night skies. 

Travel+Leisure reports that an abandoned mining town outside Lone Pine, California, is for sale. The town, called Cerro Gordo, is 300 acres and has 24,000 square feet of buildings still standing, like a hotel with a bar and museum, a superintendent's house, and a bunkhouse. The town was privately owned for decades, and restoration was completed on most of the structures, according to the listing.

The asking price? Just $925,000. For an entire town.

Cerro Gordo, which dates back to the Civil War-era, is nestled in the Owens Valley to the east of the Sierra Mountains, across the Owens Lake—spectacular views included. (Owens Valley is known as "the Land of Little Rain.") It's about a four-hour trip to Vegas, and a four-hour trip to L.A.

The possibilities are endless once you own it.

"The owners hope to find someone who appreciates and desires to preserve the historic nature of it," listing agent Jake Rasmuson told SFGate.

So, you could take up silver mining. You could conduct tours for eager photographers and school children, as the Cerro Gordo Historical Foundation does now. You could start a cult of history buffs. Or you could do nothing but hang out. Because you know who makes for good company? Ghosts. And you know you doesn't? Alive people.

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BODY-HEAT POWERED MATRIX POWERWATCH

This just might be the smartest smartwatch out on the market today. It’s not the number of technologies, or apps, or the sheer amount of screen space that makes a watch smart – it’s the way that technology improves the experience of the wearer. The Matrix PowerWatch doesn’t have the most overwhelming number of functions, but it just might have the smartest tech available today.

Solar power is nothing new. But the MATRIX PowerWatch is the world’s first watch to run on body heat. On top of that, thermoelectric tech taps into the wearer’s kinetic data, tracking calories burned, activity level (daily steps taken), and sleep quality. It is also water resistant up to 50 meters, and has a customizable user interface. Wearing it overnight charges it up, so you never have to take it off and plug it into the wall. The PowerWatch App allows you to monitor all your data, and see how much energy your body heat is generating. Get charged up for the MATRIX PowerWatch. $200

 

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‘First Man’ Stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong

Most men aren’t built for life-threatening expeditions that have never once been completed. It takes a special kind of drive and a unique level of moxie. Neil Armstrong had it, and if you need proof of that, just find your way to theaters when First Man hits. The film is the dramatic retelling of the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission. Based on the book by James R. Hansen, the story takes you inside one of Man’s greatest triumphs, along with the painful steps that led to it. Ryan Gosling stars as Neil Armstrong, and he teams with his director from La La Land, Damien Chazelle. The cinematography looks stunning and you already know the story is insane. 

 

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PEERLESS DISTILLING STRAIGHT RYE WHISKEY

Once the second largest distillery in the state of Kentucky, Peerless Distilling was one of the many victims of Prohibition. A century later, the distillery was revived by 4th and 5th generation descendants of the original master distiller Henry Kraver. The first release to turn heads from the resurrected brand is a rye whiskey that is non-chill filtered and bottled at barrel strength with no water added. And despite being only two years old, the whiskey helped Peerless become the only craft distiller to crack Whiskey Advocate's Top 20 Whiskies of 2017.

 

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1970 TUPOLEV A-3 AEROSLEDGE N007

The Tupolev A-3 Aerosledge is an unusual curiosity from the depths of the cold war, the CIA and MI6 doubtless had thick folders on the craft as it was used for collecting both cosmonauts and crashed pilots in the remote areas of Siberia.

Alexei Tupolev of the Tupolev Design Bureau originally developed the Tupolev A-3 in the early 1960s, the first production A-3 was delivered in 1964. The main problem that the Aerosledge had been built to solve was the difficulty of reaching remote communities and military bases in the wide frozen expanses of Russia’s wild eastern region.

Roads in Sibera are of limited use in the winter due to snowfall, and rivers freeze over for months at a time. Alexei Tupolev had been tasked with designing a vehicle to overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles – and he knew it couldn’t be an aircraft, as frequent storms, blizzards, and white outs would make it all but impossible to fly for days or even weeks at a time.

The design that Alexei and his engineers settled on was the aerosledge, a craft not dissimilar in function and design to the airboats commonly seen in the Florida Everglades and the Louisiana bayous. Unlike airboats, the Aerosledge has an enclosed fuselage and a bottom designed to operate on snow and ice as well as water.

THE TUPOLEV A-3 AEROSLEDGE – ENGINE – FRAME – CONSTRUCTION – SPEED

The first A-3 built in the 1960s were powered by a 100 hp M-11 5-cylinder air-cooled radial engine in a pusher configuration, later A-3s were fitted with a 260 hp AI-14R radial mounted on a shock-absorbing tubular frame, with a cowling to cover the oil tank and pipes for the lubrication system.

The Tupolev Design Bureau is best known for designing aircraft, and they didn’t stray far from their roots with the A-3. The craft has a aircraft-type frame constructed with longerons, ribs, and stringers onto which D-16 Duraluminium (an aluminum alloy) are riveted – ensuring that it’s both strong and lightweight.

The underside has replaceable panels of low friction 3.5 mm polyethylene attached, with three stainless-steel runners mounted to the hull base. Incredibly, the Tupolev A-3 has a draft of no more than 2 inches even when fully loaded.

Directional control is provided by twin rudders designed to vector thrust from the propeller, allowing the Aerosledge to turn even when not moving forwards. If the pilot pulls the yoke towards his or her chest, the rudders both rotate outwards into the airflow to act as an airbrake.

The latter 260 hp version of the Aerosledge was capable of 120 km/h on the snow and nearly 70 km/h on water – a vast improvement on the speeds that had previously been possible using tracked vehicles.

Over the course of its early ’60s to early ’80s production run, it’s thought that over 800 A-3 were built. Many have since been scrapped and there are very few surviving and functional examples left – possibly also due to the hard life they lived in some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth.

THE TUPOLEV A-3 AEROSLEDGE SHOWN HERE

The A-3 you see here has had one significant upgrade that were never available from the factory – it’s powered by a Vedeneyev M14P air-cooled supercharged 9-cylinder radial aircraft engine with a displacement of 10.16 liters, twin counter-rotating propellers, and 360 hp.

Now licensed with the cold war appropriate tag N007, this Aerosledge was extradited from the USSR during perestroika, its fuselage was comprehensively restored by hand by a German specialist, and its engine rebuilt in Bacau, Romania.

Since crossing the Atlantic (not under its own power) and taking up residence in the USA it’s won the “Corinthian Awards”, awarded at the “Keels and Wheels” concours d’elegance, at Houston, in 2006.

It’s now being offered for sale by Artcurial on the 19th of June in Paris, the estimated hammer price is listed as €140,000 to €200,000. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can HERE.

 

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TEARS OF LLORONA NO. 3 TEQUILA

Hand-crafted from 100% blue agave grown in volcanic soil in the highlands of Jalisco, Tears of Llorona No. 3 Extra Añejo Tequila is one of the most complex spirits in the category. After a thorough distillation process, the tequila is aged for nearly five years in a variety of barrels including Sherry casks, ex-Scotch whiskey barrels, and French Limousin barrels previously used to mature Cognac. It's then blended and bottled in one-liter glass swing-top bottles.

 

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DEKANTĀ KIKOU IS THE LATEST PREMIUM JAPANESE WHISKY MADE FOR COLLECTORS

Premium whisky maker Dekantā have unveiled their latest small batch of single cask Japanese whisky called Kikou. The stunning looking expression is a tribute to Masataka Taketsuru, the man considered the father of Japanese whisky. Accompanying that status is a whisky that has been finished in a cask from the Port Ellen distillery in Scotland. Given that the Port Ellen distillery ceased operation in 1983, the Kikou should make for a great collector’s item without the collector’s price tag. $847.00

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This Tiny Home Is Modeled After a Lunar Lander

Stroll the banks of the Columbia River in central Washington and you’re forgiven for thinking, at least for a second, that you’re on the surface of the moon. No, it’s not because the riverbank has gone to shit; it’s because Kurt Hughes lives there and so does his lunar lander-inspired tiny home. The 250-square-foot abode is hexagonal in shape and all NASA in vibe. There’s a bedroom on the lower level, a kitchen formed of hard lines, and even a dining room table next to a portal that looks out on the river to remind you you’re still on Earth. Hughes leveraged his decades of experience designing boats to nail the floor plan and overall structure, and it’s hard to argue with the results. If we tried the same, it would look like a prop in an elementary school play.

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I WISH! URWERK UR-105 KRYPTONITE WATCH

Named for its bright green SuperLuminova numerals and indications, the Urwerk Ur-105 Kryptonite Watch is all about contrast. Its 39.5mm octagonal case is crafted from matte black AlTiN-coated titanium, creating a dramatic look, and has a catch on the top you need to slide to reveal the wandering hour mechanism. Twin pneumatic turbines on the back regulate the self-winding rate, allowing you to harness slight movements, only more vigorous motion, or turn it completely off for manual winding. $65K

 

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Gaming: Metro Exodus Leaves The Train Tunnels For A Dangerous Open Russia

Our train slowly chugged to a halt. Something was apparently blocking the road up ahead, possibly put there by a rival band of survivors. The captain sent my character out to investigate. Moments later, I was killed by a giant floating orb of static. Post-nuclear Russia is not a place to explore blindly.

But explore is exactly what Metro Exodus maker 4A Games wants you to do. Beginning on a train headed away from the Moscow public transit system in which players spent the previous two games foraging for bullets and batteries Exodus will take players to a city far away, consisting of several open-air regions spread across four different seasons and linked by the same set of tracks. The area I explored in a hands-on demo at E3 2018 took place during early spring, and the unforgiving landscape hid everything from mutant crocodiles and deadly wisps of sentient electromagnetic energy to an outpost of religious fanatics who blame technology for the modern state of the world—a completely reasonable sentiment under the circumstances.

After reloading my last auto-save, I set out on a more roundabout path past an old abandoned train car, a quick, barebones search of which turned up nothing interesting but the broken down ghosts of past civilizations etched into the window curtains. I headed toward a thawed lake where a rowboat sat. On the other side, there looked to be an old abandoned boathouse, so I decided to head for it. Giant bugs plopped off into the marshy water from the banks on either side as I rowed by, and I did my best to avoid the ripples they left in their wake. My short voyage went on, uninterrupted.

As I approached the boat house, I found that I was not alone: I could hear someone giving a sermon about the hellscape surrounding us and how those who embraced technology were to blame for it. No one interacted directly with me, though and I was able to make my way up a landing by the dock and toward the top of the building. A mother and daughter were there, asking for my help. They needed asylum of some kind. It was hard to tell how exactly, but my agreeing to help them sparked a chain reaction that set thugs from the religious meeting below looking for me. What followed was a bloodbath, one I hadn’t planned on, but one whose consequences would haunt me for the rest of my time in the Exodus demo. I slogged my way the muck, weapons dirty and low on ammunition, searching desperately for the resources I’d need to finish my reconnaissance missions.

As the latest series to make its way into the open-world space, Metro’s is to accommodate player agency and make different paths and approaches to exploring new areas viable. The developers at 4A Games, during the demo and afterwards during an interview, explained that choice is important in this new, more free-flowing Metro world. In the large swamplands I explored, that meant giving me an objective to go check something out off in the distance, but not holding my hand telling me how to get there, or preventing me from checking out other buildings or combing the land for potential supplies or hidden secrets.

Building in multiple player paths and planning for different possibilities means that Exodus has also had to leave some of its past behind. Most notably, the new game dispenses with the series’ bullet economy, in which ammunition doubled as the currency of exchange for buying items.

“I think the bullet economy was something that was really cool,” the game’s executive producer Jon Bloch told Kotaku at E3. “But at the same time, I think that had to be to be sacrificed in order to move into this new design idea of doing these open environments, and players seeking their freedom.” Bullets were laid out like cookie crumbs in the last two games, and 4A Games was able to craft these drops with precision because of the limited nature of most environments and the way players were propelled down narrow tunnels from one story beat to another. In the more open world of Exodus, this planned economy wouldn’t be possible.

Bullets will still be precious in Exodus, Bloch said, and a reason to try and take out enemies as stealthily as possible rather than go in guns-blazing like I did. The end of my time with the game was spent hiding behind a door in an abandoned factory trying to figure out how my three shotgun shells would get me through the unknown number of mutated creatures stalking the halls around me.

An overhauled crafting system means that ammunition and other supplies can be crafted using a portable workshop carried on your back, but you still need to find the right ingredients first, leading to a risk and reward trade-off that adds a layer to the decision-making process. Diverge from the beaten path and you might find useful stuff or the occasional audio log, but you’re also likely to encounter threats that are costly to deal with and potentially leave you in even worse shape than when you arrived.

This heightened danger risk is something most open worlds and go-as-you-please sandbox environments are missing, and shows just how much the series has to gain from leaving the cramped Moscow underground from the first two games. Where most game areas encourage the player to find a way to overpower and eventually master them, the part of Exodus I played was not keen to have me around in the slightest. If anything, it left me wishing I could complete my task, get the tracks cleared, and hop back on my comrades’ train as soon as possible, like any great survival game should.

Ultimately, this is what’s helped Metro feel so grounded and intimate, and what my time with the game convinced me Exodus will still have. Despite evolving to more closely resemble games like Dishonored 2 and Fallout 4, the game is still about protagonist Artyom trying to make his way in a world wracked by nuclear winter and not immediately die of radiation poisoning. The game’s roots in this deeply personal realism are reaffirmed nowhere better than in its still incredibly organic and minimalist user interface. Whether I was rowing in a boat or crouching behind a snow-covered log, I could always pull out a map of the area on my clunky clipboard to figure out where I should head next. With the game still proceeding in the background, I could study the crude contours of the island I was on with a handwritten X marking my next objective.

As Exodus adds new systems and becomes a more complex game, relying on a more explicit HUD to communicate with the player could have provided easy shortcuts. Instead, it has opted for the more beautiful and brutal alternative. The game doesn’t pause when you’re studying your map, or the diary on the flip-side, or when you’re checking your guns to clean them or switch out attachments. These aren’t secondary activities separate from the open world exploration: they’re the heart of it.

“It might take a little more effort on the part of the player, but I like that,” said Bloch. “We’ve used this this term ‘It’s like the thinking gamer’s shooter’—you have to put a little bit more thought into it, and you can’t just go around with a bullet hose.”

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Rolls-Royce's Hood Ornament Is Actually A Tribute To A Secret Affair

Rolls-Royce is one of the few automakers left today that still uses a hood ornament to adorn the front of its cars. It's called the Spirit of Ecstasy - a elegantly winged woman that who looks as though she's experiencing a constant headwind. She was, allegedly, based on an actual woman named Eleanor Velasco Thornton.

This, according to Carfection, is how the story goes.

In the early 1900s, John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, the second Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, commissioned a hood ornament for his Rolls-Royce from an English sculptor named Charles Robinson Sykes. Sykes modelled the ornament after Thornton, an actress and Montagu's mistress.

Eleanor Velasco Thornton

Because of their secret relationship, the first mascot that Sykes designed had a finger to her lips and was named "The Whisperer."

Hood ornaments were all the rage during that time and more and more people were putting them on their Rolls-Royce cars. Rolls-Royce, supposedly, stuffy then like it is today, didn't like that there were so many unofficial ornaments decorating its cars, so it asked Sykes to design a mascot it could put on all of its cars.

Sykes remodeled "The Whisperer" into the Spirit of Ecstasy that we know today, and called it, "a graceful little goddess, the Spirit of Ecstasy, who has selected road-travel as her supreme delight and delighted on the prow of a Rolls-Royce motorcar, to revel in the freshness of the air and the musical sound of her fluttering draperies."

People sure don't talk like that anymore!

Anyway, sadly, Thornton died not long after in 1915. She was travelling aboard the SS Persia when the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Mediterranean.

If you want to hear this story told to you in a dulcet English voice to make the experience more authentic, check out Carfection's video.

 

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Arcade1Up Makes Us Want to Open an Arcade in Our Home

When we visited with the crew of Arcade1Up at E3 this year, a feeling of nostalgia hit us like a ton of bricks that we weren’t ready for. These guys create old-school arcade cabinets, but not in the traditional sense. These are shrunken down cabinets that are sold for a cheaper price and can fit in your home much more easily than ones you could buy from an arcade or a dealer.

Take, for example, the lovely Street Fighter II: Champion Edition cabinet above, complete with all the original marble art and fighter pictures you would see if you walked into an arcade back in 1992.

This particular cabinet stands at 4′ tall and comes complete with sticks and buttons that are the same size as the original but placed on a smaller panel. Below you’ll see cabinets that for classics like Centipede, Final Fight, Asteroids, and Rampage. And if you’re an arcade enthusiast, each one is broken down into pieces so you can build them yourselves. Standard arcade cabinets come in a variety of prices depending on the quality, but Arcade1Up’s systems are around $400, which is a damn fine price considering what you’re buying and building.

These were an absolute joy to try out and, with any luck, we’ll be able to receive one to review it more in-depth and let you know how they play. But on the surface, if you’re looking to make a game room in your home, or are maybe looking for some nostalgia for your kids that’s about their height, these are a must-own. There are also options to buy a 1′ booster to make them 5′ tall, and you can also buy stools to sit in front of them with. Pre-orders will be made available on July 25th through Wal-Mart and GameStop, and you can find more info on their website.

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The Coolest Distillery to Visit in Israel

In a small modified garage in an Arab-Christian village in northern Israel is a boutique distillery producing some of the world’s finest arak.

Me’ilya, ISRAEL—The aromatic smell of anise, a close olfactory cousin of licorice, was already evident in the parking lot, tucked in the middle of an industrial park in this Arab-Christian village in northern Israel. It was the only real indication, aside from one actual faded sign, that here, inside a small modified garage, was a boutique distillery producing some of the world’s finest arak. 

Made from fermented grapes and the anise spice, arak is an alcoholic spirit—clear, colorless, and potent. It is indigenous to the Levant, a geographic area of the Middle East roughly corresponding to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, and a close relation to its Mediterranean cousins ouzo, sambuca, and raki. The distillery, now six years old, was the brainchild of two brothers, Jeryis and Wadia Hadid, native sons of Me’ilya, as well as Shukri Hayak, who was decidedly not. 

Hayak originally hailed from Lebanon, a short 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) north across the border but, in political terms, a world apart. Israel and Lebanon are enemies and still technically at war, the last one having taken place just in 2006. But there was a time not so long ago when parts of Lebanon were not only allied with Israel, but brothers-in-arms with Israel. Hayak was one such soldier. His story, and that of this liquor operation, tell a tale of what once was—and what may hopefully be again.

“It was always my dream to make arak,” Hayak, 52, tall, bald, and large, says now, almost sheepishly. His grandfather made arak for years out of a small workshop in their hometown of Jezzine, a picturesque hamlet in the mountains of south-central Lebanon. Politics, however, would intercede. In his early twenties, and with the Lebanese Civil War raging, Hayak joined the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a militia Israel helped establish in the late 1970s as a bulwark against their common enemies. “They needed us, and we needed them,” a retired Israeli intelligence officer active in Lebanon once told me. 

Made up predominantly of local Maronite Christians (like Hayak), but also Druze and Shia Muslims, the SLA was the effective government in the region, which at its peak swept over 10 percent of Lebanon and ruled over 150,000 people. Israel provided arms, training, and support, including its own military personnel; gave money to help build roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure; and allowed trade to flow in both directions. Indeed, the Israel-Lebanon border at the time was called the “Good Fence,” an indication of the many Lebanese who entered Israel daily for work. 

If at first the enemy was the Palestine Liberation Organization, then after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the PLO’s expulsion, a new nemesis arose: Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia militia supported by Iran. Years of bloody, and inconclusive, guerrilla warfare in southern Lebanon ensued. Public opposition grew along with the slow trickle of body bags returning home; many referred to Lebanon as “Israel’s Vietnam.” By May 2000, with domestic opinion firmly in favor, Israel almost overnight withdrew from what heretofore had been its “Security Zone.” The SLA, for its part, collapsed. Nearly 10,000 hastily fled south to Israel, including Hayak, who had risen to become an officer (and therefore a marked man). He left behind a wife and two children. 

These SLA personnel now live in exile, mostly in northern Israel—close enough to see their old homeland, but not to touch it. Some integrated into Israeli life, learning Hebrew, sending their kids to the army, and finding employment. Many, though, found it difficult to acclimate, and either left for points overseas or returned to Lebanon to face Hezbollah’s harsh judgement. 

Hayak stayed and, along with two other SLA veterans, started an arak distilling business. Hayak’s onetime hobby as a militiaman had turned into a profession, bringing a little taste of traditional Lebanese tipple to Israel. “Everyone drank it back home,” he told me, “that was our symbol, so to speak.” Business went well and the distillery was eventually bought by a major Israeli beverage conglomerate. And yet, increased taxes on alcohol introduced by the Israeli government a few years back, currently over 60 percent, ultimately forced the conglomerate to shutter its arak subsidiary. This is where the Hadid brothers stepped in.

Me’ilya is located a 20-minute drive east from the coastal city of Nahariya, just off the main highway that runs across Israel’s northern Galilee region. Literally meaning “something above,” the town is nestled in rolling hills, offering picturesque views of the surrounding countryside. Narrow winding roads, reminiscent of Italian village life, bring visitors to Me’ilya’s highest point: the ruins of a 12th-century Crusader fortress called the “King’s Castle.” People had built homes inside the fortress’ ancient walls, popping out to hang laundry from the ramparts. Many of the structures in town were built from white and brown stones dating back centuries. This included the main church just adjacent to the King’s Castle, as well as a home nearby whose arched foundations were being excavated for, oddly enough, a new Italian restaurant. 

Home to 3,000 Greek Catholic Arab Israeli citizens, Me’ilya’s inhabitants are known primarily for being accomplished academics and small business owners. Jeriyas and Wadia’s father, indeed, was for decades a pig farmer—an occupation that in the Jewish state was left to either the Christians or a handful of socialist/atheist kibbutzim (collective agricultural communities). During the SLA years, Jeriyas, 47, sold pigs to the south Lebanese, cultivating relationships he retained upon their forced immigration. While the Hadids still retain a foothold in this life, operating a butchery on the town’s main street offering choice cuts of meat, including pork, the herd had long been sold off. Born entrepreneurs, the brothers joined forces with Hayak to try their hand at a new business.

Jeriyas, with close cropped grey hair and an easy manner, seems to run on Davidoff cigarettes, black Arabic coffee, and his cellphone (always near to hand). “In my wildest dreams I couldn’t imagine where we’d be when we started all this,” he told me excitedly. And in truth, the early steps were uncertain. 

First they needed a name. The most obvious, Montfort, after another nearby Crusader fortress, was dismissed as being too clichéd. “Every garage, restaurant, and business in the area is called that, they’ve gone overboard,” Jeriyas told me. Ultimately they settled on Arak Masada, after the Roman-era fortress near the Dead Sea best known as the site where Jewish rebels committed group suicide rather than be caught alive. The name worked both in terms of its strong Jewish connection—a marketing boon in the Israeli market—as well as its more allegorical significance. “You know the saying, ‘Masada shall not fall again?’ Jeriyas inquired. “That was us. We won’t fail like all the other arak producers. We’ll give it our all.” 

Further complicating matters, Hayak’s recipe required precise ingredients—not only for traditional Lebanese arak, but specifically Zahlawi arak, from the city in eastern Lebanon renowned for its “wine and poetry.” Dabouki white grapes closest to the Lebanese variety were sourced from an Israeli vineyard on the Mediterranean coast. The right anise, a cultivated plant, was found in the western Syrian town of Kafroun and moved to Israel via a Jordanian middleman. (Upon inquiry, Jeriyas said the Syrian civil war hadn’t stopped this Levantine anise trade. “You don’t think people still farm during wartime?” he posited.) 

To sum up: Israeli grapes and Syrian anise (via Jordan) all come together in a factory situated in a Christian Arab town in Western Galilee, under the name of an ancient Jewish fortress, where a Lebanese Maronite proceeded to put, as he called it, his “magic touch” on the proceedings. 

With reason, Hayak didn’t want to reveal too much. But the process in its most mechanical form called for a 21 day initial fermentation period, producing 96 proof alcohol. This alcohol was then combined with the anise inside big copper pots (called karaki) that are then heated for intervals of between eight to 12 hours. The resulting vapor was then funneled through copper piping into open-top metal tanks, where cold water was introduced, producing a liquid. The liquid, coming out the other side, was dripped into massive plastic vats. This was arak. 

The above difference in distillation times gave rise to the three types of arak that Masada produces: the most basic and best-selling, Jabalna (“our mountain,” after Me’ilya); Kafroun, after the Syrian village, for the more refined arak connoisseur; and Alwadi (“dry riverbed,” after a nearby stream), the most traditional Zahlawi of the lot, potent, and decidedly not for the faint of heart.

The entire operation, including another filtering process and then bottling, was all done by hand by six workers. A human touch, traditional, and something that probably wouldn’t look too out of place in the moonshine backwoods of Appalachia. And yes, they do provide tours, tastings, and lectures to visitors of the factory. It’s also strictly kosher, as would be expected from a product seeking to make inroads in the Israeli market. 

Israel, for its part, seemed to respond. Arak has been produced, and imbibed, by Jews here since before Israel’s founding, although, to hear the traditionalist take, the local arak was simply bottled raw material with anise flavoring. Arak Masada offered something different.

Not just a liquor used for shots at nightclubs, or mixed in with crushed ice and grapefruit juice—although Jeriyas was at pains to say that there’s nothing wrong with that either—but rather something of more quality and taste. The real way to drink it, he said, was a third arak and two thirds water, with a single ice cube. This process opens the arak’s aroma, as well as creating the cloudy white coloring that gave the liquor its well-known Arabic nickname: “lion’s milk.” In fact, the cloudier the arak, the purer the anise. 

From store to store, wedding to wedding, and mouth to mouth, Arak Masada began to make a name for itself, initially in northern Israel and now all across the country. It won multiple awards from various wine and liquor associations, especially in the Mediterranean region. They currently export their products overseas, including to the United States, Sweden, Holland, and even Jordan (under a different Arabic label that still says “Product of Israel”). Although it does help to export to markets with large Israeli or Arab communities already familiar with the product, Jeriyas said that it was only a question of marketing before people caught on. “Everyone drinks, even Muslims,” he told me with a wink. 

The one place where Arak Masada couldn’t be exported to was its spiritual homeland, Lebanon. Sitting on the Hadid family’s front patio over a glass of Jabalna and water and ice, Hezbollah was just a few kilometers north, across a frontier patrolled by heavily armed men, on both sides, who were using this sunny summer afternoon very differently. 

Shukri Hayak will likely never be able to go back home. And Israelis and Lebanese will, at least in the foreseeable future, never be able to sit around a table together in Beirut or Tel Aviv, sipping “lion’s milk,” wondering how they ever allowed the politics of the Middle East to define them strictly by their differences, and not by all that they have in common.

[MIKA27]

The Magical and Mysterious Floating Uros Islands of Peru

Nobody knows exactly when the people of Uros starting building floating islands on the world's highest navigable lake, but what they accomplished is spectacular.

“You can’t bring your wheelchair to Uros,” my guide told me. He pointed to a collapsible and slightly dilapidated manual wheelchair nearly a foot too wide for me. “Use this one.”

I had just arrived in Puno, Peru, to see the floating Uros islands on Lake Titicaca, the 120-mile long lake that sits between Peru and Bolivia. To get there, I had flown to Lima and then the southwestern desert town of Arequipa, before driving southeast through Colca Canyon across the Andes mountains in a van. At each stop we made, my guides had said the same thing—my 200-pound electric wheelchair would not be able to get around whatever we were seeing that day. But besides a monastery in Arequipa that was almost all stairs and Machu Picchu, my guides had mostly been wrong.

I like to think of my wheelchair as the Little Engine that Could. It has taken me over glaciers in Iceland and across the sand and stone of Petra’s ancient canyon, through ancient jungle temples in Bali and over miles of cobblestone streets all over Europe. But something in my guide Alex’s concerned face told me to go with it. In the loaned manual wheelchair, Alex, his friend Max, who came along for his strength, and I, boarded a small boat in Puno’s harbor. As Max lifted me and then the loaner chair into the boat, I was already glad I had taken it instead.

Out on the water, it felt like I was taking the first proper breath I’d had in days. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable body of water in the world at nearly 13,000 feet in elevation, but it was still a lower altitude than most of the route I’d taken to get there. During that drive, I had learned altitude sickness is not a joke. Any time we went over 14,000 feet, I got nauseated and my heart raced. It felt like I was suffocating whenever I tried to lay down, and the adrenaline from my racing heart made it impossible to sleep. I had been living on coca tea—the main ingredient in cocaine that’s completely harmless and an altitude sickness lifesaver in its plant-based form.

The first sign we had reached Uros was a small island with a single reed hut and a lookout post about four miles away from the coast of Puno, almost to Bolivia. It was impressive on its own, but just beyond that, the water suddenly opened up to a colorful and vibrant village floating in the middle of the lake on nothing but layers of thin green totora reeds and blocks of mud. The totora reed grows almost exclusively on Lake Titicaca and Easter Island in Chile, and can reach up to twenty feet high.

The people of Peru are masters of their environment. Each mountain in Colca Canyon is lined with stone terraces built by the Incas centuries ago, from the base to the peak. Peruvians still use these terraces every day, climbing hundreds of feet to farm everything from potatoes to quinoa.

The islands of Uros are an equally ingenious feat of physics and ingenuity. The indigenous people of Uros have harnessed the power of the totora reed and have been living on the islands for centuries. There are over 100 islands in Uros, each one no more than 90 feet wide and four to eight feet thick. They use large hand saws to cut out three-foot thick bricks of the mud and roots underneath to reeds in the shallow parts of the lake. They bind these bricks together to form the base of the islands and layer the totora reed on top to give the islands their buoyancy.  

Each island can house up to 10 families and are tethered together by rope so they do not drift apart and anchored by eucalyptus tree trunks. There are no walls on the islands except for the reed ones that make up the peoples’ homes, and nothing to stop you from dropping over the edge into the water. Even though Lake Titicaca has an average depth of around 440 feet, many of the Uros people do not know how to swim.

For the Uros people, the totora reed is at the very center of their lives. Not only does the reed keep them afloat, they also use it to build their boats, homes, and the handicrafts they sell to tourists, as well as for medicine and food. The islands are in a constant state of decay, and so every day the people must cut reeds from the shallower parts of the lake where they grow and spread them out over their islands.

From certain angles, the islands simply looked like extensions of the shoreline. Then we stepped onto one of them and our feet and wheels quickly sunk down several inches into the dried reeds. It was like trying to move on top of a spongey mattress. Max had to pull the wheelchair like a cart and at one point, a bundle of reeds got caught in the undercarriage. I panicked at the idea that I was tearing up the only thing keeping families from dropping into the water. But Max just scooped the pile of reeds out from under the chair and laid them back out on the island floor.

The lake was calm and the sky blue that day but the islands still bobbed and swayed with the water, creating this sense that the islands were alive. Every slosh and bob was a breath. It made me wonder, though, what it would be like to be here during high wind or a storm.

The boats transporting tourists alternate between islands so that each family has an opportunity to make money. My boat took us to the island with the local Uros kindergarten and the home of the school’s founder and teacher, Amalia Suana. It was a lucky day, Alex said, Amalia’s island was his favorite. No matter what country I’m in, my wheelchair is always of some interest as I travel and I wondered what Amalia and her family would think about it. Amalia and her family welcomed us with bright smiles, appearing not to even notice the chair. Instead, she invited me to come sit in her home—a one room reed house with a bed made of reeds. They gave me a demonstration on how they build their islands using the totora reeds.

Uros is home to some of the starkest poverty in Peru and Amalia grew up on the islands without ever having the opportunity to go to school. As a young adult, she saved money by selling handicrafts to pay her way through college on the mainland to become a teacher. She returned to Uros with a teaching degree and created the first kindergarten on Uros without the help of government funding, despite requests for aid. Later, Amalia received an international award for her work and the Peruvian government began funding the school, but the school still relies on donations from visitors to buy supplies and books for the children.

The handicrafts made by the people of Uros were the most beautiful I found in all of Peru. The women stitch beautiful scenes on blankets with colorful thread and fabric completely from memory and without a pattern, while the men make hanging mobiles, toys, instruments, and ornaments out of reeds and gourds. The clothes the people of Uros wear are equally vibrant, with patterns of flowers and geometric designs stitched in by hand. Many of the women attach large hot pink or lime-colored yarn pompoms to the end of their long braids.

Uros is still a bit of a mystery. The people descend from the Uru, one of the most ancient people in the Americas. They created the islands to escape violence on the mainland while the Incas were expanding their territory centuries ago, but no one really knows how long the people have been there. Bobbing along on Lake Titicaca, it was easy to see why the people of Uros picked this place as their escape. It felt like the edge of the world. But even on the edge of the world, I discovered that technology had found a way in. The reed boats are mostly for tourists, as most of the islanders use small motorboats. Several portable solar panels pop up above the homes, a recent addition to the island after a former Peruvian president stayed the night on the islands and wanted to be able to read in his bed in the evening. On one of the other islands, there is also a small convenience store where you can buy American candy bars and sodas, as well as fried quinoa bread and the locally popular neon yellow Inca Cola. The soda tastes like bubblegum but is still somehow delicious, and it certainly provides a more authentic Peruvian experience. You can also rent kayaks to paddle around the islands on your own.

Most people go to Peru for Machu Picchu and to marvel at the ingenuity of the Incas. However, only 250 miles away bobbing and swaying on the world’s highest navigable lake, sits a living example of the region’s resourceful people that remains almost unchanged by time.

[MIKA27]

The Extravagant Architecture of Vedado, Havana’s ‘Forbidden’ Neighborhood

This affluent and leafy neighborhood a couple miles outside Old Havana is chock-full of jaw-dropping works of Art Deco, Neo-Classical, and Art Nouveau from Havana’s heyday.

In Havana’s turn of the century boom years, wealthy Cubans, Americans, and other foreigners flocked to the former military no-go zone of Vedado to build their palatial homes in the variety of styles popular at the time. For those looking to escape the bustle of Old Havana and wander tree-lined streets with almost no other tourists, then Vedado is calling. The remarkable Art Nouveau and Neo-Classical houses and sleek Art Deco apartment buildings are today in various conditions, with some restored as casa particulares or for government use, others lovingly maintained against the odds, and a number that are losing the battle against time and nature.

 

[MIKA27]

ALFA ROMEO MOLE 001 COUPE

Alfa Romeo's 4C mid-engine coupe is a beautiful Italian two-seater straight from the factory. But design house Mole Automotive thought they could improve on the cars looks — and they did, with flying colors. The completely new bodywork wraps the 4C's carbon fiber tub with sculpted lines that give the car a much more aggressive look, akin to the Giulia sedan. While this is a one-off, hopefully, Alfa Romeo takes notice for the 4C's next styling update.

[MIKA27]

‘Welcome to Marwen’ is a Very Different Steve Carell Movie

Someday, I’d love to crawl inside the brain of filmmakers like Robert Zemeckis to understand where a film like Welcome to Marwen came from.

The first trailer for the Universal Pictures film starring Steve Carrell and Janelle Monae hit this morning, and it’s certainly something to see:

This could very well be one of Carell’s most interesting performances — seeing him dive into a more dramatic role is always a fascinating viewing experience. Pair that with Zemeckis, score by Alan Silvestri, and a cast including Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, and Gwendoline Christie, this one is certainly going on my anticipated features list.

Quote

After surviving a violent attack, Mark Hogancamp (Carell) creates a miniature World War II town in his backyard as a way to escape from reality. The event wipes away all Hogancamp’s memories, no one expected recovery. Putting together pieces from his old and new life, Mark meticulously creates a wondrous town where he can heal and be heroic. As he builds an astonishing art installation—a testament to the most powerful women he knows—through his fantasy world, he draws strength to triumph in the real one.

Welcome to Marwen is set to hit theaters this Thanksgiving, November 21st, 2018.

[MIKA27]

Michael B. Jordan Fights for Vengeance in the Stunning Creed II Trailer

The first Creed 2 trailer has been released, and it’s a knockout. Focusing on family drama with a big fight looming on the horizon, the sports sequel looks to continue the powerful legacy established by the original Oscars-winning Rocky and the Oscar-nominated Creed. The first trailer promises the same heart and personal battles delivered by the best installments in the franchise along with hard-punching bouts of boxing.

Directed by Steven Caple Jr., written by Sylvester Stallone and Cheo Hodari Coker (Luke Cage) and taking direct inspiration from Ryan Coogler‘s 2015 awards-worthy pic, Creed II will see Michael B. Jordan return as Adonis Johnson, son of Apollo Creed, to continue his training under Rocky Balboa in order to prep for what’s sure to be a brutal fight against Vitor Drago (Florian Munteanu), the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Tessa Thompson also returns as Adonis’ love interest, Bianca, and Coogler is on board as an executive producer.

Creed 2 opens November 21st.

[MIKA27]

'Electronic Skin' Allows User Of Prosthetic Hand To Feel Pain

Current prosthetic limbs aren't yet capable of transmitting complex sensations such as texture or pain to the user, but a recent breakthrough by scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in which a synthetic layer of skin on an artificial hand transmitted feelings of pain directly to the user, takes us one step closer to that goal.

Pain sucks, but we'd be lost without this extremely valuable sensation.

"Pain helps protect our bodies from damage by giving us the sensation that something may be harmful, such as the sharp edge of a knife," Luke Osborn, a co-author of the new study and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, told Gizmodo.

"For a prosthesis, there is no concept of pain, which opens it up to the possibility of damage. We found a way to provide sensations of pain in a meaningful way to the prosthesis as well as the amputee user."

Working with JHU neuroengineer Nitish Thakor, Osborn and his colleagues developed a system called e-dermis - a skin-like layer that gives prosthetic limbs the capacity to perceive touch and pain. Pressure applied to the e-dermis is transmitted to the user's brain via an electric nerve stimulator implanted in the arm above the prosthesis, allowing the system to emulate actual sensations.

In tests of the e-dermis system, a volunteer amputee said he could tell the difference between objects that were rounded or sharp, saying the sensation of pain registered a three out of 10 in terms of severity. This study was published today in Science Robotics.

People who use prosthetic limbs can use these pain signals to avoid damaging their prosthesis, just as they use the warning of pain to avoid harming any other body part. Sharp objects and heat can wreck the fingertips of an artificial hand or cause damage to its cosmesis, or skin-like covering.

Serious damage to an artificial limb is no joke, as some of the more expensive units can cost upwards of $US70,000 ($94,560) or more. What's more, a prosthetic limb that can feel its surroundings adds to its utility.

Clearly, pain is unpleasant, and we should work to minimise the amount of pain that people are regularly exposed to. As the authors of the new study admit, an ideal prosthesis would "allow the user to maintain complete control" and choose to "overrule pain reflexes" if desired. For example, users should be able to switch off the pain function and have automated, built-in pain reflexes kick in when the limb senses something is causing damage.

That's the ultimate goal, but in the meantime, the JHU researchers are seeking to create more realistic prosthetic limbs capable of delivering a rich diversity of tactile information, including pain.

As noted, modern prostheses don't provide meaningful tactile feedback or perception, so users can't tell if something is rough, smooth, sharp, cold or hot. To overcome these deficiencies, the JHU researchers built their e-dermis device by mimicking the way pain works on natural skin.

Specifically, they modelled the way nerve cells within skin, called nociceptors, process pain and transmit the resulting signals to the brain for processing via mechanoreceptors. (As a important aside, while we experience pain at the point of injury, the actual sensation of pain is produced by the brain).

"We feel pain through receptors in our skin," said Osborne. "We have what are called mechanoreceptors that send information about anything we touch to our brain. That's why we can feel things like pressure or texture. Nociceptors, on the other hand, convey sensations of pain when we touch something sharp or have a cut. We built a multilayered electronic dermis, or e-dermis, that tries to mimic the behaviour of these different receptors."

Diagram of the e-dermis system. 

To make it work, the researchers created a neuromorphic system - a device that mimics the behaviour of the nervous system with circuits. In this case, their neuromorphic model took the output of the e-dermis (that is, the tactile information produced when touching an object) and transformed it into electric spikes, or neural signals, that replicated the behaviour of mechanoreceptors and nociceptors.

These spikes were then used to electrically stimulate the peripheral nerves of an amputee volunteer (that is, transcutaneous nerve stimulation, or TNS). When provided with this nerve stimulation, the volunteer was able to feel sensations in his artificial hand.

In experiments, an amputee volunteer could feel pressure, the tapping of a fingertip, and even objects that elicited painful sensations. He could tell the difference between non-painful and painful tactile perceptions, including variations in an object's curvature and sharp edges.

The volunteer said the sensations felt like they were coming directly from the so-called phantom hand. EEG scans taken during the experiments appeared to show that regions in the brain associated with the hand were activated in the participant's brain.

The JHU researchers documented which stimulations the user found painful and which felt more like normal touch. The volunteer was asked to rate the discomfort of the perceived sensations in the phantom hand using a scale from -1 to 10, where -1 is something enjoyable or pleasant, 1 is very light pain like an itch, 2 is a discomforting feeling like a pinch, 3 is uncomfortable but tolerable, like an accidental cut, and so on. During this experiment, the highest level of pain was ranked as a 3.

The volunteer performing the sensation task.

"One of the most surprising aspects of this work was being able to identify different stimulation patterns that produce different sensations in the phantom hand of the amputee volunteer," said Osborn. "In this case, those sensations were of pressure or pain."

To make the system more life-like, the researchers also added an automated pain reflex to the system. When the prosthetic hand touched a sharp object, the fingers automatically jerked away, "to prevent damage and further pain," as the researchers write in the study. Importantly, the volunteer had no control over these reflex movements.

Sharlene Flesher, Sharlene Flesher, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who wasn't involved with the new study, said the new study is "a good piece of work that's very complete", and that "the progression they present is solid". That said, she felt the EEG results were "silly".

"They claim that it demonstrates that the participant felt the sensations in the left hand, but EEG does not provide the spatial accuracy to claim that," Flesher told Gizmodo.

"The result agreed that the sensations were on the left side of the body and probably somewhere on the arm, I did not buy that it was in the hand from the EEG report. I would have liked to see more detail about how they mapped the sensations, but it appears that they did a good job finding stimulation sites that evoked sensations in the phantom hand."

As for building prosthetics that allow users to feel pain, Flesher agrees that triggering full-on pain should not be the goal.

"Whether or not pain should be relayed is interesting, and they kind of get at it here. If the prosthesis can identify 'painful' situations and minimise them, does discomfort really need to be relayed to the user? I think if they keep the pain sensations in an informative range, where it doesn't cause so much pain so as to be a distraction, it's useful," she said.

"However, they also evoked sensations with different modalities, such as pressure and tingle, so one reasonable pain-free alternative would be to have the tingle sensation indicate a painful touch. That being said, if they can evoke pain, pressure and tingle, using all three could convey more information."

This is very promising work, but there are many other aspects of touch. Looking ahead, the JHU researchers would like to explore other perceptions that could be provided through sensory feedback, including temperature and proprioception (such as knowing the relative location of our body parts, like an arm above the head).

"By adding in different sensations, we can continue to improve upper limb prostheses to make them even more functional and lifelike," said Osborn.

[MIKA27]

LAND ROVER DEFENDER 110 ‘BLACK HAWK’

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Arkonik, but it’s abundantly clear that these customizers out of the U.K. haven’t lost their touch. In fact, one of their newest builds, a Land Rover Defender 110 they’re calling ‘Black Hawk’ is one of the most intimidatingly impressive SUV builds we’ve seen from them.

Powered by a beefy 3.5-liter V8 engine, this all-black beast features a premium off-road package that makes it just as formidable on pavement as it is in mud. The build includes bead lock Mach 5 wheels paired with massive 33″ BF Goodrich Mud Terrain tires, a full-length roof rack for all your hauling needs, a WARN Zeon 12-S winch and bumper, Wideboy wheel arches, and more. And that’s just outside. Inside, you’ll find Recaro front seats wrapped in Ruskin Inside black leather with Alcantara trim, a premium Pioneer sound system with a touchscreen control display, and so much more. Badass from head to toe, this is a Defender we certainly wish was our own.

 

[MIKA27]

POLYMEGA MODULAR HD RETRO GAME CONSOLE

With retro gaming on the rise, it seems like new throwback consoles are popping up every day. And that makes it really hard for new releases to stand out against the crowd. The Polymega, however, has no such trouble, as this new retro console boasts some truly unique and impressive features.

As is claimed on the Polymega site, this is the world’s first modular HD retro gaming console. What that means is it features a crisp and clean 1080p high-definition output, regardless of the video game you’re playing. It also means, with the proper modular addition (what the brand calls “Supported Element Modules”), this console is designed to play games from NES, SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and more. In fact, it also has a CD drive that works with any disc-based games (PS1, Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, etc.) without any additional setup – just pop it in and play. You can even stream games directly to your TV from their online database and share videos and photos to social media. Furthermore, it comes with a single Bluetooth controller, but the modules also support classic wired controllers. Honestly, this might be the most comprehensive retro console we’ve ever seen.

[MIKA27]

Final Days Of Ötzi The Iceman Revealed Through New Analysis Of His Tools

Ötzi the Iceman is the gift that keeps on giving. Found embedded in a glacier in 1991, the 5300-year-old mummy has offered unprecedented insights into Copper Age Europe. A new analysis of Ötzi's equipment shows what he was up to in the hours before an archer drove an arrow straight into his back.

The Ötzi mummy has provided scientists with an astounding amount of data in the 27 years since his body was found by hikers in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy. From his exquisitely preserved remains we know that Ötzi was about 45 years old when he was killed. His body was covered in tattoos (61 to be exact), and his stomach contents contained bits of wild goat, grains and dry-cured meat.

But Ötzi was also found with his clothes and equipment intact. New research published today in PLoS One presents an updated analysis of the Iceman's toolkit, offering new insights into this remarkable individual and the Copper Age community in which he lived. What's more, the new analysis paints a clearer picture of Ötzi's final 48 hours and the events leading up to his death.

 

Illustrations of the Iceman's tools. a] dagger, B] endscraper, c] borer.

Using high-powered microscopes and CT scans, archaeologist Ursula Wierer from Soprintendenza Archeologia in Florence, Italy, took a new look at key items in Ötzi's tool kit, including his dagger, borer, flake, endscraper, antler retoucher and two arrowheads.

"Through analysing the Iceman's toolkit from different viewpoints and reconstructing the entire life cycle of each instrument, we were able to gain insights into Ötzi's cultural background, his individual history, and his last hectic days," Wierer told Gizmodo.

"What we do is to examine tools from the past and reconstruct their life cycle in detail, from their production to their utilisation until they were finally discarded. In this way we are able to determine many features of the lifestyle of prehistoric people. In Ötzi's case we were dealing with the toolkit of a specific person, about whom we already knew a great deal. This made the research all the more exciting."

Previous studies suggested all of Ötzi's chert - a sedimentary rock that produces sharp edges when flaked, or knapped - came from a single region in Northern Italy known as the Lessini Mountains. But the new analysis suggests the stones in Ötzi's six tools were imported from at least three different regions in northern Italy, all within 40 to 70km from the valley where the Iceman lived.

This means that villages were being supplied with chert from different outcrops, and that contacts were maintained over long distances. This is not a new suggestion, as a previous study showed that the metal from Ötzi's copper axe originated from Southern Tuscany some 555km from where Ötzi met his fate in the Italian Alps.

Front and back views of an arrowhead. Blue arrows show a plunge scar, and red dots show use-wear. 

What's more, Wierer's comparative analysis of Ötzi's tools with other Copper Age artefacts revealed the presence of stylistic influences, including both Northern Italian traditions and more distant alpine cultures, such as Swiss Horgan culture. This should "come as no surprise in the toolkit of a man who lived in a territory where transalpine contacts would have been of great importance," write the authors in the new study.

Wierer and her colleagues also examined the wear and tear on the Iceman's tools. The distinctive flake patterns show that Ötzi was a right-handed individual, something not known before, and that he wasn't an expert flintknapper. "The technical skill of flintworking, measurable by the regularity of work, the presence or absence of mistakes, is not excellent but on a medium level," Wierer told Gizmodo.

The tools were of various ages, and as noted, acquired from different regions. Looking at the quality of the edges, Wierer's team suspects that Ötzi re-sharpened and reshaped some of his tools shortly before he died. He wasn't working on any of his equipment when he was killed, as all of his tools were found in their respective bags - except the dagger, which was found lying in meltwater next to Ötzi's mummified body.

Interestingly, the dagger had a broken tip, but minimal signs of wear; the authors suggest Ötzi used his small dagger as an ornamental display, wearing it on his belt as a status symbol.

More of the Iceman's tools. d) arrowhead 1, e) arrow head 2, f) small flake.

As for Ötzi's other tools, most of them displayed evidence of extensive use, and many were at the end of their usefulness. His flake, though small, was a practical cutting instrument due to its sharp edges; analysis shows the Iceman used it for cutting soft wood or reeds.

Ötzi also had an antler retoucher (also known as a pressure flaker), which he used for flaking chert and for resharpening worn-out tool edges; the antler spike inside this tool was likely made from roe deer antler. This tool was made by inserting an antler spike inside the canal of a stripped branch of lime tree.

The antler retoucher, or pressure flaker. X-ray images reveal its interior structure, and the doe deer antler spike inside. 

The Iceman used his endscraper for various perforating, cutting and scraping tasks, particularly when working on tough plants. Strangely, the borer, which was traditionally used to make holes in leather or wood, exhibited no traces of such work, and it was unused. Ötzi also had two arrowheads, both of which had recently been resharpened.

Taken as a whole, however, Ötzi's toolkit wasn't very impressive - a sign that the Iceman was in a bit of trouble.

"His chert toolkit is very reduced, he had only essential tools without any ready for future replacement," said Wierer. "Furthermore, the tools show several resharpenings, uses, modifications through time, and have now arrived at their last stage of usability."

By analysing the pollen contained within the foods consumed by Ötzi, along with other prior evidence, Wierer and her colleagues were able to reconstruct his hectic itinerary in the hours before he died.

Reconstructed timeline of Ötzi's last days. 

Roughly 33 hours before his death, the Iceman was up in the mountains at a height of 2500m above sea level. From there, he made a descent along the southern slope of the alpine ridge, reaching a location where he spent some time before making another ascent up the mountains. He climbed to a height of 3000m about four to five hours before his death.

Ötzi managed to eat three meals during this 33-hour period, including a final meal about two hours before he was killed.

It has been hypothesised that Ötzi was involved in three conflicts in the hours before he died, the first of which is based on circumstantial evidence, namely the absence of a bow and set of arrows to match his arrowheads. It's possible Ötzi was attacked, and his bow and arrow damaged, stolen or discarded in haste - though no evidence exists to support this assertion aside from the conspicuous absence of this equipment.

But the other two conflicts are on firmer footing, as evidenced by injuries observed on the Iceman's body. After Ötzi made his descent to the valley below, he was attacked.

"The second conflict is shown by several injuries on the body of the mummy, the most evident of which is a deep wound on the right hand in a position which is characteristic for self-defence," Wierer told Gizmodo. "Due to the healing process which had already started, researchers know that the cut happened at least 24 hours before his death."

Wierer says the deep wound, between thumb and index finger, must have been very disabling for him. Ötzi was right-handed, as the new evidence shows.

"Therefore we can state that after this event manual work for repairing and finishing his equipment must have been very difficult if not impossible," she said.

The authors speculate that Ötzi went down to the valley below to collect much-needed equipment and raw materials (based on his depleted and worn out toolkit), but the Iceman's arrival was met with resistance. Badly injured and likely in mortal danger, he decided to flee by going up the mountains.

"The last conflict led to Ötzi's death. He was shot from behind by an archer," said Wierer. "The type of arrowhead, still stuck in the Iceman's shoulder, is typical for the arrowheads used in Northern Italy, and in the communities the Iceman belonged to."

As for a motive, that's more difficult to prove, and we'll likely never know why an archer decided to end Ötzi's life near the top of a mountain.

 

[MIKA27]

Soccer Fans Are Out-Drinking the Country of Russia

As the World Cup heats up in Russia, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans are running around the country, drowning their bitter sorrows and celebrating their raucous victories in tall glasses of cold beer. Unfortunately, the beer keeps running out. Somehow, Russia did not see this madness coming.

Reuters reports that some bars and restaurants in Moscow are out of beer, and that deliveries are taking longer than usual. And no vodka for these fans; they're pretty much just drinking beer.

“We just didn’t think they would only want beer,” said one waiter from Moscow, whose restaurant ran out of draft lager on Monday and is waiting up to 24 hours for fresh deliveries.

Dmitry, a bartender in Moscow, said fans drank more than 211 gallons of beer in three days.

“The sun makes them thirsty,” he said. “In Russian we say, ‘To the bottom!’ I like that these guys are embracing our culture.”

And in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, where Sweden played South Korea on Monday, the taps ran empty before the match even started, according to the Independent.

Apparently, beer sales have gone down in the notoriously buzzed country of Russia in the past decade due to increased taxes and tightened regulations on advertising. But hey, the World Cup might just turn the trend around, thanks to a lot of thirsty out-of-towners.

So za zdarovje—to your health—to all the soccer fans trying to reach the bottom of their steins. This goes on for three more weeks.

[MIKA27]

CONSTELLATION AUDIO LEO SMART SPEAKER

Constellation is known for its products of stellar audio quality, with simple if slightly inelegant designs. But with their latest music system, they’ve sought to create a beautiful outward shape to resonate with the product’s inward brilliance. The result is a striking speaker that they call the Leo.

The first product in their new Dominion series, the Leo represents a Renaissance for Constellation’s engineer and design division. Built to be compact, attractive, and intelligent (if only we had all been built the same) the Leo is part of Constellation’s SmartAudioProducts initiative, through which they’ve sought to integrate new technologies for the modern music lover. The Leo’s intelligence means that fine-tuning and control is available using your smartphone or tablet. A tri-amplified stereo system, the Leo promises to evoke high-quality sound from any media with which it’s paired, from CD players to phono cartridges. The Leo can also connect to WiFi, Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay for streamlined streaming. Two 6.5-inch high-sensitivity woofers, each driven by their own 140-watt amplifier, reside on opposite ends of the architecture to produce thumping bass while avoiding bothersome vibration. Two 2.5-inch midrange drivers tethered to individual 70-watt amplifiers belt the mids, while the highs are illuminated by two 0.75-inch tweeter, also connected to 70-watt amps. Touting itself the world’s finest playback interface, the Leo is an audial and visual artwork for your home. Coming soon to a living room ampitheater near you, the Leo will be available for purchase later this year.

[MIKA27]

The Story of Anchor Liberty Ale: The Beer that Started the Craft Revolution

Liberty Ale was first brewed in 1975 to commemorate the start of a revolution—the 200th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride—but, in the process, it ended up launching one.

Walk into any taproom, bottle shop or local watering hole these days and you’ll find an IPA-heavy assortment of sudsy offerings. And while the India Pale Ale’s history can be traced overseas, the American version’s history, in all its hoppy glory, begins with Anchor Liberty Ale.

Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag purchased Anchor Brewing Company in 1965, saving the 70-year-old brewery from closing its doors. “When Fritz started, there were mostly major breweries making lager,” says Mark Carpenter, brewmaster at Anchor. “The smaller breweries that were around at the time just tried to compete by making cheaper lager than the big guys.”

Knowing that model would never work, Maytag decided to focus on quality, being hands-on and, in turn, charging a bit more for his beer. It would be nine years before he saw a profit, but shortly after he did, Maytag looked to expand Anchor’s range beyond the classic Anchor Steam and the newly introduced Anchor Porter, which was the first produced by an American craft brewery after Prohibition. To do so, he looked to England.

Drawing inspiration from a stronger ale he had during his travels in West Yorkshire, Maytag returned to the U.S. and concocted Anchor’s newest beer: Liberty Ale. It was a beer that featured hops like no American beer had before, and it defied existing labels. Liberty Ale was more effervescent than the pale ales of England, brewed with whole-cone hops, and crafted with only natural ingredients. A couple of years earlier, it was Coors who started experimenting with Cascade hops, a new American hop variety. But whereas Coors used the newfangled American hop in small quantities to impart some slight notes, Anchor went all in on it. Not only did they use it during the boil to make a beer far more bitter than anything most Americans had ever come across, but they used it to dry-hop Liberty Ale and deliver an aroma U.S.-based nostrils had never experienced. For the first time, that citrusy, floral aroma that drives hopheads crazy flowed from draft lines.

It was the first American IPA (or the first American Pale Ale, as category lines are often quite blurry). Since Anchor Liberty Ale didn’t exist when the terms “American Pale Ale” and “IPA” were used prevalently in the States, it was simply called their “special ale.” Michael Jackson, the famed beer writer, called Anchor Liberty Ale the first modern American ale, and its introduction set in motion the craft beer tidal wave that would slowly build over the next few decades.

“Pale Ales started the microbrewers revolution,” says Carpenter. After Liberty Ale came New Albion Ale from New Albion Brewing Company, a short-lived brewery that only churned out 7.5 barrels a week, and then the infamous Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, often championed as one of the earliest and finest craft brews. It was the style that launched a thousand little breweries, inspired homebrewers, and changed the landscape of beer in America.

Today, IPAs account for close to a quarter of all craft beer sales, and the style is the most popular category at the Great American Beer Festival. Names like “Heady” and “Pliny” dominate trade forums and spark impromptu trips to Vermont and California. Five of the top ten beers in America sport those three little letters (even if they drop a “D” before them). “When I started, there were 100 breweries in America,” says Carpenter, who began working at Anchor in 1971. “Today there’s around 3,800. It’s impossible to comprehend.” It really is. It’s estimated that America’s beer industry has created 1.75 million jobs, and that’s not just because of the big guys. There’s BPA (Before Pale Ale) and APA (After Pale Ale).

With close to 4,000 breweries, we suggest stopping into the one around the corner, ordering up their latest IPA featuring the current hottest hop (they’ll have one), and raising a toast to Fritz Maytag and Anchor Brewing for starting this whole damn thing.