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Cleopatra, Napoleon, Queen Victoria and a Vanderbilt: How Three Ancient Egyptian Obelisks Ended Up Halfway Across the World

Looked upon by Cleopatra and Queen Victoria 19 centuries apart, lost at sea, and dragged through Manhattan: The incredible tale of the obelisks of Paris, NYC, and London.

In the heart of Paris, just steps from the Grand Palais and the Louvre, there is a monument unique among the city’s countless statues and memorials. A stone shaft 75 feet tall, the Luxor Obelisk stands at the center of Place de la Concorde, its gold pyramidal cap catching the light on sunny days. Etched on all sides are rows of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs commemorating the great works of the pharaohs. It is singularly out of place.

A similar obelisk stands on the north bank of the Thames in London, this one worn smooth in places by centuries of violence, and pockmarked by shrapnel from a World War I bomb. Its twin can be found across the Atlantic Ocean, hidden atop a knoll behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York’s Central Park. In all three places, the obelisks are far older than the cities they stand in.

New York - Obelisk in Central Park

How did these obelisks come to be so far from home, out of place and context?

Each has borne witness to centuries of war and tumult. They have been toppled by earthquakes and burned by Persian armies. They have been shipped up the Nile, and lost in the sands of the Sahara. They were looked upon by Cleopatra and Queen Victoria 19 centuries apart. One was lost at sea. One was dragged through the streets of Manhattan.

The story of their removal from Egypt is a testament to the hubris of 19th-century European imperialism, tracing the arc of industrial and political advancement. It is a story of war and empire, of technological advancement and of cultural exchange. It is a story of art and architecture transcending time and place.

And it is a story which begins with Napoleon Bonaparte.

Years before he rose to rule France as emperor, Napoleon was a young upstart general fighting his way through Europe in defense of the young Republic’s sovereignty. His plan was to smuggle an army across the Mediterranean into Egypt, which was then under Ottoman control, and push his way east into Syria. French control of this region would cripple Britain by cutting it off from its vast colonial holdings in India.

Napoleon arrived at the port of Alexandria on July 1, 1798, with some 25,000 soldiers. Though he enjoyed some early success, Napoleon retreated to France in 1799 and Egypt reverted to the British-backed Ottomans in 1801.

Napoleon in Egypt - Philippe Joseph Auguste Vallot 1838

The victorious British troops sought a souvenir by which they might commemorate their triumph. On the shores of Alexandria harbor, they found an ideal candidate: there, buried in the sand and mud lay a 68-foot-long obelisk, the twin to the more famous “Cleopatra’s Needle” which stood nearby.

Ancient Egyptians referred to obelisks as “tekhenu,” which means “to pierce the sky.” They were dedicated to the sun-god Ra and were “a symbolic representation of the sun’s rays.” The word “obelisk” originated centuries later, derived from the Greek word “obeliskos,” which means a sharpened object, usually a spit for cooking over a fire.

Both Alexandrian obelisks were originally erected some time around 1400 BCE in Heliopolis, near modern-day Cairo. They ornamented what was then one of the greatest temple complexes of Egypt’s New Kingdom, the period of dynastic stability which lasted from roughly 1570-1070 BCE. The temple and much of the rest of Heliopolis was destroyed in 525 BCE by an invading Persian army, and the obelisks were toppled to the ground.

They remained prostrate where they fell until the first century BCE, when they were hauled to Alexandria for use in the “Caesareum,” a temple dedicated to the Caesars. There they would have presided over all the violence and intrigue of six centuries of Roman rule: Egypt’s pharaonic line came to a dramatic end with Cleopatra’s suicide in 30 BCE.

Christianity gained traction in Roman Egypt, with Alexandria emerging as a center of religious activity. The Caesareum was converted into a Christian church in the third century CE. It was there, in the shadows of the obelisks, that the pagan philosopher Hypatia was beaten to death and burned by a Christian mob in 415 CE.  

Alexandria remained under Roman rule until 646 CE, when it and the rest of Egypt fell to Arab invaders. The city went into decline as nearby port cities like Rosetta grew in prominence. The obelisks remained standing together until a great earthquake in 1303 CE knocked one to the ground. It rested there, mired in the shoreline muck, for the next 500 years.

Alexandria - Both obelisks circa 1810

The remaining obelisk became a landmark for the city, known colloquially as “Cleopatra’s Needle.” The fact that the it was likely not erected at the Caesareum until several years after her death mattered little. Through the lens of romanticized history, Queen Cleopatra and the lonely harbor obelisk each symbolized Alexandria’s ancient Egyptian heritage. Calling the obelisk “Cleopatra’s Needle” helped tie the city to its long-lost glory days.

Plans were drawn up by the British to haul the fallen obelisk home to London as a spoil of their victory. A sunken French frigate was raised from the bay to act as a pier by which the stone might be pushed into a British ship for transport, but a storm arose and washed the frigate away. The British fleet left shortly thereafter, abandoning the obelisk where it lay.

London - Encasing for Shipment - The Story of Cleopatra's Needle Susie Esplen 1899

Over the next two decades, Britain then attempted to secure the obelisk as a gift of friendship from the Egyptian government. A letter written in 1820 by Samuel Briggs, British Consul at Alexandria, stated that it was to be “unique of its kind in England, and might, therefore, be considered a valuable addition to the embellishments designed for the British metropolis.”

The obelisk was gifted to Britain, but no funds were allocated for its removal. The landowner where it sat threatened to cut it up for use in construction. Still, despite various attempts and creative machinations over the ensuing decades, the British-owned obelisk continued to wait in the mud in Alexandria.

Not to be outdone, the French negotiated the acquisition of the other obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, in 1820. They too then all but abandoned their gift for lack of funds and a workable plan for how to remove it from Egypt. It continued to bestride Alexandria harbor, as it had for centuries.  

In 1829, the renowned scholar Jean-Francois Champollion (who is credited with deciphering hieroglyphics for the first time) wrote to French authorities of a superior pair of obelisks at a temple in Luxor. He strongly suggested that they be secured for France, even if it meant relinquishing their claim to Cleopatra’s Needle in Alexandria. He felt that, despite being less famous, they were far more valuable artistic and archaeological specimens.

On Nov. 29, 1830, the Khedive (viceroy) of Egypt Muhammad Ali Pacha ceded ownership of all three obelisks as a display of “his gratitude to France for the numerous marks of kindness and friendship that have been manifested to him at different times.” An immense wooden transport barge named the Louqsor was assembled at Toulon, on France’s Mediterranean coast, and dropped anchor in Alexandria harbor on May 3. Its crew transferred to a flotilla of smaller river boats and entered the Nile at Rosetta, bound for Luxor.

They arrived a month later, bearing witness to what Champollion had described as “the city of a hundred gates, containing palaces, sphinxes, and colossal monuments, all bearing witness to a past grandeur and subsequent decadence.”

Luxor in the 1830s was a century away from being an international tourist destination. The sailors found a sleepy farming village filled with half-buried temples and monuments. Some 30 homes would need to be demolished in order for the French workers to lower the obelisk and drag it to the river. After a cacophonous negotiation orchestrated by a government translator named Ibrahim, a settlement was reached whereby each property owner was compensated. Ibrahim, it was later discovered, received a substantial kickback for his role in the mediation.

Around 400 local men, women, and children were employed in the demolition of the houses and subsequent dredging of a canal which would allow the Louqsor to pull perpendicular to shore for easier loading of its ancient cargo. Awestruck locals, most of whom had never seen such a great ship before, compared it to a “floating mosque” as it was maneuvered into position.

The French elected to take the western obelisk, closest to the river, for the obvious reason that it would be easier to haul away than its twin. The 75-foot-tall, 200-ton stone was encased in wood in preparation for lowering, but an outbreak of cholera killed off many local laborers, along with several Frenchmen. Delayed but undeterred, the crew finished work on a complex set of pulleys which would disperse the weight and stress of the lowering monolith, allowing it to fall gently onto a trackbed which had been constructed to carry it down to the Louqsor.

On the morning of Oct. 24, 1831, nearly five months after the crew had disembarked at Luxor, everything was finally in place. The command was given, and the obelisk was lowered in stages. Slowly and with great difficulty, the immense stone was brought to horizontal and dragged toward the waiting ship. It was finally aboard on Dec. 19: “The joy and pride felt by all […] at the completion of that important operation may be imagined more easily than described; four months and a half of excessive toil, trial, and suffering were rewarded by complete success.”

The crew then waited eight weary months in Luxor for the Nile to rise high enough to float the heavily laden ship so they could sail north. It departed on Aug. 25 and reached Rosetta, on Oct. 1, where they became trapped for another three months by low water. Finally out of the Nile, the ship proceeded to Alexandria, where it was trapped by bad weather until April. At last, the Louqsor reached the port of Toulon on the night of May 10, 1833. There, they were quarantined for another month.

The ship reached Paris that December, but had to wait until the following August for the flow of the Seine to become low and gentle enough for the obelisk to be unloaded. After all that time and effort, when it finally reached its new home at the Place de la Concorde, no pedestal had been prepared for it.

Paris - Place de la Concorde 1919

A 236-ton block was hauled from Brittany to be carved. At last, on Oct. 25, 1836, the Luxor Obelisk was hoisted into place using a reverse implementation of the same methods employed to lower it from its former home in Egypt. US Navy Admiral Seaton Schroeder pointed out that the obelisk had been “brought from the silent ruins of the greatest city of the ancient world, to the brightest and gayest of modern capitals.” It stood precisely where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been executed just 43 years prior.

Paris - Obelisks standing at Luxor 1809

Despite officially owning both obelisks at Luxor, France never sought to retrieve the twin to the one erected in Paris. Nor did they ever attempt to fetch Cleopatra’s Needle in Alexandria. It seems they were quite satisfied with the experience of having transported one ancient 200-ton monolith across the sea. No need for any more.

Across the channel in England, debate continued over Britain’s obelisk, which was now being incorrectly referred to as “Cleopatra’s Needle.” One proposal after another was presented to Parliament but collapsed over financing. Meanwhile in Egypt, souvenir hunters chipped away at it, finding its vulnerable state on the ground too tempting to resist. One hammer-wielding British traveler caught breaking off a piece of its hieroglyphics in 1859 stated that he knew it belonged to Britain, “and as one of the British nation I mean to have my share.”

While in Paris in 1867, a British Lieutenant-General by the name of Sir James E. Alexander was struck by the sight of that city’s magnificent Egyptian monument in Place de la Concorde. Seeing it, he was reminded of Britain’s neglected obelisk in Alexandria and set out on a concerted effort to rectify the situation.

For the next eight years, he worked on the finances and logistics of the project. Dozens of ideas were handed down as to how the obelisk might be safely transported to London. Much technological progress had been made in the decades since France had acquired their obelisk by way of a wooden barge. Shipbuilding was revolutionized in the 1840s by the introduction of wrought iron hulls, and Britain was keen to show off its industrial might wherever possible. Thus it was decided that the obelisk could be encased in a giant iron tube, which would then be dragged to England by a larger ship.

London - Plan for the obelisk barge - Egyptian Obelisks by Gorringe 1885

When workers finally arrived on-site in Alexandria in the first half of 1877, to begin excavating the partially buried obelisk, they were significantly delayed by the owner of the land, who demanded restitution from the government for allowing it to encumber his property for so many years. He was finally placated by a satisfactory settlement, and work could begin in earnest.

Earth was removed from around and beneath the obelisk, with wooden blocks inserted to support it as excavation progressed. Dozens of artifacts were discovered, including a burial vault containing multiple skeletons, the skulls of which were kept as talismans by the sailors.

On the whole, the British had a much simpler task at hand than the French had half a century prior, simply by virtue of having their obelisk already lying horizontal, ready for shipment. There was no need for a complex system of ropes, winches, and pulleys like those used at Luxor. They merely had to excavate, pack, and sail.

Once the obelisk was freed from the ground, the iron tube was built around it, piece riveted to iron piece, until it was fully enclosed. Fully built, it was 92 feet long with a diameter of 16 feet. The obelisk was suspended within it by a series of iron ribs. It was outfitted with a rudder and sails to help stabilize it during the journey across the sea, and with a small cabin to house the crew.

On the foggy morning of Aug. 28, 1877, two steam-powered tugboats were chained to the tube, which had been christened the Cleopatra, and attempted to pull it out to sea. It inexplicably began to take on water, and divers discovered that a stone hidden in the sand had pierced its hull. The tube had to be rolled upside-down for repairs before its journey could finally get underway.

Led by Captain Henry Carter, the Cleopatra was towed out of Alexandria harbor on Sept. 21 by the steamship Olga, making stops at Algiers and Gibraltar on its way toward its new home. It rounded the southwestern coast of Portugal on Oct. 10, but encountered a terrible storm four days later off the northwest coast of Spain. The vessels were thrashed violently and six sailors were swept to their deaths before Captain Carter called for the Cleopatra and its precious cargo to be cut loose from the Olga. It was considered lost to the angry sea.

The New York Times was amused to speculate on “the wonder and bewilderment of future archaeologists who should find the monolith” thousands of years later. What would they think, the newspaper continued, when they not only found the obelisk so incongruously “in the midst of a submarine deposit,” but also “encased in a metal tube to protect it, apparently, from the elements.”

But the obelisk did not sink, and was soon recovered by a Scottish steamer named the Fitzmaurice, which found the Cleopatra adrift and towed it into port at Ferrol, Spain. (The skulls that had been taken on at Luxor were nowhere to be found, presumably tossed overboard during the storm by superstitious Maltese sailors.) There it sat for three months as the captain of the Fitzmaurice fought for a salvage bounty. It was finally retrieved by the tugboat Anglia and reached London on Jan. 20, 1878.

London - Obelisk in place on the Thames - Egyptian Obelisks by Gorringe 1885

A number of locations were proposed as the obelisk’s final resting place. The preferred spot was in the center of what is now known as Parliament Square Garden, just north of Westminster Abbey. City officials even went to the trouble of erecting a wooden mockup of the obelisk on the site to see how it would look.

The problem with this location, however, was that it would have situated the 200-ton stone (plus its pedestal) directly above the tunnels of the Metropolitan Underground Railway. The company’s owners demanded permanent indemnity against the possibility of it falling through the earth onto their tracks. City officials opted to relocate the obelisk instead.

In the end, a site was chosen along the banks of the Thames just east of the Charing Cross rail bridge. There, the Cleopatra was nestled into a timber cradle and, at low tide, dismantled to expose the obelisk within. Using hydraulic jacks, it was lifted up onto the embankment. An iron sleeve was slipped around the obelisk, equipped with arms which would allow it to be brought upright into position.

Its pedestal, unlike that of Paris, was ready and waiting. Sealed within it were an assortment of mementos: a complete set of British coinage (including an Indian Rupee), a vellum-printed description of the obelisk’s acquisition and journey out of Egypt, a map of London, a railway guide, a Hebrew Torah, Bibles in multiple languages, some children’s toys, a box of cigars, and “photographs of a dozen pretty Englishwomen” from none other than Captain Carter of the Cleopatra.

On Sept. 12, 1878, the obelisk was at last hoisted vertical above its waiting plinth before an approving crowd. The Union Jack and an Ottoman Turkish flag were raised in celebration. The next day, their so-called “Cleopatra’s Needle” was lowered into position and its supports removed. In 1881, bronze wings were added to its base to camouflage its damaged edges, and a pair of bronze sphinxes were added to either side of it to complete the decorative array.

As early as September 1877, while London’s obelisk was being towed out of Alexandria harbor, work was afoot to secure a similar trophy for the United States. Eager to cement its status as a global power, as equal an heir to the ancient empires of the East as any of her European brethren, the United States viewed the acquisition of an obelisk as vital to the development of its global reputation.

From the New York Herald: “It would be absurd for the people of any great city to hope to be happy without an Egyptian Obelisk. Rome has had them this great while and so has Constantinople. Paris has one. London has one. If New York was without one, all those great sites might point the finger of scorn at us and intimate that we could never rise to any real moral grandeur until we had our obelisk.”

A flurry of letters were exchanged over the course of several months in early 1879 before word was handed down that the Egyptian Khedive Ismail Pasha had agreed to give the famous Cleopatra’s Needle of Alexandria as a gift of friendship to the United States.

Khedives Ismail and Tewfik - Egyptian Obelisks by Gorringe 1885

The American Consul-General in Egypt, Elbert Farman, wrote to Washington at the conclusion of the negotiations: “The gift of this ancient and well-known monument cannot be regarded as other than a very great mark of favor on the part of the government of Egypt toward that of the United States, and proof of its high appreciation of the friendship that has ever existed between these countries.”

It was more than international camaraderie which convinced Ismail Pasha to grant Cleopatra’s Needle to the Americans, however. By the time he made this agreement in early 1879, Britain and France were pressuring the Ottoman government to overthrow him as Khedive, fearing that he was too independence-minded. (Ismail hoped his gift would keep the United States neutral in this tug-of-war over his leadership. He was deposed that June and replaced by his more compliant son, Tewfik.)

Unlike the obelisks taken by France and Britain, the one claimed by the United States was a beloved and internationally recognized landmark of Alexandria, where it had stood for more than 18 centuries as a symbol of the city. Residents were aware that it had been “given” to the Americans, but never expected them to show up to retrieve it so soon, as they did on Oct. 16, 1879.

Alexandrians were whipped into a frenzy of shock and indignation at the idea of their obelisk being taken away so quickly. Vitriolic articles appeared in local newspapers and physical violence was threatened against workmen at the site. The resistance extended to European politicians and resident archaeologists, who insisted that it was illegal to remove historic objects from Egypt, despite the Khedive’s declaration and their own predations.

In response to these hurdles, the American excavation teams doubled their efforts, working night and day to erect the scaffolding and pits necessary to lower the obelisk from its plinth and carry it to the harbor. The British hadn’t had to lower their obelisk, so the Americans had only the French at Luxor half a century prior for instruction as to how to safely bring theirs down from its pedestal.

Like the French, the Americans erected an enormous lever and pulley system, and with some difficulty, Cleopatra’s Needle was brought to horizontal on Dec. 6. The watching crowd, which had been hostile and unruly at first, grew deathly silent as the stone began to move, and cheered when the feat was accomplished. It took three more months for the obelisk to be lowered onto a wooden track which would allow it to be pushed to the water for transport.

Taking a lesson from the British, who had almost lost their obelisk at sea, the Americans procured a decommissioned Egyptian mail freighter which was large enough to take Cleopatra’s Needle directly into its hold for the long journey across the Atlantic. The ship in question, the Dessoug, had a hole cut in its bow and the obelisk was slid into it using a floating dock. Its 50-ton pedestal followed suit, resting atop a steel mount in the ship’s stern.

In June of 1880, the American crew traveled to Cairo to bid farewell to the Khedive, thanking him for resisting European and Alexandrian calls to revoke the gift. At last, on June 12, the Dessoug raised anchor and sailed out of Alexandria harbor, bound for New York.

New York - Loading the obelisk on the Dessoug - Egyptian Obelisks by Gorringe 1885

The ship passed uneventfully through Gibraltar and the Azores, but its engines broke down abruptly in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on July 6. It limped along on the power of its sails for a week while its crew made repairs. During this time, they intercepted and purchased bread from a passing Austrian ship en route to Constantinople. The Dessoug was at last repaired and reached New York on July 20, anchoring in the Hudson River off 23rd Street.

On arrival, the crew of the Dessoug found that the city was still debating where exactly Cleopatra’s Needle should stand. City officials argued on behalf of placing it in the plazas on either 5th or 8th Avenues and 59th Street, at the corners of Central Park. These sites would be highly visible and easily accessible to all New Yorkers, but there was concern that the eventual buildup of high-rises around it would detract from the obelisk.

William H Vanderbilt, whose money had funded the majority of the obelisk’s journey out of Egypt, pressed for it to be placed on a knoll near the newly constructed Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park. In the end, his opinion won out and the obscure hilltop was readied for its new occupant.

The Dessoug sailed south to Staten Island, where its hull was reopened and Cleopatra’s Needle at long last emerged into the New York sun. It was then transferred to a set of pontoons and floated across the harbor to the dock at Manhattan’s West 96th Street. There, the first major hurdle was to get the obelisk across the heavily used riverfront tracks of the New York Central Railroad.

To block rail traffic with the obelisk for any length of time was out of the question, so a temporary bridge was constructed and thrown across the tracks between passing trains. As quickly as they could, workers dragged the 77-foot-long, 240-ton obelisk across the tracks and removed the bridge, allowing train traffic to resume. The whole endeavor took just 80 minutes.

New York - Obelisk being carried across Central Park - Egyptian Obelisks by Gorringe 1885

Using a system of wooden trestles, the obelisk was dragged through the city, first along 96th Street to Broadway, then south to 86th Street. There, it was once again turned and made its way into Central Park. Drastic elevation changes made crossing the park grueling work.

On Jan. 5, 1881, after multiple delays due to snow and cold weather, Cleopatra’s Needle arrived at its hilltop destination. The journey from the river had taken 112 days at an average pace of 97 feet per day.

As in London, a time capsule was buried in the foundation of Cleopatra’s Needle in New York, containing coins, medals, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The obelisk’s original granite pedestal was dropped into position via horse-drawn wagon, and the stage was set for the monument to finally be turned upright once more.

A crowd of some ten thousand flocked into Central Park on Jan. 22, 1881, to watch Cleopatra’s Needle being brought to vertical. A silence which was, according to one contemporary witness, “almost unnatural” gripped the audience until the obelisk reached the 45-degree mark, at which point it was halted for a photo. When it resumed its upward motion, a roar of excitement rippled through the gathering

“It is something,” exclaimed Henry H. Gorringe, “to have witnessed the manipulation of a mass weighing nearly 220 tons changing its position majestically, yet as easily and steadily as if it were without weight.” After 15 months of journeying across more than 5,000 miles, the obelisk was turned upright in just five minutes.

New York’s was the last obelisk to be taken out of Egypt. Its status as a major tourist attraction faded over time, and today it is obscured from view by the southern wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. London’s obelisk was nearly destroyed in 1917 when a German bomb detonated nearby in an air raid during World War I. The Luxor Obelisk in Paris, meanwhile, finds itself standing at the center of a traffic circle better remembered as the site of royal beheadings than as the home of an Egyptian masterpiece.

New York - Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park circa 1895

In the end, all three obelisks are too far from home and too out of context to be truly appreciated. The average tourist or commuter will likely never know the magnitude of their age or what they endured to end up in their present locations. By removing the obelisks from Egypt, these cities have stripped them of their meaning, turning them into just one of many baubles meant to decorate the imperial capitals of the modern age.

Across the sea in Luxor, on the wide bend of the Nile which defines southern Egypt, stand the ruins of Luxor Temple, now a popular first stop for tourists on their way to the Valley of the Kings or Karnak. Flanking its entrance, are two colossal statues depicting a seated Rameses II wearing the dual crown of a united Upper and Lower Egypt. Towering over the left statue is a tapered granite obelisk set atop a plinth depicting rows of baboons. Before the right statue lie the remains of a similar plinth, but without its obelisk.

The mismatch gives the temple an uneven appearance, its symmetry undermined by the absence of so integral a piece of its outer ornamentation. The knowledge that this missing obelisk now stands a world away in the center of Paris seems beyond comprehension. It seems almost grotesque.

Former US Secretary of State William Evarts summed up the pillaging best when he declared in 1881, “These obelisks, great and triumphant structures, […] mark a culmination of the power and glory of Egypt, and every conqueror has seemed to think that the final trophy of Egypt’s subjection and the proud pre-eminence of his own nation could be shown only by taking an obelisk—the chief mark of Egyptian pomp and pride—to grace the capital of the conquering nation.”

 

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Is a Rye Whiskey Shortage on the Horizon?

We look at whether the new generation of rye whiskey drinkers is going to drink warehouses dry.

I get paid to think about whiskey and beer, and as a result, I think about both of them at the same time more than most people. Usually this just leads to me having a Boilermaker, but sometimes it yields an intriguing idea about the two categories and how they’re related.

Here’s my latest idea. Craft beer didn’t really take off until around 2005. Why? The first generation of drinkers who had never lived in a world without craft beers came of age and were very thirsty. Instead of reaching for a Bud, like their parents, they went for one of these tasty and innovative upstarts.

At a rough guess, rye whiskey is going to hit that same point in about five years. When it does, these “rye babies,” who’ve grown up with Rittenhouse and Old Overholt and Bulleit and the myriad craft ryes, may want a hell of a lot of whiskey. And be warned, there are a lot of them: Generation Z will hit 65 million in 2019, according to Bloomberg figures, which will be about 32 percent of the U.S. population. Are we ready for that many rye drinkers?

To be sure, rye’s growth has already been nothing short of amazing. Annual sales for the category were around 16,000 cases in the mid-1990s; an entire class of whiskey, about to disappear. Last year saw almost a million cases of rye sold, on a volume growth rate of 15.9 percent over the previous year.

What happens if this generational boom actually takes place? Does the industry have the stocks of aged rye whiskey to sustain that kind of demand? And what kind of rye whiskey will it be?

“I think that there is plenty of room for supply, and demand, to grow,” says Paul Hletko, the founder of FEW Spirits in Evanston, Illinois, and the former president of the American Craft Spirits Association. “If you look at historical sales volumes from forty to fifty years ago, [sales of rye whiskey] were way higher, with a smaller population base.”

Scott Harris, co-founder of Catoctin Creek Distilling in Purcellville, Virginia, agrees. “If you look at historical periods like the 1950s to the 1960s, or even the 1890s to the 1900s, rye was a much more prominent drink. We believe it can be once again. I do believe a new generation are that key demographic. We see people in the ages of 28 to 38 being most willing to try new products like ours.”

Harris and another small distiller, Phil Brandon, founder of Rock Town Distillery in Little Rock, Arkansas, believe that rye has a lot of room to grow outside the big markets that get all the press attention. “Rye may be mainstream in New York, D.C., and San Francisco,” Brandon said, “but there are still emerging markets where rye is a tougher sell; markets like Oklahoma City, or Minneapolis, and even in Europe, where everyone expects American whiskey to be bourbon.”

Almost everyone I talked to was hesitant to compare rye whiskey so directly to the rise of craft beer. “We used to have this debate about craft distillers vs. craft beer,” said Susan Wahl, the Group Product Director for Heaven Hill, the distillery that arguably has the most experience with rye whiskey in the modern era. “Most of the cycles we’ve seen on the beer side haven’t translated. Yes, there are more people coming into the category. Yes, there is more room for expansion. But the lead time to get to something in the bottle is so much longer, you don’t get the immediate turn you do with beer.”

She’s talking about whiskey forecasting, which is at the heart of this discussion. A vodka maker can make more vodka in under two weeks, if the market demands it. Whiskey is quite a bit different because of that time it takes to age in the barrel. “You have to forecast out five, eight, ten years,” Wahl told me. “We try to predict, and there are days we get it right, and days we get it wrong. Forecasting is a beast. It’s like whack-a-mole. You think you have everything covered, and then a brand wins a big award, and it has more growth than you predicted. Then you have to adjust everywhere within the inventory, because each barrel is going to different taste profiles.” (That exact scenario is playing out right now, because Heaven Hill’s Henry McKenna Single Barrel Bourbon was recently named best whiskey in the world at a spirits competition.)

The “taste profiles” that she refers to are the different bottlings that the distillers build from a mix of barrels aging in their warehouses. Heaven Hill has Rittenhouse and Pikesville, two quite different ryes. Beam Suntory has several these days: Old Overholt, Jim Beam Rye, Knob Creek Rye, and (rī)1. The master distiller (or blender) will pick batches of barrels to blend together to make each different-tasting whiskey.

Are there enough of those barrels? Scott Harris is confident. “I do not believe there will be any supply crunch,” he told me. “What do we have now, over 1,600 distilleries nationally? There’s a lot of big capacity coming online, and rye is certainly one of the prominent things being made, especially in the mid-Atlantic, which is traditional rye country with brands like Catoctin Creek, Sagamore, Dad’s Hat, Wigle, and many more.”

Wahl isn’t as sure. “Rittenhouse is a large brand, but it’s still on allocation,” she pointed out. “This category is still pretty young. People have laid down whiskey in an effort to fuel this category. But it’s a small category, and you only lay down so much. There’s still not enough being laid down to cover the growth. We don’t see that changing anytime soon.” She has a point; sustained double-digit growth tends to eat up reserves, but you’re crazy to count on it.

Whether there is supply or not also depends on selection. What are these new rye drinkers even going to consider a “rye whiskey”?

In a way, they’re lucky. Rye choices used to be pretty limited. It started to change when Sazerac released its 18-year-old rye in 2000, and then a lot more when various bottlers started buying the excellent rye whiskey made by what’s now called MGP in Indiana. That’s the rye that you can find in Templeton, Redemption, Bulleit, and High West (and a bunch of others), and it was great, different, and found fans quickly. The bigger brands mentioned above—plus Wild Turkey’s legacy rye, and a new rye from Jack Daniel’s—are all over store shelves.

But there are also a host of small distilleries who are making rye the way they want to. Wigle is making organic rye in Pittsburgh, Dad’s Hat Rye in Bristol, Pennsylvania, hews more to the rye-heavy “Monongahela Red” style of yesteryear, Leopold Brothers is making a more delicate Maryland style in Denver. Out in San Francisco, Hotaling & Co., which used to be called Anchor, has been making its 100-percent malted rye Old Potrero since the early 1990s.

So, what taste identifies “rye” for these new drinkers?

“The definition of rye is being set by the legacy distillers,” said Hletko. “They make great whiskey, and that makes our job tough, but also fun and interesting. It’s the little guys that make the category vibrant and exciting.”

Hletko also doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on what “rye whiskey” is. “It is really a minority of drinkers that ‘know’ what any beverage is,” he said. “People know what they like, and they will try stuff that other people like. Some will then pursue what they like, and learn more about it, and then ‘know’ what rye whiskey is.”

Ryan Maloney has had his finger on rye’s pulse for a number of years, running Julio’s Liquors, an acclaimed retailer in Westborough, Massachusetts. In his opinion, rye is hot enough to inspire top-billing on a label. “Everyone wants to have that word in their name. It’s like ‘-tini,’ or ‘IPA.’”

He’s not worried about supply if the generational wave hits. Small distillers are building inventory that’s getting older. Big distillers have been ramping up. And Maloney knows there’s a possible game-changer in the wings.

“Canada,” he said, firmly. “And they have established brands. Yeah, if rye gets bigger, there’s a chance for Canada to walk in big.”

There is a lot of rye whiskey—sorry, whisky—stored in Canadian warehouses. We’ll just have to wait and see if it’s going to be of interest to the coming rye whiskey generation.

[MIKA27]

NASA X MIT MORPHING WING

While there have been a lot of huge changes across the aerospace industry since the Orvilles’ first flight in 1903, the basic idea behind fixed-wing aircraft has remained largely the same. But now NASA and MIT, both engineering giants in their own right, have teamed up to create a radical and revolutionary new Morphing Wing that could change air travel as we know it forever.

Assembled from hundreds of tiny, identical pieces, the Morphing Wing isn’t fixed. In fact, it is actually designed to change shape mid-flight to control the trajectory of aircraft in a much more efficient manner than existing flapped fixed wings. And while this new technology could make ailerons virtually obsolete, its interwoven lattice structure also has the potential to make aircraft based on the Morphing Wing a good deal lighter, more efficient, and easier to repair. Having been tested in NASA’s wind tunnel, the concept seems very promising, but it remains to be seen if the two organizations will pursue a working prototype.

 

[MIKA27]

MASTER & DYNAMIC MW07 WIRELESS EARPHONES

Truly wireless with a handcrafted tortoise brown acetate body, the MW07 earphones from Master & Dynamic strike an ideal blend of convenience, performance, and style. Inside each 'bud is a custom 10mm Beryllium driver that delivers impossibly good sound from a small package. Silicone "wings" in two different sizes ensure a secure fit, and MEMS mics let you handle calls easily. They last for 3.5 hours, charge inside the included stainless steel carrying case for a total of 14 hours of battery life, and have an IPX 4 splashproof rating, making them capable, although unlikely, gym companions.

Available in Matte Black or Tortoise Shell. $299

[MIKA27]

A New Clown Prince Rises In The First Teaser For Joker

Get ready to say hello to an all-new incarnation of Batman’s most infamous foe.

Warner Bros. just dropped our first look at Todd Philips’ Joker, an origin story re-imagining how a normal man, named Arthur Fleck, descends into darkness to be reborn as the titular villain—this time played by Joaquin Phoenix, and not Jared Leto, who’s Joker has an at-best mildly confusing future in the DC Universe with the arrival of this movie.

This is, really, outside of a few pictures, our first tangible look at just what Joker is going for...and even then, we still don’t know much, like how the film’s take on the Wayne family will factor into Arthur’s downfall.

We’ll no doubt get a lot more on Joker soon—after all, it’s hitting theatres on October 3.

MIKA: I am so excited for this movie.

Jauquin Phoenix is one of the greats in acting, I'm excited to watch this.

I've also looked at the trailer and there are indeed easter eggs within if you're a Batman fan. The scene in the apartment where the TV is turned on, clearly shows Thomas Wayne on TV followed by Joker walking past Wayne manor and reaching through the fence to whom I'm guessing is clearly a very young Bruce Wayne. Seriously can't wait.

[MIKA27]

NASA: Debris Field Created By India's Anti-Satellite Test Threatens The ISS

India’s first successful test of an anti-satellite weapon has produced an orbiting debris field consisting of at least 400 pieces, according to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. This debris now threatens the ISS, he said, calling India’s actions “not compatible with the future of human spaceflight.”

Bridenstine made the comments yesterday while speaking to NASA employees at a town hall meeting, reports Space. NASA has identified approximately 400 pieces from the destroyed satellite, of which 60 are larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches) wide — large enough to be tracked by the U.S. military’s ground radars, SpaceNews reports.

Troublingly, some of these pieces have reportedly entered into orbits equal to or higher than the International Space Station, potentially putting the base at risk.

The debris field was created on March 27 when India destroyed its own Microsat-R with a ground-launched anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon. India is now the fourth country to have tested ASATs, the others being the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China. The conspicuous test, called Mission Shakti, was a demonstration of India’s newfound capacity in space, and a warning to rival nations to stay clear of India’s satellite fleet.

A family in India watches prime minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation during a televised address on March 27, 2019.

The doomed satellite was at an altitude of approximately 300 kilometers (185 miles) when it was destroyed, a height low enough such that the debris should “decay and fall back onto the Earth within weeks,” claimed India’s foreign ministry after the test. Precedent, however, suggests it could take much longer than that; in 2008, the U.S. destroyed a defunct satellite at an altitude of 250 kilometers, and it took about 18 months for all the material to fall back to Earth, according to SpaceflightNow.

Troublingly, NASA says around two dozen pieces of the destroyed Indian satellite were flung to orbits higher than the ISS, which currently orbits the Earth at an altitude of 410 kilometers.

“That is a terrible, terrible thing, to create an event that sends debris into an apogee that goes above the International Space Station,” said Bridenstine at the town hall. “And that kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spaceflight. It’s unacceptable, and NASA needs to be very clear about what its impact to us is.”

The fear is that a shard of the shattered satellite could strike and damage the ISS. Even the slowest object in Low Earth Orbit moves at speeds approaching 7.8 kilometers per second, or 28,164km per hour, so an impact with the space station could be catastrophic.

Bridenstine continued: “We are charged with commercialising low Earth orbit; we are charged with enabling more activities in space than we’ve ever seen before for the purpose of benefiting the human condition, whether it’s pharmaceuticals or printing human organs in 3D to save lives here on Earth, or manufacturing capabilities in space that you’re not able to do in a gravity well.”

Such activities are placed at risk by these kinds of events, he said, and “when one country does it, then other countries feel like they have to do it as well,” he said. The NASA chief is worried about a copycat effect, in which other countries will now feel compelled to demonstrate their own anti-satellite capacity.

(Of course, NASA tested its own anti-satellite weapon in 2008.)

NASA, along with the military’s Combined Space Operations Center, estimated that the risk to the ISS increased by 44 per cent over a 10-day period. That said, Bridenstine assured the town hall audience that the six people currently on board the ISS aren’t in any immediate danger. The ISS is “still safe,” he said, adding the ISS could be manoeuvred if necessary, a contingency he described as having “low” probability.

Laura Grego from the Union of Concerned Scientists said the nearly 2,000 satellites currently in orbit are put at risk by such tests.

“Destroying satellites orbiting in altitude bands that are heavily used for both military and civil satellites also can have ripple effects, producing dangerous clouds of debris that could stay in orbit for decades or centuries, disabling or destroying any satellites they collide with,” said Grego in a statement. “The United States and other countries need to find a way forward that keeps space safe for everyone to use and doesn’t create new risks of conflicts on Earth.”

 

[MIKA27]

A New Look at Andres Guinaldo’s Art for Titan Comics’ Blade Runner 2019 #1

Here’s Andres Guinaldo‘s cover to Blade Runner 2019, the new comic book series by Michael Green, Mike Johnson and Andres Guinaldo, out in July.  It features Ash, the lead Blade Runner in the series that’s to be regarded as a canon sequel to the original movie, co-written by the screenwriter of the sequel movie…

We also got another look at her on the cover to Diamond’s Previews, looking a little more serene.

And we have the solicitation for the collection coming in November.

Quote

 

Blade Runner Volume 1
Written by Mike Johnson, Michael Green
Illustrated by Andres Guinaldo

Paperback. On sale Nov 19, 2019 | 978-1-78773-161-5

Return to the original world of Blade Runner 2019.

Welcome to the rain soaked world of Los Angeles 2019 – a dystopic world of Replicants, Spinners and hardboiled future noir. There’s a new Blade Runner in town, and she’s out for blood. Replicant blood.

This officially sanctioned sequel comic to the original Blade Runner film is written Michael Green, the screenwriter of Blade Runner 2049.

 

Look for a lot more PR to come ahead of the July solicitations.

[MIKA27]

Mexican Rum: It Exists and It's Delicious

Talented Miami bartender Will Thompson is currently obsessed with Uruapan Charanda Blanco Rum from Mexico. Find out why you should be, too.

In the weeks leading up to opening Miami’s Jaguar Sun, co-founder Will Thompson had the difficult job of tasting through all sorts of spirits and liqueurs to decide what would make the bar’s final cut. He tried mezcals, tequilas, gins, vodkas and, of course, plenty of rums. But the spirit that stood out to him most, was the one he least expected: Uruapan Charanda Blanco Rum.

“You taste a lot of stuff that’s really not exceptional,” says Thompson, who opened Jaguar Sun with his business partner chef Carey Hynes (formerly of Momofuku and Per Se) last September. But “once in a while you come across something that just opens your eyes a little bit wider and that’s what I felt about that rum.”

Distilled from sugarcane or its byproducts—including melado, piloncillo and molasses—charanda (which in the Purépecha language means “red-colored soil”) is a style of rum that has been made in Mexico for centuries. It wasn’t until 2003, however, that the spirit was granted protective denominación de origen status, stating that charanda must be made in the Mexican state of Michoacán in the region of Uruapan.

The Uruapan Charanda Blanco that captured Thompson’s attention is one of just a few commercially available charandas outside of Mexico. The spirit is made from an equal blend of sugarcane juice distilled in a copper pot still and molasses distilled in a modified French-style column still. The sugarcane used for both ingredients is grown nearby in the region’s famed red, volcanic soil.

Though Thompson admittedly tries to avoid obsessing over things as he’s “already airing on the side of being a geeky bartender,” he says what’s exciting about this 92-proof rum is finding out what it can’t do.

“I was concerned I was only going to be able to put it in geeky bartender drinks, but increasingly I’ve just been using it as a white rum,” says Thompson. “It checks a lot of boxes for me.”

When Thompson first tasted the charanda, he says it reminded him of a rhum agricole thanks to its prominent heat and hogo funk. But, he adds that its underlying big fruit flavor—like “exploding, overripe pineapples”—masks the esters and any potential harshness.

So far, Uruapan Charanda Blanco is featured in two cocktails on the menu at Jaguar Sun: a spirit-forward pineapple Daiquiri (“a drink that we see reordered over and over again, which is really cool”) and the Very Strong Baby (recipe below), which combines the spirit with pear eau de vie, strawberry-infused Campari, and vermouth.

Another box this funky spirit checks for Thompson is its price—it retails at a very reasonable $26 for a liter.

“There’s a whole universe of things that are very delicious and also expensive,” he says. “I think a lot of the time your job as a bartender is to seek out that value that hasn’t been explored yet and then pass that along to people by making inexpensive, delicious drinks that lead a guest to want to come back.”

It doesn’t hurt that the bottle is eye-catching.

“The fact that it’s visually beautiful goes a really long way with guests,” says Thompson. “That’s what I learned with mezcal. It can help somebody who doesn’t want to have a conversation with you about ancestral rum styles from some of the smaller states in Mexico open their minds to, ‘I don’t care what that is, just give it to me in a drink.’”

Thompson’s newfound love of Uruapan Charanda Blanco has also encouraged him to seriously consider rums and other rum-like spirits from outside the same standard Caribbean islands —from clairins in Haiti to Brazilian cachaça.

“Sugarcane spirits in general are in the midst of a really exciting time,” he says. “Even though [charanda] is not a Caribbean rum where a lot of the [rum] conversation is coming from, it’s still tapped into this idea of making really great unadulterated spirit and being really transparent about it—I think that’s really important.”

Very Strong Baby

INGREDIENTS:

1 oz Charanda
.5 oz Pear eau de vie
1 oz Strawberry-infused Campari*
1 oz Chinato Vermouth
Glass: Old-fashioned
Garnish: Half grapefruit wheel (optional), pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS:

Add all the ingredients to an Old-fashioned glass. Then add one large ice cube. Stir and garnish with a pinch of salt and, if desired, half of a grapefruit wheel.

[MIKA27]

Beats’ new Powerbeats Pro are AirPods with a longer battery life and better fit

A couple of weeks after Apple shipped its second-generation AirPods, the company’s Beats division is finally making its own entrance into the true wireless earbuds market. The new $249.95 Powerbeats Pro ship in May and are Beats’ most significant product in years. I get the feeling that, for many people, these are going to prove even more compelling than AirPods. They offer longer battery life, they seal fully in your ears without letting in outside noise, they include the same Apple H1 chip as the latest AirPods for hands-free “Hey Siri” voice commands, and yes, to my ears, the Powerbeats Pro sounded better during my brief introduction to them.

Beats says its Powerbeats wireless earbuds are the most popular fitness headphones in the world, and the new Pro model sheds the cable that links the left and right buds together. They retain the look and identity of Powerbeats, but Beats didn’t just snip the wire; it redesigned the entire product in the move to a true wireless design. The Pros are 23 percent smaller and 17 percent lighter than the regular Powerbeats neckbuds, and Beats is offering color options beyond white: the Powerbeats Pro will come in black, white, dark green, and navy.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT THE POWERBEATS PRO?

Battery life: Beats says the Powerbeats Pro can reach nine hours of continuous listening. That’s no match for the best traditional Bluetooth headphones out there (including Beats’ own Solo 3s) but, if accurate, it’s an exceptional achievement for true wireless earbuds. Nine hours handily beats the AirPods, Galaxy Buds, Jabra Elite 65t, and the rest of the field. The charging case holds enough extra juice to get you around 24 hours of total listening time.

Apple H1 chip: Just like the second-gen AirPods, the Powerbeats Pro include Apple’s H1 chip for hands-free “Hey Siri” voice commands and quicker switching between your Apple devices.

Fit: Beats aimed for a comfortable and secure fit, and my initial impression is that it nailed it. Wrapping the ear hook around my ear was a bit awkward — such is life for those of us with glasses — but once they were in, the Powerbeats Pro didn’t budge. I didn’t get to take them for a run or do cartwheels while wearing them, so more testing is needed. But don’t judge these based on older Powerbeats earbuds. Beats says “over 20 configurations were electronically modeled and physically tested. The result is a completely new, ergonomically angled acoustic housing that nests comfortably in the concha bowl of the ear with an off-axis nozzle.” Four sets of ear tips should hopefully mean you’ll find the perfect seal or something close to it.

Physical controls: You don’t need to worry about gestures or awkward touch-sensitive tapping zones here. Both earbuds have identical physical buttons for volume and track controls. When you’re in the middle of a workout, you’ll appreciate the no-fuss controls. There’s no power button, but the earbuds contain motion sensors that automatically put them into sleep mode when idle.

Automatic pause and resume: Like AirPods and many other true wireless earbuds at this point, the Powerbeats Pro will pause your music when you remove one or both earbuds and then start playing again once they’re back in.

They can be used independently: Like the AirPods, both Powerbeats Pro earbuds connect to your device independently. Many other true wireless buds use a linked system where only of them is connected to your phone, and the other is connected to the first earbud. This limits you to using only one side for phone calls, for example. With the Powerbeats Pro, you can pop in either earbud and you’re set.

WHAT’S NOT SO GOOD ABOUT THE POWERBEATS PRO?

Large charging case: It’s very clear that Beats expects people to keep the charging case for the Powerbeats Pro in a bag of some sort; whether it’s your gym bag or daily carry doesn’t matter. But the case is significantly larger than the competition. It’s hard to surpass Apple here, and you’ve got to factor in the ear hooks on the Powerbeats Pro, which demand a larger case. Still, this one is way bigger than what you get with Beats’ competition. You could probably squeeze this thing into a pocket, but it’s not going to be comfortable.

No wireless charging: If there’s one obvious thing that separates the new AirPods from the Powerbeats Pro, it’s this. The case doesn’t support Qi wireless charging.

No LED light to show earbud charge status: Apple’s AirPods also lack this, so I’m not surprised. But some true wireless earbuds have separate LEDs to reflect how much charge the case and earbuds each have. The tiny circular LED on the front of the Powerbeats Pro case is only meant to show its own remaining battery. Checking the battery level for the earbuds themselves requires flipping the case open near your iPhone; a menu will pop up to show you charge status for the earbuds and the case. You’ll also see the percentage whenever you’re using them in the iOS battery widget.

Water-resistant, but no rating: Beats isn’t disclosing an IPX water resistance rating for the Powerbeats Pro, but the company insists they’ve been engineered to handle all of your sweat without fail. (The charging case is not water-resistant, so you’ll want to wipe down the earbuds before dropping them in there after a strenuous workout.)

HOW DO THEY SOUND?

Look, I really didn’t get enough listening time to make a definitive call here, but my initial impression is very positive. The Powerbeats Pro put a lot of oomph behind The Hold Steady and my rock-centric workout playlist. They exhibited a really nice dynamic range and wide sound stage as I shuffled through my library over the course of a couple of minutes. Yes, there’s an emphasis on bass. And no, no one’s going to confuse these with neutral studio headphones.

If you want Beats’ take on the sound, here’s that: “Completely re-engineered from the inside out, the earphones boast an upgraded linear piston driver that leverages an efficient, pressurized airflow to create a powerful acoustic response in a small package.”

ANYTHING ELSE?

Case charges with Lightning: Beats put a Lightning jack on the Powerbeats Pro case instead of USB-C. It’s not the first time the company has done this; the Beats X also use Lightning. I can see reasonable arguments on both sides here: if you’ve got an iPhone, you’ve obviously got a Lightning cable at the ready. But isn’t USB-C the future? Either way, the Powerbeats Pro can still charge plenty fast. Beats says you can get an hour and a half of playback with a 5-minute charge and four and a half hours after a 15-minute top off.

Call quality is supposed to be excellent: Lousy voice calls are a common complaint with true wireless earbuds. Check out my colleague Becca’s video review of the Galaxy Buds for just one example of that. The AirPods’ long stem helps out tremendously here. But Beats came up with its own solution: it put both speech-detecting accelerometers (to sense when your mouth is moving) and two beam-forming mics in each earbud that should be able to pull in your voice and block outside noise reasonably well. I haven’t tested it yet, so I can’t vouch, but I’m optimistic.

They work fine with Android: The Powerbeats Pro are compatible with Android, of course, and Beats says you can expect the same battery life of up to nine hours on a charge. A Lightning charging port is a little inconvenient, but there’s nothing you’re really losing out on aside from Apple-only features like “Hey Siri.”

THESE OR AIRPODS?

Beats (and by extension Apple) view the Powerbeats Pro as complementary to the AirPods — not a direct threat. They’re in a different price bracket ($250 versus $159 or $200). They isolate sound, which some people will prefer but others will not. If you frequently run outside on busy city streets and like being aware of what’s happening, that might be a deciding factor. The Powerbeats Pro don’t have any kind of ambient noise mode to pipe in outside audio.

But if AirPods don't fit you well or if you do want to block out surrounding noise, the Powerbeats Pro are looking very impressive out of the gate. That nine-hour battery life sets a new bar for true wireless earbuds. They fit snugly and securely.

WHERE DO THEY FIT IN TERMS OF PRICING?

The Powerbeats Pro are firmly in the high-end tier of true wireless earbuds. They’re not the most expensive, but they’re certainly up there.

Bang & Olufsen Beoplay E8: $299.99 (Mika's choice)
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless: $299.95
Master and Dynamic MW07: $299
Beats Powerbeats Pro: $249.95
Sony WF-1000X: $199.99
Apple AirPods with wireless charging case: $199
Bose SoundSport Free: $199
Sony WF-SP700N: $179.99
Jabra Elite 65t: $169
Apple AirPods with regular case: $159
Samsung Galaxy Buds: $129
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air: $79

[Fuzz]

1 hour ago, MIKA27 said:

A New Clown Prince Rises In The First Teaser For Joker

 

Meh. Another Batman movie. Next year, probably another Superman movie. DC have nothing else to put out? There is a huge roster of DC heroes and villains, but you do another Batman movie. How about another female DC character? Hawkgirl? Zatanna? Black Canary? Huntress? Mary Marvel?

Hell, do a Supergirl movie. The existence of other Kryptonians has already been established, plus the theme that Kryptonians colonised other worlds.

[MIKA27]

2 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Meh. Another Batman movie. Next year, probably another Superman movie. DC have nothing else to put out? There is a huge roster of DC heroes and villains, but you do another Batman movie. How about another female DC character? Hawkgirl? Zatanna? Black Canary? Huntress? Mary Marvel?

Hell, do a Supergirl movie. The existence of other Kryptonians has already been established, plus the theme that Kryptonians colonised other worlds.

Be gone naysayer! 

[MIKA27]

Rivsalt Salt Grinder 

Rivsalt is a gastronomic experience and a new way of adding salt to food. Unlike traditional salt-grinders that use already pulverized pieces of salt, the Rivsalt Salt Grinder allows you to work a whole block of pink Himalayan Salt. Perfectly shaped himalayan salt crystals are grated with the functional, yet beautiful, stainless steel grater. A natural oak wood board serves as a great stand to the Japanese grater. This set has been designed so that the natural Himalayan salt can be grated directly onto your dish and sit beautifully on your table or kitchen counter. A great addition to your kitchen and the perfect gift for a foodie. $35
 

[MIKA27]

There really is something unique about Tennessee whiskey, study finds

So-called "Lincoln County Process" is a critical step in achieving smooth flavor.

Scientists are beginning to unlock the scientific secrets of what makes so-called "Tennessee whiskey" so distinct from other whiskeys, bourbons, and similar spirits, according to a presentation last weekend at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Orlando, Florida. Specifically, they've identified many of the key aroma-active compounds responsible for the beverage's distinctive flavor profiles.

"We're aiming to create a methodology, a practical tool, to reproducibly measure the changes that happen to guide distillers," said lead investigator John Munafo of the University of Tennessee. "By mapping out all the different compounds, we can better understand what each one contributes, and in what concentrations, so distillers can tweak [those parameters] to get the flavor profile they want. That variety is what makes whiskey so interesting."

Munafo spent 12 years as director of flavor science and plant chemistry at Mars Incorporated, working primarily with chocolate (naturally). He's doing similar chemistry research at the University of Tennessee, frequently partnering with local agriculture and industry, like Sugarlands Distilling Company in Gatlinburg. Sugarlands makes an award-winning whiskey called Roaming Man, and it's keen on gaining a better understanding of the underlying science of its distillation process.

"People think Tennessee whiskey is just whiskey made in Tennessee," said Trent Kerley, a graduate student in Munafo's lab who presented the research at the ACS meeting. But Tennessee whiskey is distinct from bourbon, even though both are composed of 51 percent corn combined with rye and barley and then barrel aged. Fresh make distillate for Tennessee whiskey undergoes an extra filtration step prior to barreling called the Lincoln County Process, aka "charcoal leaching." (The moniker comes from the Tennessee county where Jack Daniels set up its first distillery.) If it doesn't go through that process, it can't legally be sold as Tennessee whiskey, although different distilleries have their own methodologies within that requirement.

Sour mash cooks in fermenting tanks at Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

Charcoal is a common substance used for filtration in distillation, and the charcoal chips used in the Lincoln County Process are made from selected sugar maple trees native to the region. Filtering the whiskey through charcoal is thought to improve its flavor by jump-starting the aging process, removing more congeners, even before the whiskey is poured into charred oak barrels for aging. "Originally, people drank unaged 'White Dog' whiskey," said Kerley. "So they would treat it with the charcoal to mellow it out, because it was significantly harsher than the whiskey we drink today."

Sugarlands provided them with the distillate and the maple charcoal they used in their experiments. First, Munafo and Kerley established a baseline flavor profile by analyzing the distillery's unfiltered whiskey with a combination of two techniques: gas chromatography-mass-spectrometry and gas chromatography-olfactometry. (The latter tool enabled them to sniff out the individual components as the compounds were separated.) Next, they used aroma extract dilution analysis to tease out which compounds were most critical to the whiskey's flavor profile, and in what concentrations.

The team then soaked several other batches of distillate in the charcoal for between one to five days and analyzed those resulting samples. "If you taste the control that hasn't been treated, and the one that has been treated, there is clearly a reduction of these harsh attributes," said Munafo. That difference in flavor corresponded to the significant changes they measured in the chemical composition of the unfiltered and filtered whiskeys. The levels of some classes of compounds decreased by as much as 30 to 50 percent.

Kerley and Munafo just presented a sampling of their study results at the ACS meeting. It's the basis for Kerley's master's thesis, and a paper discussing the full study will be submitted to the Journal of Agricultural Chemistry at the end of the year. "The ultimate goal is to characterize the whole process, including the aging process [in the barrel]," said Munafo. "We're just starting to get an idea of the impact of the different process parameters on the final product."

[Fuzz]

2 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

Be gone naysayer! 

Batman is a poorly written character that only wins because he has to, otherwise he'd be a smear on the wall the first time he comes up against a real threat. That old chestnut, "But Batman has a plan to beat any villain, and if he doesn't, he will go make a plan." just doesn't fly. Any villain he has never come across could wipe him out from a distance (some could just level Gotham with a sneeze), but nooooo,  Batman manages to beat them because he's Batman!

[Fuzz]

7 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

Rivsalt Salt Grinder 

 

USD35 for a cheese grater!

[MIKA27]

4 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Batman is a poorly written character that only wins because he has to, otherwise he'd be a smear on the wall the first time he comes up against a real threat. That old chestnut, "But Batman has a plan to beat any villain, and if he doesn't, he will go make a plan." just doesn't fly. Any villain he has never come across could wipe him out from a distance (some could just level Gotham with a sneeze), but nooooo,  Batman manages to beat them because he's Batman!

Hmm.... Can someone find me a "good moderator" to report this nonsense to? 

@Fuzz who would honestly pay to watch a movie with Hawkgirl, Zatanna, Black Canary, Huntress, Mary Marvel?

None of the above would be good enough for a stand alone movie IMO.  Out of your selections, I'd love to see Zatanna somewhere in a movie no doubt though.

[MIKA27]

PS4: ‘Borderlands 3’ Announcement Trailer Confirms Fall 2019 Release Date

 

[Fuzz]

5 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

Hmm.... Can someone find me a "good moderator" to report this nonsense to? 

@Fuzz who would honestly pay to watch a movie with Hawkgirl, Zatanna, Black Canary, Huntress, Mary Marvel?

None of the above would be good enough for a stand alone movie IMO.  Out of your selections, I'd love to see Zatanna somewhere in a movie no doubt though.

And that is the problem with DC. Nobody cares about any characters outside of the big 3.

[MIKA27]

16 hours ago, Fuzz said:

And that is the problem with DC. Nobody cares about any characters outside of the big 3.

I care about the others but.... on their own, meh.

What I think would be the best platform is a big budget mini series where these characters can play their parts and roles, not left on the scrap room floor as major cuts and edits which would lead to a lackluster movie only because studios limit movie run times.

Who wouldn't want to see Black Canary or hawk girl? But maybe in such a series where you got your BIG 3 along with the others.

If it can work for acclaimed series such as Game Of Thrones, AMC Walking Dead, and so many other successes, I think this is the ONLY WAY to tell the stories that do justice to them all, INCLUDING the top 3. I mean.... one can say BvS was crap (I still liked it), but the story they wanted to tell versus the story we got was massively convoluted, messy due to time limits. Even the theatrical release versus the extended edition.

Another example of this, and its purely IMO, people are already complaining about Marvels Avengers endgame being past the 3 hour mark. WTF?

I have no issue to sit and watch a great movie, I much prefer a long run time and great story versus a rushed job for a movie that deserved better. This is the issue I find with DC, they still haven't worked out Marvels formula, which is a real shame.

But be it Marvel, DC, whatever, I think if you have an ensemble of characters, one can not introduce them all in one movie. It should go down to a series.

[MIKA27]

The Cautionary Tale Of An Idiot, A Mercedes C43 AMG, Bald Tires And 2,000 Miles Of Blizzard

Source: Jalopnik

I should have known that things were off to a bad start when the airport check-in kiosk wouldn’t read my passport.

Sure, the woman behind the counter was cheerful when she told me I “mis-booked” my flight, and that I had to cough up $847 to get the flight I wanted in the first place.

But it didn’t help, and it later proved to be the first of several bad omens to come.

The plan was to fly from my home in Minneapolis to pick up a car in California and drive back. I wanted to take U.S. Route 50 out of Sacramento through Lake Tahoe and continue on across Nevada, and from there I’d shoot up through Salt Lake City and across the Dakotas.
I hadn’t bought something and drove it this far in some years. The last time was a 1972 911 from Virginia. Or maybe that 321,869km 996 from South Carolina. Or the Yugo GV from North Dakota. It all runs together.

Anyway, this time my requirements were specific. I wanted a manual, from Europe, with rear-wheel drive, it had to be special, and under $14,122. Time on Bring a Trailer proved how unexpectedly difficult this has become; evidently I missed the boat on cheap E36 M3s, and every other M3 under $14,122 has had a hard life.

Interiors are destroyed, miles are high, and more often than not, there’s a salvage title in the glovebox. And to be honest, they’re underrated, but not that special.

What else was there? An E34? E30? E39? An older manual Mercedes 190E? A Porsche 944? I looked at everything. Facebook is useless for a buyer searching for in specific locations. Craigslist is still a crapshoot. Phone calls are frustrating. Most cars were sold, but the ads still lingered. I told one guy he was a little high on the car. He thought I meant actually “high” and hung up on me.

An imported E34 turned up, but after several days of back and forth it turned out the guy didn’t have a title. Another guy with an E30 ghosted me. And thanks to that aforementioned auction website, where a six-speed 540i with a manual and 241,402km commands obscene prices, every slightly unique toilet of a car is forged in gold, cast in the foundry that is Bring a Trailer.

I settled on a 190E, a cool car overshadowed by “God’s chariot,” dead reliable when maintained right and pretty comfortable. They made tons of them, and while most are totally pounded, the good ones are still cheap at around $5,649 to $8,473. The perfect one existed on Craigslist in Ohio, but the owner I contacted was out of town for a while.

Back to square one. But that took me where this journey ultimately led: the Mercedes C43 AMG. A 4.3-litre V8 with 300 horsepower in a tiny ’90s C-Class? Sign me up.

This car was a product of an era when Mercedes was kind of struggling to catch up to the stuff made by its German rivals at BMW’s M division. For much of the late ’80s through the late ’90s, Mercedes’ most badass cars were made by someone else—the AMG Hammer, or the 500E built by Porsche.

By stuffing a V8 into what used to be the six-cylinder C36, Mercedes — which took full control of AMG in 1999 — aimed to strike back. It was more expensive than the E36 M3, and despite having significantly more power, didn’t perform quite as well in many regards.

Our first meeting.

I didn’t care. It was special.

Yet just like the E36 M3s, the early AMG stuff has been badly abused. The unfortunate thing is that production numbers were far lower, so finding a good one is thus considerably tougher. Only about 4,200 C43s were manufactured from 1997 to 2000 — and that’s globally. The AMG badge and its cheap initial cost make it the perfect choice for sketchy guys in striped track suits whose hobbies include carrying concealed weapons and referring to everything as “lit.”

The upkeep isn’t easy though. Unless you do the work yourself, just changing the spark plugs (it’s a twin plug engine) and wires is a $700 affair, and brakes can be over $1,400. Deferred maintenance has slid most C43s into the dustbin of history, or worse, they’re somehow kept limping along, as mere husks of their former selves. I found a black one with 241,402km before I found out in the fine print that it was actually in Puerto Rico. Another graced Bring a Trailer, but it had a salvage title.

Just before I gave up on getting a C43, returning to beige interior, beige dash, beige emotion E39s, I came across a white one in San Francisco. After a few pleasantries and more photos, a deposit was exchanged, and a flight was booked.

On the wrong day.

Upon meeting this car it proved cleaner than I’d expected, a rare occurrence. According to the owner it needed an alignment, and according to my fingers the rear summer tires were over half worn, but not to the bars.

It drove exactly what a car made for hauling around suitcases full of track suits and MP5s should feel like. The 300 HP did its job and pressing your chest lightly into the seat. The shift at 100 feels the same as the rest. When it was new, 300 horses was a lot, and honestly, it feels like a lot in a small car like the C43. The cruise control worked just fine at 217km/h, and there was no problem getting to the electronically limited 155 if you wanted to, which I didn’t.

The steering was heavy, and pushed back nicely with no electric motors interfering with the conversation. The traction control, however, was pretty annoying—there’s no way to turn it off short of presumably unplugging the ABS module, so I was stuck with a triangle strobe light off the line or whenever I tried to re-enact my favourite scenes from Ronin.

I was set to meet an editor from another car publication for breakfast the next day before starting my drive back to Minnesota. Just before taking off on my connecting flight I scheduled an alignment for that morning. On the test drive, the alignment felt ok, just a slight drift to the right. Manageable.

My budget had been stomped by the $847 plane ticket. I checked the weather for the route home. It seemed like it could snow, but I figured I could drive around it.

I cancelled the appointment. A late afternoon departure put me in Nevada at 9 PM. I’d drive through Lake Tahoe, and take highway 50 across Nevada. It would cost me an hour on paper, but I knew I could make up time on the desolate highway in the obviously Autobahn-engineered C43. Right?

The climb up to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento started out well. It was about an hour out when I realised things were going poorly. Signs popped up warning of snow chains and impending hazardous road conditions. I’d checked the weather. How could this be happening?

The snow started to pile up imperceptibly on the side of Interstate 80. First a trace, then it was up to the armco barriers. I had to quit fiddling with my radio transmitter.

The rain had turned to flurries, and slush was starting to pile up on the road. Deep ruts from tire chains had destroyed the right lane. The alignment went from “Yeah ok, this isn’t so bad, just a little pull to the right” to “Do I remember what my kids look like?”

The car darted in and out of the ruts. The front toe was way out and the rear tires were worthless. Slush between the lanes yanked the car around. The giant yellow triangle in the middle of the speedometer blinked, warning me to not do whatever it was I was doing.

I reduced my speed to 50 mph, eventually settling on 56km/h. I crept just off center in the rutted right lane as more responsible motorists with good alignments and good tires passed by.

The snow was past the armco and my roof. It towered above the car, 10 to 4.57m from the ground. It was a white wall. I wondered what crashing into it would be like.

Nevada was a welcome sight. Lower elevation and drier air cleared the roads, and in turn, my speeds increased. I realised the wiper that was on the car was at the end of its life. The local small town parts store didn’t have a new one. It’s a mono wiper, moving like the guy throwing the advertisement in front of the “taxes for free” office.

Walking back out of the store, I noticed that the driver’s side headlight wiper was in the upright position. It seemed symbolic—and probably expensive.

I’d wanted to snag photos on Highway 50 as the sun fled into the distant mountains. The high desert of Nevada is alluring. Highway 50 is known as the “Loneliest Road in America.”

It probably isn’t. Some of the routes through middle Nevada are far less travelled. It starts its cross-state run at Reno with the last town being Ely, over 515km. It used to be hundreds of miles between fill-ups, but towns have filled in.

The roads were clear to Austin, Nevada, 161km into Highway 50. The wind started to pick up after. I had no cell phone service. The light amount of snow that had fallen earlier was now blowing across the road. It lay on the pavement in stripes. The car lurched over each one, revealing the true nature of its alignment. I’d realised in Tahoe I needed tires and an alignment, but no one stocked the tire.

In the middle of nowhere Nevada, the odds were stacked even further against me. I kept on. I was the only one on the road.

The sunset I was after never came. The clouds never gave respite. Darkness fell, and visibility came and went. Road conditions had varied until the halfway point, but there was no thinking “I’ll drive through this” any more after that. It had begun to snow, and the winds kept up.

In the distance two headlights were pointed off and down, illuminating the side of a berm. One headlight was askew. It was a semi pulling two separate trailers full of hay. The wheel on the driver side was pointed in a different direction, the tie rod obviously broken. Snow and dirt were shoveled up over the top of the bumper, about halfway up the grille. The driver must have dipped just one tire off.

I drove past, then stopped, then backed up. I hadn’t seen anyone on the road in over 30 minutes.

The truck idled, the only thing other than my car making any noise for miles. “Hey, man do you need help?” I asked. The return was in Spanish. His voice was absurdly cheerful, and upbeat, given the situation. I tried to offer help but the communication barrier was too much to overcome. I hoped someone was coming to get him. I simplified the interaction with “You ok?

He said, “I OK.” I bid farewell with “buenos noches,” and rolled on.

It was dry again 145km from Ely. I was going to be late. The next town I came to was asleep. The gas station was closed with pay at the pump available. I filled up and fixed my misaligned headlight. It was an empty gesture and unlikely to help in the blowing snow.

A forgettable green Ford Explorer pulled up, and a young woman with purple slippers hopped out. I wondered where she could be going alone at this time of night, in this place. She stood in the dirty slush, her heels and toes outside the fuzzy confines of her slippers. I quietly muttered “what are thooooose?” to myself. One hotel sat in the middle of town. There was one car in the lot.

The elevation jumped very slightly as I rolled by. The traction control light started up. It’s giant triangle not blinking for seconds, but minutes. It was relentless. The car was riding on pure ice.

The differential in the C43 offered itself up, somehow allowing both wheels to weakly attempt to move the car out of the town and up the next hill. I got about a half-mile out of town and could go no further.

I didn’t want my last words to be “what are thooooose?”

A brand new Cadillac Escalade pulled up next to me. I looked over at his tires. They were gnarly, with knobs out to the top sidewalls. The driver rolled down the passenger window.
I asked the guy inside if he wanted to trade vehicles. Clearly unimpressed at my attempt at humour, he declined and asked me if I had chains. I didn’t. He implored me to go back, as it only got worse. I would. He took off in a manner I could only dream of.

Turning around on the steep incline wasn’t easy. I was on a curve. Any input on the accelerator pulled me backward and sideways towards the ditch. In fact, anything I did at all induced slipping. I would have to back up into a J turn.

I got about halfway through it when the car started to slide down the hill at a perpendicular angle to the road. I had no control. It was a tenuous, prolonged descent, angled slightly towards the ditch.

The tires caught the rumble strip at the side of the road and stopped. I put the car in reverse, muttering “so slow, so careful” as if I had to convince myself that getting stuck here would be an awful situation. I had AAA, but it would take all night for them to arrive. I’d have to walk back to my hotel, ashamed at all the choices I had made.

I wasn’t even sure decent tires would have helped at this point. I had less tread on my shoes than the tires did, and falling down over and over again all the way to the only hotel in town seemed pathetic.

Slowly, and carefully, I reversed horizontally across the road. Momentum and brakes took me the rest of the way back down the hill and into a town called, humorously, Eureka.

I rang the doorbell at the desk of the Sundown Hotel. It was 11:30 or so. I heard some rustling above me, and a woman clomped down some stairs and fell on to the stool behind the desk. Seventy-nine dollars, she said. Fine.

She mentioned they usually took care of the roads by 7 AM, and that all of this weather was out really of season. It helped me feel less like an idiot, but not much.

It was cold in the room. The heat was off. Outside it was 25 degrees. Inside it wasn’t much better. I poked the bed. The blankets were thin, and the hotel should have sprung for a new mattress years ago. I turned the shower on hot, which wasn’t. I crawled into the shitty bed with the shitty blankets and thought about my shitty tires. I remembered the woman had told me she was going to bed, knowing there was nothing I could do short of sleeping in the car.

I feared dying from an exhaust leak in there, the world thinking I’d just had enough of this stupid used AMG and the snow. I was shivering. I checked the weather, wondering how far I’d be able to go the next day. There was a blizzard coming, and I-80, my route home, was closed. I hopped on DiscountTire.com and bought a set of tires and set them up to be delivered to a location in Salt Lake City.

I slept for 45 minutes.

I decided I’d head back the way I had come, where it had been dry, and then shoot straight north to I-80 via U.S. 276. The roads had deteriorated, but 276 was flat and it wasn’t snowing. Oncoming truck traffic was brutal. Each one pulled snow off the road surface and blinded me for a few moments. I couldn’t see the road, or anything out any of the other windows either.

Upon seeing one, I pulled as far right as I could and slowed to 10 mph. Despite the dangers from the trucks, 276 was mostly unpopulated, just like 50. Other than the road, there were little signs of humanity. No power lines, no buildings, and no real roads. In the distance, mountains sat stoically on their bedrock. The snow thinly veiled their shape, smoothing out much of their rocky surface. It was stunning.

In all my travels in the western U.S., I’d never seen anything like it. The mountains stood in contrast to the usually arid, desaturated scene. It made the previous night’s problems seem like currency paid to see the view. With the car off there was near silence, the only sounds the wind whistling in and out of the rocks, brush, and drifts.

I-80 came, and with it, a sense of relief washed over me.

I got my tires and an alignment, so by the early evening I was on the road again. I drove until I couldn’t, to Evanston, Wyoming. That hotel had heat and hot water, so things were looking up, until I learned the next morning that I-80 was still closed.

In the belief that I was going broke by not sleeping for free in my own bed, I decided I’d push on. The interstate was dreadful, even where it was open, it was covered in varying surfaces: hard packed ice, snow, small drifts, and slush. I pushed north around West Yellowstone, Montana near the northwestern-most point of Wyoming.

In Montana, I’d hook up with 12 or 94 and hope those interstates, which were also closed, would open. Just past West Yellowstone, I pulled over for a few photos. I observed the car would need spacers, because for some reason the rear wheels just didn’t fill out the fender wells as they should.

The snowpack was still deep, but the roads cleared up the farther north I went. Driveways had 4.57m or more of snow lined up. It was deep enough you couldn’t see the gas stations behind them.

At a gas station in Bozeman, Montana, I took a closer look at the stance. Through some of the sweepers on U.S. Highway 20 out of Yellowstone, I’d had some rubbing. The front tires had 245s on them, and so did the rear... at least on the passenger side. I stood up straight, not believing what I was about to discover. Indeed, the other side of the car had the 225s on it. Are you fucking kidding me?, I screamed inside my mind.

My morale was low, the interstates were closed, and now I was going to be stuck in a tire shop getting the wheels swapped around. Discount Tire apologetically paid for the work at another company’s shop, and then some. Customer service, it turns out, is not dead.

Miles City, Montana sits at the Interstate 94/U.S. 12 split near the Dakotas. One goes into South Dakota, the other North. Either way is a wasteland of a drive, and both were 100 per cent closed. I pushed on towards Bismarck via I-94, where the closure occurred. With new tires (on the correct hub) and an alignment, the C43 finally felt like the car it was supposed to be. It ate up the miles.

For hours I violated the law on an absolutely barren stretch of interstate. There were no trucks and just a few cars. With no way through, people had elected to stay home, or just hole up. Truck stops were overflowing, far past their capacity. On ramps and off ramps were parking lots. Thus far the roads were dry and nearly perfect. About two hours short of Bismarck my radar detector lit up. I actually wasn’t even speeding.

I made eye contact with the North Dakota State Trooper through my illegal tint. I laughed as I went by, elated that I wasn’t going to get pulled over. I realised it was the first time I’d laughed, or said much other than “checking in” in several days. Several minutes later he pulled me over. While I was drifting towards the rumble strip, I raised my hands in disgust, my emotion finally getting the best of me.

The trooper asked if I’d like to explain my frustration in his police car. He was nice enough. He had a K-9 too. I suspected this section of road to be a drug corridor. I apparently smelled fine and was sent on my way.

Bismarck came up fast, and eventually I-94 opened like a gated, private road just as I rolled into the city limits. I was alone, and the newly opened interstate was mine. The roads were still garbage; there was little that would shake my resolve. There were no more obstacles, and I was six hours from home. I was just an idiot in a C43, but I’d made it.

So what do you take from this, if you want to buy an old car out of state and then drive it home? People do it all the time. I’ve certainly done it. A lot of preparation is needed, but in the end you never really know what’s going to happen.

In hindsight, I should have addressed the tires and alignment first. I should have pushed harder for the previous owner to drop the car at a tire shop at my expense before I got there. I could have made that a deal breaker, and I can’t imagine he would have balked. Following your own advice is often the hardest.

I was so enamoured with finally finding a car that didn’t suck I overlooked the exact thing I tell everyone to do: a pre-purchase inspection. A lot can go wrong in 3,219km. (It was 2,071, to be exact.)

Yet the solitude and ups and downs built a relationship with the car I wouldn’t have otherwise. Even though I was a lot poorer, I didn’t care. Driving isn’t always about attacking, performance, and lap times. Sometimes it’s just a way to experience things you never would have before, regardless of what road you’re on.

[Fuzz]

47 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

I care about the others but.... on their own, meh.

What I think would be the best platform is a big budget mini series where these characters can play their parts and roles, not left on the scrap room floor as major cuts and edits which would lead to a lackluster movie only because studios limit movie run times.

Who wouldn't want to see Black Canary or hawk girl? But maybe in such a series where you got your BIG 3 along with the others.

If it can work for acclaimed series such as Game Of Thrones, AMC Walking Dead, and so many other successes, I think this is the ONLY WAY to tell the stories that do justice to them all, INCLUDING the top 3. I mean.... one can say BvS was crap (I still liked it), but the story they wanted to tell versus the story we got was massively convoluted, messy due to time limits. Even the theatrical release versus the extended edition.

Another example of this, and its purely IMO, people are already complaining about Marvels Avengers endgame being past the 3 hour mark. WTF?

I have no issue to sit and watch a great movie, I much prefer a long run time and great story versus a rushed job for a movie that deserved better. This is the issue I find with DC, they still haven't worked out Marvels formula, which is a real shame.

But be it Marvel, DC, whatever, I think if you have an ensemble of characters, one can not introduce them all in one movie. It should go down to a series.

I disagree. Marvel managed to do an ensemble film with Guardians of the Galaxy. Prior to GOTG, all the characters had their own back stories, but none of that mattered in the MCU. Black Widow still hasn't been given her own film, but she is bankable (ScarJo may have helped a fair bit).

DC made a hash of Suicide Squad. BvS was horrendous. Justice League was ok, but that was because you already had the big 3 with their stand alone films. Do a Birds of Prey film to establish some of the minor characters (I say minor compared to WW, Supes and Batsy) of the Justice League. Hell, where's the Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (RR version has been erased from my memory) or the Flash movies?

It's really odd. DC can do TV series, but kinda suck at films. Whereas Marvel is the other way around.

[Ken Gargett]

4 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

I disagree. Marvel managed to do an ensemble film with Guardians of the Galaxy. Prior to GOTG, all the characters had their own back stories, but none of that mattered in the MCU. Black Widow still hasn't been given her own film, but she is bankable (ScarJo may have helped a fair bit).

DC made a hash of Suicide Squad. BvS was horrendous. Justice League was ok, but that was because you already had the big 3 with their stand alone films. Do a Birds of Prey film to establish some of the minor characters (I say minor compared to WW, Supes and Batsy) of the Justice League. Hell, where's the Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (RR version has been erased from my memory) or the Flash movies?

It's really odd. DC can do TV series, but kinda suck at films. Whereas Marvel is the other way around.

without wanting to get into this debate, guardians was great fun. guardians 2 was one giant load of turgid rubbish. the second worst film kurt russell has done (he was awful), since whatever that monumental heap of steaming excrement he did for that one-trick-pony tarantino was. 

[Fuzz]

1 hour ago, MIKA27 said:

The Cautionary Tale Of An Idiot, A Mercedes C43 AMG, Bald Tires And 2,000 Miles Of Blizzard

 

Geez. Pick a measurement system and stick to it. Hopping from miles to kms, and occasionally throwing in metres. When he wrote "25 degrees" I thought to myself, "That's a little warm for a hotel room", before my brain clicked it was Fahrenheit.

20 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

without wanting to get into this debate, guardians was great fun. guardians 2 was one giant load of turgid rubbish. the second worst film kurt russell has done (he was awful), since whatever that monumental heap of steaming excrement he did for that one-trick-pony tarantino was. 

Agree. For GOTG 2 they rushed it and came out with a lame reason for Star Lord's heritage. Kurt Russell was wasted on that role as Ego. It was a very weak story, and more of a gap filler for Infinity Wars.

[MIKA27]

Rhino Poacher In South Africa Reportedly Killed By Elephant, Then Eaten By Lions

A man suspected to have entered Kruger National Park in South Africa near the border with Mozambique on Monday with four compatriots to poach protected rhinos was reportedly killed by an elephant before becoming a meal to a pack of lions, according to a report in the Letaba Herald subsequently confirmed by other outlets.

Spokesman Isaac Phaahla told the paper that “According to the family of the deceased, they were called by his accomplices who notified them that their relative had been killed by an elephant while they were in the KNP to poach a rhino on Tuesday evening.” Kruger National Park Rangers along with South African Police Service officers from Komatipoort and Skukuza discovered the remains in the Crocodile Bridge section of the park during a search on April 4, the Herald wrote.

The Herald wrote that after the man was suddenly attacked by the elephant, lions devoured much of his body:

Quote

 

According to Phaala, indications found at the scene suggested that a pride of lions had devoured the remains leaving only a human skull and a pair of pants. Skukuza police were notified immediately and are currently busy with further investigations into the incident.

... “Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise, it holds many dangers and this incident is evidence of that. It is very sad to see the daughters of the deceased mourning the loss of their father, and worse still, only being able to recover very little of his remains,” [NKP Managing Executive Glenn Phillips] said.

 

According to CNN, three people suspected of participating in the hunt were arrested over the past week, resulting in seizures of firearms. They are being held on charges of “possessing firearms and ammunition without a licence, conspiracy to poach and trespassing,” and have been remanded to custody pending a formal bail application, CNN wrote. 

Kruger National Park, a highly protected zone guarded by everything from dogs to aircraft, says it is home to an estimated 349 to 465 of the critically endangered black rhino, which the IUCN Red List notes used to number in the hundreds of thousands of individuals. They now are believed to number at somewhere around 5,000, with almost all living in protected ranges in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

CNN wrote that the park also says it is home between 6,600 and 7,800 white rhinos, which the IUCN Red List categorizes as Near Threatened and has a population of roughly 19,600 to 21,100 individuals concentrated in the same countries (though the northern subspecies is on the brink of extinction).

Both the black and white rhinoceroses are subject to poaching for ivory, which is sold on the international black market as both a bunk form of alternative medicine and as a status symbol. According to CNN, the South African Police Service made 680 poaching and trafficking arrests in 2016, some 417 of whom were “in and around” Kruger National Park. As the BBC noted, Hong Kong authorities recently made their biggest rhino horn bust in half a decade, seizing approximately $3 million worth of it.