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

[Ken Gargett]

4 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

Monkey Shatters Zoo Glass With Sharpened Stone In Impressive Prison Break Attempt

A video from China is all the proof you need that the hilarious antics of monkeys at the zoo are really just a distracting ruse as they spend their days figuring out the best way to escape.

On August 20, visitors to the Zhengzhou Zoo, located in Central China’s Henan Province, were amused by a Colombian white-faced capuchin monkey who had picked up a rock with a sharp edge and was using it to bang away on one of the glass walls of its enclosure, the People’s Daily reports.

To the visitors’ surprise — and probably the monkey’s, given how quickly it retreated — it only took a couple of blows for the glass wall to shatter into thousands of pieces. The animal’s apparent escape attempt was still fruitless, however, as the pane of glass remained intact as a result of its reinforcement.

A zoo staffer told Chinese media that this particular capuchin monkey has stood out by using tools to crack open walnut treats, instead of just struggling to bite open the tough shells.

After the incident, the rocks in the enclosure were reportedly removed.

Without those stone tools, future escape might be impossible — or is that what the monkeys want us to think?

not that i want to start a forum dispute of any kind but i'm looking forward to the creationist explanation for that! 

[MIKA27]

Stunning Video Reveals Conditions Inside Wreck of Doomed Franklin Expedition

Plates and other artifacts on shelves next to a table where low-ranking crew ate their meals.

The ill-fated Franklin Expedition to map the Northwest Passage resulted in the loss of two ships, one of which, the HMS Terror, was explored by researchers earlier this month. Unprecedented footage taken from inside the well-preserved wreck highlight various artifacts left behind by the sailors who ultimately perished.

The scene inside the HMS Terror is as eerie as it is fascinating.

Aside from some silt and an assortment of odd sea creatures, the conditions inside the wreck appear largely unperturbed—a glimpse into the final state of the ship as it was abandoned by its crew over 170 years ago.

Bottles and other artifacts in the ship’s lower deck.

Photographs and video captured by divers and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) show ornately decorated plates resting upright on shelves, while bottles, tumblers, and stemmed glassware can be seen through the murky water. Bowls and plates continue to occupy the dining spaces where crew once ate, and beds, desks, and storage compartments are still visible in the officers’ quarters.

A storage compartment in Captain Crozier’s cabin, with a window visible in the background.

The Franklin Expedition set off from England in 1845 in search of the elusive Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. It was a major operation, involving two ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and 134 officers and crew. The ships were last seen on July 26, 1845 by whalers, but the expedition managed to penetrate the far north. Evidence collected in the ensuing years shows the expedition made it as far west as King William Island, north of what is now Nunavut. An excerpt from the Canadian Encyclopedia explains the fate of the crew:

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Despite their steam engines, the sturdy ships were locked in the menacing ice, exposed to blizzards, frigid temperatures and cyclonic gales. Three crew members died during the winter of 1845–6, and were buried on [Devon] island. The Erebus and Terror again became caught in the ice in September 1846, just off King William Island. Franklin’s ships ought to have been freed during the summer of 1847 so that they could push on to the western end of the passage at Bering Strait. Instead, they remained frozen and were forced to spend a second winter off King William Island. It was a death warrant for the expedition, and [Captain John] Franklin himself died in June 1847. The remaining 105 men abandoned their ships on 22 April 1848 and set up camp on the northwest coast of King William Island, intending to set out for the mainland. All perished—most on the island, and some on the northern coast of the mainland.

Both ships were only recently located by Canadian archaeologists, the Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016. The ships are currently being investigated by a team of archaeologists from Parks Canada and Inuit researchers. Earlier this month, the HMS Terror was explored by divers and an ROV over seven days. The interior spaces of the wreck “were scientifically and systematically explored for the first time,” according to a Parks Canada press release. The wreck is resting 24 meters (79 feet) below the surface near King William Island.

The ensuing photographs and videos are the first views inside the Terror since it was abandoned in the 1840s. In total, Parks Canada conducted 48 dives in early August, plus seven performed by the ROV, as reported in the CBC. In addition to gathering visual evidence, the researchers are collecting data in an effort to create a 3D map of the wreck.

In total, 90 percent of the lower deck was explored, including 20 cabins and compartments, reports the CBC. No human remains were discovered over the course of the operation, nor were any artifacts brought to the surface.

A bunk, drawers and shelf in a cabin on the ship’s lower deck.

Among the areas of interest explored was the cabin belonging to Captain Francis Crozier. Video taken from his well-preserved office shows his desk seemingly as he left it. This desk in particular has piqued the curiosity of the researchers, who speculate that it might still contain documents, including written papers or maps. If so, they could provide critically important clues about the expedition and what actually transpired during its final months and days.

The recent investigation also resulted in some strange observations. Project director Ryan Harris told the CBC that the ship’s propellor appeared to be in its operating position. At the same time, however, the ship appears to have been deserted, having “settled to the sea floor without violent action,” said Harris. The researchers will now have to find the reasons for wreck’s strange configuration.

Indeed, there is still much more work to be done, with the team planning on exploring each cabin one by one, among other future plans. And of course, there’s the Erebus to explore. 

[MIKA27]

BMW’s X6 VBx2 Is Dressed In The World’s Darkest Shade Of Black

The vastness of space is unquantifiable; pronounced, but misunderstood in its perplexity. It’s home to some of the most mesmerizing phenomena that we’ve seen, and an indiscernible amount of things that we haven’t, making it a medium of mythical proportions. Now, the German vehicle manufacturer, BMW, has brought their understanding of the universe to the automotive realm with the X6 VBx2 Vantablack — the stealthiest vehicle ever produced.

For this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, BMW has introduced the shadowy X6 VBx2 — a one-off show car that channels a scientific understanding of light, or lack thereof. To create the vehicle’s unique colorway, the company has implemented a series of carbon nanotubes — each 5,000-times thinner than a human hair — to absorb surrounding light. In an effect similar to what we’ve seen from space’s distant stars and galaxies, the coating serves to pull this light into an inescapable space, allowing for the contours of the vehicle to elude the eyes of the viewer. However, the X6 is still somewhat visible, thanks to the array’s one-per-cent total hemispherical reflectance (THR), making it the darkest shade of black available today. Initially, this technology was devised for optical devices and space-faring components, allowing researchers to observe galaxies and stars that were once unnoticable due to their absorption of the sun’s light.

[MIKA27]

James Cameron Watched The Last 3 Terminator Movies To Figure Out What Not To Do With Dark Fate

For Terminator: Dark Fate, the return of Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger is exciting enough. But it’s the return of franchise creator James Cameron that’s arguably the bigger deal. Cameron is back as a producer and helped craft the story of the film, which only recognises his first two Terminator movies as canon.

But what about Terminator: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys? Cameron did use them for one thing — to figure out what went wrong with Terminator at large.

“One of the things that seemed obvious from looking at the films that came along later was that we would need to get everything back to the basics,” Cameron told Deadline in an extended interview. “That we would need to avoid the mistakes of making things overly complex, and that we needed to avoid stories that jump around in time, and one that goes backward and forward in time.

“Let’s keep it simple in the relative unity of time. With the story, let’s have the whole thing play out in 36 hours or 48 hours. In the first two movies, everything plays out in less than two days in each one, so there’s energy and momentum.”

Cameron also said that while developing the story, he and his collaborators, which include director Tim Miller, came up with a three-film arc.

“We rolled up our sleeves and started to break out the story and when we got a handle on something we looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater there to be told,” Cameron said. “If we get fortunate enough to make some money with Dark Fate we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films.”

However, Cameron admits that with this film, he wasn’t exactly happy with the script as filming began. So, though he was off making his Avatar movies and Miller was left on his own to direct, Cameron was still helping from afar.

“I focused on getting the script punched up,” Cameron said. “I didn’t feel like we went into the shoot with the script exactly where it should have been. There was a lot of momentum on the project, there was a start date, there was a lot of energy, and a lot of 'go fever', but the script wasn’t where it needed to be, so I quietly worked on it in the background and shipped out pages.

“Sometimes I was shipping out pages the day before they shot a scene. I’m not sure that was 100% always helpful, but overall I kept the characters on track and sounding right and being where they needed to be.”

There’s much more from Cameron at the Deadline piece, so head over there and check it out. Terminator: Dark Fate opens October 31.

[MIKA27]

The Secret Story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Last Tango

For six years they managed to elude the most powerful detectives on the planet and outrun their past across the wilds of South America.

Everything comes to an end, even a tango party in Argentina. It was a perfect combination, that night in early 1904: a warm spring evening, a house full of the great, and a yard full of the good.

The great: That would be the new governor, Dr. Julio Lezama, accompanied by the chief of police, military surveyors, and various political functionaries. And the good: That would be the 80 or so people standing on the grass, almost the entire population of this remote valley in the Andes. Among the guests were families, local laborers, and misfits from many nations. Some were broke South American cowboys; others immigrants from Italy, England, Wales, and America. Some were indigent; others, like the hosts of the party, seemed to have it all: money, land, houses, and cattle.

The music was provided by the governor himself. He was a man of many accomplishments—a doctor, politician, and guitarist who could pick out most any regional favorite. Tonight it was the Brazilian samba, plus a new style that was just emerging in Argentina, the melancholy tango.

Somewhere in the party, mingling with ease and leading the festivities—because this was their house, their life—were three people, each with a $10,000 bounty on their head. Back home they were criminals, efficient and daring experts in the art of separating powerful people from their money. Here, under new names, they were upstanding citizens, free from the past.

One of the two hosts, James “Santiago” Ryan, had once worked as a butcher, and outside the cabin, he must have cast a critical eye on the men grilling the lamb and beef. The other man, Henry “Enrique” Place, spoke better Spanish than his friend and business partner, and would have spent more of the evening inside with Ethel, his wife. She was the one who made this frontier house sparkle, the social one, the music teacher who spoke Spanish well, whose elegant presence remade the lives of three criminal fugitives into something whole and wholesome-looking. Despite having her face on WANTED posters all over the globe, she took a turn around the cabin floor with Dr. Lezama.

The party lasted until 2 a.m. The governor himself stayed overnight as a guest of Place and Ryan. In another life, they had gone by other names. Many other names, in fact; the men put on aliases the way other people put on coats. In Argentina, they hoped to conceal forever the names history would remember them by: Butch and Sundance. 

In the 1969 Oscar-winning film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the famous outlaws are shown escaping America to a decrepit village in Bolivia. According to the movie version, they  died side by side, guns blazing, in the crosshairs of half a Bolivian regiment. It’s a great Hollywood ending that happens to be true, mostly: they left America… then died in Bolivia.

What Hollywood didn’t know is that Butch and Sundance escaped.

For six years they managed to elude the most powerful detectives on the planet and outrun their past across the wilds of South America. Hidden, for years, in the tranquil frontiers of Patagonia and the deep forests of the Andes, they started new lives as law-abiding citizens. They roped cattle, built ranches, and spent their ill-gotten gains on glorious living, including tango parties and cabin concerts where a governor—and even lawmen charged with arresting them—were honored guests.  

They tried to let go of the past. But they were hounded for a crime which we now know they did not commit, and the past caught up with them. Found out, the Old West’s smartest robbers responded by going on an epic spree of bank jobs that filled their saddlebags and humiliated law enforcement in three countries. Given the real story of what Butch and Sundance pulled off in South America, it’s no wonder the authorities tried to forget those years.

Honesty is the best disguise, the ultimate trick for such famous criminals. During the 1890s, Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, carried out a streak of bank robberies across five U.S. states with the help of a revolving host of associates known as the Hole in the Wall Gang. Often planned by the meticulous Butch and executed by the quick-thinking Sundance, their crimes made the most of preparation and timing and were justifiably famous for their panache and profit.

Butch was a lapsed Mormon who nursed a grievance against the high and mighty. He deliberately targeted the most powerful banks and financial interests, and while his crimes were usually nonviolent, his plans grew increasingly ambitious and elaborate with practice. In 1898, he escalated his war dramatically by boarding an express train of the Union Pacific railroad in Wyoming. After politely releasing the passenger carriage, the gang swiped $30,000 from the train’s safe, along with diamonds and negotiable bank notes. They blew a bridge to prevent pursuit, and when Sundance was later cornered by a sheriff’s posse, he managed to shoot his way out and escape. 

E.H. Harriman, owner of the Union Pacific, hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track the men down and eventually raised the price on their heads from $1,000 to $10,000 each. The gang responded by pulling off a string of rapid-fire robberies over the next two years, hitting trains and banks and escaping with impunity. Sympathetic and charismatic, able to vanish overnight into raw wilderness, they executed their heists with such audacity, it was as if they were toying with the banks and powerful corporations they robbed. 

But they were smart enough to know the streak couldn’t last forever. Sometime in 1899, they started making plans to get out. In a letter to a friend, Butch explained what made their flight to South America possible: $30,000 they had “inherited” from an uncle.

The “uncle’s” name was the National Bank of Winnemucca, Nevada, and the inheritance was withdrawn at gunpoint in September 1900. This was the last of the Wild Bunch robberies—in the U.S., anyway. But instead of fleeing into the deepest badlands of Idaho or Wyoming as before, the trio of Butch, Sundance, and Ethel hid in a another kind of wilderness, the teeming streets of New York City.

By this point, they were not a duo but a trio. Ethel—not Etta, as history misrecalls her—began to associate with the Wild Bunch in the 1890s. Pinkerton reports, one source for their South American idyll, described her as 5’5” and quite thin, with pale skin, green eyes, and brown hair. In photos, she has the calm self-possession of many a beautiful woman.

There are more absences than known facts in her record: no last name, no evidence of a legal marriage, no letters, no clue as to her final fate. But she and Sundance were already a common-law couple of many years by the time they left for South America, and he introduced her as his wife, even to his family in Pennsylvania. Decades later his grandnieces would identify her, perhaps fancifully, as a West Virginia-born music teacher. But the only solid data tells a less charming story: As Anne Meadows relates in her book Digging Up Butch and Sundance, Ethel had resided for a time in Fort Worth, Texas, at an address near the cattle yards that was listed as a “Class A” house of prostitution. The frontier drew many young women into brothels, and virtually all of them would be looking for a way out. By 1900, Sundance and Butch were on the way out of the hemisphere with her.

Sundance and Ethel, in New York City in 1901

In January 1901, the trio took the best suite in a boarding house on East 12th Street, about a 20-minute walk from the offices of their nemesis, Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The outlaws spent a month living large. Butch bought a gold watch at Tiffany’s for the modern equivalent of $1,200, and Sundance and Ethel had their picture taken at a celebrated photography studio. On Feb. 20, they boarded the SS Herminia, a luxurious new steamship which offered only first-class accommodations, and set sail for South America.

The Herminia delivered the trio to Rio de Janeiro, where they spent several months considering Brazil as a home before moving on to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, they sampled the cafes and parks of a fast-rising capital city, its ports thronging with immigrants from every part of Europe, its wide avenues lined with aristocratic mansions and European architecture. It even had a new “underground train,” like those in London.

But there were still too many eyes around, and by the end of the year the trio were far south, across the Río Negro, the traditional border to Patagonia, the sparsely settled region every bit as wild as the American West at the turn of the century. They finally came to rest in the tiny ranching settlement of Cholila. Surrounded by jagged, snow-capped peaks, Cholila was so remote, it wasn’t even clear yet whether it lay in Chile or Argentina. This was, it seemed, the end of the world, an ill-defined frontier at the farthest edge of civilization.

When the Americans arrived in Cholila, they raised the valley’s population to 43. Butch and Sundance introduced themselves, respectively, as James (“Santiago”) Ryan and Henry (“Enrique”) Place. Sundance introduced Ethel as his wife.

Sundance, Ethel and Butch at the Cholila cabin

Butch and Sundance filed a claim for a landholding by a brook, and later built a spacious cabin which grew quickly into a compound with outbuildings, sheds, and corrals. (The buildings still stand; I visited them as part of the research for this article.) A steady stream of furnishings and fixtures arrived, some from as far away as Europe. The four rooms were decorated with polished wainscoting and a pink floral wallpaper. They imported a porcelain washbasin and windows from England.

The newcomers dressed like wealthy men, in red corduroy suits, and bought the finest saddles, bridles, and spurs. According to visitors, they also loaded themselves with weapons, including state-of-the-art repeating rifles and an array of pistols; each man often carried three, including tiny derringers tucked into vest pockets.

Almost their first order of business in Cholila, in June 1901, was buying 16 horses for $855 from Francisco Preston, the manager of several ranches in the area. Owning a herd also required branding the animals, and on October 30, they registered the “Place y Ryan” brand: 

The men found it easy to ingratiate themselves with the other English-speaking colonists, many of them Americans or British citizens who had spent time in the United States. The norteamericanos had an easy way with their neighbors and even the local police. When a police officer needed a character witness when filing for his own cattle brand, Henry Place was happy to oblige. The other signed witness on that document was John Gardner, a Scotsman who had been in Patagonia for more than a decade. Ethel shared English books and magazines with Gardner, and he became a regular guest at the cabin and their closest confidant. The trio welcomed overnight visitors, including an Italian draftsman who described a house “notable for a shining cleanliness, geometric distribution of objects, walls with picture frames and displays of weavings, North American magazines, many and beautiful weapons and lariats made of braided horse hair.”

Butch Cassidy’s cabin in Patagonia as it looks today.

After three years of hard and peaceful work, Santiago Ryan and Enrique Place had each amassed 450 head of cattle and 20 bulls, and according to a survey of Cholila, their personal goods were valued at $1,500 to $2,000 each.

Not all was relaxation, however. The Italian described the two men as “cautious of speech, nervous, watchful.” Ethel, while often seen well dressed and reading a book, was also known for dressing and riding “like a man” and carrying two revolvers in her belt. 

An Englishman who passed through in 1904 recorded seeing Ethel shoot an eagle out of the sky with one bullet from a Winchester rifle. Another witness recalled her shooting two beer bottles off a gate while galloping on a horse, holding the reins in her teeth. Once Butch entertained visitors by demonstrating his quick-draw technique, spinning out his revolver and shooting a tiny box of matches propped on a wall. When someone insinuated this was luck, he did it again from farther away.

In a letter to a friend in Utah, Cassidy is by turns nostalgic about his youth and melancholy, noting his isolation from the gossip and daily concerns of his Spanish-speaking neighbors. But he also sounds content:

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I like the place better every day. I have 300 cattle, 1500 sheep, and 28 good Saddle horses, 2 men to do my work, also good 4-room house, wearhouse [sic], stable, chicken house and some chickens. The only thing lacking is a cook, for I am still living in Single Cussedness and I sometimes feel very lonely… [For cattle] the country is first class. it can’t be beat for that purpose, for I have never seen a finer grass country, and lots of it hundreds and hundreds of miles that is unsettled and comparatively unknown… there is plenty of good land along the Mountains for all the people that will be here for the next hundred years… The summers are beautiful… And grass knee high everywhere and lots of good cold mountain water…

For three of the most wanted criminals in the world, this was the life they had always dreamed of. Soon the governor would visit, dance with Ethel, and sleep away the dawn in the cozy and comfortable confines of their Wyoming-style log cabin. By all accounts, they had reinvented themselves completely, and escaped.

The morning when the governor finally woke up after the tango party, someone robbed a man driving a cart across the plains of Patagonia. He was taking a load of goods from the coast to the English ranches along the face of the Andes. 

The robbery occurred 350 miles away from Cholila. Yet that distant crime would ultimately upend the new lives of the three fugitives. If their end had a beginning, this was it.

Near the coast, police quickly caught two Americans named Evans and Wilson with the stolen money in hand. Like Butch and Sundance, they were American cowboys who had relocated to Patagonia, probably to escape a life of crime. One of them had even visited the cabin in Cholila. 

But despite the clear evidence that Butch was having breakfast with the governor hundreds of miles away—perhaps one of the greatest alibis in history—something linked him to the crime. It may have been a pistol from Butch, or a horse branded with their trademarked P&R. He may have helped conceive and plan the crime; in the American West, Butch had sometimes organized every detail of the Hole in the Wall Gang robberies but then sat out the actual assaults. The evidence is lost to history, but there must have been some, if the police reached 350 miles across Patagonia to arrest him. Butch was hauled all the way to Rawson on the coast and locked up.

Butch and Sundance had tried to appear ruler-straight in Cholila, but they were always trailed by whispers. They stood out. They were wealthy but handled animals like veteran cowboys. They carried state-of-the-art weapons at all times and routinely displayed a practiced efficiency with them—this in a gaucho culture where the knife was preferred to the pistol. They kept company with governors but also thugs. Butch was reported to have bragged drunkenly about his criminal capers back in America. Their names and stories could never have been perfect. 

And the Pinkertons had never stopped looking for them. The Chicago-based agency was perhaps unique in the world, a kind of private intelligence agency and police force that had done everything from protecting President Abraham Lincoln to breaking strikes. The Pinkertons were synonymous with persistence and famous for their global reach, so the escape of two celebrity criminals was a wound to their reputation. After missing the men in New York, the detective agency had searched Europe, traced one lead all the way to Tahiti, and distributed wanted posters in Spanish throughout South America. Robert Pinkerton, son of the founder, was clearly infuriated that the duo had eluded him and wrote a personal letter to the chief of police in Buenos Aires, warning him to watch for the Americans, and even describing, all too prophetically, how Butch and Sundance would strike:

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They are all thorough plainsmen and horsemen, riding from 600 to 1,000 miles after committing a robbery. If there are reported to you any bank or train hold up robberies or any other similar crimes, you will find that they were undoubtedly committed by these men.

In 1903, a small, jowly Pinkerton agent named Francis P. DiMaio was on an assignment in Brazil. “Frank” DiMaio was an intrepid investigator who had successfully penetrated the Sicilian mafia posing as a forger, and who had once solved an assassination case by getting himself arrested and locked in prison with his suspects. With the initiative that would make him one of Pinkerton’s most famous agents, he now decided to sail from Brazil to Buenos Aires—without bothering to inform headquarters—to see if there was any chance the notorious robbers were hiding among the many Americans in Argentina.

Soon after arriving in Buenos Aires, DiMaio got a tip from George Newbery, one of the country’s more unusual characters. Newbery was a dentist—but also a wealthy aristocrat, land owner, and diplomat, who worked on the teeth of Argentina’s wealthy, including the president. He owned a large estancia, or ranch, not far from Cholila, and had received a letter from his foreman, passing on gossip that a pair of American newcomers—Place and Ryan—were not what they seemed. Perhaps they were even fugitives.

Intrigued, DiMaio sent a telegram to the Chubut provincial police, inquiring about the Americans. He also made plans to go see for himself. Curiously, Newbery talked DiMaio out of going, exaggerating the distance and time required, and claiming that the rainy season made travel impossible in the “jungle.” (The route is actually through a barren landscape with almost no greenery, let alone jungle).

It’s possible Newbery was protecting the men; he was, after all, more compromised than he let on. Among his many projects, Newbery had proposed the creation of a special colony in Patagonia to attract English-speaking immigrants. Butch and Sundance, as Place and Ryan, had been among the first people to sign a petition supporting the plan. If it came together, everyone would make money.

Yet Newbery also offered to lure the two cowboys to Buenos Aires, on the pretense of signing deeds for land in the new colony. He promised to inform DiMaio if “apples,” ”citrus,” or “peaches”—code for Butch, Sundance, and Ethel—ever showed up. 

DiMaio’s telegram to the Chubut police had thrown suspicion on the household, adding to the rumors. But discouraged in his journey by the aristo-dentist, DiMaio turned for home without visiting Cholila. Instead of the peerless Pinkertons, it was local police on the coast, clueless about the international reward and Pinkerton inquiries, who lucked into arresting the American.

Ethel in Patagonia

To free Butch, Sundance and Ethel mounted up and rode across Patagonia to the Atlantic Ocean, arriving so quickly that Ethel’s endurance riding was noted in the local newspaper as a spectacular feat for a woman. (The Argentine historian Marcelo Gavirati uncovered many Spanish-language court documents and accounts that have never appeared in English before). To add to the confusion, Evans and Wilson, the two Americans arrested for the robbery on the Patagonian plains, had somehow escaped from the Chubut police in the meantime. And now Sundance was somehow able to talk Butch out of jail (perhaps using Butch’s favorite trick, spending lots of money on famous lawyers). But instead of attempting the 500-mile ride back across Patagonia, the trio caught a steamer around the tip of South America to Chile, disembarking at a spot much closer to the Argentina border region and Cholila.

But even back home, there was no safety. Because of Newbery, the president of the republic had been alerted to the presence of two possibly dangerous American fugitives. Soon the provincial governor and chief of police went from being houseguests to antagonists. The outlaws’ hope of going straight had all but evaporated. When your past catches up to you, it’s hard not  to regress to being who you were.

Patagonia has a faraway sound, but before the Panama Canal opened in 1913, virtually all travel and trade between the Atlantic and Pacific worlds had to go around the tip of Cape Horn. The largest port was at Rio Gallegos, the southernmost town in Argentina, where industrial goods came in and exports of wool, lamb, and beef flooded out of the steppe to global markets. When gold fields opened in the interior, Rio Gallegos became a boom town. 

In January 1905, two American men rode into town and checked into the Hotel de la Bolsa under the names Linden and Brady. Linden was described as 5’11” with blond hair and a beard. Brady was shorter, with green eyes and a cropped dark beard. They chatted with an American salesman, telling him they were ranchers looking to set up a large estancia. They seemed to have the money.

The salesman introduced them to a 24-year-old Englishman named Alexander MacKerrow, treasurer of the Bank of Tarapaca, which represented the interests—and deposits—of the Anglo South American Bank, the Bank of London and South America, and Lloyds Bank. The new arrivals visited MacKerrow at work, and, according to the local paper, opened an account and deposited 7,000 pesos, or a couple thousand turn-of-the-century dollars. They explained that they represented a large livestock company that planned to buy major tracts of land around the province.

Linden and Brady spent at least three weeks living it up in Rio Gallegos. They left generous tips for waiters at the Café de Farina and smoked cigars with MacKerrow and his friends at the Club del Progreso. They also visited him repeatedly at the bank to exchange small amounts of British sterling—and, presumably, to take careful note of the bank’s hours, layout, and staffing.

The Americans bought horses and supplies, including a telescope and a compass, and rode frequently into the country on long tours under the pretense of searching for land allotments. On these rides they memorized the roads into and out of Rio Gallegos, the locations of fords, springs, and settlements, and the route of a telegraph line connecting the town to the interior of the country.

At one point a traveler discovered the men, who he had already met in town as Brady and Linden, drinking beer in a tent in the countryside. They invited him in to drink, and then paid him to carry their supplies onward to a hotel 15 miles from Rio Gallegos. They returned to town without the string of extra horses they had left with.

On Feb. 13, they went to the Bank of Tarapaca and withdrew all the money in their account. The next day, they returned and withdrew everyone else’s money. 

At 2 p.m., MacKerrow and his assistant manager, Arturo Bishop, were alone in the bank, closing out the day’s accounts, when Brady and Linden entered. According to MacKerrow, Linden—his new friend, client, and card-playing partner—jumped onto the counter with a Colt revolver in each hand. He ordered Bishop to stand back and put his hands on a railing. Brady, with whom MacKerrow had shared many whiskeys at the Progreso, drew another pair of Colts and told him to stay silent and put his own hands on the counter.

The men made Bishop put all the available cash into a white canvas sack. The shorter thief also grabbed a tin box full of British sterling off the counter. The robbers ordered the two employees to stay behind the counter, keeping their hands visible. While one of the thieves stood guard, the other went outside and put the sack on his horse. Its contents were worth about $100,000 in today’s dollars.

About a minute later, as Bishop told the local paper, “I heard the one who was outside say in English something like 'all set.’ The other assailant at once went outside, and they immediately took off in flight on horses that they had already prepared.”

MacKerrow rushed outside and saw the robbers rounding a corner at full gallop, heading toward a ford in the Gallegos River. He ran to the Café de Paris, where a policeman was posted, and raised the alarm. Bishop called police headquarters from a nearby telephone.

Within minutes, a handful of civilian volunteers took off after the bandits. An hour later, a five-man posse set out under the command of Sergeant Eduardo Rodriguez. The telephone and telegraph should have given authorities a head start; indeed, that afternoon the alarm reached a police station almost a thousand miles north, where Chilean cavalry patrolled the distant border. But telegraph lines to the west, the direction the robbers were fleeing, were all dead. While the robbery was under way, someone had shot the glass resistors off the tops of the poles.

After a flat-out sprint, the robbers reached the hotel where they had sent their supplies with the traveler days earlier. They collected their belongings and seven more horses before quickly moving on. Rodriguez was determined but out-planned. Unlike Brady and Linden, none of the pursuers had cached food and extra horses (and beer) along the route. None of the lawmen had recently cased each dirt trail and back road in the distant countryside. After two days of pursuit, the posse’s mounts gave out at a spot in the wilderness called Bajo de la Leona, where, the sergeant reported, they lost the trail of the robbers, “who relied upon elements of mobility of the first order.” The only sign of the outlaws were three exhausted horses they had left behind. 

Butch Cassidy’s cabin in Patagonia as it appears today.

The timing, tools, and methods all point to the trio of Butch, Sundance, and Ethel. Many details of the thieves’ physical descriptions matched the trio, right down to Linden’s upper lip, which curled in an exaggerated way when he talked, just like Sundance’s. (Brady’s reported beard and eye color didn’t match Butch’s, but the Pinkertons noted the robbers probably dyed their hair). Fresh horses was a technique Butch had used repeatedly during train and bank robberies in the American West. Before a job in Idaho in 1896, he and another partner had positioned a string of horses along Montpelier Pass, near the Wyoming border, allowing them to easily outride their exhausted pursuers. And it’s hard to imagine that third rider was anyone but Ethel, the sharpshooter. At Rio Gallegos, there had been talk that one of the men had a sister, dubbed “la Americana.”

After Rodriguez’s posse returned empty-handed, two detachments of Argentine cavalry spent the next three weeks searching the province from the coast to the Chilean border. A unit of Chilean police even joined the search, and at a place called Ultima Esperanza, Last Hope, they found more abandoned horses. But there was no sign of the fugitives. Whoever they were, the robbers had disappeared into the vast outback of the Andes, a terrain of towering peaks, glaciers, and unknown valleys. The ride from here back to Cholila, depending on the route, would be 600 to 1,000 miles—exactly what Robert Pinkerton had predicted in his letter to the Argentine police.

They had escaped Rodriguez and even the cavalry, but evading capture in the Andean wilderness did not mean freedom. While Pinkerton ace DiMaio had decided to head back to the U.S., and no one was formally declaring that the Rio Gallegos robbers were Butch, Sundance, and Ethel, the trio knew that they were, at best, under suspicion. DiMaio, Newbery, and even Argentina’s president had made or overheard too much noise. The bucolic life they had tried to build in Cholila was now impossible, and they were left with only bad choices. Return to their ranch and keep up the pretense of innocence, risking arrest, deportation, or worse. Or run, and be convicted in public opinion.

They ran.

In the spring of 1905, the trio disappeared on horseback. Many fantastical accounts emerged of what happened to them next. In his book In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin claimed that they died in a shootout in Argentina, but he misdated their adventures by years. Other accounts had them appearing in Pennsylvania or Spokane. But in fact, instead of traveling thousands of miles, they simply hid out in an inaccessible valley just above Cholila. There they set up well-equipped canvas  tents along the Rio Tigre, near a huge alpine lake. (I visited the hideout, which is still known locally as the Lake of the Gringos.) Supplies came via their trusted ranch foreman, who used coded whistles to signal his approach, and left food and other items at a drop point without ever actually seeing the fugitives.

The Americans spent a few months in this gorgeous setting, mostly doing paperwork. They sent a stream of letters, paid off debts, transferred money, and asked that an order of clothing they were expecting be given to a friend instead. They began selling off their cattle and the ranch itself. On May 1, 1905, Cassidy wrote to one of his local friends, a former Texas sheriff, asking him to reimburse a debt Cassidy owed to a local police officer, adding, “My best estimate is that we will leave today.”

They went north next, riding to the alpine vistas of Bariloche, where they gave their horses to their foreman and took a series of small boats across the border to Chile. It is one of the most stunning passages in the world, through sheer mountains that would be impassable if not for seven long, thin lakes connected by short portages.

As they made their way west, the landscape changed from arid brown to humid green as the mountain mists closed in. They knew they had reached Chile when it started to rain. 

In Chile, Butch and Sundance sold their house, land claim, and two of their three herds for $20,000. In June 1905, Sundance wrote to Gardner, the Welshman who had traded books with Ethel, describing the deal as satisfactory. He asked him to tell a long list of friends, neighbors and employees how much he appreciated them, and included a request to deliver an occasional ration of meat to a solitary old man they both knew.

It was a clean break. “I never want to see Cholila again,” Sundance wrote. 

According to historian Anne Meadows, Sundance and Ethel returned by ship to San Francisco. But by December, Sundance—and perhaps Ethel, the record is unclear—was once again in South America, crossing back into Argentina.

There is no doubt about who pulled off the next robbery. In mid-December, four men rode into Villa Mercedes, a prosperous trading town near Córdoba in northern Argentina. The identities of the two extra riders have never been established with certainty, but the events that followed show that Butch and Sundance were the principals in the group. They checked into the Hotel Young and for a week established themselves by way of a now-familiar strategy: posing as American ranchers looking to buy land. They spent money, met important people, and cased a branch of the Banco de la Nación, Argentina’s largest bank.

On the morning of Dec. 19, the four were seen drinking whiskey in a bar two blocks from the bank, which was itself two blocks from a police station. Around 10:30 a.m. they struck. One man stayed outside to hold the horses ready, and three stormed inside.

This time, nothing went right. The robbers fired three shots in the air and started collecting money. But a customer and the bank manager resisted, and the robbers beat both men brutally with pistols. The bank manager’s daughter heard the commotion from next door and rushed to her father’s aid, bringing a pistol of her own. The wounded manager took the gun and opened fire.

It was the start of a gun battle that went on for so long that a bank employee had time to run home, grab a shotgun, and rejoin the fight. Somehow, no one was hit. After 15 minutes of shooting, the four bandits made it to their horses and took off with a haul of about 14,000 pesos, or about $6,000 at the time—perhaps $170,000 today. 

The police chief led a six-man posse that caught up with the men later that day as they were changing horses. But two of the robbers opened up with Winchester rifles from 200 yards away, while the other two calmly saddled their new mounts. Under a barrage of bullets, the commander and his men decided to return to town “with the idea of getting more men.”

The next day the robbery was reported in Buenos Aires newspapers, along with speculation that two of the criminals were the same ones who had struck in Rio Gallegos six months earlier. Someone at police headquarters dug out the old Pinkerton circulars about Butch and Sundance and concluded that they were likely the same men.

In quick succession, police units were dispatched, border guards were notified, and several civilian posses formed up in pursuit. Soon newspapers published the famous photo of the duo taken in Fort Worth in 1900. On Christmas Eve, the newspaper La Prensa identified Butch, Sundance, and Ethel by their real names, pinned the Rio Gallegos robbery on them, and included a summary of their crimes across the American West. Their past had caught up with them.

A copy of the New York Herald from 1906.

Reported sightings of the outlaws started coming in from all over Argentina. As far south as Neuquén, in Patagonia, three Americans were spotted riding the train, one of them a “sad-looking” woman who supposedly resembled Ethel. (The three were arrested and held for days, but one man turned out to be a rotund redhead, while the other was too short). On Dec. 30, witnesses reported seeing the criminals near the southern town of San Luis, while other witnesses  placed them 250 miles south of there. Police received reports of 11 different Americans wandering the countryside with Winchester rifles, and the fugitives were variously seen swimming across the Rio Salado on a raft made of inflated rubber boots, nursing gunshot wounds in Mendoza, and stealing horses in Maximiliano Salinas.

Amid the swirl of false reports, the Argentine police never found the real outlaws. By the spring of 1906, it was reported they had escaped into Chile. Gardner was the last to hear from them, and mentioned that his old neighbors were headed for Bolivia. There was a reported sighting of Ethel arguing with Sundance in a hotel in Antofagasta, the northernmost town in Chile. Knowing what awaited her companions, did she choose this moment to exit their story? She disappears, finally and totally, probably because she caught one last boat to San Francisco and the end of this particular dream.

In Bolivia, Butch became James Maxwell and Sundance became H.A. Brown. They took a series of jobs through 1906, mostly running mule trains full of supplies for the country’s many mines. Bolivia was rich in gold, silver, and tin, and the Americans took notice of both the precious metals that left the mines and the cash that flowed back to pay the miners. They eventually found work protecting payroll deliveries, and in so doing learning the schedules and became trusted confidants of the very people they were about to fleece.

Around that time, an American named Hiram Bingham was crossing the border into southern Bolivia when he encountered two “rough looking Anglo-Saxons.” Bingham was an ambitious young professor from Yale on his way to Peru, where he would discover Machu Picchu and become world famous. In an account unnoticed by historians of Butch and Sundance because it focused on his archaeology, he wrote that one of the Americans confessed to being a robber, “driven out of the United States by the force of law and order and hounded to death all over the world by Pinkerton detectives.” The men sounded defeated, he said, telling him that members of their gang had been killed by police. They sold him their mules and went on their way.

In the flatlands of eastern Bolivia, Butch and Sundance found territory ideal for cattle, with the same knee-high grass and flowing streams they had left behind in in Cholila. Ranches were starting up and skilled American cowboys were in demand. Once again they dreamed of a new beginning. All they needed was a stake to get started. “I have found the place I have been looking for for 20 years,” Butch wrote to a friend. But his mood was less optimistic than it was in Cholila. They had been on the run for almost two decades. In the same letter, he wrote: “Dear God, if I could go back 20 years... I would be happy.” He seemed all too aware that he was running out of time and places to hide. “I will be living here very soon,” he told his friend, “if I don’t die.” 

Notorious

Here’s how the story ends. The Hollywood version is true, sort of.

They would die in a gunfight. The big-screen version from 1969 shows how Butch and Sundance took to robbing mule trains in Bolivia, and then were cornered and killed in a dusty town. The film ending is exaggerated but more or less accurate.

In 1907, the two men had ambushed a mining supply train of mules in the grubby canyon lands of southern Bolivia. When the thieves reached the village of San Vicente a day or two later, word of the robbery had preceded them. Arriving in late afternoon, the Americans spent time stabling their horses and finding a house to sleep in, but someone recognized the mules and notified a policeman. The Bolivians responded with initiative and speed: The mayor, police chief, a single soldier, and a volunteer took up rifles and moved on the house so quickly that Butch and Sundance were caught carrying their saddles.

A gunfight erupted. The Americans fired their pistols while retreating quickly into their room. The soldier was shot and killed, but in their rush for cover the outlaws left their rifles outside and were soon outgunned. With dusk falling, the Bolivians peppered the doorway and room with bullets until a sudden silence fell. At dawn the Bolivians finally entered the building and found both men dead. According to the local police report, one of the men had clearly been killed in the initial battle, while the other was found with his arms clasped around a barrel, in an agonized posture, as if he had died slowly of gunshot wounds.

At the time, the Bolivians had no idea who these men were. Butch and Sundance were reduced to their dusty fate: just two outsiders who had tried to help themselves to other people’s money. That was how they lived, and that was how they died. 

Before burying the bodies, the Bolivians recorded a few details about the assailants. One stands out: a gold pocket watch one of the men carried, which looked expensive enough to come from a place like Tiffany’s.

[MIKA27]

Watch the Bugatti Chiron smash through the mythical 300 mph barrier

Speed, especially extremely high speeds, can get pretty abstract. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to wrap my head around anything faster than 150 mph, which is the speed most commercial airplanes reach when they take off. So when Bugatti announced today that its Chiron hypercar has smashed through the 300 mph barrier, my brain just found it difficult to accept that such a thing was possible.

Fortunately there’s video! Here’s Andy Wallace, Le Mans winner and Bugatti test driver, reaching a top speed of 304.773 mph (490.484 km/h) on August 2nd on the VW-owned test track at Ehra-Lessien in the German state of Lower Saxony.

To put it in more relatable terms, 300 mph is fast enough to cover the length of a football field — doesn’t matter which version of football you prefer — in less than a second. Of course it’s more about bragging rights than any real-world applications. You don’t ever need to go that fast, at least not outside the Fast and Furious cinematic universe. But it’s not just about what’s possible: there just aren’t enough straight lines in the world long enough to let a person hit such ludicrous speeds.

Still, breaking such a speed record raises important questions, such as “how did they do it without just completely flying apart?” According to Bugatti, Wallace worked his way up to the top speed from 300 km/h in 50 km/h increments “to make sure all the conditions were right and the Chiron was optimally balanced in terms of lift and downforce.” You see, when you start to approach airplane-takeoff speeds, you have to worry about things like, well, taking off into the air.

“At that kind of speed, normally airplanes are flying in the air,” said Stefan Ellrott, head of development at Bugatti. “You have to make sure the car stays on the ground.”

The news was reported exclusively by Top Gear, which notes that the velocity was verified by the TÜV – Germany’s Technical Inspection Association. That means Bugatti beat records previously set by SSC (256.18 mph, 2007), Hennessey (270.49 mph, 2013) and Koenigsegg (284.55 mph, 2017).

Wallace was driving a prototype version of the Chiron that is not yet available for you and your billionaire pals to scoop up — at least not yet. The original Chiron was introduced in 2016 with a rating of 0 to 100 km/h in less than 2.5 seconds, 16 cylinders with four turbochargers, a total power output of 1,500 horsepower, and a $3 million price tag. Last year, the French automaker released a Chiron Sport that weighed about 40 pounds less but cost $260,000 more than a normal Chiron.

Back in 2016, The Verge published an account of what it was like to drive 200 mph. “You’re basically in the death zone,” auto columnist Jason Harper wrote for us. Would that make 300 mph beyond death? At the very least Andy Wallace should be able to tell us what the future is like.

[MIKA27]

Watch 14 minutes of new Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay footage

A new look at different gameplay styles for the upcoming open-world RPG

It’s been over a year since CD Projekt Red last unveiled a look at the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077. Today, the company has released a new trailer showing off what gameplay will look like when the game comes out next year.

The demo footage appears to be a condensed version of the one shown behind closed doors at E3 this year, and it shows off more of the actual gameplay for Cyberpunk 2077. As the demo explains, there are no set classes in Cyberpunk, although the demo does show off two differently built characters: a “strong solo” player built around strength and direct combat and a stealthier “netrunner” character designed around hacking and manipulating technology around the game world.

There are also more glimpses at how the game will force players to make choices, like whether they decide to work with a NetWatch law enforcement officer or attack them. Plus, we got the first in-game look at Johnny Silverhand, the digital ghost companion voiced by Keanu Reeves who’ll accompany the player throughout the game’s story.

Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be released on April 16th, 2020.

[MIKA27]

The Gold Miner Who Hiked Into Colorado’s Worst Blizzard on a Mission for Love

Loren Waldo tried to cross the Rockies during one of the worst winters in U.S. history. His foolishness in the face of extreme weather remains a potent, symbolic warning.

By 7 p.m. exactly 120 years ago, Loren Waldo was dead. No one can say that for sure because he was alone. But if you lie down in the snow for just five minutes as if you’d fallen there, unable to ski through a sub-zero night, you’ll know.

I’m writing this from the inside of a 150-year-old cabin at the very top of Boreas Pass, a gale-prone gap on the Continental Divide in Colorado. It’s below zero, and if not for the wood stove at my feet and the down bag that I will zip into soon, I’d be as dead as Waldo on the anniversary of his death: February 11.

I skied up here to see the winter day that Waldo, a 27-year-old bookkeeper from Breckenridge chose to try and cross Boreas and get to Como, on the Eastern Slope of the Rockies, and then on to Denver, where his lovely young wife waited for him.

Normally, he’d have taken the narrow-gauge train that snaked east out of town. But the tracks were buried by the Big Snow of 1899, the worst winter to hit Colorado since miners had shambled into the high country looking for gold 40 years before.

There hasn’t been a winter like it since. More than 31 feet of snow fell from December through April alone, a record never beaten. Not even close. Few people ventured into it the way Waldo did, in a light overcoat, a fedora, and 10-foot skis he could hardly use. A potent combination of love and—you gotta believe—lust drove him on as the sun went down over the Tenmile Range and the temperature dropped to 35 below zero.

"George and Gertrude Engle stand in a snow tunnel used to access businesses on Main Street, Breckenridge (Colo.)--1898-1899"

Why ski into a blizzard dressed like a businessman in Chicago? We will never know. Waldo went over the pass with two other men, both of whom had dressed for near-Arctic conditions. I think Waldo, an Illinois native, had come to rely on the luxuries of the day: trains that scaled the steepest mountain passes; wood stoves that kicked out furnace-like heat; and beds covered in quilts. Flatlanders like Waldo could arrive in mining towns without hiking a single pass, then live like city dwellers.

“Big, kind-hearted Waldo,” as the people of Breckenridge called him (he stood over six feet tall), was the victim of a climate anomaly that year. He might have made it in any other winter. But the whole country froze in 1899. There were 45 states at the time, and the mercury in every one of them fell below 0.

Temperatures in Montana plummeted to a Siberian minus 61. Storms dumped 30 inches of snow in New Jersey in a matter of days. Food shipments in Chicago stopped for three weeks. Ice floes drifted past New Orleans on the Mississippi. Sleet clung to telegraph lines in Florida, snapping them to the ground. Kids had a snowball fight on the steps of the capitol in Tallahassee.

The weather event became known as the Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899. A massive pool of Arctic air migrated south over the U.S. The culprit was the jet stream, the west-to-east air flow high in the atmosphere that—normally—pens Arctic air in the north. That winter, the jet stream dipped farther south than it had in recorded history, and frigid air followed.

These days in the American West, it’s hard to imagine the blizzards of 1899. Most every winter is warmer than the last, and the summers are often ruined by smoke from wildfires. All of that, and worse, is predicted by climate change. Surprisingly, so are Arctic outbreaks like the one in 1899 (the journal Nature described the mechanics in a study last March).

The East Coast and Midwest are expected to freeze most often. December’s deadly snow in North Carolina is evidence. So is January’s fatal Arctic outbreak in the Midwest. In March, another, bigger outbreak stretched across the country, driving temperatures down to just 9 degrees as far south as Tulsa, Oklahoma. North Platte, Nebraska, fell to a March record of minus 25. 

In Colorado, it snowed like it was 1899. Breckenridge got 40 inches in three days. On March 3, an avalanche crashed down the granite walls of Tenmile Canyon. Video of the slide showed a towering plume of snow filling the canyon. Four days later, another avalanche buried four cars under 15 feet of snow near Copper Mountain Resort. Next, a “bomb cyclone” hit the Colorado plains. Winds at the Denver airport howled to a record 80 miles per hour as a Florida-worthy hurricane, but with snow, struck the middle of the country. Tornadoes tore across New Mexico. Hail the size of baseballs hammered Texas. A biblical flood swept away whole towns and herds of cattle in Nebraska and Iowa.

Unless we act fast, weather anomalies like this are going to become routine. The frigid winter of 2019 shows that the world isn’t going to end in fire, as one might expect from global warming—but maybe in ice. Given that, it might be wise to study the winter of 1899 on the roof of America and see how people coped.

Mattie Walker, a 27-year-old school teacher from Kokomo, a vanished mining town near Copper Mountain, wrote about the winter. It began, she said, just like any other.

“Large feathery flakes fell until Kokomo was a city of whiteness,” she wrote in a letter. “The wind would blow occasionally and heap the snow into great drifts, but this was nothing uncommon for this place and passed almost unnoticed.”

Then the winter got real. Snow started falling by the foot in January, and the wind blew constantly. A train left Kokomo on January 17, and one didn’t return until April 27. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Railroad operators outfitted trains with rotating blades that bored through snow like mammoth drills. But even those couldn’t dislodge the soaring drifts that walled off the tracks on the Continental Divide.

Coal ran out, and townspeople had to dig through snow to get wood off nearby hills. Telegraph lines fell, and the only mail came from Leadville, 20 miles away, by snowshoe. Fresh food disappeared. People left the table hungry, and everyone, not just the miners, played cards, a game considered too rough for women.

“I began to be haunted by the dreadful fear that the snow would continue to fall until the valley was filled,” Mattie Walker wrote, “and the people of this little camp, like the inhabitants of Pompeii, might in long years after be dug from this tomb.”

People in nearby Breckenridge paid men to ski 20 miles over Boreas Pass to Como, on the eastern side of the Divide, for supplies and mail. Bored, and tired of trudging through snow, a group of Breckenridge men tried to build a “snow bike,” with a paddle wheel on the back to push it along. It broke on the first outing and became kindling.

Dances in Breckenridge that winter often went until 4 a.m.

Elmer Peabody, 14, had to trudge through feet of snow every day to feed the family’s cow. The animal never left the barn all winter because its small pasture was buried, and that probably saved its life, Peabody wrote years later. When their neighbor went out to milk her cow, she found it butchered by a group of men desperate for food. They paid her, at least.

Loren Waldo didn’t last long, marooned in a mountain town without his pretty new wife, Minnie. She lived with her mother in Denver, while Waldo stayed in Breckenridge to watch over mining claims he had made. In 1887, two lucky diggers had pulled a 12-pound chunk of crystallized gold out of nearby Farncomb Hill, the biggest ever found in Colorado. The monster rock, called Tom’s Baby, stoked gold lust in a town that already had it bad.

Waldo had been torn between gold and his girl. Now, his claims were buried. His gold, if there was any, was safe under feet of snow, and he had little reason to stick around.

It had to feel bleak. Avalanches fell around Breckenridge, obliterating whole hamlets. One slide blocked trains near Glenwood Springs. When men came on a wrecking train to shovel out the tracks, another slide ripped down and pushed them and their rig into the river, killing three. Cabins in Swandyke, just a few miles from Breckenridge, disappeared in a slide soon after. Another one near Central City smothered a mother and her baby daughter in their cabin. Her two young sons survived. Mattie Walker wasn’t crazy: Colorado was becoming Pompeii.

Waldo saw his exit on February 10, when two men came into J.H. Hartman’s general store, where Waldo worked, looking for some tallow candles. Tallow kept snow from freezing to the bottoms of wooden skis, and the men, Eli Ruff and Ed Flanders, were fresh out of it after skiing 19 miles from Kokomo to Breckenridge. They, too, wanted to get over Boreas to Denver.

Ruff and Flanders were hardcore, especially Flanders. He worked as a fireman on the railroad, shoveling coal into engines. Before coming to Colorado, the wiry 32-year-old fought bloody battles in Cuba during the Spanish–American War. “His constitution is that of iron,” wrote a Denver Post journalist who interviewed him after the Boreas crossing.

When Waldo learned that Flanders and Ruff planned to cross Boreas Pass on skis, he pleaded to join them. He had recently purchased a pair of Norwegian shoes, which is what people called skis at the time. He hadn’t done any “extended walking” on them, he told Flanders, but he “had been practicing in the vicinity of Breckenridge with some success.”

Waldo was a big man, but even for him, his skis were abnormally long (10 feet) and absurdly heavy (made of ash). Flanders, by contrast, had a lighter 8-foot pair, and he knew how to use them. So did Ruff. To climb, they wrapped burlap sacks around them under foot, giving traction.

Flanders and Ruff stayed in Breckenridge that night. They left the next day at 11:20 a.m. after Waldo collected his pay from Hartman. Waldo’s gear must have alarmed them. He dressed for a winter walk in Denver, with a skull cap under his fedora and a pair of black mittens. He had lashed a suitcase over his shoulder. It was the 1899 equivalent of skiing in jeans.

Worse, it became clear immediately that Waldo couldn’t handle his Norwegian shoes. Instead of skiing up the railroad line, the men slogged up Indiana Gulch, a shorter route to the top of Boreas Pass. There was six feet of fresh snow, and the wind blew hard. Waldo lagged. Flanders and Ruff, sweating from the climb, froze every time they stopped to wait.

The three men took a longer rest three miles from the top of Boreas at Sutton’s mill. History doesn’t say if the place milled rock or timber, but the owner had a warm stove and plenty of coffee, and Waldo drank a lot of it. This was a certainly a blunder. Caffeine constricts blood vessels, denying blood flow to the hands and feet. It’s also a diuretic, flushing out crucial fluids along with all the sweat. Waldo may have felt better after his stop at Sutton’s mill, but it wouldn’t last.

The Section House where Waldo should have stayed, almost exactly 120 years after he left there.

“We kept together for some time, but he began again to drop behind,” Flanders told the Denver Post. Ruff warned that if they kept stopping, their sweat would freeze them to death. They waved for Waldo to follow as he struggled in the snow, but they kept moving, losing sight of him after a mile.

The old mountain railroads needed a lot of maintenance, so workers lived year-round in houses along the line and minded their section of track. These “section” houses dotted rail lines throughout the Rockies. Flanders and Ruff bypassed the tall, inviting house at the top of Boreas and skied down to a lower one, arriving at 6:30 p.m., just before dark.

Waldo, meantime, reached the top of the pass at 5:30 p.m. He warmed himself in the section house that Flanders and Ruff had skied past. Science says that Waldo should have been dead long before he reached the top of Boreas. It’s tempting to argue that love kept him going, but the Illinois native had probably acclimatized to the altitude and cold soon after he arrived in Summit County from Denver. Record snow and blistering cold had almost certainly become routine for him by the time he took off for Como, lulling him into thinking he could survive outside the safety of his house in town.

The agent at the summit section house told him to stay the night. I can tell you from experience that he absolutely should have. As it happened, we rolled into the smaller, older cabin next to the summit section house 90 minutes before Waldo did, exactly 120 years later. He would have been trudging through the snow field just to the west of us as we lit the wood stove and started water for hot cocoa.

I went out at 5:30 p.m. to see the world as Waldo did. The sun hung at the very same angle: low in the southwest and diminished. The wind tore across the ridge, blowing snow over to the Atlantic side of the Continental Divide. Clouds skittered eastward. Remove a glove for too long to take a picture, and it took an hour to warm your hand.

Waldo ignored the station agent and went back out in this frozen world, but worse. When we were there, the thermometer at the top of Boreas read 1 below zero. On Waldo’s final night, it fell to minus 35. I can’t imagine that he lasted more than a few more hours after leaving. At around 7:30 p.m., I put on my skis and headed east toward Como. The trees had turned black in the twilight. All but the tallest ones would have been buried completely in Waldo’s day, leaving a field of white.

South Park, one of Colorado’s three broad mountain basins, spread out far below me. Somewhere down there was Como. If he could see South Park, lit by a far-off sunset like it was for me, the pleasant, flat valley would have drawn Waldo onward.

I stopped, dropped my poles, and laid down on the wind-crusted snow. Within seconds, the cold penetrated all my layers. Blowing snow collected in the creases of my jacket. I could imagine freezing there and being covered in no time. At 1 below zero, with a steady wind, frostbite can start in 30 minutes. At minus 30, in can begin in just 5 minutes.

Was it madness to go? Yes, but it may not have looked that way to Waldo. In 1899, people lived all over the mountains of Summit County. Railroad agents lived in section houses at 11,500 feet. Men worked in mines and mills just below timberline. Waldo may have felt safe until the end, given the crowd.

A few days after Waldo disappeared, a Denver Post reporter visited Minnie at her mother’s house in Denver and described the scene: “Two helpless women, wrung with anxiety, sat in a cozy back room of the neat cottage at 1855 Lafayette Street this morning, as they have sat for many days, waiting for news they almost dread to receive.”

A friend arrived and tried to calm Minnie by suggesting that Waldo could be holed up in a miner’s cabin, snowed in and suffering from exposure, but very much alive. “Oh, but if he is sick, I want to be with him,” Minnie said.

Waldo’s father, Nathan, spent much of the spring looking for his son, helped by Waldo’s friends from Breckenridge. Late storms thwarted the search well into April, piling more snow on the dead man. A train arrived in Breckenridge on April 24, the first one in 79 days. In May, searchers found a pile of clothes beside a dead dog. The clothes contained theater tickets, but no money, and Waldo was known to have been carrying a wad.

In May, Waldo’s father offered a $200 reward for his son’s body, about $6,000 in today’s dollars. Finally, on June 3, a man named James Craig found Waldo, face-down in a stand of pine. He shouted to Waldo’s father, who searched nearby.

The body was black from exposure, the face weathered beyond recognition. Waldo had tried to save himself by wrapping shirts from his valise around his legs. Then, he must have given up. One glove was off, and a pencil lay beside him. His father concluded that Waldo had been writing to his wife.

“He realized that death was at hand,” his father told the Denver Post. “He pulled off one glove and got out his pencil and paper. If he wrote a note, the wind blew it away, for death came before he got the glove on again.”

Waldo was one of 105 Americans who died in the first two weeks of February 1899 alone. Avalanches killed many of them, and the cold got the rest. None of them had ever seen a winter like that, and many, like Waldo, underestimated its danger.

With the climate changing, we have to ask ourselves what dangers we’re not seeing, what catastrophes we’re laughing off. Some of us are going to find ourselves in frigid white-outs in the Rockies, watching our SUVs run out of gas after avalanches close the Interstate. Others are going to be swept away in ice-laden floods like the one this month that submerged Verdigre, Nebraska, and Hamburg, Iowa. These deaths will make headlines, until they become routine.

A tip if you’re the person in the SUV: put some candles and matches in the glove box. A single candle will heat your rig for hours while you wait for a rescue. In the meantime, try to shrink your carbon footprint. It’s your only hope.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Gave One Of The World's Rarest Bats A Manicure To Help Save It

Conservation technology has come a long way in recent decades. Scientists can now track birds’ migratory patterns via satellite and try to bring species back from the brink of extinction through advanced fertility technology.

But there is still room for more low-tech approaches. Sometimes all you need are small fishing nets and four bottles of nail varnish.

They were the chief tools in a project undertaken recently by a group of Cuban and international scientists trying to get a grip on just how many endangered greater funnel-eared bats remain in their last-known habitat of Cueva la Barca (“boat cave”), a huge, humid underground cave system on Cuba’s second largest island, Isla de la Juventud.

“We are trying to work out the density of the bats and to do that we need to catch them, mark them in some way and then release them,” Jose Manuel De La Cruz Mora, a bat specialist from the Natural History Museum in the town of Pinar del Rio, told Gizmodo.

However due to the fragile status and modest size of the bats, De La Cruz Mora said that more common capture and recapture methods used to count mammals, such as small cuts, necklaces or wing punches, were not an option.

“Above all we needed something harmless to the bats and non-permanent,” he said.

Cuban greater funnel-eared bat.

Thus, the idea was born to give each animal its own bespoke manicure. The team used small nets, with threads thinner than a fishing net to capture each bat. Scientists then marked each bats’ claws with a unique combination of four different colours of non-permanent varnish.

The unique nail job meant they were able to identify animals they had already captured, allowing them to get an idea of the density of bats in the cave. The whole process took around 20 minutes per bat according to De La Mora.

The Cuban greater funnel-eared bat, or Natilus primus, is often referred to as the bat that came back from the dead. Long thought to be extinct, two scientists stumbled upon the animal in the remote, forested Cueva la Barca in 1992.

The adjoining national park on the island’s western peninsula was extended, and the focus since has been to protect the cave and the bats. The environment Natalid species of bat thrive in — hot and dark basically — means studying them and monitoring them is no easy job. If you’re claustrophobic, have issues with creepy crawlies or the dark and generally wilt in extreme heat, then Cueva de la Barca is basically your worst nightmare.

“In total we had eight sessions in the cave,” De La Cruz Mora says. “But we can only be in there a maximum one hour as we have no idea what impact humans can have on these bats. I would say the maximum bats we capture in one session is seven.”

Reasons for a relatively low catch rate are numerous. For one thing the caves are home to 13 different bat species. And a host more other animals including snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, and giant crabs call the caves home, adding a degree of fear factor. Light is minimal and the temperature hovers around 40 degrees Celsius. Moving around also requires basic caution as the forest floor surrounding the cave is covered in jagged ancient dog tooth coral.

But despite the long sweaty hours over the two-week expedition, there are reasons for the researchers to be optimistic. From the capture and recapture process, the team have estimated that the maximum density for the population Natilus primus in the cave is less than 750 bats. That means they now have a tangible idea of how large and viable the colony could be, helping plan for conservation efforts.

De La Cruz Mora spoke to Gizmodo on the phone from the offices of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). As a Fondation Segré ZSL fellow, he receives funding to study and promote the greater funnel-eared bat which is classified as an EDGE (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered Species) by the institution.

ZSL EDGE conservationist painting the ‘nails’ or claws of the Cuban greater funnel-eared bat to help identify individuals. 

Cuba’s communist government has a long tradition of helping to conserve its environment and unique (and often unheralded) biodiversity. But the foreign funding has been a help because the country’s sanctions have put a drag on the economy stymied for years, leading to illegal logging, deforestation and habitat destruction.

Cueva La Barca itself lies a mere 250 meters within the Guanahacabibes National Park boundary and logging companies operate nearby. With the unknowns of how rising temperatures due to climate change could impact such a unique ecosystem and the species that needs it to survive, the focus must now be on protecting the colony in the cave rather than trying to reintroduce or increase population numbers of the bat elsewhere.

“I think the focus must now be to use this new information to firstly change the IUCN status of Natilus primus from vulnerable to get it more protection,” De La Cruz Mora said.

Natalus primus. 

The bats, as with all Natalid species, evolved distinctly from other bat species and represent millions of years of evolution. According to archaeological records they were once found far more widely in the Caribbean. The fact they are now almost fenced in to one last cave in the remote western forests of Cuba is a biodiversity calamity and decline that is sadly not unique in the world.

However, scientists know they are there and now they know (roughly) how many. And some have even had their nails done.

[MIKA27]

The Menacing 808HP Sián Is Lamborghini’s First Hybrid Supercar

After images leaked, Lamborghini pulled the trigger and revealed their latest road hellion, and it’s a full-course meal for gearheads. The Lamborghini Sián Hybrid Super Sports Car is the first of its kind for the legendary Italian automobile manufacturer, and they didn’t hold back one bit.

The Sián, which translates to “flash,” combines a 6.5-liter V12 with a new mild-hybrid system, leading to a total output of 808 horsepower. The speed beast uses a 48-volt 34-horsepower electric motor integrated into the gearbox for improved performance. According to Lamborghini, the direct connection between the electric motor and wheels is a first. And instead of using a lithium-ion battery pack, the latest Lambo utilizes a supercapacitor, which is three times more powerful than a battery of equal weight. With superior power, the vehicle can burst to 62mph in less than 2.8 seconds and hit a maximum speed of 217mph. Lamborghini will also customize the ride to fit the owner’s taste via their Ad Personam program. The supercar is limited to 63 examples and will debut at the 2019 Frankfurt IAA Motor Show, which starts on September 12.

[Puros Y Vino]

7 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

The Menacing 808HP Sián Is Lamborghini’s First Hybrid Supercar

 

After images leaked, Lamborghini pulled the trigger and revealed their latest road hellion, and it’s a full-course meal for gearheads. The Lamborghini Sián Hybrid Super Sports Car is the first of its kind for the legendary Italian automobile manufacturer, and they didn’t hold back one bit.

The Sián, which translates to “flash,” combines a 6.5-liter V12 with a new mild-hybrid system, leading to a total output of 808 horsepower. The speed beast uses a 48-volt 34-horsepower electric motor integrated into the gearbox for improved performance. According to Lamborghini, the direct connection between the electric motor and wheels is a first. And instead of using a lithium-ion battery pack, the latest Lambo utilizes a supercapacitor, which is three times more powerful than a battery of equal weight. With superior power, the vehicle can burst to 62mph in less than 2.8 seconds and hit a maximum speed of 217mph. Lamborghini will also customize the ride to fit the owner’s taste via their Ad Personam program. The supercar is limited to 63 examples and will debut at the 2019 Frankfurt IAA Motor Show, which starts on September 12.

 

Nice renders!    Even though Lamborghini's continue to have the same shape since the Countach, I do like the look of this one.  I would like to see them bring back more curvy and organic designs like the Jota and Miura.  When this is released I may pick one up.  In 1:18 scale.  ?

[MIKA27]

Also no pick up until funds have cleared. The items must be removed on Sunday at latest.

It is, for now and forever, definitely not a good time to be a Nazi.

Fox Searchlight — now of course owned by Disney, at least one executive of which has been rumoured to be concerned by the thought of releasing a satire taking aim at the very-easy-to-aim-at spectre of delusional fascism — has just dropped a new trailer for Taika Waititi’s satirical, fantastical historical movie, Jojo Rabbit.

Set in the closing years of the Second World War, the movie follows the titular Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a young member of the Hitler Youth who just so happens to have an imaginary friend in the form of Adolf Hitler himself (Waititi).

But when Jojo discovers that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) has been safeguarding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) from Nazi persecution, he must confront his imaginary friend — and his own blind devotion to the cruel nationalism of the Nazi party — with the realisation that, hey, maybe these fascists are up to something real bad.

If only more people these days would realise that. Anyway, Jojo Rabbit looks great, and hits theatres December 26 in Australia.

[MIKA27]

‘Bad Boys for Life’ Official Trailer Brings Will Smith and Martin Lawrence Together Again

ad Boys Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are back together for one last ride in the highly anticipated Bad Boys for Life. The first official trailer for the Sony flick is here to confirm that, yes, the Bad Boys are back, they ain’t goin’ nowhere, they can’t be stopped now, and they are indeed Bad Boys for life.

But other than that, I don’t have Clue #1 about what is actually going on in this movie. Lowrey’s still riding high in expensive cars, Marcus is still ostensibly a family man, and Captain Howard is still frustrated by the Bad Boys to the point of chugging Pepto Bismol and swearing a bunch. Nothing’s really changed. So whatever it is that brings the Bad Boys back together, I’m sure it’ll be … interesting? Does it really matter though? If fans want to see Smith and Lawrence together again as the title team, the fact that this movie exists at all will be enough of a reason to head to the theater.

Bad Boys for Life rides on January 17, 2020.

[MIKA27]

CALLUM Renews A Legend With The 600HP Aston Martin Vanquish 25

Back in 2001, the Vanquish became one of Aston Martin’s iconic models and now former Jaguar and Aston Martin designer Ian Callum is re-creating the masterpiece with advanced technology and newfound inspiration. The Aston Martin Vanquish 25 By CALLUM is a limited edition machine blending style and power for a smooth ride that’s bound to be a classic.

Under the bonnet of the beautiful vehicle beats a V12 engine that produces close to 600 horsepower offered with a new six-speed automatic gearbox. The silhouette of the original is intact, but it’s packing plenty of modern tech, such as LED headlights and taillights, enhanced carbon-ceramic brakes, sports seats, an updated infotainment system with CarPlay, and Bridge of Weir leather upholstery. The ride is also sitting on 20-inch wheels wrapped in special Michelin tires. And for a little more touch of class, the instrument cluster was designed with the help of legendary watchmaker Bremont. There will be 25 examples of the Vanquish 25 by CALLUM worldwide, and if you’re lucky enough to get one it will cost you $663,600.

[MIKA27]

DARTH VADER'S HELMET

A well-made replica, this is not. Worn on screen by David Prowse in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, this authentic Darth Vader helmet is among the holy grails of film memorabilia. The prop is made from fiberglass, with a mask painted dark metallic gray with black accents. The interior of the mask is marked "1", indicating it needed to be put on prior to the jet black helmet. While the PVC fitting that connected the two is gone, the screw holes for it remain, as do the remnants of the Velcro that served as a back-up connection. The turned aluminum "atmospheric sensors" at either side of the vent and the mesh behind it are also missing, and the helmet has minor chips and dents from use, but it remains an extremely rare and desirable artifact, and will be joined at auction by a full-size screen-used model of R2-D2.

Bid Now: $250K

[MIKA27]

The Final Trailer For Doctor Sleep Is Ready To Go Back To The Overlook Hotel

“There’s a place...” One of the scariest places in fiction, a place of power and terror and one awful dad. That’s right, Doctor Sleep is gearing up to go back to the Overlook.

That’s the vibe given by the final trailer for the film, a sequel to The Shining that works to channel both the King novels and the Stanley Kubrick film that King famously distanced himself from. It’s a tricky balancing act, but it’s one that director Mike Flanagan and his impressive cast, including lead Ewan MacGregor as Danny Torrance, seem eager to tackle.

This last trailer is heavy on the allusions to the previous film, while also shedding more light on the plot wrinkles unique to the sequel: Danny, tortured by his past, ends up linking up with a young girl with the same psychic powers as him. Only, she’s being pursued by a group of psychic villains, a struggle that leads them all, it seems, inexorably, back to the Overlook. To confront the past, and the future, all at once.

Doctor Sleep hits theatres November 7.

[MIKA27]

Four Roses Blended 4 Of Their Oldest Whiskeys For A Special Release

Four Roses has an ongoing history of crafting exceptional and rare whiskeys. In fact, their Limited Edition Small Batch has won Bourbon of the Year at the World Whiskey Awards two times in three years. This year, that release is shaping up to be one of the brand’s best ever.

Comprised of four different offerings, the 2019 version of this Kentucky straight bourbon is a combination of a 21-, 11-, and two 15-year-old whiskeys — of which there are three different mash bill recipes therein. On top of that, it’s also bottled at 112.6 proof (56.3 ABV) and is non-chill filtered to retain and preserve its cloudiness and congeners. Shaping up to be a collector’s dream release, this spirit will surely clear off the shelves quickly once it’s released on September 21st for $140 a bottle.

 

[MIKA27]

Matrix Powerwatch 2

Matrix is back with the new PowerWatch 2, a follow-up to last years´ popular wearable that was powered entirely by body heat, and never had to charge. The new iteration now features a 1.2-inch color display, support for thermometric and solar charging (converts your body heat and ambient light to power itself), heart rate monitoring, as well as GPS and fitness tracking. As you´d expect, it also syncs wirelessly to your phone, tracks your steps, sleep, calories, and is water resistant to 200 meters. Finished with a circular Aircraft-grade Aluminum case and black silicone strap. 

[MIKA27]

Sony Cashes In On Nostalgia With 40th-Anniversary Walkman (Now Cassette-Free!)

In honour of the original Walkman’s 40th birthday, Sony recently released an anniversary edition of the iconic cassette player that first made music portable. Only, it doesn’t actually play cassettes, so don’t go breaking your collection out of storage. And it’ll set you back about three times as much as one would have in 1979.

Sony’s NW-A100TPS (doesn’t exactly have the same ring, does it?) marks the company’s latest attempt to revitalise the Walkman brand, and this time around they’ve seemed to have given up any pretense that this is anything more than a nostalgia cash grab.

While Sony has purportedly made a cassette tape with a storage capacity that would put its 20th-century brethren to shame, the company smartly decided to forego magnetic tape entirely with its new design.

Instead, an Android-powered music player stores up to 16GB of your favourite tunes. It lacks a SIM card but you can connect to Wi-Fi and use Android apps via its itty bitty 3.6-inch touchscreen.

For the complete nostalgia factor, the device has a screensaver that looks like an old-school cassette player except the colour changes depending on what type of music file is playing. An accompanying soft case that comes with it looks every bit like an old Walkman, so when you throw up that screensaver and snap the case closed it’ll make you feel just like you’re back in the ‘80s. Or, for those of our readers too young to remember the Walkman’s heyday (like me), it’ll make you feel just like you’re in an episode of Stranger Things.

If you want to go full retro mode, this special edition Walkman has a headphone jack as well. But you can also just connect to Bluetooth like a normal person too.

Unlike back then though, when a Walkman had a price tag of about $220, this special-edition Walkman will go on sale for $599 in Australia come December.

But I mean, can you really put a price tag on the first truly portable commercial music player? A device that punted vinyl out of cultural relevancy (back then, at least) by selling 200 million units over its lifetime? The predecessor to the iPod, smartphones, and all manner of gadgets that consume our lives now? For this consumer, yes. Yes, you absolutely can. And it’s half a grand more than I’m willing to spend.

[Lotusguy]

Matrix Powerwatch 2

Matrix is back with the new PowerWatch 2, a follow-up to last years´ popular wearable that was powered entirely by body heat, and never had to charge. The new iteration now features a 1.2-inch color display, support for thermometric and solar charging (converts your body heat and ambient light to power itself), heart rate monitoring, as well as GPS and fitness tracking. As you´d expect, it also syncs wirelessly to your phone, tracks your steps, sleep, calories, and is water resistant to 200 meters. Finished with a circular Aircraft-grade Aluminum case and black silicone strap. 

I got to play with one yesterday at the IFA show - really cool!

[MIKA27]

‘Face/Off’ Remake in the Works at Paramount from ‘Fast and Furious’ Producer

For my money, John Woo‘s classic 1997 action-thriller Face/Off is one of the most entertaining movies ever made, so it comes as no surprise that Paramount is developing a remake that will feature a new cast rather than original stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.

Oren Uziel has been tapped to write the script, and Fast and Furious franchise producer Neal Moritz will produce the reboot, while original Face/Off producer David Permut will serve as an executive producer. The new Face/Off should benefit from the technological advances Hollywood has made over the last 20+ years, though to be honest, the thousands of impressive Deep Fake videos that have flooded the internet in recent years threaten to render this plot rather blasé. But hey, as long as they find two movie stars as charismatic as Cage and Travolta, it doesn’t really matter what kind of craziness comes out of their mouths.  I’ll forgive momentary lapses of madness, as evidenced by my love for this movie,

Mike Werb and Michael Colleary wrote the original Face/Off script, which saw FBI agent Sean Archer (Travolta) go undercover by swapping faces with known bad guy Castor Troy (Cage). Inevitably, this poses a problem, both for Castor’s brother, Pollux Troy (Alessandro Nivola), and for Archer’s family, played by Joan Allen and a rebellious Dominique Swain. Gina Gershon and Nick Cassavetes co-starred as siblings and friends of Castor, and the supporting cast was stacked — seriously, look at this cast of character actors: Harve Presnell, Colm Feore, CCH Pounder, Robert Wisdom, Chris Bauer, Matt Ross, John Carroll Lynch, Tommy Flanagan, Kirk Baltz and David Warshofsky, plus Thomas Jane, Margaret Cho and James Denton. Casting director Mindy Marin should’ve won an award for assembling that ensemble!

Uziel has worked with Moritz in the past on 22 Jump Street and Paramount’s upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie. He also wrote The Cloverfield Paradox and Freaks of Nature, in addition to writing and directing the Netflix movie Shimmer Lake starring Rainn Wilson. He’s represented by Writ Large.

Paramount hasn’t been shy about exploiting its library in the wake of its success with Mission: Impossible, as the studio has sequels to Top Gun and Coming to America coming to theaters next year. Deadline broke the news.

[MIKA27]

‘The Lighthouse’: New Trailer Sees Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe Fight Over Secrets

A24 has released a second trailer for The Lighthouse a little over a month after the first one arrived to stir up all kinds of curiosity about director Robert Eggers‘ sophomore feature film. The Lighthouse stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as two 19th-century lighthouse keepers with a bad, bad case of cabin fever.

The latest Lighthouse trailer begins with Thomas (Pattinson) inquiring about the last man assigned to help Ephraim (Dafoe) take care of the lighthouse situated on a craggy rock somewhere eternally gloomy. With a turn-of-the-century accent spoken in a tone as jagged as the rocks that surround the lighthouse, Ephraim tells Thomas the last man went mad, believing there was “some enchantment in the light.”

If that’s not enough of a signal to you that things get increasingly unnerving in this Lighthouse trailer, than I don’t know what will. Ephraim is suspicious of Thomas’ origin story, mentioning the danger of secrets (keep a pin in that if and when you watch, folks). Things get peak-weird when Thomas and Ephraim get locked in the worst Dude Where’s My Car-meets-Meisner repetition exercise moment as they continually repeat “What?” as each other in their claustrophobic shared bedroom. That’s ignoring all of the fog, a quick glimpse as what is quite possibly a corpse, and an octopus tentacle slithering overhead as Thomas hides from it.

All in all, Eggers has seemingly managed to up the ante on his use of both atmospheric tension and minimalism to evoke some truly unsettling results. Eggers co-wrote the script with brother Max Eggers. This is also the director’s second film to be released by A24.

The Lighthouse arrives in limited release to Los Angeles and New York theaters on October 18 before a wider release sometime afterward.

[MIKA27]

The Complicated Legacy Of Simón Bolívar, The ‘Liberator’ Of South America

Simón Bolívar freed South America's slaves — but he was also a wealthy descendent of Spaniards who believed in the interests of the state over the interests of the people.

Known across South America as El Libertador, or the Liberator, Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military general who led South America’s fight for independence against Spanish rule in the early 19th century.

During his lifetime, he was both revered for his firebrand rhetoric promoting a free and united Latin America, and reviled for his tyrannical proclivities. He freed thousands of slaves, but killed thousands of Spaniards in the process.

But who was this South American idol?

Who Was Simón Bolívar?

Born into a wealthy Creole family, Simón Bolívar rose as a prominent leader of the revolution.

Before he became the fierce liberator of South America, Simón Bolívar lived a carefree life as the son of a wealthy family in Caracas, Venezuela. Born on July 24, 1783, he was the youngest of four children and was named after the first Bolívar ancestor who migrated to the Spanish colonies some two centuries before his birth.

His family came from a long line of Spanish aristocrats and businessmen on both sides. His father, Colonel Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte, and his mother, Doña María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco, inherited vast swaths of land, money, and resources. The Bolívar family fields were labored over by the Native American and African slaves that they owned.

Little Simón Bolívar was petulant and spoiled — though he suffered great tragedy. His father died of tuberculosis when he was three, and his mother died from the same disease about six years later. Because of this, Bolívar was mostly cared for by his grandfather, aunts and uncles, and the family’s longtime slave, Hipólita.

Hipólita was doting and patient with the mischievous Bolívar, and Bolívar unabashedly referred to her as the woman “whose milk sustained my life” and “the only father I have ever known.”

When he was young, Simón Bolívar was a spoiled boy with little regard for authority.

Soon after his mother died, Simón Bolívar’s grandfather passed away, too, leaving Bolívar and his older brother, Juan Vicente, to inherit the enormous fortune of one of Venezuela’s most prominent families. Their family’s estate was estimated to be worth millions in today’s dollars

His grandfather’s will appointed Bolívar’s uncle Carlos as the boy’s new guardian, but Carlos was lazy and ill-tempered, unfit to raise children or command such a mountain of wealth.

Without adult supervision, the rambunctious Bolívar had the freedom to do as he pleased. He ignored his studies and spent much of his time roaming around Caracas with other children his age.

At the time, Caracas was on the cusp of a serious upheaval. Twenty-six thousand more black slaves were brought to Caracas from Africa, and the city’s mixed-race population was growing as a result of the inevitable intermingling of white Spanish colonizers, black slaves, and native peoples.

Biographer Marie Arana on Simón Bolívar’s legacy.

There was growing racial tension in the South American colonies, since the color of one’s skin was deeply tied to one’s civil rights and social class. By the time Bolívar reached his teens, half of Venezuela’s population was descended from slaves.

Underneath all of that racial tension, a yearning for freedom began to simmer. South America was ripe for rebellion against Spanish imperialism.

His Education Of The Enlightenment

Bolívar’s family, although one of the wealthiest in Venezuela, was subject to class-based discrimination as a result of being “Creole” — a term used to describe those of white Spanish descent who were born in the colonies.

By the late 1770s, Spain’s Bourbon regime had enacted several anti-Creole laws, robbing the Bolívar family of certain privileges only afforded to Spaniards born in Europe.

Still, being born into an upper-crest family, Simón Bolívar had the luxury of travel. At age 15, the heir apparent to his family’s plantations, he went to Spain to learn about empire, commerce, and administration.

The death of Simón Bolívar’s wife, María Teresa, was a turning point in the young man’s life, leading him to a life of politics.

In Madrid, Bolívar first stayed with his uncles, Esteban and Pedro Palacios.

“He has absolutely no education, but he has the will and intelligence to acquire one,” Esteban wrote of his new charge. “And even though he spent quite a bit of money in transit, he landed here a complete mess….I am very fond of him.”

Bolívar wasn’t the most considerate guest, to say the least; he burned through his uncles’s modest pensions. And so he soon found a more suitable patron, the marquis of Uztáriz, another Venezuelan who became young Bolívar’s de facto tutor and father figure.

The marquis taught Bolívar math, science, and philosophy, and introduced him to his future wife, María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza, a half-Spanish, half-Venezuelan woman two years Bolívar’s senior.

They had a passionate, two-year courtship in Madrid before finally getting married in 1802. The newly wed Simón Bolívar, 18 and ready to take over his rightful inheritance, returned to Venezuela with his new bride in tow.

But the quiet family life he envisioned would never become. Just six months after arriving in Venezuela, María Teresa succumbed to a fever and died.

Bolívar was devastated. Though he enjoyed many other lovers in his lifetime after María Teresa’s death — most notably Manuela Sáenz — María Teresa would be his only wife.

Later, the renowned general credited his career change from businessman to politician to the loss of his wife, as many years later Bolívar confided to one of his commanding generals:

Quote

“If I were not widowed, my life would have maybe been different; I would not be the General Bolívar nor the Libertador….When I was with my wife, my head was filled only with the most ardent love, not with political ideas….The death of my wife placed me early in the road of politics, and caused me to follow the chariot of Mars.”

Leading South America’s Liberation

Witnessing Napoleon’s crowning as king of Italy lit a fire under the young aristocrat’s belly.

In 1803, Simón Bolívar returned to Europe and witnessed the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte as the King of Italy. The history-making event left a lasting impression on Bolívar and gave rise to his interest in politics.

For three years, he studied the works of European political thinkers — from liberal Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and Montesquieu to the Romantics, namely Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

According to University of Texas at Austin historian Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Bolívar became “attracted…to the notion that laws sprang from the ground up, but could also be engineered from the top down.” He also became “familiar with…[the Romantics’] biting critique of the Enlightenment’s dangerous abstractions, like the idea that humans and societies were inherently reasonable.”

Through his own unique interpretations of all of these writings, Bolívar became a Classical Republican, believing that the interests of the nation were more important than the interests or rights of the individual (hence his dictatorial leadership style later in life).

He also recognized that South America was primed for revolution — it just needed a little nudging in the right direction. He returned to Caracas in 1807, ready to dive into politics.

His opportunity came soon enough. In 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain and ousted its king, leaving Spanish colonies in South America without a monarchy. Colonial cities responded by forming elected councils, called juntas, and declared France the enemy.

In 1810, while most Spanish cities were self-ruling, juntas in and around Caracas joined forces — with the help of Bolívar and other local leaders.

Simón Bolívar, full of revolutionary ideas and armed with his wealth, was appointed as an ambassador for Caracas and went to London to gain British support for the cause of South American self-rule. He made the trip, but instead of forming a British allegiance he recruited one of Venezuela’s most revered patriots, Francisco de Miranda, who was living in London.

Miranda had fought in the American Revolution, was recognized as a hero of the French Revolution, and had met personally with the likes of George Washington, General Lafayette, and Russia’s Catherine the Great (Miranda and Catherine were rumored to be lovers). Simón Bolívar recruited him to help the independence cause in Caracas.

Although Bolivar wasn’t a true believer in self-rule — unlike his North American counterpart, Thomas Jefferson — he used the idea of the United States to rally his fellow Venezuelans. “Let us banish fear and lay the foundation stone of American liberty. To hesitate is to perish,” he proclaimed on July 4, 1811, America’s independence day.

Venezuela declared independence the next day — but the republic would be short-lived.

The First Republic Of Venezuela

Simón Bolívar and his vice president Francisco De Paula Santander.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, many of Venezuela’s poor and non-white people hated the republic. The nation’s constitution kept slavery and a strict racial hierarchy completely intact, and voting rights were confined to property owners. Plus, the Catholic masses resented the Enlightenment’s atheistic philosophy.

On top of public resentment toward the new order, a devastating series of earthquakes toppled Caracas and Venezuela’s coastal cities — quite literally. A massive uprising against the junta of Caracas spelled the end for the Venezuelan republic.

Simón Bolívar fled Venezuela — earning safe passage to Cartagena by turning in Francisco de Miranda to the Spanish, an act that would forever live in infamy.

From his tiny post on the Magdalena River, in the words of historian Emil Ludwig, Bolívar began “his march of liberation there and then, with his troop of two hundred half-caste Negroes and Indios…without any certainty of reinforcement, without guns…without orders.”

He followed the river, recruiting along the way, taking town after town mostly without combat, and eventually gained full control of the waterway. Simón Bolívar continued his march, leaving the river basin to cross the Andes mountains to take back Venezuela.

On May 23, 1813, he entered the mountain city of Mérida, where he was greeted as El Libertador, or The Liberator.

In what is still considered one of the most remarkable and dangerous feats in military history, Simón Bolívar marched his army over the highest peaks of the Andes, out of Venezuela and into modern-day Colombia.

Simón Bolívar earned the nickname El Libertador for his prolific role in the liberation of South America.

It was a grueling climb that cost many lives to bitter cold. The army lost every horse it had brought, and much of its munitions and provisions. One of Bolivar’s commanders, General Daniel O’Leary, recounted that after descending the far side of the highest summit “the men saw the mountains behind them…they swore of their own free will to conquer and die rather than retreat by the way they had come.”

With his soaring rhetoric and unflappable energy, Simón Bolívar had roused his army to survive the impossible march. O’Leary writes of the “boundless astonishment of the Spaniards when they heard that an enemy army was in the land. They simply could not believe that Bolivar had undertaken such an operation.”

But though he had earned his stripes on the battlefield, Bolívar’s wealthy status as a white Creole at times worked against his cause, especially compared to the fierce Spanish cavalry leader named José Tomás Boves who successfully amassed support from native Venezuelans to “squelch the people of privilege, to level the classes.”

Those loyal to Boves only saw that “the Creoles who lorded over them were rich and white…they hadn’t understood the true pyramid of oppression,” beginning at the top with imperial colonialism. Many natives were against Bolívar due to his privilege, and in spite of his efforts to liberate them.

In December 1813, Bolívar defeated Boves in an intense battle at Araure, but “simply couldn’t recruit soldiers as quickly and effectively as [Boves],” according to biographer Marie Arana. Bolívar lost Caracas soon afterward, and fled the continent.

He went to Jamaica, where he wrote his famous political manifesto known simply as the Jamaica Letter. Then, after surviving an assassination attempt, Bolívar fled to Haiti, where he was able to raise money, arms, and volunteers.

In Haiti, he finally realized the necessity of attracting poor and black Venezuelans to his side of the fight for independence. As Cañizares-Esguerra points out, “this isn’t due to principle, it’s his pragmatism that is moving him to undo slavery.” Without the support of slaves, he had no chance of ousting the Spanish.

Bolívar’s Fiery Leadership

Simón Bolívar signs the Death War Decree.

In 1816, he returned to Venezuela, with support from the Haitian government, and launched a six-year campaign for independence. This time, the rules were different: All slaves would be liberated and all Spaniards would be killed.

Thus, Bolívar liberated enslaved people by destroying the social order. Tens of thousands were slaughtered and the economies of Venezuela and modern-day Colombia crumbled. But, in his eyes, it was all worth it. What mattered was that South America would be free from imperial rule.

He pushed on to Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia (which is named after him), and dreamt of uniting his newly liberated territory — essentially all of northern and western South America — as one massive country ruled by him. But, once again, the dream would never fully materialize.

On Aug. 7, 1819, Bolívar’s army descended the mountains and defeated a much larger, well-rested, and utterly surprised Spanish army. It was far from the final battle, but historians recognize Boyaca as the most essential victory, setting the stage for the future victories by Simón Bolívar or his subordinate generals at Carabobo, Pichincha, and Ayacucho that would finally drive the Spanish out of the Latin American western states.

Having reflected and learned from earlier political failures, Simón Bolívar began to piece together a government. Bolívar arranged for the election of the Congress of Angostura and was declared president. Then, through the Constitution of Cúcuta, Gran Colombia was established on Sept. 7, 1821.

A map of Gran Colombia.

Gran Colombia was a united South American state that included the territories of modern-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, parts of northern Peru, western Guyana, and northwestern Brazil.

Bolívar also sought to unify Peru and Bolivia, which was named after the great general, into Gran Colombia through the Confederation of the Andes. But after years of political infighting, including a failed attempt on his life, Simón Bolívar’s efforts to unify the continent under a single banner government collapsed.

On Jan. 30, 1830, Simón Bolívar made his last address as president of Gran Colombia in which he pled with his people to maintain the union:

Quote

“Colombians! Gather around the constitutional congress. It represents the wisdom of the nation, the legitimate hope of the people, and the final point of reunion of the patriots. Its sovereign decrees will determine our lives, the happiness of the Republic, and the glory of Colombia. If dire circumstances should cause you to abandon it, there will be no health for the country, and you will drown in the ocean of anarchy, leaving as your children’s legacy nothing but crime, blood, and death.”

Gran Colombia was dissolved later that year and replaced by the independent and separate republics of Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada. The self-governing states of South America, once a unified force under the leadership of Simón Bolívar, would be fraught with civil unrest through much of the 19th century. More than six rebellions would disrupt Bolívar’s home country of Venezuela.

As for Bolívar, the former general had planned to spend his last days in exile in Europe, but passed away before he could set sail. Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis on Dec. 17, 1830, in the coastal city of Santa Marta in present-day Colombia. He was only 47 years old.

A Grand Legacy In Latin America

Bolívar’s remains were eventually moved from Santa Marta, where he died, to a tomb in Caracas, where he was born.

Simón Bolívar is often referred to as the “George Washington of South America” because of the similarities the two great leaders shared. They were both rich, charismatic, and were key figures in the fight for freedom in the Americas.

But the two were very different.

“Unlike Washington, who suffered excruciating pain from rotten dentures,” says Cañizares-Esguerra, “Bolívar kept to his death a wholesome set of teeth.”

But more importantly, “Bolívar did not end his days revered and worshiped like Washington. Bolívar died on his way to self-imposed exile, despised by many.” He thought that a single, centralized, dictatorial government was what South America needed to survive independent from European powers — not the decentralized, democratic government of the United States. But it didn’t work.

Despite his notoriety, Bolívar did have a leg up on the U.S. in at least one respect: He freed South America’s slaves nearly 50 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” while owning dozens of slaves, whereas Bolívar set all of his slaves free.

Which is probably why Simón Bolívar’s legacy as El Libertador is heavily intertwined with the proud Latin identity and patriotism in countries across South America.

[MIKA27]

Beam Suntory Haku Vodka

Beam Suntory owns a ton of whiskey, and their stuff is award-winning. They’ve now expanded their vodka line with Haku, so named for the white rice on which it’s based, a short-grain Japonica rice. The rice gets fermented, and the resultant mash is distilled twice, blended, and then filtered through bamboo-based charcoal. Haku is mildly sweet with a smooth taste and delicate rice nose. For vodka lovers, it’s a new unique version to try either mixed or all by itself, and the price is very approachable.

[MIKA27]

Stephen King's New Book Is Out Today And Is Already Becoming A TV Series

The Institute, the latest book by Stephen King, is about a place where kids with special powers are forcibly held to be experimented on. And though the book hasn’t even been out for 24 hours, it’s already been picked up for a Hollywood adaptation.

Deadline reports that Spyglass Media Group optioned the book’s rights to be developed as a limited TV series, with Big Little Lies’ David E. Kelley writing and Lost’s Jack Bender directing.

Both Bender and Kelley are no strangers to the work of King. The pair previously worked together on the show Mr. Mercedes, and Bender also directed episodes of Under the Dome.

“I’m delighted to be working with Jack and David, the creative team behind Mr. Mercedes,” King said in a statement. “We think alike, and I believe The Institute is going to be a great success.”

Going by the book’s description, it sounds like a mix of X-Men (people with great powers being persecuted), A Clockwork Orange (human experimentation), It (kids versus evil adults), and even The Great Escape (the kids are locked up, they’re gonna try to get out, right?). And there’s probably a whole bunch of other weird shit in there too. It’s Stephen King after all.

No word on when or where we may see The Institute, however. The likely next step in the process will be for Spyglass to find a partner, be it a streamer or TV station, to air it.