The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally

The Warrior
 

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Today in HIstory

1624		Riots flare in Mexico when it is announced that all cults are to be closed.
1811		In a secret session, Congress plans to annex Spanish East Florida.
1865		Union troops capture Fort Fisher, North Carolina.
1913		The first telephone line between Berlin and New York is inaugurated.
1919		Peasants in Central Russia rise against the Bolsheviks.
1920		The Dry Law goes into effect in the United States. Selling liquor and beer becomes illegal.
1920		The United States approves a $150 million loan to Poland, Austria and Armenia to aid in their war with the Russian communists.
1927		The Dumbarton Bridge opens in San Francisco carrying the first auto traffic across the bay.
1929		The U.S. Senate ratifies the Kellogg-Briand anti-war pact.
1930		Amelia Earhart sets an aviation record for women at 171 mph in a Lockheed Vega.
1936		In London, Japan quits all naval disarmament talks after being denied equality.
1944		The U.S. Fifth Army successfully breaks the German Winter Line in Italy with the capture of Mount Trocchio.
1949		Chinese Communists occupy Tientsin after a 27-hour battle with Nationalist forces.
1965		Sir Winston Churchill suffers a severe stroke.
1967		Some 462 Yale faculty members call for an end to the bombing in North Vietnam.
1973		Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action by US troops in Vietnam.
1973		Four of six remaining Watergate defendants plead guilty.
1975		The Alvor Agreement is signed, ending the Angolan War of independence and granting the country independence from Portugal.
1976		Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life in prison for her failed attempt to assassinate Ford.
1991		UN deadline for Iraq to withdraw its forces from occupied Kuwait passes, setting the stage for Operation Desert Storm.
1991		Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II approves Australia instituting its own Victoria Cross honors system, the first county in the British Commonwealth permitted to do so.
1992		Slovenia and Croatia’s independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is recognized by the international community.
2001		Wikipedia goes online.

Riding an Avalanche

In this video, Tom Oye was snowboarding at Whistler, British Columbia, when an avalanche opened up beneath his feet. His helmet cam gives us his personal POV as he was tossed down the mountain.

(YouTube link)

But listen: that mechanical sound you hear is Oye's inflatable backpack airbag deploying, designed for just such an emergency. The bag helped keep him above the snow, and might have also helped if he were thrown into rocks or trees. They're not cheap, but could save your life.

The Straight Men Who Made America's First Gay Record

In the early 1960s, the record label Edison International was looking for unusual ideas for record albums. Photographer Murray Garrett recalled unknowingly being in a gay bar and hearing male performers sing songs with lyrics written for women. An idea was born. Love is a Drag was filled with soft jazz versions of standard love songs by an unnamed male vocalist. It was the first record album specifically produced for gay men, but it took 50 years for the origin of the album to surface.  

“When Murray asked Gene Howard about recording the vocals for the album, he said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, my wife would have a fit,’” Doyle says. Howard’s wife eventually approved, but insisted that the recording had to be done with dignity, and she wanted to be in the studio when it was made. To back Howard’s vocals, Ames’ team at Edison put together a group of established studio musicians for the various instrumentals: Dick Shanahan on drums, Heinie Beau on flute, Bobby Hammack on piano, Morty Corb on bass guitar, and Al Viola on guitar.
Garrett supposedly also came up with the record’s title, “Love Is a Drag,” whose meaning is explained in fine print on the back of the album as “Drag: (in music vernacular, a bore, a headache).” It’s unclear if he ever acknowledged the more coded definition of the word “drag,” long used in the queer community to describe someone flamboyantly dressed as the opposite gender.
The album’s limited pressing was finished in 1962, making it the first complete album of gay subject matter in American music history. Despite its groundbreaking substance, the record received zero media coverage, partly because the producers agreed to keep all the musicians anonymous. “The mystery was supposed to sell the album in the first place,” Doyle explains. “Famous people like Frank Sinatra were trying to guess who the vocalist was, wondering, ‘Do I know this person?’ If they had credited Gene Howard originally, it would’ve been totally different."

Love is a Drag was a hit among gay men who knew about it (Liberace even stole a copy), but the record label didn't know how to market it, and then they went out of business. The album became a footnote in history until DJ and music archivist J.D. Doyle began playing it just a few years ago, and then learned the album's story from Garrett. Doyle explains how Love is a Drag came about at Collectors Weekly. 

The Russian Spy Who Convinced America to Take ESP Seriously

In 1954, Soviet KGB agent Nikolai Evgenievich Khokhlov was sent to Germany to assassinate the leader of an anti-communist group. Instead, he defected and surrendered to U.S. agents. Khokhlov was glad to share the Soviet Union's spy secrets with America, including the loaded cigarette case he was to use in the assassination. But the KGB did not forget him.

Khokhlov later testified before the U.S. Congress about Soviet intelligence activities and became something of a media star. His story inspired a four-part series in the Saturday Evening Post called “I Would Not Murder for the Soviets,” and in 1957 he published a memoir, In the Name of Conscience. That was also the same year the KGB made an attempt on his life. After giving a speech in Frankfurt, Khokhlov had been served a cup of coffee, which he wrote in his memoir “did not seem to me as good as usual.” Soon he felt tired, and a “strange weight oppressed” his heart and stomach. Khokhlov collapsed in a parking lot. He had been dosed with thallium, a slow-acting poison that causes considerable pain before killing its victim. Khokhlov was lucky, though, and ultimately recovered after weeks in the hospital. His poisoning had coincided with the successful launch of Sputnik, and he reflected upon this in his book. “I, too, was an exhibit of the achievements of Soviet science,” he wrote. “Totally bald, so disfigured by scars and spots that those who had known me did not at first recognize me, confined to a rigid diet, I was nevertheless also living proof that Soviet science, the science of killing, is not omnipotent.”

Khokhlov did settle in the U.S., at first studying at Duke University. That's where he met J.B. Rhine, the founder of the Institute for Parapsychology in North Carolina. Something about Rhine's research spoke to Khokhlov, who knew of Soviet research into ESP and other parapsychological phenomena. Read about Khokhlov's extraordinary life at Atlas Obscura.

'Welcome to the Era of BS'

'Welcome to the Era of BS': A Message to My Doomed Colleagues in the American Media from a Russian Journalist

Dumbass Trump Wants To Kill Obama's Plan to Get You Overtime Pay

How Dumbass Trump Could Kill Obama's Plan to Get You Overtime Pay

Fox 'News'' Gutfeld On Millions Losing ACA Health Insurance: ‘So What?’

He speaks for the majority of wingnuts everywhere.

So a minuscule minority then.

Why is This Powerful Addiction-Fighting Substance Banned in the U.S.?

Why is This Powerful Addiction-Fighting Substance Banned in the U.S.?

Activist Files Federal Suit to Declare Electoral College Unconstitutional

Activist Files Federal Suit to Declare Electoral College Unconstitutional Under Slavery Ending Amendments

YIKES: Biloxi, MS Sends Out Tweet Renaming Martin Luther King Day 'Great Americans Day'

Biloxi decided MLK doesn't deserve a day anymore.

White Tennessee teen seeks tuition help after parents cut her off for dating black student

White Tennessee teen seeks tuition help after parents cut her off for dating black student

“I showed my parents his picture, and the conversation was over before it even began. My dad did not give me an option: he told me that I was not allowed to see Michael ever again. Why? Strictly because of skin color,” she wrote on the page, adding that her parents were disappointed in her telling her that she “could do so much better.”

Microsoft Employees Say They Were Forced to Watch Videos of Child Abuse, Sexual Assault and Murder

Former Microsoft Employees Who Say They Were Forced to Watch Videos of Child Abuse, Sexual Assault and Murder, Sue the Company Claiming PTSD

10 Celebrities Advocating for a More Sustainable Food System

10 Celebrities Advocating for a More Sustainable Food System

Study finds association between eating hot peppers and decreased mortality

Like spicy food? If so, you might live longer, say researchers at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, who found that consumption of hot red chili peppers is associated with a … Read more

Are You Eating Smuggled Avocados?

Are You Eating Smuggled Avocados?

It’s the Heat and the Humidity

New Study Finds: Why Lyme Disease is Common in the North, Rare in the South

When it’s hot and not too muggy, Lyme disease-bearing ticks hide out where people don’t tread. Scientists say that’s why the illness is rare in the South, and may eventually fade out along the Mason-Dixon line. The … Read more

Hairy-Legged Vampire Bats Feast on Human Blood

Now, there's a headline that can induce nightmares. There are three species of vampire bat (that we know of), and only one of them, the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), is known to drink the blood of mammals -mostly livestock. The white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi) and the hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) target birds for their blood. At least until now. Hairy-legged vampire bats have been drinking human blood in Brazil. That shocked scientists who know how chemically different bird blood and mammal blood is.

As Sandrine Ceurstemont reports for New Scientist, previous experiments have shown that when only pig and goat blood was made available to bats that were used to bird blood, many of them opted to fast rather than diversify their diet - and sometimes even starved to death.
But when Bernard and his team investigated the diets of a colony of hairy-legged vampire bats in the Caatinga dry forests of northeastern Brazil, they found something strange.
Genetic analysis of 15 faecal samples contained bird DNA as expected, but 3 of those samples contained a mixture of human and bird DNA - evidence that these particular individuals had been feeding on both.

This switch in diet could be due to the depletion of some wild bird species, plus farmers locking up their chickens at night. The implications are frightening, as bats have been known to spread hantavirus. Read more about the research that led to this discovery at Science Alert.

These Squirrels Are Running a Chocolate-Theft Ring

A convenience store in Toronto noticed their were having quite a few chocolate bars going missing. When they figured out who was taking the chocolates, the family who runs the store had quite the charming surprise.

(Video Link)

Over the years a local band of squirrels stole dozens of chocolate bars from the shop. As it turns out, the family itself may be to blame -years ago they started feeding the birds outside the shop and the excess food may have lured the squirrels into the area. Once the free food was gone, the squirrels thought there still must be some free snacks somewhere.

Animal Pictures