Elsewhere for April 20, 2019

You should read this for 4/20/2019:

Art and Film

1840 – Notre Dame avant restauration
Notre Dame Cathredral before the 19th century restoration. And before the 2019 fire.

Books, Writing, and Language

Today a customer mentioned that she could get a new hardcover book online for $15.

Our mission is not to shame anyone for their shopping practices, but we do feel a responsibility to educate about what it means when a new hardcover is available for $15 online.

Food and Drink

Via NPR: Saving The Story Of Grits, A Dish Born Of Poverty Now On Fine-Dining Menus Erin Byers Murray has just published a book Grits: A Cultural and Culinary Journey Through The South.
“For grits, every major pivot point in the story line involves appropriation,” writes Murray in her book. “It started with the fateful naming of the bowl of cracked maize.” It’s said that British colonists arriving in Virginia were presented by Indigenous people with steaming bowls of this maize, a dish that the colonists began referring to as “grist,” which later morphed into “grits.”
See also NPR’s From Hooch To Haute Cuisine: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger’s Corn Gets A Second Shot

History and Archaeology

Romans brought rabbits to Britain, experts discover

Who brought the first rabbit to Britain? Not, it would seem, the Normans, who were previously thought to have introduced the animal to England in the 11th century.
Instead, re-examination of a bone found at a Roman palace more than half a century ago has shown that it belonged to a rabbit that may have been kept as a pet by the villa’s owners – making it Britain’s first bunny.

Science and Nature

Wake up, people: You’re fooling yourself about sleep, study says
Discovery! 3rd Planet Found in Two-Star ‘Tatooine’ Star System

Society

Former Navy rear admiral: Ilhan Omar has a point

Technology

How to delete your Facebook account so the social network stops tracking your data
Second-Gen Apple Pencil Could Prevent You from Unlocking Your Car

Women’s Work

Via @tkingdot Tracy King: If anyone ever wonders how so many women in STEM are written out of history, you can see it live and in action

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Via NPR: Highlights From The Mueller Report, Annotated
Meet The People In Trump’s Orbit Who The Mueller Report Says Ignored His Orders

. . . the threshold for charging the president might have been breached, had staffers not resisted his directives to engage in actions that would have impeded the investigation.

Via Forbes: The Barr Cover-Up: Call It What It Is

He’s spent weeks now completing the broadest possible universe of redactions, removing both grand-jury-related material as well as the especially unclear vague references to “peripheral third parties.”  The more latitude he has to redact, the more latitude he has to protect the president. The less the public will know what’s in the full report.
This is all part of a consistent pattern designed to minimize the release of damaging information. One would hope that the highest law enforcement officer in the land would be more of an honest broker than a spin doctor, but clearly in these hyper-partisan times that’s too much to hope for.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Drunk on smoke: Notre Dame’s bees survive cathedral blaze