A weekly collection of links lovingly curated by Colin Wright.
The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe
“Ken Eto left the meeting at Caesar DiVarco’s club on Wabash knowing they were going to kill him. It was midday. The plan was to get up with Johnny Gattuso and Jay Campise that evening, then they’d take him to Vince Solano and they’d all have dinner together. Eto walked back to his black ’76 Torino coupe, illegally parked, and saw he’d gotten a ticket. He drove around for a while. He had to figure out what to do, or what he could do. Around 3 p.m., he got back home to Bolingbrook. The thing was the life insurance. Mary Lou needed to know where the $100,000 policy was. He also had to give her the pawn slips — tell her to get everything out of hock by the end of next week, February 18, 1983, or she’d lose it all. And the lease for the restaurant in Lyons — Mary Lou needed to make sure it got signed. That way, after he was gone, at least some money would be coming in.”
Why Salvador Dalí Is the Most Faked Artist in the World
“In a career spanning more than 50 years, Dalí produced a vast number of paintings, etchings, lithographs, and sculptures. But fake reproductions of his art constitute a larger market. In the 1980s, during an art investment bubble, experts believe hundreds of thousands to millions of fake Dalís began to circulate, leading to $625m to $1B in sales of fake Dalí art in the US. Worldwide, fraudulent sales may have reached $3B.”
The Plan to Map the Entire Human Immune System
“The scale of this challenge is exponentially greater than the Human Genome Project, the international effort to sequence all 3 billion base pairs in human DNA and map all 20,000 human genes, which took more than a decade to complete. The data in the human immunome is millions of times larger and vastly more complex. It does not merely include the legions of lymphocytes, neutrophils, and monocytes/macrophages, which biologists have pieced together and studied over many decades, but all of the interactions these cells have, over a person’s life, with pathogens, toxins, and the consequences of their diet and lifestyle.”
Russia Has a Vodka Addiction—So Does Vladimir Putin, But Not the Same Way
“On that date, Putin created a new company called Rosspirtprom — an acronym for Russian Spirits Industry — to seize control of the means of vodka production. It was a move that not only helped Putin amass enormous wealth over the coming two decades, but was a critical first step in cementing his grip on the Russian economy and the Russian people, who would help line his pockets while his vodka helped ruin their health.”
A Weed Is Swallowing the Sonoran Desert
“The buckets of moisture heaped on the West this winter have solved some problems while watering others. Billions of canary-yellow orbs now drape southern Arizona’s desert like a fungal carpet. Vast fields of stinknet, an invasive shin-high herb also known as globe chamomile, emerged in early spring, out-competing native plants with startling efficiency. And when these swaths of yellow dry out and turn brown this summer, they will become fuel for wildfires that, as botanists have discovered, only end up expanding their range. It’s a weed that helps create the void it fills.”
How to Survive a Car Crash in 10 Easy Steps
“Some symptoms include: completely forgetting how to upload a video on Instagram. You know how to record one — you’ve filmed yourself six different ways lying in your hospital bed, the TV on but muted in the background, colors reflecting on the planes of your face, while saying in a death-warmed-over voice, Hi everyone, I’m alive but I have a trau-ma-tic brain injury.”
India’s Religious AI Chatbots Are Speaking In the Voice of God—and Condoning Violence
“At least five GitaGPTs have sprung up between January and March this year, with more on the way. Experts have warned that chatbots being allowed to play god might have unintended, and dangerous, consequences. Rest of World found that some of the answers generated by the Gita bots lack filters for casteism, misogyny, and even law. Three of these bots, for instance, say it is acceptable to kill another if it is one’s dharma or duty.”
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