Nomads and Tramps: Siberian Sheila

Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.

— Francis de Sales, born in 1567

The notion that recent extraordinary events in federal politics were driven by policy differences, rather than just pure spite and collective madness, seems to have pretty comprehensively bitten the dust in the past week of post-coup bewilderment.

The dirty words of politics didn't used to be so vile

Ancient Foal Perfectly Preserved in Siberian Permafrost

Remains of hybrid human girl with Neanderthal mother discovered ...

Evolution's Holy Grail: 90000-year-old Hybrid Teenager Stuns Science   around 90,000 years ago was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, according to genome analysis of a bone discovered in a Siberian cave. This is the first time scientists have identified an ancient individual whose parents belonged to distinct human groups. The findings were published on 22 August in Nature1.   

“To find a first-generation person of mixed ancestry from these groups is absolutely extraordinary,” says population geneticist Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London. “It’s really great science coupled with a little bit of luck.”

Luck is right…what a needle in a haystack.

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TIL that the hieroglyphic hobo code probably wasn’t used as extensively as the internet suggests. However, hobos and tramps did tag bridges, water towers, and train cars with tramp writing, which usually consisted of their moniker (i.e. their hobo name), the date, and the direction they were heading in.

Hobos, or tramps, were itinerant workers and wanderers who illegally hopped freight cars on the newly expanding railroad in the United States in the late 19th century. They used graffiti, also known as tramp writing, as a messaging system to tell their fellow travelers where they were and where they were going. Hobos would carve or draw their road persona, or moniker, on stationary objects near railroad tracks, like water towers and bridges.

In 2008, corporate lawyer & city slicker Jodi Ettenberg quit her job to travel the world for a year…and then just never went back to her old job (or self). For 10 years, she traveled and ate her way through the world, documenting her adventures at Legal Nomads. For the 10-year anniversary of the site, Ettenberg has posted a retrospective highlighting some of her most memorable times.

The valley from above the Denisova Cave archaeological site, Siberia, Russia B. Viola / MPI f. Evolutionary A

Writing in a true voice was important. Presenting a glimmering version of yourself that doesn’t feel real is an easy path to discontent. You can follow your passion all you want, but if you’re not expressing it authentically, in a way that is indisputably you, the gap will catch up with you. The space between who you are and who you express yourself to be exists in varying degrees. But if it’s too large, especially if your work involves sharing your thoughts creatively, the disparity can easily engulf you. 

As I’ve been lucky enough to travel a bit over the last couple of years, this post about The Overview Effect, Mindfulness, and Travel particularly caught my eye. 

You cannot ignore the happenings in other places, or stick your head in the sand, because it’s too late — you’ve stepped away and looked at the planet in a different light. (Or, as I said to someone recently “once you’re a pickle you can’t go back to being a cucumber.”) While far less vivid or spectacular than a space trip, travel does tend to push people to think about the forest through the trees and to constantly pin current observations against past experiences. We all do this, naturally. But I think that the more you see, the more you have to compare ‘against’, which then permanently alters your views of the planet and of its people. The ultimate example of this, of course, is seeing it all from above, an orb glowing in the darkness of space.  

This reflection on her travels in Mongolia also had my head nodding.

I included this post because nothing since has compared to the magic of simply watching the identity I had dissolve, replaced by pure wonder. Who I was shortly prior didn’t matter, because everything in front of me felt so intensely new that it blotted out anything familiar. 

These wonder-filled moments, large and small, have happened to me while traveling, looking at art, lost in the company of others, watching heavenly bodies eclipse each other and even while working on this here website…and that’s a perfect succinct description of how it feels when it happens.

More on hobo graffiti from CityLab. (via open culture)

RECIPE: How to build a Nothingburger, step by step. By Ann Telnaes. (h/t Rick Edmonds)

THE AP AND BLOCKCHAIN: The Associated Press and the journalism blockchain startup Civil announced that they’ll work together on a technology that will let Civil newsrooms track the flow of their content and enforce licensing rights, Digiday’s Lucia Moses reports. The AP also will license its content to the 14-newsroom Civil network, which includes Block Club Chicago, The Colorado Sun, ZigZag and the investigative site Sludge.

IN RELATED NEWS: Quartz is launching its first paid newsletter, focusing on cryptocurrency, The Wall Street Journal's Ben Mullin reports. “Despite surging interest in them, cryptocurrencies remain opaque to most potential investors,” says Quartz co-president and editor-in-chief Kevin J. Delaney. “It’s surprisingly difficult to find clear and useful information on the web.”

THE POWER OF JOURNALISM: He had a heart attack. He went to a Texas hospital. A Kaiser Health News and NPR story on the plight of a 44-year-old teacher, who said “they’re going to give me another heart attack stressing over this bill,” led to a major markdown in what he owed — from $108,951 to $782.

COURAGE IN EDITORIAL CARTOONING: Pedro X. Molina has won this annual award for his work on repression and killings in Nicaragua. The award is given by the Cartoon Rights Network International. Here's a terrific profile of Molina from Danielle Renwick for Roads & Kingdoms. (h/t Anup Kaphle)