The Deep Sea is a fun little web toy where you scroll down into the ocean to see the depths at which different animals (and a few plants) hang out. Warning: if you start scrolling you probably won’t be able to stop until (spoiler alert!) you reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
I was surprised to learn many things along the way, including that elephant seals can dive to 2400 meters (about a mile and a half), there’s such a thing called the headless chicken fish, the Cuvier’s beaked whale is the deepest diving mammal (~1.8 miles), and that “more people have been to the Moon than the Hadal zone” (past 20,000 feet deep).
Two must-read pieces for your weekend
Alex Jones. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Carve out some time this weekend for reading. This Sunday’s New
York Times Magazine has two can’t-stop-reading pieces that deserve your
attention. They are already up online.
The first is from one of the best magazine writers in the
country — Pamela Colloff, the senior reporter for ProPublica and staff writer
for The New York Times Magazine. Her
latest piece shows why. It’s about a lifelong con man whose testimony from
alleged jailhouse confessions has led to 34 convictions, including four who
have been sent to death row. One of those cases may lead to an innocent man’s
execution. In addition, the con man’s cooperation might have helped him avoid
trouble for sexually assaulting a minor. (He later allegedly assaulted
another.)
The reporting is meticulous and the writing is superb as Colloff
digs through a case that is more than 30 years old, but remains controversial
and active.
The second piece is a first-person feature written by Josh Owens
called, “I
Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It.”
Many already believed the InfoWars owner was off the rails, but
the allegations in this story are even more stunning than we’ve heard before —
drinking while speeding through traffic, getting into punching contests with
employees, wild fits of rage, shooting animals. And, especially, details about
Jones’ outrageous conspiracy theories.
You have to read it
to believe it.
For me, Erik Larson is one of the best nonfiction storytellers around. I loved bothThe Devil in the White City (about the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893) and In the Garden of Beasts. So when his new book, The Splendid and the Vile, comes out in February, I’m gonna hop on it right away. As the subtitle says, the book is about Winston Churchill and Britain during the the Blitz.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports — some released only recently — Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.