James Frey's Blog, page 29
August 6, 2023
More Sex = More Memories
Does a poor sex life lead to memory decline? Researchers at Penn State have discovered a potential connection between low sexual satisfaction during middle age and future cognitive decline.
The study, which focused on erectile function, sexual satisfaction, and cognition in men between 56 and 68 years-old, found that decreases in sexual satisfaction and incidents of erectile function displayed a connection with signs of memory loss later in life.
“What was unique about our approach is that we measured memory function and sexual function at each point in the longitudinal study, so we could look at how they changed together over time,” says Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State and co-author on the study, in a university release.
August 5, 2023
Tulare Returned
Tulare Lake re-emerged after intense storms battered the state this winter, and will likely remain in the Central Valley for months — and maybe years — to come.
By Shawn Hubler / Photographs by Mark Abramson
Officials say that the lake has reached its peak size and predict it will stay at its current level for the next one to two years.It sounds like the sea and approaches the size of Lake Tahoe. Its wind-driven waves are unexpectedly silky and warm. Tulare Lake seems to go on forever on the immense brown and green flat of California’s Central Valley, shimmering like a great blue mirage.
Three months have passed since the lake, which dates to the Ice Age, re-emerged in the basin that once held the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. Dammed dry by humans, it has periodically attempted a comeback, though rarely with the force seen after this winter’s storms.
First a trickle, then a flood, the water that coursed into the lake bed over a handful of months swallowed one of the nation’s largest and most valuable stretches of cropland in about the time it takes to grow a tomato. Thirty square miles, then 50. Then 100. Then more.
August 3, 2023
Cult of the Dead Cow Now
Story by Joseph Menn
Hacking group plans system to encrypt social media and other apps © Tom Brenner/For the Washington PostSAN FRANCISCO — Once known for distributing hacking tools and shaming software companies into improving their security, a famed group of technology activists is now working to develop a system that will allow the creation of messaging and social networking apps that won’t keep hold of users’ personal data.
The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a coding framework that can be used by app developers who are willing to embrace strong encryption and forsake revenue from advertising that is targeted to individuals based on detailed profiles gleaned from the data most apps now routinely collect.
The team is building on the work of such free products as Signal, which offers strong encryption for text messages and voice calls, and Tor, which offers anonymous web surfing by routing traffic through a series of servers to disguise the location of the person conducting the search.
The latest effort, to be detailed at the massive annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas next week, seeks to provide a foundation for messaging, file sharing and even social networking apps without harvesting any data, all secured by the kind of end-to-end encryption that makes interception hard even for governments.
August 2, 2023
James Larkin Gone
Larkin, 74, took his own life on Monday, just a little over a week before he was slated to stand trial for his role in running the web-classifieds platform Backpage.
Entrepreneur, journalist, and First Amendment warrior James Larkin has died, just a little over a week before he was slated to stand trial for his role in running the web-classifieds platform Backpage. Larkin, 74, took his own life on Monday.
A native of Maricopa County, Arizona, he leaves behind a wife and six children, as well as a string of newspapers and a legacy of fighting for free speech.
With journalist Michael Lacey, Larkin built the Phoenix New Times from an anti-war student newspaper into a broad—and still-thriving—record of Maricopa County culture and politics. New Times didn’t shy away from honest reporting on local law enforcement and power figures—including Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy—or on controversial issues like abortion, immigrant rights, or the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
“I had just come back from school in Mexico City and had been exposed to the Mexican student movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s and they were really serious radicals, serious revolutionaries, and a lot of them were killed in the ensuing years, murdered by the Mexican government. I realized that politics were serious,” Larkin told Reason in 2018. “I felt that the paper…really had an opportunity to be politically powerful.”
June 30, 2023
Long Live The Dog
Chefs around the country are going large with the garnishes. Eat up this guide to America’s most extravagant and irresistible hot dogs, with recipes to recreate them at home this July 4th weekend.
By Pervaiz Shallwani
FULLY LOADED At a recent Chaat Dog pop-up at Brooklyn’s Grimm Artisanal Ales, both all-beef and vegan hot dogs came with a variety of chaat toppings, including mango and corn-poblano. Find the recipe for the latter below. PHOTO: F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNALFEW DISHES are more recognizably Filipino than sisig, a sizzling platter of minced pig parts tossed in garlic, citrus and chiles. And perhaps no food is more manifestly American than the hot dog, a vehicle for endless interpretation.
So when chef Chance Anies set out to expand the menu at Tabachoy, his Philadelphia restaurant showcasing the Filipino-American food of his childhood, he hit upon the Sisig Dog, built to satisfy all his customers. “Filipinos know sisig, locals know hot dogs,” Anies said. He sourced Martin brand hot dogs, an American-made version of the style of frank popular in the Philippines. “They are bright red,” Anies said. “The color is artificial, but I felt like if we’re doing a Filipino hot dog, we need a Filipino hot dog.”
The result is a multiple-napkin, meat-on-meat beast: a blistered crimson dog in a toasted bun, slathered in curry mayo and topped with rich pork-belly sisig, a pickled carrot and green-papaya salad, with a final scattering of fried shallots and chopped scallions.
While that might sound a little over-the-top, it’s certainly not the most extravagant dog on offer these days. Consider the $29 version at the fine-dining restaurant Mischa, in Manhattan—or, for sheer audaciousness, the Slider Dog brought to Cleveland’s Progressive Field by local bar and restaurant Happy Dog, which comes loaded with Froot Loops, pimento mac and cheese, and bacon.
June 24, 2023
Octopus Farming. Really.
Plans for the world’s first commercial octopus farm are well advanced – just as science discovers more about this curious, intelligent and affectionate animal. Can it be done ethically?
by Ashifa Kassam in O Grove, Pontevedra
he sterile boardroom, much of it taken up by a lengthy white table, is at the heart of the sprawling building in northern Spain. The corporate chatter that fills this room these days, however, is dominated by the scene playing out one floor below, where about 50 adult male octopuses are in a tank the size of a budget hotel room.
A handful of the octopuses – the fifth generation to be born in this Spanish multinational’s concrete-and-glass office and research centre – skim through the shallow waters, some brushing up against each other while others tuck into the tank’s barren corners. A low-intensity light casts a pale glow as researchers lay the groundwork for one of the world’s most….
June 23, 2023
Cormac McCarthy Gone
BY JOHN WRAY
Cormac McCarthy in Santa Fe, N.M., in 2014. (Beowulf Sheehan)For the entirety of my writing life, Cormac McCarthy has been a mountain. Some of the novelists of my generation found the mountain beautiful; others found it oppressive. But virtually all of us, whatever our position or attitude, existed in its shade.
In spite of the enormity of his shadow, however, I’ve never before written about the author of so many novels I’ve studied and admired. In the two decades since my first book was published, I’ve fielded the boilerplate question about my influences no end of times, name-checking an almost absurdly ragtag crew: Shirley Hazzard, Denis Johnson, William S. Burroughs, Amos Tutuola, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, John Berger, Ursula K. Le Guin — even, just a few weeks ago, whoever ghost-wrote David Lee Roth’s memoir, “Crazy From the Heat.” But one name I’ve conspicuously avoided all these years has been that of McCarthy, who died last week at 89. Why on earth is that?
June 22, 2023
Bacon Goes Public
A portrait by British painter Francis Bacon will be publicly listed this summer, even as rising interest rates blur the case for investing in art
By Carol Ryan
Painter Francis Bacon in 1984. The British artist died in 1992. PHOTO: ULF ANDERSEN/GETTY IMAGESWhat would the late painter Francis Bacon make of it all? A portrait of his lover is about to make its stock-market debut, giving the average Joe access to the rarefied world of serious art collecting.
One catch is that the megarich may have enjoyed the best spoils already.
A company named Artex is launching a roughly $55 million initial public offering of Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer,” painted shortly after the couple met in 1963. Shares in the portrait will be sold for around $100 a piece and will list on a specially created art stock exchange based in Liechtenstein, giving regular investors the ability to buy and sell shares in a famous artwork on a stock exchange for the first time.
June 20, 2023
Church Repurposing
BY RAF CASERT
MECHELEN, Belgium (AP) — The confessionals where generations of Belgians admitted their sins stood stacked in a corner of what was once Sacred Heart Church, proof the stalls — as well as the Roman Catholic house of worship — had outlived their purpose.
The building is to close down for two years while a cafe and concert stage are added, with plans to turn the church into “a new cultural hot spot in the heart of Mechelen,” almost within earshot of where Belgium’s archbishop lives. Around the corner, a former Franciscan church is now a luxury hotel where music star Stromae spent his wedding night amid the stained-glass windows.
Across Europe, the continent that nurtured Christianity for most of two millennia, churches, convents and chapels stand empty and increasingly derelict as faith and church attendance shriveled over the past half century.
June 19, 2023
Discovering Ocomtun
Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discover an ancient Mayan city in the Balamku ecological reserve© Thomson ReutersMEXICO CITY, June 20 (Reuters) – A previously unknown ancient Maya city has been discovered in the jungles of southern Mexico, the country’s anthropology institute said on Tuesday, adding it was likely an important center more than a thousand years ago.
The city includes large pyramid-like buildings, stone columns, three plazas with “imposing buildings” and other structures arranged in almost-concentric circles, the INAH institute said.
INAH said the city, which it has named Ocomtun – meaning “stone column” in the Yucatec Maya language – would have been an important center for the peninsula’s central lowland region between 250 and 1000 AD.
It is located in the Balamku ecological reserve on the country’s Yucatan Peninsula and was discovered during a search of a largely unexplored stretch of jungle larger than Luxembourg. The search took place between March and June using aerial laser mapping (LiDAR) technology.
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