The Notorious Mrs. Mossler, Solving Murders via Genealogy, the 1977 NRA Revolt, Genius of Von Neumann

PLUS: Eleanor Rigby’s Grave, Stupid Ways of Setting Speed Limits, Greedy Doctors, Elite Secret Societies at Yale a Century Ago

𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒:

𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐛𝐲'𝐬 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞

What do we know about the real woman behind one of the Beatles' most famous songs? The real Eleanor was born in 1895 to parents Mary Rigby and Arthur Whitfield. She worked in a hospital in Liverpool, and in 1930 married a man named Thomas Woods. Eleanor lived in Woolton her whole life, and died at the age of 44 in 1939. But how did her name get involved with The Beatles?

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐫𝐬. 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐫

Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | Nov 2021

In “the trial of the century,” a Houston socialite was accused of plotting her husband’s murder—and of having an affair with her nephew. But Candace Mossler was only getting started.

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐚 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫

Raffi Khatchadourian | New Yorker | November 15, 2021

Genetic genealogists like CeCe Moore are cracking cold cases and transforming policing. As DNA analysis redefines ancestry and anonymity, what knowledge should we be permitted to unlock? Fascinating intro: A genealogist solves what had previously been a 30-year-old cold case murder in two hours.

𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐮𝐧𝐬

Elena Saavedra Buckley | Epic Magazine | Nov 2021

The story of the 1977 Revolt at Cincinnati, and the men who changed the course of the NRA forever.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐃𝐨𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦

Jan Hendrik Kirchner | Universal Prior | 16th November 2021 

How do you incentivise a doctor to give you an objective diagnosis, when the doctor will profit more from deciding you have a condition that needs treating? More generally, how do you evaluate an expert opinion when you are not an expert? Various models are gamed here (do skip the algebra). A good first question would seem to be: Is the doctor's diagnosis predictable?   

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲

Zachary Karabell | Delancey Place | November 19, 2021

On Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head and other secret societies 100 years ago. Excerpt from the book Inside Money by Zachary Karabell. Tap Day at Yale was the epitome of the elitist secret society traditions at some Ivy League colleges: “It happened every May, on a midmonth Thursday. The juniors of the college had been talking about it for months, anticipating what might happen, wondering if they would be included and anointed, or left out and humiliated.” …

The ceremony had originally been private, done in the shadow of night, with rumors of who was picked and who was not only gradually trickling out later. But in the 1870s, the juniors had had enough of waiting nervously in their rooms; instead they grumpily marched out to the Old Campus to wait together. So began the public spectacle of Tap Day that had grown by the turn of the twentieth century to involve hundreds of students and onlookers crowding the streets and cramming the windows of adjacent buildings, covered by major newspapers with the same gossipy pas­sion of the Ivy League football games that had come to define the clubby group of Northeast colleges that trained -- if not schooled -- the young men who would, it was assumed, lead the United States. And of those exclusive schools, Yale in those years was the most exclusive of all.”…

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐎𝐟 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐕𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐞𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐧

Tom Chivers | UnHerd | 16th November 2021 

Appreciation of a great mathematician and a consideration of the P vs NP puzzle as a metaphor for genius. Well argued. “There is, I think, some discomfort about calling people 'geniuses' these days, or in admitting that intelligence is a real thing or that it shapes history – but von Neumann was a genius, and his extraordinary intelligence shaped the modern world”

𝐄𝐒𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀:

𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄:  Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

—Marcel Proust

𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎: The Wrong Way to Set Speed Limits | YouTube | Not Just Bikes. On the "85th percentile" rule still used to set speed limits across North America, "which makes no sense at all once you think about it" (11m 08s)

𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎: The Swedish Art of Kulning | Tune in to a music-centric episode today, where reporter Abbey Perreault takes us into the world of kulning. For centuries, herdswomen in Northern Sweden have used this art to lure cows home with haunting melodies.

𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐎𝐑:  Saturday Evening Post’s collection of Thanksgiving Cartoons.

𝐆𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐄:  11 Thanksgiving Side Dishes the Pilgrims Didn’t Eat | Mental Floss | these ones are all pretty common and you’re probably used to them | Unusual Thanksgiving Side Dishes | Atlas Obscura | These ones, however, you probably have limited familiarity with. Interesting regional variations.

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒:  Mail Jumpers | In Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, mail delivery requires a little bit more athleticism than usual. That’s because this town is the first and only one in the United States where jumpers deliver mail from a passenger-carrying mailboat, a tradition that began in 1916 when the primitive roads were too difficult to traverse. It has continued uninterrupted, May through September, for the last 105 years. And yes, before you ask—people do fall in. All in a day’s work.

𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘: Photo Mosaic of the Milky Way

𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐌: Rest | Richard Jones

          It’s so late I could cut my lights

          and drive the next fifty miles

          of empty interstate

          by starlight,

          flying along in a dream,

          countryside alive with shapes and shadows,

          but exit ramps lined

          with eighteen wheelers

          and truckers sleeping in their cabs

          make me consider pulling into a rest stop

          and closing my eyes. I’ve done it before,

          parking next to a family sleeping in a Chevy,

          mom and dad up front, three kids in the back,

          the windows slightly misted by the sleepers’ breath.

          But instead of resting, I’d smoke a cigarette,

          play the radio low, and keep watch over

          the wayfarers in the car next to me,

          a strange paternal concern

          and compassion for their well being

          rising up inside me.

          This was before

          I had children of my own,

          and had felt the sharp edge of love

          and anxiety whenever I tiptoed

          into darkened rooms of sleep

          to study the small, peaceful faces

          of my beloved darlings. Now,

          the fatherly feelings are so strong

          the snoring truckers are lucky

          I’m not standing on the running board,

          tapping on the window,

          asking, 𝐼𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑘𝑎𝑦?

          But it is. Everything’s fine.

          The trucks are all together, sleeping

          on the gravel shoulders of exit ramps,

          and the crowded rest stop I’m driving by

          is a perfect oasis in the moonlight.

          The way I see it, I’ve got a second wind

          and on the radio an all-night country station.

          Nothing for me to do on this road

          but drive and give thanks:

          I’ll be home by dawn.