Insects Are Dying At An Alarming Rate, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: it's not just the bees that are dying at an alarming rate, at least one guy bowled a perfect game on 9/11 and there was a big earthquake that no one felt.
Just About Everything Is Dying At An Alarming Rate
If you can, you might remember back in 2015 where folks on the internet would post an image of a person or thing smiling next to an image of that same person or thing looking very solemn, and then caption it with some form of "…but then you remember bees are dying at an alarming rate." What a fun time.
This week, the New York Times Magazine published a feature that not only confirms that bees are actually dying at an alarming rate, but that all insects, birds, plants and just about everything that relies on insects has seen their populations decrease by as much as 75 percent over the past 30 years.
Brooke Jarvis's story isn't so much a shocking revelation as it is a coherent stitching-together of many various studies and observations that, when examined as a whole, paints a shocking picture with one simple takeaway: if the bugs die, we all die.
It's also a reminder that, yes, climate change does exist and we are indeed feeling the effects of it right this very second. And that it's not going to wait around for debates to be had or legislation to be passed. The insects are dying at an alarming rate because the Earth is getting warmer. Have a good weekend.
A Guy From Western Massachusetts Bowled A Perfect Game On 9/11
You know, there's plenty in the news these days to get, rightfully, upset about. Like the story about insects dying at an alarming rate above. That's upsetting. And I don't mean this as a sort of stick-your-head-in-the-sand type of privileged ignorance, but: sometimes it's nice to just read something simple once in awhile. It's nice to read something that has a beginning and an end and you leave that piece of writing feeling that there are some things in this world that just have a beginning and an end and that's just it, you don't have to overthink it.
That said, Luke O'Neil, who writes the fantastic newsletter Hell World, published an interview this week with a man who bowled a perfect game on September 11, 2001.
His name is Bill Moro. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He's been working in a paper mill since he was 18 years old and he's now 67.
It's a really nice interview to read because both Luke and Bill seem so reasonable. Bill isn't sure about WTC7, but he thinks universal healthcare is a good thing. Sometimes it's easy to forget that most people are reasonable. You read stories about reporters going to bars in rural Pennsylvania to try and get the perspective of Real America and all that gets you is a bunch of racist people hanging out in bars in rural Pennsylvania, I guess.
That's not to say that neither Bill nor Luke are trying to portray either of themselves as Real America — I think if you asked them they'd say something like, hey we're just two guys, you know? But I do think that Bill Morrow bowling a perfect game on 9/11 is Real America. Not in a Back-To-Back-World-War-Chaps kind of a way, but more like, I think we all have highs and lows in our lives and bowling a perfect game is one of those American Highs and that September 11 is one of those American Lows.
Scientists Still Aren't Sure What Caused A Massive Earthquake That No One Really Noticed
By and large, earthquakes are normally characterized by an initial violent release of tension as one piece of earth's crust slides over another. But earlier this month, researchers were a bit baffled when they detected a monotonous rumbling that lasted for some 20 minutes, resonated nearly the world over but no one really payed attention to because of the low-magnitude.
Those who are familiar with The Bloop might see unidentified seismic activity as potential evidence that there is some unfathomably large ancient horror lurking in the depths of our planet and it is finally awakening. Well, that would be nice.
The reality, as Maya Wei-Hass finds for National Geographic, is that this weird slow quake isn't exactly alarming to researchers so much as it's kind of odd puzzle to solve. They think it's the product of magma chambers shifting underneath the Earth's surface, or maybe the fact that this seismic event took place off the coast of Mayotte that the particular makeup of the Earth there might have a filtering effect on what might be just perfectly normal seismic activity. They're not really sure! But they're going to look into it. And, chances are — just like the Bloop, which was eventually found to be just an icequake — it will not be an ancient horror.
