J. Beaman - The Magazine

We’ll start with some important, unknown facts about hyenas.

Hyenas are not scavengers. They kill around 95% of what they eat. More than their Disney inspiring neighbors. Hyenas will eat anything (as long as it is, or used to be, alive). A researcher in the Masai Mara observed Hyenas who seemed to be grazing but it turned out they were licking live caterpillars off the grass. That is awesome.

Hyenas are completely matriarchal. Adult males eat last and are constantly ridiculed by the rest of the pack (even the juvenile males are encouraged to abuse the males). Females have complete control over the mating process. Females choose who to mate with and they have an extremely long reproductive tract, so long that if they choose to they can, after having hot hyena sex, flush out the sperm. A fucking built in morning after pill. The females also have an extremely large clitoris, nearly indistinguishable from a penis, capable of becoming erect. And, to further make your head go whawhawhaweeee, the labia are fused and filled with fatty glands, looking then, like balls. Amazing.

And my favorite:

In one sitting a hyena can eat 30-40 lbs of meat. They eat everything in front of them, pulverizing bone for the minerals and marrow with their massive jaws and molars. The only problem is they can’t digest hairs or hooves. So what, they just vomit it up later.

“All that’s left when a hyena eats you is a pool of blood and your hooves” –Ian Chillag

Thanks to the Bryant Park Project and The Smithsonian.

This article is amazing. I’m going to be wearing moccasins soon. Or flip flops in Brasil. Havaianas!

In a 1997 study, researchers Steven Robbins and Edward Waked at McGill University in Montreal found that the more padding a running shoe has, the more force the runner hits the ground with: In effect, we instinctively plant our feet harder to cancel out the shock absorption of the padding. (The study found the same thing holds true when gymnasts land on soft mats—they actually land harder.) We do this, apparently, because we need to feel the ground in order to feel balanced. And barefoot, we can feel the ground—and we can naturally absorb the impact of each step with our bodies. “Whereas humans wearing shoes underestimate plantar loads,” the study concluded, “when barefoot they sense it precisely.”

How We’re Wrecking Our Feet With Every Step We Take — New York Magazine

The New Yorker has an amazing new article on elevators. I especially love this bit and it reminded me of how I feel about Airborne, astrology and other causational nonsense. For the record: there are no personality archetypes determined by the apparent relative positions of celestial bodies and you would have not gotten sick anyway.

And, this video, accompanying the New Yorker article, is fucking chilling. Try and watch it with the sound.

“In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer.”

Our Local Correspondents: Up and Then Down: Reporting & Essays: The New YorkerThis is another favorite bit.

“Passengers seem to know instinctively how to arrange themselves in an elevator. Two strangers will gravitate to the back corners, a third will stand by the door, at an isosceles remove, until a fourth comes in, at which point passengers three and four will spread toward the front corners, making room, in the center, for a fifth, and so on, like the dots on a die. With each additional passenger, the bodies shift, slotting into the open spaces. The goal, of course, is to maintain (but not too conspicuously) maximum distance and to counteract unwanted intimacies—a code familiar (to half the population) from the urinal bank and (to them and all the rest) from the subway. One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead. Mirrors compound the unease. Generally, no one should speak a word to anyone else in an elevator. Most people make allowances for the continuation of generic small talk already under way, or, in residential buildings, for neighborly amenities. The orthodox enforcers of silence—the elevator Quakers—must suffer the moderates or the serial abusers, as they cram in exchanges about the night, the game, the weekend, or the meal.”

Hat tip: Oliver.