All posts tagged: tore

She tore out her L.A. hillside lawn and planted drought-tolerant plants

She tore out her L.A. hillside lawn and planted drought-tolerant plants

Published by Sam Flores

Water-hungry lawns are symbols of Los Angeles’ past. In this series, we spotlight yards with alternative, low-water landscaping built for the future. Julia Lee had no need for a new garden when she and her husband purchased their Cheviot Hills home eight years ago. The traditional 1950 home came with mature tropical plants in the back and a sprawling grass hillside lawn in front, and it suited them just fine. But as drought and wildfires dragged on in California in recent years, she started to question whether keeping the thirsty lawn made sense. “Our water bill was insane,” she says as she offers a tour of the former lawn, which is now filled with colorful native plants and drought-tolerant plants. “It was a waste of space. Our kids were getting older and didn’t play on the lawn. There was just no reason to keep a big green lawn.” After reading a Times story about Georg Kochi, a retiree who swapped his Koreatown lawn with plants suited for California, Lee was inspired by Kochi’s wild, wabi-sabi-style …

American racism tore her family apart. Now she shares the story of their reconnection : NPR

American racism tore her family apart. Now she shares the story of their reconnection : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. Today, a story about how American racism tore a family apart and how Pope Leo XIV was the catalyst for bringing them together. Last spring, when the news broke that the newly-elected pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, journalist Susan Saulny recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it. Her grandfather, George, was a Black bricklayer who raised his children in New Orleans. His brother Edward was Black, too, but a shade lighter. Enough to leave for Chicago in the early 1920s, remake himself as a white man and never come back. Susan grew up with just one picture of him. A young man, barely 19, propped on her grandfather’s China cabinet. Five words in Creole did all the work of explaining – Edward, passe blanc, white passing. A century later, Susan set out to find the white family Edward built in Chicago and to see whether …

Wuthering Heights reactions: How Emerald Fennell’s divisive adaptation tore the Independent’s culture desk apart

Wuthering Heights reactions: How Emerald Fennell’s divisive adaptation tore the Independent’s culture desk apart

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Brexit. JFK’s assassination. That blue and black or white and gold dress. All vaguely impressive sources of debate, but sorely lacking in the drama and volatility of The Independent culture desk’s first few days in a post-Wuthering Heights world. Emerald Fennell’s grass-eating, dough-molesting bodice-ripper – “adapted” “loosely” from Emily Brontë’s literary touchstone – has been the canary in the coal mine for our offices here, helping surface long-standing tensions and sharpening inter-desk rivalries. No, I kid. We’ve all just really, really disagreed with one another on it, Fennell comfortably reaffirming her position as the most divisive filmmaker currently working. Questions are constant. “Was Margot Robbie supposed to act like that?”; “Jacob Elordi gold tooth – yay or nay?”; “Did I enjoy Wuthering Heights or …

How 3 imaginary physics demons tore up the laws of nature

How 3 imaginary physics demons tore up the laws of nature

Published by skeptic

There is a long history of doing physics by imagination. Albert Einstein built his special theory of relativity after imagining himself chasing a beam of light. Erwin Schrödinger gave us a cat that was both alive and dead. The German mathematician David Hilbert demonstrated the counterintuitiveness of infinity by imagining a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and guests. By taking creative liberties, physicists use thought experiments to stress-test ideas and so better understand them. Curiously, three of the most enduring and perplexing thought experiments all involve what have come to be known as “demons”. The most famous is Maxwell’s demon, devised in 1867, which imagines a tiny being with strange but logical powers. Along with two other similar thought experiments – Laplace’s demon and Loschmidt’s demon – it still gets physicists scratching their heads today. Thinking about these demons, it turns out, can help us come to grips with some of the trickiest concepts in physics. “The exciting and amazing thing is that scientists are able to learn so much about reality by …