Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Sam Easter

Ned Raggett

@nedraggett.bsky.social

Hell with it, I'm just going to post the whole thing here via screencap and alt text. It's Kaleb Horton, man, his writing always deserves the second read, especially since it could have just easily been lost forever like so much else. Read it, share it.

A look at forgotten Hollywood landmarks
By Kaleb Horton

Let's say you come in from down south, and you're looking for an unsung movie landmark.

So you fly in to LAX, rent a car, blow right past Hollywood, leave Los Angeles county heading north, go over the Grapevine, gape at the monumental hills and, wow, there really is a Smokey Bear Road, then you turn off the air conditioner when the sign tells you. Once you come down the grade too fast and see the world's loneliest Denny's, you're well on your way to what you're looking for – the middle of nowhere.

You're going to Kern County to find the spot where Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of the greatest scenes in movie history, the crop duster sequence from "North by Northwest." It takes place in Indiana, of course, but the Indiana road sign and the imported corn field can't deceive this Bakersfield native. The parched and desolate heat of the scene feels too much like Kern County.

The scene people know off-hand — Cary Grant running from an airplane — isn't why "North by Northwest" is a classic. The film's greatness, as was often the case for Hitchcock, lies in its build-up, its suspense, its mood. The plane moment is almost anticlimax. It is those five minutes before Grant's desperate escape that constitute a mathematically perfect suspense scene. So expert is Hitchcock's hand that he creates suspense, a slow burning dread, with no camera tricks and no music in broad daylight.

Grant's character is a prototypical James Bond. His perfect suit, fast wit, high-alcohol tolerance and effortless charisma have got him out of every predicament so far. In the city, among people, he has powers. Take him away from people, put him nowhere, and he's just like us — totally helpless. He has no powers: His suit is no good out here; his million-dollar tailoring and perfect haircut is just vanity now. No amount of pretending can provide escape. Here, is the one place where he can die, and he gets by on the grace of God. All he can do is wait for what's coming.

So when you seek the lost landmark of this scene, you're looking for an idea as much as a place. You're on Highway 99 now, going 30 miles north of Bakersfield, looking for an unassuming patch of dirt that carries spiritual weight. The scene was filmed neart Garces Highway to the west of Delano. You'll think there's a handy exit for it. There's not. You'll probably get lost in Delano, counting on a connection. You're at once a million miles from Hollywood and a hundred miles away. It's lonely. The horizon sprawls forever like there's nothing past it. There are broken down trucks on the side of the road, plumes of smoke from faraway fires. You'll find Garces eventually.

You'll pass a bar called Rosy's Place, abandoned houses, an oil field, a prison, a cemetery, a sign that says "we clean headstones," and a whole lot of gold-on-brown punctuated by an occasional trailer or car going faster than you. You're looking for where Garces meets Corcoran Road. That's where this "North by Northwest" scene was filmed. You'll get a vague idea where it is but you'll never be exactly sure, since there's little impetus for clear signage 10 miles from a prison. Maybe Corcoran Road is unlabeled. Besides, that Indiana sign and the prop cornfield haven't been there in 56 years.

If you're anything like me, you'll lose the light and call it a day, unsatisfied with the route you took. You return to I-5 northbound. From the 5, you'll meet Route 46, and go through a place called Lost Hills, then back in to the location from Corcoran Road instead. That's how Hitchcock probably did it. More intuitive.

Still in the middle of nowhere, but on your way to Corcoran Road, you're right next to another Hollywood landmark: Blackwells Corner, James Dean's last stop. It's a glorified Texaco, and gas is 50 cents a gallon more than it should be. They sell Jelly Bellys and '50s kitsch artifacts — plates with Marilyn Monroe's face on them, and so forth. They really figured out how to cash in on death. You don't want to stop here.

But I stopped. I asked the kid at the Blackwells Corner counter how to get to Corcoran Road. He gave me a look that said "there's no reason to go there," and then wearily told me where to go anyway. I was about 8 miles from the destination.

Going there is a meditative experience. You're not just going to the middle of nowhere. You're going to the perfect nowhere. Going alone, in the hypnotic heat of the Central Calfiornia Valley, you might even forget what year it is. There is no reason to believe the road would be so well preserved for half a century, intimately tied to the career of an actor born in Bristol 111 years ago, but it has been.

There's an abandoned house. A barn with a cross on it. But almost nothing has changed in 56 years. At some point new lines were added on the road. There's overgrowth where there didn't used to be overgrowth. A couple discarded Budweiser cans from who knows when, but mostly it's identical. This is the same sleepy loneliness that Alfred Hitchcock used to make great art in 1959. And that may sound dull, but tranquility is the point. You stand on that dirt and there's no distraction from what's in your soul. It's an inner destination, not an outer one.

I told my grandma about it when I got back to Bakersfield. She told me her Uncle Harold thought it was the prettiest road in America. And she showed me a picture of a Corcoran grade school class posing in the dirt with Grant and Hitchcock. It's just a field trip picture. The kids are fidgeting, many with arms folded, some shielding their eyes from the sun, all with obedient smiles. They'd all be in their sixties now, but they'd remember where this road is.

It emphasized the ugliness of James Dean's last stop becoming a place to sell T-shirts. It's about what we preserve, and what we don't, and what we remember, and what we don't. It's easy to find shrines to morbidity and hard to find meaningful places. For those, you have to go looking.

November 26, 2025 at 9:52 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Robby Lerman

@rbrett.bsky.social

After you help your boss convert a doc to PDF

November 22, 2025 at 4:55 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Karen Attiah

@karenattiah.bsky.social

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...

Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.

www.washingtonpost.com

November 18, 2025 at 6:48 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Joost van Spanje

@joostvanspanje.bsky.social

Today in Dutch newspaper @parool.nl:

The murder of a lawyer in 2019 made judges sentence Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent 71% harsher on average in the weeks after.

The researchers who discovered it call it a salience effect - judges paying more attention to particular traits that a suspect has.

November 4, 2025 at 11:29 AM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Jim Calabro

@calabro.io

This is a fun chart!

The green is the main bsky load balancer traffic throughput from Saturday night, and the purple is how much traffic there was 7 days before (the previous Saturday)

The spike is due to the world series - pretty incredible! ⚾

A chart of the main bsky backend load balancer request throughput compared to 7 days earlier (the previous Saturday). There's a massive spike during the world series game.

November 3, 2025 at 6:05 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Amy Ash

@lolennui.bsky.social

brand new sentence

Danny K @dannykpolitics.bsky.social · Oct 6

WATCH: ‘Portland Frog’ pepper balled by ICE agents

October 8, 2025 at 11:37 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Ryan Teague Beckwith

@ryanbeckwith.bsky.social

Editor in chief, city editor, features editor

October 7, 2025 at 12:12 AM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Conrad Hackett

@conradhackett.bsky.social

The sport that is 'America's sport,' according to US adults:
Football 53%
Baseball 27%
Basketball 8%
Soccer 3%
Auto racing 3%
Hockey 1%
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/05/by-a-wide-margin-americans-say-football-not-baseball-is-americas-sport/

Chart showing more than half of Americans (53%) say America’s sport is football – about twice the share who say it’s baseball (27%). Much smaller shares choose one of the other four sports we asked about: basketball (8%), soccer (3%), auto racing (3%) or hockey (1%). We also included the option for Americans to write in another sport. The most common answers volunteered were golf, boxing, rodeo and ice skating.

October 5, 2025 at 10:10 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

John Schwartz

@jswatz.bsky.social

Aw, no. Not Jane Goodall. www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91

She used her global fame to draw attention to the plight of dwindling chimpanzee populations and, more broadly, to the perils of environmental destruction.

www.washingtonpost.com

October 1, 2025 at 6:16 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Jacob Bogage

@jacobbogage.bsky.social

Lightning round of what’s closed and what’s open during this government shutdown.

Got questions?

Drop them in the replies and I’ll work to answer them through the day.

October 1, 2025 at 12:08 PM

Sam Easter

@samkweaster.bsky.social

What has Tom Hanks done now

AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · Sep 25

🇩🇰 Denmark said a "professional actor" was behind drone flights over multiple airports this week in a "hybrid attack" designed to create fear, adding it would acquire new capabilities to detect and down drones.
➡️ u.afp.com/SWMm

September 25, 2025 at 11:02 AM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Ryan Teague Beckwith

@ryanbeckwith.bsky.social

If you have an extra $10 a month to spare, here's a list of worker-owned cooperative news sites you might want to support:

• 404 Media
• Defector
• The Flytrap
• Flaming Hydra
• The Appeal
• Aftermath
• Racket
• Hell Gate
• The 51st
• The Colorado Sun
• Range Media
• Discourse Blog
• Pop Heist

September 19, 2025 at 2:00 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Philip Bump

@pbump.com

YouGov asked Americans to identify which elements of American culture are associated with the MAGA movement. I took the data and made some charts and an interactive. www.pbump.net/o/the-maga-s...

The MAGA subset of American culture

One of the things I appreciate about the polling firm YouGov is that they are able to poll a lot of things over a short timeframe. One effect of that is that they can ask unusual questions and get sta...

www.pbump.net

September 16, 2025 at 2:25 PM

Sam Easter

@samkweaster.bsky.social

Did a double take when I realized the outlet

Reuters @reuters.com · Sep 13

Charlie Kirk's allies warn Americans: Mourn him properly or else reut.rs/3JYLkkp

Charlie Kirk's allies warn Americans: Mourn him properly or else

After the fatal shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, U.S. Republicans have a warning for Americans: Mourn him respectfully or suffer the consequences.

reut.rs

September 14, 2025 at 1:01 AM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Matt Pearce

@mattdpearce.com

Tapping the sign.

mattdpearce.substack.com/p/the-plotle...

In my own past work as a reporter covering the public violence of mass shooters and terrorists, I saw that the emotional and propaganda impulses of the political arena almost always seek clarity at the cost of accuracy, indulging a tendency to look away from the inevitable chaos of biographical truth: The killers have narrative, in a sense that the events in their lives follow one after another, but frequently lack plot. The James Earl Ray who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 was a racist, it's true, but that's almost giving the real Ray too much coherence. It was Dr. King who was one of the great and inevitable Americans, the Hegelian world-historical figure hauling us toward to our republican destiny; Ray was a small-time criminal and a drifter interested in hypnosis who was thinking about going into the pornography business. What's ridiculous is that we ever had to know who Ray really was. The biographical limitations here are that the more you learn, the less you really understand.

September 12, 2025 at 2:47 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Amarnath Amarasingam

@amaramarasingam.bsky.social

Toronto man wakes from nap to find himself falsely accused online of killing Charlie Kirk www.thestar.com/news/gta/tor...

September 11, 2025 at 10:33 PM

Sam Easter

@samkweaster.bsky.social

It's important to cool it until we see something more substantial than "officials said." We don't have anything yet.

Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · Sep 11

NYT on the alleged messages on the shooter's weapon:

According to a preliminary internal report circulated inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, federal and local officials recovered ammunition with the shooter’s rifle that appeared to be engraved with statements “expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.”

But a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that report had not been verified by A.T.F. analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted. In fast-moving investigations, such status reports are not made public because they often contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information.

September 11, 2025 at 4:30 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Eric Columbus

@ericcolumbus.bsky.social

Here is the New York Times from September 11, 2001, already old news by the time I picked it up from my doorstep. I’ve never been able to open it up or throw it out.

Photo of the newspaper inside a blue plastic home delivery bag

September 11, 2025 at 2:48 PM

Reposted by Sam Easter

Nolan Hicks

@ndhapple.bsky.social

The Salt Lake Tribune had a photographer at the Charlie Kirk rally, who has sent back photos of the immediate aftermath -- www.sltrib.com/news/2025/09...