What was Moby like? He seems cool.
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We were both AV geeks at Darien HS in Darien, Connecticut. It was 1981, and he was 2 years behind me, i think, so we didnât have any classes together. He hung around with his sub-group of friends who we all called âthe punkies,â because of the music they liked, while my friends and I were d&d geeks. I recall some mild contempt that each of our sub-groups had for each other, but he was an otherwise nice kid. The lady who ran the AV department adored him, and I think kept in touch with him after high school. I remember him frequently playing with the reel-to-reel tape recorders, splicing the tape and looping it over and over on itself, or running the same length of audio tape through multiple machines, so he was into playing with sound long before the digital age.
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So basically the same as he ever was. 
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I remember once, I watched an interview of him on a talk show Isaac Mizrahi did. Isaac went to his apartment and chatted with him while Moby cleaned his stovetop. When Isaac asked him why he was cleaning his stovetop, Moby said âI want your audience to think about me every time they clean their stovetops.â
And dammit if I donât think about Moby every time I clean my damn stove top.
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Thatâs brilliant
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Maybe cheating to list this as âsomeone who made a notable difference to the worldâ, but none of the other topics are sad enough.
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That snail lived a long life. How long are snails supposed to live?
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It varies a lot. Some live less than a year, others take a few just to mature, and Roman snails are said to live as long as 2-3 decades. Animal lifespans seem fairly random to me, but snails cover a good range of sizes and niches â more species than vertebrates, you know â so it might not be surprising they are so different. The articles generally agree George was very old, as one last data point for Achatinella apexfulva.
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97âŚa great run! (pun intended)
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Off topic, but most people donât realize she was black.
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Oh no. I thought she would live forever. She was amazing - one of a kind.
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In her 2002 autobiography, âJust Lucky I Guess,â Ms. Channing revealed that when she was 16 her mother told her that her father was part black; she kept her racial heritage a secret, she wrote, for fear that it would be bad for her career.
That doesnât make it sound like she identified as POC.
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Well, yeah, at the time she didnât dare identify that she was mixed race. Doesnât mean she wasnât. Itâs important to acknowledge that great talent can be denied access simply by the discovery that the person isnât the societal norm in some way (white, straight, etc.). If sheâd acknowledged her paternal side, she probably would never have gotten the roles that made her a star.
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I understand that.
But weâre talking about a woman who was not raised African-American, had no idea she had any family connections to African Americans, apparently didnât make anyone suspect she was African-American, and only discovered there was a connection because her mother told her when she was nearly an adult.
She chose until later in life not to publicise it, and yeah that was because she was living in a racist society and thatâs a bad thing, but the point is she could.
So if no-one knew, she didnât experience it societally, and she didnât grow up with it, how can it matter unless someone wants to invoke the one-drop rule, which is itself racist? Note even her dad was only partly African American â at least from the article it doesnât say what his own relation was.
By that logic Elizabeth Warren really is Cherokee.
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According to Wikipedia, her paternal grandmother was African American.
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There are hidden costs when you know you have to hide who you are. Specifics, like she may have chosen to do her makeup and hair, for example, in a style to hide any trace. But also psychological: worried that the truth could come out and change everything. Itâs not the same as growing up with obviously dark skin, but that doesnât mean it didnât affect her negatively.
Also, speaking as someone with mixed heritage: itâs very personal, deciding what part(s) to openly acknowledge to the general public. But all the parts are real. Being able to pass, with âonlyâ 25% African American heritage, doesnât mean she isnât part black.
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As someone whoâs also mixed heritage⌠Iâm starting to feel like Iâm being put in a camp whose actual members would automatically kick me out.
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LOL!
Itâs just, Iâd love for us to be in a âpost-racialâ society where we can honestly say that someone who successfully hides their mixed heritage has therefore not suffered for being part of that heritage, but I donât think weâre there yet.
(Obviously, in a truly post-racial society one wouldnât feel any need to hide oneâs heritage.)
Also, which camp would have accepted her if it became publicly known that she was 25% AA? Probably neither.
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Thatâs because she could (and did) pass for White. (Not that I blame her.)
Excellent points all; her genetics are not the same thing as her lived experiences.
No, sheâs totally of African descent, biologically speaking⌠but thatâs not the same as actually living the Black experience.
I say this as someone who had a relative on my momâs side who was passing in the 1960âs, in Ohio⌠and when he was found out, he ended up murdered, âmysteriously.â His murder was never solved.
Iâd like to live in a society where none of our trivial differences matter⌠but I donât ever expect to see it happen unless Xenomorphs invade or something equally horrific forces humanity to âget the fuck over it.â
Thatâs kind of an assumption; many Black folks would likely have accepted her (especially since she was successful) while some others would feel resentment because of her ability to pass, whether she was aware that she was doing so, or not.
Thatâs an issue that Iâve dealt with my whole life as an obviously biracial woman with pale skin and long, dark hair:
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There are Black folks who just accept me as is, and thatâs the end of the story.
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There are Black folks who begrudgingly acknowledge my place in the community, but they are âfunny-actingâ about it (making needless snide remarks, jokes that arenât funny, and basic passive-aggressive bitchery.)
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Then there are self-hating Black folks who actively resent my existence altogether; out of their own self-loathing for their dark skin and tightly coiled hair, they willingly perpetuate negative stereotypes about both light and dark complected Black folks.
And White folks in general; let alone in my biological family?
Forget about it; though they were never blunt or direct about it, was always clear to me that I was not âone of them,â and never would be.
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