Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 30 Jun 2026 20:35 UTC

  62 points

  7

  on: Ben Pace’s Short­form Feed

  From Joseph Mitchell’s 1944 article in the New Yorker titled “Thirty-Two Rats from Casablanca”, an account of how New York City worked to prevent an outbreak of the Black Death.

  When the Coast Guardsmen are satisfied a ship is empty of humans, they seal the holds and cabins and open cans of hydrocyanic, liberating the gas. They even fumigate the lifeboats; rats often hide in them. After a certain number of hours—ten for a medium-sized ship—the holds are opened and aired out, and the Coast Guardsmen go below and search for dead rats. The rats are dropped in oil-paper bags and brought to a laboratory in the basement here. They are combed for fleas. The fleas are pounded in a mortar, put into a solution, and injected into guinea pigs. Then each rat is autopsied and examined for signs of plague. Then bits of spleens and livers are snipped out, pooled, and pounded up. They are also put into a solution and injected into guinea pigs. If the fleas or the rats are infected, the pigs sicken and die. We began this work in 1921, and for twenty-two years we injected hundreds of generations of pigs with the fleas and spleens of rats from practically every port in the world without turning up a single Black Death germ. We didn’t want to find any, to be sure, but there were days when we couldn’t help but look upon our work as routine and futile.

  “Now then, late in the evening of January 10, 1943, the French steamship Wyoming arrived from Casablanca, Africa, with a miscellaneous cargo, chiefly wine, tobacco, and vegetable seeds. A big convoy came in that evening, sixty or seventy ships, and we didn’t get to the Wyoming until next day. Casablanca was on the plague list at that time; there had been an outbreak in December, shortly before the Wyoming sailed. The crew was carefully examined. No sign of illness. Then the captain brought out a deratization certificate stating that the ship had recently been fumigated and was free of rats; this certificate later turned out to be worthless. She was allowed to dock at Pier 34, Brooklyn, where she discharged some bags of mail. Next day, she proceeded to Pier 84, Hudson River, and began discharging her cargo. Some rats were seen in her by longshoremen, and on January 13th we went over her and found evidence of infestation. She was allowed to continue unloading. On January 18th we fumigated her at her dock and found twenty rats. We combed and autopsied the rats, and inoculated a guinea pig. Four days later the pig sickened and died. An autopsy indicated plague infection and cultures from its heart blood showed an oval organism which had all the characteristics of Pasteurella pestis. We made a broth of tissue from this pig and inoculated a second pig. It sickened and died. It was the Black Death, no doubt about it. We had found it in the harbor for the first time in forty-three years.

  “In the meantime, the Wyoming had moved from the Hudson to Pier 25, Staten Island, for repairs. On January 29th we went aboard her, removed all excess dunnage and gear to the decks, and ripped open all the enclosed spaces in the holds; we were afraid the hydrocyanic hadn’t penetrated to these spaces. Then we refumigated. Twelve more dead rats were found. On the same day we got in touch with Dr. Stebbins, the Commissioner of Health for the city, and told him about the situation. We were greatly apprehensive. The Wyoming had touched at piers in rat-infested sections in three boroughs and there was, of course, a distinct possibility that infected rats had got ashore and were at that moment wandering around the waterfront, coming in contact with local rats and exchanging fleas. Mr. Holsendorf, the Health Department’s rat consultant, quickly got together some crews of trappers and they began setting break-back traps on the Brooklyn pier, the Manhattan pier, and the Staten Island pier, and in building in the vicinity of each pier. The trapping was done unobtrusively; we were afraid a newspaper might learn of the matter and start a plague scare. Early in February the first batch of rats was sent for autopsies to the laboratory of the Willard Parker Hospital, an institution for contagious diseases, at the foot of East Fifteenth Street. We waited for the report with considerable anxiety. It was negative on every rat, and we began to breathe easier. Mr. Holsendorf and his crews trapped from the end of January to the middle of May and the reports continued to come in negative. At the end of May we concluded that no Wyoming rats had got ashore, and that the city was safe.”

  I posted this substantially because I deeply admire that they did this reliably for twenty-two years before finding an actual case. Though I’ll note that I don’t believe that it is the right call not to inform people that there is high-alert for an outbreak of a deadly plague.

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #87 (Tues­day 6/​30)

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 28 Jun 2026 10:30 UTC

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform

  Hopefully it’s obvious, if your writing is widely read and says important things, there will always be people calling you overconfident. You cannot add enough qualifiers such that all people stop reading disagreements as your reasoning being overconfident.

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #86 (Tues­day 6/​23)

Lev­er­aged on be­ing right

The Fi­nan­cial Ledger The­ory of Apologies

[CANCELED] Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #85.6 (Tues­day 6/​16)

Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes, June ’26

The Power to Punish

Im­pres­sions at the Ex­trem­ity of Civilization

Te­quila Sun­set at the Hog’s Head (A Scene)

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 13 Jun 2026 4:38 UTC

  9 points

  3

  in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Lighthaven East—A Fea­si­bil­ity Study

  I kinda vibe this. “Lighthaven East” is in Boston or NYC, is a more intellectual place. “Lighthaven DC” is a different beast with a very different focus (e.g. perhaps it works far harder to be politically neutral ground).

Park­in­son’s Heuris­tic: The Only Time To Do Anything

[CANCELED] Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #85.5 (Tues­day 6/​9)

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 5 Jun 2026 5:59 UTC

  7 points

  1

  in reply to: Adele Lopez’s comment on: Cole Wyeth’s Shortform

  I’d want to see any statistic before I believed that. There weren’t that many writers even writing on LW during Inkhaven 2, and the ones that were (e.g. Lawrence Chan, Katha Grace, Oliver Habryka, etc) I think mostly wrote pretty good stuff.

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 4 Jun 2026 23:52 UTC

  2 points

  2

  in reply to: Alexei’s comment on: Alexei’s Shortform

  I do really think there’s a lot of using-AI and a dearth of understanding-how-people-are-using-AI.

  I think using AI is often good, but I would like more understanding of what’s going on.

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 4 Jun 2026 21:01 UTC

  9 points

  5

  in reply to: Andrea_Miotti’s comment on: abramdem­ski’s Shortform

  You keep saying good things you’ve done as though it means you couldn’t possibly have also done the bad things you’re being accused of.

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 2 Jun 2026 4:45 UTC

  11 points

  2

  on: “Con­ta­gious Hum­ming” to Silence a Room

  Thanks for the writeup.

  I believe @Duncan Sabien (Inactive) is the person responsible for this being a widespread tool in our culture. (I use this at basically all events I run to gather the attention of a large group for a talk or announcement.)

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #85 (Tues­day 6/​2)

• Ben Pace, the Vacationing Vagabond 30 May 2026 23:26 UTC

  5 points

  1

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Some Dat­ing Stories

  FWIW my current stance is that this content is good for the reasons you mention, but that I (and I suspect many others) would like slightly better ability to filter it out of our day-to-day site experience.

  My first idea is that standard NSFW content (i.e. explicitly sexual) should be able to be flagged by readers as such (not relying on the author to get it right). For posts it should let you know at the top of the post, either in the tags or beside the author name and date) and that NSFW comments should be click-to-view, like how Reddit does with many images.

  

  And of course, users like Wentworth should easily be able to hit a toggle in their user settings for “don’t blur NSFW content for me”.