Ripped from the Headlines: October 2020: This Week In Culture: Current Events Vocab for October 31–November 6, 2020

Baron Wolman, who was Rolling Stone magazine's first chief photographer, died at 83 of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. His three years at the magazine from 1967–1970 coincided with the explosion of the counterculture in America as personified by larger-than-life talents like Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, and the Rolling Stones, all of whom Wolman captured for the magazine. Many of his images became famous, and he continued to shoot musicians throughout his career.

Borscht is a soup made from beets and a variety of other ingredients. Ukraine has applied to the UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural organization, to declare the soup as part of the country's cultural heritage and identity. Though the dish likely originated in Ukraine, Russia claims it as well, and since the two countries are bitter enemies at the moment this move has taken on an added symbolism.

Strange bursts of radio waves have been discovered coming from a point inside the Milky Way. FRBs, "Fast radio bursts," have been detected before, but never from somewhere relatively close. The bursts are short, but incredibly powerful — up to 100 million times more powerful than the sun's radiation. Scientists theorize that the source is a magnetar, a star with an intense magnetic field that might act like a cannon for focused bursts of energy.

Sir Sean Connery, the actor who played the first James Bond, died at 90. He won an Oscar in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables, and starred in a number of hit movies through the 1980s and 90s. He turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. Gauche is French for "left," and it's used to describe a person or action that's crude or socially awkward.

A Dutch metro train ran off the end of a high platform near Rotterdam, but instead of falling into the water 30 feet below, it was caught by the tail of a large whale sculpture, where it remained perched so the driver was able to safely evacuate. This extraordinary turn of events is what experts call "a fluke."

The recent discovery of an ancient skeleton in Peru has called a number of assumptions about gender roles in prehistoric societies. The bones belonged to a 17–19 year old woman and were buried along with a so-called "big game hunting kit," adding to existing evidence that both men and women hunted, possibly in equal numbers. Previous models for many hunter-gather societies assumed that men hunted and women gathered.

A new study shows that multitasking on more than one screen at once — say, checking Instagram while watching TV — may hurt your attention and memory, especially if you're young. While more research needs to be done, researchers encourage everyone to be mindful of how and how much they use screens and devices, especially as we enter into a period of more indoor time.

After the success of The Witcher, Netflix announced that it has commissioned several series based on another video game, Assassin's Creed. The deal includes a live-action show, plus animated series. No date was given for production or release of any of the shows. The game was adapted into a movie in 2016 that received terrible reviews and did poorly at the box office.

As the weather cools down and the pandemic worsens, it looks like there will be more TV-watching in our futures (when we're not learning vocabulary, that is). This list suggests nine binge-worthy comedies to cheer and entertain you in the coming weeks. Solace comes from the latin verb solari, meaning "to comfort" or "to console."

The Argentinian photographer Jorge Vargas has spent quarantine making portraits of his daughters using a wide variety of household objects as props. Shot in black and white against a plain white backdrop, the photos are playful, serious, beautiful, strange, and above all they show what imagination and collaboration are capable of even with limited options for creativity.