John McPhee, who has contributed stories to The New Yorker since 1963, including many about geology and earthquakes, was in Princeton, New Jersey, about thirty miles from the epicenter. “My whole house shook,” he told me. He had never experienced an earthquake before, but had always wanted to. “I’m ninety-three years old, and I waited ninety-three years for the earthquake.” McPhee immediately understood the rarity of Friday’s tremor. Seismological activity of this type usually occurs along faults that separate tectonic plates, and the New Jersey area is not considered an active plate boundary.

https://link.newyorker.com/view/5be9fbf02ddf9c72dc8975a0kt177.3sis/b19e168e

In 1979, a mild earthquake rattled the unincorporated community of Cheesequake, New Jersey, which is about twenty-five miles from Princeton. It did very little damage, except to a science classroom at a local school. McPhee was away from home at the time, but he wrote about it in his book “Assembling California,” and continued to hope that he would live through a quake. He remembered talking with a nephew who had lived through several in Los Angeles. “He was constantly telling me about being at grocery stores with bottles and cans falling off the shelves,” McPhee said. “I envied him! I don’t envy him anymore.”

TIL that Muammar Gaddafi submitted a proposal to the UN that Switzerland be abolished as a state and merged into Italy, Germany, and France [source, comments]

REDRUM

I don't think this dude understands what this is evidence of

The IDF has fully withdrawn from Khan Younis and the rest of southern Gaza; no Israeli forces remain in the strip, except Gaza City and its outskirts

me and postshitposting

some other aftershock in NYC