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Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski | ProPublica | April 6, 2023 | 2,936 words
No matter where you get your news, you’ve likely seen this story sometime in the last 24 hours. It’s a bombshell investigation that reveals how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received lavish gifts from a billionaire Republican donor named Harlan Crow, likely in violation of federal law. Said gifts include international cruises on a staffed superyacht, a Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass, flights on a private jet, and annual vacations to Crow’s luxury compound in upstate New York. Anyone with an iota of respect for democracy should be appalled — albeit unsurprised, given everything we already know about Thomas’s associates, including his wife. Read it and rage. But also read it and admire the craft that went into telling the story. It is rich in detail, yet precise. Its tone is finely tuned. The selection and placement of quotes are [chef’s kiss]. The writers dole out gobsmacking information throughout the piece, right down to the kicker. This is top-notch reporting and delivery. A+ all around. —SD
Michael Hall | Texas Monthly | April 4, 2023 | 8,672 words
The legend of Robert Johnson dwarfs the man himself in many ways. Johnson wasn’t the first recorded blues musician, nor the most prolific of his era. Yet, his brief career and early death shrouded him in mystery and mythology, ultimately influencing the evolution of popular music itself — and confounding would-be biographer Mack McCormick. McCormick, who spent much of his life chasing down the stories and music of men like Johnson, is the focus of this remarkable story, but he’s by no means a hero. He may have been once, when Texas Monthly executive editor Michael Hall first profiled him 20 years ago; that was before his obsession overwhelmed his clarity, and his remarkable research into Johnson’s life turned into something far more toxic. Now, Hall revisits McCormick’s life after his death, teasing the truth from hagiography and telling the long, twisting tale of a man crushed by his own masterwork. Having helped titans like Lightnin’ Hopkins find the spotlight, McCormick long ago achieved his own legendary status. The question that persists is whether a legacy like his can be tainted by a flawed final act. —PR
Ben Goldfarb | Hakai Magazine | April 4, 2023 | 2,400 words
A reported essay on the intricacies of dog-leashing rules could have felt like a real slog. But Ben Goldfarb’s piece lifts off the page. In the opening paragraphs, we meet Kit, Goldfarb’s dog, as she runs along the beach with the wind flying through her floppy ears. It’s an image I could instantly relate to: Like all dog owners, I love watching my own dog dash around off-leash. (Well, meander around. She isn’t the speediest.) But, sometimes, there can be an environmental cost. Goldfarb meticulously takes us through the problems of letting dogs off-leash on a beach, raising some concerns I had never considered. I felt for the shorebirds trying to rest after a long migration; as a contributor eloquently puts it, “Imagine you’ve just gotten home from work and want nothing more than to chill on the couch with a beer — and then a pack of barking dogs tears into the house and chases you outside, over and over again.” Combined with some horrific facts about little blue penguin deaths, this piece will make you think about when to unclip that leash. —CW
Meg Bernhard | n+1 | March 2, 2023 | 3,367 words
This week, Meg Bernhard’s piece hit the sweet spot for me as a reader, offering insight into a world I know nothing about: what it’s like to be a female long-haul truck driver. I’m fascinated by the minutia of others’ jobs and this piece delivered. You’ll meet members of REAL Women in Trucking, a rights advocacy group for women drivers, and get to know Jess, age 39, who escaped an abusive relationship to see America behind the wheel of her rig dubbed “The Black Widow.” “Jess kept a secret credit card,” Bernhard writes, “and left their home only with the clothes she was wearing. She went to her stepdad’s, applied for a trucking job, and was on a bus to a training facility in Indiana four days later. Halima spent fifth grade on the road. They solved math problems with dry erase markers on the truck’s windows and played catch in warehouse parking lots.” —KS
Angela Burke | Eater | March 24, 2023 | 1,533 words
At an early age, I had mastered a critical skill in our house: lifting the lid on our humongous cookie jar to pilfer a treat, then replacing that lid in complete silence. As a cookie burglar, I was an apple that hadn’t fallen far from its tree. My Dad was always there first. And when my mom complained about dwindling stock, dad pointed the finger directly at me and my brother. (The nerve!) That cookie jar (a brown ceramic wooden stump with a creepy, grinning gray squirrel on top) sits on their kitchen counter to this day. At Eater, in this love letter to the kooky cookie jar, Angela Burke introduces us to artist and vintage ceramic cookie jar maker Hazy Mae. Her custom jars, in homage to Dolly Parton, Andy Warhol, Elvis, and Madonna (among others), can run $800 or more. That may feel steep, but can you really put a price on a vessel that could eventually contain fond memories, too? —KS
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Jayson Greene | Pitchfork | March 29, 2023 | 4,435 words
Yes, it has one of the best hed/dek combos I’ve seen this year, but Jayson Greene’s look back at the spuming cultural wave known as the pop-R&B gigahit “Blurred Lines” doesn’t stop there. It aims primarily at Robin Thicke, though Greene’s got heat for everyone from Thicke collaborators Pharrell Williams and T.I. to Miley Cyrus. Sometimes the best culture-crit is steeped in a vat of acid. (That said, I regret to inform you that “Shooter” still goes superduperhard.) —PR
If you didn’t grow up with a kooky, kitschy cookie jar in your kitchen, you likely know someone who did. “Each kitchen should have a cookie jar to reflect the person’s personality,” advises (Mercedes DiRenzo) Bolduc. “It makes them happy.”
The joy of cookie jars, for many, is finding a jar that feels perfectly suited to one’s own personal taste or identity. In this hunt, the world of vintage cookie jars offers near infinite options. In Chicago, pastry chef Mindy Segal remains smitten with a vintage 1940s ceramic cookie jar that she’s had for decades. “I call him Chef,” says Segal, coauthor of the cookbook Cookie Love. “I’ve had him since I was in my 20s and it was my first major purchase into the vintage world. I love him and will never get rid of him. He’s like my guy.” Chef dons a stiff white chef’s hat and he has been dubbed guardian of dog treats. Recently, Segal bought a second cookie jar, which lives in her popular Mindy’s Bakery. “I put pretzels in it and sometimes I put candy in it. I don’t put cookies in it,” she says.
Protect your facial biometric data with knit wear? As absurd as that sounds, designer Rachele Didero, of the Italian startup Cap_able, has patented textiles that do just that. The patterns trick facial-recognition cameras into thinking it's not looking at a person. — Read the rest
"Whole time they missed a whole bomb in my bag," said Dorion Young Davis, 26, as TSA agents patted her down at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Tuesday.
Apparently, Davis was "joking," she didn't really have a bomb, but TSA weren't laughing. — Read the rest
The Death Eaters are battling the Sapsuckers. Which mushrooms will win?
The post Mushroom War appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
When we see the three letters K-E-F subtly emblazoned across any speaker, expectations are for a realistic listening experienced from speakers realized with industrial design conceived to tastefully coexist in a living space. In short, KEF has always made speakers that look nearly as good as they sound. But speakers like the brand’s $22,000 Reference 5 Meta loudspeakers orbit a stratosphere only few could imagine even consider. The British audio gear brand’s new R Series Meta collection arrives as a welcome attempt to bring some of their flagship performance down to earth with seven models to mix-and-match.
Given enough time any cutting-edge technology eventually parachutes down into the realm of affordability. Of course, “affordable” within the audiophile category is subjective, but KEF’s new seven model loudspeaker line justifies the price tags with flagship details borrowed from the aforementioned top-of-the-line The Reference. To put this into perspective, a pair of these new R3 Meta bookshelf speakers arrive at one-tenth the price of its flagship predecessor, with even the largest R11 Meta option priced at a subjectively reasonable $3,250 (each).
Detail of KEF’s new Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT), a circular plate with a maze-like structure of intricate channels engineered to absorb specific frequencies. The channels act as an acoustic black hole, absorbing 99% of the unwanted sound from the rear of the tweeter.
The R Series is engineered to please ears equally whether while listening to music in a stereo configuration or as a multi-speaker Dolby Atmos capable surround sound home theater solution.
This updated R Series now shares the same proprietary maze-like driver design as the feature towering, The Reference. Metamaterial Absorption Technology, or MAT for short, is reputed to absorb 99% of unwanted frequencies. KEF uses the analogy of an acoustic black hole – a labyrinth where undesirable distortions never escape.
The R Series also includes a slightly modified 12th-generation Uni-Q driver, the same component found in the brand’s LS50 Meta bookshelf speakers, a model we always considered a gateway into audiophile acoustics.
Shown here with the ceiling aimed Dolby Atmos-compatible R8 Meta surround modules seated atop, the R Series is adaptable for a variety of applications and room dimensions.
KEF continues to give their latest line a characteristically handsome finish aligned with the previous R Series, with the latest KEF R Series Meta collection available in White Gloss, Black Gloss, or a handsome Walnut finish. The R3 Meta is also offered in a conspicuous Indigo Gloss. Bump up to the R7 and there’s a subtly automotive metallic Titanium Gloss finish. Head here to see the complete collection with pricing.
Award-winning playwriter, performance artist, director, and producer Virginia Grise has teamed up with producer and conceptual embroidery artist Maricella Infante to create "A Todo Dar Productions." A todo dar means to give everything, all in.
Creating at the generative, risky, and thrilling intersections of art and politics, emphasizing issues of identity, power, and community struggles, A Todo Dar "stages public interventions and builds convivial spaces for and with community to study, think, imagine, create and dream together beyond black boxes, border walls, prisons, and cages." — Read the rest
Today we are featuring stories about the decimation of a national park, the survival of Texas Monthly magazine, how a couple escaped slavery in Boston, choosing when to die, and the future of jelly.
Georgina Gustin | Undark | January 4, 2023 | 2,363 words
Once a wildlife paradise, Kenya’s Amboseli National Park has become a wasteland. Tourists on safari arrive excited but leave traumatized, reports Georgina Gustin, as carcasses of starved animals litter the terrain: “Wildebeests are gray-brown lumps with quote-shaped horns. Gazelles, small piles of suede. Zebras, bloated disco-era carpets.” Previously a lush wildlife sanctuary, Amboseli has been plagued by climate change-fueled drought for two years and braces itself for a third. In addition to a parched and changing landscape, clashes between herders and farmers and an increase in illegal poaching also contribute to the dire situation. Wildlife photographs by Larry C. Price accompany Gustin’s piece, and while they may be hard to look at, they’re an important reminder that no creature can escape a warming planet. —CLR
Stephen Harrigan | Texas Monthly | January 17, 2023 | 4,495 words
Fifty years used to be nothing for a magazine. Of course they lasted decades, they were bound collections of journalism printed monthly and delivered via newsstand and mailbox! But for Texas Monthly to hit that mark was in no way foretold — and for it to do so during the long slow decline of physical media is a miracle indeed. No wonder that the magazine commissioned some of its longtime writers to bear witness. What sets Stephen Harrigan’s dispatch apart, though, is its utter lack of nostalgia. Sure, Harrigan was there at the very beginning; sure, he wrote for TM as typewriters gave way to computers and fax machines gave way to computers and [checks notes] everything gave way to computers. This is no elegy to a bygone era, though; it’s an ode to evolution. Turns out that a publication needs to adapt to survive. But that doesn’t mean that its mission has to. “Morale was shaky, salaries were flat, the staff was shrinking,” Harrigan writes of a particularly lean period last decade. “It just didn’t seem like a world anymore where a writer would have the latitude to take three or four or six months to deeply report a feature story, where it was possible for a statewide magazine to maintain a national reputation. But at the same time, nobody wanted to give up on the idea.” Nobody wanted to give up on the idea. Nobody should. And in a time when launching new magazines is far too rare (and their demises far too frequent), it’s crucial to remember that. —PR
Ilyon Woo | The Boston Globe Magazine | January 5, 2023 | 5,786 words
Ellen and William Craft fled slavery not via the Underground Railroad but by actual train: They climbed aboard one bound for Savannah, Georgia, in December 1848 — she disguised as a white man, he as her property. They saw people they knew on their journey, including a friend of their master who sat right next to Ellen in a first-class seat. (She pretended to be deaf so she wouldn’t have to converse with him and risk exposing her identity.) But making it to Boston, where the couple built a new life together, didn’t guarantee their safety. Slave catchers came for them, and in an enthralling turn of events, Bostonians of all colors came out to defend the Crafts by any means necessary. This story, excerpted from Ilyon Woo’s new book, Master Slave Husband Wife, had me on the edge of my seat and, at various points, cheering. It feels as if it’s powered by a locomotive engine, but really the motor is Woo’s exceptional facility with pacing, scenes, and characterization. —SD
Robin Williamson | The Audacity | January 11, 2022 | 4,597 words
Robin Williamson’s mother had secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. A disease that ravaged her body for many years — before driving her to an attempt on her own life. Her family needed to find a different path. Williamson talks about her mother with love, tenderness, and sadness that never creeps into the saccharine. Instead, pragmatism overlays emotion: Faced with death, this family made a plan, wrote a schedule, and decided to confront it together, not in secret. Despite her mother being “the strong, stoic sick person,” Williamson knew that — beneath this persona — there was misery and pain, with morphine now “like laying a thin blanket on a stone bed.” Not shying away from the reality of disease, Williamson still manages to write an essay more beautiful than maudlin. The final month the family spends together before heading to Dignitas to carry out “The Switzerland Schedule” is about the tiny, precious moments of nothing: “Picture my father, my brothers, and I spread across the sofas, beer bottles and wine glasses strewn around the room, with my mother on her scooter beside one of the sofas.” The time then spent in Switzerland is about grief, but it is also about finding peace. —CW
Bettina Makalintal | Eater | January 10, 2023 | 1,818 words
“I predict that we are on the threshold of a new aspic-forward aesthetic,” is something I would not have expected to read in my lifetime. I admit it. I’m a dessert fusspot. I have strong opinions: I love sticky toffee pudding and chocolate cake. The only acceptable pies are apple and pumpkin. Custard is bland. Tapioca is revolting. But Jell-O tops the many desserts on my “hard no” list. Way too squirmy! It’s always important to revisit your beliefs from time to time. (I guess.) Could Jell-O become a possibility for me? (Highly unlikely!) “I think that Jell-O, in a way, can be terrifying and delicious at the same time. There’s a little discussion in the book about the sublime: things that are really scary, but they kind of attract you anyway. It’s things that are in the liminal space between what’s acceptable and what’s really bizarre, and people find that fun from an aesthetic perspective.” —KS
Over at The Nib, Sam Wallman has created an illustrated history of the Pinkerton Agency — the original "private eyes," a nearly 200-year-old American corporation that essentially pioneered the privatization of domestic military intelligent services, most often weaponized against the working class. — Read the rest
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