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Black Existence in “Torto Arado” em Dez Dobraz

The collection of critical essays “Torto Arado” em Dez Dobras [“Torto Arado” in Ten Folds] will be released in 2023 in Brazil by Mercado de Letras. The anthology, organized by Francisco Neto Pereira Pinto, Rosemere Ferreira da Silva, Naiane Vieira dos Reis Silva, and Luiza Helena Oliveira da Silva, is divided into four sections entitled: […]

Summer Fun! Finally!

A few days after I wrote my post about pretending that it was summer, the weather changed and it started getting warmer. Now, I’m not saying that my post was a magic spell or anything but I think you can draw your own conclusions there. Ahem…let’s carry on with today’s post. The weather hasn’t been… Continue reading Summer Fun! Finally!

Amazon discounts the Blink Mini by 50 percent in an early Prime Day deal

Amazon has the Blink Mini for a mere $17.50 in an early Prime Day deal — half off the security camera’s $35 sticker price. The small plug-in device can give you extra peace of mind while you’re away from home, letting you check in remotely to ensure your space is free from intruders (or talk to your pets using its two-way audio). The lower price for Prime Day could make it easier to set up a fleet of them in your home without breaking the bank.

Unlike the more expensive Blink Indoor, the Blink Mini is a plug-in device, so make sure you have a nearby power outlet or can run an extension cord to the area where you’ll set it up. The Blink Mini offers 1080p capture, infrared night vision and optional phone alerts if it senses motion while armed. Setup is straightforward, only requiring a few minutes of following instructions in the Blink app to connect it to WiFi. However, the camera only works with Amazon Alexa, so you may want to look at competing products in Engadget’s Smart Home Guide if you rely on Siri or Google Assistant for voice control.

If you’re more interested in monitoring your yard or entrance, Amazon also has the Blink Outdoor for half off as part of the same early Prime Day deal. Usually $100, you can snag it today for $50. The “weather-resistant” wireless camera records in 1080p and can last up to an estimated two years on a pair of AA batteries. Remember that you’ll need a Blink Sync Module 2 and a Blink Subscription to save your recorded photos and videos to the cloud with this model.

Finally, this Blink Video Doorbell bundle — which includes the Sync Module 2 — is on sale for $47.49 (usually $95.) Like the other devices, it supports 1080p live video with nighttime infrared support and can run for up to two years on a couple of AA batteries. Amazon also describes it as weather-resistant, with a seal protecting it against water. Setup can vary, depending on whether you connect it wired or wirelessly, but either way, the Blink app will guide you through the steps. And if you opt for the simpler wireless setup, you can configure it to use a Blink Mini to play a chime indoors when someone visits.

Amazon has deals on several other Blink bundles as well. You can check out the entire sale for the full details.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-discounts-the-blink-mini-by-50-percent-in-an-early-prime-day-deal-070938182.html?src=rss

Blink Mini

Marketing photo for the Blink Mini indoor security camera. The camera has a black front face and a white body. It’s facing the right with a power cord fading off to the left.

Musk annoys Twitter users by capping number of tweets they can view each day

Elon Musk's Twitter profile displayed on a phone screen in front of a Twitter logo and a fake stock graph with an arrow pointing down.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Twitter has imposed limits on how many tweets users can view each day, with owner Elon Musk claiming the drastic change was needed to fight "data scraping" and other "manipulation." Users who hit the rate limits were greeted with error messages like "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again."

"To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits: - Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day - Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day - New unverified accounts to 300/day," Musk wrote on Saturday.

When Musk says "verified," of course, he means users who pay $8 a month for the Twitter Blue subscription that comes with certain perks, such as adding a blue checkmark to the accounts of subscribers. Prior to Musk's ownership of Twitter, "verified" meant that a user had been confirmed to be notable and authentic.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

DOOM: Twitter's panic-driven rate-limiting gets them dropped out of Google Search

Fisticuffs enthusiast and noted "Pedo Guy," Elon Musk announced drastic rate-limiting policies on Twitter last week. Purportedly rate-limiting is evidence of Tekonoking battling with "data pillagers," but it may result from Twitter's internal mismanagement. Regardless, Twitter has ignored both the law of holes and Google's book of rules on SEO; most notably, that content hidden behind a walled garden is not recommended by Google Search. — Read the rest

Wikipedia updates its Creative Commons license

Wikipedia is moving to the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, from the old version it's used for years. What's the difference? It means that other v4-licensed material can be added to Wikipedia verbatim, it's written with international law in mind, it has simpler attribution requirements, and is easier for laypersons to read and understand. — Read the rest

Breaking Bad Habits

Two things to note about habits: one, they are very hard to break and two, a fair number of them are bad for us. Many of us have fallen into the habit of reaching for our phones throughout the day to read the news and editorials. We watch videos of congressional hearings, we listen to […]

Man dies after diving 40 feet into 4 foot-deep water

A 34-year-old man died of his injuries after diving from an embankment into the shallow end of Lake Gladewater in Texas. The embankment was 40 feet (12m) up, but the water was only 4 foot (1.2m) deep. Local police report that numerous witnesses saw him jump headfirst into the water and tried to help him, and that alcohol might have been a factor. — Read the rest

Off for the US Holiday — More Grammar

We are off today and tomorrow for the US Independence Day holiday. Also included, a song that hews carefully to archaic rules about prepositions at the end of sentences.

The post Off for the US Holiday — More Grammar appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.

Henri Lefebvre’s 1939 book on Nietzsche and the ‘Liste Otto’ – which books of his were banned?

About twenty years ago, in an essay on Henri Lefebvre, I said that his book on Nietzsche (1939) was on the prohibited ‘Liste Otto’. These were books that had to be removed from sale, and existing copies destroyed, after the German occupation of France. For other reasons now I’ve recently looking at the list – the 1940 version is here – and discover that this is not one of the books on the list. Mea culpa.

As far as I can tell, only two books written by Lefebvre are on the list – there are various iterations from 1940 and through the occupation. The books are Hitler au pouvoir (1938) and Le Matérialisme dialectique (1940). So too was Ca­hiers de Lé­nine sur la dia­lec­tique de He­gel (1938) and Karl Marx’s Morceaux choisis (1934), both of which Lefebvre and Norbert Guterman had edited.

Three books that were on the list - Le matérialisme dialectique is a later reprint
Three books that were on the list – Le matérialisme dialectique shown here is a later reprint

Guterman was Jewish, so this alone would have been enough for inclusion on this list. But Lefebvre’s book on Nietzsche, his Le Nationalisme contre les Nations (1937) and the collection of texts by Hegel he and Guterman had edited (1938) are not on the lists I’ve seen, and nor is their co-authored book La conscience mystifiée (1936).

three books that were not included on the list
three books that were not included on the list

There is therefore something of an arbitrary nature of the list – there are obviously reasons why the Nazi occupiers would object to those they did include, but those reasons would also seem to apply to ones they did not. The Nietzsche book, for example, is very much written as a challenge to the fascist appropriation.

In looking further into this, though, I went back to the original edition of Critique de la vie quotidienne from 1946. On the page ‘Du même auteur’, Lefebvre lists his previous publications.

There he distinguishes three ways his books were suppressed.

  1. seized and destroyed by the [Édouard] Daladier government in October 1939
  2. seized and destroyed by the publisher at the beginning of 1940
  3. seized and destroyed by the occupying authority, on the ‘Liste Otto’ at the end of 1940.

Interestingly, he says Le Nationalisme was in the first category; Hitler and Nietzsche in the second; Le matérialisme dialectique and the collections on Lenin and Hegel were in the third. From the lists I’ve seen, this isn’t entirely correct either for category three, but it explains why the Nietzsche book was indeed removed from sale shortly after publication, and why copies are so hard to find today. And presumably the ‘Liste Otto’ did not need to proscribe books that were already banned.

The list of books by Lefebvre ‘En préparation’ is also interesting – only a few of these were ever published, but that’s another story, some of which also concerns censorship.

I hope what I’ve reported here is accurate, but happy to receive additions or corrections.

Incidentally, my 2004 book on Lefebvre has long been available as print-on-demand only, and keeps going up in price. Someone has uploaded a version here though…

stuartelden

Three books that were on the list - Le matérialisme dialectique is a later reprint

three books that were not included on the list

Cowboy Cruiser e-bike offers a more upright ride

When premium e-bike maker Cowboy introduced its Adaptive Power update earlier this year, Engadget’s Mat Smith wondered when a new model would arrive. We have the answer today as the company announced the Cowboy Cruiser. The new variant encourages a more upright design for a relaxed Dutch riding position. It also includes a wider saddle — a feature that was at the top of our wish list for the Belgian company’s latest iteration.

The Cowboy Cruiser weighs 19.3 kg (42.5 lbs) and includes comfort grips and a “distinctive raised and curved handlebar to facilitate a natural hand position.” Its saddle is wider and has an increased gear ratio compared to previous models. The e-bike has a wireless charging phone mount, and, like with all of its models, its companion app integrates with Google Maps. In addition, it has a removable battery, carbon belt, mudguards and “puncture-resistant” 47mm tires. Of course, all of the company’s models have crash detection.

Front-side view of the Cowboy Cruiser e-bike handlebars. A phone is mounted in the center.
Cowboy

With its lineup getting more crowded, Cowboy renamed its existing e-bikes, “making it easier for customers to find the e-bike which best suits their personal needs.” The original C4 model is now called the Cowboy Classic, and the C4ST becomes the Cruiser ST.

The Cowboy Cruiser is available starting today for an “introductory price” of £2,690 ($3,393.43). You can buy it in black and sand colorways from the company website. And if you're looking to browse in person, the company plans to roll out the e-bikes, eventually, to 300 bike retailers across Europe.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cowboy-cruiser-e-bike-offers-a-more-upright-ride-000010102.html?src=rss

Cowboy Cruiser e-bike

Marketing photo of the Cowboy Cruiser e-bike split into a main panel (left, showing the full bike), top-right box showing the handlebar view with mounted phone and lower-right box revealing its wide saddle.

Twitter's latest panic-driven implosion was "self-inflicted DDOS"

Elon "Pedo Guy" Musk's strategy of buying Twitter at the highest price, firing anyone who understands how it works, and then running his mouth seems to be paying off. This weekend, after rate-limiting users, Twitter is plagued by service issues related to rate-limiting users. — Read the rest

Watch Kevin Bacon singing songs to his goats

Kevin Bacon singing songs to his goats is one of my favorite things on the internet. He started the series, which he calls "Goat Songs," at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when he was spending a lot of time at his Connecticut farm–where he cares for goats, alpacas, and other animals. — Read the rest

Catherine and Pata test ride an adult e-trike and aren’t pleased

While I was visiting my family in South Carolina last month, my cousin M asked me if I knew anything about adult trikes. She was thinking about getting one for noodling around her neighborhood; she liked the idea of the extra stability of the third wheel, and the setup seemed well-suited for fun and safety.… Continue reading Catherine and Pata test ride an adult e-trike and aren’t pleased

After “Barbie,” Mattel Is Raiding Its Entire Toybox

In an era when “pre-awareness” rules Hollywood, the company is ginning up plots for everything from Hot Wheels to UNO.

Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating

Decorative grey background with light circles. "Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating" by Edwin Battistella

Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating

English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may have learned these as “helping verbs” in elementary and middle school, since they are sometimes described as verbs that “help” the main verb express its meaning. There are even schoolroom songs about them. They are a curious bunch.

The auxiliaries include the modal verbs (can and could, shall and should, will and would, may and might, and must). The verb that follows a modal is in its bare, uninflected form: can go, could go, must go, and so on. There are also a number of semi-modal auxiliary verbs (such as dare, need, ought to, had better, have to, and used to). Some are compound words spelled with a space and several have unusual grammatical properties as well, such as being resistant to contraction or inversion. And in parts of the English-speaking world, modals can double up, yielding expressions like might could, may can, might should, and more.

Aside from the modals, semi-modals, and double modals, the primary auxiliaries are forms of have, be, and do, which are inflected for tense (is versus was, has versus had, do versus did), number (is versus are, has versus have), and person(is versus am versus are, do versus does). These auxiliaries help to indicate verbal nuances like emphasis, the perfect and progressive aspects, and the passive voice. Here are some examples, adapted from Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea:

Those who did catch sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove … (emphatic do and perfect aspect had)

The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. (progressive aspect)

His shirt was patched so many times that it was like the sail … (passive voice)

The primary auxiliaries come before the negative adverb not and allow contraction to it.

They didn’t catch sharks.

His shirt wasn’t patched.

He hadn’t taken the sharks.

And they play a role in questions by hopping to the left over the subject

Did they catch sharks?

Was his shirt patched?

Had he taken the sharks?

or by being copied at the end in a tag question.

They caught sharks, didn’t they?

His shirt was patched, wasn’t it?

He had taken the sharks, hadn’t he?

Main verbs like see and go and walk don’t do any of those tricks.

Things get even curiouser, however, because the helping verbs have and do have doppelgangers that actually are main verbs.

The old man did his chores. 

His shirt had a tear in it.

How do we know these are main verbs and not helping verbs? Well, for one thing, they are the only verbs in the sentence. For another, they can occur with other helping verbs:

The old man had done his chores. 

His shirt had had a tear in it all day.

And if you make the sentences questions or negate them, you have to add a form of auxiliary do.

Did the old man do his chores?

Did his shirt have a tear in it?

The helping verb be also has a doppelganger main verb, but the forms of main verb be behave pretty much just like the helping verb. More curious behavior, keeping us on our toes. The first sentence below has past tense main verb was followed by an adjective; the other two have the past tense helping verb was.

The shark was tenacious. (main verb was)

The shark was never caught. (auxiliary was)

The old man was trying his best. (auxiliary was)

But all three was forms hop to the left in questions.

Was the shark tenacious?

Was the shark ever caught?

Was the old man trying his best?

The curious behavior of helping verbs goes on and on, with different dialects doing different things. If you’ve read many British novels or watched British television you might have noticed forms of helping verb do popping up in elliptical sentences. Here’s an example from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers: “Sam frowned. If he could have bored holes in Gollum with his eyes, he would have done.” (For a study of these forms, check out Ronald Butters’s 1983 article “Syntactic change in British English propredicates.”)

In African American English, the auxiliary done lends a completive meaning to events. You can see it in these dialogue examples from August Wilson’s Fences and from Walter Mosely’s Blond Faith: “Now I done give you everything I got to give you!” and “Didn’t she tell you that Pericles done passed on.” For more on this use of done, take a look at the chapters by Lisa J. Green and Walter Sistrunk and by Charles E. DeBose in the Oxford Handbook of African American Language.

We’ve just scratched the surface of auxiliaries. I hope you’ve become curious about these curious words.

Featured image by Alexander Grey via Unsplash (public domain)

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Twitter Rolling Out Support for Picture-in-Picture on iOS

Twitter appears to be adopting support for picture-in-picture mode on the iPhone and iPad, with some Twitter users reporting access to a feature that allows them to watch Twitter videos while doing other tasks on the ‌iPhone‌ and ‌iPad‌.


Starting a video in Twitter and then swiping out of the app leaves the video player open, so Twitter users can use other apps while continuing to watch video content from the social network.

Twitter has had an in-app picture-in-picture option previously, but the new feature allows Twitter video to be watched while using other apps, similar to how YouTube and other video content apps work on iPhones and iPads.

Looks like Twitter videos now support the iOS system wide PiP.
Note that it’s rolling out slowly, so it’s normal if some of you don’t have it yet pic.twitter.com/QeCrI670XA

— iSoftware Updates (@iSWUpdates) June 30, 2023

Not all Twitter users have access to the picture-in-picture feature as of yet, which suggests that Twitter is still in the process of rolling out support. Accessing the feature requires the latest version of the Twitter app on ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌.
Tag: Twitter

This article, "Twitter Rolling Out Support for Picture-in-Picture on iOS" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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F5: Crystal Williams Is Far More Than RISD’s President

F5: Crystal Williams Is Far More Than RISD’s President

As Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) 18th president, Crystal Williams believes that education, art and design, and staying committed to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. At RISD, the Detroit-born activist is working to drive meaningful change centered on expanding inclusion, equity, and access. To back that up, Crystal has more than two decades of higher education experience as a professor of English as well as serving in roles that oversaw diversity, equity, and inclusion at Boston University, Bates College, and Reed College. The ultimate goal behind Crystal’s role at RISD is to enhance the learning environment by making sure it includes diverse experiences, viewpoints, and talents.

brown-skinned woman with short black hair wearing a black turtleneck and long gold earrings looks into the camera

Photo: Jo Sittenfeld

However, Crystal’s talents go beyond the halls and classrooms of colleges and universities – she’s also an award-winning poet and essayist. So far, she’s published four collections of poems and is the recipient of several artistic fellowships, grants, and honors. Most recently Detroit as Barn, was named as a finalist for the National Poetry Series, Cleveland State Open Book Prize, and the Maine Book Award. Crystal’s third collection, Troubled Tongues, was awarded the 2009 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award, the Idaho Poetry Prize, and the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize. Her first two books were Kin and Lunatic, published in 2000 and 2002. Crystal’s work regularly appears in leading journals and magazines nationwide.

Today, Crystal Williams is joining us for Friday Five!

high contrast orange sunset of a large body of water

Martha’s Vineyard \\\ Photo: Crystal Williams

1. Silence

Originally, I was going to write about a place that inspires me. But when I truly started to consider places I find inspiring, I realized that each of them elicits and enables silence and stillness, a refraction of silence (at least for me). So then, silence itself is the thing that inspires me. Silence inspires me to delve and investigate and allows me to situate myself in wonder and awe – in the amplitude and magnitude of who and what and how we are as a species, to sometimes take issue with personal fears or traumas or worse – the behaviors that ultimately impede personal and spiritual growth or insight.

For me, silence is a great gift. Perhaps the greatest. It is a balm. Through it, I connect to the world not as Crystal Williams of this particular body but as a congregation of embodied energy and spirit. In this way, it is the catalyst through which all good art, poetry, ideas, and leadership emerge. So it is among the most inspirational things in my life – and among the most rare, given my life.

book opened to a page with a poem

Photo: Crystal Williams

2. Lucille Clifton Poem

I admire many poems. But Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” (which is how it is commonly known although Clifton did not, in “Book of Light” originally title the poem), is the one that inspires me the most. It is a poem that speaks to resilience, fortitude, bravery, imagination, hope, and it names what being a Black woman in the United States can and often does elicit.

“won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
….
…come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”

video still of a brown-skinned woman in a black dress singing into a microphone

Nancy Wilson, Carnegie Hall, 1987 \\\ Video still courtesy YouTube

3. Nancy Wilson, “How Glad I Am,” Carnegie Hall, 1987

There are moments in art when an artist transforms one thing into another, utterly broadening, deepening, and transmuting the original meaning. In this live version of “How Glad I Am,” her encore performance at the 1987 “Live at Carnegie Hall” performance, Wilson – a vocalist I listened to obsessively as a younger person – transforms a simple song between lovers into a rousing tribute from an artist to her audience. This performance is the most profoundly loving example I have witnessed of an artist speaking directly and forcefully to the mutuality between artists and audiences. And it’s become a kind of personal soundtrack when I’m walking through my life, especially my life as a poet and now as president. Often, when I’m among creatives, I hear Wilson’s gorgeous, gravely voice imploring: “you don’t know how glad I am [for you].”

two people wearing black face masks work on a lighting project on a large white table

RISD students \\\ Photo: Jo Sittenfeld

4. Young Creatives

Listen, these young people at RISD and young creatives everywhere are our best-case scenario. They are our visionaries, if only we can amplify them, listen to them, and then get out of their way. They have all the love (and strategy and insight and knowledge) we need if we can help them wield it successfully. They have all the intelligence and ingenuity we need to help solve our challenges and advance what is good, right, and just among our species. Added to those attributes are other facts: they are funny and curious and eager to learn and gloriously unusual.

I watch them here at RISD in their multi-colored outfits, hair-dos, and platform shoes, giggling with each other in front of the snack machine or intensely applying their best thinking to each others’ work during critiques. I listen to them grappling with big ideas, considering, reconsidering, and redesigning our world as if on slant, eschewing the boxes into which we have crammed stale ideas that continue to guide our actions. And I watch them in their magnitude – in the more quotidian actions of their lives trudging up and down the severe hill outside with their humongous portfolios and unwieldy art projects, and think through it all, “Wow” and think “to be so young and so powerful and necessary” and think “thank God” and think “Thank you, young people, for saying yes to the impulse that brought you here.” Not only do they inspire me, they humble me and they – each one of them – feel like a balm, like hope incarnate.

brown-skinned man wearing a suit, light-skinned woman with dark hair wearing a patterned dress, and a brown-skinned baby girl in a white dress posing for a family portrait

Photo: Crystal Williams

5. My Parents

My folks married in 1967 against all odds. They were of different ethnicities – he Black, she white. Different places – he from the Jim Crow South, she from Detroit, Michigan. Different eras – he born in 1907, she in 1936. Different careers – he a jazz musician and automotive foundry worker, she a public school teacher. And different educational backgrounds – he, we think, not a high school graduate, she a college graduate. And yet, they found each other over the keys of a piano and decided, against society’s cruel eye and hard palm, to love each other and to love me. I now understand the courage it took for all of that to be true, for them to make a way, for them to walk through the world in 1967 as a couple and with me as their child. That courage inspires me. Those decisions inspire me. They inspire me. Everyday. All day.

 

Work by Crystal Williams:

orange book cover reading Kin by Crystal Williams

Kin by Crystal Williams, 2000 \\\ Williams utilizes memory and music as she lyrically weaves her way through American culture, pointing to the ways in which alienation, loss, and sensed “otherness” are corollaries of recent phenomena.

red book cover reading Lunatic: Poems by Crystal Williams

Lunatic: Poems by Crystal Williams, 2002 \\\ Williams confronts large-scale social and cultural events such as September 11, the death of Amadou Diallo, and the Chicago Race Riots in addition to exploring the often paralyzing terrain of loss, desire, and displacement. Among its most common themes is personal responsibility.

white book cover with a photo of green plants that reads Troubled Tongues by Crystal Williams

Troubled Tongues by Crystal Williams, 2009 \\\ In each of the three sections of this book is a prose poem meant to be read aloud in which a character, interacting with other characters, is named for a quality. They are Beauty, Happiness, and Patience.

predominantly grey book cover reading Detroit as Barn: Poems by Crystal Williams

Detroit as Barn: Poems by Crystal Williams, 2014

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Japanese eggplants lie next to a knife on a cutting board.

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Sifting through the aftermath of a disastrous blaze. The romance that launched a thousand Supreme Court opinions. A poetic ode to a simple life, well lived. Tracing the arc of food writing. And examining the hidden costs of a particularly sensitive surgical procedure. Our favorites of the week, pulled from all of our editors’ picks.

1. The Night 17 Million Precious Military Records Went Up in Smoke

Megan Greenwell | Wired | June 27, 2023 | 7,987 words

Megan Greenwell’s piece does what the best longform features do: It mesmerizes you with an opening so powerful and a story so compelling that you deliberately read it slowly, just to make it last. This piece—about a devastating fire at a branch of the National Archives and Records Administration that happened to contain records belonging to Greenwell’s grandfather—is nearly 8,000 words long, but the prose is so sharp and cinematic that you’ll wish it was longer. “The National Personnel Records Center fire burned out of control for two days before firefighters were able to begin putting it out,” she writes. “Photos show the roof ablaze, a nearly 5-acre field of flame. The steel beams that had once held up the glass walls jut at unnatural angles, like so many broken legs.” Even were it not set against a backdrop of the U.S. government, this would be a fascinating mystery: What or who started the fire and how do workers attempt to uncover precious facts from seriously damaged files? Did Greenwell’s grandfather’s records survive the blaze? Be sure to take it slow and let this story smolder. I’m certainly glad I did. —KS

2. Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story

Kerry Howley | New York | June 21, 2023 | 7,555 words

My husband sent me this story while I was reporting in Idaho last week, with a message that said, “Isn’t this by that writer you like?” The answer, reader, is yes. Kerry Howley’s 2022 story about anti-abortion activist Marjorie Dannenfelser was rightly named a finalist for a National Magazine Award—one of several nominations Howley’s work has received in the last several years—and I suspect this piece about Clarence and Ginni Thomas will be in the running for many, many honors. Whereas with Dannenfelser, Howley was shedding light on a powerful person who isn’t a household name, here she tackles two of the better-known political (yes, SCOTUS justices are political) figures in America. She does it without access to them, instead surveying pre-existing material on the Thomases with remarkable facility, mustering everything she needs, and nothing she doesn’t, to tell the story of their marriage. Take the seemingly mundane detail of Ginni telling a bunch of right-wing youth that her favorite charm on a bracelet Clarence gave her is a pixie because, to her husband, she is “kind of a pixie…kind of a troublemaker,” which Howley convincingly positions as a metaphor for the havoc Ginni has wreaked on American democracy. Consider this brilliantly constructed sentence: “They take, together, lavish trips funded by an activist billionaire and fail, together, to report the gift.” And that’s just in the first section! This piece is one for the ages in both substance and style. I mean, damn.SD

3. Obituary for a Quiet Life

Jeremy B. Jones | The Bitter Southerner | June 6, 2023 | 1,580 words

I have never before picked an obituary for our Top 5, but Jeremy B. Jones’ ode to his grandfather deserves recognition. At just over 1500 words, it’s not a particularly long piece, but it’s a particularly poetic one, and is enough to get to know—and respect—Jones’ Papaw. Ray Harrell lived a simple life on a little bit of land in Fruitland, North Carolina. To many, it would not be enough; for Harrell, it was plenty. After all, as Jones writes, he had “a reliable tractor and a fiery woman.” It was a good life because he appreciated what he had, was contented with his lot. Jones notes that these quiet lives often slip past unnoticed, “yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.” A small essay about a simple life that I found hugely moving. —CW

4. Mother Sauce

Marian Bull | n+1 | June 15, 2023 | 3,978 words

In reviewing Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires, Marian Bull looks at how infusing recipes with introspection and experience begat the cooking memoir. What I loved about about this piece—besides spurring me to pick up Small Fires, which also appeared in our recent feature “Meals for One”—is that while Bull surveys chef memoirs, she hails Johnson’s book as one for the home cook, the self-trained enthusiast. “Johnson has inverted this form by writing a memoir of a recipe, rather than a ‘memoir’ with recipes,” she writes. Johnson looks at cooking as translation and recipes as a form of performance, which is comforting for someone like me who views a recipe as a guide: “The unpredictable ‘I that cooks,’ who resists the recipe again and again, generates new translations.” How inspiring and affirming to be invited to take a seat at this generous table where nothing is lost and everything is gained in translation. —KS

5. Inside the Secretive World of Penile Enlargement

Ava Kofman | ProPublica and The New Yorker | June 26, 2023 | 8,601 words

It’s easy to think that “men trying to upgrade their dongs” is a journalism cheat code of sorts. Having written about them myself many years ago, I can assure you that it’s not. Pitfalls abound. Tone is everything. Jokes are easy; reserve is hard. (So is avoiding double entendres.) Yet, Ava Kofman manages to thread every needle in her stunning examination of the state of penile-enlargement procedures, which focuses primarily on issues surrounding the popular Penuma implant. She writes compassionately about the patients, not dismissing the complex psychological situations that led them to pursue surgery. She writes unblinkingly about the doctor who popularized the procedure, and whose practice seems at times to operate with all the care of a 30-minute oil change joint—and about the surgeon who “was doing such brisk business repairing Penuma complications that he’d relocated his practice from Philadelphia to an office down the street.” And speaking of unblinking, I dare you not to wince as she plays fly on the wall during an implantation; you may never hear the phrase “inside out” the same way again. This story may have drawn you in with its imagined salaciousness, but it delivers something far better: truth. —PR


Audience Award

What piece did our readers love most this week? One that makes clear that the kids are not all right.

Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: Inside the Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes

Joseph Cox | Vice | June 20, 2023 | 2,111 words

Those looking for dirty deeds to be done seem to be going no further than the Comm, a series of Discord communities in which people order violence, including commissioning robberies for bitcoin, and organizing swats against vulnerable people for perceived slights and insults. For Vice, Joseph Cox infiltrated this vile, testosterone-fueled world of crime. —KS

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