As an editor of a Berlin English-language monthly, Alexander Wells beautifully observes how, due to increasing globalism, language and usage are in a perpetual state of metamorphosis.
My favourite kind of anglicism is the Scheinanglizismus. Many languages across the world have these « pseudo-anglicisms », which consist of English phrases that are used in that language but don’t actually make sense in English. An overhead projector is called a Beamer here; a photo shoot is, rather alarmingly, a Shooting. During lockdown, the practice of working from home got dubbed das Homeoffice, much to the bafflement of Berlin’s UK contingent. A male model used to be called a Dressman, in a doublepseudo- anglicism: it’s the English verb « dress » tacked onto the elegant rump of « gentleman ». Best of all were short-lived attempts to market the messenger satchel to Germans as Bodybag.
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Kickstart your weekend by getting the week’s best reads, hand-picked and introduced by Longreads editors, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.
An investigation into a heinous (and lurid) crime. A look at the spirited world of competitive cheer. A visit to the world’s creepiest motel. An empathic eye on assisted dying. And the true planetary cost of your beloved cat. Our favorites of the week, pulled from all of our editors’ picks.
Andy Mannix | The Star Tribune | June 2, 2023 | 10,330 words
This investigative feature comes with a warning at the top to “read at your own discretion,” and I feel obliged to say the same thing here. What follows is a deeply upsetting story about the suspicious death of a woman who was part of the BDSM community in the Minneapolis area. Heather Mayer was found naked, hanging by a chain that had been locked around her neck; she was covered in bruises and scars, with the words “Daddy Knows Best” carved into her arm. Police ruled her death a suicide, but that never sat right with the death investigator on the case or with Mayer’s mother, who was immediately suspicious that her daughter had been killed by Ehsan Karam, a “dominant” with whom she was in a relationship. Reporter Andy Mannix does a brilliant, sensitive job interrogating the lines between sex and violence, pleasure and pain, consent and coercion. There’s no judgment here, except of the dangerous assumptions many people (including members of law enforcement) make about BDSM practitioners—and of men like Karam, who crossed lines willfully and often, at the physical and emotional expense of their partners. —SD
Jana G. Pruden | The Globe and Mail | June 7, 2023, | 3,231 words
Jana G. Pruden’s Globe and Mail piece is a masterclass in longform journalism. Pruden goes behind the glitter of the Canadian Cheer National Championships in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to introduce us to the hardcore, competitive subculture called cheer. Pruden’s laser focus on original detail puts you in a front-row seat at this raucous, high-energy competition, and before you know it, you’re rooting for these tough-as-nails, besequined athletes as they run their routines before the keen-eyed judges. “Then, as a flyer spun a pirouette atop her teammates’ uplifted hands, a momentary loss of balance,” she writes. “It was the final moment of the final stunt, the last seconds of the routine.” Reading this, don’t be surprised if your spirit lifts like a cheer flyer in motion. —KS
Andrew Chamings | New Lines Magazine | May 19, 2023 | 2,786 words
A clown motel—built to honor the clown collection of a man who died in a mine fire in 1911—would not be top of my must-see list. While Andrew Chamings seems equally bemused, he bravely makes it through a lobby filled with clown memorabilia to stay in a room themed around clown Elvis (Clownvis). Tonopah, the small American town where the clowns reside, has a devasting past. In the early 1900s, a mysterious illness known as the Death Harvest decimated its population, and the motel sits across from the cemetery where many of its victims lie. The graves draw more tourists than the clowns. As Chamings explains, “America … strangely and uniquely fetishizes its brutal past.” The American West has long held a particular fascination: The more gruesome the tale, the more the appeal. Chamings, a Brit, ponders on the cultural difference to England, where “every inch of soil has been warred over, killed for, harvested, bought and sold a hundred times, from the Druids to the Romans to the Gauls to the modern day[;]” concluding that this vastness is why the British lack the same interest in historical tragedies. I concur. When I lived in London, I no doubt had picnics over Black Plague pits—they lie under several green spaces, unmarked. As long as you have a decent sandwich, what does it matter the skeletons that lie beneath? As Chamings eloquently puts it, the “carnage of America’s manifest destiny is fresher, a bloodstain still drying in the sand.” Some fascinating reporting. —CW
Jason Warick | CBC News | June 4, 2023 | 4,312 words
In Canada, while the government has been criticized for proposed expansions to the Medical Assistance in Death (MAiD) program that could include people with mental illness and disabilities, the program’s intent was originally to allow Canadians with terminal illness the right to die with dignity on their own terms. Saskatoon artist Jeanette Lodoen, 87, wanted Canadians “to understand the realities of medically-assisted dying.” She and her family granted CBC News reporter Jason Warick and videographer Don Somers unrestricted access in the weeks before, during, and after her death, allowing them to share an intimate portrait of a vibrant woman who—in relinquishing her life—reminds us how to live. “I thought, thank you. Thank you,” says Lodoen. “I’ve had enough. I’ve had a long life. I’m 87 years old. I’ve had a wonderful family who support me and I love dearly forever. It was such a release to know that I didn’t have to suffer anymore, and that it was OK to go.” —KS
Carrie Arnold | Noēma | June 6, 2023 | 3,186 words
Let me preface this by saying I am both a cat person and a dog person. That said, cats are assholes. That’s okay! It’s part of their charm. They’re loving, yes, but they’re also haughty and destructive and give approximately half a damn about your feelings or possessions. Carrie Arnold allows as much when she sets out her own felinophilic bonafides in her Noēma piece. Yet, even she, a woman who calls cats “the only phenomenon on Earth that could lure me out of bed before sunrise,” was surprised to learn of the havoc they wreak on the natural world. In the U.S. alone, as many as 80 million unowned cats (and another 20ish million pet cats with outdoor privileges) present a legitimate existential threat to birds, plants, and other wildlife. The story, for all its essayistic tendencies, focuses on the rift between conservationists and cat defenders—and also on the hypocrisy lurking in the way we think about outdoor cats. We shun the peaceful “free dogs” of India, yet we don’t give a second thought to the cat with a bird in its mouth (nor do we realize that for every mouth-bird we see, many others have been ravaged out of sight). Then again, as Arnold points out, “the problem with cats has nothing to do with cats at all. The issue is a fundamentally human problem.” We’re so busy marking our own territory, it seems, we don’t think about the responsibility of pet stewardship. Bob Barker was right all along. —PR
Audience Award
What piece did our readers love most this week? The envelope, please!
Richard Sima | The Washington Post | June 1, 2023 | 4,122 words
Could autoimmune diseases be at the root of some mental illnesses? Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, thinks so. “By all accounts, she was thriving, in overall good health and showing no signs of mental distress beyond the normal teenage growing pains,” they said of April Burrell. This was before she suffered a traumatic experience, became incoherent, and was hospitalized. Twenty years after she became catatonic, Markx discovered that April’s bloodwork showed antibodies were attacking her brain. Miraculously, after several courses of steroids and immunosuppressive drugs, April improved to the point where in 2020, she was deemed mentally competent enough to check herself out of treatment, but not before a joyful reunion with her family. —KS
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In this gorgeous essay, Jessica Wilkerson recalls growing up in Tennessee in the ’90s, a place where feminism was widely considered dangerous, ridiculous, and a joke. In trying to find her way in the world, Wilkerson revered two important women: her grandmother and Pat Summitt, the former head coach of the University of Tennessee’s Lady Volunteers basketball team. For Oxford American, Wilkerson recounts Summitt pushing boundaries with her personal brand of feminism and her grandmother’s poignant reminder that Wilkerson’s body was hers alone. “Unlike her, I could live another way. I left with the imprint of her hand in mine, her words in my ears, saying out loud what I did not know I needed to hear. My grandmother, perhaps more than any other person, wished for me to set out to do what I wished with my own life, body, and mind.”
Only at the end of her life, it seems, did she get to make a decision about her body, one granted too few people. After numerous harrowing visits to the ER and several long hospital stays, she had finally gotten her wish: to stay home during the next medical crisis, and to begin the process of dying on her own terms.
When she asked me the question about children, I stumbled over my words. This was not a prompt that people asked in the part of the country where I’m from. Children are assumed, especially of people young and married. Women get pregnant; women raise children.
I told my grandmother in halting words that I didn’t know if that—children, motherhood, sacrifice—was what I wanted. She squeezed my hand and whispered hoarsely, “You know you don’t have to.” In that moment, my grandmother broke an enforced silence around women’s bodies and the choices we can or cannot make and the implications of those choices for our lives.
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Police ruled Heather Mayer’s death a suicide.* Her mother set out to prove them wrong and uncovered an escalating tale of violence, perpetuated by a man Heather met in the BDSM community:
The officers told Dibble not to bother with bagging the victim’s hands to preserve DNA evidence or sealing the body for the autopsy—standard protocols for a potential homicide. Dibble did anyway, but by then police had covered the woman with a dirty bedsheet, possibly contaminating the body.
“They had already made their minds up that her death was a suicide,” Dibble said in an interview. “And I had no indication of that at all.”
The woman’s name was Heather Mayer. She was 33 years old and worked as a policy specialist for a Twin Cities insurance company.
Dibble would revisit the scene of Heather’s death many times as she lay awake nights or paused at a stoplight. She waited for the day police might deliver the investigative findings that would make the rest of the pieces fit into place. It never came.
Nearly four years later, the circumstances of Heather Mayer’s death continue to remain a mystery. South St. Paul police have informally continued to call it a suicide, or possibly a “tragic accident,” and the medical examiner records still list Heather’s cause of death as “undetermined.”
Dibble wasn’t the only one who wondered if there was more to Heather’s death than what police said. When one of the officers called Heather’s mother, Tracy Dettling, to say her daughter had hanged herself, Dettling’s mind flashed to her grandkids still in the house. She jumped into her car and sped toward the Twin Cities. Then she called the officer back from the road.
“Did he do this?” Dettling demanded.
*Trigger warning for intense descriptions of domestic violence.
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Before the Civil War, Edgefield, South Carolina was an important center of pottery production. The wheels and kilns were operated largely by slaves, including one named Dave, who signed his pots. Indeed, Dave could read and write; he even inscribed poetry on some of his creations, including mournful lines about his family:
The potter had been bought and sold by a series of owners by then. He’d lost a leg, but his gifted hands won him local renown: His expert work with clay ensured he would be kept in the district known for its stoneware, even as his family was torn from him at auction.
Using a sharpened tool, he etched into the jar’s shoulder: “I wonder where is all my relation/Friendship to all—and every nation.” The potter then added his enslaver’s initials, the date, and, finally, his own name: “Dave.”
In that simple act, the man, long known as Dave the Potter, and later David Drake, was not only wondering about his lost family: He was committing an extraordinary act of defiance in pre-Civil War South Carolina, indelibly asserting his existence in an age that sought to obliterate the humanity of Black people.
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“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
—William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
It was February 2019, and Mary Price had rarely seen her office so busy. A wiry woman in her sixties with shoulder-length straight hair, Price is general counsel at FAMM, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. FAMM is an acronym for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and in addition to opposing severe sentencing, the group broadly advocates for the fair treatment of people in prisons across the United States. FAMM had recently sent out an edition of its newsletter, which supporters knew as the “FAMM Gram.” The response from readers began as a trickle, then became overwhelming, and for good reason: The newsletter outlined historic changes to the U.S. government’s compassionate release process.
Since the mid-1980s, federal prisoners have been able to seek compassionate release for what the law deems “extraordinary and compelling reasons”—including old age, terminal illness, and severe disability—by requesting that the Bureau of Prisons file a motion on their behalf in court. The BOP, however, rejects almost every request it receives. In January 2018, the Department of Justice reported that the BOP had approved less than 10 percent of the compassionate release applications it received over the previous four years, allowing just 306 people to go home. (Within the same time frame, 81 prisoners died waiting for the BOP to respond at all.) The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General called the process “poorly managed,” with “inconsistent and ad hoc implementation [that] has likely resulted in potentially eligible inmates not being considered for release.”
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For a long time, when the BOP denied a request, a prisoner had no recourse; the bureau’s decision was the final word. That changed in December 2018, following years of advocacy by FAMM and other groups, when Congress passed the First Step Act. Among other criminal-justice reforms, the law allowed a prisoner to file a motion for compassionate release directly with a federal judge if the BOP denied their request or didn’t respond to it within 30 days of receipt. FAMM was eager to share the news and connect eligible individuals with lawyers who could help them. Price knew the organization had to move quickly. “We were very concerned that people who were nearing the end of their lives or very sick would be going before judges without any help,” she said. “We couldn’t just leave these people on their own.”
FAMM’s newsletter was delivered to 40,000 incarcerated individuals via CorrLinks, the federal prison system’s email service. Price felt a thrill of anticipation—“a sense of stepping off into something that was unknown,” as she put it. She knew that sometimes a recipient would print a copy of the newsletter and pass it around the cellblock. Over days, then weeks, Price and her colleagues were inundated with hundreds of phone calls and emails from people seeking compassionate release or inquiring about the process for loved ones behind bars.
Amid the deluge, one inquiry stood out: It was written by a prisoner on behalf of someone else. The sender did not disclose his name. “I am writing this from the ‘Cancer’ floor of FMC Butner,” he wrote, referring to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina. The five-story facility provides health care to some of America’s sickest male prisoners; it includes a psychiatric unit, a unit devoted to orthopedic surgery, and a cancer ward. “This is directed at the situation of another patient,” the sender wrote. “He is terminal and is unable to contact you directly.”
The sick man, R. Smith, had lung cancer. As Price later wrote in an article for the American Bar Association, he was in persistent pain and dependent on a feeding tube. With a prognosis of less than 12 months to live, and a sentence lasting much longer for distributing drugs, Smith applied to the BOP for compassionate release. But instead of going home, he was bound for FMC Butner’s hospice ward.
The anonymous person who contacted FAMM said that he had heard Smith crying to his family during a call on the ward pay phone. A longtime recipient of FAMM’s newsletter, the man knew that Smith might now have another way to seek compassionate release. With Smith’s permission, he was using Smith’s CorrLinks account. BOP policy forbade prisoners from using one another’s accounts, and the sender knew he risked punishment for doing so, which is why he left the message unsigned. He asked: Would FAMM consider helping Smith?
Smith’s case was exactly the kind Price had in mind when she drafted FAMM’s newsletter. FAMM connected Smith with an attorney, who began to prepare a legal motion. Meanwhile, according to Price, Smith got sicker. One of his lungs collapsed, and the man communicating with FAMM from inside Butner reported that Smith had been moved to an outside hospital better equipped to treat him. Smith’s lawyer couldn’t get updated information about his condition, but this wasn’t unusual: The BOP can be especially evasive about medical details near the end of a person’s life. “There’s no more cruel part of the BOP than this,” said a former federal defense attorney who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Smith’s lawyer filed an emergency motion in federal court for his release. The court then ordered the BOP to provide an account of Smith’s medical condition by that afternoon. The BOP didn’t meet the deadline, so the judge contacted Smith’s doctor directly. Upon learning how poorly Smith was doing, the judge ordered his release within ten days, as soon as appropriate transport could be arranged. No one could reach Smith in the hospital to deliver the news, so Price sent a message to the person at Butner working on his behalf. She hoped that he would find a way to tell Smith that he didn’t have to die behind bars.
Smith’s case was a turning point for FAMM’s work on compassionate release because it offered a blueprint for helping qualifying individuals. FAMM worked with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to expand the capacity of the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse, a newly created entity that recruited, trained, and supported lawyers representing sick or elderly prisoners requesting early release. In its first year, the Clearinghouse screened some 500 inquiries and placed more than 125 cases with lawyers.
Smith’s case also marked the start of a unique relationship. “Mr. Smith and his family are very lucky to have you in his corner,” Price wrote to the man who’d helped Smith. “We should all have friends like you.”
By then, Price knew the man’s name: Gary Settle. He was slow to tell her much about himself, but he continued to send CorrLinks messages to FAMM as he recruited more people at Butner for the Clearinghouse. In emails he sometimes used the moniker “P/H,” for “patient/helper,” in part to protect himself from BOP censure, and in part because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He felt that his personal story—including why he was serving 177 years in prison, along with his own cancer diagnosis—was beside the point.
Settle was born in 1966 in Hawthorne, California, a small city adjacent to South Central Los Angeles. His childhood had what he considered “storybook” elements: loving parents, a brother to horse around with, Little League games, family camping trips. In the summer his mother, Kay, took time off her waitressing job to drive the boys to the beach. Settle was bright—“so smart I could smack him,” Kay said. At age ten, he asked his mom for copies of Shakespeare’s plays, then named his cat Ophelia. “We weren’t rich in money, but we were happy, we had friends, there were always people over,” Settle wrote in a document he calls his “life story,” which he shared with me.
In time, Settle developed a rebellious streak. If Kay told him to stay within a few blocks of the house on his skateboard, he’d ride to busy areas downtown instead. When Settle was 13, his parents bought a farm in Ohio; his father thought the fresh air and country life would be good for the family. “We all had to learn on the fly all the farming tasks—feeding the cows, milking them and shoveling the other substances they produced by the wheelbarrow load,” Settle wrote. “If Green Acres hadn’t already been made, we would have had a great pilot.” It was a major transition for Settle: the unrelenting responsibility of farm work, the unfamiliarity of the local culture. His puka-shell necklace and faded Levi’s didn’t vibe with the rural Ohio style of bib overalls and John Deere hats.
Even so, he quickly made friends. He got into the habit of enlisting his buddies to help with household tasks. “Once, I told him he couldn’t go to a baseball game because he had to help with the chores,” Kay recalled, “and all of a sudden the whole team was weeding.” The town closest to his family’s farm had a single traffic light, two police officers, a barber shop, and “at least ten bars,” according to Settle. There was little to do, so he and his friends drank. Settle recalled being a happy drunk, outgoing and enthusiastic; he boasted that his charm was infectious.
Settle also liked to showboat—driving recklessly, hood surfing, doing motorcycle stunts. “I was not breaking any laws other than traffic ones,” he wrote. “Those I was shattering.” In fact, a juvenile court found him guilty of an offense when he was 17; the case records are sealed, but Settle said that the conviction stemmed from a fistfight he had with a man in his twenties. Looking back, he wondered whether spending his teenage years in a small town with few opportunities contributed to the course his life took.
In 1985, Settle got his high school sweetheart pregnant, and soon they married. At age 20, Settle had expenses and responsibilities, and he grew restless. When he heard about a gig with a construction company in Florida, he decided to move there with $400, two buddies, and no plan—he left his family behind for the time being. He and his friends arrived in time for spring break and blew all their money at Daytona. When Settle got a job, he had to sleep on a picnic table behind a church for a week, until he got his first paycheck.
Despite an inauspicious beginning in his new home, Settle worked hard, and he advanced from laborer to finisher and then to foreman. The construction company had contracts all over the Southeast, so Settle traveled, staying in motels. When the workday was over, he and his crew headed to strip clubs or hung out in bars.
Settle found a house big enough for his family; his wife gave birth to their son, Nathan, back in Ohio, then moved down to join him. In time Settle’s parents decided to relocate to Florida, too. Settle started his own construction company in Orange City, just north of Orlando. But for all that was changing, Settle still liked to spend his free time drinking with friends.
One day, after a few beers, he went to the drive-through window at a bank to deposit a check. He recognized the teller—she was a woman he knew from the local bar scene. “What do you want?” she asked with a smile. He replied, as a joke, “Give me all your money.” The woman bent out of sight and then reappeared holding a plastic container full of neatly stacked bills. “You mean this?” she asked, laughing.
A few weeks later, Settle ran into the woman at a bar, and she brought up their exchange at the bank, saying there had been $35,000 in the box. After their conversation, Settle couldn’t get the number out of his head. All that money, and so close he could have grabbed it.
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Sorry, cat people: According to some ecologists, your feline friends are terrible for the planet. And the problem is even worst with unowned cats, like those who cluster on one particular street in San Juan, Puerto Rico. But as Carrie Arnold unpacks in this essay, solutions are tough to come by.
Each year, cats collectively kill billions of birds, rodents, insects, reptiles and amphibians. They routinely make lists of the world’s worst invasive species. Free-ranging cats have been implicated in the extinction of Lyall’s wren in New Zealand and contributed to the extinction of 33 other species , and are considered a major threat to others, especially on an island like New Zealand — where birds, otherwise, have no natural land predators. To conservationists, it’s a major crisis.
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This essay is an interesting analysis of male friendship, set against the backdrop of a near-death canoeing experience. Nathan Munn’s vivid description of paddling rapids with his friend is sure to get your heart racing. A piece that manages to be both gripping, and thoughtful.
It wasn’t long before we both heard a deep rumbling. We stopped paddling and let the canoe drift in the current, wondering if we were hearing a highway nearby. After a moment, we realized it was the sound of the rapids ahead. I prickled with fear but we pressed on. A few minutes later we crossed a line of small red buoys that neither of us recognized as our last warning.
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You may not expect that a chain restaurant known for performative griddlework would inspire intense self-reflection, but that’s part of what makes Jaya Saxena’s piece about training to be a teppanyaki chef such a lovely surprise. Come for the onion volcano, stay for the many other layers Saxena peels back.
I think about the toll of that kind of performance and the burden of framing your culture primarily as “fun.” The menu that has barely strayed from steak and shrimp and fried rice. Spending all night slicing and dicing and flipping to applause, then reemerging into a world that values you only for your ability to conform to its preconceptions. Perhaps you think of yourself mainly in terms of how well you live up to others’ expectations, even if you never agreed to them, and fret about performing that role. Perhaps there’s barely room to think of what else you could — or want to — offer. Anyway, there is no show good enough to earn you acceptance. But still, you hope.
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Jana G. Pruden spent three days observing the Canadian Cheer National Championships in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and discovered that cheerleading no longer takes place on the sidelines. For some, it’s become the ultimate in team sport, requiring dedication, rigorous training, and a fairly high pain tolerance to excel.
The Canadian Cheer National Championships is the largest tournament in Canadian cheer. This year, 8,000 athletes journeyed from around the country to compete at Nationals, with at least double that number of supporters paying to watch. The youngest competitors were five, the oldest in their 40s. Some of the 428 teams, including both the Golden Girls and Great White Sharks, would be heading to the world cheer competition in Orlando the following week.
There are places for all kinds of bodies in cheer – small flyers, lithe tumblers, powerful bases – and with seven different skill levels and no upper age limit, virtually anyone can find a place. Though there are co-ed teams, cheer in Canada is overwhelmingly female, with girls and women making up an estimated 98 per cent of competitors.
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On Monday, Apple announced its first new product in eight years—a mixed-reality headset. Basically goggles with computers in them. Ian Bogost asks if this is even new, and why we would need such a thing.
Maybe goggles can recover some of what the internet has lost. One might use them not to foster or exploit connections (as in the old—and failed—mission of social media) but to slow down and go somewhere rather than tapping and scrolling and posting into oblivion.
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Juliane Bergmann’s poignant essay looks at the intergenerational judgement between a mother and daughter and the fraught consequences of love in a strained relationship, where neither party can meet the other’s needs. “I could not be honest with my mother in life or death because she couldn’t handle the truth,” she writes. “And, also, because I couldn’t handle telling it.”
It seems easy for some to leave their families when those relationships are rotten and poisonous. They create their own families, chosen, not assigned. It has never been that easy for me. I feel the pull of blood and name and birthplace and biology. I have always felt stuck in the quicksand of Wanting-Things-To-Be-Different. Even my mom’s death was not enough proof for me that things would never be—could never be—different. The grief over what I wanted and didn’t have, what I wished to be true but could never make true, didn’t die along with my mom’s body.
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Saskatoon artist Jeanette Lodoen wanted Canadians to understand the realities of medically-assisted dying and so she and her family granted a CBC News reporter and videographer unrestricted access in the weeks before, during, and after her death.
Jeanette said her family, which included several great-grandchildren, was her greatest pride. But her “second love” was art.
“I’m really proud. I was looking back and I realize that I’ve done a lot more than I thought I did,” she said, pausing to gather a breath. “I’ve never thought of that because, you know, your life is in pieces. Your life is always now, right?
“I used to think I was lazy because I hated housework. I hated it to the Nth degree. Even when I was young, my brother used to accuse me of being lazy. And so when I did all this [art] work, I realized I wasn’t lazy. I was working at something that I love, not at something I hated, you know?”
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What starts as a profile of Tim Robinson, Emmy-winning co-creator of the sketch phenomenon I Think You Should Leave, becomes a meditation on what exactly the show is trying to do, and why Robinson succeeds so soaringly. Sure, Sam Anderson isn’t making many points that haven’t been made before—but as with any of his profiles, he makes them so engagingly and artfully that you’ll all too happy to steep yourself in a not-quite-new argument.
Robinson understands a nasty little paradox about rules: The more you believe in them — the more conscientious you are — the more time you will spend agonizing, worrying, wondering if you are doing things right.
This obsession makes “I Think You Should Leave” the perfect comedy for our overheated cultural moment. The 21st-century United States is, infamously, a preschool classroom of public argumentation. Our one true national pastime has become litigating the rules, at high volume, in good or neutral or very bad faith. “Norms,” a concept previously confined to psychology textbooks, has become a front-page concern. Donald Trump’s whole political existence seems like some kind of performance-art stunt about rule-breaking. The panics over “cancel culture” and the “woke mob” — these are symptoms of a fragmented society wondering if, in a time of flux, it still meaningfully shares social rules. Every time we wander out into the public square, we risk ending up screaming, or screamed at, red-faced, in tears.
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Emily Latimer | Longreads | June 6, 2023 | 4,358 words (15 minutes)
It’s March in Florida, and I’m walking around Hogsmeade village in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. It’s a Christmas card come to life—a picturesque setting with charming storefronts, cobbled streets, and faux snow-capped brick buildings with crooked chimneys. A train conductor dressed in a brown suit greets me in a (probably fake) British accent. Behind him, excited park-goers bustle in and out of a sweet shop, clutching plastic cups of Butterbeer. My friends and I snap pictures of the village’s arched roofs, marveling at this place that attracts millions of visitors each year.
We want to see Hogwarts, so we head to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, a flying adventure through the castle. We pass through the gates and eventually it becomes dark and atmospheric, with cold stone walls and stained glass windows everywhere, but the warm glow of yellow lanterns lights our way. We hear music from the movie, including its iconic leitmotif: first the delicate sounds of an enchanted bell, then the flurry of strings. Talking portraits speak to us as we move deeper into the castle, and we see magical objects scattered about: the Mirror of Erised, a copy of the Daily Prophet newspaper, and the Sorting Hat. Above, we see Professor Dumbledore, who welcomes us to Hogwarts. “You may encounter all manner of things not common to your own world,” he warns.
It really feels like we’re walking through the halls of a magical place.
As we approach the end of the queue, Harry, Ron, and Hermione appear and invite us to watch a Quidditch game. A rollercoaster-style car pulls up next to us. It looks like some kind of enchanted bench. Above us, countless candles float in the air, as if they’re all under a spell.
“Huh,” I say to my friend. “I think this is the ride that made me feel sick last time.” We walk onto the moving platform and take our seats. It happens fast, and there’s no time to back out. I pull the ride restraint over my shoulders and it clicks into place.
The bench abruptly moves sideways and I’m lifted into the air, feet dangling. I’m swept up and to the side at the same time, which throws me off balance.
Instant regret. My heart is beating hard, I’m accumulating spit in my mouth, and after a few seconds, I’m already dizzy and nauseous. I’m hyperaware of my body as it shifts and sways at the mercy of a robotic arm that lurches me, tilts me, turns me. I hold on for dear life.
I’ve been told that the ride is about four minutes long. But it feels like I’ve entered a portal to another dimension where time loops on and on. I’m reminded of that time I ate an innocent-looking THC-laced peanut butter cup and spent the night in a fetal position. I just pray I make it through alive. Or better yet, maybe I’ll die and the misery will end.
I suddenly remember the $8 Butterbeer that I chugged right before the ride. Whoops. I close my eyes; I know I’m going to be sick. I can’t escape it, but maybe I can delay it. I take deep but shaky breaths. I brace against the unpredictable movements. And then, I let it happen.
I surrender to the ride’s pre-programmed destiny. Its force is bigger and stronger than mine, and better engineered. I’m flailed around like a ragdoll. I curse Harry Potter and his friends, the ride designers, the thrill seekers who rave about the ride, and most of all, me, for willingly going on it. I hold on as long as I can, but the ride pitches me forward and I open my eyes. I see Harry on screen, flying a broom through a Quidditch field. And then I throw up all over my lap. In my hands. And into the open air.
I love amusement parks. I love rides. Unfortunately, they make me barf. There was the time I emerged green and shaky-legged from The Simpsons Ride, a motion simulator attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood, and another occasion when I nearly blacked out from the g-force on Dueling Dragons, a roller coaster that Universal Orlando retired in 2017.
It’s not just rides: I once spent six hours in the cabin of a rocking lobster fishing boat, and I often feel disoriented on an especially windy car ride. But I’ve always denied my propensity for motion sickness. Feigning ignorance is the best bet, I thought: So I read in the car, I opted for high-speed ferries, and I went on whatever fun fair rides I felt like. Forget medication—my motion sickness is not that bad.
That is, until this past winter, when I found myself wandering Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure in search of a new pair of shorts, carrying a plastic bag stuffed with my puke-covered clothing. It was then, at age 27, having thrown up at multiple amusement parks in my life, that I realized motion sickness was something I’d have to live with. And that even though I’ve loved going on theme park rides since I was a kid, I’ve never been able to fully experience what they’re built to do: give me a freewheeling, exhilarating thrill.
Thrill seekers want an extreme adrenaline rush, but also an emotional journey. Theme parks are designed to deliver both. The fear and ultimate satisfaction we feel from thrill rides is similar to what we seek in a horror movie or a painfully spicy hot sauce. They’re all benign forms of masochism. (Singer Lucy Dacus recently said that flying in airplanes is a “death-flavored experience.” I think the same could be said for amusement park rides.)
The real trick is making sure park-goers don’t clue into the coordinated efforts happening behind the scenes. The goal? Complete immersion.
There’s an enduring interest in theme parks and their manufactured thrills. In 2019, over half a billion people visited theme parks worldwide, passing through the gates of magical places like Walt Disney World, Legoland, Six Flags, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Universal Studios in Hollywood and Orlando, where I met my fate on that Harry Potter ride. The global theme park industry, valued at almost $55 billion, is built on family fun, shared experiences, and escape. “It’s about getting away from the everyday and disappearing into a different world,” says Sabrina Mittermeier, author of A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks. There’s no time to think about your silly little problems when your body is flying through the air against all odds.
A theme park is also an illusion: a fantastical, cloistered space that transports visitors to far-off realms. “It’s all about control,” says Scott A. Lukas, a cultural anthropologist who studies theme parks. “We’re giving you the illusion that you can do whatever you want, yet, we’re controlling everything.” The real trick is making sure park-goers don’t clue into the coordinated efforts happening behind the scenes. The goal? Complete immersion.
But what happens when a ride that’s meant to excite you or make you feel awe doesn’t strike that perfect balance of fun and fear? What does a shattered mirage look like?
When I was younger, the arrival of the traveling carnival each spring to our mall parking lot in Sydney, Nova Scotia, was a sign of the end of the school year. It was 2006, and I was nearly 11 years old. For about $15, my best friend Erika and I got bracelets that let us go on any rides we wanted. Black pavement underfoot, we were free. We weaved through the circus grounds with other unsupervised children from our neighborhood, giddy with excitement. Under worn-out tents, carnies slung sickly-sweet cotton candy and invited us to play games of chance. We always blasted past the games and ran straight for the rides: rides with names like Sizzler, Fireball, Tornado, and Round-Up, which spun all around us, a dizzying assault on the senses. There were a few standout attractions—Zipper flipped you upside down, Tilt-a-Whirl spun you in circles, and the Gravitron lifted your legs off the ground as if by magic. We went on all of them.
One day, we waited in line for Star Trooper, which whizzed above us in a blur of purple and aqua. We slid into the umbrella-like seats when it was our turn. We flew through the air, kicking our feet as the ride lifted us higher. Halfway through, it slowed down and reversed. The backward motion reminded me of the Subway sandwich I’d eaten earlier. I got off the ride, sickly pale, and puked in a garbage can. (“The olives stand out to me the most,” Erika says now.) We laughed, the older kids made fun of me, and we continued on like it never happened. Surely the slow-moving Ferris wheel would be fine. But as we reached the very top, I threw up on the riders below me. Again, we laughed. It was just another day at the circus.
We liked being scared. In our basements, we used Ouija boards to summon spirits. We huddled together in front of the TV as we watched people cut their limbs off in Saw. (I threw up on the carpet after that one.) And we rode all the rides.
I love amusement parks. I love rides. Unfortunately, they make me barf.
Every summer, Erika and I took the ferry to Prince Edward Island for a soccer tournament. We would stay in Cavendish, the beachside town famous for Anne of Green Gables and the classic Sandspit Amusement Park. After soccer games, we visited the fairground and rode the old wooden roller coaster or the bumper boats. It was kind of rinky-dink, but there were more intense rides too. One time, we went on the Rok-n-Rol, a ride on a raised platform that spun us into oblivion. Seated face-to-face, it tipped us upside down, swirled us around in circles. We loved it. Erika begged me to go on again. A little voice told me not to, but I was good at ignoring it in the pursuit of fun. We rode again, and I felt my chicken pesto sandwich come up. I vomited all over both of us. “It was, like, almost normal to me at that point,” Erika says. “It’s weird that we never looked into it.”
Up to a third of people experience motion sickness. It’s the body’s response to different types of movement that cause disequilibrium—a sensation of unsteadiness, imbalance, and spatial disorientation. Cue the nausea, dizziness, headaches, cold sweats, general unwellness, and, well, barfing. Anyone can get motion sickness, so it’s not considered a disease, nor is it considered a disorder. It’s been described as “a natural response to unnatural conditions,” and somehow, that makes me feel better. Children as young as 2 can experience it, and women are more susceptible than men, as are migraine-sufferers and those with inner ear troubles. Heck, sheer anticipation may bring it on: People who have experienced it in the past may have worse symptoms expecting to feel sick.
Motion sickness can be felt anywhere: land, sea, air, and space. In recent decades, new technology that mimics vehicular travel—like flight simulators, VR headsets, video games, and motion simulator rides — have joined the classic motion sickness provokers: the car, the railcar, the airplane, and the boat. You can’t escape it.
Since antiquity, thinkers have theorized and written about motion sickness. Aristotle was the first to describe seasickness as an imbalance of fluids in the body. Hippocrates wrote, “Sailing on the sea proves that motion disorders the body.” Charles Darwin was continually seasick on his nearly five-year journey on the HMS Beagle, writing in 1835, “I hate every wave of the ocean, with a fervor, which you, who have only seen the green waters of the shore, can never understand.” Angsty.
The cause of this condition is simple: motion. There are, however, competing theories about what is happening inside our bodies. Sensory conflict theory says sickness is brought on due to a mismatch between what the eye sees and the information the brain receives from the inner ear balance mechanism (the vestibular system, which detects disorientation in space). So when the eyes tell the brain that a person is sitting still on a boat, for example, but the vestibular system senses head movements from waves rocking against the ship, these mismatched messages are traditionally believed to cause motion sickness.
Too much stimuli can make you sick. These signals can combine and multiply, depending on your environment. John Golding, a professor of applied psychology at the University of Westminster, says motion sickness can take many forms: sea sickness, car sickness, air sickness, space sickness, cinerama sickness, and cyber sickness.
I experienced hybrid sickness on that Harry Potter ride, thanks to the mismatched stimuli between screens and physical motion. But ride-induced motion sickness is nothing new. In 1893, ride designer Amariah Lake invented an “illusion apparatus” called The Haunted Swing. Victorian-era riders entered a room and took a seat on the swing. Attendants gave it a push, and, as one Australian newspaper described, “The swing seems to whirl completely over … while the occupants shriek convulsively and hug each other.” The ride mechanics deceived riders enough for them to believe they were moving. In reality, they were stationary; it was the room that rotated. People were amazed by the engineering and overwhelmed by the physical experience—sometimes enough to vomit. But the ultimate trick in theme park rides is to perfectly calibrate their ups and downs so people don’t end up sick.
Thrill seekers want an extreme adrenaline rush, but also an emotional journey. Theme parks are designed to deliver both.
If you ask me, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey missed the mark. It’s definitely a feat of engineering—the world’s first passenger-carrying industrial robot. Since its successful debut at Orlando’s Islands of Adventure in 2010, Universal has built the ride at parks in California, Japan, and China. (Before the Hollywood version launched to the public in 2016, TMZ reported that it was making employees barf left and right, and ride engineers couldn’t figure out why.)
As I encountered that day in March, the ride features a four-seat, roller coaster-style bench, mounted on a robotic arm that drops, spins, twists, and turns. The bench doesn’t go upside down, but at one point, riders are laid flat on their backs, and honestly, what’s the difference? The robotic arm (which seems to have a mind of its own, but actually is programmed) was designed for “a guaranteed thrill factor,” according to KUKA, the German robot manufacturer.
For me, there’s too much movement: The arm is attached to a track, which moves through a physical set with animated props. Dome-shaped projection screens fill the rider’s entire field of view. (Read: There’s nowhere else to look.) The ride blended the “first-ever combination of live-action, advanced robotic technology and innovative filmmaking,” creating a new, immersive experience. And hey, people really love it: There’s a cult-like following online, with fans calling it a revolutionary ride with insane, state-of-the-art tech that refreshes the indoor “dark ride” genre.
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But those prone to motion sickness don’t like it very much. Exactly once, more than a decade ago, Steven Golden rode the Forbidden Journey. I contacted Golden after I found him on Reddit, complaining about the ride. He still hasn’t forgotten the feeling of helplessness that set in when the over-the-shoulder restraint eased into place. “I just remember thinking, oh my God, I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Golden says. Within seconds, he remembers being propelled up and jerked around. He tried to look for an exit sign or a stationary object to break the illusion of immersion, but he couldn’t find anything. “There was absolutely no escape.” Over a Zoom call, we laugh and bond over our shared misery. Never again.
New research from Thomas Stoffregen, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, says it is unstable movement that makes you sick—full stop. Motion sickness doesn’t start in the inner ear, Stoffregen says, but rather from a disturbance in the body’s system for maintaining posture. You lose your equilibrium first, and then you get motion sick. In an inconsistent environment, the brain can’t modulate the body’s movement like it usually can.
So on a theme park ride, the relationship between what you’re trying to do with your body and what actually happens to your body is unpredictable and leads to destabilization. Yes, just picture poor me, strapped to a seat and pushed through space. “You’re trying to stabilize the head against these motions that you cannot predict and cannot control,” Stoffregen says. “That’s why you got sick in that device.”
Theme parks have long been a battleground for motion sickness sufferers, but they’ve continued to lure people over the decades. Thrill seekers want fun, fantastic, never-before-felt experiences. Dreamland, one of the earliest theme parks at Brooklyn’s Coney Island, operated from 1904 to 1911. For just 35 cents admission, visitors, many of whom arrived by ship, could embark on one of the first motion simulator rides: Under and Over the Sea, a simulated submarine ride in the Atlantic Ocean. It looked like a Man-of-War ship, complete with lifeboats, gun turrets, and a deck. Peering through portholes, riders witnessed giant squids and sharks. Other simulators at the time imagined a trip to the moon, or a reproduction of the Galveston flood of 1900.
These rides were completely new physical experiences for people at the time. In a 1981 article in TheJournal of Popular Culture, American historian Russel B. Nye described the public appeal of the amusement park as a “riskless risk, a place where one may take chances that are not really chances.”
Thrillseekers want their kinesthetic sense disturbed—that’s the whole point. But push the drama too intensely and a person may never come back again. Ride designers must walk that fine line between safety and danger, while balancing the physical stress on the body. The truth is, thrill rides are designed to induce some level of discomfort. But what’s too much? Throwing up? Whiplash? Blacking out due to g-force?
Modern rides that choreograph one-of-a-kind experiences in whimsical worlds and galaxies far, far away—like riding a magical bench through the halls of Hogwarts, soaring on the back of a winged banshee in Pandora, or joining the Resistance in an epic battle against the First Order—are leveraging haptics, olfactory, and VR technology that has become increasingly multi-sensory and immersive. All the while, they need to fine-tune the right amount of fear and fun that doesn’t make riders run for the nearest garbage can.
Past and present, some rides go too far. The world’s first looping roller coaster, the Flip Flap Railway at Coney Island’s Sea Lion Park, was infamous for knocking people out. (It had a perfectly circular loop, which meant passengers were nailed with serious g-force.) In 1910, Rough Riders, another early Coney Island roller coaster, tossed 16 passengers out of the car, killing four.
But the ultimate trick in theme park rides is to perfectly calibrate their ups and downs so people don’t end up sick.
Even if you don’t die, some rides are notorious for making you feel sick—even today. Just read through online reviews for Epcot’s Mission: SPACE, The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios, or Star Tours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and you’ll find lots of people commenting that they nearly puked. After my vomit mishap, I stumbled around Hogsmeade in search of chocolate when a kind shopkeeper advised me to skip the Minions and Transformers rides, just to be safe. Last year, the New York Postwrote that Epcot employees were handing out barf bags at the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which rotates 360 degrees and has Disney’s first-ever reverse launch on a roller coaster. (Am I surprised? No.) On message boards, park visitors plot when to take their Dramamine and ask which stomach-turning rides to skip.
New motion simulator rides, like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios—a combined trackless dark ride, motion simulator, walk-through, and drop ride—have been more successful. In 2020, Theme Park Insiderranked it as the best new attraction: “Disney’s latest masterpiece blends four ride systems with animatronics and live actors to create the most immersive themed experience of the year.” Disney made another winner at its Animal Kingdom park at Walt Disney World. On Avatar Flight of Passage, a 3D flying simulator, riders straddle a mechanical banshee and feel it breathe between their legs. “No other theme park attraction so wonderfully recreates the feeling of flying than Flight of Passage does,” states another Theme Park Insiderreview.
In my deep dive into theme park blogs and forums, I found a real appetite for well-done immersive rides that don’t make you expel your overpriced park lunch.
Because here’s the thing: People are getting sick at theme parks all the time. Prone to motion sickness since childhood, Darren Kwong rode that Harry Potter ride a few years ago. He later rated it one star. “I couldn’t enjoy it at all,” he now says. He closed his eyes seconds after the ride started, and took deep breaths to stop from getting sick. He made it through without throwing up on his date, but it was close.
Another rider, Laurin Jeffrey, went in with a plan. He heard it may be a rough ride, so he preemptively took ginger pills, Gravol, and Pepto-Bismol. Even loaded up on medication, he felt sick because he felt the actions on screen didn’t match up with the movements of the robotic arm. “You’re going sideways while backwards while it tips you as you’re looking at something going forwards,” he says. “If you could design a Vomit-Tron, that would be it.”
One blog post on Penny Arcade resonated with me in particular: “Within the first 5 seconds of Harry Potter I knew I was in trouble. … As vomiting turned from a possibility into certainty I started trying to focus on how best to throw up.” Been there, brother.
You can try to beat motion sickness, but once it sets in, it’s already too late. The best way to stop motion sickness is to avoid situations that may provoke it. But if you’re like me and absolutely must ride: Look at the horizon. Try Dramamine. Consider acupressure. Don’t eat or drink anything before or after a ride. (Or if you do, make sure it’s bland.) Try not to get annoyed when your friend says, “I didn’t think it was that bad.”
But prevention may not work. One reviewer took Transderm-Scop, a medication that had proved effective on other rides. “That miracle drug allows me to ride everything else in the world … [but] it barely took the edge off,” they wrote. “Without the medication I was undone.” Another reviewer took medication but ended up braving the ride to see if it had kicked in. “It didn’t work at all,” she wrote. “I’m 44 years old and have never thrown up on an attraction.”
When you puke in a land of magic and whimsy, the wonder vanishes.
The seat was curved, so puke pooled under my butt and legs. Who’s going to clean this? I thought. I stood up, spaced out and doused in vomit, and watched as the bench rolled away. I hurried toward the nearest unmoving wall, squatted, and took deep breaths as my friends surveyed what happened. The cool floor looked like a good place to lie for a while. Then I heard a voice.
“Ma’am, I have a room for you.”
I glanced up and saw a kind employee looking down at me. From his expression, I could tell he had seen this before and knew exactly what to do. He ushered me to a door marked for employees only and opened it to reveal a hidden space—one dedicated to unfortunate souls like me who couldn’t make it through the ride without getting sick.
There was a square basin that looked like a toilet filled with water. It was a special puke sink, with a silver flush handle. I hovered over it for a second, but I was all puked out. Two of my friends came in after me, and one of them was inspired to throw up, too.
The small room had a normal sink and soap and throw-up bags and paper towels. I wiped off my shorts and legs, and removed my T-shirt, which was completely ruined. The attendant knocked on the door and asked if I needed anything. A new shirt. Shorts. Water. He came back with a blue T-shirt, size adult large, with a screen print of the Hogwarts castle. “Visit Enchanting Hogsmeade,” it read. A $27 souvenir, free for the price of vomit. “No shorts,” he said.
I felt grateful for his help and relieved that this secret room was here to hide my vomit. There was a wooden cabinet with dozens of Gildan T-shirts and flip-flops in different sizes. As I looked at them, I thought of all the people who came before me and puked on their shoes. They got to see inside this secret space, too, which is magical in its own way.
My friends and I explored, flinging cupboards open and peeking behind curtains to reveal cleaning supplies and garbage bags. As I scrubbed my body and donned my new T-shirt, I accepted the tiniest water bottle I’ve ever seen—another consolation prize.
“Does this happen a lot?” I asked the ride attendant.
“Pretty often,” he said.
I balled up my old T-shirt and my ruined hat and shoved them into a plastic bag. I was still shaky, but I took sips of water and felt ready to leave.
I wobbled through the busy gift shop toward the bright Florida sunlight, dazed as people dressed in Hogwarts-themed clothing moved around me. I put my clammy hand to my cheek and took a Snapchat selfie with my barf bag. “Bag of shame,” I posted.
As I cowered in a shady area while my sister hustled around looking for a new pair of shorts for me, I thought about how quickly the illusion can shatter in theme parks: You get stuck upside down on the Flying Cobra. The bright lights come on after Space Mountain malfunctions, exposing the ride’s steel infrastructure. You’re covered in your own vomit, and the spell is broken.
Emily Latimer is a journalist and fact-checker in Nova Scotia. She’s written for the CBC, Canadian Business, Maclean’s, and elsewhere. You can find her stories atwww.emilylatimer.com.
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Most people have heard of Arpanet, the computer network that presaged the internet as we know it. But most haven’t heard of SUPARS, an early information-retrieval engine that was tested and championed by library-science grad students—and that set the stage for web search as we know it. At Aeon, Monica Westin tells the story.
SUPARS and other largely forgotten systems were the forerunners of the contemporary search engines we have today. While the popular history of the internet valorises Silicon Valley coders – or, sometimes, the former US vice president Al Gore – many of the original concepts for search emerged from library scientists focused on the accessibility of documents in time and space. Working with research and development funding from the military and industry, their advances can be seen everywhere in the current online information landscape – from general approaches to ingesting and indexing full-text documents, to free-text searching and a sophisticated algorithm utilising previous saved searches of others, a foundational building block for contemporary query expansion and autocomplete. Indeed, these and many other approaches developed by campus pioneers are still used by the multibillion-dollar businesses of web search and commercial library databases from Google to WorldCat today.
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Dogma has long held that The Simpsons hasn’t been good since the late ’90s. That means it’s been muddling along for 26 years—which would make even “bad” Simpsons the longest-running prime-time scripted show in television history. Yet, as Jesse David Fox points out, the series’ 34th season has brought about a new approach to writing, and with it a stunning creative reversal. D’oh you believe it?
Selman sees the show as a “Groundhog Day–type reality, where at the beginning of every episode, they’ve forgotten everything that’s happened before.” That frees the writers from the burden of story continuity, allowing them to push the boundaries of what The Simpsons can do. No recent episode defines the current spirit like “Lisa the Boy Scout,” a mind-bending postmodern intervention into the series. In it, hackers interrupt the episode to play supposed deleted scenes that would “ruin” the audience’s conception of The Simpsons universe. There’s a clip in which Carl learns that his best friend, Lenny, was actually a figment of his imagination and another in which it is revealed that Martin, Bart’s nerdiest classmate, is actually a grizzled 36-year-old father of three with an aging disorder that leaves him looking 10.
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Could autoimmune diseases be at the root of some mental illnesses? Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, thinks so. “By all accounts, she was thriving, in overall good health and showing no signs of mental distress beyond the normal teenage growing pains,” they said of April Burrell. This was before she suffered a traumatic experience, became incoherent, and was hospitalized. Twenty years after she became catatonic, Markx discovered that April’s bloodwork showed antibodies were attacking her brain. Miraculously, after several courses of steroids and immunosuppressive drugs, April improved to the point where in 2020, she was deemed mentally competent enough to check herself out of treatment, but not before a joyful reunion with her family.
The medical team set to work counteracting April’s rampaging immune system and started April on an intensive immunotherapy treatment for neuropsychiatric lupus. Every month for six months, April would receive short, but powerful “pulses” of intravenous steroids for five days, plus a single dose of cyclophosphamide, a heavy-duty immunosuppressive drug typically used in chemotherapy and borrowed from the field of oncology. She was also treated with rituximab, a drug initially developed for lymphoma.
The regimen is grueling, requiring a month-long break between each of the six rounds to allow the immune system to recover. But April started showing signs of improvement almost immediately.
A video of the reunion shows that April was still tentative and fragile. But her family said she remembered her childhood home in Baltimore, the grades she got in school, being a bridesmaid in her brother’s wedding — seemingly everything up until when the autoimmune inflammatory processes began affecting her brain. She even recognized her niece, whom April had only seen as a small child, now a grown young woman. When her father hopped on a video call, April remarked “Oh, you lost your hair,” and burst out laughing, Guy Burrell recalled.
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