The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Werner Herzog gives a fascinating account of the time he spent in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Larger-than-life characters and unwise adventures keep you gripped with every word.

There were occasional bizarre scenes. The mother fed her son as if he were a little kid. More precisely, she made him eat green Jell-O, and she started to think of me as someone who might also benefit from it. I ate it uncomplainingly. This motif surfaced many years later, in my film “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,” where the protagonist, played by Michael Shannon, is covered in Jell-O by his mother, as if it were war paint. He ends up playing the part of Orestes in a theatre production, failing to keep performance separate from reality, and killing his mother with a stage prop, a Turkish sabre.

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/DXyHFx1

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/gRSxk8A

The World Is Going Blind. Taiwan Offers a Warning, and a Cure

The best science journalism doesn’t read like science journalism at all; it reads like a mystery. And Amit Katwala’s latest Wired feature, which chronicles how a Taiwanese eye surgeon set out to solve his country’s decades-long slide into severe nearsightedness (and ends on one of the more charming kickers I can remember), knows no good solution comes without sleuthin’.

In 1999, the government convened a group of experts in medicine and education to try and fix the problem. Jen-Yee Wu, who worked at the Ministry of Education and had done his doctoral thesis on eyesight protection, was asked to write a set of guidelines for schools to address nearsightedness. Later that year, he published a thin green book full of advice for teachers. It paid careful attention to desk height (to keep texts the right distance from the eyes) and room lighting, and advocated eye relaxation exercises, including a guided massage of points around the eyes and face. The book also advised giving children more space in their notebooks to pen the intricate characters that make up written Mandarin. And it formalized the 30/10 rule: a 10-minute break to stare into the distance after every half hour of reading or looking at a screen.

None of it worked. Nearsightedness rates continued to climb because, as it turned out, Taiwan, and the world, had been thinking about how to address myopia completely wrong.

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/2jZh1LM

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/D74682W

What Happened to “Wirecutter”?

Those looking for unbiased, trustworthy product reviews once had an easy first step: Check Wirecutter. But as Charlie Warzel points out, it’s not so simple anymore. Between its parent company growth expectations, the increasing influence of product discussions on Reddit and other social platforms, and SEO chicanery, Wirecutter often feel a little bit … less. But with a pleasingly meta approach, Warzel tries to answer his own question. Is the result definitive? Impossible to say. But such is true of any product review these days.

Ultimately, Wirecutter’s mission to “tell you what the best particular product in a category is at any given moment” has become a herculean, if not impossible, task; the internet is too big, and it’s filled with too much stuff. And, as many online shoppers learned during the height of the pandemic, purchases don’t always follow the cold, rational logic of a Wirecutter recommendation. We panic-buy; we impulse-buy; we buy to fill a hole in our lives. “The ideal review is that you test everything and then there’s one product that works well for most people,” a former Wirecutter editor, who asked to speak anonymously because they still work in media, told me. “But who is ‘most people’?”

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/yhPxdTi

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/D74682W

Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule

At this point, nothing more needs to be said to describe Elon Musk’s seeming personality shift over the past two decades—but particularly over the past five years. Why that’s happened is a more interesting topic, and one that Ronan Farrow delves into deeply in this well-sourced, well-reported exploration of the entrepreneur’s increasingly influential role on the global geopolitical stage.

National-security officials I spoke with had a range of views on the government’s balance of power with Musk. He maintains good relationships with some of them, including General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since the two men met, several years ago, when Milley was the chief of staff of the Army, they have discussed “technology applications to warfare—artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and autonomous machines,” Milley told me. “He has insight that helped shape my thoughts on the fundamental change in the character of war and the modernization of the U.S. military.” During the Starlink controversy, Musk called him for advice. But other officials expressed profound misgivings. “Living in the world we live in, in which Elon runs this company and it is a private business under his control, we are living off his good graces,” a Pentagon official told me. “That sucks.”

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/iOxZcAw

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/D74682W

Frank Smith Was Locked Up for Eight Decades. At 98, What Would It Mean to Be Free?

He’s likely the longest-serving prisoner in the United States. The state of Connecticut tried to execute him eight times. Now he lives in a secure nursing home, struggling to stay in the present and live with the past:

Even now, Smith seems to live perpetually in the time of his trial. He has mild dementia, and doesn’t always recall what he did a day ago. But he remembers his public defenders, members of the jury, who said what and when. He can’t stop replaying these details for anyone who will listen. It’s a habit he’s apparently maintained for seven decades. In 1953, a death row chaplain told the Courant he spent the long night before one of the aborted executions with Smith. Even on the verge of death, the chaplain said, “He kept going over and over his case.”

All these years later, he’ll say to me:

I’m in here on no evidence at all.

They never had a case against me.

I’m innocent under Connecticut law.

I asked one of the nursing home administrators if my visits were too upsetting, bringing up terrors from a lifetime ago, making Smith relive the days before his scheduled executions.

No, she told me. Being listened to “is happiness for him.”

But in our conversations, he would return again and again to the electric chair, still an object of primal, almost talismanic fear all of this time later. “It cooks you,” he would repeat, folding into himself. “It cooks you.”

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/TelCdhE

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/Mc8AF5t

At His Majesty’s Pleasure

Poundbury seems to be a bizarre place: King Charles’ vision of how English towns should be. Jimmy McIntosh heads there for the coronation with high expectations but leaves unimpressed. A quirky little essay about a quirky little place.

Much has been written about the first foray into town planning of King Charles III, né His Royal Highness Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince of Wales. It’s either a utopia or a twee hell, depending on who you read. But here’s the top line: the genesis of Poundbury came about in 1987, when West Dorset County Council decided to expand westwards into the fields from the county town of Dorchester. The land had been, since the reign of Edward III in 1337, Duchy of Cornwall land, but rather than sell up to the council for a generous price the Duke of Cornwall, Charles – who had long had an interest in urban development and architecture – agreed to work with them to build his vision of England: a return to tradition, a reaction against estate modernism, the wet dream of a thousand Quinlan Terry fanboys and internet edgelords.

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/dWNY5qV

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/Mc8AF5t

Gwyneth Paltrow Put Her House Up on Airbnb. And Thus, a Quest Began.

A fun look at Gwyneth Paltrow’s rather ridiculous offer to AirBnB her guest house. Jodi Walker strips this down to the publicity stunt it is and has a great time analyzing how she can make the stay hers.

Because if it looks like a contest and quacks like a contest, it’s probably a publicity stunt. But still, if at the end of that publicity stunt—and at the end of whatever technical nightmare stands between me and the Goop House—is my getting to talk about natural wine and odors with Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk … well, quack quack, bitch, let’s go.

Read the story

from Longreads https://ift.tt/RUmXI8Q

---

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/Mc8AF5t