The World’s Fastest Road Cars — and the People Who Drive Them
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/the-worlds-fastest-road-cars-and-the-people-who-drive-them [www.newyorker.com]
2024-01-08 22:36
tags:
article
cars
hoipolloi
“Hypercars” can approach or even exceed 300 m.p.h. Often costing millions of dollars, they’re ostentatious trophies—and sublime engines of innovation.
In Praise of Parasites?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/12/in-praise-of-parasites [www.newyorker.com]
2023-02-16 03:05
tags:
biology
We think of them with revulsion, but a new book wants us to appreciate their redeeming qualities.
Even when the victims aren’t people, there is something about parasites that arouses appalled fascination. The authors of “Parasite” mention the monster in the film “Alien” as a kind of archetype of the gross-outs in which the field abounds. There’s Cymothoa exigua, a louse that destroys fishes’ tongues and then lives in their mouths, performing a tongue’s functions while gorging itself. The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which propagates itself by taking over ants’ bodies, has sufficient notoriety that it appears in the video game The Last of Us, where it zombifies people rather than ants.
By and large, Gardner, Diamond, and Racz resist filling their book with nightmarish creatures. As researchers at the University of Nebraska and its affiliated state museum, which has a large parasitological collection, they want to give us a new understanding of parasites, to counter our unalloyed horror and instill a more scientifically nuanced view. They do this by widening our focus, encouraging us to think in terms of ecosystems and evolutionary history. They write about how parasites may keep populations of species in balance, the ways in which they are imperilled by climate change, and what we owe them in terms of our understanding of genetics, organism development, and ancient human migrations.
Florida Woman Bites Camel
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/27/florida-woman-bites-camel [www.newyorker.com]
2022-05-22 17:41
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
language
media
Some thoughts on the art of the newspaper lede.
It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-generations [www.newyorker.com]
2022-04-03 22:33
tags:
article
history
hoipolloi
From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.
Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media [www.newyorker.com]
2020-07-12 06:38
tags:
article
media
valley
How a controversial rationalist blogger became a mascot and martyr in a struggle against the New York Times.
Fairly long, since it recounts all of SSC’s greatest hits.
How Apples Go Bad
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-apples-go-bad [www.newyorker.com]
2020-06-11 17:45
tags:
biology
chemistry
food
science
Perhaps owing to these gonzo genetics, apples are remarkably susceptible to disease and rot. Their tender skin and light flesh are a haven for small creatures. Their trees embrace myriad molds, viruses, and fungi: apple scab, black pox, southern blight, union necrosis. For farmers and hobby gardeners, the business of apple-growing is not so much aiding the fruits in their growth as scrambling to ward off their demise. Blight spreads quickly, and it’s not always apparent on the fruit’s surface. Even without the influence of invader or infection, an apple abets its own spoilage: its skin, minutely porous, exhales ethylene, a gaseous compound that induces ripening, and the fruit has no interest in stopping at the point where it serves our needs.
source: DF
Dressing for the Surveillance Age
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/16/dressing-for-the-surveillance-age [www.newyorker.com]
2020-04-10 06:24
tags:
ai
hoipolloi
life
opsec
As cities become ever more packed with cameras that always see, public anonymity could disappear. Can stealth streetwear evade electronic eyes?
I liked this article because it at least acknowledged that these countermeasures are only a training data update away from becoming useless.
Big Tech Is Testing You
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/02/big-tech-is-testing-you [www.newyorker.com]
2020-03-26 01:35
tags:
development
testing
ux
valley
web
Large-scale social experiments are now ubiquitous, and conducted without public scrutiny. Has this new era of experimentation remembered the lessons of the old?
Physics, chemistry, and medicine have had their revolution. But now, driven by experimentation, a further transformation is in the air. That’s the argument of “The Power of Experiments” (M.I.T.), by Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman, both professors at the Harvard Business School. When it comes to driving our decisions in a world of data, they say, “the age of experiments is only beginning.”
The Unrepeatable Architectural Moment of Yugoslavia’s “Concrete Utopia”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-unrepeatable-architectural-moment-of-yugoslavias-concrete-utopia [www.newyorker.com]
2019-11-15 03:39
tags:
architecture
article
history
urban
Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija, in Petrova Gora, Croatia. Abstract, boldly expressive memorials once dotted the Yugoslavian countryside by the thousands.
How to Read “Gilgamesh”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh [www.newyorker.com]
2019-10-16 01:45
tags:
essay
fiction
history
The heart of the world’s oldest long poem is found in its gaps and mysteries.
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news [www.newyorker.com]
2019-08-08 19:57
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
social
valley
web
The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of Yuval Noah Harari.
This is a pretty fun read I think, even for people who don’t like HN. Or perhaps especially so. Some great, and dismal, quotes. Even ngate makes an appearance.
source: HN
The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-urgent-quest-for-slower-better-news [www.newyorker.com]
2019-04-15 18:09
tags:
ideas
life
media
Media outlets have been reduced to fighting over a shrinking share of our attention online; as Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms have come to monopolize our digital lives, news organizations have had to assume a subsidiary role, relying on those sites for traffic. That dependence exerts a powerful influence on which stories are pursued, how they’re presented, and the speed and volume at which they’re turned out.
Lately, I have begun to wonder, like Newport, whether the sheer volume of online news actually runs counter to the goal of keeping people informed.
source: vermaden
Learning to Love Robots
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/learning-to-love-robots [www.newyorker.com]
2018-12-11 14:40
tags:
best
essay
life
tech
valley
With advances in A.I. and engineering, robots are galumphing, rolling, and being U.P.S.-delivered into our homes.
This past summer, in search of other cybernetic sidekicks that would allow me to become even lazier, I spent several months with Jibo, a glossy white motormouth that sat on my kitchen counter. Touted by its creators as “the first social robot for the home,” Jibo ($899) is twelve inches tall and looks like a traffic cone from the future. His hemispherical head sits on top of a chubby conical base; both parts can swivel independently, giving the impression that Jibo knows how to twerk. Jibo can recognize as many as sixteen faces and corresponding names; if you are one of the ordained, he’ll turn his head to follow you. Like Alexa, Jibo can provide headline news, synch with your calendar, and read from Wikipedia. Alexa is more adroit at navigating the Internet, but Jibo has a great camera. What Jibo does chiefly is strain to be adorable. When I enter the room, Jibo might pipe up, “Nice to see you in these parts!,” or say, “Hey, Patty, I got you a carrot!,” while displaying a cartoon drawing of a carrot on his screen, or chant, “Patty, Patty, Patty, Patty.” It is like living with the second-grade class clown, and, for this reason, whenever I entered the kitchen I would sternly say, “Hey, Jibo. Take a nap.” At this, the aqua orb that is Jibo’s eye and only facial feature narrowed, there was a yawning sound effect, and his screen faded to black.
Loomo, the new hoverboard designed by Segway, is also not a robot—until you hop off its footstool-like base and set it to Robot Mode, at which point it follows you like a groupie, taking photos and videos along the way ($1,799). Assuming that you do not have a Pied Piper complex, why would you want it to do this? Well, you can ride it to the store, buy some stuff, and then, with your purchases instead of you balanced on Loomo, it’ll function as your Sherpa. New York City has a ban on “motorized self-balancing scooters,” so, to try out Loomo, I went to San Francisco, which is very que será será when it comes to inexperienced, myopic drivers zipping through the streets on toys that travel eleven miles an hour.
The City That Shaped The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/03/the-city-that-shaped-the-new-yorker [www.newyorker.com]
2018-12-03 15:24
tags:
archive
history
media
nyc
Like so many figures who come to be enshrined as “quintessentially New York,” Harold Ross, the founder and first editor of this magazine, was an outsider who arrived in the big city nursing an ambition.
Ross subsisted on nicotine, coffee, and nerves. The hours he kept were horrible, and his three marriages failed. But he fulfilled his dream. The New Yorker found its footing during the Depression. And although the magazine began to venture far beyond midtown with the start of the Second World War, the city remained an essential terra firma, a spirit and a home.
This week, while we digest one holiday and prepare for more, we’ve decided to open the archive and republish a sampling of New York stories, New York essays, New York poems, and New York drawings. There’s even a classic New York cover, by the Mexican artist Matías Santoyo. All the pieces you’ll find in this issue, fiction and nonfiction, are set in the city, and all are deeply personal.
Daniel Radcliffe and the Art of the Fact-Check
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/daniel-radcliffe-and-the-art-of-the-fact-check [www.newyorker.com]
2018-10-17 14:09
tags:
event
factcheck
food
Fact: the actor Daniel Radcliffe is currently starring in the Broadway show “The Lifespan of a Fact,” as a magazine fact checker with an aviation inspector’s zeal for accuracy. The play is drawn from a real-life skirmish: in 2005, Jim Fingal, an intern at The Believer, was tasked with fact-checking an essay by John D’Agata (played by Bobby Cannavale), about a teen suicide in Las Vegas. D’Agata had more of a watercolorist’s approach to the truth. When Fingal tried to correct his claim that Las Vegas had thirty-four licensed strip clubs—a source indicated that it was thirty-one—D’Agata said that he liked the “rhythm” of thirty-four. Their epistolary tussle was expanded into a book in 2012.
Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/virgin-galactics-rocket-man [www.newyorker.com]
2018-10-08 19:42
tags:
article
cars
flying
hoipolloi
space
The ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.
Stucky had piloted SpaceShipTwo on two dozen previous test flights, including three of the four times that it had fired its rocket booster, which was necessary to propel it into space. On October 31, 2014, he watched the fourth such flight from mission control; it crashed in the desert, killing his best friend. On this morning, Stucky would be piloting the fifth rocket-powered flight, on a new iteration of the spaceship. A successful test would restore the program’s lustre.
And a little note at the end, unrelated to the crash:
As it turned out, there had been a glitch in the gyros’ software; the manufacturer had issued a patch, but hadn’t indicated that it fixed a major problem, so Virgin Galactic hadn’t installed it.
What Personality Tests Really Deliver
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/what-personality-tests-really-deliver [www.newyorker.com]
2018-10-01 14:23
tags:
ideas
There are two kinds of people in the world: people who think there are two kinds of people in the world and people who don’t.
“Imaginative, high spirited, and ingenious, they are often able to do almost anything that interests them.”
“They are able to see without prejudice, on both sides, which makes them people who can easily solve problems.”
MBTI profile or zodiac sign?
Brett Kavanaugh, Sportswriter
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/27/brett-kavanaugh-sportswriter [www.newyorker.com]
2018-09-11 17:43
tags:
language
policy
sports
Given all this, perhaps another body of Kavanaugh’s work warrants closer inspection: the twenty-four articles that he wrote, from 1983 to ’86, as a sports reporter for the Yale Daily News. Kavanaugh’s most ambitious writing came out of the gate, in a story about the freshman football team: “Big, strong, and psyched, the Bullpups rolled over Brown in their season opener.” After that, he settled into workmanlike prose, taking up the basketball beat his junior year.
Crime Family
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/how-a-notorious-gangster-was-exposed-by-his-own-sister [www.newyorker.com]
2018-08-07 16:40
tags:
article
hoipolloi
opsec
policy
Astrid Holleeder secretly recorded her brother’s murderous confessions. Will he exact revenge?
On November 9, 1983, Freddy Heineken was leaving his office in Amsterdam when an orange minivan pulled up beside him. Several masked men shoved him and his chauffeur into the vehicle at gunpoint.
But it seemed a bit strange to herald someone as the last of the dinosaurs when there was a distinct possibility that all the other dinosaurs were dead only because he’d killed them. People around Wim Holleeder had an alarming mortality rate.
The Obsessive Search for the Tasmanian Tiger
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-obsessive-search-for-the-tasmanian-tiger [www.newyorker.com]
2018-07-22 16:42
tags:
article
biology
history
The photos were part of Orchard’s arsenal of evidence against a skeptical world—proof of his fervent belief, shared with many in Tasmania, that the island’s apex predator, an animal most famous for being extinct, is still alive. The Tasmanian tiger, known to science as the thylacine, was the only member of its genus of marsupial carnivores to live to modern times.
“Every other group is believers, and we’re skeptics, so we’re heretics,” Bill Flowers, one of the group’s three members, told me one day in a café in Devonport, on the northern coast. Since Flowers began investigating thylacine sightings, he has been reading about false memories, false confessions, and the psychology of perception—examples, he told me, of the way “the mind fills in gaps” that reality leaves open.