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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
US president Donald Trump made the headlines this week when he deleted a social media image apparently depicting him as Jesus after an outcry from religious leaders that he was being blasphemous. Trump later denied that he was trying to look like Jesus Christ and said he thought it was an image of him as a doctor. But does he actually think he is Jesus?
(The New Yorker, approx six mins reading time)
“Trump’s remarks, in my view, make for essential viewing, thirty-seven seconds that showcase the precipitousness of our fall as a superpower. Look at how Trump stares straight into the cameras as he lies. A doctor? Seriously? It’s as though he felt no need to come up with a better excuse—or any excuse at all. (To be fair: the fact that, as Trump said this, he was flanked by a fifty-eight-year-old maga enthusiast from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who had just delivered to him a bag of takeout McDonald’s in a bright-red ‘DoorDash Grandma’ T-shirt suggests that God does have a pretty good sense of humor.) By Wednesday, Trump had reasserted his claim to divine authority, posting another A.I.-generated image of himself standing alongside Jesus, who has his arm wrapped around Trump’s shoulder; both of them are bathed in the soft glow of a heavenly light. Trump’s caption: ‘The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!’”
Skincare and wellness has been all the rage for a while now. But at what point is this dedication to aesthetics concerning? Journalist Zoe Dubno is wondering if it has now become women’s version of looksmaxxing, a worrying internet trend involving doing everything from bone smashing to chin extensions to look your best.
(The Cut, approx 12 mins reading time)
“Now, she says, ‘I don’t think there’s anything I don’t do. Red light and lasers and creams and supplements and injections.’ Her ‘stack’ of beauty and wellness treatments — this is what people now call the combination of the many elements in their routine — reads to me like it’s been encrypted through the Enigma machine: ‘I take a copper peptide called GHK-Cu. And AOD-9604. And NAD+. I have Sermorelin, Ipamorelin, though I’m not sure what those do; I did research on them a long time ago and now I’m just in the habit of using them. I take HMB and vitamin D3, reishi mushrooms and cranberry pills and taurine and biotin, Telomere Length and HealthyCell gel packs. I give my dog, Madeline, NAD, because the first tests they did were on dogs and it was really effective and I want her to live forever.’”
Have you noticed more wired headphones, record players and vintage cameras around? There’s been a bit of a return to analog recently. But Hanif Abdurraqib writes in the New Yorker that the modern world has made us ill-equipped for the reality of past technologies, even if that same world is also fueling nostalgia for slower days.
(The New Yorker, approx 12 mins reading time)
“When I was young, I had a Walkman far longer than most anyone else I knew. This was, in part, because my family didn’t have a lot of money, and updating electronics was a low priority. We had a giant, clunky computer that hardly worked, whereas most of my friends had Segas and Nintendos. My mother wrote on an old typewriter. My two older siblings had grown up in the cassette era, and so every listening device in our home was either a record or a tape player, which meant that not only did I have a Walkman, I had one that had been handed down twice.”
Ben Riley’s dad became very interested in AI when he finished working. He started using it for everything, but when he was diagnosed with cancer he started asking AI about that too. His son only realised this ten months after he learned his father had refused the treatment his doctor recommended.
(The New York Times, approx 15 mins reading time)
“Ben knew better than to confront his dad, a retired neuroscientist who bristled at anyone questioning his intellectual judgment. He needed more information, a plan, to persuade Joe, who was — apparently — dying of cancer thousands of miles away in Seattle. He was anxiously monitoring his dad’s patient portal, trying to decide what to do, when a new message popped up. Joe had sent his oncologist research he had done with A.I., the apparent evidence for his decision to refuse the treatment.”
Belgian backpacker Celine Cremer went for a short hike in the Australian state Tasmania in 2023, devastatingly she was never seen alive again. The most likely possibility was that Cremer had become lost in the rainforest and died, but after several police searches her body could not be found. Then came rumours and whispers alleging Celine has been abducted. Celine’s childhood best friend Justine left her home in Belgium and relocated to Tasmania for six months in an attempt to finally find out what really happened.
(ABC, approx 20 mins reading time)
“Justine was so excited about meeting up with Celine in Australia that when she booked her flight to Darwin on June 20, 2023, she called Celine straightaway to share the news. But she couldn’t reach her friend. Celine’s mother, Ariane Mathieu, was also unable to contact her. She’d last heard from her daughter on June 16 (Australian time) and had sent a few messages since, but received no reply. It was unusual. When Justine called Ariane to ask if she’d spoken with Celine, Ariane says she realised ‘pretty quickly that something wasn’t right’.”
A controversial new biopic about Michael Jackson is coming to cinemas later this month. But will the movie – which is partly funded by the Jackson estate and starring Jackson’s nephew – be able to redeem his reputation after allegations of child sexual abuse?
(The New York Times, approx 20 mins reading time)
“‘I wish I could separate the artist from the man,’ John Logan, the screenwriter of ‘Michael,’ once said of Alfred Hitchcock, another of his subjects. But Hollywood musical biopics are constructed to do the opposite of separating art from its flawed human creators. A sanctioned biopic of a musician requires approval of the estate and the catalog owners — Jackson’s executors are among the producers of “Michael” — and is thus a carefully managed showcase of hits performed in maximally visceral fashion, with concert-quality sound and visuals. But it’s also an opportunity to bind the songs to a satisfying story arc, in which the protagonist’s personal struggle deepens our appreciation of their I.P. — sorry, art — whether it’s Ray Charles’s addiction, Bob Dylan’s romantic and political agita, Bruce Springsteen’s depression or Freddie Mercury’s sexuality. New fans leave the theater feeling connected not simply to the soundtrack but also to a definitive interpretation of the life of its maker.”
This harrowing read from the late Alex Tizon tells the harrowing story of how the woman who raised him was also kept as a slave in his family for 57 years. When Tizon’s family moved to the US from the Philippines in 1964, they brought Lola, the family’s Katulong, or helper, with them. Lola lived in the US for the rest of her life, the majority of which was spent as an unpaid, domestic helper without even her own bedroom, unable to leave due to a lack of means and valid immigration status.
(The Atlantic, approx 40 mins reading time)
“Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.”
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