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 the week’s best reads for you to savour.
How a series of stories about the sheriff’s department in small-town Oklahoma led a local newspaper to uncover an explosive revelation. A story of corruption and the importance of local journalism.
(The New Yorker, approx 24 mins reading time)
Gazette articles can be shorter than recipes, and what they may lack in detail, context, and occasionally accuracy, they make up for by existing at all. The paper does more than probe the past or keep tabs on the local felines. “We’ve investigated county officials a lot,” Willingham, who is sixty-eight, said the other day. The Gazette exposed a county treasurer who allowed elected officials to avoid penalties for paying their property taxes late, and a utilities company that gouged poor customers while lavishing its executives with gifts. “To most people, it’s Mickey Mouse stuff,” Willingham told me. “But the problem is, if you let them get away with it, it gets worse and worse and worse.”
German-American computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum invented the chatbot in 1966, but he later became an AI critic who warned against the potential dangers posed by this technology. Today, his views are no longer a minority position.
(The Guardian, approx 31 mins reading time)
There is so much in Weizenbaum’s thinking that is urgently relevant now. Perhaps his most fundamental heresy was the belief that the computer revolution, which Weizenbaum not only lived through but centrally participated in, was actually a counter-revolution. It strengthened repressive power structures instead of upending them. It constricted rather than enlarged our humanity, prompting people to think of themselves as little more than machines. By ceding so many decisions to computers, he thought, we had created a world that was more unequal and less rational, in which the richness of human reason had been flattened into the senseless routines of code.
Over two decades, millions of people were scammed in one of the biggest mail-order scams in North American history, involving a legendary psychic, forged letters and $200 million. Rachel Browne speaks to the man behind it.
(The Walrus, approx 23 mins reading time)
Many who responded to the Maria Duval ads and letters, in North America and Europe, fit a general profile: they were generally older and sometimes economically vulnerable. They were believers—in astrology, in psychics, in fortune telling—who longed for transformation, salvation, fortune. In December 1998, a seventeen-year-old girl named Clare Ellis drowned in a river in England. According to the Evening Chronicle, a Maria Duval letter was found in her pocket. Ellis’s mother told the newspaper that in the weeks leading up to the death, her daughter had been corresponding with Duval, from whom she had also purchased charms and pendants. Her mother claimed that Ellis’s behaviour had become erratic, which she was convinced was linked to her daughter’s communications with Duval. “These things just shouldn’t be allowed,” the mother told the media. “We even got letters from this woman for months after Clare had died.”
The International Energy Agency thinks global oil use will peak within seven years as the world switches to renewables. But is this really possible?
(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)
Reaching a peak in oil use is by no means enough to tackle climate change – and an end of the decade peak will still fall far short of what is needed to keep global temperature rise within safe-ish limits. In fact, the IEA has previously outlined that for CO2 emissions from the energy sector to reach net zero by 2050 – a requirement for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – there needs to be an immediate halt to new coal mines, oil fields and gas fields. But it would still be an important real-world signal that the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is taking place on a global scale. The IEA is not the only body to spell out an end for oil growth. Oil companies such as BP have also indicated they think the global demand for oil is in decline.
A fun account of how ten friends trekked through the Guatemalan jungle to attend a friend’s wedding, full of visceral details and cautionary tales.
(Outside, approx 20 mins reading time)
I lie half naked and miserable in a puddle of my own sweat. I open the tent flap to breathe but there’s no relief, even at midnight. Who comes to the Guatemalan jungle in July? Yesterday’s hike was rough, but the 15 miles today were raw pain. The mosquitoes were so vicious that by mile two even our local guides had asked to borrow our 100 percent deet. Bugs here suck down lesser repellent like an aperitif. Nothing provides complete protection. Our destination is La Danta, one of the largest pyramids on earth. It’s located in the ruins of El Mirador, a centerpiece of Maya civilization from 800 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. that was abandoned nearly 2,000 years ago. There are no restrooms, no gift shops. In fact, the site is still being excavated. This is where Angela and Suley want to get married. So, accompanied by a pair of guides, a half-dozen pack donkeys, and their ten toughest (or least informed) friends, the brides are determined to march us 60 miles over five days through Parque Nacional El Mirador in northern Guatemala to La Danta to say “I do.”
Striking TV writers speak about how their jobs have changed in the last decade, with Hollywood studios separating them from the production side of things leading to less steady work and lower earnings.
(New York Times, approx 7 mins reading time)
In addition to the possible effect on a show’s quality, this shift has affected the livelihoods of writers, who end up working fewer weeks a year. Guild data shows that the typical writer on a network series worked 38 weeks during the season that ended last year, versus 24 weeks on a streaming series — and only 14 weeks if a show had yet to receive a go-ahead. About half of writers now work in streaming, for which almost no original content was made just over a decade ago. Many have seen their weekly pay dwindle as well. Chris Keyser, a co-chair of the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee, said studios had traditionally paid writers well above the minimum weekly rate negotiated by the union as compensation for their role as producers — that is, for creating a dramatic universe, not just completing narrow assignments.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
The legendary singer Sinéad O’Connor died this week at the age of 56. In this interview from 2021, she discussed her life and career for her book, Rememberings.
(The Guardian, approx 20 mins reading time)
She’s probably still most famous for ripping up the picture of John Paul II. Has that defined her career? “Yes, in a beautiful fucking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing; people say, ‘Oh, you fucked up your career’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”
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