The Internet Personified: June Link List
snet from my iphon
At LAST the sun is shining and two wood pigeons have taken over the empty crow’s nest in the tree outside our living room, true Berlin style. Speaking of squatting, we saw a good documentary on the subject called Berlin Utopiekadaver, which you should try and get a hold of if you can because it goes into gentrification and how the city is changing and what that means for the people living in these abandoned buildings and attempting to build community.
In books, I hit a bit of a slump recently, but seem to have emerged out of it with a re-read of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which is brilliant, one of the best books of true crime I’ve ever read. I plan on rewatching the biopic, Capote, when I’m done which follows Truman a lot more closely than the book does—he’s mostly absent in the narrative which is chronological and reconstructs dialogue and people by interviews he’s done with them. It’s also a controversial book because Truman added little inventions and made up things to speed up the narrative, which makes it more of a novel than investigative journalism. (The Guardian actually has it on its 100 best novels list.) This would be okay if it was just a book, but as readers in the know will know, it was serialised in the New Yorker as journalism and though a fact-checker went through it, marking passages with “how know?” those questions were never answered.
Eventually, Truman was destroyed—shattered, maybe?—by the success of this, his most famous book. He had developed a close relationship with one of the killers, a man named Perry and they exchanged letters and books. Truman needed an ending to his story and so he knew that the killers had to be hanged, except he didn’t realise he’d become so close to Perry that his death would also devastate him.1 He never finished his last book, despite the roaring accolades and riches he received from In Cold Blood and descended deeper into alcoholism finally dying of complications of the disease, coupled with drug use.
All this to say, you should read this complicated, compelling book.
On to the links!
“I looked into the big, vacant eyes of the smiling girl on the cover, and--like the moment a Magic Eye reveals itself to you--he transformed from sinister to welcoming. Maybe, I thought, Amazon knows something I don’t. Motherhood is about learning to read the rhythms of your child and then reacting appropriately. Like an algorithm rapidly interpreting my behavior on the internet, every day I learn more and more about when my infant son needs to eat or sleep or practice tummy time*.* If I am mommy… could Amazon also be mommy? Is Amazon my mommy? Maybe Amazon is just trying to do me a solid and let me know that it knows what’s best for me, and what’s best for me right now is Students Perilous Journey to Correct Their Mistake.” - From My Kindle thinks I'm stupid now by Leah Beckmann
“Snape was a man in his 30s (yes, half the age of Rickman), brilliant but prone to cruelty. Some of this is explained by his backstory: His abusive childhood, bullying by James Potter, his friendship with and unrequited love for Lily Potter (née Evans), and, eventually, his decision to become a follower of Voldemort. Snape’s heroics were highlighted toward the end of the series once it was revealed that, despite being a double agent and a massive prick, his allegiances were firmly on the side of the light despite siding with the dark as a young man. He died trying to atone for his betrayal of Lily and protected Harry to the end. Still the overall goodness of his character is up for debate—unless you’re a Snapewife.” - From Consider the Snapewife by Ashley Reese
“To counteract retraction and scarring after removal, some men engage in an elaborate penile rehab regimen. Solomon directs his patients to wear a condom with a metal weight at its tip six hours a day. Other doctors who remove the device — explanters, in the parlance — prescribe RestoreX, a contraption whose painful clamp and extension rods its users compare to a medieval rack. These daily stretching routines are sometimes accompanied by further revision procedures, as well as by prescriptions for Viagra and antidepressants. The great irony — lost on few — was that, after getting surgery to stop thinking about their penises, these men were now thinking about their penises all the time.” - From Inside the Secretive World of Penile Enlargement by Ava Kofman
““I don’t have an ideology,” Gupta told me. “I have a philosophy, and the philosophy is very simple: why can’t you be, in modern India, economically liberal and socially liberal? Why to be socially liberal you have to be economically left?” This philosophy feeds into Gupta’s approach to both the editorial and business sides of journalism. He believes that a regulated, for-profit model protects reporting from undue influence and internal agendas. At the Indian Express, he was at the forefront of turning the paper from a loss-making family company into a solvent business. He realised that the anti-establishment reputation that had made the Indian Express respected was also a marketable commodity, especially to a relatively small but extremely influential group of decision-makers, many of whom shared his breed of liberalism. “Part of my idealism in journalism,” Gupta told me, “is also the belief that there is no contradiction between the marketplace and good journalism. That you can make money with good journalism and pay tax on it and live well.” There is no ethical contradiction if sources became friends and the establishment becomes one’s social milieu along the way.” - (CAVEAT: This article is now TEN YEARS OLD, 2014 to be exact, and a lot of things have changed, but somehow I missed it then so I’m sharing it now. I used to work at the Indian Express when he was in charge actually, but I was just a lowly junior reporter in the features section, our paths barely crossed, but I remember when they did, he made it a point to ask my name and how I was liking working there. I appreciated that.) From How profit and principle shaped the journalism of Shekhar Gupta by Krishn Kaushik
“Shah’s power is equally undisputed. During Modi’s first term, Shah, as president of the BJP, was not technically part of the government. But the corporate lobbyist in Delhi told me that he had seen “cabinet ministers jump out of their chairs when a call came from him”. Rajiv Shah, a journalist who reported on the early years of Modi and Shah, explained the order of rule in Gujarat, which is a neat reflection of the way Delhi runs today. “No 1 is Modi, and because he is Modi, he has to be all the numbers from one to 10,” he said. “Then 11 to 30 is Amit Shah, and then there are a bunch of people who are told what to do.” - From ‘He likes scaring people’: how Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man, runs India by Atul Dev
“Every decision the Collinses make is backed by data. “Nominative determinism is a heavily studied field,” Malcolm tells me, when I ask about his children’s names. “Girls that have gender neutral names are more likely to have higher paying careers and get Stem degrees.” Names like Titan and Industry are much more than gender neutral, I say. “We wanted to give our kids strong names. We want our kids to have a strong internal locus of control,” he continues, as Octavian waves a plastic rubbish truck in front of my face.” - From America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’ by Jenny Kleeman (this story is NUTS.)
Extra, extra: Retelling Ladybird folk tales. ** A really good post about being young in Delhi. ** Why did Colleen Hoover stop writing? ** India is also threatening American journalists of Indian origin. ** Many teens are developing tics thanks to TikTok (nice wordplay there) **
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Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of eight books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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All from this Lithub article: https://lithub.com/how-truman-capote-was-destroyed-by-his-own-masterpiece/#:~:text=The%20success%20of%20In%20Cold,Plaza%20Hotel%20in%20New%20York.
My goodness! The protnatalist article was so so so crazy!