Capturing a Nazi in his 90s, trying to live forever, repeating his overwhelming desire to go home, forgiving his father, and finding humor in being scammed.
Tom Lamont | GQ | September 12, 2023 | 6,622 words
Thomas Will is – wait a minute – the head of the Central Bureau of the National Judicial Service for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes. He is a Nazi hunter. The last person who held the role in the same position. It will end in the 2020s, with the last generation of perpetrators already in their 90s. Tom Lamont spent a lot of time with Will for this film, much of it in his office. But somehow, in setting the scene of bureaucracy, Lamont creates a searing, chilling atmosphere. At one point, Will uses a pack of sugar and his empty espresso cup on the conference table for a demonstration. The cup represented mass murder, and the sugar represented the limits of criminal responsibility. Sugar is now at its limit. They are investigating the secretary, not the camp director. People who would have been sitting at similar tables in similar offices, typing out kill orders. The Holocaust was so efficient because civilians went into offices every day to do their jobs. It’s incredibly unpleasant to think about. Incredibly necessary. At one point, Lamont asked Will: “What would have happened if Hitler’s army had drafted him and put him to work in a concentration camp?” Would he have gone? “I don’t know.” His answer is “I don’t know.” Some people question the idea of putting a 90-year-old office worker on trial, but it’s being watched and discussed and therefore valuable. There is some very powerful writing here, with many subtle messages. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. —C.W.
Charlotte Alter | Time | September 20, 2023 | 4,575 words
The idea that wealthy people try to live forever is nothing new. But Charlotte Alter’s profile of entrepreneur Brian Johnson provides food for thought in an era of rapidly evolving AI. Johnson is developing an algorithmically optimized life extension system to lower biological age. “The goal is to have a 46-year-old’s organs look and behave like his 18-year-old’s organs,” Alter wrote. To do this, it is necessary to adopt a unique lifestyle and a strict diet, which includes dark green mud and “special chocolate with a taste”. Like feet. ” Johnson seems to think of himself as some sort of high-flying biohacker in an unprecedented era of humanity—“I have more to do with the 25th century than with the 21st,” he told Alter. – but critics are skeptical about his age – an inversion experiment not backed by science. (Frankly, he looks pale and lifeless, almost like an android) alien, hungry for hydraulic fluid. Alter visits her home, which resembles “her Apple store in the jungle,” to find out what an algorithmically controlled (and ultimately rigid and cold) life is like. Come enjoy her hilarious lines and bizarre scenes, and stay (and ponder) the profound question, “Are humans more than just brains and flesh?” Alter asks. What makes us human? —CLR
Jennana Vučić | Sydney Book Review | August 14, 2023 | 3,876 words
“Bosnia is far away and travel is expensive,” writes Jennana Vučić in this haunting braided essay. sydney review of books About running away and returning from a place that was once home. Vučić’s concise yet beautiful prose is packed with meaning. The distance implied in the word “far away” is not just physical. “Expensive travel” involves costs far greater than monetary amounts. Regarding the habits of migratory birds, Vučić wrote that caged birds whose migration is blocked feel anxious, and that this is characterized by “changes in sleeping behavior, frantic jumping, and flapping in the direction of migration.” ing. “When I am away from home for a while, I feel a sense of absence rising in the pit of my stomach, hollowed out by the gravitational pull of a black hole. When she returned home, she spoke of the physical scars from the post-war Bosnian conflict. “This land has suffered this loss with ruins, abandoned houses with gaping windows, exposed brick and plastic UN sheets that, 30 years later, are still replacing glass in the homes of our poorest neighbours. Trees are growing out of the broken walls. Blackberries and nettles are crowding the cavities of the houses across the street.” Less obvious but worth considering is the fact that Vučić was forced to relocate. However, the question is how to reveal the personal and human sacrifices caused by the war, which forced people to return home again and again. —K.S.
John Paul Scott | Sun Magazine | October 3, 2023 | 2,110 words
We’ve all experienced it. I have hidden my true self in order to conform to other people’s ideas of acceptable behavior. John Paul Scott was told to shut up for passionately sharing baseball facts and figures, which he did at school. He did the same thing at home, but his father screamed in silence. Scott does a great job of reminding us of the power that parents have over us, a power that lasts into adulthood whether we like it or not. How sharp words and derogatory comments belittle us and reduce us to frightened children and their parents determined to avoid attention as much as possible. “I learned how to calm him down. Don’t complain. Don’t talk to him when he’s focused on work.” Be where you want him to be. Do what he tells you to do immediately,” he wrote. The beauty of Scott’s essay is that it is an epiphany that deserves deeper consideration. The father was angry and wanted to maintain order, even at the cost of his son’s spirit, not because they were so different as people, but because they were so similar. —K.S.
Devin Friedman | insider | October 1, 2023 | 6,021 words
Devin Friedman and his wife wanted a pool. So they hired a contractor. Then the contractor emailed them asking them to send money to some strange-sounding username, which they did. Then they did the same thing again. and again.and after that They learned those emails were not from the contractor at all. Mr. Friedman not only wallowed in shame and self-pity for being the victim of a royal fraud, but also tried to get his money back. When that failed, he wrote an article about why he couldn’t get his money back. Sounds like a shame, right? It’s not that fast. So this is for them, but it also ended up being the most interesting feature I’ve read all year. Sure, there’s a little Joel Stein here. (“Like so many other things I use to do the most important tasks in my daily life, blithely forgetting about them, I didn’t really know what Zelle was.”) But Friedman’s self-deprecation is perfectly calibrated, and even though the reporting is heavier, he weaves in humor at just the right angle, as a necessary weft to the warp of the work. (“Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the financial industry regulator most hated by the banks, is petitioning Zell to figure out exactly how much fraud there is. And if she collects As he himself says, “The data suggests that there is probably quite a lot of fraud, technically speaking.”[o]Of all types of money, money for building a swimming pool is probably the best type of money for the world to lose. ” There is no poor me here. However, if you skip this, you’ll end up even poorer. —PR
audience award
Can you hear the timpani? Here’s what viewers liked most this week:
internal work
Katherine Laidlaw | Life in Toronto | September 20, 2023 | 6,174 words
A policeman with noble hobbies and money troubles. A wealthy woman who loved and supported him. He is an old man with dementia and has a huge amount of wealth, but no close relatives. And her secret girlfriend and her fake suicide note.What do you get when you mix these elements? Latest articles from Catherine Laidlaw life in toronto About romance and financial fraud gone wrong. —CLR