Froggy’s Regrets. Rare Chicago Bulls tickets. A conversation about AI and nature. A profile of the world’s most famous unknown author. And finally, a look back at last Friday and St. Patrick’s Day traditions.
1. Frog
Anne Fadiman | Harper’s Magazine | February 10, 2023 | 5,816 words
“There are two kinds of pets: those you choose and those you get by chance,” writes Anne Fadiman, reflecting on her family’s diverse collection of pets, including goldfish, hamsters, guinea pigs, a dog named Typo, and Bunky, an African clawed frog the family raised from a tadpole. Praising Bunky, who looks like “an ordinary frog bleached and then put into a panini press,” Fadiman describes the noble species. Bunky helped create the first widely available pregnancy test, earned a Nobel Prize for a British biologist who used an African clawed frog to clone the first vertebrate, and helped establish that reproduction was possible in weightlessness after a trip on the space shuttle. effortAll this coming from a pet that wasn’t a dog. “Bunkie was the anti-typo. An unlovable pet. Cold to the touch, squishy but not soft. Definitely slimy. Uninterested in education. Useless as a hiking companion. In fact, completely useless as a companion. You couldn’t even take him out of the tank and put him on your lap.” Fadiman’s article will make you chuckle and think more carefully about your role as a pet owner. —KS
2. How tickets to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls debut became priceless
Justin Heckert | ESPN | March 7, 2023 | 5,462 words
I don’t follow the NBA, and I’m not interested in memorabilia of any kind. But leave it to one of my favorite feature writers, Justin Heckert, to make me care about an old, untouched ticket to a Chicago Bulls game that took place around the time I was born. Heckert is spending time with Mike Cole, who saw Michael Jordan’s first Bulls game as a college freshman and, being the kind of guy he is, kept the ticket. (Cole has a plastic box labeled “Mike’s Memorabilia Box,” filled with ephemera from various sporting events.) Nearly 40 years after the Bulls game, during the period when Jordan became one of the most admired athletes in history, a man with a Glock strapped to his hip arrives at Cole’s house in an armored vehicle. He’s there to retrieve the ticket, which Cole has agreed to auction off, where it’s expected to fetch as much as $1 million. But the story Heckert tells isn’t about Cole getting rich (though that does happen). Really, it’s about the meaning of our investments in things and how they change as we and the world change.SD
3. There’s nothing unnatural about computers
Claire L. Evans | Growth | March 14, 2023 | 4,203 Words
In this fascinating interview with Claire L. Evans, State of Being Author James Bridle shares their take on the role of AI today in “broadening our notions of intelligence” and their vision of a compassionate, collaborative future that ultimately de-centers humans and creates more space for non-humans and animals. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as artificial intelligence,” Bridle says. “There are multiple kinds of intelligence, and many ways to be intelligent.” Intelligence is relational. It’s not something that resides in beings or things, but between beings and things. As a gardener, I love getting my hands in the soil and working with the little creatures in it, but I love their conversations about gardening and how humans can apply that same deep awareness to technology. I also appreciate their thoughts on resilience and knowledge transfer in times of rapid planetary change. (If you liked this Q&A, pair it with two of my previous top five favorites: “The Great Forgetting,” a read on resilience and the environment, and “What Counts As Seeing,” another interview focused on the non-human natural world.)—CLR
4. Brandon Sanderson is your God
Jason Kehe | Wired | March 23, 2023 | 4,044 words
With countless books published and many times more in sales than you can count, Brandon Sanderson is hardly a household name, unless you live in a fantasy house. And yet the most prolific living genre writer has never had a magazine feature on him. That makes Jason Keehee’s treatment all the more enjoyable. A year ago, I chose Keehee’s work on simulation theory for this feature, and the two pieces share a torpedo-free willingness to blend interpretive sharpness with a chatty, even flippant, perspective. What works for a philosophical essay also works for a portrait. Keehee’s quest is not to capture Sanderson, but rather to capture why people love him so much and what it is that animates his vast fictional world. That means casting aside the false piety and self-indulgence that pervades so many “celebrity” profiles, and instead reveling in the banality of the man. But the harsh words are laced with love, and everyone shines through as their true selves, from the ardent fans, to the characters spouting Sanderson clichés, to Sanderson himself.public relations
5. I feel the presence of God in this portable toilet
Harrison Scott Key | The Bitter Southerner | March 14, 2023 | 5,200 words
Last Friday night, I went home satisfied with a couple of pints of Guinness and a great celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Apparently, I knew nothing about how to celebrate this holiday. Harrison Scott Key enlightened me in this delightful essay about the drunken debauchery of the annual holiday parade in Savannah, Georgia. I love his raucous description of the attempts to secure a place in the parade. It was akin to the sacking of Constantinople, with “insults and elbows and tantrums.” [are] The parade is “thrown” until everyone is settled in, wearing their green feather boas, and having fun. The prose is so vivid I can hear the noise, touch the sweaty crowd, taste the booze. I could also feel the camaraderie. After years of participating in the parade, Scott Key has found lasting friendships. After moving to Savannah and feeling lonely and unsure of his place in his new community, this annual tradition helps him find his people. After all, as he writes, “it’s easier to love people who have watched you vomit into the hell-mouth of a port-a-potty at 2 a.m.”translation
And that Audience Award go to…
Will the Ozempic era change how we think about being fat and being thin?
Jia Tolentino | New Yorker | March 20, 2023 | 4,772 words
This is an interesting look at GLP-1 drugs, which create a feeling of fullness when injected. Tolentino’s reflections on the continuing changes in our acceptance of different body types and the impact of this particular trend were fascinating to me. It was a thought-provoking piece, not just about weight, but about society.translation
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