January 17, 2018
"It Had Never Been Done on Television Before"
The Oral History of Breaking Bad To mark the 10-year anniversary of the premiere, Esquire spoke with Breaking Bad’s creators, actors, and broadcasters to reflect on this little-show-that-could, its groundbreaking approach to antihero storytelling, and its ascent from hidden gem to cultural phenomenon. [more inside]
Oooo,The telephone is ringing! You sound NICE.
Nick Beggs, the very talented bassist/chapman-stickist from Kajagoogoo, has been receiving a lot of calls from scammy phone solicitors on his land-line. He's taught himself how to put the caller on speaker mode, and started recording himself fielding these calls. In October, he posted a flurry of selfies documenting these interactions. I think Nick just wants a friend.
Ways to Cope With Nazis
Three different ways of coping with Nazis, some more effective than others. First there's Oskar Speck, who kayaks from Germany to Australia.
Then there's how Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto coped with the Germans.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising & Jewish Identity
And then there's how Isidore Greenbaum stood up at an American Nazi rally.
American Nazis & a Jewish Man from Brooklyn
This Couple Who Met On Neopets As Children Fell In Love And Got Married
Kristin, who's now 29, joined a role-playing guild on the site called the "Evil Jellies." There she met Michael Andrews-Karr, a then-10-year-old user from Ohio whose pseudonym on Neopets was "Doctor." Michael is now 27. [more inside]
Bruce Lee, now with lightsabers
The Greatest City in the World
The Minnesota Diet A new short story from the author of the Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky. [more inside]
A brief history of British Pigs
The United Kingdom has a unique genetic heritage of pig breeds, but in 1955, facing pressure from the Danish, Dutch and Irish pig industries, the Howitt Report recommended that British pig operations needed to be based on only three breeds, Large White, Landrace and Welsh, narrowing the pool of British Pigs from 16. In the subsequent years, four breeds went extinct: Cumberland, the Dorset Gold Tip, the Lincolnshire Curly Coat and the Yorkshire Blue and White. Rare breeds are now faring better than before, but still not great. For more on these breeds and the efforts to maintain them, see the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. British pig history side-story: The Pig War of 1859, which was really about which country controlled San Juan Island.
Potpourri
- Shadows are difficult to retouch.
- Every country's cuisine has its own character.
- Dogs are excellent meme subjects.
Ellen Pompeo Becomes TV's $20 Million Dollar Woman
"Decide what you think you're worth and then ask for what you think you're worth. Nobody's just going to give it to you." The 'Grey's Anatomy' star recalls in her own words the personal struggles and advice from Shonda Rhimes that led to a milestone: highest-paid actress on a primetime drama.
TANSTAAFL
How much do restaurants really make from food orders? Washington City Paper's Young and Hungry asked restaurants to break down the costs of some of their most popular dishes. [more inside]
A Strategy for Ruination
An interview with China Miéville in Boston Review.
“It seems really clear to us that this is an escalation of retaliation”
Private Prisons continue to send ICE detainees to solitary confinement for refusing voluntary labor ( The Intercept) Immigration detention deaths reach the highest total since 2009 (Houston Chronicle) The heads of NYC’s New Sanctuary Coalition arrested by ICE and slated for deportation (Miami New Times, NYT) Who is Jorge Garcia and why was he deported after 39 years in the US? (Bustle) [more inside]
Alive Inside
Across the country each year, thousands of people are wrongly labeled unconscious after suffering severe brain injuries. Among the survivors, a few, including Nick Tullier, make it to a Houston rehab hospital, where those with even the worst prognoses get a shot at recovery. (SLHoustonChronicle) [more inside]
Misogyny is collaborative
"If men can swallow the confronting reality that their silence is foundational to both sexism and sexual violence, then they get to embrace the inverse reality—that their vocal dissent could begin to destabilise these evils at their base."
[CW: sexual assault]
eye in the storm
Mosul Eye is a blogger and historian who stayed in Mosul to chronicle the city under ISIS. Chronicler of Islamic State ‘killing machine’ goes public, Lori Hinnant and Maggie Michael [more inside]
"If I'd at least gotten closer to that impossible perfection..."
What We Talk About When We Talk About Translation is an essay by Deborah Smith, translator of Han Kang's novel The Vegetarian, among others. It is a response to various criticisms of her translation, first by translator and novelist Tim Parks, followed by Charse Yun, who also laid out complaints about it from Korean critics, though, as Kang Hyun-kyung reports, Smith has vociferous defenders in Korea. If you want a summary, Clare Armitstead, who comes down on Smith's side, recaps the controversy in The Guardian. Jiayang Fan touches on the dispute but focuses more on Han Kang and her upcoming books in Smith's translation in an essay in The New Yorker called Buried Words.
Bengal Shadows
Said to be larger than the Holocaust in absolute numbers, a new documentary, Bengal Shadows, revolves around the British empire’s role, especially that of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in causing and exacerbating the Bengal famine of 1943.
The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. [slGuardian Long Read by MeFi's own Oliver Burkeman]
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