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Mike Dang
Editor-in-chief, Longreads | Editorial, Automattic and WordPress.com

Oliver Sacks: 1933-2015

In Vanity Fair, a rare look at the early career of Oliver Sacks. Lawrence Weschler, a close friend of Oliver Sacks, looks back on the life of the best-selling author and neurologist in the early ’80s. The neurologist and acclaimed author died today at the age of 82.

He wrote his first book, “Migraine,” in nine days. “It had gotten to the point,” he tells me, “where I said to myself, ‘Now look, Sacks, you really must write this thing. I’ll give you 10 days or else we’re going to have to kill ourselves.’ This worked. It scared me into starting.”

He says, “At times, the world seems rife with malevolence, chaos. I am almost overwhelmed, but then it suffices for me to perceive the spectacle of quiet goodness, say the Little Sisters of the Poor, and everything is all right.

“I see 10 patients a day and write 500 words on each meeting—a thousand patients a year, a thousand stories.”

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Why Would Two Girls Attempt Murder for Slender Man?

Photo: MDL70

In 2014, two 12-year-old girls stabbed a friend, arguing that they did it for a fictional internet horror creature named Slender Man. Lisa Miller tries to understand why in New York magazine:

By the age of 8 — and definitely by 12 — psychologists agree, most children are as able as adults to sort out what’s real from what is not. What sets children and adolescents apart from adults is a mental task psychologists call “discounting” — the rational inner voices that can subdue overheated emotional responses to the imagination’s powerful projections and that come with the maturing of the frontal lobe by around age 25. That’s why a 50-year-old can finish rinsing her hair even as she recalls the shower scene from “Psycho,” while a 16-year-old will find herself with a racing heart, soapy and dripping on the mat. But the feeling of being in the thrall of a fantasy (even a morbid one) can be seductive as well, as comforting as getting high, as mesmerizing as Minecraft.

In this way, the friendship of Anissa and Morgan, with its shared obsessions and mutually satisfying imaginary play, was the rather unremarkable effort of two bright, alienated kids to build a world more thrilling than their reality, a private bubble that offered them belonging, excitement, and a sense of their own power. The problem wasn’t that Morgan and Anissa didn’t know they were living in a fantasy world: Ultimately, when pressed by adults, they acknowledged the difference between fantasy and reality. The problem was that they couldn’t — or didn’t — extricate themselves from the ­fantasy. “He does not exist,” Anissa told police on the day of the stabbing. “He is a work of fiction.” Morgan, the more troubled one, had a more enduring attachment to the fairy tale they had told themselves and that had brought them to the woods. But even she admitted, in her interview, that the attack on Bella was “probably wrong,” she said. “I honestly don’t know why we did this.”

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The Controversy Surrounding Science Fiction’s Most Prestigious Award

At Wired, Amy Wallace reports on the controversy at the Hugo Awards, which has been plagued by accusations by a faction of mostly white male authors who call themselves “Puppies” and argue that storytelling has taken a backseat to identity politics:

Though voted upon by fans, this year’s Hugo Awards were no mere popularity contest. After the Puppies released their slates in February, recommending finalists in 15 of the Hugos’ 16 categories (plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer), the balloting had become a referendum on the future of the genre. Would sci-fi focus, as it has for much of its history, largely on brave white male engineers with ray guns fighting either a) hideous aliens or b) hideous governments who don’t want them to mine asteroids in space? Or would it continue its embrace of a broader sci-fi: stories about non-traditionally gendered explorers and post-singularity, post-ethnic characters who are sometimes not men and often even have feelings?

With so much at stake, more people than ever forked over membership dues (at least $40) in time to be allowed to vote for the 2015 Hugos. Before voting closed on June 31, 5,950 people cast ballots (a whopping 65 percent more than had ever voted before).

But were the new voters Puppies? Or were they, in the words of George RR Martin—the author of the bestselling epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted into Game of Thrones—“gathering to defend the integrity of the Hugos”? On his blog, Martin predicted: “This will be the most dramatic Hugo night in Worldcon history.” He wasn’t wrong.

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Stephen Colbert on How All Late-Night Shows Are ‘Chopped’

GQ magazine interviews Stephen Colbert, who compares making a late-night show to the Food Network show Chopped:

Back at his office, Colbert delivered a soliloquy on the necessity of focus and intention, being fully present for whatever moment you are in. He was talking about comedy, and how to make a TV show 200 times a year, but it also felt like a text lifted from the Buddha’s sutras. The final goal, the product, is beside the point. “The end product is jokes, but you could easily say the end product is intention. Having intentionality at all times… The process of process is process.”

And then he talked about the Food Network show Chopped. The reason he loves Chopped is that it’s a show that is wholly about process, about creation within a limited range of possibilities. “This show,” he said, meaning The Late Show, “is Chopped. Late-night shows are Chopped. Who are your guests tonight? Your guests tonight are veal tongue, coffee grounds, and gummy bears. There, make a show.… Make an appetizer that appeals to millions of people. That’s what I like. How could you possibly do it? Oh, you bring in your own flavors. Your own house band is another flavor. You have your own flavor. The audience itself is a base dish, like a rice pilaf or something. And then together it’s ‘Oh shit, that’s an actual meal.’ And that’s what every day is like at one of these shows. Something is one thing in the morning, and then by the end of the day it’s a totally different thing. It’s allprocess.”

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‘I Was Figuring Out How to Enter Evidence into the Inquiry of My Own Death’

In Pacific Standard, Ezekiel Kweku writes about preparing to be stopped by the police and how his parents helped guide him to be “alive and black in this world”:

If stopped by the police, I thought to myself, I would set my phone to record audio and put it on the passenger seat. I would send a tweet that I was being stopped and had every intention of complying with the police officer. I would turn on Periscope and livestream the stop, crowdsourcing witnesses. I would text my family and tell them that I was not feeling angry or suicidal, that I was looking forward to seeing them soon. There would not be time to do all of these things, but maybe if I prepared in advance I could pull off one or two of them. What all of these plans had in common were that none of them were meant to secure my safety, but rather to ensure that my death looked suspicious enough to question.

I was figuring out how to enter evidence into the inquiry of my own death.

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Tech Companies Are Racing to Create Family Friendly Policies — Amazon Is Not One of Them

Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld report in the New York Times this weekend about the cut-throat work culture at Amazon. Jokes one former employee, “The joke in the office was that when it came to work/life balance, work came first, life came second, and trying to find the balance came last.” Many tech companies like Google, Netflix and Facebook are creating family friendly benefits to retain employees, but Amazon is not one of them:

Amazon retains new workers in part by requiring them to repay a part of their signing bonus if they leave within a year, and a portion of their hefty relocation fees if they leave within two years. Several fathers said they left or were considering quitting because of pressure from bosses or peers to spend less time with their families. (Many tech companies are racing to top one another’s family leave policies — Netflix just began offering up to a year of paid parental leave. Amazon, though, offers no paid paternity leave.)

In interviews, 40-year-old men were convinced Amazon would replace them with 30-year-olds who could put in more hours, and 30-year-olds were sure that the company preferred to hire 20-somethings who would outwork them. After Max Shipley, a father of two young children, left this spring, he wondered if Amazon would “bring in college kids who have fewer commitments, who are single, who have more time to focus on work.” Mr. Shipley is 25.

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A Moment of Zen: Seven Stories Looking Back at Jon Stewart’s Fake-News Legacy

Photo: Cliff

Tonight, Jon Stewart ends his 16-year run as host of “The Daily Show.” Here are seven stories looking back at how Stewart became the most influential fake-news anchor in the history of television:

1. Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America? (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Aug. 15, 2008)

“Hopefully the process is to spot things that would be grist for the funny mill,” Mr. Stewart, 45, said. “In some respects, the heavier subjects are the ones that are most loaded with opportunity because they have the most — you know, the difference between potential and kinetic energy? — they have the most potential energy, so to delve into that gives you the largest combustion, the most interest. I don’t mean for the audience. I mean for us. Everyone here is working too hard to do stuff we don’t care about.”

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The Newman’s Own Origin Story

In 1982 actor Paul Newman and his friend, writer A.E. Hotchner, started the Newman’s Own food company and made the decision to donate all profits to charity. Here’s the company’s origin story, from Mark Seal’s account in Vanity Fair of how the company is doing today:

Hotchner recalled how, a few days before Christmas in 1980, Newman phoned to say, “How about coming over and giving me a hand with something?” Hotchner did, only to find his friend drinking beer in his barn, with “a big washtub of vinegar and olive oil and condiments and a lot of dirty wine bottles. It was ridiculous, but it was fun. We drank beer and we mixed up the stuff.”

“The stuff” was Newman’s soon-to-be-famous salad dressing, which he had bottled for years and given away. Newman and Hotchner tied ribbons around the wine bottles, gathered their kids, and went Christmas caroling, distributing the bottles along the way. One of Newman’s neighbors then was a young caterer named Martha Stewart, who held a blind taste test. Newman’s was voted No. 1. Calling it Newman’s Own, Newman allowed his face to be put on the label. In 1982 the dressing went on sale in local gourmet shops and groceries.

Recalled Hotchner, “To our absolute disbelief, we banged quite a profit that first year”—$920,000, in fact. “Paul said, ‘We can’t be in the business of making money off of it! You’re a writer and I’m an actor and this isn’t what we do. Let’s give it all away to charity.’ ”

Seal’s story focuses on the feud over Paul Newman’s food empire and charitable foundation after his death.

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Getting Reacquainted With the World After Decades in Prison

Photo: Liz West

In the New York Times Magazine, Jon Mooallem follows two ex-convicts who pick up inmates the day they are released and help then navigate through their first day of freedom, which can be unnerving if they’ve been behind bars for more than a decade:

‘‘The first day is everything,’’ Carlos says — a barrage of insignificant-seeming experiences with potentially big consequences. Consider, for example, a friend of his and Roby’s: Julio Acosta, who was paroled in 2013 after 23 years inside. Acosta describes stopping for breakfast near the prison that first morning as if it were a horrifying fever dream: He kept looking around the restaurant for a sniper, as in the chow hall in prison, and couldn’t stop gawking at the metal knives and forks, ‘‘like an Aztec looking at Cortez’s helmet,’’ he says. It wasn’t until he got up from the booth and walked to the men’s room, and a man came out the door and said, ‘‘How you doin’?’’ and Acosta said, ‘‘Fine,’’ that Acosta began to feel, even slightly, like a legitimate part of the environment around him. He’d accomplished something. He’d made a treacherous trip across an International House of Pancakes. He’d peed.

But what if Acosta had accidentally bumped into a waitress, knocking over her tray and shattering dishes? What if that man had glared at him, instead of greeting him, or snapped at him to get the hell out of the way? Ann Jacobs, director of the Prisoner Re-entry Institute at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told me that even the smallest bungled interactions on the outside leave recently incarcerated people feeling ‘‘like they’re being exposed, like they’re incompetent. It’s feeding into their worst fear, their perception of themselves as an impostor who’s incapable of living a normal life.’’ Carlos and Roby have learned to steer their guys through that perilous newness — and to be nonchalant about it, to make the sudden enormity of life feel unthreatening, even fun. On one ride home earlier this year, I watched a third-striker venture inside a convenience store, alone, to buy a candy bar while Roby pumped gas. The man seemed emboldened after a few hours of freedom, actually hopping a bit as he walked. But then he tripped over the curb and tumbled forward, arms thrashing, nearly face-planting in front of the door. Roby just shrugged and said, ‘‘Well, you’ve got to get that one out of the way.’’

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Why Corporations Produce Clothes at Unsafe Factories Even When They Ban Suppliers From Using Them

Photo: Matt

Michael Hobbes has an eye-opening story in Highline, The Huffington Post’s features and investigations vertical, about why it’s impossible to eliminate sweatshops through boycotting and shopping ethically alone. Here’s how Wal-Mart found itself producing clothes at an unsafe garment factory despite banning its suppliers from using it:

After the Tazreen fire, NGO campaigns focused on how Wal-Mart was responsible for 60 percent of the clothing being produced there. But Wal-Mart never actually placed an order with Tazreen. In fact, over a year before the fire, Wal-Mart inspected the factory and discovered that it was unsafe. By the time of the fire, it had banned its suppliers from using it.

So here’s how its products ended up at Tazreen anyway: Wal-Mart hired a megasupplier called Success Apparel to fill an order for shorts. Success hired another company, Simco, to carry out the work. Simco—without telling Success, much less Wal-Mart—sub-contracted 7 percent of the order to Tazreen’s parent company, the Tuba Group, which then assigned it to Tazreen. Two other sub- (or sub-sub-sub-) contractors also placed Wal-Mart orders at Tazreen, also without telling the company.

It was the same with many of the other brands whose labels were found in Tazreen: They either didn’t know their clothes were being produced there or had explicitly banned the factory as a supplier. Those companies now say that, because the orders violated their policies, they’re not obligated to compensate victims.

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