Following the massacre in Paris, The New Yorker released next week’s cover image early this week. “Solidarité” is by Ana Juan, who has contributed more than 20 covers to The New Yorker since 1995.
New Yorker Cover: ‘Solidarité’


Following the massacre in Paris, The New Yorker released next week’s cover image early this week. “Solidarité” is by Ana Juan, who has contributed more than 20 covers to The New Yorker since 1995.

—Engineer Joshua Pearce, as interviewed by Yvonne Bang in Nautilus. The interview explores how we as a planet could feed 7 billion people after a global catastrophe.

On Sunday, I shared stories about Airbnb. In my research, I read about Jennifer Katanyoutanant’s experiences traveling abroad, using Airbnb’s older (grittier?) brother, couchsurfing.com. Katanyoutanant had a disturbing stay with a Roman impostor who tries to get her into bed—literally—but she doesn’t want to give up the prospect of global friendship:

In the Washingtonian, a story about people afflicted with “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” who are moving to the small town of Green Bank, West Virginia, where much of modern technology has been banned due to their possible interference with a government telescope:

The American poet Miller Williams — father of alt-country singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams — passed away on January 1. In this interview with Paste Magazine, Lucinda Williams reflects on her father’s influence in her life and on her work. Not only did he encourage her to pursue music, his words inspired many of her songs.
For more on Lucinda Williams, read her memoir from Radio Silence, “Where the Spirit Meets the Bone”.

It’s easy to get distracted while reading about Airbnb. First, the listings themselves range from luxurious to quaint, and if you have any sort of upcoming vacation planned … well, let’s say it’s a timesuck. Double if you have I-want-to-see-where-you-live voyeuristic tendencies. Second, Airbnb is giving away $1 million to customers who document their random acts of kindness, which is a hell of a headline and a bit of an oxymoron. Airbnb’s detractors are firm and its fans are rabid; Its prices, tempting. I’m planning a trip to Seattle in the summer—we’ll see where I end up sleeping. Here are five pieces about Airbnb hosts, the company’s founders, its guests and its implications for city politics.
Two idealistic art students founded Airbnb, and business boomed once the recession hit. But they didn’t foresee backlash from New York politicians or affordable housing advocates. Read more…

—Jeffrey Schmalz, writing in the New York Times Magazine, May 15 1988.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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In The Atlantic in 2014, James Fallows examined how Americans and political leaders became so disconnected from those who serve in the military—and the consequences of that disconnect:
If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously. As a result, what happens to all institutions that escape serious external scrutiny and engagement has happened to our military. Outsiders treat it both too reverently and too cavalierly, as if regarding its members as heroes makes up for committing them to unending, unwinnable missions and denying them anything like the political mindshare we give to other major public undertakings, from medical care to public education to environmental rules. The tone and level of public debate on those issues is hardly encouraging. But for democracies, messy debates are less damaging in the long run than letting important functions run on autopilot, as our military essentially does now. A chickenhawk nation is more likely to keep going to war, and to keep losing, than one that wrestles with long-term questions of effectiveness.
Americans admire the military as they do no other institution. Through the past two decades, respect for the courts, the schools, the press, Congress, organized religion, Big Business, and virtually every other institution in modern life has plummeted. The one exception is the military. Confidence in the military shot up after 9/11 and has stayed very high. In a Gallup poll last summer, three-quarters of the public expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military. About one-third had comparable confidence in the medical system, and only 7 percent in Congress.
Too much complacency regarding our military, and too weak a tragic imagination about the consequences if the next engagement goes wrong, have been part of Americans’ willingness to wade into conflict after conflict, blithely assuming we would win. “Did we have the sense that America cared how we were doing? We did not,” Seth Moulton told me about his experience as a marine during the Iraq War. Moulton became a Marine Corps officer after graduating from Harvard in 2001, believing (as he told me) that when many classmates were heading to Wall Street it was useful to set an example of public service. He opposed the decision to invade Iraq but ended up serving four tours there out of a sense of duty to his comrades. “America was very disconnected. We were proud to serve, but we knew it was a little group of people doing the country’s work.”

Below is a guest post from Pravesh Bhardwaj, a filmmaker based in Mumbai who has been posting his favorite short stories all year. Read more…
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