The Gruesome Dollhouse Death Scenes That Reinvented Murder Investigations

in Art, Education, Life, Psychology, Science | October 30th, 2020

Who can resist minia­tures?

Wee food, painstak­ing­ly ren­dered in felt­ed wool…

Match­book-sized books you can actu­al­ly read…

Clas­sic record albums shrunk down for mice…

The late Frances Gless­ner Lee (1878–1962) def­i­nite­ly loved minia­tures, and excelled at their cre­ation, knit­ting socks on pins, hand rolling real tobac­co into tiny cig­a­rettes, and mak­ing sure the vic­tims in her real­is­tic mur­der scene dio­ra­mas exhib­it­ed the prop­er degree of rig­or mor­tis and livid­i­ty.

Lee began work on her Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death at the age of 65, as part of a life­long inter­est in homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion.

Her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion began with the Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries she read as a girl.

In the 1930s, the wealthy divorcee used part of a siz­able inher­i­tance to endow Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty with enough mon­ey for the cre­ation of its Depart­ment of Legal Med­i­cine.

Its first chair­man was her friend, George Burgess Magrath, a med­ical exam­in­er who had shared his dis­tress that crim­i­nals were lit­er­al­ly get­ting away with mur­der because coro­ners and police inves­ti­ga­tors lacked appro­pri­ate train­ing for foren­sic analy­sis.

The library to which Lee donat­ed a thou­sand books on the top­ic was named in his hon­or.

The home­made dio­ra­mas offered a more vivid expe­ri­ence than could be found in any book.

Each Nut­shell Study required almost half a year’s work, and cost about the same as a house would have at the time. ($6000 in the 1940s.)

“Luck­i­ly, I was born with a sil­ver spoon in my mouth,” Lee remarked. “It gives me the time and mon­ey to fol­low my hob­by of sci­en­tif­ic crime detec­tion.”

Although Lee had been brought up in a lux­u­ri­ous 13 bed­room home (8 were for ser­vants’ use), the domes­tic set­tings of the Nut­shell Stud­ies are more mod­est, reflec­tive of the vic­tims’ cir­cum­stances.

She drew inspi­ra­tion from actu­al crimes, but had no inter­est in repli­cat­ing their actu­al scenes. The crimes she authored for her lit­tle rooms were com­pos­ites of the ones she had stud­ied, with invent­ed vic­tims and in rooms dec­o­rat­ed accord­ing to her imag­i­na­tion.

Her intent was to pro­vide inves­ti­ga­tors with vir­gin crime scenes to metic­u­lous­ly exam­ine, culling indi­rect evi­dence from the painstak­ing­ly detailed props she was a stick­ler for get­ting right.

Stu­dents were pro­vid­ed with a flash­light, a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, and wit­ness state­ments. Her atten­tion to detail ensured that they would use the full nine­ty min­utes they had been allot­ted ana­lyz­ing the scene. Their goal was not to crack the case but to care­ful­ly doc­u­ment obser­va­tions on which a case could be built.

The flaw­less­ness of her 1:12 scale ren­der­ings also speaks to her deter­mi­na­tion to be tak­en seri­ous­ly in what was then an exclu­sive­ly male world. (Women now dom­i­nate the field of foren­sic sci­ence.)

Noth­ing was over­looked.

As she wrote to Dr. Alan Moritz, the Depart­ment of Legal Medicine’s sec­ond chair, in a let­ter review­ing pro­posed changes to some ear­ly scenes:

I found myself con­stant­ly tempt­ed to add more clues and details and am afraid I may get them “gad­gety” in the process. I hope you will watch over this and stop me when I go too far. Since you and I have per­pe­trat­ed these crimes our­selves we are in the unique posi­tion of being able to give com­plete descrip­tions of them even if there were no witnesses—very much in the man­ner of the nov­el­ist who is able to tell the inmost thoughts of his char­ac­ters.

It’s no acci­dent that many of the Nut­shell Stud­ies’ lit­tle corpses are female.

Lee did not want offi­cers to treat vic­tims dis­mis­sive­ly because of gen­der-relat­ed assump­tions, whether the sce­nario involved a pros­ti­tute whose throat has been cut, or a house­wife dead on the floor of her kitchen, the burn­ers of her stove all switched to the on posi­tion.

Would you like to test your pow­ers of obser­va­tion?

Above are the remains of Mag­gie Wil­son, dis­cov­ered in the Dark Bath­room’s tub by a fel­low board­er, Lizzie Miller, who gave the fol­low­ing state­ment:

I roomed in the same house as Mag­gie Wil­son, but knew her only from we met in the hall. I think she had ‘fits’ [seizures]. A cou­ple of male friends came to see her fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly. On Sun­day night, the men were there and there was a lot of drink­ing going on. Some time after the men left, I heard the water run­ning in the bath­room. I opened the door and found her as you see her.

Grim, eh?

Not near­ly as grim as what you’ll find in the Par­son­age or the Three-Room Dwelling belong­ing to shoe fac­to­ry fore­man Robert Jud­son, his wife, Kate, and their baby, Lin­da Mae.

The peri­od-accu­rate mini fur­nish­ings and fash­ions may cre­ate a false impres­sion that the Moth­er of Foren­sic Sci­ence’s Nut­shell Stud­ies should be rel­e­gat­ed to a muse­um.

In truth, their abun­dance of detail remains so effec­tive that the Office of the Chief Med­ical Exam­in­er in Bal­ti­more con­tin­ues to use 18 of them in train­ing sem­i­nars to help homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tors “con­vict the guilty, clear the inno­cent, and find the truth in a nut­shell.”

Explore 5 Nut­shell Studies—Woodman’s Shack, Attic, Liv­ing Room, Garage, and Par­son­age Parlor—in 360º com­pli­ments of The Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Muse­um Ren­wick Gallery’s exhib­it Mur­der Is Her Hob­by: Frances Gless­ner Lee and The Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Swe­den, Fea­tur­ing Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dol­ly Pars­ley & More

“20 Rules For Writ­ing Detec­tive Sto­ries” By S.S. Van Dine, One of T.S. Eliot’s Favorite Genre Authors (1928)

Lucy Law­less Joins Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #5 on True Crime

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Japanese Traditions of Sashiko & Boro: The Centuries-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sustainable, Artistic Way

in Art, Fashion, History, How to Learn for Free, Life, Philosophy | October 26th, 2020

The state of our trou­bled plan­et dic­tates that dis­pos­ables are out.

Reusables are in.

And any­one who’s taught them­selves how to mend and main­tain their stuff has earned the right to flaunt it!

A quick scroll through Insta­gram reveals loads of vis­i­ble mend­ing projects that high­light rather than dis­guise the area of repair, draw­ing the eye to con­trast­ing threads rein­forc­ing a thread­bare knee, frayed cuff, ragged rip, or moth hole.

While some prac­ti­tion­ers take a freeform approach, the most pleas­ing stitch­es tend to be in the sashiko tra­di­tion.

Sashiko—fre­quent­ly trans­lat­ed as “lit­tle stabs”—was born in Edo peri­od Japan (1603–1868), when rur­al women attempt­ed to pro­long the life of their fam­i­lies’ tat­tered gar­ments and bed­ding, giv­ing rise to a hum­ble form of white-on-indi­go patch­work known as boro.

While sashiko can at times be seen serv­ing a pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion, such as on a very well pre­served Mei­ji peri­od jack­et in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s col­lec­tion, its pri­ma­ry use was always one born of neces­si­ty.

As Austin Bryant notes on Hed­dels, a news and edu­ca­tion web­site ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able goods:

Over gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies, these tex­tiles would acquire more and more patch­es, almost to the point of the com­mon observ­er being unable to rec­og­nize where the orig­i­nal fab­ric began. As they recov­ered after the end of World War II, to some the boro tex­tiles remind­ed the Japan­ese of their impov­er­ished rur­al past.

Keiko & Atsushi Futat­suya are a moth­er-and-son arti­san team whose posts on sashiko and boro go beyond straight­for­ward how-tos to delve into cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

Accord­ing to them, the goal of sashiko should not be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing rows of uni­form stitch­es, but rather “enjoy­ing the dia­logue” with the fab­ric.

As Atsushi explains in an Insta­gram post, view­ers see­ing their work with a West­ern per­spec­tive may respond dif­fer­ent­ly than those who have grown up with the ele­ments in play:

This is a pho­to of a “Boro-to-be Jack­et” in the process. This is the back (hid­ing) side of the jack­et and many non-Japan­ese would say this should be the front and should show to the pub­lic. The Japan­ese would under­stand why it is a back­side nat­u­ral­ly, but I would need to “explain” to the non-Japan­ese who do not share the same val­ue (why we) pur­pose­ful­ly make this side as “hid­ing” side. That’s why, I keep shar­ing in words. One pic­ture may be worth a thou­sand words, but the thou­sand words may be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent based on their (free) inter­pre­ta­tion. In shar­ing the cul­ture, some “actu­al words” would be also very impor­tant.

To try your hand at sashiko, you will need a long nee­dle, such as a cot­ton darn­ing nee­dle, white embroi­dery thread, and—for boro—an aging tex­tile in need of some atten­tion.

Should you find your­self slid­ing into a full blown obses­sion, you may want to order sashiko nee­dles and thread, and a palm thim­ble to help you push through sev­er­al weights of fab­ric simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

You’ll find many pat­terns, tips, and tuto­ri­als on the Futat­suya family’s Sashi.co YouTube chan­nel.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Explore the Beau­ti­ful Pages of the 1902 Japan­ese Design Mag­a­zine Shin-Bijut­sukai: Euro­pean Mod­ernism Meets Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Design

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Dance Theatre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

in Dance, Life | October 16th, 2020

It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to find an unblem­ished square of pave­ment in New York City.

Unless the con­crete was poured with­in the last day or two, count on each square to boast at least one dark pol­ka dot, an echo of casu­al­ly dis­card­ed gum.

Con­firm for your­self with a quick peek beneath the exu­ber­ant feet of the Dance The­atre of Harlem com­pa­ny mem­bers per­form­ing on the plaza of the Adam Clay­ton Pow­ell Jr. State Office Build­ing dur­ing the 46th annu­al Harlem Week fes­ti­val.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, this year’s fes­ti­val took place entire­ly online, but the Dance The­atre’s offer­ing is a far cry from the gloomy Zoom‑y affair that’s become 2020’s sad norm.

Eight com­pa­ny mem­bers, includ­ing co-pro­duc­ers Derek Brock­ing­ton and Alexan­dra Hutchin­son, hit the streets, to be filmed danc­ing through­out Harlem.

Those who gripe about the dis­com­fort of wear­ing a mask while exert­ing them­selves should shut their traps until they’ve per­formed bal­let on the plat­form of the 145th and St. Nicholas Sub­way Sta­tion, where the dancers’ pris­tine white shoes bring fur­ther buoy­an­cy to the pro­ceed­ings.

The City Col­lege of New York—in-state tuition $7,340—provides the Neo-Goth­ic stage for four bal­leri­nas to per­form en pointe.

The Hud­son Riv­er and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge serve as back­drop as four young men soar along the prom­e­nade in Den­ny Far­rell River­bank State Park. Their casu­al out­fits are a reminder of how com­pa­ny founder Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet’s first black prin­ci­pal dancer, delib­er­ate­ly relaxed the dress code to accom­mo­date young men who would have resist­ed tights.

The piece is an excerpt of New Bach, part of the com­pa­ny’s reper­toire by res­i­dent chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and for­mer prin­ci­pal dancer, Robert Gar­land, described in an ear­li­er New York Times review as “an author­i­ta­tive and high­ly imag­i­na­tive blend of clas­si­cal vocab­u­lary and funk, laid out in hand­some for­mal pat­terns in a well-plot­ted bal­let.”

The music is by J.S. Bach.

And in these frac­tious times, it’s worth not­ing that only one of the dancers is New York City born and bred. The oth­ers hail from Kansas, Texas, Chica­go, Louisiana, Delaware, Orange Coun­ty, and upstate.

The group seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ampli­fy a much need­ed pub­lic health message—wear a mask!—but it’s also a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the pow­er of the arts and the vibrant neigh­bor­hood where a world-class com­pa­ny was found­ed in a con­vert­ed garage at the height of the civ­il rights move­ment.

Con­tribute to Dance The­ater of Harlem’s COVID-19 Relief Fund here.

via @BalletArchive/@Ted­Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­le­ri­na Misty Copeland Recre­ates the Pos­es of Edgar Degas’ Bal­let Dancers

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.   Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Win an Argument (at the U.S. Supreme Court, or Anywhere Else): A Primer by Litigator Neal Katyal

in Law, Life | October 14th, 2020

Do you like being right? Of course, every­one does. Are you suc­cess­ful at con­vinc­ing oth­ers? That’s a tougher one. We may polite­ly dis­agree, avoid, or scream bloody mur­der at each oth­er, but what­ev­er our con­flict style, no one is born, and few are raised, know­ing how to per­suade.

Per­sua­sion does not mean coer­cion, deceit, or manip­u­la­tion, the tac­tics of con artists, under­hand­ed sales­per­sons, or stereo­typ­i­cal­ly untrust­wor­thy lawyers….

Per­sua­sion is about shift­ing oth­ers’ point of view, respect­ful­ly and char­i­ta­bly, through the use of evi­dence and argu­ment, eth­i­cal appeals, mov­ing sto­ries, and “faith in the pow­er of your ideas,” as Neal Katyal explains in his TED pre­sen­ta­tion above, “How to Win an Argu­ment (at the U.S. Supreme Court, or any­where).”

Katyal’s job as a Supreme Court lit­i­ga­tor makes him an author­i­ty on this sub­ject. It may also dis­tract you with thoughts about the cur­rent Court pow­er strug­gle. Try to put those thoughts aside. In places where rea­son, evi­dence, and ethics have pur­chase, Katyal’s advice can pay div­i­dends in your quest to win oth­ers over.

In his first case before the Court a “hand­ful of years” after the 9/11 attacks, he rep­re­sent­ed Osama bin Laden’s dri­ver in a suit press­ing to rec­og­nize Gene­va Con­ven­tion rules in the war on ter­ror and to rule Guan­tanamo uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. His oppo­nent, the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al of the U.S., had argued 35 cas­es before the court; “I wasn’t even 35 years old,” Katyal says. He won the case, and he’ll tell you how.

His most impor­tant les­son? Win­ning argu­ments isn’t about being right. It isn’t about believ­ing real­ly, real­ly hard that you’re right. Per­sua­sion is not about con­fi­dence, Katyal insists. It’s about empa­thy. Oral argu­ments in the court­room (which judges could just as well read in tran­script form) show us as much, he says.

When his legal exper­tise was not help­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the big tri­al, Katyal felt des­per­ate and hired an act­ing coach, who trained him in such tech­niques as hold­ing hands while mak­ing his argu­ments. What? Yes, that’s exact­ly what Katyal said. But he did it, and it worked.

Hold­ing hands with the Jus­tices isn’t an option in court, but Katyal found oth­er ways to remind him­self to stay close to what mat­tered, wear­ing acces­sories his par­ents had giv­en him, for exam­ple, and writ­ing his children’s names on a legal pad: “That’s why I’m doing this, for them. To leave the coun­try bet­ter than I found it.”

Once he had estab­lished his pri­vate rea­sons for car­ing, he was ready to present his pub­lic rea­sons. As the old say­ing goes, “peo­ple don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” The facts absolute­ly mat­ter, yet the bur­den of show­ing how and why facts mat­ter falls to the per­suad­er, whose own pas­sion, integri­ty, com­mit­ment, etc. will go a long way toward mak­ing an audi­ence recep­tive.

This advice applies in any sit­u­a­tion, but if you’re won­der­ing how to move Katyal’s advice online.… well, maybe the ulti­mate les­son here is that we’re at our most per­sua­sive when we’re close enough—physically or virtually—to take some­body’s hand.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments: A Fun Primer on How to Strength­en, Not Weak­en, Your Argu­ments

Lit­er­ary The­o­rist Stan­ley Fish Offers a Free Course on Rhetoric, or the Pow­er of Argu­ments

How to Argue With Kind­ness and Care: 4 Rules from Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Learn the Stories Behind Iconic Songs: The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” REM’s “Losing My Religion,” Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” & More

in Life, Music | October 8th, 2020

There was a time when pop lyrics did not exact­ly spark curios­i­ty, doo-lang doo-lang doo-lang.

They may have tapped into some uni­ver­sal teenage feel­ings, but rarely inspired fur­ther thought along the lines of “Hmm, I won­der what—or who—inspired that.”

Dutch sta­tion NPO Radio 2’s inter­view series Top 2000 a gogo lifts the veil.

Each entry reveals the ori­gin sto­ry of a well known song.

The late Bill With­ers, above, inti­mat­ed that every woman he’d even been involved with thought “Ain’t No Sun­shine” was about her, when real­ly, the inspi­ra­tion was the mis­er­able alco­holic cou­ple played by Jack Lem­mon and Lee Remick in the 1962 film Days of Wine and Ros­es.

“Danc­ing in the Moon­light,” the endur­ing, incred­i­bly catchy hit for King Har­vest, paints an endear­ing pic­ture of care­free, cavort­ing youth, but as recount­ed by song­writer Sher­man Kel­ly, the event that led to its cre­ation is deserv­ing of a trig­ger warn­ing. Rather than lean­ing in to the dark­ness, he con­jured a light­heart­ed scene far dif­fer­ent from the one he had endured, a switcheroo that the uni­verse saw fit to reward.

One need not be the song­writer to be at the cen­ter of a song’s hid­den his­to­ry. Glo­ria Jones, preacher’s daugh­ter and even­tu­al soul­mate to T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, was a teenag­er when she record­ed Ed Cobb’s “Taint­ed Love,” a song she dis­liked owing to the impli­ca­tions of “taint­ed.” The song became a hit in Eng­land, thanks to a series of mis­ad­ven­tures involv­ing a sailor swap­ping a .45 for ciggies—a devel­op­ment that could have had an impact on Jones’ career, had any­one both­ered to inform her. All this to say, Soft Cell’s 1981 cov­er helped put MTV on the map, but it couldn’t have hap­pened with­out the teenag­er who held her nose and record­ed the orig­i­nal.

Top 2000 is unsur­pris­ing­ly full of deep and touch­ing rev­e­la­tions, but Rolling Stone Ron­nie Wood’s refusal to take things seri­ous­ly is also wel­come. Talk to Mick Jag­ger if you want con­fir­ma­tion that “Miss You” con­cerns the frus­tra­tions of star­dom. Accord­ing to class clown Wood, and his straight man drum­mer Char­lie Watts, the song was a sol­id attempt to go with the dis­co flow. The frus­tra­tion arose from being caged in a Paris record­ing stu­dio, bare­ly able to duck out for escar­got before task mas­ter Kei­th Richards cracked the whip to sum­mon them back.

Bit­ter­sweet is not the adjec­tive we’d choose to describe this his­tor­i­cal moment, but it gave us all the feels to see Alan Mer­rill, whose “I Love Rock n Roll” was a response to the Stones’ “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll,” as well as a break­through hit for Joan Jett. Mer­rill died of com­pli­ca­tions from COVID-19 at the end of March.

Explore more songs—over 200—on Top 2000 a gogo’s YouTube chan­nel.

Mul­ti-lin­guists! Con­tribute trans­la­tions to help make the videos avail­able world­wide.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Dear Facebook, This is How You’re Breaking Democracy: A Former Facebook Insider Explains How the Platform’s Algorithms Polarize Our Society

in Current Affairs, Life, Technology, TED Talks | October 5th, 2020

Is this what we want? A post-truth world where tox­i­c­i­ty and trib­al­ism trump bridge build­ing and con­sen­sus seek­ing? —Yaël Eisen­stat

It’s an increas­ing­ly famil­iar occur­rence.

A friend you’ve enjoyed recon­nect­ing with in the dig­i­tal realm makes a dra­mat­ic announce­ment on their social media page. They’re delet­ing their Face­book account with­in the next 24 hours, so shoot them a PM with your email if you’d like to stay in touch.

Such deci­sions used to be spurred by the desire to get more done or return to neglect­ed pas­times such as read­ing, paint­ing, and going for long uncon­nect­ed nature walks.

These announce­ments could induce equal parts guilt and anx­i­ety in those of us who depend on social media to get the word out about our low-bud­get cre­ative projects, though being prone to Inter­net addic­tion, we were near­ly as like­ly to be the one mak­ing the announce­ment.

For many, the break was tem­po­rary. More of a social media fast, a chance to reeval­u­ate, rest, recharge, and ulti­mate­ly return.

Legit­i­mate con­cerns were also raised with regard to pri­va­cy. Who’s on the receiv­ing end of all the sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion we’re offer­ing up? What are they doing with it? Is some­one lis­ten­ing in?

But in this elec­tion year, the deci­sion to quit Face­book is apt to be dri­ven by the very real fear that democ­ra­cy as we know it is at stake.

For­mer CIA ana­lyst, for­eign ser­vice offi­cer, and—for six months—Facebook’s Glob­al Head of Elec­tions Integri­ty Ops for polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing, Yaël Eisen­stat, address­es these pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in her TED Talk, “Dear Face­book, This is How You’re Break­ing Democ­ra­cy,” above.

Eisen­stat con­trasts the civil­i­ty of her past face-to-face ”hearts and minds”-based engage­ments with sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists and anti-West­ern cler­ics to the polar­iza­tion and cul­ture of hatred that Facebook’s algo­rithms foment.

As many users have come to sus­pect, Face­book rewards inflam­ma­to­ry con­tent with ampli­fi­ca­tion. Truth does not fac­tor into the equa­tion, nor does sin­cer­i­ty of mes­sage or mes­sen­ger.

Lies are more engag­ing online than truth. As long as [social media] algo­rithms’ goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poi­son that plays to our worst instincts and human weak­ness­es.

Eisen­stat, who has val­ued the ease with which Face­book allows her to main­tain rela­tion­ships with far-flung friends, found her­self effec­tive­ly demot­ed on her sec­ond day at the social media giant, her title revised, and her access to high lev­el meet­ings revoked. Her hir­ing appears to have been pure­ly orna­men­tal, a pal­lia­tive ruse in response to mount­ing pub­lic con­cern.

As she remarked in an inter­view with The Guardian’s Ian Tuck­er ear­li­er this sum­mer:

They are mak­ing all sorts of reac­tive changes around the mar­gins of the issues, [to sug­gest] that they are tak­ing things seri­ous­ly – such as build­ing an ad library or ver­i­fy­ing that polit­i­cal adver­tis­ers reside in the coun­try in which they adver­tis­ing – things they should have been doing already. But they were nev­er going to make the fun­da­men­tal changes that address the key sys­temic issues that make Face­book ripe for manip­u­la­tion, viral mis­in­for­ma­tion and oth­er ways that the plat­form can be used to affect democ­ra­cy.

In the same inter­view she assert­ed that Facebook’s recent­ly imple­ment­ed over­sight board is lit­tle more than an inter­est­ing the­o­ry that will nev­er result in the total over­haul of its busi­ness mod­el:

First of all, it’s anoth­er exam­ple of Face­book putting respon­si­bil­i­ty on some­one else. The over­sight board does not have any author­i­ty to actu­al­ly address any of the poli­cies that Face­book writes and enforces, or the under­ly­ing sys­temic issues that make the plat­form absolute­ly rife for dis­in­for­ma­tion and all sorts of bad behav­iour and manip­u­la­tion.

The sec­ond issue is: it’s basi­cal­ly an appeal process for con­tent that was already tak­en down. The big­ger ques­tion is the con­tent that remains up. Third, they are not even going to be oper­a­tional until late fall and, for a com­pa­ny that claims to move fast and break things, that’s absurd.

Nine min­utes into her TED Talk, she offers con­crete sug­ges­tions for things the Face­book brass could do if it was tru­ly seri­ous about imple­ment­ing reform:

  • Stop ampli­fy­ing and rec­om­mend­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and bias-based hatred, no mat­ter who is behind it—from con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to our cur­rent pres­i­dent.
  • Dis­con­tin­ue per­son­al­iza­tion tech­niques that don’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between tar­get­ed polit­i­cal con­tent and tar­get­ed ads for ath­let­ic footwear.
  • Retrain algo­rithms to focus on a met­rics beyond what users click or linger on.
  • Imple­ment safe­ty fea­tures that would ensure that sen­si­tive con­tent is reviewed before it is allowed to go viral.

Hope­ful­ly view­ers are not feel­ing maxed out on con­tact­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as gov­ern­ment enforce­ment is Eisenstat’s only pre­scrip­tion for get­ting Face­book to alter its prod­uct and prof­it mod­el. And that will require sus­tained civic engage­ment.

She sup­ple­ments her TED Talk with rec­om­men­da­tions for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence engi­neer Guil­laume Chaslot’s insid­er per­spec­tive op-ed “The Tox­ic Poten­tial of YouTube’s Feed­back Loop” and The Fil­ter Bub­ble: How the New Per­son­al­ized Web Is Chang­ing What We Read and How We Think by MoveOn.org’s for­mer Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Eli Paris­er.

Your clued-in Face­book friends have no doubt already point­ed you to the doc­u­men­tary The Social Dilem­ma, which is now avail­able on Net­flix. Or per­haps to Jaron Lanier’s Ten Argu­ments for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

Read the tran­script of Yaël Eisenstat’s TED Talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

This Is Your Kids’ Brains on Inter­net Algo­rithms: A Chill­ing Case Study Shows What’s Wrong with the Inter­net Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Frida Kahlo’s Venomous Love Letter to Diego Rivera: “I’m Amputating You. Be Happy and Never Seek Me Again”

in Art, Letters, Life | September 25th, 2020

Painter Diego Rivera set the bar awful­ly high for oth­er lovers when he—allegedly—ate a hand­ful of his ex-wife Fri­da Kahlo’s cre­mains, fresh from the oven.

Per­haps he was hedg­ing his bets. The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment opt­ed not to hon­or his express wish that their ash­es should be co-min­gled upon his death. Kahlo’s remains were placed in Mex­i­co City’s Rotun­da of Illus­tri­ous Men, and have since been trans­ferred to their home, now the Museo Fri­da Kahlo.

Rivera lies in the Pan­teón Civ­il de Dolores.

Oth­er cre­ative expres­sions of the grief that dogged him til his own death, three years lat­er:

His final paint­ing, The Water­mel­ons, a very Mex­i­can sub­ject that’s also a trib­ute to Kahlo’s last work, Viva La Vida…

And a locked bath­room in which he decreed 6,000 pho­tographs, 300 of Kahlo’s gar­ments and per­son­al items, and 12,000 doc­u­ments were to be housed until 15 years after his death.

Among the many rev­e­la­tions when this cham­ber was belat­ed­ly unsealed in 2004, her cloth­ing caused the biggest stir, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ways in which the col­or­ful gar­ments were adapt­ed to and informed by her phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties.

Her pros­thet­ic leg, shod in an eye-catch­ing red boot was giv­en a place of hon­or in an exhib­it at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um.,

These trea­sures might have come to light ear­li­er save for a judg­ment call on the part of Dolores Olme­do, Rivera’s patron, for­mer mod­el, and friend. Dur­ing ren­o­va­tions to turn the couple’s home into a muse­um, she had a peek and decid­ed the lip­stick-imprint­ed love let­ters from some famous men Fri­da had bed­ded could dam­age Rivera’s rep­u­ta­tion.

In what way, it’s dif­fi­cult to parse.

The couple’s his­to­ry of extra­mar­i­tal rela­tions (includ­ing Rivera’s dal­liance with Kahlo’s sis­ter, Christi­na) weren’t exact­ly secret, and both of the play­ers had left the build­ing.

One thing that’s tak­en for grant­ed is Kahlo’s pas­sion for Rivera, whom she met as girl of 15. Tempt­ing as it might be to view the rela­tion­ship with 2020 gog­gles, it would be a dis­ser­vice to Kahlo’s sense of her own nar­ra­tive. Self-exam­i­na­tion was cen­tral to her work. She was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly avid in let­ters and diary entries, detail­ing her phys­i­cal attrac­tion to every aspect of Rivera’s body, includ­ing his giant bel­ly “drawn tight and smooth as a sphere.” Dit­to her obses­sion with his many con­quests.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, she was capa­ble of pen­ning a pret­ty spicy love let­ter her­self, and the major­i­ty were aimed at her hus­band:

Noth­ing com­pares to your hands, noth­ing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mir­ror of the night. the vio­lent flash of light­ning. The damp­ness of the earth. The hol­low of your armpits is my shel­ter. my fin­gers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-foun­tain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.

Her most noto­ri­ous love let­ter does not appear to be one at first.

Bedrid­den, and fac­ing the ampu­ta­tion of a gan­grenous right leg that had already sac­ri­ficed some toes 20 years ear­li­er, she direct­ed the full force of her emo­tions at Rivera.

The lover she’d ten­der­ly pegged as “a boy frog stand­ing on his hind legs” now appeared to her an “ugly son of a bitch,” mad­den­ing­ly pos­sessed of the pow­er to seduce women (as he had seduced her).

You have to read all the way to the twist:

Mex­i­co,
1953

My dear Mr. Diego,

I’m writ­ing this let­ter from a hos­pi­tal room before I am admit­ted into the oper­at­ing the­atre. They want me to hur­ry, but I am deter­mined to fin­ish writ­ing first, as I don’t want to leave any­thing unfin­ished. Espe­cial­ly now that I know what they are up to. They want to hurt my pride by cut­ting a leg off. When they told me it would be nec­es­sary to ampu­tate, the news didn’t affect me the way every­body expect­ed. No, I was already a maimed woman when I lost you, again, for the umpteenth time maybe, and still I sur­vived.

I am not afraid of pain and you know it. It is almost inher­ent to my being, although I con­fess that I suf­fered, and a great deal, when you cheat­ed on me, every time you did it, not just with my sis­ter but with so many oth­er women. How did they let them­selves be fooled by you? You believe I was furi­ous about Cristi­na, but today I con­fess that it wasn’t because of her. It was because of me and you. First of all because of me, since I’ve nev­er been able to under­stand what you looked and look for, what they give you that I couldn’t. Let’s not fool our­selves, Diego, I gave you every­thing that is human­ly pos­si­ble to offer and we both know that. But still, how the hell do you man­age to seduce so many women when you’re such an ugly son of a bitch?

The rea­son why I’m writ­ing is not to accuse you of any­thing more than we’ve already accused each oth­er of in this and how­ev­er many more bloody lives. It’s because I’m hav­ing a leg cut off (damned thing, it got what it want­ed in the end). I told you I’ve count­ed myself as incom­plete for a long time, but why the fuck does every­body else need to know about it too? Now my frag­men­ta­tion will be obvi­ous for every­one to see, for you to see… That’s why I’m telling you before you hear it on the grapevine. For­give my not going to your house to say this in per­son, but giv­en the cir­cum­stances and my con­di­tion, I’m not allowed to leave the room, not even to use the bath­room. It’s not my inten­tion to make you or any­one else feel pity, and I don’t want you to feel guilty. I’m writ­ing to let you know I’m releas­ing you, I’m ampu­tat­ing you. Be hap­py and nev­er seek me again. I don’t want to hear from you, I don’t want you to hear from me. If there is any­thing I’d enjoy before I die, it’d be not hav­ing to see your fuck­ing hor­ri­ble bas­tard face wan­der­ing around my gar­den.

That is all, I can now go to be chopped up in peace.

Good bye from some­body who is crazy and vehe­ment­ly in love with you,

Your Fri­da

This is a love let­ter mas­querad­ing as a doozy of a break up let­ter. The ref­er­ences to ampu­ta­tion are both lit­er­al and metaphor­i­cal:

No doubt, she was sin­cere, but this cou­ple, rather than hold­ing them­selves account­able, excelled at rever­sals. In the end the letter’s threat proved idle. Short­ly before her death,  the two appeared togeth­er in pub­lic, at a demon­stra­tion to protest the C.I.A.’s efforts to over­throw the left­ist Guatemalan regime.

Image via Brook­lyn Muse­um

Once Fri­da was safe­ly laid to rest, by which we mean rumored to have sat bolt upright as her cas­ket was slid into the incer­a­tor, Rivera mused in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

Too late now I real­ized the most won­der­ful part of my life had been my love for Fri­da. But I could not real­ly say that giv­en “anoth­er chance” I would have behaved toward her any dif­fer­ent­ly than I had. Every man is the prod­uct of the social atmos­phere in which he grows up and I am what I am…I had nev­er had any morals at all and had lived only for plea­sure where I found it. I was not good. I could dis­cern oth­er peo­ple’s weak­ness­es eas­i­ly, espe­cial­ly men’s, and then I would play upon them for no worth­while rea­son. If I loved a woman, the more I want­ed to hurt her. Fri­da was only the most obvi­ous vic­tim of this dis­gust­ing trait.

via Let­ters of Note and the book, Let­ters of Note: Love.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Fri­da Kahlo’s Blue House Free Online

What the Icon­ic Paint­ing, “The Two Fridas,” Actu­al­ly Tells Us About Fri­da Kahlo

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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If Werner Herzog Reviewed Trader Joe’s on Yelp: “Madness Reigns. The First Challenge Your Soul Must Endure Is the Parking Lot”

in Comedy, Film, Life | September 21st, 2020

I like the Inter­net for var­i­ous things, but it’s lim­it­ed. I’m not on social media, but you will find me in the social media. There’s Face­book, there’s Twit­ters, but it’s all not me.

—Wern­er Her­zog in an inter­view with The Hol­ly­wood Reporter

The night before his 2016 doc­u­men­tary Lo and Behold: Rever­ies of the Con­nect­ed World pre­miered at Sun­dance, direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog declared him­self “still a lib­er­at­ed vir­gin” with regard to his reliance on the Inter­net:

I think we have to aban­don this kind of false secu­ri­ty that every­thing is set­tled now, that we have so much assis­tance by dig­i­tal media and robots and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. At the same time, we over­look how vul­ner­a­ble all this is, and how we are los­ing the essen­tials that make us human. That’s my advice … Cook a meal at least three times a week. Play a musi­cal instru­ment. Read books and trav­el on foot.

That said, he’s not immune to the reju­ve­nat­ing effects of ran­dom cat videos at the end of a tir­ing day, as he told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­sen dur­ing a pro­mo­tion­al vis­it for 2018’s Meet­ing Gor­bachev:

Per­haps guess­ing that Googling his own name is not one of Herzog’s pre­ferred online activ­i­ties, Ander­son took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hip his guest to come­di­an Paul F. Tomp­kins’ Teu­ton­ic-inflect­ed recita­tion of a noto­ri­ous Yelp review of Trad­er Joe’s in Sil­ver Lake.

To the untrained ear, Tomp­kins’ Her­zog is pitch per­fect.

The spoof’s sub­ject sug­gest­ed that the accent could use improve­ment, but agreed that the text is “very fun­ny.”

And it is, espe­cial­ly giv­en the pedes­tri­an tenor of the same Trad­er Joe’s oth­er 5‑star reviews:

This is the best Trad­er Joe’s loca­tion I’ve been to! Been com­ing here since I was a kid! (I’m 25 now) I’ve moved out of this area but still come to this loca­tion just because it beats the rest of them. — Deb­bie G

TJ is the best!! I’ve been com­ing here for many years, and the food is great!! The employ­ee’s are awe­some! Some of the many things I love to pur­chase here are: salmon balls, smooth­ies like the chia seed straw­ber­ry, pro­tein almond but­ter drinks, coconut smooth­ie, cashew yogurt, south west­ern sal­ad that comes in a bag is BOMB.COM! — Ray­mond M

Tomp­kins tapped Herzog’s fas­ci­na­tion with man’s ani­mal nature and the bru­tal­i­ty of exis­tence for anoth­er Yelp review, award­ing three stars to San Francisco’s Hotel Majes­tic and attribut­ing it to Wern­er H:

Tomp­kins clear­ly savors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chan­nel Her­zog, log­ging 16 appear­ances for the char­ac­ter on the Com­e­dy Bang Bang pod­cast, includ­ing episodes where­in he dis­cuss­es work­ing with Tom Cruise and his desire to be cast as a clue­less sub­ur­ban hus­band in an appli­ance com­mer­cial. Find them all list­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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