Weekend Reading
Long reads for a Spring weekend
“On May 28, 585 B.C., according to Herodotus, an eclipse led the Medes and Lydians, after more than five years of war, to become ‘alike anxious’ to come to peace. More than a hundred years before that, the Assyrian royalty of Mesopotamia protected themselves from the ill omen of solar eclipses—and from other celestial signs perceived as threatening—by installing substitute kings and queens for the day. Afterward, the substitutes were usually killed, though in one instance, when the real king died, the stand-in, who had been a gardener, held the throne for decades. More recently, an eclipse on May 29, 1919, enabled measurements that recorded the sun bending the path of light in accordance with, and thus verifying, Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Any given spot on the Earth witnesses a total solar eclipse about once every three hundred and seventy-five years, on average, but somewhere on the planet witnesses a total solar eclipse about once every eighteen months. In Annie Dillard’s essay ‘Total Eclipse,’ she says of a partial solar eclipse that it has the relation to a total one that kissing a man has to marrying him, or that flying in a plane has to falling out of a plane. ‘Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it,’ she writes. During a partial eclipse, you put on the goofy paper eyeglasses and see the outline of the moon reducing its rival, the sun, to a solar cassava, or slimmer. It’s a cool thing to see, and it maybe hints at human vulnerability, the weirdness of light, the scale and reality of the world beyond our planet. But, even when the moon blocks ninety-nine per cent of the sun, it’s still daylight out. When the moon occludes the whole of the sun, everyday expectations collapse: the temperature quickly drops, the colors of shadows become tinny, day flips to darkness, stars precipitously appear, birds stop chirping, bees head back to their hives, hippos come out for their nightly grazing, and humans shout or hide or study or pray or take measurements until, seconds or minutes later, sunlight, and the familiar world, abruptly returns.” (Rivka Galchen/TNY)
“For decades, Trump has monetized chaos and conflict. His multiple divorces, bankruptcies, and lawsuits played as plotlines in a serialized tabloid spectacle. But Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign represents a sinister evolution of his brand: He is running as a would-be dictator out for revenge. ‘I am your retribution,’ he told supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023. In September, Trump accused then Joint Chiefs chairman Mark Milley of treason when it was reported Milley privately assured the Chinese military during the January 6 Capitol riot that the American government remained stable. ‘This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. At rallies, Trump even invoked the dehumanizing language of Nazis. ‘We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,’ Trump told supporters in New Hampshire last November. If Trump wins back the White House, his increasingly extreme and violent rhetoric is poised to become policy. The New York Times reported Trump plans to order mass roundups of undocumented immigrants and detain them in deportation camps. Trump has promised to direct the Justice Department to prosecute Joe Biden. At a rally in February, Trump said he would encourage Russia to do ‘whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t increase military spending. Veterans of Trump’s first administration are sounding the alarm. ‘He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century,’ former communications director Anthony Scaramucci has said. Former attorney general Bill Barr testified to the January 6 Committee that Trump was ‘detached from reality.’” (Gabriel Sherman/VF)
“According to a recent British Defence report, Russia has been recruiting about 30,000 replacements per month. This monthly throughput is probably a more sustainable effort for training and equipping soldiers than irregular, large scale mobilisation efforts. These troops will be replacing lost soldiers in existing units as well as potentially contributing to the formation of new brigades and divisions announced by the Russian defence minister. Russia, which made key decisions about mobilising people and industry in 2022, is clearly now in a position to replace its losses in a way that Ukraine cannot. This will be a key asymmetric advantage for Russia in 2024 unless Ukrainian mobilisation is effective and the US and others step up materiel assistance. For some time now, Russian attacks have been part of a larger reconnaissance battle taking place across the front. This has seen Russian forces fighting for information while also fighting to deny information to the Ukrainians. It is a very important preliminary activity for any larger scale offensive. This reconnaissance battle takes place with dismounted and mounted troops, as well as UAVs, electronic warfare and strategic intelligence support from satellites and other sources. The Russians will probably have been undertaking stockpiling. Food, fuel, water, spare tires and vehicle parts and ammunition are all part of this build up of materiel and supplies to support an army on the advance. The Russians have also been adapting their tactics, including wider use of long-range glide bombs, as part of their offensive activities. Although, whether they have developed the new warfighting concepts necessary to achieve operational surprise, and breakthrough the Ukrainian defensive lines in an era of greater battlefield transparency, remains to be seen.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that will lower the country’s minimum conscription age from 27 to 25, potentially boosting the number of men available to fight Russia’s invasion. The Ukrainian Parliament passed the measure in May 2023 but Zelensky had not signed it into law until Tuesday. It is unclear how many men will be impacted by the move. A statement published by the Parliament upon passing the law in 2023 said it was ‘inappropriate’ that ‘a significant number of citizens’ who were fit for military service could not be called up, despite the present need, under martial law. Calling men up to fight under Ukraine’s martial law, which is currently in effect, is a two-stage process. Firstly, men are drafted into military service. Then, once serving in the military, they can later be mobilized – or called up to fight – by the government. The law signed by Zelensky on Tuesday lowers the age they can be drafted to 25, but leaves the mobilization age at 27, However, the Ukrainian Parliament is also considering a bill that would reduce the mobilization age to 25. Martial law also prohibits most men between the ages 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine, unless they are deemed unfit for military service for health reasons or have an exemption. The move comes as Ukraine has struggled to free up more manpower for its military as the Russian invasion continues into a third year.” (Xiaofei Xu and Yulia Kesaieva/CNN)
“As regular readers know, I’ve long supported community service as the appropriate sentence for Donald Trump. The logistics of housing the Secret Service detail (to which Trump as a former president is entitled) in jail are too difficult and imprisonment runs the risk of making him a martyr, or at least distressingly popular among other white collar inmates. With the trials delayed, I hadn’t thought much lately about sentencing but now the question of punishment for contempt of court is front-and-center. On Monday night, Judge Juan Merchan issued a stunning five-page ruling that extended the gag order to his own family because the physical safety of his daughter — wrongly accused by the Trump team of bias against the defendant — is imperiled by the former president of the United States. This is the horrifying reality of life in the United States now, and of course it will get much worse if Trump returns to the Oval Office.” (Jonathan Alter/Old Goats)
“Some people still have stress dreams about high school exams. I still have stress dreams about working for David Bouley. Famed chef David Bouley passed away in February 2024. His New York Times obituary notes that his masterful cooking transformed fine dining. As a former employee of Bouley’s, I know the class politics of fine dining says as much about Bouley’s legacy as his highly lauded cuisine. I spent a couple of formative years working at Bouley, the Chef’s namesake lower Manhattan flagship. Working for a legendarily dictatorial boss in a legendarily dictatorial business premised on inequality was an education for a budding sociologist. I worked my way up the hierarchy at Bouley’s from a food-runner to a captain while studying at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. My first sociology professor, Jack Estes, encouraged me to do an ethnography of the restaurant. Although I (regrettably) did not follow his advice, my sociological imagination was shaped by this (mostly) terrible on-the-job education where I (mostly) learned how not to treat people. I also learned that luxury, however pleasurable, is often just cleverly concealed exploitation. The aura of transcendent individual genius around Bouley, and celebrity chefs generally, obscured the collective labor facilitating genius. As a headwaiter, my goal was to create the illusion that nothing unpleasant could spoil the meal, while knowing the entire ritual was marinated in cruelty. Wage theft was so common that on payday, we would rush down the block to HSBC to cash our checks before they bounced. Bouley was also known to stiff suppliers. One of the most egregious examples of Bouley’s worker exploitation took place in the wake of 9/11. Bouley’s Tribeca restaurant was just a few blocks north of the World Trade Center and, like much of the city, closed following the 9/11 attacks. For months after, Bouley used his kitchen to feed rescue workers through a contract with the Red Cross. This ostensibly selfless gesture became selfish when “what started as a charitable effort became a business venture.” Bouley was profiting from every meal served to relief workers, despite the fact that he was relying on the labor of volunteer staff and donated food.” (Victor Ray/Contexts)
“(Eric) Ripert refuses to take full credit for Le Bernardin’s continued culinary excellence. ‘It takes a lot of energy, passion, and work from the entire team, really. Everyone has their own role to play. We mentor each other and work with the same goal in mind, which is to create something special for our clients,’ he says. The chef believes the key to a successful restaurant is to create a healthy work environment. ‘We treat our employees very well and that creates consistency. I always say a cook or a waiter who is afraid will never do a better job than one who is inspired. we are very blessed to have such a team.’ But, Le Bernardin isn’t the only place in New York City where you can find Ripert feeding people. The chef also serves as vice chairman of the board of City Harvest, the city’s first and largest food rescue organization. This year, City Harvest will rescue more than 77 million pounds of good, nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste — with some of that food coming from the kitchen of Le Bernardin. Ripert explains, ‘At the end of the night, we choose what food is good for City Harvest. Sometimes the string beans are not as green as we wish. Sometimes we have bread or desserts. We can make a little difference.’ Ripert also offers a special menu at the restaurant’s lounge that benefits City Harvest: order it and the restaurant donates five dollars toward City Harvest’s efforts to feed New Yorkers. Ripert says his work with the organization began in the 1990s when he noticed homeless people right outside his tony restaurant.” (Laine Doss/Broken Palate)
“In 2015, the U.S. Department of Treasury hired an economist named Owen Zidar as a contractor to help a team of government officials examine a problem of growing urgency. The ultrawealthy were increasingly turning to intricate webs of companies and trusts to move their income in ways that auditors could hardly begin to understand. These distinctive new investment schemes are often called “large partnerships,” and they have become pervasive in the private equity funds and similar investment firms the rich have flocked to in recent years. When the IRS granted Zidar access to its volumes of secret tax data, he was shocked by what he saw. Hundreds of billions of dollars held by the wealthiest people had become effectively hidden from agents in the murky partnership schemes. ‘There was a staggering amount of wealth pouring into these opaque structures,’ Zidar, now an economics professor at Princeton University, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ‘This is where the 1%’s rising share of income is going.’ After years of budget cuts, one of the world’s largest tax agencies was no longer enforcing tax laws for the ultrarich, it seemed to Zidar. The IRS was simply trusting them to pay their taxes.” (Spencer Woodman/ICIJ)
“The stock market undervalues K-pop, according to Goldman Sachs. Korean pop music is ubiquitous: Six of the world’s top 20 best-selling artists in 2023, and all three of the best-selling albums, were South Korean, an industry survey said. Its power stretches beyond music: Hyundai pulled out of an aluminum supply deal after K-pop fans campaigned against the plan.” (Tom Chivers/semafor)
“The one time I met Lauren Oyler in person was in New York in the spring of 2018. I had been closely following her work as a critic and admired her intelligence and fearlessness. That exuberant night, she sat mostly quietly, with a look of anger, through a long evening at a bar, which ended late, outside a pizza restaurant, over greasy slices. She was the girlfriend of a friend of mine, who was the reason I was there. The next day, I learned that after they had gone home, she had dumped him. All of this made a deep impression on me. Not pretending to be having a good time. Some sort of power she embodied, just sitting there stonily. I have a terrible memory, but I remember that night—and her at the center of it—so vividly. That spring, it seemed like everyone was talking about her hyperarticulate critiques of Roxane Gay, Greta Gerwig, and Zadie Smith. She was unafraid to use the full force of her critical eye to scrutinize even those artists who were mostly widely praised. Several weeks after we met, she wrote a defense of my novel Motherhood in The Baffler, responding to various prominent American female critics who had negatively reviewed the book. I wrote to thank her, and in the years since, we developed a correspondence and a friendship. Three years ago, she published her first novel, Fake Accounts, about a young woman who flees to Berlin and interrogates her relationships and herself, while a Greek chorus of ex-boyfriends occasionally chimes in with corrections to her self-mythology. Her new book of essays, No Judgment, contains six pieces, all written specifically for the book. She thinks about the history of criticism in the form of star ratings on Goodreads; about gossip and anxiety. I was struck by the pleasure vibrating from these essays; the evident joy she takes, and freedom she feels, in writing and thinking in the essay form. I was eager to ask her certain questions outside the structure of our friendship. She is a critic I admire, with strengths that feel different from my own; in other words, someone to learn from.” (Sheila Heti/The Paris Review)
“With derision, some have observed (Bobby) Short’s success with white audiences and the ruling class as indication of his desire to be white. But the truth was, he was a Black man navigating what W.E.B. Du Bois described as the ‘double consciousness.’’ He was this incredible stoic,’ said (Susan) Fales-Hill. ‘I remember thinking, whatever horrors he had been through in his life, for him, he seemed to be saying, he made it through them.’ Short was very much in touch with his African American roots. ‘He was beloved by high society — Nan Kempner adored him, Pat Buckley adored him — but he was always very grounded in who he was,’ Fales-Hill points out. The parties he held at his Sutton Place apartment ‘were always very integrated’ with white guests and Black guests like Carmen de Lavallade, Harry Belafonte, Carroll, and Premice … As a performer, Short’s musical selections leaned toward the romantic: ‘Love Is Here to Stay,’ ‘I’m in Love Again,’ and ‘You’ve Got That Thing.’ He was best known for his interpretations of the Great American Songbook by writers like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, but also performed Fats Waller, Thomas A. Dorsey, James Weldon Johnson, and J. Rosamond Johnson.” (Constance CR White/Avenue)