Links for January 8th
How Pfizer pills get made, Joan Didion's early conservatism, bookcore, Theranos, Mel Brooks
Hello, hope you’ve had a decent week. I can’t say the news was good but it wasn’t appreciably worse than the week before, and isn’t that all we’re asking for?
Links
I thought this was interesting as hell — this guy breaking down the supply chain of how the Pfizer covid pill gets made.
A writer at Teen Vogue followed up with some of the Jan. 6 families, where one member reported another to the FBI (or confirmed it). Original angle!
“In the last year, I’ve noticed something strange: many people considered cool in the online fashion community dress like the people I see at my local bookstore.” This on “bookcore” is true, and it’s a cousin to a look you often see in Brooklyn: aunt who’s just come in from gardening.
Ross Douthat sort of dug into Joan Didion’s political shift, including this very sharp point:
That these essays are not all overtly political only makes their critiques that much more lethal. If all fans of Didion have something they particularly owe her, then what she offered to admirers on the right was an example of how to write conservative essays that were first and foremost simply essays, their conservatism a matter of atmosphere and attitude rather than tedious polemic.
If you wondered why Elizabeth Holmes was convicted on investor charges but acquitted on patient charges, think Matt Levine lays out a worthy theory (there’s more to it, but here’s part):
“Jurors heard Theranos patients testify their blood-test results falsely led them to believe they had unhealthy conditions,” but found Holmes not guilty on those counts. I don’t know why — I was not at the trial, and I certainly wasn’t in the jury room — but it seems plausible that Holmes was less personally culpable for those tests than she was for her own pitches to investors. But never mind that.
Instead, my point here is that if you do a fake blood test on a patient, you have arguably defrauded him (though Holmes was acquitted of that), but how much have you defrauded him really? Arguably the answer is quite a lot; arguably he is quite badly harmed by thinking he had a deadly disease and taking drastic steps to fight it, or thinking he did not have a deadly disease and missing the chance to fight it. But arguably the answer is $14.95, or whatever he paid for the blood test (I made that number up): You were doing fraud for money, and the money you got from any one patient is fairly small. Whereas the money you got from Betsy DeVos was $100 million.
This really killed me: “An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush.”
Light book commentary
Just as Mel Brooks would want, I brought his memoir, All About Me!, with me to church on Christmas Eve. (I was waiting in the church library during a second service.) It stands to reason that Brooks was at times a tougher customer than parts of his memoir might suggest (though, hey, it’s his book), and yes, as a reviewer put it, it is one long punchline rather than a deep look into the soul. With that said, the memoir is basically delightful and very funny. Enjoyable book! His descriptions of his brothers and 1930s New York are very warm, as are his descriptions of complex people like Sid Caesar and Richard Pryor. There’s a ton of interesting stuff about writing and staging, particularly in the chapters about The Show of Shows, Young Frankenstein, and the Broadway version of The Producers. There’s also just a lot of throwaway funny stuff like this:
He was an incredibly good neighbor because he would come over and spill his troubles and worries with me, and I would spill all my doubts and fears to him. We would buoy each other up with false statements and lies.
Anyway, he also mentioned this, which happens to be online and is goofy funny:
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.