Links for May 16
OpenAI, how the internet works, museum taxidermy, going back to school at 40, house renovation, restaurant design, baseball celebrations
Hope you had a smooth week and the weather is as good today where you are as it is in New York.
Links
In the news, this is a holistic look at how poorly the administration’s detention policies are faring in court from Kyle Cheney who’s been tracking thousands of cases.
Also in the news, this Katie Baker recounting of the last day of the Elon-Altman trial gives you the flavor of the courtroom.
I could see where “story about taxidermist” might put you off, but this feature on the last museum taxidermist in the country, who is 72 and (lovingly) puts together the dioramas in the natural history museum in LA, has incredible photos and you really learn a lot.
(This is a good series, with these super beautiful photos and videos of people making things, like this one a few years ago on a violin maker.)
Nice story alert: J.R. Smith, the basketball player, went back to college at North Carolina A&T (and played on the golf team!) but he also graduated at 40, and this is just a nice look at it. As he says: “You're still a person at the end of the day and you can get better in all areas and facets.”
This couple has just been buying and renovating good-looking but non-insane houses in Oklahoma for like 30+ years before building this big one. Houses! They’re fun to look at!
Restaurant design, meanwhile, now moving out of millennial muted pinks and sage greens into super vibrant blues (“the blue on the Domino’s box was a reference point for Ceres”).
If you’re interested in, on some level, how the internet works logistically, this Odd Lots episode about undersea cables is super interesting.
A doctor friend re-posted this second doctor rebranding normal postpartum hospital medication into holistic vaguely-skincare stuff to get people to take it up (“Birth+ by Motherline, it’s a peptide infusion for optimized labor progression?”).
In baseball, polite/impolite baseball celebrations and the Nats’ puppy.
In terms of vibes, how about some great photos of Iowa and this desk setup.
Light book commentary
Everyone’s, at this point, heard enough about On the Calculation of Volume in this space, but next week I believe I will get into volume four here. Or if not that, some kind of vacation reads for the summer, which I was just doing, live and in person, for a subscriber this week.
If you have requests for a TYPE of novel to read this summer, send them my way, and I will try to spin something up.
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.