newyorker--2020-01-18--“Sex Education,” Season 2: The Doctor Is In

When it débuted on Netflix last year , the British series “ Sex Education , ” created and co-written by Laurie Nunn , established itself as one of the freshest , funniest , and most humane depictions of teen life in years .
( Its second season came out on Friday . )
It centers on Otis ( Asa Butterfield ) , a mild-mannered teen who , despite being a virgin in a dorky windbreaker , in the first season becomes a sex therapist to his high-school peers .
He ’ s got hangups—he won ’ t even masturbate—but , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bursting with vitality and lust , and , because his divorced parents are both sex therapists , he ’ s got the concepts down .
A savvy classmate , Maeve ( Emma Mackey ) , notices his talent for giving advice , and the plot unfurls from there .
“ Sex Education ” has fun with its concept and characters while respecting them : we get to know people through their intimate vulnerabilities , alongside diagrams of genitalia and phrases like “ scrotal anxiety.
” As they manage their clinic and their lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but not at the same time .
The writing and performances ( many by relatively unknown young actors ) are so sharp that , by the end of the first season , the status of each relationship felt like a cliffhanger .
Nunn created “ Sex Education ” in part because sex wasn ’ t discussed in her schools growing up .
Dramatically and comedically , she was inspired by John Hughes movies , “ Freaks and Geeks , ” and “ Mean Girls.
” The result often feels like a successor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best of earlier teen dramedy through a more enlightened , feminist lens , centering pleasure and mutual respect , critical of slut-shaming , lacking the racism of a Long Duk Dong character or the hissing class warfare of John Hughes ’ s wounded psyche .
These teens don ’ t balk at saying “ vagina ” or “ period ” ; L.G.B.T.Q .
characters are respected and reasonably happy ; sex is understood to be healthy and normal , and to be managed responsibly , not repressed .
The world of “ Sex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fare we ’ ve seen before—but neither is it stylistically arch .
The setting is quietly wondrous , and green as a terrarium : Otis and his mom , Jean ( Gillian Anderson ) , live on a lushly verdant riverside bluff in a Victorian house , like Villa Villekula with a view .
( Its décor includes phallic plants and erotic art : “ Why is there a minge on your wall ?
” a classmate asks . )
Otis and his ebullient best friend , Eric ( Ncuti Gatwa ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; school outcasts take refuge , and get their sex advice , in an abandoned restroom overgrown with ivy .
The heightened visual world is both sui generis and generalized , the town unpinpointed on a map .
That mix of specificity and freedom corresponds to the show ’ s narrative style .
There ’ s no explanatory voice-over or title cards or fake-documentary fourth-wall breaking , which helps liberate us from the overfamiliarity of high-school tropes .
Music cues are on the nose , corresponding lyrically to what ’ s happening in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” “ Boys Don ’ t Cry ” ) , but , because they ’ re eighties-flavored or generations-spanning ( Ezra Furman covers of LCD Soundsystem , say ) they don ’ t feel overdetermined .
In the first season , the near-rainforest level of foliage suggested an Edenic wilderness of innocence and possibility ; in the second , knowledge has crept in , with serpentine results .
Vitality has made its way into Otis ’ s life , and into his pants .
He now has a girlfriend , Ola ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s hesitant with her , and he can ’ t stop masturbating : his days are a never-ending loop of pants tents , room-fleeing , wanking , and showers .
( Some of this is shown with empathy and hilarity ; some veers uncomfortably close to “ American Pie ” slapstick . )
Eric , winning as ever , both delights in Otis ’ s new situation— “ You have discovered the wonder of your own penis , my friend !
” —and howls with laughter at his boner problems .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a chlamydia panic .
( Cue “ We Don ’ t Have to Take Our Clothes Off , ” performed by the glee club . )
Emergency assemblies are called ; face masks are donned .
Otis ’ s wisdom is more needed than ever .
“ You can not catch an S.T.I .
from a pitch whistle !
” he exclaims at one point .
But , though it ’ s mostly a delight , Season 2 , which is hard not to binge all at once , at times makes for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Otis—now challenged to face the realities of love , intimacy , and sex in his own life—sometimes acts like an asshole .
Butterfield , twenty-two , is an appealing actor who brings empathy to his awkwardly endearing character ; perhaps it ’ s the soundtrack , but I can ’ t help seeing something Andrew McCarthy-ish in his eyes .
His performance in the first season was so feeling and mature that it managed to convince us that a sixteen-year-old boy could make a viable sex therapist .
Watching Otis dispense soulful advice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you don ’ t like yourself , how are you supposed to believe that Sam does ?
” —was a marvel , as was watching Otis and Maeve recognize each other ’ s subtle uniqueness .
( “ You saw something in me when no one else did , ” he tells her . )
In Season 2 , his masturbatory misadventures aren ’ t his only problem : his emotions are all over the place , and he doesn ’ t know what to do with them .
He , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hurt one another , and we hurt , too—and it ’ s not always clear to me whether these pains are the fault of the characters or of the writing .
Movies and shows about teen life—like teens themselves—sometimes try to stand out by trying too hard , by being showy , or self-aware .
We trust “ Sex Education ” not to do that , not to go for the predictable horror , not to be too cruel , broad , upsetting , or clichéd .
When it approaches that territory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of trust with the viewer—it ’ s special , and we want it to be perfect .
For the most part , the storytelling in Season 2 continues to be masterly—plot arising from character and observation , almost all of it tremendously satisfying .
But as Otis ’ s behavior deviates farther and farther from what he might advise others to do , culminating in an excruciating scene of drunken public jerkiness , I found myself wishing that the writers had made different choices , my suspension of disbelief pierced .
Other elements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is a particular standout , with storylines that thrill ; Lily ( Tanya Reynolds ) , the lovably horny sci-fi geek , spearheads a delirious Shakespeare musical ; and Adam ( Connor Swindells ) , the bully and screwup trying to find his way , will break your heart .
They , and everybody else , journey , with difficulty , toward employing the tools that Jean , Otis ’ s mom , articulates in the season ’ s first episode : “ The three Ts : trust , talking , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggested cure for the school ’ s chlamydia panic—but , as “ Sex Education ” teaches us and its characters , as goes the bedroom , so goes life .

When it débuted on Netflix last year, the British series “Sex Education,” created and co-written by Laurie Nunn, established itself as one of the freshest, funniest, and most humane depictions of teen life in years. (Its second season came out on Friday.) It centers on Otis (Asa Butterfield), a mild-mannered teen who, despite being a virgin in a dorky windbreaker, in the first season becomes a sex therapist to his high-school peers. He’s got hangups—he won’t even masturbate—but, all around him, the world is bursting with vitality and lust, and, because his divorced parents are both sex therapists, he’s got the concepts down. A savvy classmate, Maeve (Emma Mackey), notices his talent for giving advice, and the plot unfurls from there. “Sex Education” has fun with its concept and characters while respecting them: we get to know people through their intimate vulnerabilities, alongside diagrams of genitalia and phrases like “scrotal anxiety.” As they manage their clinic and their lives, Otis and Maeve fall in love, but not at the same time. The writing and performances (many by relatively unknown young actors) are so sharp that, by the end of the first season, the status of each relationship felt like a cliffhanger.
Nunn created “Sex Education” in part because sex wasn’t discussed in her schools growing up. Dramatically and comedically, she was inspired by John Hughes movies, “Freaks and Geeks,” and “Mean Girls.” The result often feels like a successor to them, and a welcome update—the best of earlier teen dramedy through a more enlightened, feminist lens, centering pleasure and mutual respect, critical of slut-shaming, lacking the racism of a Long Duk Dong character or the hissing class warfare of John Hughes’s wounded psyche. These teens don’t balk at saying “vagina” or “period”; L.G.B.T.Q. characters are respected and reasonably happy; sex is understood to be healthy and normal, and to be managed responsibly, not repressed.
The world of “Sex Education” isn’t like teen fare we’ve seen before—but neither is it stylistically arch. The setting is quietly wondrous, and green as a terrarium: Otis and his mom, Jean (Gillian Anderson), live on a lushly verdant riverside bluff in a Victorian house, like Villa Villekula with a view. (Its décor includes phallic plants and erotic art: “Why is there a minge on your wall?” a classmate asks.) Otis and his ebullient best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), bike to school through gorgeous primeval woods; school outcasts take refuge, and get their sex advice, in an abandoned restroom overgrown with ivy. The heightened visual world is both sui generis and generalized, the town unpinpointed on a map. That mix of specificity and freedom corresponds to the show’s narrative style. There’s no explanatory voice-over or title cards or fake-documentary fourth-wall breaking, which helps liberate us from the overfamiliarity of high-school tropes. Music cues are on the nose, corresponding lyrically to what’s happening in the moment (“I Touch Myself,” “Boys Don’t Cry”), but, because they’re eighties-flavored or generations-spanning (Ezra Furman covers of LCD Soundsystem, say) they don’t feel overdetermined.
In the first season, the near-rainforest level of foliage suggested an Edenic wilderness of innocence and possibility; in the second, knowledge has crept in, with serpentine results. Vitality has made its way into Otis’s life, and into his pants. He now has a girlfriend, Ola (Patricia Allison), but he’s hesitant with her, and he can’t stop masturbating: his days are a never-ending loop of pants tents, room-fleeing, wanking, and showers. (Some of this is shown with empathy and hilarity; some veers uncomfortably close to “American Pie” slapstick.) Eric, winning as ever, both delights in Otis’s new situation—“You have discovered the wonder of your own penis, my friend!”—and howls with laughter at his boner problems. Meanwhile, at school, the term begins with a chlamydia panic. (Cue “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off,” performed by the glee club.) Emergency assemblies are called; face masks are donned. Otis’s wisdom is more needed than ever. “You cannot catch an S.T.I. from a pitch whistle!” he exclaims at one point.
But, though it’s mostly a delight, Season 2, which is hard not to binge all at once, at times makes for painful viewing. This is largely because Otis—now challenged to face the realities of love, intimacy, and sex in his own life—sometimes acts like an asshole. Butterfield, twenty-two, is an appealing actor who brings empathy to his awkwardly endearing character; perhaps it’s the soundtrack, but I can’t help seeing something Andrew McCarthy-ish in his eyes. His performance in the first season was so feeling and mature that it managed to convince us that a sixteen-year-old boy could make a viable sex therapist. Watching Otis dispense soulful advice to hapless, confused peers—“If you don’t like yourself, how are you supposed to believe that Sam does?”—was a marvel, as was watching Otis and Maeve recognize each other’s subtle uniqueness. (“You saw something in me when no one else did,” he tells her.) In Season 2, his masturbatory misadventures aren’t his only problem: his emotions are all over the place, and he doesn’t know what to do with them. He, and other characters we’ve grown to love, hurt one another, and we hurt, too—and it’s not always clear to me whether these pains are the fault of the characters or of the writing.
Movies and shows about teen life—like teens themselves—sometimes try to stand out by trying too hard, by being showy, or self-aware. We trust “Sex Education” not to do that, not to go for the predictable horror, not to be too cruel, broad, upsetting, or clichéd. When it approaches that territory, it seems to violate its pact of trust with the viewer—it’s special, and we want it to be perfect. For the most part, the storytelling in Season 2 continues to be masterly—plot arising from character and observation, almost all of it tremendously satisfying. But as Otis’s behavior deviates farther and farther from what he might advise others to do, culminating in an excruciating scene of drunken public jerkiness, I found myself wishing that the writers had made different choices, my suspension of disbelief pierced. Other elements help compensate: Gatwa, as Eric, is a particular standout, with storylines that thrill; Lily (Tanya Reynolds), the lovably horny sci-fi geek, spearheads a delirious Shakespeare musical; and Adam (Connor Swindells), the bully and screwup trying to find his way, will break your heart. They, and everybody else, journey, with difficulty, toward employing the tools that Jean, Otis’s mom, articulates in the season’s first episode: “The three Ts: trust, talking, and truth.” The three Ts are her suggested cure for the school’s chlamydia panic—but, as “Sex Education” teaches us and its characters, as goes the bedroom, so goes life.


newyorker--2020-01-18--Conspiracy Theories That Never Gained Traction

“ Succession ” and “ Billions ” are , scene for scene , the exact same show ( but no one has watched both of them ) .
George Soros has been pumping money into George Clinton ’ s Parliament-Funkadelic organization for years .
There was only ever one Winklevoss , but there are actually two identical Hammers , Armie and Arnie .
Half of the world ’ s population falsely remembers the Mandela Effect being spelled as the Mandela Affect .
The moon landing happened , but they still staged it afterward , because , originally , Neil Armstrong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big step for man , but two steps for manki—wait , ” then Buzz Aldrin ’ s foot got stuck in a moon crater , and it was a whole thing .
So NASA was , like , “ Let ’ s punch that up and just stage all this later.
” Kobe Bryant never played in the N.B.A .
Twitter completely made him up .
Paul Rudd looks more or less his actual numerical age .
You just associate charm with youth .
Language is a construct created in order to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their existence with deeply painful emotions that didn ’ t exist before the words that define them were invented .
With each new level you reach in Duolingo , you only make Duo stronger .
His blinks communicate his true , unspoken message : “ End mankind.
” Vaping was invented so that robots could look cool .
When Elon Musk runs out of CBD , he turns back into Mark Zuckerberg .
They ’ ve always been one and the same , and both versions put way too much sunscreen on their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lokos .
Big Slinky pressured postwar housing developers to build more two-story homes , because they initially produced way too many Slinkys .

“Succession” and “Billions” are, scene for scene, the exact same show (but no one has watched both of them).
Lana Del Rey perished aboard the Titanic.
George Soros has been pumping money into George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic organization for years.
There was only ever one Winklevoss, but there are actually two identical Hammers, Armie and Arnie.
Half of the world’s population falsely remembers the Mandela Effect being spelled as the Mandela Affect.
Vaccinations make your Wi-Fi slower.
Donald Trump was the Gerber baby.
George R. R. Martin was the Gerber baby.
Lana Del Rey was the Gerber baby.
The moon landing happened, but they still staged it afterward, because, originally, Neil Armstrong accidentally said, “This is one big step for man, but two steps for manki—wait,” then Buzz Aldrin’s foot got stuck in a moon crater, and it was a whole thing. So NASA was, like, “Let’s punch that up and just stage all this later.”
Plantar fasciitis isn’t a real thing.
Bagels aren’t born with holes.
Bitcoins are made of foil-wrapped chocolate.
Kobe Bryant never played in the N.B.A. Twitter completely made him up.
Amelia Bedelia accidentally founded the Illuminati.
Paul Rudd looks more or less his actual numerical age. You just associate charm with youth.
Language is a construct created in order to make humans confuse one another and to complicate their existence with deeply painful emotions that didn’t exist before the words that define them were invented. With each new level you reach in Duolingo, you only make Duo stronger. His blinks communicate his true, unspoken message: “End mankind.”
Sunscreen is just mayonnaise.
Vaping was invented so that robots could look cool.
When Elon Musk runs out of CBD, he turns back into Mark Zuckerberg. They’ve always been one and the same, and both versions put way too much sunscreen on their sandwiches.
Four Loko only contains three lokos.
Big Slinky pressured postwar housing developers to build more two-story homes, because they initially produced way too many Slinkys.


newyorker--2020-01-19--Sunday Reading: The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This week , Americans will be celebrating Martin Luther King , Jr. , Day .
In 1965 , Renata Adler published a report in The New Yorker on King ’ s march from Selma to Montgomery , Alabama , writing about the participants ’ experiences along the way and describing King ’ s calm and steady presence .
At one point , King approached an old man with a cane and asked if he would join them .
“ I ’ ll walk one step anyway , ” the old man said .
“ Because I know for every one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll take two.
” This weekend , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces about King ’ s legacy and the significance of the upcoming holiday .
In “ The Hours Before ‘ I Have a Dream , ’ ” from 1963 , Calvin Trillin joins the March on Washington and writes about the events leading up to King ’ s famous speech .
In “ When I Met Martin Luther King , Jr. , ” Charlayne Hunter-Gault , who became one of the first black students to integrate the University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how her meeting with the civil-rights leader that year inspired her .
In “ The Mission , ” David Levering Lewis examines the complicated political alliance between King and President Lyndon Johnson .
Finally , in “ Martin Luther King Day with Trump , ” Jelani Cobb explores how the holiday has taken on a new meaning in our current political climate .
We hope that you find these pieces as fascinating—and inspiring—as we do .
A survey of the March on Washington , in the lead-up to Martin Luther King , Jr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On the trail to Montgomery .
I will always remember that moment and what it taught me about Dr. King and one of his core values : humility .
The holiday will be presided over by a President who scarcely seems to comprehend King ’ s principles .

This week, Americans will be celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. In 1965, Renata Adler published a report in The New Yorker on King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, writing about the participants’ experiences along the way and describing King’s calm and steady presence. At one point, King approached an old man with a cane and asked if he would join them. “I’ll walk one step anyway,” the old man said. “Because I know for every one step I’ll take you’ll take two.” This weekend, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about King’s legacy and the significance of the upcoming holiday. In “The Hours Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ ” from 1963, Calvin Trillin joins the March on Washington and writes about the events leading up to King’s famous speech. In “When I Met Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who became one of the first black students to integrate the University of Georgia, in 1961, recounts how her meeting with the civil-rights leader that year inspired her. In “The Mission,” David Levering Lewis examines the complicated political alliance between King and President Lyndon Johnson. Finally, in “Martin Luther King Day with Trump,” Jelani Cobb explores how the holiday has taken on a new meaning in our current political climate. We hope that you find these pieces as fascinating—and inspiring—as we do.
—David Remnick
Photograph from Corbis via Getty
A survey of the March on Washington, in the lead-up to Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s most famous speech.
Photograph by Stephen Somerstein / Getty
On the trail to Montgomery.
Photograph by Don Cravens / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty
I will always remember that moment and what it taught me about Dr. King and one of his core values: humility.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s final chapter.
The holiday will be presided over by a President who scarcely seems to comprehend King’s principles.


newyorker--2020-01-19--Living in Alan Turing’s Future

Living in Alan Turing’s Future

More than a decade has passed since the British government issued an apology to the mathematician Alan Turing .
“ On behalf of .
.
.
all those who live freely thanks to Alan ’ s work , ” then Prime Minister Gordon Brown said , in an official statement , “ we ’ re sorry , you deserved so much better.
” The tone of pained contrition was appropriate , given Britain ’ s grotesquely ungracious treatment of Turing , who played a decisive role in cracking the German Enigma cipher , allowing Allied intelligence to predict where U-boats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of lives .
Unapologetic about his homosexuality , Turing had made a careless admission of an affair with a man , in the course of reporting a robbery at his home in 1952 , and was arrested for an “ act of gross indecency ” ( the same charge that had led to a jail sentence for Oscar Wilde in 1895 ) .
Turing was subsequently given a choice to serve prison time or undergo a hormone treatment meant to reverse the testosterone levels that made him desire men ( so the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Turing opted for the latter and , two years later , ended his life by taking a bite from an apple laced with cyanide .
His wartime code-breaking work was just one example of what made Turing one of the most influential minds of the twentieth century .
In 1936 , when he was twenty-three years old , he published a paper called “ On Computable Numbers , ” in which he attempted to tackle the problem of “ decidability ” in formal systems like mathematics .
In it , he sketched a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between a gramophone stylus and a typewriter carriage , that moved along a tape divided into squares .
At any given time , the machine might be in one of a finite set of states that would tell it to move either right or left or to print , erase , or stop .
The machine was not a piece of functioning hardware but a thought experiment meant to reveal something about the essence of computation .
The really novel idea behind Turing ’ s imaginary machine was that it was not designed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given instructions ( “ programmed ” ) that allowed it to simulate any other machine .
Such universal computers are now called Turing machines and are the basis for all smartphones , laptops , and the Internet .
Yet Turing ’ s temperament was the antithesis of the stepwise , uniform procedure captured in his thought experiment .
A dreamy nonconformist in the style of hyperrational eccentrics such as Lewis Carroll and Bertrand Russell , Turing operated best on the ludic frequency of games , puzzles , secret codes , and abstract formal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of science , with nothing but scorn for any whiff of the theological , Turing nevertheless had a speculative streak , which could lead him into realms bordering on science fiction .
Since boyhood , he had been keenly interested in mechanism ( at eleven , he drew up the plans for a typewriter of his own design ) and invented words ( “ quockling ” is the sound seagulls make ) , and he developed a fondness for Edwin Tenney Brewster ’ s “ Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very sophisticated machines .
Later , he began pursuing the idea that thinking itself could be mechanized , and , in collaboration with his Cambridge friend David Champernowne , he developed Turochamp , one of the very first computer chess programs .
A mind like Turing ’ s ended up being immensely valuable to Allied counterintelligence during the Second World War .
When the German Enigma machine became the most powerful ciphering instrument in the world—it was believed to be impregnable—military cryptography accordingly became more mathematically complex .
With the help of notes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ codebooks from sunken U-boats , Turing oversaw the construction of a machine that could find loopholes in the Enigma ’ s polyalphabetic rotary design , and soon the code-breaking team began cracking Nazi radio messages without the Germans ’ knowing it .
Though Turing had been against the war as a student at Cambridge , he seems to have undertaken this work as much for the challenge of tackling a fiendishly complex puzzle as for any sense of patriotic duty .
He was also a stickler for respectable working conditions : he wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poor plumbing facilities at Bletchley Park , the Tudor mansion northwest of London where the code-breakers had set up shop .
After the war , Turing began writing more speculatively about minds and machines .
Anyone who had been reading American science fiction would have been familiar with the questions raised in his paper “ Computing Machinery and Intelligence , ” from 1950 , and one of the more delightful intersections in the history of ideas is the way both Turing , in the august philosophy journal Mind , and the young Isaac @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Science Fiction , started talking about the same thing at about the same time .
Turing , in his typically chatty , unadorned way , wondered what could serve as a criterion for treating a machine as “ intelligent.
” To answer that question , he came up with the second of his famous thought experiments , the imitation game ( now known as the Turing test ) , in which a person poses questions via teletype to two interlocutors , one a human , the other an algorithm .
If the questioner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then we must grant that the machine thinks .
One reason that Turing settled on a talking test for artificial intelligence was that he did not want machines to be judged according to irrelevant criteria .
“ We do not wish to penalise a machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions , ” he wrote , just as we would “ not penalise a man for losing a race against an aeroplane.
” While Asimov was writing stories about government-issue robots with rules burned into their positronic brains to prevent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Turing ’ s essay directly inspired a new wave of trippier science fiction .
Philip K. Dick happened upon a reprint of “ Computing Machinery and Intelligence ” and , soon afterward , went to work on “ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?
, ” a novel that posited a so-called Voight-Kampff empathy test for determining whether someone is a human being or a replicant .
( The story was later the seed for the film “ Blade Runner.
” ) One argument against machine intelligence was what Turing called Lady @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ada Byron , the Countess of Lovelace and the daughter of the poet .
Lovelace kept up a correspondence with the English inventor Charles Babbage , who worked his whole life on a huge brass cogwheel engine that could compute logarithmic tables , to be used by astronomers and navigators .
In a letter , Lovelace said of this contraption that it “ has no pretensions whatever to originate anything .
It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.
” It was a coder ’ s insight ( Lovelace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ programmers ) , but it was also the instinct of a poet ’ s daughter , attuned to more mysterious routes of thought than logarithmic tables .
The two attitudes beautifully commingle in another letter , in which Lovelace , discussing the punch cards that Babbage used as proto-software for his analytical engine , notes that the machine “ weaves algebraical patterns just as [ a ] loom weaves flowers and leaves.
” After the declassification of wartime documents , in the mid-seventies , an industry of Turing hagiography began , reaching its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the film “ The Imitation Game , ” from 2014 .
Based ( extremely loosely ) on Andrew Hodges ’ s excellent biography “ Alan Turing : The Enigma , ” from 1983 , the film imagines Turing as an obtuse savant who can ’ t make out English idioms or catch social cues .
In a preliminary interview for the code-breaking work at Bletchley , Turing unnerves a government official with his literalism .
“ Ah , Turing !
A mathematician .
How ever could I have guessed ?
” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ folder .
“ You didn ’ t .
You just read it on that piece of paper , ” Turing replies .
A little later , he has trouble understanding what the word “ lunch ” means .
By most accounts , Turing was gregarious and socially at ease , not the near-android that he is made out to be in the film , and , if he was also noted to be a stickler for precision in thought and speech , fastidiousness isn ’ t the same thing as humorlessness .
Cumberbatch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ option for on-the-spectrum-ish über-nerds , a style that he also brings to the BBC series “ Sherlock , ” in which Holmes regularly flies over the heads of the non-geniuses around him .
( Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ’ s amateur detective , by contrast , is keenly aware of others ’ feelings and often empathic to a fault . )
Whether this depiction is the result of poetic license , Cumberbatch being his ( often great ) actorly self , or rote adoption of Hollywood tropes about how geniuses are supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anguished John Nash in “ A Beautiful Mind ” ) , the effect is to bring Mr. Spock clichés to a person who was anything but a human robot .
A more recent fictional Turing shows up in Ian McEwan ’ s “ Machines Like Me , ” from 2019 , a novel set in a counterfactual 1982 , in which Sir Alan has lived to be seventy and oversees the first commercial manufacture of A.I.
, in partnership with the DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis .
( My guess for the choice of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year of “ Blade Runner , ” which , in a further through-the-looking-glass twist , is itself set in 2019 . )
Their collaboration begins when they “ devise software to beat one of the world ’ s great masters of the ancient game of go , ” a sly bit of alternate history , as DeepMind ’ s AlphaGo program in fact won four out of five games against the South Korean Go master Lee Sedol , in 2016 .
There was some buzz when I.B.M.
’ s Deep Blue machine beat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1997 , but the victory over Sedol was thought to mark the encroachment of A.I .
onto the sacred ground of human creativity and intuition , since Go is exponentially more complex than chess and playing well often involves an ability to grasp which move is the most beautiful .
McEwan is good at imagining the messy situations that might attend the arrival of full-blown artificial people , no matter how good they are at Go .
He imagines androids who always tell the unvarnished truth , under any and all circumstances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do , for example , or who become menacingly guileless sexual rivals .
( Julian Lucas points out in this magazine that McEwan ’ s “ Adam ” comes equipped with “ Kantian morals and fully functioning phallus.
” ) McEwan has his own way of embellishing his counterfactual Turing with traits that he does not seem to have possessed in reality .
For instance , his Turing becomes irritated with an American cable-TV host while trying to explain P = NP .
It ’ s a problem that has its origins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decidability and asks if problems verifiable in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time .
In the novel , Turing has cracked it , but , outside the pages of the book , P = NP remains one of the outstanding problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute , and its solution carries a prize of a million dollars .
In the years leading up to Turing ’ s death , his thoughts ran in increasingly imaginative , unpredictable directions .
He used the Fibonacci series to understand patterns like those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tinkered with a theory of cellular automata , and pursued the design of machines that would not only pass the Turing test but also learn from experience ( the ultimate rebuttal to Lady Lovelace ’ s Objection ) .
Given that the twenty-first century has become one giant Turing machine , it is not surprising that the culture remains obsessed with him .
Had Turing lived longer , perhaps the state of artificial intelligence would encompass more than drearily corporate banalities such as the Amazon checkout window making suggestions about what you might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offering up a few words for how to complete a sentence in progress , or a South Korean genius having his soul crushed by a roomful of statistics wonks—not to mention more chillingly Orwellian developments , such as facial-recognition software .
It is fortifying to remember that the very idea of artificial intelligence was conceived by one of the more unquantifiably original minds of the twentieth century .
It is hard to imagine a computer being able to do what Alan Turing did .

The British mathematician Alan Turing was one of the more unquantifiably original minds of the twentieth century. Photograph from Alamy
More than a decade has passed since the British government issued an apology to the mathematician Alan Turing. “On behalf of . . . all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work,” then Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, in an official statement, “we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.” The tone of pained contrition was appropriate, given Britain’s grotesquely ungracious treatment of Turing, who played a decisive role in cracking the German Enigma cipher, allowing Allied intelligence to predict where U-boats would strike and thus saving tens of thousands of lives. Unapologetic about his homosexuality, Turing had made a careless admission of an affair with a man, in the course of reporting a robbery at his home in 1952, and was arrested for an “act of gross indecency” (the same charge that had led to a jail sentence for Oscar Wilde in 1895). Turing was subsequently given a choice to serve prison time or undergo a hormone treatment meant to reverse the testosterone levels that made him desire men (so the thinking went at the time). Turing opted for the latter and, two years later, ended his life by taking a bite from an apple laced with cyanide.
His wartime code-breaking work was just one example of what made Turing one of the most influential minds of the twentieth century. In 1936, when he was twenty-three years old, he published a paper called “On Computable Numbers,” in which he attempted to tackle the problem of “decidability” in formal systems like mathematics. In it, he sketched a design for a peculiar machine, somewhere between a gramophone stylus and a typewriter carriage, that moved along a tape divided into squares. At any given time, the machine might be in one of a finite set of states that would tell it to move either right or left or to print, erase, or stop. The machine was not a piece of functioning hardware but a thought experiment meant to reveal something about the essence of computation. The really novel idea behind Turing’s imaginary machine was that it was not designed for a specific purpose but could be given instructions (“programmed”) that allowed it to simulate any other machine. Such universal computers are now called Turing machines and are the basis for all smartphones, laptops, and the Internet.
Yet Turing’s temperament was the antithesis of the stepwise, uniform procedure captured in his thought experiment. A dreamy nonconformist in the style of hyperrational eccentrics such as Lewis Carroll and Bertrand Russell, Turing operated best on the ludic frequency of games, puzzles, secret codes, and abstract formal systems like mathematics. Wholly a man of science, with nothing but scorn for any whiff of the theological, Turing nevertheless had a speculative streak, which could lead him into realms bordering on science fiction. Since boyhood, he had been keenly interested in mechanism (at eleven, he drew up the plans for a typewriter of his own design) and invented words (“quockling” is the sound seagulls make), and he developed a fondness for Edwin Tenney Brewster’s “Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know,” which suggested that human beings were just very sophisticated machines. Later, he began pursuing the idea that thinking itself could be mechanized, and, in collaboration with his Cambridge friend David Champernowne, he developed Turochamp, one of the very first computer chess programs.
A mind like Turing’s ended up being immensely valuable to Allied counterintelligence during the Second World War. When the German Enigma machine became the most powerful ciphering instrument in the world—it was believed to be impregnable—military cryptography accordingly became more mathematically complex. With the help of notes provided by Polish cryptanalysts and some recovered codebooks from sunken U-boats, Turing oversaw the construction of a machine that could find loopholes in the Enigma’s polyalphabetic rotary design, and soon the code-breaking team began cracking Nazi radio messages without the Germans’ knowing it. Though Turing had been against the war as a student at Cambridge, he seems to have undertaken this work as much for the challenge of tackling a fiendishly complex puzzle as for any sense of patriotic duty. He was also a stickler for respectable working conditions: he wrote Winston Churchill a letter complaining about the poor plumbing facilities at Bletchley Park, the Tudor mansion northwest of London where the code-breakers had set up shop.
After the war, Turing began writing more speculatively about minds and machines. Anyone who had been reading American science fiction would have been familiar with the questions raised in his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” from 1950, and one of the more delightful intersections in the history of ideas is the way both Turing, in the august philosophy journal Mind, and the young Isaac Asimov, in the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction, started talking about the same thing at about the same time. Turing, in his typically chatty, unadorned way, wondered what could serve as a criterion for treating a machine as “intelligent.” To answer that question, he came up with the second of his famous thought experiments, the imitation game (now known as the Turing test), in which a person poses questions via teletype to two interlocutors, one a human, the other an algorithm. If the questioner cannot tell the difference between them, then we must grant that the machine thinks.
One reason that Turing settled on a talking test for artificial intelligence was that he did not want machines to be judged according to irrelevant criteria. “We do not wish to penalise a machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions,” he wrote, just as we would “not penalise a man for losing a race against an aeroplane.” While Asimov was writing stories about government-issue robots with rules burned into their positronic brains to prevent them from rebelling against their masters, Turing’s essay directly inspired a new wave of trippier science fiction. Philip K. Dick happened upon a reprint of “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” and, soon afterward, went to work on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” a novel that posited a so-called Voight-Kampff empathy test for determining whether someone is a human being or a replicant. (The story was later the seed for the film “Blade Runner.”)
One argument against machine intelligence was what Turing called Lady Lovelace’s Objection, referring to Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace and the daughter of the poet. Lovelace kept up a correspondence with the English inventor Charles Babbage, who worked his whole life on a huge brass cogwheel engine that could compute logarithmic tables, to be used by astronomers and navigators. In a letter, Lovelace said of this contraption that it “has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.” It was a coder’s insight (Lovelace is considered one of the first computer programmers), but it was also the instinct of a poet’s daughter, attuned to more mysterious routes of thought than logarithmic tables. The two attitudes beautifully commingle in another letter, in which Lovelace, discussing the punch cards that Babbage used as proto-software for his analytical engine, notes that the machine “weaves algebraical patterns just as [a] loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
After the declassification of wartime documents, in the mid-seventies, an industry of Turing hagiography began, reaching its glamorous apex when Benedict Cumberbatch played Turing in the film “The Imitation Game,” from 2014. Based (extremely loosely) on Andrew Hodges’s excellent biography “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” from 1983, the film imagines Turing as an obtuse savant who can’t make out English idioms or catch social cues. In a preliminary interview for the code-breaking work at Bletchley, Turing unnerves a government official with his literalism. “Ah, Turing! A mathematician. How ever could I have guessed?” the official says, looking into a manila folder. “You didn’t. You just read it on that piece of paper,” Turing replies. A little later, he has trouble understanding what the word “lunch” means.
By most accounts, Turing was gregarious and socially at ease, not the near-android that he is made out to be in the film, and, if he was also noted to be a stickler for precision in thought and speech, fastidiousness isn’t the same thing as humorlessness. Cumberbatch has in any case become the central-casting option for on-the-spectrum-ish über-nerds, a style that he also brings to the BBC series “Sherlock,” in which Holmes regularly flies over the heads of the non-geniuses around him. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s amateur detective, by contrast, is keenly aware of others’ feelings and often empathic to a fault.) Whether this depiction is the result of poetic license, Cumberbatch being his (often great) actorly self, or rote adoption of Hollywood tropes about how geniuses are supposed to behave (think Russell Crowe’s anguished John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind”), the effect is to bring Mr. Spock clichés to a person who was anything but a human robot.
A more recent fictional Turing shows up in Ian McEwan’s “Machines Like Me,” from 2019, a novel set in a counterfactual 1982, in which Sir Alan has lived to be seventy and oversees the first commercial manufacture of A.I., in partnership with the DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis. (My guess for the choice of 1982 is that it is the release year of “Blade Runner,” which, in a further through-the-looking-glass twist, is itself set in 2019.) Their collaboration begins when they “devise software to beat one of the world’s great masters of the ancient game of go,” a sly bit of alternate history, as DeepMind’s AlphaGo program in fact won four out of five games against the South Korean Go master Lee Sedol, in 2016. There was some buzz when I.B.M.’s Deep Blue machine beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, in 1997, but the victory over Sedol was thought to mark the encroachment of A.I. onto the sacred ground of human creativity and intuition, since Go is exponentially more complex than chess and playing well often involves an ability to grasp which move is the most beautiful.


newyorker--2020-01-19--Are the Democrats Ready for Trump’s Impeachment Trial?

“ This is a difficult time for our country , ” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last Wednesday , after the clerk of the House of Representatives arrived in the Senate chamber carrying articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump .
McConnell added , “ But this is precisely the kind of time for which the Framers created the Senate.
” That is true , even if his claim that the Senate would “ rise above short-termism and factional fever ” is risible .
Some of McConnell ’ s Republican colleagues don ’ t seem to be thinking any longer-term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about them before their next primary .
But this is the Senate we have at an extraordinarily wrenching juncture in our history , and on Thursday , following the direction of the Constitution , Chief Justice John Roberts swore in its members as jurors .
The seven House managers whom Speaker Nancy Pelosi named last week are now basically petitioners , coming in to make their arguments before senators whose votes may be fixed by partisanship .
And yet they have a strong case to present .
It could , no doubt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours after McConnell spoke , Lev Parnas , an associate of Trump ’ s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani , appeared on MSNBC in a doozy of an interview with Rachel Maddow .
Parnas asserted that he had understood from Giuliani that they had Trump ’ s approval to pressure officials in Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden , former Vice-President Joe Biden ’ s son , who had a paid seat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma .
Parnas described a plot involving , among others , Attorney General William Barr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sent to the Senate ) documents related to Parnas which sketch out various wild schemes , including possible threats against Marie Yovanovitch , the former U.S .
Ambassador to Ukraine .
Parnas has credibility problems ; he is currently under indictment on campaign-finance charges , and his allegations need to be substantiated .
Giuliani called him a liar , and Trump denied even knowing him , for whatever that ’ s worth .
And more revelations are sure to follow .
The essential dilemma , with Trump , is that there is always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ site of his Administration : a Parnas interview ; a hint from John Bolton , the former national-security adviser , that , if the Senate subpoenas him , he will have interesting things to say ; a decision from the Government Accountability Office that the Administration ’ s withholding of aid to Ukraine , during its pressure campaign , broke a law called the Impoundment Control Act .
That finding may upend the President ’ s argument that there was nothing illegal about his dealings with Ukraine .
The decision was made public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were sworn in ; Senator Chuck Schumer cited it at a press conference during which he expressed dismay that the trial might proceed “ without witnesses.
” Calling new witnesses in the Senate trial would require a simple majority , in a vote that is expected after each side presents its arguments .
That ’ s less than the two-thirds required for conviction , but , given the Republicans ’ majority of fifty-three , it still may be out of reach .
The House Democrats might have done better to extend their pursuit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do so in their own right—that is , before they voted on the articles .
They might have waited for some of the ongoing lawsuits concerning subpoenas to reach higher courts , in which case Chief Justice Roberts might be playing a more complicated role .
But they didn ’ t , and there is no going back .
The impeachment is the House ’ s expression of faith in its case , and it should not be forgotten that the managers already have powerful witnesses .
More than a dozen testified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s orders to stay away .
Their damning accounts will be heard in the Senate and by the public , whether in video clips or in transcripts that the managers quote , and their words should resonate .
There is Ambassador William Taylor , who testified that the nation ’ s official agenda had been subordinated to the President ’ s personal one ; Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman , who heard Trump ’ s July , 2019 , phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky and recognized it as highly improper ; the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who witnessed Bolton ’ s explosion about what he called a “ drug deal ” ; and Ambassador Gordon Sondland , who interacted with enough senior Administration officials ( including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Mike Pence ) to conclude that “ everyone was in the loop.
” There is also David Holmes , the diplomat who heard Sondland reassure Trump that Zelensky “ loves your ass ” and would do anything he wanted .
And there is Trump himself , who , according to the official notes of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wanted him to “ do us a favor.
” Indeed , the passage of time since the last witnesses testified may have obscured some of the richness of the record .
( Who were the Three Amigos , again ?
Sondland , the former Energy Secretary Rick Perry , and the former special envoy Kurt Volker . )
Some Republican senators , such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz , have argued that , if the House managers get to call more witnesses , the President should , too—among them , perhaps , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kamala Harris told CNN , “ We need to have all available evidence , ” but , when asked about the younger Biden , she noted that there are rules about relevancy .
Otherwise , “ you could just say , ‘ I want Santa Claus to come forward.
’ ” Many Republicans , of course , regard Hunter Biden as highly relevant .
There are no perfect answers here ; a trial , in our confrontational system , is not meant to be precisely curated .
The President , quite properly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case that he deems strongest , just as he had the freedom , on Friday , to choose Alan Dershowitz—apparently taking a break from defending himself regarding his past association with Jeffrey Epstein—to help him make it .
The message that , without new witnesses , the trial may prove a sham also risks reinforcing the Senate Republicans ’ complaint that the House sent them something shoddy and incomplete , and that they can ’ t be expected to do the lower chamber ’ s work for it .
But their work is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Republicans ’ craven indifference to the Constitution will be all the more clear to the public if the emphasis is on what the managers do have , rather than on what they don ’ t .
And then the country can judge the Senate .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
“This is a difficult time for our country,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last Wednesday, after the clerk of the House of Representatives arrived in the Senate chamber carrying articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. McConnell added, “But this is precisely the kind of time for which the Framers created the Senate.” That is true, even if his claim that the Senate would “rise above short-termism and factional fever” is risible. Some of McConnell’s Republican colleagues don’t seem to be thinking any longer-term than how many times Trump might tweet about them before their next primary. But this is the Senate we have at an extraordinarily wrenching juncture in our history, and on Thursday, following the direction of the Constitution, Chief Justice John Roberts swore in its members as jurors. The seven House managers whom Speaker Nancy Pelosi named last week are now basically petitioners, coming in to make their arguments before senators whose votes may be fixed by partisanship. And yet they have a strong case to present.
It could, no doubt, be stronger still. Just a few hours after McConnell spoke, Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, appeared on MSNBC in a doozy of an interview with Rachel Maddow. Parnas asserted that he had understood from Giuliani that they had Trump’s approval to pressure officials in Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, former Vice-President Joe Biden’s son, who had a paid seat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Parnas described a plot involving, among others, Attorney General William Barr. The House also released (and sent to the Senate) documents related to Parnas which sketch out various wild schemes, including possible threats against Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. Parnas has credibility problems; he is currently under indictment on campaign-finance charges, and his allegations need to be substantiated. Giuliani called him a liar, and Trump denied even knowing him, for whatever that’s worth.
And more revelations are sure to follow. The essential dilemma, with Trump, is that there is always a new path leading to the disaster site of his Administration: a Parnas interview; a hint from John Bolton, the former national-security adviser, that, if the Senate subpoenas him, he will have interesting things to say; a decision from the Government Accountability Office that the Administration’s withholding of aid to Ukraine, during its pressure campaign, broke a law called the Impoundment Control Act. That finding may upend the President’s argument that there was nothing illegal about his dealings with Ukraine. The decision was made public just a few hours before the senators were sworn in; Senator Chuck Schumer cited it at a press conference during which he expressed dismay that the trial might proceed “without witnesses.”
Calling new witnesses in the Senate trial would require a simple majority, in a vote that is expected after each side presents its arguments. That’s less than the two-thirds required for conviction, but, given the Republicans’ majority of fifty-three, it still may be out of reach. The House Democrats might have done better to extend their pursuit of witnesses when they had the ability to do so in their own right—that is, before they voted on the articles. They might have waited for some of the ongoing lawsuits concerning subpoenas to reach higher courts, in which case Chief Justice Roberts might be playing a more complicated role. But they didn’t, and there is no going back. The impeachment is the House’s expression of faith in its case, and it should not be forgotten that the managers already have powerful witnesses. More than a dozen testified in the House, defying the President’s orders to stay away. Their damning accounts will be heard in the Senate and by the public, whether in video clips or in transcripts that the managers quote, and their words should resonate.
There is Ambassador William Taylor, who testified that the nation’s official agenda had been subordinated to the President’s personal one; Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who heard Trump’s July, 2019, phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky and recognized it as highly improper; the former National Security Council official Fiona Hill, who witnessed Bolton’s explosion about what he called a “drug deal”; and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who interacted with enough senior Administration officials (including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Mike Pence) to conclude that “everyone was in the loop.” There is also David Holmes, the diplomat who heard Sondland reassure Trump that Zelensky “loves your ass” and would do anything he wanted. And there is Trump himself, who, according to the official notes of the July call, told Zelensky that he wanted him to “do us a favor.” Indeed, the passage of time since the last witnesses testified may have obscured some of the richness of the record. (Who were the Three Amigos, again? Sondland, the former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and the former special envoy Kurt Volker.)
Some Republican senators, such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have argued that, if the House managers get to call more witnesses, the President should, too—among them, perhaps, Hunter Biden. On Thursday, Senator Kamala Harris told CNN, “We need to have all available evidence,” but, when asked about the younger Biden, she noted that there are rules about relevancy. Otherwise, “you could just say, ‘I want Santa Claus to come forward.’ ” Many Republicans, of course, regard Hunter Biden as highly relevant. There are no perfect answers here; a trial, in our confrontational system, is not meant to be precisely curated. The President, quite properly, should have the latitude to make the case that he deems strongest, just as he had the freedom, on Friday, to choose Alan Dershowitz—apparently taking a break from defending himself regarding his past association with Jeffrey Epstein—to help him make it.
The message that, without new witnesses, the trial may prove a sham also risks reinforcing the Senate Republicans’ complaint that the House sent them something shoddy and incomplete, and that they can’t be expected to do the lower chamber’s work for it. But their work is there; much evidence is in hand. The Republicans’ craven indifference to the Constitution will be all the more clear to the public if the emphasis is on what the managers do have, rather than on what they don’t. And then the country can judge the Senate. ♦


newyorker--2020-01-19--“Relentless Absurdity”: An Army Photographer’s Censored Images

In his new book , “ Attention Servicemember , ” Ben Brody recounts being sent to a Rotary Club luncheon near Fort Stewart , Georgia , to present a slide show of pictures he had taken as an Army combat photographer in Iraq .
Brody ’ s mandate overseas had been “ to photograph the war in a way that justified its existence and exaggerated its accomplishments.
” At the luncheon , however , he found himself telling the Rotarians about an American soldier killed by friendly fire and showing them images of night raids and executions .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and arbitrary death and relentless absurdity that came with my job , ” Brody writes .
The effort failed : “ No one stopped eating during my talk , and when I was done they clapped a little.
” With “ Attention Servicemember , ” Brody tries again .
This time , he will make you stop eating .
He might make you stop breathing and blinking .
Brody enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002 , when he was twenty-two years old , not because he supported the impending invasion of Iraq—even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because he wanted to photograph it .
He spent twenty-seven months in Iraq , largely outside the wire , during some of the most chaotic and violent periods of the war .
The dual roles of soldier and documentarian , participant and observer , must be difficult to reconcile for any combat photographer .
For someone ambivalent about the mission , such reconciliation must be next to impossible .
On the one hand , Brody enjoyed unique access , both physically ( moving around the battle space with far greater liberty than civilian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( wearing the same uniform and subscribing to the same creed as his subjects ) .
On the other hand , the intimate , graphic , and bracing work this access allowed him to produce was consistently suppressed .
“ You learned what pictures the Public Affairs Officer would release and what he wouldn ’ t , ” Brody explains .
“ Soldiers looking calm or stoic .
Yes .
Soldiers looking angry or frightened or exhausted or confused or lost with eyes like the bottom of the ocean .
No.
” After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engagement with a unit from the 101st Airborne Division , he claimed that a division chief of staff prevented the pictures from being published .
( The Army said it had no available information on the situation . )
“ He said it was ‘ too negative , ’ ” Brody writes , “ meaning that my account didn ’ t conform to his tightly scripted vision of what victory was supposed to look like.
” Those photos that did conform to the script were used in Army newsletters and publications , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daily .
Others were made available on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service , or DVIDS , a clearinghouse for military images and videos , operated by the Pentagon .
All of the content on DVIDS is public domain—Army combat photographers don ’ t hold the copyrights to their work—which means that anyone can use Brody ’ s pictures for any purpose .
One dramatic image he captured , of an infantry captain leading an assault across a field at sunrise , has appeared in advertisements for tactical radios , batteries , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was discharged , in 2008 , the skepticism with which he had enlisted seems to have evolved into something more like disgust .
In “ Attention Servicemember , ” he is frank about his disillusionment with the war and refreshingly clear-eyed about the nature of his involvement in it .
He acknowledges having contributed to “ propaganda ” and “ disinformation , ” implementing a “ visual doctrine ” that , rather than chronicling reality , advanced the deceptive messaging campaigns of the military .
Thankfully , apart from the images that his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brody saved some twenty-five thousand pictures from his time in Iraq on a hard drive .
For ten years after he returned from his second tour , the hard drive remained in his closet , untouched .
While studying photography at Hartford Art School , on the G.I .
Bill , Brody finally decided to look at it .
What he found would lead to “ Attention Servicemember.
” On one level , Brody ’ s book feels like an explicit rebuke of the military that exploited and weaponized his talent .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act of personal and artistic redemption—a reappropriation of his work and , because he was also a combatant , a recasting of his part in the conflict .
Interspersed among the pictures from his hard drive , which are printed on thick , matte paper , Brody includes several sections—printed on thin , glossy paper—of his pictures from DVIDS and other military outlets .
The officially sanctioned images are contained within and contextualized by the officially censored .
At the same time , Brody is deeply , and understandably , leery of context @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paper are surrounded by articles , commentary , and captions , those on the matte paper have none .
No locations , no names , no dates .
The result can be disorienting .
We ’ re never sure where we are , or with whom , or why .
Initially , I found this frustrating .
As I made my way through the book , however , I began to sense that disorientation , as an experience , is one of its principal themes .
The images have a kaleidoscopic intensity that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of combat , generally , and the incoherent debacle of Iraq ’ s occupation by the United States , specifically .
“ Attention Servicemember ” has no narrative , because , from the perspective of an American infantryman in Baghdad , the war had none .
Or , rather , the narratives of the war are exactly what the book means to subvert .
Because we are constantly aware of the tension between Brody ’ s competing identities as an Army combat photographer—and because this tension is part of what makes his work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jarring when we learn that , after leaving the military , Brody became a civilian photojournalist and embarked on multiple embeds with U.S. forces in Afghanistan .
Perhaps more surprisingly , his pictures from Afghanistan are presented , in “ Attention Servicemember , ” no differently than those from Iraq .
Still no dates , names , locations , captions .
Still the commitment to a vernacular aesthetic rather than to factual information .
Even as a journalist , in other words , Brody focusses more on his relationship with the wars than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to insist on the subjectivity of “ Attention Servicemember ” by opening and closing it with black-and-white images—this time printed on art-gallery paper and framed within broad margins—from his home in Southampton , Massachusetts .
Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Brody ’ s family , friends , and neighbors , we realize that perhaps there is a narrative .
The final image in the collection shows a blasted , vertical tree trunk in a Southampton forest .
The splintered wood evokes a monument , a memorial .
For me , it recalls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services for fallen soldiers—services Brody was forbidden to photograph in Iraq because , he claims , “ the brigade commander considered that negative press coverage.
” In one of many lyrical passages of text in “ Attention Servicemember , ” Brody expresses his disdain for the jingoistic anthem “ American Soldier , ” by Toby Keith , which often provided the soundtrack for such ceremonies .
Had Brody been killed , he writes , “ that pop-country bullshit ” would have been played at his own service .
He adds , “ You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There is only doctrine , down to the smallest detail.
” By the time we reach the end of “ Attention Servicemember , ” there is no doctrine .
There is no music .
There is no spin .
There is only pure , unspeakable mourning .

“You learned what pictures the Public Affairs Officer would release and what he wouldn’t,” Brody explains. “Soldiers looking calm or stoic. Yes. Soldiers looking angry or frightened or exhausted or confused or lost with eyes like the bottom of the ocean. No.” After Brody photographed one especially protracted and bloody engagement with a unit from the 101st Airborne Division, he claimed that a division chief of staff prevented the pictures from being published. (The Army said it had no available information on the situation.) “He said it was ‘too negative,’ ” Brody writes, “meaning that my account didn’t conform to his tightly scripted vision of what victory was supposed to look like.” Those photos that did conform to the script were used in Army newsletters and publications, such as The Warrior and The Dog Face Daily. Others were made available on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS, a clearinghouse for military images and videos, operated by the Pentagon. All of the content on DVIDS is public domain—Army combat photographers don’t hold the copyrights to their work—which means that anyone can use Brody’s pictures for any purpose. One dramatic image he captured, of an infantry captain leading an assault across a field at sunrise, has appeared in advertisements for tactical radios, batteries, and vape pens.


newyorker--2020-01-19--Armando Iannucci Gets Lost in Space in “Avenue 5”

Some aficionados of Armando Iannucci—the creator of sturdy political farces including “ Veep , ” “ The Thick of It , ” and “ The Death of Stalin ” —will interpret his new science-fiction comedy as another statement on lunacy in the practice of power and suasion .
The show , “ Avenue 5 , ” on HBO , is christened after a spacecraft captained by one Ryan Clark ( Hugh Laurie ) .
Forty years hence—sometime after “ the Pacific went toxic , ” in the show ’ s imagining of our collective destiny—five thousand earthlings board this luxury @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the outer solar system .
About eight minutes into the pilot , as the ship prepares to round a Saturnal moon , a ghostly malfunction forces the vessel off course .
Initial projections determine that the trip home will take three years .
“ Avenue 5 , ” the series , is the tale of a fateful trip that was supposed to be a fun thing .
The vessel itself is like a ship of state inanely navigating a pitiless vacuum .
Its curvilinear interiors ooze with consumerist neo-futurism , gilded and streamlined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Enterprise , the Apple Store , the T.W.A .
Flight Center , and the infantilizing floating Xanadu of “ WALL-E , ” not to mention the Pacific Princess of Aaron Spelling ’ s “ The Love Boat.
” The visual style , like the deadpan absurdism of the performances , achieves a tone that is somehow dry and campy at once .
The looks and lines exaggerate the contours of contemporary life and inform the show ’ s shape as a social satire and an existential gripe .
No one is really in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this society runs itself .
The crisis reveals the captain to be a fragile man who has advanced beyond his abilities as a charmer with a good haircut .
He is not , like Laurie ’ s Bertie Wooster , a straight-up twit , but more like an empty suit with a heavy soul .
He is willing to set aside his pride and rely on his chief engineer ( Lenora Crichlow ) , but he can not escape his foolishness .
Their boss , the owner , is aboard , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , played by Josh Gad—exhibits the grandiose bluster of a tech mogul , the garish amorality of any given zillionaire , and many exotic forms of buffoonery ; he is , at best , an uncomprehending child in velour playclothes .
Judd ’ s chief consigliere , Iris Kimura ( played by Suzy Nakamura ) , is a meritocrat epitomizing the honed skill and soulless striving of the managerial class .
Triumphant in the belief that one calamity , in an escalating series of them , has been mitigated , she pumps her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems like they ’ re babies.
” If the baby-killing line is to make any sense , it is as an invocation of Jonathan Swift , one among many florid indications that Iannucci and his co-writers are on a sort of meta-rhetorical spree .
Characters spend a lot of recycled air critiquing one another ’ s diction , complaining about tone , policing shades of connotation , getting huffy about “ jargon , ” measuring the gestation of pregnant pauses , and generally tracing one another ’ s figures of speech .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while apologizing , saying , “ Sir , I hate to interrupt the protracted metaphor .
.
.
.
” Another describes Judd ’ s incompetence by fuming , “ The best analogy I can think of is he ’ s like an idiot in charge of a spaceship .
But that is not an analogy—that is just a fact.
” Here ’ s one passenger ’ s ill-fated attempt at cocktail-party small talk : “ No weather in space , right ?
Makes it hard to talk about the weather , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The show generates a good deal of screwball energy with these constant scrambles to its own verbal surface , which variously evokes “ Airplane !
” and Pirandello .
In terms of the plot , the most overt and important such moment occurs , near the end of the pilot , when the captain ’ s accent slips from its anchor in General American into something disconcertingly Oxonian , a moment presaging Clark ’ s confrontation with the stability of reality itself .
In terms of tone , the most aggressive and intriguing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spencer ( Zach Woods ) , Avenue 5 ’ s head of customer relations .
Spencer is introduced as a talking head exhorting consumption from a screen above a buffet table .
“ If you ’ re not completely satisfied , you ’ re wrong , ” he says .
Spencer is a fool , a radical imp , something of a trickster , definitely a key annotator of the text .
There ’ s an excellent tension between his supposed profession as a nerve-calming concierge and his nihilistic view of the human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aligns with the authorial voice , which is not just humorously morbid but merrily macabre , as when Spencer wraps up a funeral oration by describing existence as “ random , pointless , without redeeming value.
” Spencer ’ s pushiest customer is one of those ask-for-the-manager social types known as a Karen ( played by Rebecca Front ) ; if the fact that this character literally is named Karen strikes you as either too clever or else somewhat dumb , then this is not the show for you .
“ Avenue 5 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which poop jokes are about waste and entropy and fatal pollution but also , foremost , about tons of poop , the sight of which lightens the mood .

Some aficionados of Armando Iannucci—the creator of sturdy political farces including “Veep,” “The Thick of It,” and “The Death of Stalin”—will interpret his new science-fiction comedy as another statement on lunacy in the practice of power and suasion. The show, “Avenue 5,” on HBO, is christened after a spacecraft captained by one Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie). Forty years hence—sometime after “the Pacific went toxic,” in the show’s imagining of our collective destiny—five thousand earthlings board this luxury liner for an eight-week sightseeing cruise to the outer solar system. About eight minutes into the pilot, as the ship prepares to round a Saturnal moon, a ghostly malfunction forces the vessel off course. Initial projections determine that the trip home will take three years. “Avenue 5,” the series, is the tale of a fateful trip that was supposed to be a fun thing.
The vessel itself is like a ship of state inanely navigating a pitiless vacuum. Its curvilinear interiors ooze with consumerist neo-futurism, gilded and streamlined, spaces to associate with the Starship Enterprise, the Apple Store, the T.W.A. Flight Center, and the infantilizing floating Xanadu of “WALL-E,” not to mention the Pacific Princess of Aaron Spelling’s “The Love Boat.” The visual style, like the deadpan absurdism of the performances, achieves a tone that is somehow dry and campy at once. The looks and lines exaggerate the contours of contemporary life and inform the show’s shape as a social satire and an existential gripe.
No one is really in charge here; the systemic farce of this society runs itself. The crisis reveals the captain to be a fragile man who has advanced beyond his abilities as a charmer with a good haircut. He is not, like Laurie’s Bertie Wooster, a straight-up twit, but more like an empty suit with a heavy soul. He is willing to set aside his pride and rely on his chief engineer (Lenora Crichlow), but he cannot escape his foolishness. Their boss, the owner, is aboard, and the man in charge of the capital—Herman Judd, played by Josh Gad—exhibits the grandiose bluster of a tech mogul, the garish amorality of any given zillionaire, and many exotic forms of buffoonery; he is, at best, an uncomprehending child in velour playclothes. Judd’s chief consigliere, Iris Kimura (played by Suzy Nakamura), is a meritocrat epitomizing the honed skill and soulless striving of the managerial class. Triumphant in the belief that one calamity, in an escalating series of them, has been mitigated, she pumps her fist and cheers, “We kill problems like they’re babies.”
If the baby-killing line is to make any sense, it is as an invocation of Jonathan Swift, one among many florid indications that Iannucci and his co-writers are on a sort of meta-rhetorical spree. Characters spend a lot of recycled air critiquing one another’s diction, complaining about tone, policing shades of connotation, getting huffy about “jargon,” measuring the gestation of pregnant pauses, and generally tracing one another’s figures of speech. One underling approaches the captain on the bridge while apologizing, saying, “Sir, I hate to interrupt the protracted metaphor. . . .” Another describes Judd’s incompetence by fuming, “The best analogy I can think of is he’s like an idiot in charge of a spaceship. But that is not an analogy—that is just a fact.” Here’s one passenger’s ill-fated attempt at cocktail-party small talk: “No weather in space, right? Makes it hard to talk about the weather, which I’m kind of illustrating.”
The show generates a good deal of screwball energy with these constant scrambles to its own verbal surface, which variously evokes “Airplane!” and Pirandello. In terms of the plot, the most overt and important such moment occurs, near the end of the pilot, when the captain’s accent slips from its anchor in General American into something disconcertingly Oxonian, a moment presaging Clark’s confrontation with the stability of reality itself. In terms of tone, the most aggressive and intriguing sparks of textual energy emanate from Matt Spencer (Zach Woods), Avenue 5’s head of customer relations. Spencer is introduced as a talking head exhorting consumption from a screen above a buffet table. “If you’re not completely satisfied, you’re wrong,” he says. Spencer is a fool, a radical imp, something of a trickster, definitely a key annotator of the text. There’s an excellent tension between his supposed profession as a nerve-calming concierge and his nihilistic view of the human condition. The character’s absurdism aligns with the authorial voice, which is not just humorously morbid but merrily macabre, as when Spencer wraps up a funeral oration by describing existence as “random, pointless, without redeeming value.” Spencer’s pushiest customer is one of those ask-for-the-manager social types known as a Karen (played by Rebecca Front); if the fact that this character literally is named Karen strikes you as either too clever or else somewhat dumb, then this is not the show for you. “Avenue 5” is distinguished by a high-low sensibility in which poop jokes are about waste and entropy and fatal pollution but also, foremost, about tons of poop, the sight of which lightens the mood.


newyorker--2020-01-20--Luci Gutiérrez’s “Mindful Commuting”

Luci Gutiérrez’s “Mindful Commuting”

Luci Gutiérrez ’ s third cover for the magazine offers a whimsical take on a typical New York City commute .
Gutiérrez , who is known for her clean lines and playful characters in her work , will be familiar to readers as the weekly illustrator for the magazine ’ s Shouts & Murmurs section .
She recently spoke to us about finding inspiration through travel , her first impression of New Yorkers , and the art of the subway nap .
You ’ re based in Barcelona but are a frequent visitor to New York .
Were your first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this image suggests ?
I would say it ’ s easier to see kooky situations in New York than in other places , and this is one of the reasons that I love New York so much .
People seem to go their own way and not worry about what other people think .
I ended up getting used to it , so it stopped surprising me , but I was amazed the first time I came to the city .
So much of your drawing relies on very fine , detailed observation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your process ?
You ’ re right ; there ’ s a voyeur in me , and I enjoy observing people .
Especially when I ’ m in New York , I like going out and drawing people .
I have notebooks filled with sketches .
I do it for pleasure , but later I use them in my work .
Most of the characters I draw are based on these sketches .
Do you get your ideas while out in the city or while sitting at your work table ?
Usually at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have been out in the world to get ideas .
Drawing at my desk is a way to digest what I see .
And I need to have a pencil in my hand to come up with ideas—in my case , they don ’ t come out of the blue , but a pen will draw them out .
Have you ever napped on the subway ?
Where do you find your own peace and calm ?
I ’ m a big fan of sleep and , yes , I have napped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missed my station !
Besides sleeping , I find peace and calm when I have the chance to draw with no purpose .
It ’ s a special time just for myself .
It doesn ’ t always happen , but I ’ m always looking for it .
For more covers celebrating the subway , see below :

Luci Gutiérrez’s third cover for the magazine offers a whimsical take on a typical New York City commute. Gutiérrez, who is known for her clean lines and playful characters in her work, will be familiar to readers as the weekly illustrator for the magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs section. She recently spoke to us about finding inspiration through travel, her first impression of New Yorkers, and the art of the subway nap.
You’re based in Barcelona but are a frequent visitor to New York. Were your first impressions of the subway as kooky as this image suggests?
I would say it’s easier to see kooky situations in New York than in other places, and this is one of the reasons that I love New York so much. People seem to go their own way and not worry about what other people think. I ended up getting used to it, so it stopped surprising me, but I was amazed the first time I came to the city.


newyorker--2020-01-20--Mary South on Content Moderation and Trauma

The protagonist of “ You Will Never Be Forgotten ” is working at “ the world ’ s most popular search engine ” as a content moderator .
Why did you want to give your character that job ?
Would she agree with her boss that “ content moderation is unending warfare ” ?
My protagonist needed to be engaged in work that is contradictorily appreciated only when it is invisible .
If she and her colleagues do their jobs perfectly , no one will know that they exist .
These kinds of jobs aren ’ t new ; content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work that is dangerous , traumatic , or deeply unpleasant and therefore delegated to those who are less privileged .
I was very aware that many types of out-of-sight , out-of-mind duties—the labor of cleaning , caring , and maintaining—have been performed invisibly by women for centuries .
The woman of my story is in this extreme iteration of such a role , but she , too , has a certain amount of privilege that will protect her : a safety net of family that can help , the option to resume her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing this work forever .
Who will come after her with less ability to leave ?
I knew she would have to look up from her monitor one day and suddenly not understand how she has found herself entrenched in such a toxic environment .
A big part of the reason she ’ s there is because she ’ s been indoctrinated to believe that hypermasculine toxicity is normal and that her suffering is an unfortunate consequence of “ doing business.
” This daily toxicity is evident in the language that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gallows humor—her boss ’ s flippant claim that this is “ unending warfare , ” or the game of chicken they play using horrifying videos .
More broadly , why is disruption such a focus in the tech world ?
Why do all these billionaires aspire to go to outer space ?
Perhaps it is because it is more fun to compete with each other than turn their attention to the unglamorous work of cleaning , caring , and maintaining .
The woman has been trained to see her emotions as irrelevant , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trained to regard them as valid , I doubt she would have accepted the conditions of this job .
She was raped some time before the events of the story take place , and she ’ s found herself unable to stop stalking the perpetrator ’ s social-media feeds .
In the story , she ’ s known only as “ the woman , ” and he ’ s “ the rapist.
” Did you know from the outset that you ’ d refer to the two characters in this way ?
Did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
The characters have always been known only as “ the woman ” and “ the rapist.
” For a while , I did consider giving the woman a proper name .
A writer friend , one of my trusted early readers , suggested that the woman should have a name to make her seem like a specific person rather than the general everywoman .
And I admire survivors like Chanel Miller who have come forward and asked us to know their names .
However , I ultimately decided against it because this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s dealing with intense feelings of shame , guilt , and anger that ’ s directed inward .
The only way she ’ s able to live with those feelings is to hide in plain sight .
It ’ s O.K .
that she ’ s not yet ready to come forward or talk about her experience .
By the end of the story , I think she might be ready to share her name .
There was never any question of not referring to the rapist as “ the rapist.
” Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re still so often given the benefit of the doubt , known for their hobbies and accomplishments .
In news articles , Brock Turner was a “ Stanford swimmer ” during and after his trial .
Calling this character “ the rapist ” is a protest against that tendency .
By continually thinking of this man as “ the rapist , ” the woman is able to direct a small portion of her anger outward instead of inward .
She ’ s insisting upon her reality and taking back some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life online , posting a motivational newsletter , and there ’ s often a blithe obliviousness to his self-presentation .
The woman sets up a fake profile on the dating site where they first met and starts writing to him .
He ’ s more sympathetic—and apparently more vulnerable—in this forum : “ Their communication feels much more intimate than the communication they exchanged when the woman was herself.
” Which version of the rapist is more disturbing to the woman ?
Both versions of the rapist are very disturbing to the woman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ versions of him causes cognitive dissonance for her , which is one of the main reasons for her obsession : she craves a narrative .
Why did this happen to her ?
If the rapist is evil and he does this with all of the women he dates , that , in a way , makes things simpler .
She ’ s not special ; there isn ’ t some quality about her that caused him to single her out or to intuit that he could get away with it .
However , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she knows he is a predator but has remained silent , thus putting other women at risk .
On the flip side , if he is capable of genuine connection , if he ’ s struggling with his own damage but can be in a loving relationship with a woman—for example , with the programmer who becomes his girlfriend—then what does that say about her personally ?
Then the woman is special in a very negative sense ; there ’ s something about her that incited him to harm her .
That explanation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shame .
What she realizes in the final lines is that it doesn ’ t matter .
I didn ’ t want this character to have an epiphany , per se—to make it seem like she was suddenly healed—but she ’ s come to a kind of acceptance .
The woman is ready to do the hard work of recovery , which is a type of work that ’ s also invisible .
The woman starts following the rapist in real life .
She goes to the restaurant where he ’ s celebrating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , then , after engaging the girlfriend in conversation , leaves and lets herself in to the rapist ’ s apartment .
Does she want to confront him ?
Or to occupy the space she was once in ?
While the woman needs the safety of her anonymity , she ’ s also struggling with the need to be seen—that ’ s another example of her cognitive dissonance , how she herself feels sort of split in two .
The idea that she could be hurting so much as a result of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolutely no effect upon him is a further violation .
It feels bitterly unfair that , in the words of Christine Blasey Ford , her rape will always be “ indelible in the hippocampus , ” a devastating experience she can not forget , but that , for the rapist , it could be just another date night , which he may or may not remember .
Even if it makes her seem desperate , she craves having her pain acknowledged .
She wants to observe , somehow , in his eyes a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did .
I don ’ t think she would go so far as to break in to his apartment if she weren ’ t being constantly retraumatized at her job .
The woman is in quite a passive position—passively absorbing her own feelings as well as passively absorbing this horrifying content—so she feels a compulsion to do something active , perhaps even messy or destructive , to reclaim herself .
Of course , it doesn ’ t have the effect that she would ever desire or intend .
When the rapist and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find the woman hurriedly dressing .
The girlfriend films her , threatening to show it to the police—or upload it to the Internet .
Did you always know the story would reach this point , with the woman potentially becoming the content to be moderated ?
That ’ s the risk in letting yourself be seen : you can ’ t control how other people perceive you .
I knew she needed to go from invisible to visible in a pretty dramatic way .
Unfortunately , the woman will have additional work to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because she ’ s performing her own violation in making herself seen .
But , even if she had found a healthier way to do so , she still wouldn ’ t be able to control the reactions of others .
“ You Will Never Be Forgotten ” is the title story of your first collection , which will be published by FSG Originals this March .
One of the stories is set at a summer camp for troubled teens who need a healthier relationship with social media .
Another takes place in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a state of perpetual sleep from infancy , until their bodies are harvested for medical purposes .
How do you categorize your stories ?
Do you see any kind of division between the more speculative ones and the more ostensibly realistic ?
Are there particular states of mind you ’ re interested in exploring ?
With this collection , I was interested in exploring how characters self-soothe , what narratives or strategies they have constructed in order to palliate their psychic pain—grief , rage , despair—and what happens when those coping mechanisms are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have that in common : there ’ s something that these characters are afraid to confront , then they ’ re forced to confront it , to see the ways in which they ’ ve behaved badly or have continued to reënact their trauma .
By necessity , they ’ re broken open .
But getting broken open , wrenching as it is , can also be an opportunity to become a healthier , better person .
Where do they go from here ?
Since we ’ re surrounded by massive amounts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information , and instantly , than ever before in history—I ’ m interested in how that manifests new story forms .
How does a story emerge from someone scrolling through the Internet looking for medical information or posting in a forum about their favorite television show ?
But the technology is never the point of the stories .
The point is the profound loneliness these characters feel , and what the technology reveals about their mental states .
In this story , it reveals the character ’ s obsession , that , despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she has to be the one to find a way to care for herself .
In the story you mention , about the institute stocked with body doubles raised for their organs , the nurse protagonist who cares for these doubles is forced to confront the full force of her grief over her dead husband .
But she doesn ’ t question the world she ’ s in , whether it ’ s right in the first place to be harvesting these individuals .
Because these characters often don ’ t question their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinctly reveals the ways in which their worlds , both speculative and realistic , are distorted for the reader .

Photograph by Nina Subin
The protagonist of “You Will Never Be Forgotten” is working at “the world’s most popular search engine” as a content moderator. Why did you want to give your character that job? Would she agree with her boss that “content moderation is unending warfare”?
My protagonist needed to be engaged in work that is contradictorily appreciated only when it is invisible. If she and her colleagues do their jobs perfectly, no one will know that they exist. These kinds of jobs aren’t new; content moderation is just a late-capitalist iteration of work that is dangerous, traumatic, or deeply unpleasant and therefore delegated to those who are less privileged. I was very aware that many types of out-of-sight, out-of-mind duties—the labor of cleaning, caring, and maintaining—have been performed invisibly by women for centuries. The woman of my story is in this extreme iteration of such a role, but she, too, has a certain amount of privilege that will protect her: a safety net of family that can help, the option to resume her education. She won’t be doing this work forever. Who will come after her with less ability to leave?
I knew she would have to look up from her monitor one day and suddenly not understand how she has found herself entrenched in such a toxic environment. A big part of the reason she’s there is because she’s been indoctrinated to believe that hypermasculine toxicity is normal and that her suffering is an unfortunate consequence of “doing business.” This daily toxicity is evident in the language that’s used by her colleagues and in their gallows humor—her boss’s flippant claim that this is “unending warfare,” or the game of chicken they play using horrifying videos. More broadly, why is disruption such a focus in the tech world? Why do all these billionaires aspire to go to outer space? Perhaps it is because it is more fun to compete with each other than turn their attention to the unglamorous work of cleaning, caring, and maintaining. The woman has been trained to see her emotions as irrelevant, a hindrance. If she had been trained to regard them as valid, I doubt she would have accepted the conditions of this job.
She was raped some time before the events of the story take place, and she’s found herself unable to stop stalking the perpetrator’s social-media feeds. In the story, she’s known only as “the woman,” and he’s “the rapist.” Did you know from the outset that you’d refer to the two characters in this way? Did you ever think about giving them names?
The characters have always been known only as “the woman” and “the rapist.” For a while, I did consider giving the woman a proper name. A writer friend, one of my trusted early readers, suggested that the woman should have a name to make her seem like a specific person rather than the general everywoman. And I admire survivors like Chanel Miller who have come forward and asked us to know their names. However, I ultimately decided against it because this character needs her anonymity. She’s dealing with intense feelings of shame, guilt, and anger that’s directed inward. The only way she’s able to live with those feelings is to hide in plain sight. It’s O.K. that she’s not yet ready to come forward or talk about her experience. By the end of the story, I think she might be ready to share her name.
There was never any question of not referring to the rapist as “the rapist.” Even after men are convicted of rape, they’re still so often given the benefit of the doubt, known for their hobbies and accomplishments. In news articles, Brock Turner was a “Stanford swimmer” during and after his trial. Calling this character “the rapist” is a protest against that tendency. By continually thinking of this man as “the rapist,” the woman is able to direct a small portion of her anger outward instead of inward. She’s insisting upon her reality and taking back some of her power.
The rapist charts his life online, posting a motivational newsletter, and there’s often a blithe obliviousness to his self-presentation. The woman sets up a fake profile on the dating site where they first met and starts writing to him. He’s more sympathetic—and apparently more vulnerable—in this forum: “Their communication feels much more intimate than the communication they exchanged when the woman was herself.” Which version of the rapist is more disturbing to the woman?
Both versions of the rapist are very disturbing to the woman, and trying to reconcile the two versions of him causes cognitive dissonance for her, which is one of the main reasons for her obsession: she craves a narrative. Why did this happen to her? If the rapist is evil and he does this with all of the women he dates, that, in a way, makes things simpler. She’s not special; there isn’t some quality about her that caused him to single her out or to intuit that he could get away with it. However, that explanation fills her with overwhelming guilt—that she knows he is a predator but has remained silent, thus putting other women at risk. On the flip side, if he is capable of genuine connection, if he’s struggling with his own damage but can be in a loving relationship with a woman—for example, with the programmer who becomes his girlfriend—then what does that say about her personally? Then the woman is special in a very negative sense; there’s something about her that incited him to harm her. That explanation, though, fills her with overwhelming shame. What she realizes in the final lines is that it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want this character to have an epiphany, per se—to make it seem like she was suddenly healed—but she’s come to a kind of acceptance. The woman is ready to do the hard work of recovery, which is a type of work that’s also invisible.
The woman starts following the rapist in real life. She goes to the restaurant where he’s celebrating an anniversary with a new girlfriend, and, then, after engaging the girlfriend in conversation, leaves and lets herself in to the rapist’s apartment. Does she want to confront him? Or to occupy the space she was once in?