Required Reading
‣ Identifying the color of your aura is trending, thanks to an ill-conceived TikTok filter. But for Believer, photographer Adalena Kavanagh visits a shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown for insights into aura readings and what they can offer those of us looking for answers:
The technology of aura photography has its roots in a technique developed back in 1939 by Russian scientists Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, who generated phantasmal effects by connecting a high-voltage source to a photographic plate. Kirlian photography was seen for decades as a potential diagnostic tool for health, and perhaps this is what gives it the illusion of impartiality. Today, as you look at your aura, a reader dispenses personalized attention: confirming your desires, validating your ailments. Tangible proof comes in the form of the photograph.
Looking at all the green in my second photo, a wide band going from the right (the past) to the left (the future) gave me some hope for the prospects of my novel, which is on submission. Alas, the photos themselves were disappointing: in previous years, aura readers used a now discontinued film that had higher fidelity, and the photography purist in me longed for that era. Then I recalled that whenever I’d walked by Magic Jewelry in the past, I’d always seen pairs of people leaving with their new mementos. They had someone who could tell them what they looked like while the reader was explaining their aura. They had someone to share the experience with, not just the object in their hands.
For my third aura reading, Nadia, the same reader I’d had the second time, was joined by an assistant who offered me a cup of hot green tea. When the assistant sat me down, she asked in Chinese if I speak Chinese. I said, “Yidian dian,” which means “a little bit” in Mandarin, but when I say it, it means “I am greatly saddened and ashamed that I no longer do.”
‣ Exactly a century after the publication of The Great Gatsby, Maureen Corrigan considers the novel’s particular relevance for readers in the United States today for NPR:
Fitzgerald himself said his novel was about “aspiration.” But aspiration doesn’t guarantee success. Remember that Jay Gatsby, the character who strives, who stretches out his arms to that green light and all it represents, is dead at the beginning of this retrospective story.
No surprise, then, that The Great Gatsby has been and continues to be on lists of books challenged and pulled from school libraries as our frenzy of book banning rages on. Blame all that drinking, extramarital sex and a lurking doubt about the meritocratic promise of America.
But the banners aren’t reading the novel carefully enough. For, even as The Great Gatsby tells us the American Dream may be a mirage, it does so in some of the most beautiful language anyone has ever written about America, particularly the last seven or so pages of the novel where Nick Carraway talks about “man’s” search for “something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” As a wise former student of mine once said about The Great Gatsby, “It’s the Sistine Chapel of literature in 185 pages.”
‣ Sarah Hashemi of Smithsonian Magazine reports on the geometric mystery that mathematicians just solved, after decades of puzzling:
“It’s just a problem about how straight lines can intersect one another,” explains Jonathan Hickman, a mathematician at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the new work, to Joseph Howlett at Quanta Magazine. “But there’s such an incredible richness encoded in it—an incredible array of connections to other problems.”
Tracing either the circle or the curvy triangle assumes the needle is sitting flat on a desk, in two dimensions. But if you hold the needle up in 3D space and try to rotate it in all directions, the task becomes much harder. To minimize the space it moves through, you’ll need an infinitely narrow needle—and creative math. This puzzle led to the Kakeya conjecture: It states that the number of dimensions of the traced shape will always match the number of dimensions of the space it’s in.
While experts thought this, too, sounded simple, it has taken decades for them to prove it in 3D. Now, mathematicians Joshua Zahl at the University of British Columbia in Canada and Hong Wang at New York University have found the answer to how the needle can move in three spatial dimensions. Their work was recently published as a 127-page preprint article, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on the arXiv server
‣ The Guardian‘s Edward Pilkington spoke to the Black Panther Party “cubs” — children of the group’s original members — about the challenges and joys of their upbringings and the political values they carry into their lives:
Several of the cubs have applied their inspirational learning to careers in education. Sharif El-Mekki went on from his Philadelphia freedom school to work as a teacher and principal for almost 30 years and now runs a group that seeks to train the next generation of motivational Black educators.
El-Mekki’s respect for his parents’ revolutionary activities knows no limits. “I think the Black Panther Party was one of the Blackest, most incredible social justice movements America has seen. Being a cub for me is a deep badge of pride. It’s a quintessential Black love story.”
He has six children. He calls them “grandcubs”.
Several others have channeled the Panthers’ belief in the power of the written word to become writers. Ericka Abram is writing a memoir of her surreal journey from the Panther dorm to Malibu, titled Black Panther Princess. Sharon Shoatz has helped disseminate her father’s recently published posthumous autobiography, I Am Maroon.
Having been conflicted for so long over the absence of her mother, Abram is finally learning to forgive her. “I now appreciate her for what she did. She was incredibly brave – a fighter, and a survivor.”
She is also learning to forgive herself. “I thought for many years that I was useless, because I wasn’t a revolutionary. Now I think that if you contribute in any positive way, that’s OK. I’m not gonna beat myself up any longer.”
‣ My feed was flooded with photos from the nationwide “Hands Off” protests last weekend, but why did much of American print media downplay the demonstrations? Parker Molloy writes in the New Republic:
This isn’t just bad journalism. It’s a deliberate editorial choice that speaks volumes about how establishment media downplays collective action challenging power.
When hundreds of thousands of people coordinate across an entire nation to protest governmental policies, that’s not a page 18 story. That’s not a “see more in section B” situation. That’s front-page news. Period.
The messaging from these protests was clear and compelling. Organizers articulated specific demands: “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”
This wasn’t just a bunch of disgruntled people without purpose. This was a coordinated resistance with specific grievances and demands—exactly the kind of civic engagement our democracy supposedly values.
‣ After a biotech company announced a “de-extinction” plan for the long-gone dire wolf, scientists started sounding the alarm. Riley Black writes in Slate about the billionaire-backed project and its potential consequences:
To put it another way, Colossal’s dire wolves are like Tesla’s disastrous Cybertruck. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the co-founder of Colossal is a billionaire. Someone rich felt a pang of nostalgia and made a demand. The infamous and ugly Cybertruck was inspired by video game vehicles. Colossal’s wolves are prestige TV creatures. This kind of thinking is everywhere: Blue Origin is sending Katy Perry way high up into the sky, a stunt to help sell a sci-fi daydream of one day taking a bus to Moon. This isn’t progress; it’s a bunch of toys. Meanwhile, the government is actively gutting science and health agencies, and firing people who do the challenging and often-unglamourous work that research involves—not for personal glory and a shiny press treatment, but simply to advance knowledge and make the world better for the humans and creatures who already live here. Careful and painstaking conservation work, such as the work restoring wood bison herds to Alaska, is overlooked in favor of designer species given meme-sprinkled promo reels.
‣ As if getting a job wasn’t hard enough, AI-generated profiles are apparently flooding positions posted by companies based in the US, CNBC‘s Hugh Son reports:
Cybersecurity and cryptocurrency firms have seen a recent surge in fake job seekers, industry experts told CNBC. As the companies are often hiring for remote roles, they present valuable targets for bad actors, these people said.
Ben Sesser, the CEO of BrightHire, said he first heard of the issue a year ago and that the number of fraudulent job candidates has “ramped up massively” this year. His company helps more than 300 corporate clients in finance, tech and health care assess prospective employees in video interviews.
“Humans are generally the weak link in cybersecurity, and the hiring process is an inherently human process with a lot of hand-offs and a lot of different people involved,” Sesser said. “It’s become a weak point that folks are trying to expose.”
But the issue isn’t confined to the tech industry. More than 300 U.S. firms inadvertently hired impostors with ties to North Korea for IT work, including a major national television network, a defense manufacturer, an automaker, and other Fortune 500 companies, the Justice Department alleged in May.
‣ I will never know true happiness until I lay eyes on the largest Cadbury Creme Egg, unveiled this week according to BBC:
Just how big, though, is the colossal confectionery? Well, let’s just say you might bite off more than you can chew, and definitely wouldn’t want to drop it on your foot. Cadbury proudly states it to be as tall as an emperor penguin, with the poundage of a newborn horse – or, in old money, 3ft (90cm) and 7st 1lbs (45kg).
And what’s more, not a bit of the brown behemoth – on display at Birmingham tourist attraction Cadbury World – is fake. It’s real chocolate, with real gooey fondant filling and even has the signature touch of the engraved twinkle.
The only bit of the Easter treat that isn’t quite legit is the wrapping. It’s actually a painted veneer, presumably because there was not a piece of foil large enough, lest a run on crinkly silver lead to stale sarnies.
‣ A friendly reminder about the wealth of free resources you can access through your local library:
‣ *Ru has left the chat*:
Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.
