Susan Orlean's Blog, page 5

How Bruce Foxworth Changed the Rules of the Game

The tennis pro specialized in defying expectations.

The Hard-Won Achievements of Mary Cocaine

A life of devotion to family, pie, and the city of Worcester.

The John Smiths of America

One was an internationally known expert in molecular biology; another was a miner who loved to play checkers.

The Rabbit Outbreak

A highly contagious, often lethal animal virus arrives in the United States, Susan Orlean writes.

TheRealReal���s Online Luxury Consignment Shop

Susan Orlean on how the reseller brings designer goods into the ���circular economy.���

Growing Up in the Library

Susan Orleans writes a personal history about growing up in libraries, and rediscovering them later in life.

The Surreal Comedy of Internet Art

Susan Orlean writes about Internet art, especially the playful Twitter feeds and YouTube videos created by Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender.

Man And Machine

Were you driving through western Pennsylvania in the mid-nineteen-nineties, with the radio on? Was the music interrupted by two adolescent male voices jabbering trucker lingo? Or, several years ago, did you come across an online tourism video for the city of Milwaukee? Did it seem a little strange, in that the city shown was very obviously Manhattan, and that the video suggested that the entire Milwaukee area had been contaminated by an industrial accident? Or, sometime during the past few years, did you notice an account on Twitter called Horse_ebooks that spewed peculiar, mantralike messages such as “You’re not alone in your passion for tomatoes!” and “Demand Furniture”? Around the same time, did you happen upon a YouTube channel called Pronunciation Book, which consisted of videos of words in black lettering on a white background, and a calm male voice pronouncing each word three times, with great deliberation?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Cover Story: “Stop,” by Chris Ware
The Met’s “Unfinished” Is a Great Show, People!
Selections from the Pet Pavilion at the Armory Show

Horse_ebooks Is Human After All

The Internet is full of mysteries. Two of the more intriguing ones have been a Twitter account, @Horse_ebooks, and a YouTube channel, Pronunciation Book, which have been running for the past several years. Both have the hallmarks of automation, chugging along anonymously and churning out disjointed bits of text in a very spam-like fashion. At the same time, their output has seemed strangely knowing and even portentous. Horse_ebooks, in particular, has inspired fan fiction, Tumblr accounts, T-shirts, and tattoos with its weird Zen-like sentence fragments, such as “Who Else Wants To Become A Golf Ball,” or “For The Highest Price Possible, No Matter How Much Time You Have Had To Prepare!,” or “Everything happens so much.” Both accounts have spawned speculation among the hundreds of thousands of people who have viewed them. Were they really spambots? Were they some slowly unfolding promotion for, say, a new phone or movie? Were they machines testing out a new kind of artificial intelligence? Were they Edward Snowden’s side projects?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Walk While You Work

Susan Orlean writes about the growing popularity of the treadmill desk, and why walking while you work has gained a leg up on sitting or standing.