Countries visited: Mexico, Guatemala
REGIONAL STORIES:
Te Veré en el Desayuno (See You at Breakfast) by Guillermo Fadanelli: An example of Mexican “dirty realism,” this novella follows four characters in Mexico City as their lives intersect, and it moves from a darkly comedic first half to simply dark second half. A heady combination of external forces (poverty, crime, sexism) and what Fadanelli depicts as human nature (a proclivity to lie to ourselves and others, to decide the wrong things are important) that drives the characters’ increasingly appalling, irrational-yet-rational decisions. An employee at a bookshop in Mazatlán recommended it to me — and it was an excellent one. Not sure how the English translation holds up.
La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus (short documentary): A sweet, though slow, look at how an American school bus gets transformed into a gloriously kitschy Guatemalan camioneta that provides public transport, and the financial and (gang) security risks involved in making that transformation. This documentary has made me look both more joyously and concernedly at all the many, many such buses we’ve passed on first our couple days in Guatemala.
LONG FORM:
My favorite pieces in the last few weeks have focused on 3 topics.
(1) Gaping Holes in Science
“The hidden air pollution in our homes” (New Yorker) - Consider that we have spent billions cleaning up (and studying) outdoor air pollution, and that we publish academic reports quantifying the loss of life associated with living in “dirtier” cities. Yet it turns out most of us live over 95% of our lives indoors (5% outdoors = 1 hour, 12 mins per day)—and that we know close to nothing about whether there is indoor air pollution from home substances mixing: everything from cooking fumes (toast, baking, stir frying), to chemical cleaners, to body lotions. This article probably gets slightly too alarmist for my taste, but it is true that we don’t know how alarmist to be because of the lack of science in this area.
(2) Rotten Tech
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (h/t Werner): This book follows the rise and fall of the blood testing hardware company Theranos, and the ways the leadership committed escalating acts of outright deception (to media, board members, and investors) to score massive commercial deals and pump up attention (and valuations). It also is the story of how difficult it is in these circumstances to be a whistleblower. It’s of course an amazing story to cover, but the writer (journalist) gets way too caught up in side details. Somewhere in this readable 299-page book is an actually excellent 200-page book.
Two reasonably good starting places on potential paths for regulating Big Tech: “Here’s how we can break up Big Tech” (Medium) from Elizabeth Warren & “Antitrust 3: Big Tech” (Planet Money)
(3) Love is Complicated
Normal People by Sally Rooney: Sally Rooney is currently a darling of the literary world, and deservedly so after her excellent debut novel Conversations with Friends, which deftly examines the burdens and glories of female friendship in your early 20s. This is her sophomore book, which focuses on a male/female best friendship in which both characters come of age together, and their relationship is challenged by sexual tension, class differences, mental illness, and of course your standard college drama bullshit. The thing is, it’s just not as good. There’s not nearly enough dialogue (Rooney’s strong suit), and the male character is just a bit flat. That said, it’s still Sally Rooney, so you know, it was compulsively readable, and I finished it in a day. (And also, most critics seem to disagree with me and like this book more than her first one.)
“A Very Offensive Rom-Com” (Invisibilia): Invisibilia’s team is on a roll with choosing risky episode topics that are going to get them tons of hate mail— and I love it. This one focuses on a young Asian American woman who’s determined to examine, challenge, and “fix” her own racial (racist?) sexual preferences. As the host asks: Can we, and should we, hammer our sexual preferences into the shape of our political beliefs?