Bundy, Hume, Foodies, Spies
Mrs. Bundy
Dana Middleton Silberstein | Morning News | 3rd September 2015
On the day of serial killer Ted Bundy's execution, a local TV talk-show host tracks down his mother at home and later interviews her alongside the mother of one of his victims. An emotional profile of two women simultaneously close and distant. "It has to be terrible for her," says the victim's mother; "our suffering is over, our answers are all there—and I think hers are probably just beginning" (5,260 words)
How An 18th-Century Philosopher Helped Solve My Midlife Crisis
Alison Gopnik | Atlantic | 15th September 2015
Largely an essay about whether David Hume could possibly have been influenced by Buddhist philosophy, with personal narrative mixed in. Hume "argued that there was no soul, no coherent self," and that "I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception," similar to Buddhist ideas about emptiness and the self. But could they have reached Hume in 1730s France? (6,630 words)
Meet The Hottest Restaurant Of 2081
Matt Buchanan | Eater | 16th September 2015
Imaginary interview, from the co-editor of the Awl. "What I wanted to get back to again was this period of a certain kind of casual luxury, an era where everyone could afford to be inefficient, when eating meat was normal and natural, and we're taking the re-creation of that culture very seriously.... we're now raising real, whole cows and pigs on a small horizontal plot of land owned by one of our investors just outside the city" (2,080 words)
Who Killed The 20th Century’s Greatest Spy?
Simon Parkin | Guardian | 15th September 2015
Egyptian businessman Ashraf Marwan tumbled from the fifth-floor balcony of his London flat in 2007. Who was he really working for, and why? Did he jump, or was he pushed? "Killing him didn’t have to be a physical push ... You can say to a person: you have two sons. If you want us to leave them alone, you should jump ... Maybe something like that. But the inquest couldn’t decide" (6,570 words)
Video of the day: The Girl & The Tree
What to expect: Artistic, aching Iranian animated short (2'00")
Thought for the day
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is
Thomas Szasz