Friend Apartments

“You Are My Friend”

Jessica Riskin | Public Domain Review | 29th May 2024

The talking head in Don Quixote is just one example of humanity's obsession with machines that can speak. Unlike AI developers, many on this quest in the late 18C — including Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus — sought to recreate the actual speech organs with machinery. Leather lips, rubber tongues and bellow-operated lungs managed to say a few words including "Mama" (4,400 words)

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At The Webster Apartments

Tess Little | Paris Review | 28th May 2024

Remembering one of Manhattan's last women-only boarding houses. From 1923, this building offered cheap, safe accommodation in the heart of the city. Occupants were "guests" not residents, and could stay for no less than a month and no more than five years. In the 1920s, it was for shopgirls toiling at department store counters. Decades later, the fashion interns moved in (2,600 words)