Newsletter 1016
Best of the Moment
Fire School
Rachel Monroe | Rumpus | 27th May 2013
If you train as a West Texas firefighter, and your boyfriend is an emergency medical technician, you come home with quite a few stories to share. Here's a selection. How to section a car with hydraulic tools. More on the West factory explosion. "The bizarre intimacy of seeing a stranger’s skull shine underneath a flap of skin". Why fires are fun to start. But remember: "Your trauma highs are somebody else's traumas"
In The Crosshairs
Nicholas Schmidle | New Yorker | 27th May 2013
Navy Seal Chris Kyle was "one of the deadliest snipers in American history, with a hundred and sixty confirmed kills". His memoir, American Sniper, sold a million copies. The stress accumulated: “Snipers have the curse that they see the work their round does.” He left the Navy, started a company, did some drinking and bar-fighting, worked with other disturbed veterans. Took them hunting. Until one of them shot him dead
Obituary: Bill O’Hagan, Sausage-Maker
Anonymous | The Economist | 25th May 2013
By night an editor at the Daily Telegraph. By day an amateur butcher, and the moving spirit of a British sausage renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. His masterpiece: "A succulent tongue-teasing blend of minced lean pork, rolled oats, fresh eggs, sea-salt, chervil and winter savoury, generously dosed with real ale." Went full-time into the sausage business in 1988; by 1991 was selling 2m sausages a year, Didn't get rich, did get happy
After The Spike, And After The Like
Matt Locke | Medium | 26th May 2013
"The last 50-60 years have been a blip, a time in which the relationship between storytellers and audiences was effectively broken. We’re coming to the end of that now, and seeing a transition as interesting and profound as the beginning of the 20th century, when storytelling moved from the live performance circuits of music hall and variety to the new mass mediums of cinema and broadcasting"
Video of the day: Street-Fighter Motion Sculptures
Thought for the day:
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word No"— Ian Betteridge