{"id":256480,"date":"2023-10-27T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=256480"},"modified":"2023-12-31T19:41:35","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T19:41:35","slug":"the-grift-the-indian-prince-and-a-shocking-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/10\/27\/the-grift-the-indian-prince-and-a-shocking-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"The grift, the Indian prince, and a shocking twist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Hannah Ghorashi for Air Mail<\/a>: “My husband received a call from his acquaintance Amar Singh\u2014a women\u2019s-rights activist, art patron, film producer, and Indian prince\u2014and said he had a wild story to tell him. It concerned Amar\u2019s relationship with a young Swedish woman named Liza-Johanna Holgersson, whom he had met online. They had broken up on August 6 when, he claimed, he had discovered she had been living a secret life. She had, he said, been a grifter, a con woman, taking him and multiple other men for a ride. But what I thought would be a cautionary tale of online dating among the 0.1 percent became something else: by the end of my research, I had twice been offered bribes to stop writing Amar\u2019s story. Both times they had been offered to me by Amar.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many ghost sightings were due to carbon-monoxide poisoning?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Cyclones,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Jeanette Winterson for The Paris Review<\/a>: “There\u2019s a theory I like that suggests why the nineteenth century is so rich in ghost stories and hauntings. Carbon monoxide poisoning from gas lamps. Street lighting and indoor lighting burned coal gas, which is sooty and noxious. It gives off methane and carbon monoxide. Outdoors, the flickering flames of the gas lamps pumped carbon monoxide into the air\u2014air that was often trapped low down in the narrow streets and cramped courtyards of industrial cities and towns. Indoors, windows closed against the chilly weather prevented fresh oxygen from reaching those sitting up late by lamplight. Low-level carbon monoxide poisoning produces symptoms of choking, dizziness, paranoia, including feelings of dread, and hallucinations. Where better to hallucinate than in the already dark and shadowy streets of Victorian London? Or in the stifling interiors?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Dylan Matthews gave his kidney to a stranger, and thinks you should too<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Everything<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Dylan Matthews for Vox<\/a>: “On Monday, August 22, 2016, a surgical team at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed my left kidney. It was then drained of blood, flushed with a preservative solution, placed on ice, and flown to Cincinnati. Surgeons in Cincinnati then transplanted the kidney into a recipient I\u2019d never met and whose name I didn\u2019t know; we didn\u2019t correspond until this past month. The only thing I knew about him at the time was that he needed my kidney more than I did. It would let him avoid the physically draining experience of dialysis and possibly live an extra nine to 10 years, maybe more. I was selfishly, deeply gratified to have made at least one choice in my life that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt was the right one.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note: <\/strong><\/em>If you like this newsletter, I’d be honoured if you would help me by contributing whatever you can <\/em>via my Patreon<\/em><\/a>. Thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winging it with the new backcountry barnstormers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Brad Rassler for Outside magazine<\/a>: “In early August of 2022, 69 days before the 12th annual High Sierra Fly-In\u2014an event known as American aviation\u2019s Burning Man\u2014Trent Palmer hoisted himself into the cockpit of his red, white, and blue bush plane, the Freedom Fox,<\/em> and fired up the engine for another cruise into the valleys north of Lake Tahoe. Palmer, wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a Trent Palmer limited-edition trucker hat (\u201cFly Low, Don\u2019t Die,\u201d $40), is not your typical bush pilot, hauling mountaineers and machinery. Thanks to a prodigious YouTube following, he\u2019s one of the most prominent of a new breed of lower 48 adventurers who are landing their fat-tire planes on and in mountaintops, ridgetops, river canyons, mountain meadows, dry lake beds, and grass and dirt airstrips, mainly in the American West, and mostly on land managed by the federal government.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creepy new digital afterlife industry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Wendy Wong for IEEE Spectrum<\/a>: “Researchers have identified a digital afterlife industry of 57 firms. The current players include a company that offers interactive memories in the loved one\u2019s voice (HereAfter); an entity that sends prescheduled messages to loved ones after the user\u2019s death (MyWishes); and a robotics company that made a robotic bust of a departed woman based on \u201cher memories, feelings, and beliefs,\u201d which went on to converse with humans and even took a college course (Hanson Robotics). Some of us may view these options as exciting. Others may recoil. Still others may simply shrug.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deaf children in China can hear thanks to new gene therapy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Literacy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Antonio Regalado for MIT Technology Review<\/a>: “Li Xincheng has been playing a game with her mother: Her mother says a few words. Then the six-year-old, nicknamed Yiyi, repeats what she heard. \u201cClouds, one by one, blossomed in the mountains,\u201d says her mother, Qin Lixue, while covering her mouth so Yiyi can\u2019t read her lips. \u201cClouds, one, one, blossomed in big mountains,\u201d Yiyi replies. It\u2019s hard to believe that Yiyi was born entirely deaf. But this year her family, who live in a high-rise block in the city of Dongguan, enrolled her in a study of a new type of gene therapy. During the procedure, doctors used a virus to add replacement DNA to the cells in Yiyi\u2019s inner ear that pick up vibrations, allowing them to transmit sound to her brain.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The underground city built by leaf-cutter ants<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This is a subterranean super city,

It appears to be designed by an architect, but this is the collective will of a species of grass cutter ants called Atta capiguara

Highways with the shortest transportation routes, waste chambers, all ventilated 1\/\ud83e\uddf5
pic.twitter.com\/J3tuWlY1we<\/a><\/p>— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 20, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>