// WORK YOUR BRAIN OUT WITH OUR 5 FAVORITE LONG READ THIS WEEK //
1
When Your Greatest Romance is Friendship (New York Times)
"From the beginning, there was something about our interaction that reminded me of friendships from childhood, in which no question was off limits. On religion, she claimed to be an atheist. I admitted to being haunted by the ghosts of a Roman Catholic upbringing. She said her sisters believed in hell and worried about her soul. Austin, though, seemed afraid of nothing, least of all death. I said I was still afraid of the dark."
2
THE LAST THINGS THAT WILL MAKE US UNIQUELY HUMAN (Bbc Future)
We will never be as perfect as Artificial Intelligence and in a few decades, AI will outstrip many of the abilities we believe make us special.
"With computers conquering what used to be deeply human tasks – those that require knowledge, strategy, even creativity – what will it mean in the future to be human? Some are worried that self-driving cars and trucks may displace millions of professional drivers (they are right), and disrupt entire industries (yup!). But I worry about my six-year-old son. What will his place be in a world where machines trounce us in one area after another? What will he do, and how will he relate to these ever-smarter machines? What will be his and his human peers’ contribution to the world he’ll live in?"
3
THE EMPATHY LAYER (The Verge)
Can an app that lets strangers — and bots — become amateur therapists create a safer internet?
"In January 2016, police in Blacksburg, Virginia, began looking into the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl named Nicole Lovell. Her parents had discovered her bedroom door barricaded with a dresser, her window open. Lovell was the victim of frequent bullying, both at school and online, and her parents thought she might have run away.
On social media, Lovell posted openly about her anguish. On Kik, a messaging app, Lovell told one contact, “Yes, I’m getting ready to kill myself.” In another exchange, she grabbed a screenshot from a boy she liked who had changed his screen name to “Nicole is ugly as fuck.” She broadcasted these private interactions to the wider world by posting them on her Instagram, where she also snapped a photo of herself looking sad, adding the caption “Nobody cares about me.”
Starved for affection among her peers, Lovell sought it out online. Police found a trail of texts on Kik between Lovell and a user named Dr. Tombstone. Kik allows users to remain anonymous, and over the course of a few months, the conversation turned romantic. Tombstone’s real identity was David Eisenhauer, a freshman at Virginia Tech, five years older than Lovell. In a horrific turn of events, authorities say Eisenhauer lured Lovell to meet him, then murdered her."
4
SEARCHING FOR MR. GRASS (SOUTHWEST MAGAZINE)
“The sun’s gonna be a little bright in our eyes,” Mr. Grass says, wheeling around in his bare feet. We squint and look up at the small balcony off his master bedroom, fixing our eyes on the apple-sized camera tacked to the eave overhead. “You gotta freeze because it needs to go for about two seconds.”
We both reflexively give the camera a thumbs-up, hold the pose, and smile.
5
"The Employment" (A Video Directed by Santiago Grasso)
Mental Yoga Sunday :: 5 Favorite Long Form Reads This Week 3.12.17 ~ Fin.
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