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Medellín’s Bright Future Is Tangled Up With Its Dark Past
Decades after the end of the narco era, a Colombian city wonders if it is better to forget
Medellín’s Bright Future Is Tangled Up With Its Dark Past
Decades after the end of the narco era, a Colombian city wonders if it is better to forget
Pictured above: A view of Medellín, Colombia, from a landing on the public escalator that climbs into the Comuna 13 neighborhood.
In the mountains above the sleepy Colombian suburb of Envigado, there’s a startling, quetzal’s-eye view of the city of Medellín, nestled in a bowl-shaped valley, studded with red and white skyscrapers, and laced with public gondolas that climb into hills to serve neighborhoods once thought too dangerous to visit. A few years ago, monks from a Benedictine order acquired this lofty site—called “La Catedral” (The Cathedral)—and transformed it into a monastery and senior citizens’ home. There’s a spare hilltop chapel, statues of saints, and quaint red-tiled living cottages. La Catedral feels today like a meditation retreat, halfway to the clouds.
A blank wall beneath a concrete overhang prompts my Colombian guide, David Rendon, to pull out his phone. “Look,” he says. He shows me a picture he took just months ago of the same wall—covered with a blown-up photo mural of drug lord and native son Pablo Escobar and the message, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Cautionary and repentant though the message seemed, the monks have since removed it. “They don’t want to be related to it anymore,” Rendon says. A few feet away from the newly blank wall, there’s another banner that proclaims, “Atone for our sins, and we will save our souls.”
An aerial view of La Catedral.
If there is a sin that the city of Medellín still feels the need to atone for, it is named Escobar. Half a lifetime ago, La Catedral was his notorious pleasure-palace-cum-prison. In 1991, he presented himself here for a negotiated prison term that was supposed to last five years. But it was incarceration on his terms, and the South American jungle is only just starting to reclaim the final remains of the excesses of what was called “Hotel Escobar.” There’s a frayed soccer net, a wooden stable that once housed prize horses, and a plaque that reads, “Ruins of one of the pleasure rooms, with its round and rotating bed.”
La Catedral’s evolution reflects Colombia’s uneasy relationship with its past and its doubts about the future. Understandably, many Colombians resent the way Escobar and his fellow criminals have come to define their national identity. Some are eager to move on, to transform, to escape a gawking, bloody tourism in favor of something more enduring or inspiring. “Our presence here means that we are committed to cleanse the face of Envigado, to apologize for that turbulent past, not only here but throughout the city and the country,” a priest from the monastery, Gilberto Jaramillo Mejía, told Colombian daily El Tiempo when it was established. …
Will 2019 be the Year of Men?
WOE IS MEN
A protester sits on the lap of “Lady Justice” on the steps of the US Supreme Court.
One year ago, people got woke—or so the story goes. After the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed a slew of sexual assault and sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, countless women were moved to share their personal experiences of harassment and abuse on social media under the hashtag #MeToo. A movement was born.
#MeToo made me nervous. While it’s imperative to eradicate abuse, it seemed to me then that women were falling into a dangerous trap, sharing tales of our subjugation and humiliation for the titillation of a culture ultimately indifferent to women’s dignity or safety.
I refused to say #MeToo, not because I’ve never dealt with abuses of power, but because I have and wouldn’t voluntarily grant anyone the opportunity to contemplate my humiliation or dismiss me as a mere victim. And I worried that as #MeToo unfolded, it was playing into an ancient narrative written by men, for men. In this story, if women are to be heard at all, it’s only when we talk about men and sex.
If the hashtag had been less polite—a rebel yell like #FuckYou—I might have found it more inspiring. Still, after a while, I got used to the idea that sharing our horror stories might somehow lead to recognition of our inherent equality. Women seemed galvanized and unified by the hashtag activism. I wondered if I’d been impatient, wanting to skip steps and get to the part where we’re all humans instead of acknowledging the need for course correction.
Maybe, I thought, #MeToo was provoking change after all. …
A hoax that targeted feminist scholarship accidentally revealed a bigger problem with academia
THE “GRIEVANCE STUDY” AFFAIR
James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian, who conducted the hoax.
Why do men go to Hooters? This hardly seems like an academic question.
How about: “An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant?” That has a certain scholarly ring.
The latter was the title of one of several papers published in credible journals over the past year, but were revealed to be a hoax earlier this month. Others include a discussion of canine rape culture at a dog park; a proposal of a theory that encouraging men to anally self-penetrate would combat transphobia; and a paper on “Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism” that replaced the anti-Semitic phrases in Hitler’s Mein Kamf with feminist buzzwords. In total, seven of the 20 false papers the hoaxters submitted were accepted by peer-reviewed journals.
The group behind the hoax—Helen Pluckrose, editor of the online magazine Aero, James Lindsay, an author and mathematician, and Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University—wrote in Aero that they conducted the scheme to expose unscientific ideologies in areas of academia they call “grievance studies.” Fields of cultural and identity studies are overly invested in revealing “power imbalances and oppression” rooted in gender, race, and sexuality, they claim, at the expense of examining the evidence. The hoax, they said, proved they were right.
Others disagreed. The “Sokal Squared” hoax, as it’s been termed (named after an earlier hoax by Alan Sokal), has led to a fierce debate between those who believe the pranked journals should be embarrassed, and those condemning the hoaxters themselves. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a collection of responses from academics this week, with such conflicting headlines as “In Defense of Hoaxes” and “A Hollow Exercise in Mean-Spirited Mockery.” …
The Creepiest (True?) Story I’ve Ever Heard
“What’s the creepiest real story you’ve ever heard? After all, you’ve written what NPR called one of the 100 best horror novels of all time, and are often called the Executive Vice President of Modern Horror. So what scares you?” That is a great question, and it’s kind of weird that no one has ever actually asked any part of it. I do have an answer, in case someone ever does.
The creepiest true story I’ve ever heard is the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. Not because of what happened that night, but because of what happened after …
5. It’s A Chilling Tale That Changed The World (But Not, Like, In A Good Way)
“Oh, those eyes. They’re there in my brain … I was told to close my eyes because I saw two eyes coming close to mine, and I felt like the eyes had pushed into my eyes … All I see are these eyes … I’m not even afraid that they’re not connected to a body. They’re just there.”
-Barney Hill, under hypnosis.
First, I don’t believe aliens have visited Earth, or that ghosts haunt houses, or that demons possess people. I think if psychics could actually predict the future, they’d drive nicer cars. I don’t think ventriloquist dummies are really alive; I think it’s something the guy is doing with his voice. What I’m saying is that I think of myself as a skeptic, but still find the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction story terrifying.
Everything that we now think of as standard for an alien abduction — the short “grey” aliens with big black eyes, the anal probings, the “missing time” — it all came from this one incident. The fact that there are two names involved is the key; one person’s brain can shit itself in any number of ways, but how does that happen simultaneously to two people with no history of mental illness or wild claims? If it was a hoax, why did they spend years resisting every chance to go public with it?
Seriously, what the fuck is going on here?
Let’s start from the beginning …
When Pop-Up Books Taught Popular Science
Before they were relegated to the domain of children, books with movable mechanisms explained anatomy, astronomy, and more to adults. An Object Lesson.
Today, books with pop-up illustrations—flaps to be lifted, tabs to be pulled, and wheels to be turned—form a small niche of the book market. Mostly, pop-up books are meant to get young children interested in books and reading. Once that interest is kindled, they are discarded for more sophisticated reading material.
The charm and whimsy of pop-ups might seem far removed from the dry seriousness of technical literature. But during the first three centuries of printing, from about 1450 to 1750, most pop-ups appeared in scientific books. Moveable paper parts were once used to explain the movements of the moon, the five regular geometric solids, the connections between the eye and the brain, and more. Although there are examples in medieval manuscripts, pop-ups became prominent during the age of print, when there was a rising demand for books on scientific subjects.
The invention of printing was accompanied by a surge in literacy and book ownership. Readers expanded beyond the small, wealthy, educated elite that held medieval manuscripts. These new readers were hungry for knowledge. Scientific, technical, and medical books aimed at the general public (as opposed to academic or specialist readers) were among the most popular types of books produced during the early era of print.
But popular science books posed some new challenges for both authors and readers. Since antiquity, teachers had held that scientific subjects were best learned through pictures and working models. Beginners needed to see, touch, and manipulate the objects of study. Teachers of astronomy and mathematics, for example, had long employed three-dimensional models and instruments in their classrooms. Anatomy instructors had used the bodies of humans and animals to illustrate their lessons. For this reason, many scientific, mathematical, and medical books were richly illustrated. …
The Magic Leap Con
“Today, our world feels divided.” Rony Abovitz, CEO of the infamous mixed reality startup Magic Leap stood awkwardly on a circular stage, surrounded by hundreds of attendees of his company’s first developer conference, and first major public-facing event, eyeing a teleprompter, arms behind his back. “It feels broken,” he said. “Our new medium of spatial computing feels fresh. It doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that are dominating the news today.”
That, of course, is debatable. Few companies can attract titanic levels of investment, spawn years of breathless, myth-making press coverage, slowly frustrate its own fan base, get slapped with workplace-related lawsuits, and drift perilously towards becoming an industry-wide punchline without releasing a single product—all while retaining a $6 billion valuation. Magic Leap somehow managed to pull it off.
The Florida-based company was once the trendiest, most enigmatic entity in tech—in the mid-2010s, I remember hearing stories of friends of friends of someone they knew trying this augmented reality thing, and it was awesome—riding the wave of a half bil of Google cash, delighted reactions to concept videos, and an ejaculatory Wired cover story. At the heart of it was Abovitz, who drummed up anticipation for Leap by, say, comparing the company to NASA during the moonshot. “The space program had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, and we’re in our Apollo phase,” he told Fast Company in 2014. Abovitz describes Magic Leap as producing “cinematic reality,” which he has long proclaimed will beget “a complete shift in visual computing.”
After years of intense secrecy and relative silence, in August, Magic Leap finally launched its flagship product, a mixed reality rig featuring goggles, a control wand, and clip-on computer pack, to developers, who could purchase it for $2,295. This week, the company held its inaugural developer conference, to try to entice third-party creators, and to introduce the gear to a wider audience. In many ways, this is the final stage of the product’s public debut. In 2015, Abovitz told Wired, “When we launch it, it is going to be huge.” After spending two days at LEAPcon, I feel it is my duty—in the name of instilling a modicum of sanity into an age where a company that has never actually sold a product to a consumer can be worth a billion dollars more than the entire GDP of Fiji—to inform you that it is not. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
We follow 18 year-old John Kraus, a world famous rocket launch photographer as he tries to perfect a shot that’s eluded him for years.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Atlas does parkour. The control software uses the whole body including legs, arms and torso, to marshal the energy and strength for jumping over the log and leaping up the steps without breaking its pace. (Step height 40 cm.) Atlas uses computer vision to locate itself with respect to visible markers on the approach to hit the terrain accurately. For more information visit www.BostonDynamics.com.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Here’s me commentary on an Alpaca in a hole. Cheers!
珍しくゆとりのある箱で寝るまる。Maru sleeps in the box!
FINALLY . . .
Gamified life
From scoreboards to trackers, games have infiltrated work, serving as spies, overseers and agents of social control
Deep under the Disneyland Resort Hotel in California, far from the throngs of happy tourists, laundry workers clean thousands of sheets, blankets, towels and comforters every day. Workers feed the heavy linens into hot, automated presses to iron out wrinkles, and load dirty laundry into washers and dryers large enough to sit in. It’s loud, difficult work, but bearable. The workers were protected by union contracts that guaranteed a living wage and affordable healthcare, and many had worked decades at the company. They were mostly happy to work for Disney.
This changed in 2008. The union contracts were up, and Disney wouldn’t renew without adjustments. One of the changes involved how management tracked worker productivity. Before, employees would track how many sheets or towels or comforters the workers washed, dried or folded on paper notes turned in at the end of the day. But Disney was replacing that system with an electronic tracking system that monitored their progress in real time.
Electronic monitoring wasn’t unusual in the hotel business. But Disney took the highly unusual step of displaying the productivity of their workers on scoreboards all over the laundry facilities, says Austin Lynch, director of organising for Unite Here Local 11. According to Lynch, every worker’s name was compared with the names of coworkers, each one colour-coded like traffic signals. If you were keeping up with the goals of management, your name was displayed in green. If you slowed down, your name was in yellow. If you were behind, your name was in red. Managers could see the monitors from their office, and change production targets from their computers. Each laundry machine would also monitor the rate of worker input, and flash red and yellow lights at the workers directly if they slowed down.
‘They had a hard time ignoring it,’ said Beatriz Topete, a union organiser for Unite Here Local 11 at the time. ‘It pushes you mentally to keep working. It doesn’t give you breathing space.’ Topete recalled an incident where she was speaking to workers on the night shift, feeding hand-towels into a laundry machine. Every time the workers slowed down, the machine would flash at them. They told her they felt like they couldn’t stop.
The workers called this ‘the electronic whip’. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?