The New Yorker

A Stanford Law student and donkey-rights advocate infiltrates NBCUniversal’s headquarters in a bid for recognition for Perry, the donkey model for Eddie Murphy’s character in “Shrek.” https://lnkd.in/gn2RJttx

“Just as certain works of literature can radically alter our understanding of language and form, there are a select number of books that can transform our sense of what makes a photograph, and why,” Hilton Als writes. Nan Goldin’s “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is one such book—her first and best known, “a benchmark for photographers who believe, as she does, in the narrative of the self, the private and public exhibition we call ‘being.’ ” On Goldin’s birthday, revisit Als on her groundbreaking work: https://lnkd.in/g8jSNmMd

The writer Richard Powers is deeply attuned to the cataclysms that technological innovation could invite. But terror results from “not being able to escape the time frame where you can only see the earth as a story of loss,” he said. https://lnkd.in/gpsa-92y

The latest iteration of Venezuela’s long-running crisis began after the head of the National Electoral Council—an apparatchik of Nicolás Maduro—declared him the victor of the Presidential election on July 29th, with 51 per cent of the vote to 44 per cent for Edmundo González. Maduro has been Venezuela’s President since the death in office of his mentor, the strongman Hugo Chávez, in 2013. Maduro’s latest “win” will give him an additional six years in office when his current term ends, in January. Maduro’s claims are widely regarded as specious, not least because neither he nor Venezuela’s electoral council have produced any evidence to support them—namely the vote tallies. Meanwhile, the opposition has published the tallies of more than 80 per cent of the voting machines which suggest that González won by a factor of more than two. The impasse has created new political divisions that are already beginning to play out through the hemisphere. A group of countries including the European Union nations, the United States, and 13 of its allies in the Americas—Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica among them—has demanded “the immediate publication of all original records and the impartial and independent verification of those results.” But a grab bag of authoritarian regimes around the world (notably Russia, China, and Iran) and rhetorically leftist regimes in the region (Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, and Bolivia) have applauded Maduro’s reconsecration in power. Jon Lee Anderson writes about Venezuela’s disputed election and its impact on the Latin American left: https://lnkd.in/gtUXzxuG

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by @PaulNoth. #NewYorkerCartoons https://lnkd.in/gD-hPeJE

In Barry Blitt’s latest Kvetchbook, Kamala Harris sizes up the post-debate landscape. https://lnkd.in/gAv7frHs

A poem by Sandra Cisneros. https://lnkd.in/gU45pvbK

Garth Greenwell has been lauded for his depiction of sex—our “densest form of communication,” he calls it. His first two books were closely observed minuets of pleasure, power, humiliation between lovers. His latest, “Small Rain,” again reports from the site of the narrator’s body, the body in the hands of strangers—but this time, it explores the narrator’s experience being hospitalized with a rare vascular condition. “From a tale of great pain—a rare kind of story—it becomes one so difficult to render that it is thought to be impossible: a story of ordinary love, ordinary happiness,” Parul Sehgal writes. Read her full review: https://lnkd.in/gujnGrXv

In early August, Instagram doubled the maximum number of photos allowed in users’ carrousels, from ten to 20 per post, enabling the sort of sprawling so-called photo dumps that would once have felt anathema to the platform’s aura of careful curation. “Today’s Instagrammer no longer chooses one representative photo at a time, creating a grid of images just so; instead, users, especially those belonging to Gen Z, are putting up faux-messy but actually carefully selected compendia showcasing the detritus of their lives,” Kyle Chayka writes. Nonchalance achieved chalantly is nothing new, but the way it is being encouraged on social media today reflects increasing structural limitations to life online. Instagram’s algorithmic recommendations appear to favor image dumps. “When I asked my own Instagram followers why so many people were posting big albums, many said that doing so seemed to be the only way to get attention on the platform these days, though they also felt a tinge of guilt for bombarding their audiences,” Chayka writes. “One respondent described posting a single image as ‘humiliating’; another, a Gen Z-er, said that it was a ‘social risk.’ ” The 20-image dump is supplying exactly what Instagram, as a platform, needs more of: high-engagement, high-volume content. “We follow platforms’ unwritten and ever-shifting rules, and we are rewarded with more attention; we attempt to counteract the overflow of content by putting out an overflow of our own,” Chayka writes. “In the long term, the platform wins, and we’re left forcing new formats to fit our old goal of interacting with friends.” Read Chayka’s full column: https://lnkd.in/gx6har35

A cartoon by Benjamin Slyngstad. #NewYorkerCartoons See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://lnkd.in/gQ6fpGFB