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The Idylls of Prison, and Other News

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On the Shelf

Alyse_Emdur_9

Alyse Emdur, Anonymous Backdrop Painted in State Correctional Facility, Otisville, New York. Image via Beautiful Decay.

  • Who owns the moon? It could be you! (It’s probably not you.)
  • The National Enquirer’s sixties covers show how the language of scandal has evolved—what used to pass as odious is now just sort of quaint. “I’M A SLOB. I Burp & Slurp in Public,” says one headline. The horror.
  • Brian Eno has chosen twenty essential books for saving civilization; I’ve read zero of them.
  • “I thought at the time it was really bad luck to survive. I really wanted to die with them.” An interview with a kamikaze pilot.
  • The surreal world of prison portraiture: “visitation rooms of penitentiaries have backdrops where friends and family can get pictures taken of/with the inmate … Often, these backgrounds are idyllic landscapes that offer the inmate a moment to emotionally escape their sentence.”