Longreads

2 days ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

With just a few hundred people, the town of Galisteo is probably better known to art fans and film location scouts than it is to most New Mexicans. But that hasn’t stopped 88-year-old force of nature Lucy Lippard from publishing the weekly local paper El Puente de Galisteo for almost three decades. For CJR, Lucy Schiller visits Lippard to find out more about the long-running, nearly single-handed labor of love.

2 days ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

Frank Vera III served in the Air Force. Frank Vera III has health problems. Frank Vera III claims that those health problems trace directly from his time at George Air Force Base, that the U.S. military refuses to take responsibility for any of it, and that the tribe of similarly afflicted veterans he has gathered constitutes proof. Maddie Crowell doesn’t know what to think.

3 days ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

Earlier this month, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Agency unveiled new maps for the city’s famously complex subway system—well, diagrams, technically, since they’re too abstracted to be considered maps. The new design marks the first major visual overhaul since 1979; ironically enough, it’s based on Massimo Vignelli’s predecessor, which riled straphangers almost immediately after its 1972 debut (but enthralled designers).

1 week ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

In the interest of not making this about me, I’ll just say that I empathize with anyone who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder—let alone anyone whose life has been completely upended by it the way Timmy Reen’s has. Joseph Goldstein’s feature is no less affecting for its reportorial remove, chronicling how the disease shaped Reen long before the advent of COVID brought things to a breaking point.

1 week ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

You’ve already seen how “diffusion” AI models have made it simple to generate illustrations, lifelike photos, and even videos. What that technology means for music is nearing an inflection point—and so is our understanding of what “creativity” really is. For MIT Tech Review, James O’Donnell unpacks the debate, and blind-tests colleagues and experts to see if they can identify AI-generated music. He also manages to make me (and surely other music fans) very, very uncomfortable.