IT'S A SATURDAY NIGHT in August, and Walter Isaacson is sitting in the back of Lilette, a restaurant on Magazine Street in his hometown of New Orleans, swizzling a Sazerac. "The question for a biographer," he tells me, holding forth a little, "is to show how the demons of a person are totally connected to the drive that gets their rockets to orbit. People who are driven by demons get shit done."
Isaacson was the editor of Time magazine in the 1990s, a decade or so before the internet wrecked the print party. He was running CNN when 9/11 happened and then landed in 2003 at the Aspen Institute, where, for 14 years, he was the impresario of its thought-leader confabs. But he's long had a side hustle writing biographies of Great Men: Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci-as well as one Great Woman, biochemist Jennifer Doudna.
On September 12, Isaacson's latest will be published, about Elon Musk, a man many take to be something of a demon himself-erratic, vindictive, and exhibiting little impulse control. His moods can have far-reaching implications for, say, the Ukrainian army, which depends on his Starlink satellites to fight Russia. Many others hail him as a demigod trying to get humanity to Mars while battling evil AI and dating many hot babes in the process. But if you're somewhere in between, trying to figure out if he is becoming a Bond villain or still that Tony Stark-like figure many people assume him to be, Isaacson's book is not designed to help you sort it out.
Esta historia es de la edición September 11 - 24, 2023 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición September 11 - 24, 2023 de New York magazine.
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Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
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A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
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In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
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The Funniest Vampires on TV
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The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
