Don't Bogart My Blog: Sunday Best: Enter the land where the internet ends

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Sunday Best: Enter the land where the internet ends

Going off the grid is harder than it used to be.

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Sunday, June 23, 2019

NYTimes.com/Opinion »

Do you ever share this newsletter on Facebook? The company is now arguing that sharing anything on its social network means you are forfeiting every expectation of privacy. (Yes, really.) "Facebook and the rest of Big Tech built their empires by prioritizing innovation and embracing a mind-set that enormous, systemic challenges ("solving death," driverless cars, bringing the world closer together) can be solved through processing power, code and a reimagining of what's possible," Charlie Warzel writes. "It's a mentality that treats complex physical world issues as software; everything can be updated." Everything, it seems, except the definition of privacy. — Alexandra March

The Key to Musical Genius? For Him, It Was a Plastic Lobster

Scott Gelber

By ERROL MORRIS

"It's not enough to have the skill to play the piano. Something more is needed," Errol Morris writes. A plastic lobster is exactly what the musical genius Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter needed to perform.

This Is the Land Where the Internet Ends

This polar-aligned telescope in Green Bank, W. Va., rides on a gear that spins to the west as the Earth spins toward the east.

By PAGAN KENNEDY AND DAMON WINTER

Want to really go off the grid? You'll have to look far to do so. Or at least as far as Green Bank, W.Va., "a town that adheres to the strictest ban on technology in the United States."

Is It Time for You to Write a Rage Postcard?

An Rong Xu for The New York Times

By ELISABETH EGAN

"My routine is the same every morning: I wake up, pour a cup of coffee and write to the president — or occasionally, to another politician. This month, I'll mail my 450th postcard to Washington."

Don't Tell Me When I'm Going to Die

Lucy Jones

By BJ MILLER AND SHOSHANA BERGER

After a woman found out she had stage 3 lung cancer, she made the decision to begin treatment but not get any information about her prognosis. Why? "It's a way to declare, I am alive, and it's still my right to choose what's best for me."

How to Fall and Get Back Up

Ran Zheng

By SANDRA GAIL LAMBERT

"I had fallen out of my wheelchair before. In that second between knowing no recovery is possible and hitting the ground, it works best to imagine myself having already fallen and moving on to a solution."