In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Some extremely rich people, including Jeff Bezos, will take a round trip to space next week. Interestingly, the person who won the space travel ticket at an auction (for $28 million, mind you) has canceled due to “scheduling conflicts.” Well, they can always take the next flight out to outer space, right?
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The call to cancel the Olympics grows louder in light of Covid19 — weeks before the Games are set to begin this month. For years, critics have objected to the notion of the Games, equating it with unnecessary extravagance. As one person puts it: “It’s a corporate cash cow” — and the bulge feels more evident than ever during a public health crisis.
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Hercules is one of the most powerful people in Greek mythology — he is, after all, the son of God Zeus. But Disney’s plans for carrying his story through fiction and time involved a character modification. On the silver screen, Hercules has “the shoulders of an ox, a heart of gold, and zero brains. A complete himbo, in other words.”
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You can’t tell the story of the internet in India without hinting at the “frandship” trope — shorthand for men creepily trying to woo women online. The nostalgia of the 90s internet reflects how women’s agency has fared along the way. On the internet, the line between finding love and avoiding danger is, alas, worryingly thin.
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Twitter’s launch 15 years ago changed how people communicated online. The Black community has become one of its most influential groups; a people’s history of Black Twitter shows how an “online network became a pop culture juggernaut, an engine of social justice, and a lens into the future.”
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We’re so familiar with the story of the Wright brothers invented the airplane, an author notes, “that the miraculous nature of their achievement goes unheralded.” Their intellectual genius relied a lot on quarrels — without the human trait to disagree, the airplane might never have come to take flight.
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An archivist’s worst nightmare came true when she sneezed on a 150-year-old text. It led her to ask other colleagues of their “horror stories” (someone bled from a paper cut, another put it through a photocopier). Does history lose anything? “Even something that destroyed the document can make it more interesting and more valuable.”
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Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui’s death feels personal to many. A selection of his pictures — from the small joys of watching DDLJ in Maratha Mandir to the pathos of conflicts — lays bare the intimacy, humanity, and clarity of thought. In there is an account of the Indian story: bold, personal, and dignified.
