Made-to-Order, Hand-Sewn, Made in the U.S.A—KKK Hoods and Robes →

Anthony Karen, writing for Mother Jones:

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

The following is a photo essay about Ms. Ruth by New York photojournalist Anthony Karen, a former Marine who has spent several years photographing members of the Ku Klux Klan. The essay includes audio of interviews with Karen and Ms. Ruth.

The pictures are fascinating, the audio clips from Ms. Ruth are terrifyingly must-listenable, and you know what—kudos to Mother Jones for the puns employed here, including “Aryan Outfitters” and “hate couture.”

Is the World Real, or Is It Just an Illusion or Hallucination? →

Marina Galperina, writing for Hopes&Fears:

Is this real life? How do we know that we are not hallucinating it all? What if we're plugged into a Matrix-style virtual reality simulator? Isn't the universe a giant hologram anyway? Is reality really real? What is reality?

We asked renowned neuroscientists, physicists, psychologists, technology theorists and hallucinogen researchers if we can ever tell whether the "reality" we are experiencing is "real" or not. Don't worry. You're going to be ok.

Your Sunday needs this.

Why Apple is Still Sweating the Details on iMac →

Steven Levy, writing for Backchannel, on Medium:

Early this year, the top-secret laboratory where Apple designs its Macintosh accessories was bedeviled by a crisis on tiny feet. It had to do with the reinvented mouse the team was designing to accompany a new set of iMac computers that will be released today. The input device, dubbed the Magic Mouse 2, would look to users exactly like the previous model. But on the inside and underneath, everything would be different, mainly because Apple was switching to a rechargeable lithium battery instead of the previous replaceable alkaline ones.
Late in the process, everything seemed to be going fine. The internal lithium battery was custom-engineered to fit the cavity. The redesigned antenna — necessary to deal with the potential interference from an internal battery — was working well.

But one thing was totally unacceptable.

The mouse didn’t sound right.

A must-read for Apple fans and an almost-must-read for design fans.

Boss Bitch(es)

First, Miranda July, in an interview with Rihanna for T Magazine:

Her lips were bright red, her long nails were pale iridescent lavender, her mascara was both white and black in a way I didn’t really understand. A rhinestone necklace against her chest read ‘‘FENTY,’’ her last name. Oumarou wasn’t the only person I had grilled about what makes Rihanna great. A lesbian art history professor told me that she’s ‘‘the real deal.’’ Others used the words ‘‘magic’’ and ‘‘epic.’’ But when I tried to get anyone to pinpoint things she had said or done — particular interviews or incidents — everyone became lost in inarticulacy. Yet another friend, referencing an episode of ‘‘Style Wars’’ that Rihanna had appeared on, concluded, ‘‘You could just tell she’s a good person.’’ None of this was all that helpful.

And then, Vanessa Grigoriadis, in a profile of Nicki Minaj:

Minaj has a shockingly beautiful and complex face, with a wide, high forehead, dark, almond-shaped eyes and deep dimples on both sides of her cheeks that materialize when she smiles. But when asked if she felt confident in her looks as a kid, she said, ‘‘Hell, no!’’ She paused. ‘‘Now, I want to take steps to become more aware of who I am, what I like or dislike about my body — why is that?’’ she said. She mentioned how insecure she felt on Instagram, ‘‘where everyone is freaking drop-dead gorgeous.’’ Don’t get her wrong, she said: Like most celebrities, she approves the pictures that appear on her Instagram and other social-media accounts. ‘‘I get that people put filters on their pictures — I definitely use filters — but I didn’t know people retouched,’’ she says, excitedly talking about being in a nightclub the other day, taking pictures with a friend, and how the friend ‘‘cleaned all the sweat off our face’’ before she posted the photo. ‘‘We’re in a club! We can have a moist, dewy-looking face.’’

I decided to link to these two pieces together not because they are similar—Rihanna and Minaj come off quite differently in the pieces, as do their interviewers—but for the pure simple please of  seeing an outlet like The New York Times publishing them so closely together (a week apart), admitting that these are the pop cultural forces of nature that our society needs to reckon with and understand more. That’s progress.

The Chains of Mental Illness in West Africa →

Benedict Carey, writing for The New York Times:

Every society struggles to care for people with mental illness. In parts of West Africa, where psychiatry is virtually unknown, the chain is often a last resort for desperate families who cannot control a loved one in the grip of psychosis. Religious retreats, known as prayer camps, set up makeshift psychiatric wards, usually with prayer as the only intervention. Nine camps visited recently in Togo ranged from small family operations to this one, Jesus Is the Solution, by far the largest and most elaborate.

“We try to talk people out of going to the camps,” said Dr. Simliwa Kolou Valentin Dassa, Togo’s director of mental health services, “but we cannot tell them to stop if there’s no alternative.”

Any time you might feel guilty—navel gaze-ish—about the ability of the Western World to focus on and treat mental health issues, force yourself to be thankful. There are people outside of your worldview who are not nearly as fortunate.

The sicario: A Juárez Hit Man Speaks →

I’ve been on a Mexican drug trafficking story binge lately—and I think Scott Carrier has too. This piece comes via this tweet:

If you're interested in The Sicario, I suggest Charles Bowden's version The sicario | Harper's Magazine http://t.co/48PwYjBxj8 via @Harpers

It’s such a fantastic piece; just crackling with energy. And if you like Bowden’s voice, check out the podcast episode that Carrier devoted to him: “An Introduction to Charles Bowden.”

What ‘The Apprentice’ Taught Donald Trump About Campaigning →

James Poniewozik, writing for The New York Times:

Like reality TV itself, Mr. Trump is a love-or-hate proposition. In a general election, true, you need much more than 23 percent of the vote (which is Mr. Trump’s number in a recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll of the Republican field). But in today’s television, a 23 share is a landslide — and in a crowded primary in an ideologically fragmented party, it is large enough for first place.

Understanding these dynamics has let Mr. Trump reverse the polarity of primary campaigning.

There’s a lot of truth here, and personally, I think it applies to a bunch of candidates; not just Trump.

The Year We Obsessed Over Identity →

Wesley Morris, writing for The New York Times Magazine:

What started this flux? For more than a decade, we’ve lived with personal technologies — video games and social-media platforms — that have helped us create alternate or auxiliary personae. We’ve also spent a dozen years in the daily grip of makeover shows, in which a team of experts transforms your personal style, your home, your body, your spouse. There are TV competitions for the best fashion design, body painting, drag queen. Some forms of cosmetic alteration have become perfectly normal, and there are shows for that, too. Our reinventions feel gleeful and liberating — and tied to an essentially American optimism. After centuries of women living alongside men, and of the races living adjacent to one another, even if only notionally, our rigidly enforced gender and racial lines are finally breaking down. There’s a sense of fluidity and permissiveness and a smashing of binaries. We’re all becoming one another. Well, we are. And we’re not.

This piece is about music, movies, television, race, gender, identity, America—pop culture writing at its best. What a great time to be alive.

What’s Worse Than Paid App Updates? →

Dan Edwards, writing on Medium:

We’ve all seen this, and although perhaps overused to compare app value, it’s safe to say it’s a fair argument. A large majority of people who would consider buying Tweetbot would also regularly spend $5 on a coffee, a craft beer, a quick lunch or much much more on pretty much any new version of a console game.

So why are people attacking indie developers for this?

Stop complaining about people trying to make a living. Or better yet, if you don’t like it, build it yourself.

Donald Trump is Not Going Anywhere →

Mark Leibovich, writing for The New York Times:

It was at this point that I began to feel glad I decided to write about Trump, who seemed to have clearly seized on some profound exhaustion with our politics. There’s very little difference between Trump when he’s not running for president and Trump now that he is running for president, except that he makes more public appearances. Trump is the same boorish, brash and grandiose showman we’ve known across many realms. And for some reason, that character has proved an incendiary match with this political moment. It was a repeat of what I saw that night of the first debate, when the whole room abandoned the professional campaign surrogates in favor of the blazing chaos of Trump himself. Was Trump the logical byproduct of a cancerous system in which American democracy has mutated into a gold rush of cheap celebrity, wealth creation and narcissistic branding madness? Or has he merely wielded the tools of this transformation — his money, celebrity and dominance of the media — against the forces that have engendered this disgust in the system to begin with?

I’m starting to wonder if a Trump presidency would be worth it simply for the vast amount of great writing it would inspire.

/via Daring Fireball