Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
Carrying out executions took a secret toll on workers — then changed their politics (Chiara Eisner / NPR)
Nobody in the death chamber had expected Pedro Medina’s head to catch fire. Like the electrician at Florida State Prison had done dozens of times before, on that day in 1997, he had soaked a sponge with saline before applying it to the top of Medina’s scalp, to help conduct electricity and avoid a spark. But after the flames started rising around Medina’s face, something had to be decided. Behind the secret curtain that hid the staff from view, the electrician looked to the warden, Ron McAndrew, for instruction: Should he stop the machine of the electric chair, or not?
“Once the smoke and the fire came out of the helmet, of course, there was no turning back,” McAndrew said. “It was awful.”
McAndrew said the stress of witnessing that execution and seven others caused his fingers and heels to crack and drove him to drink a bottle of scotch a day. It’s been 25 years since the death chamber filled with the smell of a man burning. Though he couldn’t stop Medina’s execution after it started, he still feels responsible for what happened.
Beware of the Perfect Gentleman (RF Jurjevics / Vice)
By the time Geras listened to the threatening voicemail, he knew what was behind it. A number of women were convinced that they were in an online, romantic relationship with Geras, despite the fact that he is openly gay and had never been in touch with any of them before. The women claimed to have met him on a dating app, social media platform, or a less-expected online space, like an app-based word or puzzle game (Words With Friends is popular with scammers)—anything with a chat feature. What the women didn’t know was that the 50-something fellow with the goatee who smiled back at them in photograph after photograph wasn’t the same person they were speaking with. Their charming lover was a scripted character used by gangs of overseas fakers to bilk cash from unsuspecting romantics, and Geras’ stolen photos were the bait.
Carl Sagan, 1990, Global Warming and Military Budget (WisdomThroughKnowledge)
@wisdomthroughknowledge Carl Sagan 1990 – Global Warming and Military Budget – Climate Observations Pt. 3 #science #globalwarming #greenhouse #effect #military #war #money #budget #planet #earth #carlsagan ##wisdom #thru #knowledge #wknowledge ♬ original sound – WisdomThroughKnowledge
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