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Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“Desperate Families Search for Affordable Home Care” (NYT)
Because this is an excellent series on caring for dependents, and I know many of you will relate.
There is precious little assistance from the government for families who need a home health aide unless they are poor. The people working in these jobs are often woefully underpaid and unprepared to help a frail, elderly person with dementia to bathe and use the bathroom, or to defuse an angry outburst. Usually, it is family that steps into the breach — grown children who cobble together a fragile chain of visitors to help an ailing father; a middle-aged daughter who returns to her childhood bedroom; a son-in-law working from home who keeps a watchful eye on a confused parent; a wife who can barely manage herself looking after a faltering husband.
“Their Bodies Were Donated to Harvard. Then They Went Missing” (Rolling Stone)
Because Breanna Erlich tells about the awful story of how bodies donated to science end up sold to oddities expos and the effects it has on families.
Were those ashes — the ones they’d received in a plain black box in the mail from Harvard, the ones they’d so carefully divided up among their family members to scatter at sea, the last remaining physical presence of their mother — possibly not even their mother at all?
“The Hybrid Car Dilemma” (The Atlantic)
Because are hybrid vehicles here to stay? Will manufactuers meet demand?
Given this surge in popularity, you might think that every carmaker would be eager to offer more hybrids to customers who are looking to lower their carbon footprint but who feel unable to make the full leap to EVs. Nope. Enter what you might call the hybrid dilemma. Faced with enormous costs pivoting their businesses to make EVs, strong sales for gas cars, and shareholders who demand profitability, the auto industry can’t decide whether hybrids are a bridge to an all-electric future or a dead end. At some point, Americans may still want hybrids while carmakers have already moved beyond them.
“A Mourner’s Thesaurus” (The Offing)
Because this is a beautiful and heart-wrenching essay from Jackie Domenus her experience with the death of her cousin.
Yearn, v.
Synonyms: desire strongly, ache
At family parties now, we get ready to have cake and someone says, “Is everyone here?”
“Yup,” someone else answers.
And I wish that were true, but someone is always missing.
“Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit” (NYT)
Because this is a fascinating and must-read piece on the big AI debates from Cade Metz, Karen Weise, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac.
With a rasp of frustration, Mr. Page insisted his utopia should be pursued. Finally he called Mr. Musk a “specieist,” a person who favors humans over the digital life-forms of the future. That insult, Mr. Musk said later, was “the last straw.” Many in the crowd seemed gobsmacked, if amused, as they dispersed for the night, and considered it just another one of those esoteric debates that often break out at Silicon Valley parties. But eight years later, the argument between the two men seems prescient.
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