Re: Mr. X

1

I have questions about his family's motives in responding to the story. It seems like he left the institution in the hopes of finding a warm family home to return to, and that that wasn't actually available. He didn't know that due to whatever mysterious brain damage he had, but his brother and sister surely did, especially if the author's suggestion that they didn't really look for him when he went missing is correct. What did they think was going to happen? I don't mean to say they were evil or anything, I'm just honestly curious.

It's sad, because it seems like he would've been happier staying in the life he'd made at Whitfield, but once the family showed up that was obviously not an option.


Posted by: Osgood Yousbad | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 8:34 AM
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2

People say "Pennsyl-tucky" here to mean the middle part of the state. It's arguably rude, but fuck it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 9:47 AM
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3

This is a terrific paragraph:

In 1905, Will's younger brother Walter was put on trial for the murder of his employer, Harris Beiman. In addition to working in Beiman's dry goods store, Walter boarded at his house. Walter admitted to shooting Beiman, but he claimed it was an accident. Eyewitnesses, however, recalled the dying man saying to Walter, "You shot me! I know you want to marry my wife!" Walter was found not guilty, and he returned to his position at the store, which Beiman's widow had taken over. They soon married, and Walter began running the business.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 9:48 AM
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4

It's nice to see things work out for a couple.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 9:55 AM
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5

3 some dreams do come true!


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 9:59 AM
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6

Really well written, thanks for sharing. She mentions that no editor has yet agreed to publish the novel, seems a shame, but I hear that getting a novel published is not especially easy.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 10:02 AM
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7

That's really great. I have also found a lot of interesting stuff via that Firefox algorithm, even though I use Chrome for most things.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 10:25 AM
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8

You're right about the perfect paragraph, LB


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 10:30 AM
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9

Agreed with everyone in the thread so far.

1
What did they think was going to happen?

I can think of two main guesses for why his family did what they did.

1. They had no role in his disappearance, or no direct/intentional role. They were sincerely saddened when he disappeared - yet another misfortune; they seemed unlucky even beyond most people in the great Depression - and happy to find him again. They tried to welcome him back and make a home for him, but it continued to be unwelcoming. Maybe more crazy traumas like before, maybe just general poverty and mundane dysfunctional family stuff. 10 years passed between leaving the mental hospital and getting decapitated by a train. That's a long time to be old, poor, and partially brain-damaged.

2. His family did have something to do with his disappearance. When they heard about him on the radio, amnesiac and looking for them, they either regretted it (but if so, they hadn't fixed the underlying issues in the meantime) or figured they could parlay the discovery into money somehow.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 11:32 AM
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10

1, 9: I see the family's story as a prehistoric instance of the seduction of becoming famous for fifteen minutes, decades before Andy Warhol possibly said something about that happening in the future (Mr. google suggests maybe he didn't say it), and more decades before blogs and the rest. In 1939, nationwide radio-- the first mass media -- was about as new as Facebook is today. The family accepted a chance to be on national radio that required them to play the role of the loving family that had been searching for their brother for years without success. They probably didn't give much thought to how closely the picture fit their lives, or what would happen next.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 12:24 PM
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11

Boy did that miscalculation come back to bite them in the butt nearly 90 years later on an obscure eclectic webzine!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 12:54 PM
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12

The paragraph in 3 is great, but don't undersell this, which has caused me for the first time to question my own choice to keep a parlor rifle:
"In 1909, Clay Lawrence, the four-year-old son of Will's brother Dawson, shot and killed his nurse while playing with a parlor rifle."


Posted by: chill | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 6:41 PM
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13

By the 70s, we didn't keep a separate rifle for the parlor. We just dragged the one from the kitchen into the living room if we needed it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 6:45 PM
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14

OMG so declasse.


Posted by: Ajay | Link to this comment | 10- 8-21 11:46 PM
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15

I don't even have a parlour


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 2:14 AM
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16

A contact at Mozilla recently told me that it's actually not an algorithm - they want to have machine learning do it, and everyone assumes that it's machine learning already, but without Google-scale resources it's hard to get good results, so for now there's just this one person who has a knack for finding interesting articles and puts up a new list every day.


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 8:45 AM
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17

Wow. So are the suggestions tailored to people in any way? Or is everyone getting these suggestions and it just happens that this person aligns with me and teo pretty well?


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 8:53 AM
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18

It's really neat how they can train a person to replace a computer.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 9:12 AM
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19

I laughed.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 10:11 AM
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20

But not for things that require real intelligence


Posted by: Nw | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 10:42 AM
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21

I laugh for those as well.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 10:55 AM
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22

I just learned a new phrase for trying to see without your glasses, "raw-dogging light." That's the kind of thing a computer can't make.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 10:56 AM
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23

Unless you explained venereal disease to it very carefully.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 11:01 AM
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24

16: A person with the Internet in their back pocket posting interesting links? What'll they think of next!


Posted by: Todd | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 1:30 PM
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25

Firefox keeps giving me a link to a story about a Marcella Hazan recipe for sauce where you cook tomatoes with an onion and then throw the onion away before serving. That seems wasteful and I don't understand why you don't just dice the onion and leave it in the sauce.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 1:41 PM
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26

You don't even have to dice it. It'll be nice and soft after all that cooking and big chunks are just fine.


Posted by: Osgood Yousbad | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 7:19 PM
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27

The recipe I use for refried beans calls for boiling the beans with half an onion then throwing the onion away. The first time I did it I just left the onion in there and it mashed up fine with the beans (and the sauteed onions that you add in later). Not sure why they called for throwing it away.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 10- 9-21 11:54 PM
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28

27: Conspicuous consumption.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 1:20 AM
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29

25/6. I suppose the point of throwing away the onion is to make it a bit oniony but not very much. Hazan is dear to me, but she does tend to moderate her seasonings rather a lot. I'd leave the onion in for our tastes.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 4:16 AM
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30

It's nor like they grow on trees.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 5:36 AM
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31

Just realized Marcella Hazan is not Nigella Lawson.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 6:56 AM
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32

All Italians don't look the same.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 7:28 AM
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33

32 is true, but Nigella Lawson is British. Her father, Nigel Lawson, was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 8:29 AM
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34

It's great how with hard work she could rise from that background to become Italian. It be most of Thatcher's peoples' kids are total asses.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 8:37 AM
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35

TIL that "posh" is a country.


Posted by: Chetan Murthy | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 1:51 PM
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36

17: I should ask, but I'm pretty sure there's no personalization whatsoever; everyone gets the same articles, and you and teo are just a good fit for Median Firefox User. (So am I, to be fair.) I think there must be a Barnum effect-type cognitive bias at play.


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 7:10 PM
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37

https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-recommendations-faq#why


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 7:13 PM
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38

They do a good job. I read a fair number of those articles.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-10-21 7:33 PM
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39

||

Now that they've given the Nobel Prize in Economics to the economist who showed that minimum wage increases don't necessarily cause unemployment 30 years ago, maybe people will catch on to the fact that the consensus among economists for years is that minimum wage increases don't necessarily cause unemployment.

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Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 3:18 AM
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40

People caught onto that long ago, but people who don't want to pay a living wage will continue to lie about it for as long as some sucker will believe them.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 3:53 AM
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41

One of the guys was raised in Squirrel Hill.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 5:27 AM
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42

One of the guys who won, not one who doesn't want to pay a living wage.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 5:28 AM
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43

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Oh great! My sister (fully vaccinated) has covid.
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Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 10:14 AM
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44

Yikes. Hoping for the best.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 10:23 AM
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45

Hopefully the vaccination will keep it mild.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 10:23 AM
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46

Good wishes to your sister


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 11:52 AM
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47

Oh gosh, yes I hope she stays feeling okay.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 10-11-21 12:38 PM
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48

She says temperature and headache mainly. They say that the vaccines do make it milder if you get it anyway, so fingers crossed.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 10-12-21 4:13 AM
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