The Ghosts Of War
Happy Halloween, I suppose. Here is the October Zaleski Minute. You know the drill: If it takes you longer than 60 seconds to get through this, complain to management.
What I Was Writing:
For MIT Technology Review: Meet Ray, the first war veteran to receive a full penis transplant. The surgery resides at the radical frontier of organ transplantation. (It’s been successfully performed just four times.) But bomb blasts from below, like those experienced by thousands of American soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, leave more men than before with major genitourinary trauma — and feeling like specters of their former selves. “This was actually something that could fix me,” says Ray. “I could go back to being normal again.”
For Elemental: A dangerous dietary supplement. More than $400 million in profit. A trail of fraud and misdirection. And a handful of deaths. The inside story of the rise and fall of USP Labs, a Texas supplement manufacturer tracked for years by the federal government before it was finally taken down in 2015.
For Curbed: So you’re thinking of buying a new RV? Well, you should maybe, probably, most definitely not do that: “The rule, typically, is don’t buy a new RV. If you buy a new RV, you’re going to be sitting in a dealership for two years getting it fixed.”
And Now For Something Different:
Read this delightful profile of Adam Driver (aka Kylo Ren), Hollywood’s newest leading man: “Despite his stolid presence, his characters are often thwarted and befuddled—high-strung alpha males driven by an ancient code of valor but tripped up by contemporary frustrations, like a Cro-Magnon man airdropped into Bed-Stuy and handed the wrong person’s latte.”