Required Reading

• On Election day, architecture professor Michelle Young took a trip to the Donald J. Trump State Park to investigate the abandoned Gilded Age estate there. She writes:

Size wise, Donald J. Trump Park is slightly larger than the new Shirley Chisholm State Park in Queens (407 acres) and slightly smaller than Trail View State Park (454 acres) which extends across both Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. The park is also situated in the New York City watershed zone, just a few miles far from the Croton Reservoir which supplies drinking water to the city.

According to The New York Times, “in 2002, Mr. Trump withdrew plans to build a $10 million private golf course on land that included significant portions of wetlands, after encountering strict environmental restrictions and permitting requirements. He blamed the Yorktown supervisor, Linda Cooper, for thwarting his plans, telling her in a letter that she had ‘done a terrible disservice’ to her constituents.” Ms. Cooper countered in the Times, saying “that Mr. Trump ‘just didn’t want to go through the rules. He called me, at one point and said, ‘Linda, just let me build the golf course — I’m rich, you’ll like it.’” Instead, Trump donated the land to New York State in 2006 while George Pataki was governor.

• A very good documentary on the history of “Human Zoos,” which is closely related to modern museums:

• Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times writes that toxic individualism is killing us:

Even so, the mythos of individualism has infused both our culture and our politics. 

Herbert Hoover hammered the idea into the popular consciousness by popularizing (possibly coining) the phrase “rugged individualism” in a 1928 campaign speech — in which he described a choice between “rugged individualism and a European philosophy of … paternalism and state socialism.” It was an idea that continued to be echoed decades later by presidents such as Ronald Reagan, who once quipped at a 1986 news conference that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

In culture, rugged individualism frequently materializes in the form of the solo cowboy: “The Lone Ranger” popularized by ’30s-era radio, the westerns of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and the strapping Marlboro Man of cigarette advertising campaigns — a figure that the Economist once described as epitomizing “resilience, self-sufficiency, independence and free enterprise.”

• I’ve been waiting for an article like this forever: Introducing the science of Baby Yoda:

So why does Baby Yoda seem so developmentally delayed compared to humans? He’s been alive for 50 years, and he’s the cerebral equivalent of a one-year-old. Spana points to a recent study from Vanderbilt University, which showed that the longevity and sexual maturity of animals is correlated with their number of cortical neurons.

“Since Yoda lived much, much longer than any human, we could extrapolate that he had many more cortical neurons,” Spana says. “In humans, much of the first years of life is spent growing the size of the brain, adding neurons and adding connections between the neurons. Essentially building a brain. A bigger brain would require even more time for neurogenesis and synapse formation.”

• Pete Wells writes about how outdoor dining may change restaurants in New York forever:

1. The line between restaurant food and street food will disappear.

Restaurants won’t just be serving outdoors; they’ll also be assembling food and perhaps cooking it, to whatever extent the Fire Department allows. Already this summer and fall, the scent of smoke and Scotch bonnet peppers has filled the air in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, as Jamaican cooks prepare jerk chicken in barrel smokers on corners and in parking lots. Soon every Mexican restaurant will want its own sidewalk taco cart, every izakaya its own open-air hibachi, every seafood house a spread of oysters and clams on ice to lure passers-by.

• The Daily Show captures the Right’s paranoia quite effectively in this clip:

• The 25 best space capes in film and TV history (you’re welcome):

20) TRELANE, STAR TREK: Trelane (William Campbell), from the first season of Star Trek‘s original trilogy, is defined by being a massive drama queen. And what says “drama queen” better than a cape modeled after 18th century France, paired with a cravat? Well, abducting a starship crew so you can use them as your playthings until your mommy and daddy tell you to knock it off. But also the cape.

• John Legend gave a special shout out to Georgia:

• 2020 in a tweet:

• More truth from Carolina Miranda:

Required Reading is published every Saturday, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.