Hacker News with Generative AI: Biography

Goethe's Faustian Life (commonwealmagazine.org)
In the English-speaking world today, Goethe is still, in A. N. Wilson’s pithy phrase, “the Great Unread.”
Literature, Biography, History
38 points by lermontov 3 days ago | 29 comments
Hedy Lamarr (wikipedia.org)
Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914[a] – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor.
Biography, History, Actresses, Inventors
5 points by prmph 3 days ago | 0 comments
The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick (lrb.co.uk)
Terrence Malick​ is the quietest of American movie directors.
Film, Directors, Biography
76 points by mitchbob 7 days ago | 44 comments
I was a Theranos whistleblower. Here's what I think Elizabeth Holmes is up to (statnews.com)
I always knew Elizabeth Holmes would have a second act. But I’m shocked it’s starting while she’s still behind bars.
Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, Business, Law, Biography
132 points by iancmceachern 8 days ago | 91 comments
How Cory Arcangel Recovered Late Artist Michel Majerus's Digital Legacy (newyorker.com)
In 2002, the thirty-five-year-old, Luxembourg-born painter Michel Majerus was on a short flight from Berlin, where he lived, to his native country, when the plane crashed, killing him and nineteen other passengers.
Art, Digital Legacy, Legacy, Death, Biography
13 points by bookofjoe 8 days ago | 5 comments
Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to a 13-year-old wrecked his career (2008) (dailymail.co.uk)
Among teenagers of a musical bent, there was much anticipation 50 years ago this week.
Music, Biography, History, Relationships
5 points by Tomte 9 days ago | 0 comments
Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet (2016) (theguardian.com)
After Henry James’s death 100 years ago, his relatives were at pains to remove any hints of his sexuality from his letters and biography
LGBTQ+, Literature, Biography, History, Family
16 points by benbreen 13 days ago | 24 comments
Lazarus Lake, the 'Leonardo da Vinci of pain' behind the world's cruelest race (theguardian.com)
In an extract from his new book, Jared Beasley introduces the eccentric figure behind the Barkley Marathons, where runners are terrified and tested in equal measure
Sports, Running, Biography, Endurance Races, United States
4 points by bookofjoe 14 days ago | 0 comments
June Huh dropped out to become a poet, now he’s won a Fields Medal (2022) (quantamagazine.org)
June Huh wasn’t interested in mathematics until a chance encounter during his sixth year of college. Now his profound insights connecting combinatorics and geometry have led to math’s highest honor.
Mathematics, Awards, Education, Biography
219 points by bpierre 16 days ago | 139 comments
V.S. Naipaul: The Grief and the Glory (granta.com)
‘I’ll read it with great interest,’ V.S. Naipaul said, as he took the bound proof of my first novel in his hands and peered up at me with a mixture of alarm and fatigue.
Literature, Biography, Grief
66 points by paulpauper 19 days ago | 10 comments
The Once and Future Genius (literaryreview.co.uk)
It’s not often that a biography really gets going after the author has reached the subject’s death. Gertrude Stein herself predicted that she would only be understood in the future: ‘For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.’ She wasn’t entirely right, but Francesca Wade’s new ‘afterlife’ of Stein takes the sentiment seriously.
Biography, Literature, History, Gertrude Stein
9 points by benbreen 21 days ago | 0 comments
The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat SIM City (2010) (vice.com)
I’m English, but when I was twelve I lived in North Carolina and went to an inner-city school a bit like that one in The Wire. I only have two memories of that time.
Culture, Society, Biography, Childhood
99 points by Tomte 21 days ago | 25 comments
Feynman's Rigor (2009) (jsomers.net)
All of the things I admire about Richard Feynman -- his intellect, and verve, and eloquence -- seem like special cases of a more general feature of his mind, namely, its almost fanatical devotion to rigor.
Physics, Biography, Richard Feynman, Science, Intellectuals
7 points by jimsojim 28 days ago | 0 comments
Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte (publicdomainreview.org)
A century before publishers started marketing novels as “essential sad girl literature” and newspapers ran headlines about the “cult of the literary sad woman”, Mary MacLane confessed all, at the age of nineteen, and became the enfant terrible of American letters, seemingly overnight.
Literature, Biography, History, Women's Writing
46 points by samclemens 28 days ago | 7 comments
Larry David: My Dinner with Adolf (nytimes.com)
Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler.
Humor, History, Biography
26 points by asnyder 32 days ago | 0 comments
Judith Resnick (wikipedia.org)
Judith Arlene Resnik (April 5, 1949 – January 28, 1986) was an American electrical engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer, pilot and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Biography, Space Exploration, Engineering, NASA, Accidents
7 points by 737min 33 days ago | 0 comments
On Jane Jacobs (2017) (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
The legend of Jane Jacobs centers on the writer who revolutionized our thinking about cities with her now-classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the fearless activist who stood up to planning czar Robert Moses’s rampaging road construction, thereby saving Gotham. A recent, rather cartoonish film on the subject is even titled: Citizen Jane: The Battle for New York. It is an irresistible David vs. Goliath story with a feminist twist.
Urban Planning, History, Activism, Biography
70 points by herbertl 36 days ago | 46 comments
Pablo Picasso's Stunning Repetitions (jillianhess.substack.com)
Two things were true of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) from a young age: he was rebellious, and he loved to draw.
Art, Pablo Picasso, Biography
6 points by bookofjoe 40 days ago | 0 comments
Betty Webb never spoke about her work, until she had to (economist.com)
Betty Webb never spoke about her work, until she had to
Biography, History
15 points by austinallegro 40 days ago | 1 comments
Nobu Matsuhisa: 'I'd watch my mentor making sushi and copy him under the table' (theguardian.com)
The chef and restaurateur, 76, shares his boyhood inspiration, losing everything in a fire, and saying no to Robert De Niro.
Food, Interviews, Restaurant Industry, Biography
6 points by andsoitis 41 days ago | 0 comments
Maurice Hilleman (wikipedia.org)
Biography, History, Medicine
7 points by arbuge 47 days ago | 0 comments
Yoko: A Biography (newstatesman.com)
As David Sheff’s new biography reveals, decades of suspicion aimed at the provocative artist, musician and widow have obscured her psychology from view.
Biography, Music, Arts, Yoko Ono
35 points by howard941 49 days ago | 42 comments
The Curse of Ayn Rand's Heir (theatlantic.com)
Leonard Peikoff dedicated his life to promoting the author’s vision of freedom and self-determination. But at what cost?
Philosophy, Biography, Ethics
127 points by Michelangelo11 49 days ago | 254 comments
How to Discover Mindfulness in a Nazi Solitary Confinement Cell (honest-broker.com)
Two years ago, I shared an account of Christopher Burney, a British spy captured by the Nazis in World War II. He spent 526 days in solitary confinement under brutal conditions.
Mindfulness, History, Prison, Biography
4 points by Khaine 49 days ago | 0 comments
Bitcoin's God. Years of studying Satoshi led me to a new prime suspect (nymag.com)
If Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, was who I believed him to be, he was not going to acknowledge it. He probably wouldn’t talk to me. And seeing him was going to mean sitting on a plane for 20 hours and driving another eight. But I needed to try to have a conversation with him, and it had to be face-to-face.
Bitcoin, Cryptography, Investigations, Biography, Technology
19 points by jc_811 55 days ago | 6 comments
The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder (wired.com)
On Friday, September 13, 2019, Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, cofounders of the San Francisco internet security firm Cloudflare, stood on a slim marble balcony overlooking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship, Biography
13 points by vincentchau 56 days ago | 2 comments
George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father (theguardian.com)
Richard Blair didn’t have the easiest start in life. At three weeks old, he was adopted. Nine months later, his adoptive mother, Eileen, died at 39, after an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic she was given for a hysterectomy. Family and friends expected Blair’s father, Eric, to un-adopt him. Fortunately, Eric, better known as George Orwell, was an unusually hands-on dad for the 1940s.
Biography, Family, History, Writing
73 points by lermontov 57 days ago | 25 comments
Things You Must Know About Tamara de Lempicka (dailyartmagazine.com)
Tamara de Lempicka was many things: a successful artist, a society darling, and an expat. She knew how to create interest in herself and capitalize on it. She was an artist and a celebrity at the same time. You may say she was way ahead of her times, as her fame brings to mind that of Madonna or Lady Gaga. Her art and her public persona intertwined, staying consistently connected.
Art, Biography, History, Celebrity
7 points by aureliusm 57 days ago | 0 comments
Ungovernable, Capricious Life (nybooks.com)
The sense of vulnerability is crushing, but it is also one of the characteristics Kureishi reveals about himself that makes him so likable here, and the writing so intimate.
Vulnerability, Writing, Biography, Literature, Personal Essays
6 points by mitchbob 59 days ago | 7 comments
'The Maverick's Museum' Review: Albert Barnes and the Art of Collecting (wsj.com)
His talent for pharmaceutical chemistry made him rich. His bold taste in paintings created the foundation for America’s most personal art museum.
Art, Museums, Biography, History
15 points by Caiero 67 days ago | 7 comments