2020年10月21日 星期三

The T List: Five things we recommend this week

Batsheva launches furniture, art and wellness — and more.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we’re sharing things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. You can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

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New Orleans’s Chloe Hotel Offers Southern Charm

Left: the Chloe’s reception area and lobby. Right: an Avenue King room, which looks out onto Saint Charles Avenue.Paul Costello

By Leslie Pariseau

T Contributor

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Southern porch culture is alive and well at the Chloe, a new 14-room hotel situated among the mansions of Saint Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. It is the first hotel project by the local restaurateur Robert LeBlanc, and the sprawling Thomas Sully-designed Victorian does not disappoint, with a welcoming veranda replete with rocking chairs, pendant lights and lush potted plants, all offset by original 19th-century Mexican tile floors. It’s a lush perch from which to take in the city, drink a Sazerac or eat a shrimp étouffée dumpling made by the hotel’s resident chef, Todd Pulsinelli. The interior, designed by Sara Ruffin Costello, is a filigreed jewel box of spacious parlors and hidden nooks, with an eclectic variety of art. Pieces by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Cindy Sherman hang alongside flea market treasures and works from local artists such as the photographer Akasha Rabut and the muralist Ann Marie Auricchio. Each room is stocked with amenities from local makers and businesses: There are robes by Trish Bhansali of Lekha, body scrubs and oils from Oxalis Apothecary and vinyl sourced by Peaches Records featuring New Orleanian musicians from Louis Armstrong to Lil Wayne. Finally, the less formal back porch overlooks a slender lap pool and cocktail bar, necessary for relaxing in grand fashion. Rooms start at $176 per night, 4125 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, thechloenola.com.

Try This

Watermelon and CBD-infused “Turkish Delights”

Rose Los Angeles x Gossamer CBD Rosin Delights in Watermelon, Tomato and Sencha Green Tea.Emily Simms

By Samuel Rutter

T Contributor

Verena von Pfetten and David Reiner, former colleagues at the Huffington Post, launched Gossamer three years ago as a print journal devoted to cannabis — but the brand has recently expanded into clinically compounded CBD oils, tinctures and now edibles. This month heralds the arrival of Gossamer’s CBD Delights (a riff on the candy Turkish delight), born out of a partnership with the Los Angeles-based company Rose, which, as von Pfetten explained, “is one of the only places approaching cannabis edibles as food — as something you actually want to eat.” This new edible combines rosin (an ingredient extracted without solvents from whole flowers, leading to a purer experience of the plant) with seasonal, organic ingredients, delivering a vegan-friendly, watermelon-forward flavor with hints of tomato and green tea — the fruit of nearly twenty different recipes tested out by Tara Thomas, the chef at Brooklyn’s Sincerely, Tommy: Eat x Stay. For those more interested in tinctures, Gossamer still offers its signature Dusk, which is engineered to improve your sleep, as well as its recently launched Dawn, which is enriched with THCV to give you a morning boost. “Particularly in the Covid era,” said von Pfetten, “our days all look the same — we’re working from home, and we’re looking for new routines and new rhythms. Dawn is something that can give people a little extra energy, whether that’s to start the day or instead of a late-afternoon coffee.” Five percent of all Gossamer sales go to the Women’s Prison Association, National Bailout and Equity Alliance. gossamer.co.

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See This

A New Wellness Center Combines Art With Healing

Anna Sew Hoy’s “Slow Moon’s Rose” (2020), a site-specific installation in Compound’s courtyard.Joshua White

By Molly Creeden

T Contributor

“Having worked in art and design for most of my life, I could see there was a gap in wellness intersecting with the arts,” explains the interior designer and philanthropist Megan Tagliaferri about why she created Compound — a free art and community space in Long Beach, Calif. Opening this month, the 15,000-square-foot complex of renovated Art Deco buildings in the Zaferia district wears its mission statement on its facade. Rendered in neon by the New York- and Bahamas-based artist Tavares Strachan, the words “You Belong Here” adorn the entrance. “It’s about holding space — not in physical form but in an energetic sense — so that you feel welcome,” says Tagliaferri, who hopes to spark conversation via community programming. That might mean a flower mandala and meditation ceremony, a bilingual reading or the inaugural gallery exhibition: “Radical Empathy,” in which artists such as the sculptor Mildred Howard explore the intersection of art and activism. Anna Sew Hoy, whose installation “Slow Moon’s Rose” (2020) will inhabit the complex’s courtyard, sees Compound as a reimagination of how people share space. “We’ve all been through so much in 2020,” says the artist. “It’s my hope that it will serve the people of Long Beach toward much-needed healing and relief.” compoundlb.com.

Covet This

Take a Seat in Batsheva’s New Furniture

Left: The designer Batsheva Hay and her Throne chair, upholstered in vintage canvas with a large-scale floral print and leopard-print velvet, $2,400. Vintage floral and leopard pillow, $155. Right: The Nautilus chair, upholstered in a vintage toile and a vintage Brunschwig & Fils floral print, $2,125.Alexei Hay

By Angela Koh

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In 2016, the designer Batsheva Hay launched a collection of conservative dresses inspired by the clothing of both the Hasidic and Amish communities, as well as the floral women’s wear made popular in the ’80s by Laura Ashley and Ralph Lauren. Hay’s striking designs were soon part of the popular “prairie dress” trend, and her pieces — all made from vintage fabrics — gained a cult following, with her namesake label quickly growing to include coats, accessories and separates. While in quarantine, with nothing to dress up for, she found herself incorporating her personal style into her interiors. “I wanted to make my home as exciting as my dresses, and make my whole universe more a part of my domestic life,” she explained. This week, Hay is launching a small collection of chairs and pillows that reflect the same sensibility — vintage made contemporary — as her clothes. All pieces are handmade from colorfully printed fabrics either upholstered onto items she sourced from an antique dealer or sewn onto pillows by her local patternmaker. But that’s not all — in the near future, Hay plans to expand the line to include curtains, wallpaper and tableware. From $155; batsheva.com.

Relax Here

A Restorative Retreat in Upstate New York

The serene interior of the Tall Barn, one of two new wellness buildings at Troutbeck, an estate hotel in Amenia, N.Y.Nicole Franzen

By Alexa Brazilian

If you have been dreaming, like me, of a weekend away filled with massages, yoga classes, meals you don’t cook and beds you don’t make (and perhaps family you don’t see), Troutbeck, the country inn positioned on 250 acres of wilderness and trout-packed streams in Amenia, N.Y., is the perfect respite. The hotel — which has 36 cozy rooms and three stand-alone cottages, all decorated by the New York City firm Champalimaud Design — has just opened the Barns, a series of newly constructed, spare wellness cabins built from reclaimed larch wood and outfitted with HEPA air filtration systems. In the Long Barn, one can experience a massage, facial acupuncture with specialist FonLin Nyeu and a personal training session in the gym. Meanwhile, in the 1,250-square-foot whitewashed Tall Barn, private yoga, Tai Chi and guided meditation sessions are available along with classes in Kinesoma, a blend of Qi Gong, dance and Feldenkrais that’s meant to brighten your mood and calm your nerves. From $240 per night; 515 Leedsville Road, Amenia, N.Y.; troutbeck.com.

From T’s Instagram

#TellTAJoke: Sigourney Weaver

A still from a video in which the actress demonstrates her comedic flair.Flora Hanitijo

To review Sigourney Weaver’s filmography — more than 50 movies over nearly 45 years — is to realize that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Between “Alien” in 1979 and “Aliens” in 1986, she did a French-language comedy, “One Woman or Two,” which co-starred Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous sex therapist. She did a poltergeist romp, “Ghostbusters,” which co-starred Bill Murray and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Serious roles, silly roles, roles steeped in romance, roles drenched in sweat: she set no trajectory for her career. Even at her commercial peak she took minor parts, as in “Working Girl,” in 1988, which gave her a fraction of the screen time of Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. That performance led to an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress in the same year that she was nominated for best actress for her portrayal of the doomed primatologist Dian Fossey in “Gorillas in the Mist.” In a short video by Flora Hanitijo from which the above still is taken, Weaver shows her funny side by sharing a couple of her favorite jokes. Go to T’s Instagram to watch it, and read Frank Bruni’s profile of the actress, one of the five cover stars of the #TGreatsIssue, on newsstands this Sunday.

Correction: Last week’s newsletter misspelled the given name of one of the founders of Le Monde Beryl; she is Katya Shyfrin, not Katia.

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On Tech: Police can open your phone. It’s OK

The police actually can unlock phones. And, no, it's not the worst thing ever for cybersecurity.

Police can open your phone. It’s OK

Irene Suosalo

Technology that makes our smartphones hard to break into without a password makes us safer from hackers and other unwanted intruders. But it also makes it tougher for the police to do their job.

American law enforcement officials for years have said companies like Apple and Google should make it easier to break phone passcodes so they can better investigate crimes. Most technology experts say it’s impossible to make a phone that good guys can easily get into without bad guys exploiting it.

My colleague Jack Nicas, who wrote on Wednesday about this standoff between cops and techies, talked to me about a big revelation: Law enforcement officials are able to get into phones far more often than previously understood. Jack also said that the fight over phone security has resulted in a messy but largely effective middle ground on safety — even if no one in this debate will say so.

Shira: Don’t we want the police and prosecutors to get into phones of people accused of crimes?

Jack: Most people would agree that it’s appropriate in some cases for law enforcement to get data from a suspect’s smartphone. And with court warrants they do, using tools from companies like Grayshift and Cellebrite to unlock encrypted iPhones and other smartphones and extract data.

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What worries civil rights advocates is that we’ve seen that the police aren’t using these code-breaking technologies only in the most serious cases, but also in shoplifting, drug and assault investigations. And years of records collected by the nonprofit Upturn show that these tools are used by far more law enforcement agencies than we’d known.

Why should law-abiding people care? People might say they have nothing to hide.

We know how much information our phones have, including our entire location history, passwords to accounts, all our text messages and potentially embarrassing photos. That’s what makes smartphones so valuable in police investigations — and what makes it doubly important for there to be caution in when and why police search them.

Upturn found that many U.S. law enforcement agencies had few restrictions, if any, on what circumstances they can break into people’s phones and what they do with the data. More public transparency about how law enforcement uses these tools would be a welcome extra layer of accountability.

If the police frequently break password locks on smartphones, what’s their complaint?

It sometimes takes days, weeks or months for law enforcement to use technology tools to break into a phone, and many investigations are time sensitive. In those situations, cops and prosecutors don’t care about Apple’s worries over cybersecurity.

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Our colleagues’ investigation last year into child sexual abuse imagery showed the trade offs of technology that keeps our digital activity private: It lets criminals hide horrible activity. That’s true of smartphone locks, too.

Absolutely. That’s why I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this debate — because there’s no easy solution.

Can smartphones keep us safe from bad guys and also let cops catch criminals? Is there a middle ground?

That middle ground may be the messy status quo.

Smartphones for the most part are well protected from break-ins by criminals and hackers. However, in cases where many of us agree that law enforcement should be able to access phone data, there are tools to help them break in. Those methods don’t require tech companies creating a “backdoor”— a software opening that security experts worry could be exploited by criminals or authoritarian governments.

Huh. So neither cops nor Apple would admit it, but this impasse … it’s good?

Perhaps as good as it can get. Completely impenetrable phones would be bad for public safety, while “back doors” in encryption would be bad for cybersecurity. Neither side is terribly satisfied with this workaround, but it mostly works.

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Big Tech makes strange bedfellows

I practically get hives when companies’ purported principles clash with their behavior.

Jack wrote about one of the allegations in the U.S. government’s antitrust lawsuit against Google: A main way that Google preserves its alleged monopoly is through agreements that makes its search service the built-in choice for people using Apple’s computers, iPhones and the Siri voice assistant.

I also want to draw attention to Apple’s role here. This is the hives part.

Apple for years has trash talked companies like Google that sell digital ads based on our activity and interests. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong,” Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said in 2015. He’s repeated some version of that regularly.

But here’s the thing: It’s hypocritical for Apple to say that digital advertising machines are ruining our lives while simultaneously taking billions of dollars each year from Google, thereby strengthening one of those digital advertising machines.

An Apple executive was asked in a congressional hearing last year about why the company bashes Google but takes its money. He said that Google’s search engine is the best.

Hmm. Even if Google search cured cancer, it is not mandatory for Apple to take Google’s money for anything.

Companies can conduct business how they wish. The government is not saying that Apple is doing anything wrong. But surely if Apple wanted to apply its principles about “creepy” tactics of companies like Google, it could act differently.

What if Apple didn’t take Google’s money, and when people bought a new iPhone they had the choice of which search engine they wanted to use?

Apple could also remind people every few months to try an alternative like Bing or DuckDuckGo. Apple could, if it wanted, make its own search engine. This would be costly and possibly unwise, but hey, Apple has the money to put its principles to work if it wished to do so.

Before we go …

  • Google’s low-key chief executive gets the attention he probably didn’t want: My colleague Dai Wakabayashi introduces us to Sundar Pichai, Google’s boss who now leads a company in the government’s cross hairs. “He has surrounded himself with other serious, buttoned-up career Google managers who bring a lot of boring to the table,” Dai writes, delightfully.
  • Technology is regularly abused to hurt the vulnerable: Tech nerds have worried for years about “deep fake” technology that digitally alters images and videos being used for political propaganda. But the tech is mostly abused to harass women. One service is creating unauthorized and faked images of women and girls with their clothing removed, The Washington Post reported.
  • When members of Congress go big on Twitch: About 435,000 people at one point tuned into the web streaming site Twitch on Tuesday to see Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez play the murder mystery video game Among Us to encourage young people to vote, the Verge wrote. My colleague Taylor Lorenz recently explained how this game has “begun to serve as a default social platform for young people stuck in quarantine.”

Hugs to this

A sprawling hedgehog “highway” in Britain lets the prickly cuties safely roam through people’s yards via miniature ramps, staircases and fence holes. Here is a video!

We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.

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