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Crimetown USA: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/crimetown-usa A piece from 2000 about the mob in Youngstown Ohio, and how they essentially displaced and controlled all civic institutions in the area and the FBI agent who spent 20 years trying to break them.
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Apr 14, 2017 15:34
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This may have come from this thread but I've just finished reading it. It's a ride:https://www.thecut.com/2019/04/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-students.html posted:The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence I feel that a content warning might be useful. There's nothing graphic within but if you might be upset about someone blithely messing with young kids heads, look elsewhere.
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Jun 10, 2019 13:33
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Not very long but: David Farrier, the documentarian who make "Tickled" about the mysterious and supposedly world of competitive tickling, has stumbled upon a similar enigma: a "travel company" that solicits photos of people jumping on hotel beds: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/26-05-2019/the-mysterious-instagram-account-obsessed-with-hotel-bed-jumping/
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Jun 28, 2019 07:47
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https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/06/29/8chan/content.htmlquote:Destroyer of worlds
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Jul 4, 2019 17:12
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EmmyOk posted:old guy hornieness is the strongest type imo. theyre not loving or jacking off they're just investing in a girl's billion dollar blood test crystal ball or accidentally gifting them their house That story is full of insane non-sequiturs like that, such that it begins to stretch credibility. Some con-man or scam stories you can see how a person gradually slipped, or made a series of minor mistakes and got enveloped by the scheme. But here it's one colossally tone-deaf bad call after another. Like, is the protagonist not telling us the full story or are they utterly lacking in common sense and emotional intelligence?
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Jul 26, 2019 16:47
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EmmyOk posted:Rubbing my little rat claws together in glee And these other witnesses are all (but one) guys that didn't fall for the scam. How many are there out there who did fall for it but are too embarrassed to admit it?
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Aug 12, 2019 13:01
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EmmyOk posted:It's also extremely good to me that just rando normal dudes who seem down to gently caress were sus and blew her off but Harvard's brain level genius of judgment teaching had his life effortlessly annihilated lmao If he had any good judgement or clear thoughts, he wouldn't have ended up in academia.
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Aug 14, 2019 12:41
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EmmyOk posted:Was it in this thread there was an article about people faking cancer in Facebook groups being super common I think it was, and there's more than one longform piece about it. I remember reading someone's story about a close friend faking cancer over years (posted pictures of herself in a bed with drip, had repeated relapses and remissions), thinking I read it before and then realizing it was a different set of people, with nearly the same story.
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Feb 5, 2020 20:20
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oscarthewilde posted:kinda feels like a milquetoast adam curtis rant. I liked it. It's Laurie Penny, who I have mixed feelings about, but I think she pinpoints the surprise that a lot of tough guys are facing: there's no use for their attitude or ideas in this crisis. They're superfluous.
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Apr 5, 2020 11:45
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A Biblical Mystery at Oxford ... and Washington and Waco and Syria. A tale about lost manuscripts and archaeology, where it's not so much a question of who's lying as how many different people are lying.
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May 17, 2020 06:19
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And a related one from a few years earlier: the unbelievable story of Jesus's wife
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May 17, 2020 16:31
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Yes, longform.org is a good one. Current Affairs tends to have lots of good long pieces too.
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Apr 22, 2021 07:25
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Big Dog's Backyard Ultra: The toughest, weirdest race you've never heard ofquote:Think you can run 4.16666 miles in an hour? Probably.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:23
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Male Tears posted:Very convincing and detailed article on why Covid-19 more likely originated from a lab escape than animal transmission. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the...ApA5TjKmtixXn9k Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is a decent publication, but this is not a great article. It criticizes labelling the idea of lab origin as a conspiracy, which is exactly what it is, then claims scientists are in a conspiracy to hide the true origin, to protect their lucrative work. It says that evolution of more than single amino acids is unlikely, which is false. It claims that since sequences in the virus have not been documented before, they're novel constructs resulting from secret research rather than indications of how few viruses we're studied. My virology and molecular evolution is rusty, but this is just what I found.
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May 18, 2021 07:15
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Deep Glove Bruno posted:I can't question your virology claims but the "conspiracy" claim is simple. Many, many bad things have been created systemically that resemble conspiracies but don't require anyone to actually conspire, because the disparate group of people involved have material interests that coincide with the bad thing happening. This is not conspiracy. No, I'm with you. Chomsky made this point a long time ago - the alignment of media with the rich and powerful doesn't require cooperation and doesn't have to be a conspiracy if that just the way things work. But in the article, the author says that people are trying to label the lab origin story as a conspiracy, in order to discredit it. To my eye, it's a stretch to describe the lab origin story as anything else, whether it's true or not. A lab conducted secret research, released a virus and now the powers that be and experts across the world are hushing that up. For it to work, it requires secrecy and cooperation. And it's frankly ludicrous to expect just about every virologist and molecular evolutionist in every lab or university anywhere to sit on their hands and tow the party line. Academics are disorganised, petty and indicative. The idea that they'd all globally and independently decide "it's in my best interest not to say anything about this" is a stretch, even in the conspiracy community.
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May 18, 2021 19:10
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So, that article about the supposed lab origin of SARS-COVID? Massive problems, starting with the author who has had "interesting" ideas before: https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396240581651742724 (To give a quick summary - there's no evidence in favour of it being a lab construct or accidental escape and some evidence against. Nothing conclusive but ..) On a lighter note, here's an article on a seemingly impossible magic trick and the story behind it: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/style/berglas-effect-card-trick.html?smid=url-share There's a few pieces about it on the web, including a 75 page manuscript that supposedly details how it is done
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May 27, 2021 12:34
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Porfiriato posted:I read that NYT story the other day and would appreciate a link to the 75-page manuscript, which I submit is also appropriate for this thread as an extremely, extremely longform article This thread refers to it: https://www.metafilter.com/191585/Time-began-to-slow-down with the attribution: quote:In 2011, Richard Kaufman wrote a book called The Berglas Effects with the participation of Berglas himself in which his version of ACAAN is explained at length. ... There are 75 pages devoted to [Berglas's version]. with a summary from someone who's read it. It's apparently available via  as well
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May 27, 2021 14:52
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Crazy, isn't it? I was crazy for magic when I was a kid and one of the key things I learnt was predictable people were and how easy it was to nudge them into particular decisions. Mind, the improvisational aspect of the trick are amazing too. The magician is ready for nearly everything could spend a lot of time & effort maneuvering the trick together.
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May 27, 2021 16:14
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A discussion about QAnon lead me to this very interesting and very readable academic paper "Organised Psuedolegal Commercial Arguments as Magic and Ceremony", in which the author tries to make sense of the various arguments mounted by sovereign citizens, Freeman on the land, and other parties engaging in 'otherlaw': https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321936848_Organized_Pseudolegal_Commercial_Arguments_OPCA_as_Magic_and_Ceremony
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May 30, 2021 17:31
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lifg posted:This looks like it draws heavily on Meads v Meads (https://freemandelusion.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/meads-v-meads.pdf), which is a truly entertaining legal decision. Wow. 188 pages ... interesting though. It appears that the judge involved doesn't believe the plaintiff is sincere, which is a point picked up in the other article: there may be a significant number of people practicing psuedolaw, who simply don't believe it, but find it a useful tactic.
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Jun 1, 2021 23:53
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https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/beebo-russell-seattle-plane-theft-true-story-1187023/ posted:[He] asked for advice: “What do you think I should do, FAA guy?” The controller tried to gauge Russell’s competence: “Just flying the plane around, you seem comfortable with that?” Russell’s braggadocio bounced back: “Oh, hell yeah! It’s a blast, man. I’ve played video games before,” he said, “so, ya know, I know what I’m doin’ a little bit.” In the (startling) absence of any official investigation, Rolling Stone pieced together the story of Beebo Russell, the baggage handler who stole and crashed a plane from Seattle-Tacoma airport in 2018.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:03
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a kitten posted:Here's a video of that The barrel might actually take him down to 10 feet from the water. drat. Here's the air traffic control audio with a visualisation of his path. Guy sounds a little like Charlie Day: https://youtu.be/xD5sFrTGFnw
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Jun 29, 2021 05:28
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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/poppers-factory posted:What if I told you that right now you could walk into any one of thousands of stores across the US and buy a drug that’s been banned by the government?
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Jul 28, 2021 09:36
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A long piece that is less about 9-11 and more about international sanctions, and how the collapsing state of Sudan ended up as a target for reprisals: "Is this justice?" why Sudan is facing a multibillion-dollar bill for 9/11
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Aug 26, 2021 13:06
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It's a little different to the usual libertarian failure. Their problems are actually less to do with crypto, FYGM and squabbling, and mostly to do with no one taking them up on their idea, and the founders grossly underestimating how expensive and complicated it is to run a cruise ship. So, in the sense of them thinking everything would be simple, it's just like a typical libertarian failure. The SeaPods are an ... odd idea. Like, once you plant one into the sea, what happens then? You just stay at home in your overly expensive bunker and hope there's no medical emergencies, fire and that the weather doesn't turn nasty and trash your habitat?
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Sep 16, 2021 22:28
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Found in another thread: https://www.gq.com/story/gary-faulkner-hunts-osama-bin-laden The True Story of Gary Faulkner, the Man Who Hunted Osama bin Laden and Inspired Nic Cage's Army of One You might have heard about the spectacular misadventures of one Gary Faulkner. Equipped with little more than a sword he'd bought on a home-shopping network, a pair of night-vision goggles, and the blessing of a vengeful Christian God, the 50-year-old ex-con (and his failing kidneys) traveled to the most volatile region of Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden. What's surprising is that it wasn't his first attempt. It was his eleventh. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4382824/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98oxZOM_niU
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Oct 25, 2021 12:24
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If you talk to enough people about their childhood, you'll find out that every school had two guys who just a little too interested in the Nazis, that would wheel out facts about the German tank performance and military genius at a moment's notice. It's like they were copy-pasted across reality.
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Oct 29, 2021 04:42
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What happened to Stephen Glass, the notoriously fraudulent journalist (as depicted in the movie Shattered Glass), a story that goes in a completely unexpected direction: https://airmail.news/issues/2021-12-4/loving-lies
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Dec 6, 2021 01:42
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The article just opened right up for me, without doing anything. Going to other articles on the site, the third or so started nagging me so maybe it's an "x article per month" deal. Another piece that i'm not sure adds up to much but it's an interesting trip: "Rothko at the Inauguration - A story of America in three scams" https://hazlitt.net/longreads/rothko-inauguration quote:Looking at that report, I didn’t know that it would be a story, though I thought it might be. I certainly didn’t think I’d be puzzling over it for the next eight years. It was written by a kind of fine art scientist named James Martin. It described his analysis of a 50-inch by 40-inch oil painting, Untitled, 1956. “Hereinafter” the report said, “the “Painting”.”
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Dec 8, 2021 22:29
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Absolute pro-click. That chef is a master troll.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:27
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The Guardians best longreads of the year: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/dec/27/the-best-of-the-long-read-in-2022
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Jan 8, 2023 11:26
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Article about the culture wars and many divides in country music. Lots of artists who might want to look up: "I had originally come to the city to meet a set of local singer-songwriters whose presence challenged an industry long dominated by bro country—slick, hollow songs about trucks and beer, sung by interchangeable white hunks. This new guard, made up of female songwriters, Black musicians, and queer artists, suggested a new kind of outlawism, expanding a genre that many outsiders assumed was bland and blinkered, conservative in multiple senses. What I found in Nashville was a messier story: a town midway through a bloody metamorphosis, one reflected in a struggle over who owned Music City." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/24/country-musics-culture-wars-and-the-remaking-of-nashville
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Jul 26, 2023 14:40
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Unexpectedly interesting: a long and slightly rambling piece on legendary music engineer (and musician) Steve Albini, the music business and changing your mind: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-of-steve-albini-if-the-dumbest-person-is-on-your-side-youre-on-the-wrong-side
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Aug 15, 2023 11:40
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This is a great article about the late great SF author Octavia Butler, all the messiness and difficulties of her life, just full of surprises: https://www.vulture.com/article/octavia-e-butler-profile.html This is a much shorter piece, a review of Michael Lewis's recent book on Sam Bankman-Fried, which dismantles the book and makes SBF look even worse: https://airmail.news/issues/2023-10-7/the-journalist-and-the-fraudster Behind a sign-up wall but there are ways to deal.
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Oct 9, 2023 16:57
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Podcasters Took Up Her Sister’s Murder Investigation. Then They Turned on Her. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/magazine/murder-podcast-debbie-williamson.html quote:“People think it’s a movie,” Moore said, once we all had coffee and pastries and had found a table inside. “I don’t think people think logically when they get into those groups. They think the absolute worst.”
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Feb 7, 2024 14:45
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Something a bit different. [The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas[/b] is a classic SF / speculative fiction story by Ursula LeGuin. If you want to read it - it's short - you can find it here: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf And the wiki page is here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas Naturally, this being the 21st century, some can't accept that it's an allegory and so a variety of response stories have been done, solving or resolving the metaphorical problem at the heart of the story. This long essay takes them apart: https://bloodknife.com/omelas-je-taime/ Although this is the one decent response story: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/ nonathlon has a new favorite as of 22:36 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 20:09
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lifg posted:Remind me of how many people have tried to solve “The Cold Equations” short story. Bingo - that was exactly my go-to thought. SF fans can't read anything except in the most literal way.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:35
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Something a little different, the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, recommended somewhere else on SA. The author is an ancient history academic and regularly posts lengthy (perhaps exhaustive) multi-part essays on why the Spartans actually weren't that great, the "Fremen Mirage" of tough unsophsticated people over-whelming soft decadent civilizations, and insights into Roman history. To pick an interesting entry How it wasn't: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages quote:Why am I bothering? Isn’t this all a bunch of useless nitpicking? ... For a great many people, Westeros will become the face of the European Middle Ages, further reinforcing distorting preconceptions about the period. How we view the past has a tremendous influence on what we think about the present. In particular, the tendency to view the distant past as a time of unrestrained barbarism provides us with both an unearned sense of superiority and often a dangerous hubris – ‘we’re not like that anymore, that can’t happen anymore – people in the past were just stupid.‘ But they were not just stupid or just maniacs – they were people. People are people, no matter when they lived.
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Mar 31, 2024 17:40
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