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The Mexican Mafia and the Conspiracy Behind the Tati Torrez Prison Murder

Federal Prison in Florence, Colorado. (AP Photo/Pueblo Chieftain, Chris McLean)

A rookie FBI agent spent a decade investigating the conspiracy around the murder of Manuel “Tati” Torrez, a high-ranking member of the notorious Mexican Mafia gang, la Eme. At The Atavist, Chris Outcalt reports on Torrez as “one of the graying old guard” of the gang at ADX Florence. Despite the fact that the federal maximum security prison was specially designed to keep its population of extremely violent inmates in “near total isolation,” Torrez was brutally murdered in the prison yard while the cameras were rolling. But who did it and why?

What came next was uncharted territory: an investigation of the first homicide in a place specifically designed to prevent violence of any kind. Instead of a shank or some other crude weapon, the killer had used fists and feet to pummel a fellow prisoner to a pulp. He’d committed murder in broad daylight, with cameras everywhere, yet avoided being caught in the act. Who had done it? And, more importantly, why?

Not yet 48 hours into his inaugural FBI assignment, Jon learned that he’d be investigating the first murder at the ADX, which had badly shaken the facility’s staff. A colleague explained that, as far as he could tell, the killing had everything to do with the Mexican Mafia.

“What’s that?” Jon asked. “Like a street gang?”

“No, it’s not a street gang,” his colleague replied. “It’s the mother of all street gangs. It’s like the Navy SEALs.”

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Little Sunfish: The Robot That Could

"Little sunfish," co-developed by the debt-strapped Japanese nuclear and electronics company and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, sits ready for deployment at the badly-damaged Unit 3 primary containment vessel to assess its damage and locate parts of melted fuel, believed to be submerged under highly contaminated water. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

How can you create a plan to clean up a nuclear reactor meltdown if you have no idea what you’re dealing with because it’s far too dangerous to go inside? At Wired, Vince Beiser reports on the  little robot that bravely went where no human could: to document the extent of the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant so that Japanese scientists can figure out how to clean it up.

Human beings couldn’t go into the heart of Fukushima’s reactors to find the missing fuel, though—at least not without absorbing a lethal dose of radiation. The job would have to be done by robots. But no robot had ever carried out such a mission before. Many had already tried and failed. Debris tripped them up. Yard-thick concrete walls threatened to block their wireless signals. Radiation fouled up their microprocessors and camera components. And so it fell to Matsuzaki, a shy-eyed , 41-year-old senior scientist with Toshiba’s nuclear technology branch, to help build a machine that wouldn’t end up as another one of the robot corpses already littering the reactors.

The Fukushima cleanup is a project far bigger and more complex than those of even the world’s worst previous nuclear catastrophes. Chernobyl was literally covered up: The Soviets simply encased the whole thing in concrete and steel. Three Mile Island was tiny by comparison. Only a single reactor melted down, and none of its fuel escaped. “Fukushima is orders of magnitude more difficult,” says Lake Barrett, an American who oversaw the cleanup of Three Mile Island and who signed on as a consultant to Tepco and the Japanese government in 2013.

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How the Lani Kai Island Resort Thrives Under a Never-Ending Spring Break

Students on Spring Break in Florida. (Photo by Sean Drakes/Getty Images)

Jen Doll and photographer Eva O’Leary venture to the Lani Kai Island Resort in Fort Meyers Beach, Florida — a hotel known for choosing to host a seemingly never-ending stream of spring breakers to uncover how they not only survive, but manage to embrace the drunken debauchery of the spring break set — within reason, of course.

Then there’s the Lani Kai, which has been a relatively safe space for partiers for 25 years and counting. How does Mr. C do it?

I ask: why become a haven for spring-breakers? Why court that sort of trouble at all? “They’re the future,” Mr. C says. When the hotel started hosting spring-breakers, it employed ten security guards; now it has at least 18. But “these are good kids,” Mr. C clarifies. “Every once in a while, you get somebody that takes it too far, and you just get rid of them. Girls Gone Wild, they tried to come here, and we had none of that.” I ask about the booty-shake contest, and he laughs: “You gotta give them something.” Another thing the resort provides: a cheap all-you-can-eat brunch, because the kids “do not eat! They mostly want to drink. I want them to get at least one good meal.” Watching MTV’s Spring Break series from the comfort of my parents’ den in the ’90s, I never thought about those gyrating college kids getting a square meal, or who was keeping them safe.

I snap a picture of a black cotton dress hanging nearby that declares “I SURVIVED SPRING BREAK,” and marvel again at how this place is both homey and exotic, smutty and sweet. Like an insect cased in amber, the Lani Kai remains something of an untouched gem, pure in its impurity. And that’s what makes it, for better or worse, a spring-break touchstone. You can come here and behave like a 21-year-old again, no matter how old you actually are—as long as you’ve got proper ID.

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Gabrielle Bellot on Reclaiming Her Womanhood

Landscape of Las Terrenas, Samana Peninsula, Dominican Republic (Photo by Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

After being rejected by a flirtatious acquaintance, Gabrielle Bellot examines her pain and trepidations, realizing that years after transitioning, she needs to stop allowing others to define her and dictate what’s considered worthy of love. Read this intimate and moving essay at Medium.

Yet I do not always feel whole.

What does it mean when your body cannot be one simple thing, whenever you want it to be? What does it mean when your womanhood, ever in question, terra incognita, is itself in rolling, roiling tumult?

Transitioning has taught me that a body can encompass far more than we are usually taught, that there are many architectures of bodies a gender may possess. Some days, I stand, naked, in front a mirror and feel happy, understanding why someone might desire to hold a body like mine in the calm harbour of their arms; on other days, I tilt like a sailor who has not learnt the language of the waves, and feel, despite my self-acceptance, a sharp, funneling frustration.

Perhaps this afflictive uncertainty can be redefined. Uncertainty can ground us, sometimes. We need arrogance in one hand and doubt in the other; we fail ourselves, fall into too zealous a body theology, with too great an imbalance of either.

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Want Your Husband to Stay True? Kill a Hummingbird and Roll it in Oil and Honey

A hummingbird flies over a garden in Mexico City. (LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images)

At National Geographic, Rene Ebersole reports on how hummingbirds (who are in decline due to habitat loss and climate change) are the victims in increasing illegal trade in their tiny, dead, feathered bodies to make Mexican love potions called chuparosas. Birds are captured in nets and even shot with tiny bits of ammunition to fuel the growing demand. Perhaps the biggest problem? Mexico doesn’t think the illegal trade is a threat to the birds.

“This is the honey jar,” she tells viewers while introducing the ingredients on her workbench: photographs of two would-be lovers, a piece of paper with their names written on it three times, a small glass jar—and a dead hummingbird. She rolls the tiny animal inside the photographs and wraps the cigar-shaped bundle with hot-pink yarn nearly the same shade as her long, fake fingernails.

Showing only her arms and lower body on camera, she shields her identity as she swaddles the package in a sarcophagus of tacky flypaper, dips it in cinnamon spice, squeezes it into the jar, and spritzes it with perfumes and oils—pheromones—“so he’ll stay sexually attracted.” Restless balm “so he’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, I need to call her.’” Sleep oil “so he’ll be like a zombie.” Attraction oil “so he’ll be like, ‘Goddamn, you so beautiful, you so fine.’” Dominating oil “so you dominate his thoughts.”

As an entrepreneurial saleswoman, she tells viewers that any hard-to-find ingredients used in her creations are available for customers. For example, on her website a dead hummingbird—in life a feisty little iridescent green creature with rust-colored tail feathers—is $50. Buying a ready-made honey jar is another option. In an email she quoted me $500.

Humberto Berlanga, Mexico’s coordinator of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, an international forum of government agencies and private organizations, is a member of the delegation. Berlanga doesn’t regard hummingbird trafficking as a high priority. “I suspect the market is not too big, and I don’t think it’s affecting any endangered species, but we don’t have the data,” he said. “Those are my general impressions. People are illegally catching and using the birds, but there’s not enough enforcement to limit and stop this practice—it’s sad, but true.”

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How to (Almost) Get Away With Murder

Toronto, ON - JANUARY 31, 2014. Murder suspect Christopher Fattore is being escorted by Peel Regional Police to Peel Police airport division after his flight from Halifax arrived at Pearson shortly after 5 p.m. The flight was about an hour later than co-accused Melissa Merritt. (Chris So/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Three healthy people died at 3635 Pitch Pine Crescent in Mississauga, Ontario, in less than four years. In this in-depth multimedia piece at the Toronto Star, Amy Dempsey unravels how a series of missteps and errors at every phase of the investigation nearly allowed one couple to get away with murder — three times.

CALEB HARRISON was not the first person in his family to die at 3635 Pitch Pine Cres. He was not even the second. In April 2010, his 63-year-old mother, Bridget Harrison, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. Her body lay steps away from the powder room where one year earlier she had discovered her husband, Bill Harrison, cold and lifeless. His death at 64 was classified as natural until Bridget died under suspicious circumstances and a coroner updated his file, placing the deaths of husband and wife in the same category. “Undetermined.”

And now a third mysterious death. An entire family wiped out. How could this happen?

Peel Regional Police would come to believe that the same perpetrators were responsible for all three deaths — a theory that, if proven, meant that someone had gotten away with murder twice before, and that authorities had missed two homicides.

A criminal trial led to murder convictions in two of the three deaths, but it did not expose the series of missteps that led to this extraordinary investigative failure. Pieced together, records disclosed over four years of criminal proceedings tell a story of mistakes made at every juncture — by police, coroners and pathologists.

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How the NRA Uses Fear to Sell Guns in America

The "Wall of Guns" at the 2013 NRA Convention in Houston, Texas. (K Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

Crime levels are down in the United States, gun manufacturers are laying off workers and going bankrupt in the face of plunging sales and profits, yet that won’t stop the National Rifle Association from using fear to manipulate people into buying a gun.

At The New Republic, “military veteran, big game hunter, and gun owner” Elliott Woods goes undercover at the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas to learn about how the NRA marketing machine has gone into high gear to combat what they’re calling the “Trump Slump.”

Since the 1990s, the NRA has been enormously successful at stoking white Americans’ fears about their darker-skinned fellow citizens while simultaneously cultivating paranoia about left-wing politicians seeking to take away their guns. Barack Obama’s presidency was a watershed event in this dynamic. During his eight years in office, the NRA’s membership grew from three million to five million. The organization’s combined political spending during election cycles increased from about $6 million in 1998 to nearly $60 million in 2016. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of gun owners who cite “protection” as their top reason for owning a gun grew from 26 percent in 1999 to 67 percent in 2017. During roughly the same period, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, firearms manufacturers increased their annual output of handguns more than fourfold, from 1.3 million to 5.6 million. Firearms imports also surged, from about 900,000 guns in 1999 to over five million in 2016.

Last September, the parent company of gunmaker Smith & Wesson released its first-quarter 2018 earnings report: Net sales were down 37.7 percent from the previous year, and shares had lost a quarter of their value. The company had to cut 200 jobs later that year. At Sturm Ruger, another major gunmaker, the picture was equally bleak. Profits were down by half, and net sales were down by more than 25 percent. In February, Remington, which manufactured the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle that Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook massacre, filed for bankruptcy. “Nothing was worse for the gun industry and the NRA than getting Trump elected,” Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist and author of Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, said. “I’ve been very nervous for a long time over the [gun] issue being the province of the Republican Party, and now we see it coming to a head, because the NRA got in bed so hard with Trump.”

Viktøs, an apparel company based in Wisconsin, ran a billboard-length ad for flip-flops next to one of the escalators, with the tagline GEAR FOR YOUR DAILY GUNFIGHT. At one of the many booths promoting AR-15 accessories, I found a poster from a Florida-based custom AR-15 manufacturer called Spike’s Tactical that showed a squad of thickly muscled dudes in the foreground, backs to the viewer, dressed in jeans, black T-shirts, and ratty ball caps. Each of them wore body armor and carried some iteration of an AR-15. They stood in front of a concrete Jersey barrier, facing down a mob of ruffians wearing ski masks and bandannas who appeared to be burning down a city. None of the rioters carried firearms. The text at the top of the poster said: BERKELEY—PORTLAND—CHARLOTTESVILLE—BOSTON—>NOT TODAY ANTIFA.

I’d heard passing comments all week about the threats posed by Black Lives Matter and the so-called antifa, and I wondered how we had reached a point where conservative white Americans fantasize about taking to the streets, bristling with weapons, flanked by fellow vigilantes, prepared to violently confront other Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights to assembly and free speech. It was one thing for the NRA and the gun industry to promote concealed carry of small pistols to defend against muggers and rapists, but it was another thing entirely to promote group vigilantism at a time when the country’s racial and political tensions are actually getting people killed.

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K.D. Lang Will Indulge Your Craving for “Constant Craving”

K.D. Lang in October, 2001. (Photo by Marc Marnie / Redferns) (Getty Images)

At the New York Times, Penelope Green profiles Canadian singer-songwriter K.D. Lang 25 years after the release of Lang’s album Ingénue. Green writes about how Lang has come to terms with her success, her “chapter in the history of the gay rights movement,” and about reaching middle age as an artist.

When “Ingénue” was released in 1992, with its dirge-like anthems to love and longing, the idea that a thrillingly sexual, openly gay and very butch woman would become a pop idol was seismic. It’s hard to imagine now, when hit television shows like “Transparent” treat lesbian sex as the least complicated of its themes and when the average seventh grader has been schooled in the semiotics of drag and to see gender as a spectrum.

Gay men were familiar. Gay women, not really. And certainly not gay women as magnificently sensual as Ms. Lang. In that same decade, Ellen DeGeneres would become famous, partly by being all-American affable, never an erotic threat. Even singing her fierce “Come to My Window,” Melissa Etheridge hewed closely to the image of a traditional country singer. But K. D. Lang in a man-tailored suit was something else altogether.

Middle age, Ms. Lang said, is a chapter that interests her.

“I thought about it even when I was young,” she said. “I thought about the trajectory of a career, how a lot of people that I like kind of disappeared for a while. Peggy Lee. Dean Martin. Even Tony. Even though I’m sure they were working. There are moments when they kind of went dark, and I can see now why this is because you don’t have the unbridled confidence you have when you are young and you start questioning your abilities. I’ve started to question mine and sort of narrowing my assessment of what I’m actually good at, which is probably just singing. What’s really good to me now is probably what I can’t touch in my lifetime.

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Washing the Pillow Cases Every Day

(Photo by: MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)

In this poignant personal essay at Design Observer, Chappell Ellison recalls her brother’s crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how their family coped with his rituals as his disease worsened. As a designer, she examines how her brother’s obsession with germs informs her design choices and how those choices might help improve the lives of people with disabilities.

When my brother walks into a room, every single object has a voice that screams only at him. The sofa, the rug, the throw pillows; they scream indiscernible commands that all seem to say “Don’t touch me or you will die.” His fear of these objects and the perceived germs they carry cause him to stand in the middle of the living room, paralyzed with his palms pressed together at his waistline. It has become his standard position. He might watch an entire half-hour of television, standing in that very spot. We’ve gotten used to it. In the past five years, I’ve realized that some objects scream louder than others: door handles, light switches, cushions. But his interactions with some particular objects have provided stories that cause my family to laugh and cry years later. We have learned that objects designed to make our lives easier, prove disastrous for him. As his condition worsens, we have to take stock of these objects and adjust our own behaviors in the process.

The combination of an ear and germ obsession results in daily laundering of pillowcases. We’re not sure why, but he prefers doing his laundry at my parents house rather than his own. He carries the laundry in a black garbage bag, clutching it tightly and never once placing it on the floor. On one winter’s afternoon, he pulled a few articles out of the dryer, carrying the heap in his arms through the kitchen, walking towards his bedroom. That’s when the pillowcase fell. The sound of it hitting the floor was thunder to my ears. He didn’t notice. This would be avoided if he could use a laundry basket, yet the plastic lattice work on nearly every basket sold translates to dozens of nooks and crannies for him to clean. Washing them upwards of 30 times a day, his hands are the only trustworthy receptacle for carrying clean laundry. After he went to his bedroom, I sat at the kitchen table and starred at that dark green pillowcase, lifelessly sprawled across the orange tile of our kitchen. It was Sophie’s Choice. Or Let’s Make A Deal, without the prizes or fun. I had a choice to make: put the pillowcase back in the dryer and lead him to think he left it there by mistake, or leave it right where it was. I couldn’t bear to lie to him. My legs turned to stone and I sat, knowing the consequences. He eventually returned to discover his error, muttering curse words under his breath. Our household suffered from a minor meltdown until dinner eased the tension. He could never use that pillowcase again. My dad has since devoted his free time to searching the internet for laundry baskets that can be easily sanitized.

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“Give a Sister Her Due”: Why Richmond, Virginia, Should Honor the Mother of Rock ‘n’ Roll

11th December 1940: American gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe standing onstage, singing at the microphone with her guitar, at Cafe Society Downtown, New York City. (Photo by Charles Peterson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

At Richmond Magazine, Craig Belcher writes on the life and musical legacy of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the electric-guitar playing gospel singer widely recognized as the mother of rock ‘n’ roll. While the legendary artist made Richmond, Virginia, her home for over a decade, the city has yet to honor her — her home was seized and sold off to cover unpaid taxes decades ago and her grave went unmarked until 2009. Belcher says it’s long past time that Richmond made it up to the late, great recording artist whose blues-infused gospel sound and soulful performances influenced the likes of Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton.

There’s a two-lane stretch of highway between the Arkansas towns of Cotton Plant and Brinkley that was renamed last year. It’s now the Sister Rosetta Tharpe Highway, in honor of the woman who created rock ‘n’ roll.

Yes, a woman.

And yes, she played an electric guitar.

With a badass manner that defied tradition and expectation, she shouted about the Lord and her lovers — male and female — with a voice full of grit and gall that captivated crowds. Years later, guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Chuck Berry would mimic her movements and playing style, putting the finishing touches on the genre she shaped.

“Can’t no man play like me,” she’d say whenever she was compared with her male peers. “I play better than a man.”

Tharpe’s time in Richmond ended abruptly, and in a way that has only helped to diminish her legacy.

In 1957, while on tour out of the country, her home and all of her belongings were seized and auctioned. Lonnie Smith Sr. told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1981 that the foreclosure of her home had been related to unpaid taxes.

It was a sad end to her relationship with the city that for so long had served as a home base. She would never again return to Richmond and never again enjoy the same musical success.

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