Featured: James Droske’s #longreads page. See his story picks from Grantland, GQ magazine, Rolling Stone, plus more.
The Longreads Blog
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More actors, filmmakers and execs are using human growth hormone (H.G.H.) in an attempt to reverse the aging process. But is it really doing what its Beverly Hills evangelists are claiming?
He has been giving himself H.G.H. injections for more than 20 years. And he does look terrific, with smooth skin and a lean body. And, by the way, H.G.H. needles are extremely thin, like those used by diabetics or acupuncturists. H.G.H. therapy, doctors say, is virtually painless.
There’s just one catch. The vast majority of endocrinologists, when asked about the widespread treatment for H.G.H. deficiency, agree.
It’s baloney.
“Hollywood’s Vial Bodies.” — Ned Zeman, Vanity Fair
See also: “Inside the Bloody World of Illegal Plastic Surgery.” Jordan Ginsberg, This Magazine, Nov. 25, 2010
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Life as a cop in 2012, from the officers’ perspective. How Commissioner Ray Kelly and the legendary CompStat system have changed New York’s police department, both for better (dropping crime rates) and worse (increasing pressure on officers to make the numbers):
The disaffection from the public and anger at the department aren’t universal, but they are widespread, stretching across boroughs and ranks—and cops say that the acrimony is a by-product of the numbers-obsessed systems that Kelly has perfected. The commissioner inherited CompStat, the innovative marriage of computer-analyzed crime stats and grilling of field commanders. But in the Kelly era, CompStat has filtered through every facet of the department, and making a good show at those meetings has become an obsession. Few cops talk openly about the NYPD’s troubles: Some are wary of the media, some fear punishment from the department. ‘The job is getting smaller all the time—more demands, less autonomy, less respect,’ a recently retired Bronx detective says mournfully. ‘The aggressive management culture has been really effective, but it’s also extremely aggravating.’
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[National Magazine Awards finalist, Public Interest] An investigation of rampant sexual violence that goes unpunished at a Sioux reservation:
Kim reported the rape, and Mike was arrested and jailed. As soon as she returned to the reservation, his family began threatening her, calling her a liar and a bitch. Whenever they saw her on the street, they told her they would beat her up and make sure her son was taken away from her if she didn’t drop the charges. Kim believed they could do it, since some of Mike’s family members worked in the tribal court. ‘I was getting threats right and left, and I wasn’t scared. I was going to go through with it—they had him in jail, and it was all going to work out. But then they let him out,’ Kim said. ‘Nobody would do anything. He just walked around town.’
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Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Slate.com, New York Magazine, Inc. Magazine, The Awl, The New York Times Magazine, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Shellee O’Brien.
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[Not single-page] IBM and Microsoft teamed up on what was supposed to be the operating system that changed everything. It didn’t turn out that way:
Meanwhile, Microsoft was two-timing the operating system it had co-created. In May 1990, it released Windows 3.0, the first version that was sort of decent. In terms of technical underpinnings, it remained creaky, but it gave garden-variety PCs the same sort of Mac-like pretty front end that OS/2 aspired to deliver. Consumers and businesses embraced Windows by the millions, instantly turning it from an apparent dud into a blockbuster. Every PC maker in the industry except IBM soon standardized on it.
With Windows suddenly flourishing, Microsoft decided it didn’t have to share the future of operating systems with anyone else. It not only began to sever ties with IBM but also argued that OS/2 was, in senior vice president of systems software Steve Ballmer’s cheery words, ‘a dead end.’ The software that was originally supposed to be OS/2 3.0 morphed into Windows NT, the modernized version of Windows that both Windows XP and Windows 7 eventually descended from.
“25 Years of IBM’s OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System.” — Harry McCracken, Time
See also: “The Internet Tidal Wave.” — Bill Gates, Letters of Note, May 26, 1995
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On the balance between admiration and friendship. A writer strikes up an email relationship with the author he most admires, Leonard Michaels:
In his work Lenny exhibited incisiveness, self-awareness, and control, and yet in life he sometimes appeared to me to be innocently childlike. He was often very emotionally candid. He talked freely and unguardedly about himself and about his friends and acquaintances. Though not trying to be mean-spirited or malicious, he could be indiscreet. Once, in conversation, he mentioned a friend, a man with a recognizable name, who had impregnated his much younger girlfriend to keep her from leaving him. I understood that Lenny had mentioned this in a flow of social feeling, not to sow gossip, only to remark upon a peculiar incident that he’d found illuminating and amusing. Still, the disclosure seemed at odds with the image I’d constructed of Lenny based on his work.
“On Literary Love.” — David Bezmozgis, The Rumpus, orig. from Tablet
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Inside the rock star’s Nashville home and the headquarters for his growing company, Third Man Records:
White walked back to a room called the Vault, which is maintained at a constant 64 degrees. He pressed his thumb to a biometric scanner. The lock clicked, and he swung the door open to reveal floor-to-ceiling shelves containing the master recordings of nearly every song he’s ever been involved with. Unusually for a musician, White has maintained control of his own masters, granting him extraordinary artistic freedom as well as truckloads of money. ‘It’s good to finally have them in a nice sealed environment,’ White said. I asked where they’d been before, and he laughed. ‘In a closet in my house. Ready to be set on fire.’
White said the building used to be a candy factory, but I had my doubts. He’s notoriously bendy with the truth — most famously his claim that his White Stripes bandmate, Meg White, was his sister, when in fact she was his wife. Considering the White Stripes named themselves for peppermint candies, the whole thing seemed a little neat. ‘That’s what they told me,’ he insisted, not quite convincingly. I asked if I needed to worry about him embellishing details like that, and he cackled in delight. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
See also: “The Fresh Air Interview: Jay-Z.” Terry Gross, Nov. 16, 2010
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Oh, look, here’s something new for you to read.
Snaaap!
FYI: Not a longread, but this is a new site co-edited by Longreads managing editor Mike Dang and frequent Longreads contributor Logan Sachon. You can also follow them here on Twitter.
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Helpful tips from a poet who lives in Brooklyn:
1. MOVE OUT OF BROOKLYN
I know not every novelist in America lives in Brooklyn, it just seems that way. There are a million stories on the L Train, and they’re all basically about dorky people doing dorky things. Which is fine. The best novel to come out of Williamsburg was obviously A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. That was The Pre-ironic Brooklyn Age. And while Brooklyn might be a great place for other artists, poets and painters to live and interact and steal from each other, all your sad little Brooklyn novels end up sounding about the same. Novelists in packs are like Smurfs, except drunk and bitter.
“How to Write the Great American Novel.” — Jim Behrle, The Awl

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