laphamsquarterly: Barbara Newhall Follett, the child prodigy who began her first book The House Without Windows at the age of 8, and the subject of Paul Collins’ essay “Vanishing Act.” “My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings […]
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markcoatney: One of the big challenges on Tumblr right now is the problem of discovery: How can we come up with better ways to help Tumblr users find great new, interesting things outside of the circle of the people they follow? One step toward solving this is our new curated tag pages. Right now, with the […]
Group Home’s Unorthodox Sex Policy Disquiets Mother Kevin Rouse’s story reveals the difficulties of dealing with a population of men with adult sexual urges and often childlike thinking. The staff of the Human Development Center enacted a bold and unorthodox policy permitting sex between residents, but experts who deal with the developmentally disabled question whether […]
Mallary Tenore covers media news for the Poynter Institute’s Poynter.org. *** Timothy Lavin: The Listener, The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010 Refreshing to see well-written stories about lesser-known media phenomena like Coast to Coast AM. James Verini: Lost Exile, Vanity Fair, Feb. 23, 2010 Verini does a great job describing what the death of the paper (in this case, Russia’s English-language […]
Bargain Junkies Are Beating Retailers at Their Own Game “These wack-jobs who spend 20 hours a week stacking coupons? That stuff drives us batty,” says John Morgan, executive director of the Association of Coupon Professionals. “They dance all over the rules. These zealots may be following the letter of the law, but I don’t think […]
The Social Network Jose Canseco says he has regrets. The man is reportedly broke. The man is a pariah — he has been excommunicated by the high priests of baseball. He seems to believe this is because he told the truth about some things, because he admitted using steroids and named a few other players […]
Oprah’s Network Is Her Highest Hurdle The Oprah Winfrey Network’s three-year gestation has been unusually arduous. Early on, Ms. Winfrey’s partner in the joint venture, Discovery Communications, grew frustrated, and as boardroom tensions boiled over early last year she considered backing out altogether. The relationship has improved markedly since then. But as recently as late […]
Rolling Stone Cover Story, 1970: The Odyssey of Captain Beefheart Beefheart stubbornly continues what he’s doing and waits patiently for everyone else to come around. He has steadfastly refused to leave the Magic Band or to abandon the integrity of his art. “I realize,” he says, “that somebody playing free music isn’t as commercial as […]
Read This Over the Weekend: Vanishing Act “Some prodigies flourish, some disappear. But Barbara did leave one last comment to the world about writing—a brief piece in a 1933 issue of Horn Book that earnestly recommends that parents give their own children typewriters. ‘Perhaps there would simply be a terrific wholesale destruction of typewriters,’ she […]
Winona Forever This is where our conversation sort of gets weird. Ryder has been talking about certain aspects of contemporary culture that confuse her, as if she’s a time traveler—which she kind of is! From the last century! She’s still figuring out how to work her iPhone. She talks about TMZ but calls it TZM. […]
My Top 10 Business #Longreads of 2010 Round Two with the excellent @BrainPicker. I tried to minimize repeats with this one—stories here from David Carr, Kathryn Schulz, Nicola Twilley, Mike Riggs, Felix Salmon, David Segal, Tony Hsieh, Paul Graham, James Surowiecki and Bryan Urstadt.
Not All Smurfs and Sunshine: Profile of Esquire’s Chris Jones “I wanted to do right by Joey,” Chris Jones now says of “The Things That Carried Him” which Esquire published in May 2008. In 17,000 words, he told the story of one soldier’s return home, structured backward from his funeral to the moment an IED […]
The Physiology of Foie: Why Foie Gras is Not Unethical “Foie gras is an easy target. There are only three foie farms in the country, and none of them have the money or government clout to defend themselves the way that the chicken or beef industry does. It’s a food product that is marketed directly […]
Gordon Likes to Think He is the Most Underrated of All Mythical Heroes Gordon was 19 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Friends, family, and professionals have told him he’s mentally ill, but he can’t see any of the symptoms. To him, it’s all real. When he takes his prescribed medication, the apocalypse doesn’t vanish; […]
Goat Boy Rises (#HappyBirthdayBill) On October 1st, 1993, the comedian Bill Hicks, after doing his twelfth gig on the David Letterman show, became the first comedy act to be censored at CBS’s Ed Sullivan Theatre, where Letterman is now in residence, and where Elvis Presley was famously censored in 1956. Presley was not allowed to […]
In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm Though they offer different messages, idea entrepreneurs have plenty in common. Quite a few of them have published books with the word “innovation” in the title. All of them hate to be called consultants. “I like to position myself as a thought leader,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at […]
Larry King: ‘Is He Happy? Is He Alright?’ (1991) “I’ve had listeners send pictures: ‘This is me, listening to you,’ ” King says, amazed. “I swear to God. ‘Here I am, listening to you.’ … Sometimes, they write poems to me.” He thinks about this, wondering who else might inspire such a thing. “Would people […]
Joe Spring and Chris Keyes are editors for Outside Magazine. *** The Most Isolated Man on the Planet, Slate, Monte Reel (Aug. 20, 2010) He’s alone in the Brazilian Amazon, but for how long? The Last Patrol, The Atlantic, Brian Mockenhaupt (November 2010) A veteran unit patrolling the Devil’s Playground hands off its territory to […]
Amy K. Nelson is a writer for ESPN.com. (She and Elizabeth Merrill also wrote this great longread about sports and infidelity.) *** Longreads asked me to compile my Top 5 of 2010. An impossible task, and I know a few of mine are on other people’s lists. Here’s what I drew up: The Case of the […]
The Inequality That Matters dihard: This is a must read. Tyler Cowen, in his latest (long) article in The American Interest, takes us through the evidence of income equality, opines on the actual impact, and then asserts some root causes. While I don’t necessarily agree with it all (mainly his assertion that the root cause is practice […]
Hosed: The FDNY’s Black Firefighter Problem How would you perform in a test of logic and reading comprehension, even if the terms used in the questions made no sense to you? Here’s what we mean: try to come up with the answer to the following strange question: Q: When operating in an exocraft which uses […]
Rich Ziade is partner and lead strategist at Arc90, notable for many things including creation of the wondrous Readability app. (Ed. note: We know: One of the stories below is from 2009, and another is from 2007.) *** • Paul Graham ruminates over the deflationary value of stuff. • Zak Smith debates which is more […]
Time Person of the Year 2010: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg has often — possibly always — been described as remote and socially awkward, but that’s not quite right. True: holding a conversation with him can be challenging. He approaches conversation as a way of exchanging data as rapidly and efficiently as possible, rather than as […]
The defense could have proposed that it’s never normal or sane to believe you’re the prophet of God…But the defense did not go there, perhaps because the judge and most of the jury and most of the people outside the courtroom were Mormons and would have been deeply offended. Scott Carrier on the trial of […]
Murder Music In no arena is dancehall—and Jamaican society overall—more troubled than in grappling with sexual orientation. Blaring on most street corners and from car radios, dancehall’s virulent homophobia, a curdled hatred for homosexuals explicitly and pervasively articulated in the music’s lyrics and deeply entrenched in dancehall culture, foments a quotidian reign of terror against […]
Top 10 Longreads for Art, Design, Film & Music I teamed with the wonderful BrainPickings.org to feature my favorites in this category. Some of you beat me to the punch on these, but there are a few new gems in there (Stephen Tobolowsky, I’m looking at you).
gq: “I wouldn’t call it conversation,” Gelb said. “It’s this sort of breathless monologue that you can only engage by interrupting. Dick is an advocate. He almost always has a case to make.” Holbrooke’s forcefulness is tempered by an endearing vulnerability—the nakedness of his ambitions and pleasures and insecurities. He takes pains arranging the seating […]
Ellen Ripley Saved My Life On female sci-fi heroines. “So it’s a mercy we have Ripley. David Foster Wallace may not have agreed with his date that The Terminator was one long story about the evils of abortioning—but I do! Girl, call me!—but I find it not at all unreasonable to suggest that the entire […]
From Kid Celebrity to Consummate Con Artist When immigration officials greeted him at Pan American Hospital, he said he was a 13-year-old orphan from Colombia who sneaked into the Arca Airline plane’s wheel well. Name? “Guillermo Rosales.” That was the first lie. Now he has matured into one of the world’s notorious jewelry thieves, who […]
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