The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

How two moderators are trying to make a popular Silicon Valley forum a thoughtful and productive space to have a conversation.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 8, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,226 words)

Elizabeth Warren’s Classroom Strategy

“Warren believed that the law and its remedies should not be simply the domain of the already powerful, and her approach to communicating with her students — and later, as a more public figure, with a wider audience — came back to her drive to make seemingly complicated concepts available to those who didn’t already have an expertise, specifically by decluttering the language she feels is meant to drive people away from engagement with the policies that shape their lives, rather than drawing them in and making them full participants.”

Source: The Cut
Published: Aug 6, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,028 words)

The Beautiful Power of Ta-Nehisi Coates

Jesmyn Ward interviews one of our most essential public intellectuals.” 

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 6, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,326 words)

The Great Escape

The explosion of escape rooms make total sense in a world mostly without order.

Published: Aug 7, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,177 words)

Drink Up, Stoners

Beer producers from Lagunitas to Anheuser-Busch are betting big money that the drinkable marijuana market will be the next Red Bull or kombucha market, but will alcohol consumers buy fizzy THC water that makes you sleepy rather than amped to hit the club? As Amanda Chicago Lewis puts it, “The people who can’t handle being stoned in public are not going to suddenly learn how.”

Source: The Verge
Published: Jul 30, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,360 words)

Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens?

They call her The Savant, and between school drop-offs and dinner times and mowing the lawn, she’s down the internet’s darkest holes, finding the next misogynist who’s primed to turn violent.

Source: Cosmopolitan
Published: Aug 7, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,050 words)

Losing My Religion at Christian Camp

Katy Hershberger recalls the way her decade at Christian summer camp both shaped and condemned her views of faith and girlhood.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 8, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,207 words)

The Night Charlie Parker Soared in South Central L.A.

Despite fire, gentrification, and time erasing Los Angeles’ rich jazz history, stories help protect it. One historic event occurred in 1947, when the saxophonist genius named Bird jammed after-hours at Jack’s Basket Room, rejuvinated from a six month sober stay at Camarillo State Hospital. Some say it was Bird’s greatest performance. We’ll have to believe them. It wasn’t recorded.

Source: Alta
Published: Aug 5, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,673 words)

Who’s Considered Thin Enough for Eating Disorder Treatment?

Two patients who’ve lost 30% of their body weight. Both restrict food to the point of blacking out. Both are in imminent danger of pancreatic failure. But only one’s skinny, so only one gets real care.

Source: Elemental
Published: Aug 5, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,328 words)

The Lost Hours of Melissa Lorraine

Melissa Lorraine survived a sexual assault after getting into a car she thought was an Uber ride she had ordered. She found a way to slowly heal by performing exercises she now teaches in classes for inmates in correctional facilities.

Author: Tony Adler
Published: Aug 6, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,416 words)