“The Big Error Was That She Was Caught”: The Untold Story Behind the Mysterious Disappearance of Fan Bingbing, the World’s Biggest Movie Star

Chinese bureaucracy cracking down the Chinese multi-million dollar film industry, where salaries far outstrip the Chinese norm and tax under-reporting is the norm, and Fan Bingbing was the government’s biggest public example.

Author: May Jeong
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Mar 26, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,195 words)

How to Move a Masterpiece: The Secret Business of Shipping Priceless Artworks

No one wants to be the courier on duty when a screwdriver accidentally stabs through the crate holding a Monet.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 22 minutes (5,656 words)

Uncertain Ground

In this personal essay, Grace Loh Prasad realizes that mourning is complicated when home and homeland aren’t the same place.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 25, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,021 words)

On Virgil Avenue, Avocado Toast and Four Different Versions of the Same City

Thanks to Los Angeles’ enormous multi-culturalism, residents inhabit very different cities along this rapidly changing stretch of East Hollywood. Here food is both a symbol of peoples’ differences and their common ground.

 

Published: Mar 4, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,750 words)

I Rode an E-Scooter as Far From Civilization as Its Batteries Could Take Me

These contentious new rentals are both problematic additions to city life and promising alternatives to cars and public transit. One Bay Area resident wanted to see if they could help him escape the city into nature, and to explore the limits of the rental scooters’ abilities.

Author: Joe Veix
Source: Gizmodo
Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,770 words)

Our Words Will Save Us and Set Us Free

In the wake of having his writing career belittled, Jackson Bliss becomes an interpreter for a refugee and comes to see words, translations, and storytelling as important acts of resistance.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 18, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,149 words)

Barely There

In this personal essay, Jennifer Baker considers the ways in which hair removal rituals, begun in her tween years, have helped her achieve body acceptance and connect with her own desire.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 20, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,059 words)

Of Safe Words and the Sacred

A personal essay about how a BDSM relationship gone wrong helped Britni de la Cretaz find God.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,913 words)

The Feminist Paradox of Cathy Guisewite

A profile of Cathy Guisewite, the Baby Boomer creator of “Cathy,” the popular comic strip widely syndicated from 1976 to 2010, and the eponymous character’s conflicting concerns.

Source: The Cut
Published: Mar 19, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,088 words)

The Senseless Logic of the Wild

It was just a kayaking trip. Until it upended three men’s lives.

Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 40 minutes (10,000 words)