The Ship-Breakers
Bangladeshi men looking for work often end up doing one of the world’s most dangerous jobs:
Oceangoing vessels are not meant to be taken apart. They’re designed to withstand extreme forces in some of the planet’s most difficult environments, and they’re often constructed with toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. When ships are scrapped in the developed world, the process is more strictly regulated and expensive, so the bulk of the world’s shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.
Industry reforms have come in fits and starts. India now requires more protections for workers and the environment. But in Bangladesh, where 194 ships were dismantled in 2013, the industry remains extremely dirty and dangerous.
Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx: A Love Story
This week’s Longreads Member Pick is “Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx: A Love Story,” by Ned Stuckey-French, originally published in 1999 in culturefront, the former magazine for the New York Council for the Humanities. It’s a story that takes a closer look at the dynamics of a friendship, and the roles we play in each other’s lives.
Taking the Long View on Sports Reporting: Our College Pick
Our latest college pick, from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
The Secret History Of Britney Spears’ Lost Album
Ten years ago Britney Spears said she was working on an album called Original Doll that she hoped would prove herself as a songwriter. What happened to it?
Over the years, fans have put together mock Original Doll album covers and created their own tracklists culled from B-sides and leaked tracks. Message board threads devoted to the album have stirred speculation and conspiracy theories, and every so often, users claiming to have a friend of a friend who worked at Jive would post an alleged detail.
However, multiple former employees of Jive told BuzzFeed they were unfamiliar with the album, and a source who worked with Spears during the time said Original Doll was never scheduled internally; anything Spears said about it was just her talking about her plans. She didn’t say much, just 22 words in a single interview, but Original Doll has become Spears’ Smile, the infamous abandoned Beach Boys’ album, and a fascinating piece of pop folklore.
The Horrible Bosses of Hollywood
It sounds so glamorous, working in Hollywood. Doesn’t it? Sure, if you’re a studio chief or an actor with your own trailer. But if you’re a powerless minion, it’s a special kind of hell.
M— and L— seem mismatched as a comic team. They’re both type A personalities, with no foil, no straight man. Like the worst kind of Funny Guys, they are always, oppressively, “on.” Every time they see you, they do not merely crack a joke; they molest you with comedy. Their assaults are rapid-fire, cringe-inducing, often offensive. (“Nice jacket, Jim. What, did you buy it from a sand nigger in Morocco?” Grunt.) Surely, they must think, this is the way to become noticed as a formidable comic force—to launch one’s hilarity from across the room. No one is immune to it. When they walk into a pitch meeting with the Columbia execs, L— invariably begins the meeting with an antic gag, tripping, Dick Van Dyke-like, over a hassock, or a pair of crossed feet, nearly somersaulting across the room, then rubbing his knees and grimacing in theatrical pain. You can see the same pain flickering in the eyes of the execs.
How America’s Leading Science Fiction Authors Are Shaping Your Future
How science fiction writers inform the way we think about the real world:
Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist at the Seattle-based tech company LaserMotive, who has done important practical and theoretical work on lasers, space elevators and light-sail propulsion, cheerfully acknowledges the effect science fiction has had on his life and career. “I went into astrophysics because I was interested in the large-scale functions of the universe,” he says, “but I went to MIT because the hero of Robert Heinlein’s novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel went to MIT.” Kare himself is very active in science fiction fandom. “Some of the people who are doing the most exploratory thinking in science have a connection to the science-fiction world.”
Microsoft, Google, Apple and other firms have sponsored lecture series in which science fiction writers give talks to employees and then meet privately with developers and research departments. Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the close tie between science fiction and technology today than what is called “design fiction”—imaginative works commissioned by tech companies to model new ideas. Some corporations hire authors to create what-if stories about potentially marketable products.
‘His Career Will Be Absolutely Fine’
A molestation confession, and a family’s horrible response:
Your mother will try to turn the conversation from Dad’s A Pedophile to You’re A Bisexual. You will tell her that he used to sniff the insides of your underwear, she will say, “You’d know all about women’s underwear, wouldn’t you?” and there will be this deep pause before the insults start.
Communication with your mother will become extremely sparse, and will soon be relegated to birthdays and religious holidays. You will offer the briefest of written words and she will respond with oblique jokes about Kim Jong-un. She doesn’t have an email account of her own, so she will use your father’s email address to communicate with you. Every time his email address comes up in your inbox you almost shit your pants.
The Hunt for El Chapo
How the notorious leader of the Sinoloa Drug Cartel was captured:
At eleven-forty-two that morning, Peña Nieto announced the capture on Twitter: “I acknowledge the work of the security agencies of the Mexican state in pulling off the apprehension of Joaquín Guzmán Loera in Mazatlán.” U.S. officials had already leaked the news to the Associated Press, but Peña Nieto wanted to be certain that his troops had the right man. In the summer of 2012, Mexican authorities announced that they had captured Guzmán’s son Alfredo, and held a press conference in which they paraded before the cameras a sullen, pudgy young man in a red polo shirt. A lawyer representing the man then revealed that he was not Guzmán’s son but a local car dealer named Félix Beltrán. Guzmán’s family chimed in, with barely suppressed glee, that the young man in custody was not Alfredo. In another recent case, officials in Michoacán announced that they had killed the infamous kingpin Nazario Moreno, a triumph that was somewhat undercut by the fact that Moreno—who was known as El Más Loco, or the Craziest One—had supposedly perished in a showdown with government forces in 2010. (D.E.A. agents now joke that El Más Loco is the only Mexican kingpin to have died twice.)
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Jeffrey Wigand, who inspired Russell Crowe’s character in the 1999 movie The Insider, emerged from the sealed world of Big Tobacco to confront the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown & Williamson. Hailed as a hero by anti-smoking forces and vilified by the tobacco industry, Wigand found himself at the center of an epic multi-billion-dollar struggle.
The anti-tobacco forces depict Jeffrey Wigand as a portrait in courage, a Marlon Brando taking on the powers in On the Waterfront. The pro-tobacco lobbies have been equally vociferous in their campaign to turn Wigand into a demon, a Mark Fuhrman who could cause potentially devastating cases against he tobacco industry to dissolve over issues that have little to do with the dangers of smoking. According to New York public-relations man John Scanlon, who was hired by B&W’s law firm to help discredit Wigand, “Wigand is a habitual liar, a bad, bad guy.” It was Scanlon’s assignment to disseminate a wide range of damaging charges against Wigand, such as shoplifting, fraud, and spousal abuse. Scanlon himself, along with B&W, is now the subject of an unprecedented Justice Department investigation for possible intimidation of a witness. For First Amendment specialist James Goodale, the charges and countercharges B&W has attempted to level against Wigand represent “the most important press issue since the Pentagon Papers.” Goodale, who represented The New York Times during that period, said, “You counteract these tactics by a courageous press and big balls.”
Is This Rothko Real?
For nearly 30 years, a collector has been trying to prove his painting is a Rothko—potentially worth $20 million or more. Now, he’s got new evidence.
Douglas Himmelfarb spotted the painting in 1987 at an auction preview in South Los Angeles. The offerings that day were a mix of furniture and no-name artwork. This canvas was large and dirty, and depicted three rectangles of color stacked on top of one another. A handful of people stood clustered around it as someone pulled it off the wall and turned it around. On the back was a signature:
MARK ROTHKO
CAL. SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
EX. NO. 7
A woman scoffed, Mr. Himmelfarb recalls: “Mark Rothko did not paint in California, and there is no such thing as the California School of Fine Arts.”
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