The New York Times

An epic three-part series documenting how Tucker Carlson became America’s most racist cable TV host, and the heir apparent to Trumpism:

Like Mr. Trump, he is a winking pugilist who rails against elites even as he shapes a movement. Mr. Carlson likes to address his audience directly: “You” are decent, generous, deserving. “They” — the pro-war, pro-China, anti-American “ruling class” — are out to get you. “They’d rather put your life in peril than appear insensitive,” Mr. Carlson says of this ruling class, adding, “They literally don’t care about you, and yet they are still in charge.” He delivers these grim sermons with peppy good cheer and shameless overstatement. On “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” events of the day are further evidence of truths already established; virtually any piece of news can be steered back to the themes of elite corruption, conspiracy and censorship, from gun control to marijuana legalization to paper drinking straws.

A devastating, well-reported story on the drone program of the U.S. Air Force and the lack of mental-health support for drone operators.

Because they were not deployed, they seldom got the same recovery periods or mental-health screenings as other fighters. Instead they were treated as office workers, expected to show up for endless shifts in a forever war.

We had to watch a target for days, weeks and even months. We saw him play with his kids. We saw him interact with his family. We watched his whole life unfold. You are remote but also very much connected. Then one day, when all parameters are met, you kill him.

People often think that this job is going to be like a video game, and I have to warn them, there is no reset button.

For many years, Barnes & Noble was the Walmart of bookstores, crushing independent sellers through economy of scale. Then a new big bad entered the arena. As it turns out, though, neither pandemic nor Bezos could crush B&N — and now, armed with renewed focus, it’s staging one hell of a comeback. (Still shop independent if you can, though!)

Barnes & Noble has also concentrated on selling books, instead of the vast assortment of items that it once carried and that were only tangentially — if at all — related to reading.

“We were selling a lot of fairly irrelevant things to a bookstore,” Mr. Daunt said. “Nobody thinks, ‘I need a Duracell battery — I’m going to go down to my bookshop.’”

“Even in death, a coherent picture of Mr. Martinez’s double life — which was once the subject of a Hollywood movie — proves elusive. He was both a loyal confidant and one of the most infamous turncoats in New York lore. He was a kind friend and an admitted, ruthless killer; a selfless neighbor and a man so loathed in Harlem that former friends popped champagne in the streets to celebrate his violent end.”

“After struggling with cancer for years, Sam Anthony was running out of time. Before he died, he found the courage to mail a letter that he had long been afraid to send.”

“When my daughter’s delivery went off the script I had imagined, it made me wonder about what we ask from our birth stories.”

“It is an open secret in chess that many players cut side deals with tournament organizers and other top competitors that help them achieve norms they might have struggled to get legitimately.”

“At 17, biologist Juliane Diller was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon. Fifty years later she still runs Panguana, a research station founded by her parents in Peru.”

“Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched.”