Search Results for: Facebook

Longreads Best of 2018: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2018. Here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

If you like these, you can sign up to receive our weekly email every Friday. Read more…

The Neanderthal

Illustration by Lily Padula

Jen Gilman Porat | Longreads | December 2018 | 14 minutes (3,447 words)

A couple of years ago, I purchased a pair of 23andMe kits for myself and my husband, Tomer. I intended to scientifically prove that Tomer’s most irritating behaviors were genetic destiny and therefore unchangeable. I’d grown tired of nagging him — oftentimes, I’d hear my own voice rattling inside my brain in the same way a popular song might get stuck in my head. I needed an out, something to push me toward unconditional acceptance of my husband. My constant complaining yielded zero behavior modification from on his part; on the other hand, it was changing me into a nasty micromanager. I briefly considered marital therapy, but that’s an expensive undertaking, costing much more than the $398.00 one-time fee for both DNA kits. Plus, couples’ therapy could take a long time, requiring detours through our shared history. In much appealing contrast, 23andMe, promised to launch us straight back to our prehistoric roots, to an earlier point in causality, one that might provide Tomer with something akin to a formal pardon note, thereby permitting me to stop fighting against him, once and for all. I imagined we could help others by way of example too, for what long-married woman has not suffered her husband’s most banal tendencies — the socks and underwear on the floor, the snoring? Not me, actually, because my husband puts his used clothes in the hamper, and I’m the snorer. Really, I’m probably blessed as far as masculine disgustingness goes. But my husband is flawed in one repulsive way: his barbaric table manners.

I have no doubt this is a genetic situation, for even back when we were first dating, I’d shuddered upon seeing my father-in-law poke through the serving bowls of a family-style meal with his bare hairy hands. My husband’s father has also been caught eating ice cream directly from the carton (the thought of which I now appreciate for its built-in binge deterrent). Moreover, my father-in-law eats like a caveman-conqueror, reaching across dinner plates to pluck a taste of this or that from his mortified tablemates. A family dinner looks like a scene straight out of Game of Thrones, minus any crowns. And so, when my husband first began to exhibit similar behaviors, I had to wonder: Had I suffered some rare form of blindness previously? Did some barrier of unconscious denial gently shield my eyes each day, year after year, but only at mealtimes? It was as if a blindfold suddenly fell from my face, or as if Tomer had finally removed a mask from his own. My gentleman turned into a beast, seemingly overnight.

I watched with horror, one Sunday evening, as my husband served himself a plate of meat and vegetables with his hands. His fingers ripped skirt steak in lieu of cutting it with a knife. He abandoned his fork altogether, and I lost my appetite.

Had Tomer suffered some obscure symptom of the mid-life crisis? Or was this a regressed state? During a phone conversation with a close friend, I described my father-in-law’s vile eating manners and wondered if his pre-existing condition had grown contagious. She suggested Tomer’s change of behavior might indicate an epigenetic effect; she’d read somewhere that some aspects of our genetic code lie in wait and get activated along the way. Apparently, some inherited traits remained invisible for years, hiding patiently in our cells until: Surprise! Just when you hit middle age and are totally comfortable in your own skin (despite the new fine lines around your eyes and those brown circles that are hopefully age spots and not melanoma), some new biological fact of your genetic code makes itself manifest, waking you up from your mid-age slumber.

Another interesting detail I could not ignore: Around the same time Tomer stopped liking forks, he’d adopted the Paleo diet, (versions of which are known as the caveman diet). He’d cut all processed foods from his intake, eating nothing but meat, nuts, vegetables, and fruit. Prior to going Paleo, he’d suffered from a severe case of irritable bowel syndrome and relied on bread products, thinking that challah and croissants were the softer, gentler foods. I suspected a gluten allergy and told him to lay off all the Pepperidge Farm cookies. I probably even told him to “eat like a caveman,” but I only meant for him to eat a more natural and gluten-free diet, in order to heal him, which in fact, it did.

“My stomach is no longer a quivering idiot,” Tomer said, and he said it more than once, to countless friends and family members, until he’d worked up a complete narrative on how he’d triumphed over his very own stomach. And each time he told this story, he lifted his shirt, pounding his fists upon his midsection. His proud smile began to appear, well, wild and hungry, as if he’d tamed his digestive system but in doing so, had activated a primitive gene and sacrificed his own civility.

Shortly thereafter, I came across an article pertaining to Neanderthal DNA. According to modern science, the Neanderthals and our prehistoric ancestors mated, leaving many of us with a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA. I did more Googling and learned that 23andMe can tell you how much Neanderthal DNA you carry. Although they do mean different things, in my mind’s eye, the words “Neanderthal” and “Caveman” summoned identical images: that of savage meat-eating maniacs ripping raw meat from bone with fat fingers and jagged teeth.

And this was it — the thing that sold me on 23andMe: the chance to determine one’s degree of Neanderthal-ness. Without any consideration of all the possible consequences of submitting one’s DNA to a global database, I ordered two kits, grinning and convinced that my husband’s result would show a statistically significant and above average number of Neanderthal variants in his genome. Since Father’s Day was only a month away, I decided I’d giftwrap the kits upon arrival too. I’d kill two birds with one stone.
Read more…

Monopoly vs. the Magic Cape

George Benjamin Luks, "The Menace of the Hour," 1899. Wikimedia Commons.

Will Meyer | Longreads | December 2018 | 19 minutes (4,998 words)

As Amazon attempts to wrap its strangling octopus tentacles around Long Island City and the nondescript “National Landing” — a newly renamed portion of Crystal City — in Northern Virginia, one of the words floating in the punch bowl of our popular vernacular to describe the firm’s unchecked power is “monopoly.” The “HQ2 scam,” as David Dayen dubbed it, was never an act of good-faith competition, but rather a cunning scheme to collect data about cities all over the country: What infrastructure did they have? How many tax-breaks was the local (or state) government prepared to hand over to the richest man in the history of the world? What would they do to accommodate a massive influx of professional-class tech workers? The spectacle of the publicity stunt was gratuitous, to put it mildly, but it was also beside the point. In Dayen’s formulation, as Amazon expands from two-day to one-day or same-day delivery, the company will need more infrastructure everywhere. From Fresno, California, to Danbury, Connecticut, at least 236 cities stumbled into Amazon’s HQ2 flytrap: submitting bids — bargaining chips — for the company to use in its quest for monopoly.

The story of HQ2 isn’t about Amazon’s superior products, or even benefit to consumers, but instead how the company is the current poster boy (poster behemoth?) for the unchecked political and economic power of tech giants. Amazon has the ability to drive out rivals, to engage in dirty tricks — like the HQ2 scam — due to its size and inertia. One need look no further than the Forbes billionaire list to see evidence of the damage caused by forgoing antitrust action against tech companies. Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos are all high on that list. The white collar cops in Washington haven’t bothered them for the most part (they did go after Microsoft enough to scare them in the late nineties, but that was the last serious case), basically allowing these firms to scoop up competitors and amass as much power as they please. Read more…

Sign On the Dotted Line to Ensure Your Own Destruction

Photo by Kevin via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

When small business loans from traditional banks dried up in the financial crisis, people like David Glass of Yellowstone Capital stepped into the breach with usurious loans, structured as cash advances to get around lending regulations, with triple-digit interest rates. And when borrowers can’t repay them — and sometimes even when they can — these lenders take advantage of some arcane New York state law to seize their assets. It’s ruthless, destructive, and completely legal, and Zachary R. Mider and Zeke Faux explain it all at Bloomberg Businessweek

In August, Bush closed his business, laid off his 20 employees, and stopped making payments on his loans. Yellowstone never filed its signed confession in court, but other lenders went after him over theirs. One sunny day that month, he walked to a wooded area near his home, swallowed a bottle of an oxycodone painkiller, and began streaming video to Facebook. To anyone who might have been watching, he explained that he’d taken out cash advances in a failed attempt to save his business. Now the lenders had seized his accounts, Bush said, his voice wavering. One had even grabbed his father’s retirement money.

“I signed ’em, I take the blame for it,” he said. “This will be my last video. I am taking this on me.” He asked his friends to take care of his family, then sobbed as he told his wife and teenage son he loved them.

Someone who saw the video alerted the police. They found Bush unconscious in the woods a few hours later—he credits them with saving his life. But the pressure from his confessions of judgment hasn’t relented. “I wake up every morning afraid what else they will take,” he says. “And every morning I throw up blood.”

Bush’s contracts with Yellowstone show that the company advanced him a total of about $250,000 and that he paid them back more than $600,000. Davis, who parted ways with Yellowstone in August, says he didn’t mistreat Bush or other borrowers and always followed the company’s protocols. “You know why people put the blame on me is because I’m successful,” he says. “It’s just haters.”

Read the story

The Organ Transplant Story You Don’t Hear

Getty / Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Katya Cengel | Longreads | November 2018 | 14 minutes (3,847 words)

 

His arms are covered with the sticky gunk left after bandages come off. There is a blue bruise on the inside of his right forearm. A long plastic tube enters a hole near his belly button. When it’s not in use, James “Bo” Calvert tucks the tube that he uses for dialysis into a spandex “bra” that circles his chest.

Calvert has stage 4 kidney disease, which means his kidney function is only 15 to 30 percent. There are six stages of chronic kidney disease — stage 4 is the last stage before end-stage renal disease (ESRD), when the kidneys cannot filter waste and excess fluid from the blood. At this point, you need a transplant or dialysis to stay alive.

Calvert has had both.

Read more…

‘I Really Hope a Lot of Men Read It’: Sohaila Abdulali on How We Talk About Rape

Garu Student Union of Bangladesh demanding the arrest of a rapist accused of raping an indigenous girl, April 14, 2014. Photo: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images.

Laura Barcella | Longreads | November 2018 | 12 minutes (3,191 words)

 

In a 2015 documentary called “India’s Daughter,” one of Jyoti Singh Pandey’s rapists, Mukesh Singh, gave a disturbing jail-cell interview in which he placed the blame for his crime squarely on his dead victim. “A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” he said.

Singh’s quote is despicable, but it neatly summarizes many of the internalized myths that women all over the world walk around with each day: that women have a say in whether we end up brutalized. That we can twist our own fate by making simple choices like staying home at night, or not wearing skirts, or abstaining from drinking. It helps rapists rationalize their actions, and it makes women feel like we retain a semblance of control over what happens to us. Of course, it’s not true.

What do you think about when you think about rape? If you’re someone who has also been a victim, you might think about power, the nebulous lines of control. You might think about the outfit you wore and the plan you’d made for innocent fun with a guy you met twice before. You might think about drinking wine on the patio, of consent given and later revoked. You might think about ripped underwear; the dirt beneath the nails of his callused, unfeeling fingers; and the massive blue bruises you got in places you don’t remember being bruised before or since. You might think about the shame and humiliation of the morning after, of not knowing who to tell or what hotline to call or what to preserve in a garbage bag as “evidence.” You might think about what your friends will say; whether they’ll support your story or find a way to warp it into your fault (“I’ve seen how you act with men when you’re drunk,” “but what did you expect, inviting him over so late?”). You might think about the walk-in clinic you visited afterward and the painful tests you endured there (yes, there was blood). You might think about filing a police report, or you might remember taking to your bed for a week and trying to avoid thinking about anything at all.

In her powerful but accessibly written new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, Sohaila Abdulali explores how cultures around the world handle rape. She approaches this intimate, sinister type of violence with a decidedly global viewpoint, delving into how both individuals and governments treat their victims, as well as how they navigate the nuances of sexual consent. Sure, it’s different in America. But is it better? Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Christophe Morin / IP3 / Getty Images

This week, we’re sharing stories from Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg, and Jack Nicas; Phil Klay, Harley Rustad, Michael Graff, and Alan Siegel.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Re: Hate Mail

Illustration by the author

Amy Kurzweil | Longreads | November 2018 | 9 minutes (2,322 words)

 

I’ve received 15 emails from my internet stalker in the past four days. It’s like watching an inmate from behind a two-way mirror. He read a short story I wrote once satirically titled “The Greatest Story Ever Written.” It’s about a group of male writers who lose their way. He didn’t like it. I think I’m open to criticism, but I wonder whether I really am. This correspondence has progressed for months: he condemns and insults, then catches himself being too harsh, too forward. Sometimes he apologizes. He thanks me for listening. He sends emails to courteously correct typos in his previous emails, and even these offer a Nietzsche quote as an epigraph. “We spared neither ourselves nor others…” He invites me to read his latest blogpost. If it won’t break your legs, he says, just tell me if you like it. I think about what it really means to like something. I compose responses to him in my head; clever, angry things about the patriarchy. But I don’t send them.

***

The first internet comment I ever read about myself was on YouTube, listed under an interview I’d done with my father. I was 25. Ray Kurzweil’s daughter has nice legs but her boobs aren’t that big. When I read it I thought: I feel like my boobs are pretty big. And also: I knew that dress my mother bought me was too short. And also: I felt ashamed. I was sorry I’d brought a body into a communion of ideas. I should have worn tights. The event was called “Women at the Frontier.” It honored women making great strides in technology. A snowboarder who lost her limbs spoke about prosthetics. Daughters of innovative men in technology interviewed their fathers.

I asked my dad, the inventor and genius, “What do you think you’ve learned from me?”

“You’ve helped me become a better writer,” my father answered.

 

After my first book came out, when I was 30, I received an email from a boy. In my head he was newly bar mitzvahed, 13 years old, wearing a kippah and a black suit — that’s the scene his gmail photo conjured. But he wrote like a real man, an ironic one. Should I be your husband? was the subject line. I sent back what I felt was a cunning response: The wedding has been scheduled for 12 December. Your mother should wear lilac. Your sister is not invited. I was very proud of my wit. I hope seven children suits you, and if they aren’t all girls I will cast the offending parties into the river in baskets. Do not try to retrieve them.

 

I’m not one to cold-message women on facebook, another man cold-messaged me on Facebook. He said I’d come up in conversation on a date with a woman he met on Jswipe. He said he read my book, thinks I’m attractive, has a hunch we would get along. I composed a message in my head: I am pleased to receive the news of my fame. It’s been a dream/fetish of mine to know my name is on the lips of young Jews on internet dates all across this country. Be fruitful and multiply with this woman and may all your children’s names begin with A. But something told me he wasn’t one for irony. The man’s technically unacknowledged message still lives in that wasteland of Requests, with the whatups and hiiiis and like my pages, and the Uber driver from Florida who found me somehow — I was in Naples for the Jewish Book festival and I must have been fishing for readers. Definitely interested in the convo we were having. Let’s talk over dinner next time you’re in town.

 

My internet stalker, however, isn’t seeking marriage or dinner. He isn’t interested in my body; He wants to volley with my mind. Amy, We need to fight, or else I shall keep thinking of things to say to you. My internet stalker uses the word “shall.” He’s refined. He’s quoted Lord Chesterfield from 1774 and Matthew Arnold from 1849. These are not writers I’ve read, but Arnold’s The Strayed Reveller sounds like the man I avoid at parties. My boyfriend says: ignore him. He sees me in my defensive stance, resisting the palpable urge to hold up my hands, like the gesture I make passing a neighbor’s barking dog: I’m not on your property and I have nothing to hide.

Read more…

The Post on Anti-Semitism I Never Thought I’d Write

Businesses and properties owned by Jews were the target of vicious Nazi mobs during a night of vandalism that is known as "Kristallnacht". (Photo by © Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive)

Today begins the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a nation-wide pogrom against Jews that took place across Germany and in parts of Austria on November 9th and 10th, 1938. Over the course of those two days, Germans smashed the windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burned synagogues, and committed deadly violence against Jews in the streets. Many consider the mass destruction that took place then to have marked a shift from ongoing, rampant anti-semitism to the official beginning of the Holocaust.

As a kid, in the ’70s, although I was occasionally made fun of for being Jewish, I thought that level of hatred and violence toward Jews had been relegated permanently to the past. But now, 80 years after Kristallnacht, I’m seeing I was wrong. Anti-semitism is on the rise again — in Europe, South America, the United States, everywhere.

It’s in my city of Kingston, New York, too. In my neighborhood. On my street.
Read more…

Searching for Insights from Her Father’s Delusions

Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

After Jean Guerrero’s father tore up his condominium’s walls to find the devices that he believed were monitoring him, her mother diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic. The crack cocaine he’d been smoking certainly exacerbated his condition. For Wired, Guerrero honors her father’s claim that he is a TI, or “Targeted Individual,” by treating his story the way a trained journalist should: she goes searching for answers. She casts a wide essayistic net, examining philosophy and psychology, the biblical prophets who modern people would call bananas. She investigates the CIA’s MKUltra mind-control program and wonders if certain psychological ailments can show us things about the world we might not otherwise see. She’s reaching, but only because she’s searching for unconventional, uncomfortable truths in a country where the CIA did actually dose 10,000 American citizens with LSD without their consent. In an era of data-harvesting, she says, aren’t we all under surveillance?

We can dismiss the targeted individual whose persecutors allegedly tormented her about a breakup. Or we can ask ourselves if her story reveals something we’ve ignored about ourselves: a social media dynamic in which we are actually being watched, in which our most intimate lives are exposed, in which we are sometimes mocked and taunted by remorseless strangers.

There’s no mystery that Facebook knows our gender, ages, hometowns, birthdays, friends, likes, political leanings, and internet browsing habits. Facebook can tell, by analyzing our likes and comments, whether we are going through a breakup or a divorce. It can make predictions about our health. It can algorithmically intuit our fantasies and fears and use that information to target us with messaging so personalized it feels like persecution.

Consider this example from my own life: After the Los Angeles Times published allegations of sexual misconduct by a gynecologist at the university I attended, Facebook started bombarding me with pictures of his face in the form of ads, from plaintiff lawyers offering free consultations and injury checks. I’d had an uncomfortable experience with this gynecologist and had been considering sharing my story with journalists after reading the first article. But seeing his face on my news feed every time I opened Facebook felt invasive, almost nightmarish.

My USC classmates and I were being stalked by lawyers who knew we’d attended the university while the gynecologist worked there. It didn’t feel like the platform was presenting an option to speak up; it felt like harassment. The specificity of the ads, their omnipresence and relation to a very personal incident in my life felt like an assault on my process of deliberation—on the integrity of my free will.

Like my father, I was experiencing a form of gang stalking. And it was real.

Read the story