Search Results for: Love

All Is Fair in Love and Twitter

Longreads Pick

An excerpt from Bilton’s new book, Hatching Twitter: The untold story of Twitter’s true origins—and the contributions of Noah Glass, the co-founder who disappeared from the picture:

“What Glass didn’t know was that Dorsey was the one who wanted him out. Perhaps it was because he sensed vulnerability or perhaps it was because Glass was the only person who could rightly insist that the status updater was not Dorsey’s idea alone. Whatever his reasons, Dorsey had recently met with Williams and threatened to quit if Glass wasn’t let go. And for Williams, the decision was easy. Dorsey had become the lead engineer on Twitter, and Glass’s personal problems were affecting his judgment. (For a while, portions of the company existed entirely on Glass’s I.B.M. laptop.) After conferring with the Odeo board, around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 26, 2006, Williams asked Glass to join him for a walk to South Park. Sitting on a green bench, Williams gave his old friend an ultimatum: six months’ severance and six months’ vesting of his Odeo stock, or he would be publicly fired. Williams said the decision was his alone.”

Published: Oct 9, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,149 words)

The Spy Who Loved Frogs

Longreads Pick

A young scientist retraces the work of Edward Taylor, a prolific herpetologist (a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians) who also led a double life as a spy:

“Taylor was called to duty again in 1944, when he was 54 and war raged in the Pacific. According to records in the US National Archives, he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to train agents in Sri Lanka — then a British territory that provided ready access to Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and other areas that the Japanese had infiltrated. Scientific work, an OSS officer explained to one of Taylor’s superiors, was ‘excellent cover.’

“Taylor taught jungle survival at Camp Y, a steamy settlement on the coast. With a penetrating stare and a lantern jaw, he seemed more imposing than his 1.8 metres. In his spare time, he occasionally dodged gunfire to nab specimens, which he studied for two monographs published after the war. ‘Have just described five new forms of blind snakes from the island,’ he wrote to S. Dillon Ripley, a young ornithologist who served with him and would later lead the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In a later letter, he offered ‘some 500 species’ of mollusc shells to the Smithsonian.”

Source: Nature
Published: Sep 11, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,211 words)

The Summer of Love and Newsweek

Longreads Pick

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg reflects on his early career working as a correspondent for Newsweek in San Francisco, covering Jefferson Airplane, Ronald Reagan and hippies:

“If the S.F. music scene (I quickly learned that ‘Frisco’ was a no-no) was scarcely known outside the Bay Area, and neither was the larger cultural phenomenon it drew strength from. The word ‘hippie’—derived from ‘hipster,’ the nineteen-forties bebop sobriquet revived sixty years later in Brooklyn, Portland, and food co-ops in between—had been coined only a few months earlier, by Herb Caen, the Chronicle’s inimitable gossip columnist. (At the time, as often as not, people spelled it ‘hippy.’) Ralph J. Gleason, the Chron’s jazz critic, was the scene’s Dr. Johnson. (Pushing fifty, he was too old to be its Boswell.) Gleason’s protégé was the pop-music critic for the U.C. Berkeley’s student paper, the Daily Californian, Jann Wenner. But the national press had not taken much notice, if any. So getting something into Newsweek was a coup.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 15, 2013
Length: 8 minutes (2,143 words)

Why Everybody Loves Tesla

Longreads Pick

How the electric car maker managed to survive, and even thrive, while pursuing new opportunities with a growing network of battery charging stations around the U.S.:

“While Tesla was figuring out how to keep its cars from exploding, it also had to come up with ways to get them to go farther and recharge faster. Higher-end versions of the Model S can go up to 300 miles on a charge, which has helped separate Tesla from rival vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf, which run about 75 miles before needing more juice. Musk has hinted that Tesla has a 500-mile battery pack in the works. At the company’s solar-powered Supercharger stations, Tesla owners can replenish about 200 miles of range in 20 minutes for free. (Most electric cars take hours to recharge.) Or customers can opt for the battery swap, which will cost about what they’d pay for a tank of gas, and be back on the road in 90 seconds. ‘The only decision that you have to make when you come to one of our Tesla stations is do you prefer faster or free,’ Musk said at the charging event. The company expects to have 100 stations along major highways in the U.S. and Canada by yearend, with more to follow.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Jul 18, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,322 words)

Love and Loss in a Small Texas Town

Longreads Pick

The writer visits West, Texas, the town where he grew up, and talks to residents who experienced the fertilizer plant explosion that destroyed its surrounding area on April 17, 2013:

“Less than a minute later, he saw a bright flash and heard a deep boom. ‘I thought I was imagining this, but others saw it, too: for a split second, I could see wavy, ripple-y air,’ he says. ‘It was the shockwave. I could see it hover. I could see it come right above the treeline.’ Then he was blown onto his back on the driveway. Out front, Becky was thrown into the grass. And inside, Abby was buried under collapsed drywall. A ceiling fan fell on her, too.

“Jeff doesn’t know how long he was on the ground. When he was able finally to go back to the house days later, he saw what could have been. On the driveway, maybe a foot from where he had been standing, there was chalky residue from where a piece of concrete had landed, before smashing against the back of his house. In his mother Carolyn’s backyard there was a 16-foot length of auger pipe, a foot in diameter, thrust into the back wall, near the roofline. Judging from its path—where it clipped a tree, smashed through a fence, and landed hard enough to gouge a foot-deep gash in Carolyn’s lawn before cartwheeling into her house—it, too, had been headed straight for him.”

Author: Zac Crain
Source: D Magazine
Published: Jun 25, 2013
Length: 34 minutes (8,531 words)

A Coach’s Painful Farewell to a Rugby Program He Built and the Players He Loves

Longreads Pick

The coach of one of the only all-black rugby teams in the nation says goodbye to his team:

“‘Rugby, to me, is life,’ said Cecil, who hopes to play in college and for the U.S. national team. ‘All I dream about is rugby, all I play is rugby, all I think about is rugby, all I watch is rugby.’

“Bayer wasn’t ready to tell Cecil and his teammates that he was leaving. Not yet.

“‘There are moments in this office where it’s a lump in my throat. Kids are talking about next year. I want to tell them,’ he said, ‘but it’s not the right time. I don’t want kids to go, “Screw it, if he’s leaving, I’m done. I’m not coming back to school next year.”‘”

Author: Rick Maese
Source: Washington Post
Published: Jun 22, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,613 words)

articles read & loved no. 58

dietcoker:

articles read & loved no. 56

dietcoker:

More from Emily Perper…

Reading List: Love in the Time of Context

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Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

One reason I admire longform journalism is its ability to tell stories. Some of these stories gain national attention. Some are perfected in an MFA workshop. Some are written on the backs of receipts, after waking in the middle of the night, while in traffic.

Most longform stories are written with love: toward craft and toward subject. These four are no exception. They focus on falling in love with chance encounters and with self-acceptance. They are about a love of career and a love of potential. They are about the struggle-love of family. That is the loyalty of longform: to a love of context.

1. “Owning the Middle.” (Kate Fagan, espnW and ESPN The Magazine, May 2013)

Women’s basketball superstar Brittney Griner makes strides on the court and in LGBTQ athletic culture. Be sure to check the video interview and gorgeous portraits by Cass Bird.

2. “Growing Up With Sailor Moon.” (Soleil Ho, Interrupt Magazine, May 2013)

In the midst of her parents’ emotional divorce, a young Ho discovers and relies upon the subversive gender-empowering message of Sailor Moon.

3. “A Ruckus of Romance.” (Rachel Howard, Narrative.ly, February 2013)

They fall in love on the dance floor: Emily Hall Smith plays matchmaker to the artsy, queer women of New York City.

4. “Butch in the Airport.” (Kate, Autostraddle, May 2013)

The seemingly innocuous airport can be place of great anxiety for those whom identify as genderqueer. Here, Kate reflects on such practical and emotional difficulties.

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

Photo: Rosa Middleton

Reading List: Love in the Time of Context

Longreads Pick

Picks from Emily Perper, a freelance editor and reporter currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

Share your favorite stories in the comments.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 9, 2013