A white cross rising above the Macacos slum marks the spot where people are burned alive. A starving horse, his ribs poking out, is hitched close by with a thin rope. A nearby soccer field is dotted with pieces of melted rubber. No games are played here. The Amigos dos Amigos gang that runs this […]
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The Man Who Wouldn’t Die
Olympic hero (and 2011 “Biggest Loser” contestant) Rulon Gardner has fallen off trucks, tumbled off tractors, and gotten stuck in a baler. He has been impaled on an arrow, broken his neck, and gashed his knee clean to the bone. He has survived several catastrophic high-speed accidents, endured a frostbitten night in subzero temperatures, and […]
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Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics
Neal Wu’s last chance for international glory, and maybe America’s, too, begins with a sound like a hippo crunching through a field of dry leaves—the sound of 315 computer prodigies at 315 workstations ripping into 315 gray envelopes in unison. “You have five hours,” a voice booms across the packed gymnasium. “Good luck.”
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PR for the PRC
During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I worked as a speed typist for the Chinese Ministry of Propaganda. It was my job to type, in English, everything that was said during an endless blur of press conferences where the Middle Kingdom celebrated its logistical triumphs.
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The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics
Veronica Noone has joined the legion of people, from Olympic-level athletes to ordinary folks just hoping to lower their blood pressure, who are plugging into a data-driven revolution. And it goes way beyond Nike+. Using a flood of new tools and technologies, each of us now has the ability to easily collect granular information about […]
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The Revolutionary
As a gawky teenager in the 1960s, Dick Fosbury just wanted to find something he was really good at. Little did he know he would become an Olympic champion and turn a sport literally upside down.
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The Obamas’ Marriage
On Oct. 3, just a day after their failed Olympics bid in Copenhagen, Barack and Michelle Obama slipped into a Georgetown restaurant for one of their now-familiar date nights: this time, to toast their 17th wedding anniversary. As with their previous outings, even the dark photographs taken by passers-by and posted on the Web looked […]
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What Makes Marion Jones Run?
She has been stripped of her Olympic medals. She has been jailed. Now she is trying to become the WNBA’s oldest rookie.
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Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics
Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics Neal Wu’s last chance for international glory, and maybe America’s, too, begins with a sound like a hippo crunching through a field of dry leaves—the sound of 315 computer prodigies at 315 workstations ripping into 315 gray envelopes in unison. “You have five hours,” a voice booms across […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Inc. Magazine's Burt Helm
Burt Helm is Senior Writer for Inc. Magazine. His stories, “The Forgotten Founder,” “Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go?” and “Hard Lessons in Modern Lending,” were featured on Longreads in 2012. Best Takedown of an Old, Established Writer by a Young, Hungry Writer in an Awkward Press Junket Setting Sarah Nicole Prickett, “How to Get […]
