The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.
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The Fracking Lottery
“When I moved to Billtown, I worried most about whether fracking tainted groundwater. By the time I left the area, my biggest concern was whether the liberty granted to citizens to lease their land, or to otherwise act in ways that limits others’ access to environmental goods, taints democracy.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Sports and Games
With leagues across the world undergoing cancellations for much of the year, 2020 has been an interesting one in the world of sports. Here are some stories that resonated with us.
Judge a Book Not By its Gender
Lisa Whittington-Hill suggests there’s a distinct gender bias in celebrity memoirs. Where female celebrities are expected to expose all, male writers get to write about whatever they want.
Walking Across California
To understand what the Golden State is compared to what it was, one solitary hiker follows the trail of the first overland Spanish expedition into California 250 years later.
Removing Beethoven’s Wig: A Classical Music Reading List
Classical music is more than dead Europeans in wigs, starched collars, and stuffy concert halls.
What classical music is, where it’s going, and what it still can be.
How to Get So Famous They Give Your House a Medal
What decides whose legacies get memorialized? Mostly richness and whiteness.
Why Karen Carpenter Matters
For one brown, queer Filipino-American, Karen Carpenters’ music anchored her to her musical family’s past while helping chart her path in their adopted Southern California.
Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral
In and around Los Angeles, natural and man-made disasters have been inextricable for almost two centuries.
