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Featured Longreader: Jana Fitzgerald, editor at Nomad Editions. See her story picks from The Awl, Susan Orlean and more on her #longreads page.
Featured Longreader: Jana Fitzgerald, editor at Nomad Editions. See her story picks from The Awl, Susan Orlean and more on her #longreads page.
Featured Longreader: Jana Fitzgerald, editor at Nomad Editions. See her story picks from The Awl, Susan Orlean and more on her #longreads page.
Featured Longreader: Writer Benjamin Freed. See his story picks from The Awl, The AV CLub, The New Yorker and more on his #longreads page.
Featured Longreader: Writer/editor Dan Kois. See his story picks from The New York Times Magazine, The Awl, New York Magazine and more on his #longreads page.
LOGAN: So it’s not necessarily the idea that media coverage of this event will make anyone that has any power change anything, but that it will inspire us to change stuff ourselves?
SAM: I mean, partially. Anything like this always has 500 million different goals and other things that it’s going to accomplish without even intending to accomplish them. So for example, one thing that I thought when I saw a reporter ask the President a question about Occupy Wall Street, and he used it as a chance to try to, he tried to say he agreed with the protesters, even though the reporter had framed the question as like, clearly they think you haven’t done enough and are part of the problem, like, just the fact that that interchange took place! Before Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party were the loud people who were in the street doing things and making noise, which set a tone so that when reporters asked the President a question, they would say, “It seems like a lot of people out there think that government is too big and is spending a lot of money and that taxes are too high, what are you going to do about that?” Right? And now the question was from the opposite direction. And so simply having that be a thing that happens is important.
“Why Should We Demonstrate? A Conversation.” — Logan Sachon, The Awl
I fucked up with Aunt Mimi, the first time I met her. I was greeted, I was shown the bird feeder where the birds came to keep her company, I was shown around the place. And then I said, “wow, I’ve never been in a trailer before.”
I meant it nicely. I liked trailers; I got a bit jealous, every time we saw them on vacations; I wanted to live in a house like that when I grew up, self-contained and mobile. It seemed vaguely magical to me. It did not, however, seem magical to Aunt Mimi.
She whipped around on me like a snake.
“Well,” she said, “la-dee-dahhh, missy. You enjoying yourself? Is this an experience for you, coming down to see the poor trailer folks? It’s such a treat, getting visitors from the palace.”
“The Percentages: A Biography of Class.” — Sady Doyle, Tiger Beatdown
More from Sady Doyle: “Ellen Ripley Saved My Life.” The Awl, Dec. 7, 2010
Cannibals Seeking Same: A Visit To The Online World Of Flesh-Eaters
On the Cannibal Café’s forums were men looking for men, men looking for women (the ideal: short, buxom, thin redheads) and women looking for men—very few posts, if any, were for women looking for women. There were people who wanted to be eaten and people who wanted to do the eating. There were stories, artwork and users seeking advice on the best to way to cook someone. “I am ready!” announced that the poster was prepared for slaughter. Entire threads were devoted to “human meat for sale fresh frozen.” Email addresses were freely exchanged, with posters using handles like “Pigslut” and “Masochist Mr. Waye.”
By Josh Kurp, The Awl
Meet the Heroes of Early Scientology Reporting
Then came the six-part expose published June 24th through 29th, 1990, in the Los Angeles Times, a story that conclusively divided the wheat from the chaff where Scientology rumors were concerned. Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos spent five years on the story and it was, and still is, a corker. The other day Sappell told me that the Times’ Scientology investigation began when he learned that a former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant had become a private investigator for the Scientology organization, after having been fired by the department in 1981 for allegedly running a house of prostitution and alerting a drug dealer to a planned raid. (He was acquitted of all criminal charges in a later trial.) Soon enough it became clear that this former officer was using his LAPD contacts on behalf of his new bosses at Scientology. Sappell’s editor scented a bigger story, and the game was afoot.
Leaving Egypt, with Regrets: The Evacuated Students of Cairo
Through the dense fog, Gunnar saw a lone old man stand in the middle of a deserted street, berating a fearsome wall of police. Then the helmeted officers began charging, firing a hail of bullets. Gunnar dove behind a car. His pants split. He couldn’t tell if the police were firing high or if the old man had been hit. He was a block from his apartment, but he couldn’t get home.
He ducked into a shop, where eight people were hiding among the safety of bolts of cloth. “Take those off,” said the shop owner, a tailor, pointing to Gunnar’s pants. “I’ll sew them for you.”
By Nathan Deuel, The Awl
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