Search Results for: Time

Margaritaville and the Myth of American Leisure

Longreads Pick

“Margaritaville, as Parrotheads will tell you, is a state of mind. But it’s also—delightfully, sometimes inexplicably—a real place now open in Times Square.”

Source: Eater
Published: Aug 30, 2021
Length: 16 minutes (4,200 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Slime Mould (Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Matt Hamilton and Garrett Therolf, Lacy M. Johnson, Devin Kelly, Max Bell, and Rainesford Stauffer.

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1. How the State of California Failed Noah Cuatro

Matt Hamilton, Garrett Therolf | Los Angeles Times | August 19, 2021 | 5,000 words

“Before a 4-year-old boy’s killing, authorities wavered on rescuing him.”

2. What Slime Knows

Lacy M. Johnson | Orion Magazine | August 24, 2021 | 3,411

“There is no hierarchy in the web of life.”

3. From a Window

Devin Kelly | wildness | August 15, 2020 | 2,089 words

“Tonight, a dog holds a piece of cardboard in its mouth for an entire block. I don’t know what it finds in such a small, almost useless thing, but then again, I horde so much of what is small and useless, even to me, even to a dog. In most moments, there is something beautiful about trying, even if it’s impossible.”

4. The Bizarre and Tragic Ride of J Sw!ft

Max Bell | theLAnd Magazine | August 26, 2021 | 5,938 words

“What follows is the far more complicated story of how our country’s complex, disturbingly callous, and ever-shifting yet forever intractable immigration policies created years of hell and potentially permanent exile for one of hip-hop’s greatest producers.”

5. Her Name Is Not Honey Boo Boo

Rainesford Stauffer | Teen Vogue | August 25, 2021 | 2,300 words

She grew up on reality TV. Now she’d like you to call her Alana.

The Epic Family Feud Behind an Iconic American Weight-Loss Camp for Kids

Longreads Pick

“Each time I lose a pound
My fat heart goes round and round
All I want is to be thin
See my bones instead of skin
Each night I ask the stars up in vain
Why must I be a fat kid at Camp Shane?”

Published: Aug 26, 2021
Length: 36 minutes (9,045 words)

How Scotland Forged a Rare Alliance Between Amateur Treasure Hunters and Archaeologists

Longreads Pick

“Within a matter of hours, Hunter and Freeman realized they had a hoard on their hands— something intentionally hidden, either in the hopes of returning for it later or as part of a ritual or ceremony. The last time anything like it had been found in the area was in 1864. To Hunter, the real treasure wasn’t the metal; it was the traces of organic material he could make out among the artifacts, including a tangle of leather straps and a wood-and-leather scabbard concealing the blade of the sword.”

Source: Popular Science
Published: Aug 24, 2021
Length: 14 minutes (3,706 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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This week, we’re sharing stories from David Rohde, Sarah Cox, Wyatt Williams, Joshua Hammer, and Kiana Fitzgerald, Paula Mejía, Matt Sonzala, Donnie Houston, Lance Scott Walker, Brandon Caldwell, Cat Cardenas, Jessi Pereira, and Sama’an Ashrawi.

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1. Trying—and Failing—to Save the Family of the Afghan Who Saved Me

David Rohde | The New Yorker | August 17, 2021 | 2,539 words

“We saw the city full of these strange armed men. With strange clothing and hair styles. We are back in the nineties, you can’t believe these people are back.” The last time the Taliban had seized power, in 1996, their reign had begun with relative calm, but they quickly started conducting house raids, making arrests, and inflicting other abuses.”

2. Inside the Pacheedaht Nation’s Stand on Fairy Creek Logging Blockades

Sarah Cox | The Narwhal | August 16, 2021 | 7,574

“The Pacheedaht Nation has close to 300 members. About 120 live in the Pacheedaht community, less than a 15-minute drive from the blockades. And the inconvenient truth for the protesters, however well-intentioned in their inventive and prolonged efforts to save old-growth, however well-versed in the parlance of acknowledging the territories of Indigenous peoples, is that only a few Pacheedaht members have joined them.”

3. Eating the Whale

Wyatt Williams | Harper’s Magazine | August 18, 2021 | 5,739 words

“A personal history of meat.”

4. The Sopranos of Berlin: A Brutal Crime Family and a Billion Dollar Jewel Heist

Joshua Hammer | GQ | August 18, 2021 | 6,208 words

“For such thieves, there is no more desirable prize than the crown jewels of the great monarchies of Europe. Putting aside whatever cultural significance these treasures may have later accrued—landing them in museums—the simple fact is that these pieces were made of materials that are still quite valuable today. The authorities feared that if they didn’t catch a quick break, pieces of the Green Vault collection would be lost forever.”

5. The 20 Essential Texas Rap Tracks

Kiana Fitzgerald, Paula Mejía, Matt Sonzala, Donnie Houston, Lance Scott Walker, Brandon Caldwell, Cat Cardenas, Jessi Pereira, and Sama’an Ashrawi | Texas Monthly | August 18, 2021 | 7,267 words

“Rap wasn’t meant for Texas. But it was only a matter of time before Texans started rapping, made the genre their own, and regifted it to the world.”

The 20 Essential Texas Rap Tracks

Longreads Pick

“Rap wasn’t meant for Texas. But it was only a matter of time before Texans started rapping, made the genre their own, and regifted it to the world.”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Aug 18, 2021
Length: 29 minutes (7,267 words)

Bringing Species Back … From the Brink

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I don’t often get to use the term gobsmacked, but that is how I was rendered when I saw the film Jurassic Park. I remember the 1993 cinema trip vividly: clutching my popcorn, wide-eyed, as the first dinosaur, a brachiosaurus, ambled across the screen. Walking out with my parents, I jabbered with excitement: “Could we really make dinosaurs real again, Dad? Could we? Could we?”

These memories came flooding back as I read Natasha Bernal’s piece in Wired UK, exploring the world of biobanking animal cells. Bernal answers the question of whether extinct animals could be brought back with a tentative yes — science has long proved that “frozen cells from extinct animals could potentially be used to revive species” — but that is not what biobanking is about. The intention is to increase the diversity of living species, cloning to prevent further loss, rather than to bring back what is already gone. As a species dwindles, so does its genetic pool, and frozen cells from extinct animals could potentially be used to help prevent extreme inbreeding. 

Bernal’s case study is Tullis Mason, a chap who sports “three-quarter length shorts” even in a lab coat. Matson runs an artificial insemination company for racehorses from his family’s farm in Shropshire, England. However, on the side, he is also planning to save the animal kingdom by building the biggest biobank of animal cells in Europe. It’s not always a dignified business, with Bernal describing Mason hooking an elephant penis into a device that looks like “a huge condom,” but the science and the ethics her article explores are fascinating. We may not be about to bring dinosaurs back to life, but with help from biobanking, life already on this planet might still find a way.

This is why, back at Matson’s farm, there is a tiny, black, felt-like ear and two bat testicles the size of olive pits on a lab bench. The Seba’s short-tailed bats at Chester Zoo are usually housed in the Fruit Bat Forest, where visitors can feed them as part of a £56 “experience”. Though not currently listed as endangered, with global biodiversity at a tipping point, it’s likely that no species is entirely safe. This bat died of natural causes, but its genetic material will live on.

The first thing that Lucy Morgan, a scientific advisor at Nature’s SAFE, does is shave the ear. “Ears grow to a certain extent throughout our lifetime, so they’re a cell type that’s already wanting to grow and regenerate itself,” she says. “So when choosing a sample that you’re trying to pick to culture in the future, it’s a good one.”

She puts the ear to soak in chlorhexidine to clean it from bacteria and switches on a timer. After two minutes, she transfers it to a petri dish, and starts cutting it into small pieces the size of chocolate chips. Using tweezers, she puts them in cryovials filled with cryopreservant. The tiny testicles will be preserved whole. They couldn’t get any semen out of them – a common problem for animals that are too small to preserve in the traditional manner.

Safely pipetted into a cryovial or straw, an animal’s tissue, semen or ova are deposited into the cryogenic tank, ready to be unfrozen when they may be needed for repopulation programmes in zoos or, if feasible, the wild. In the case of some creatures, whose anatomical challenges do not currently permit artificial insemination using sperm or ova, the samples may stay there for decades. For now, all of Nature’s SAFE’s samples are in one location, but the charity aims to build a backup so that tissue can be split into different places and safeguarded for the future.

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Trying—and Failing—to Save the Family of the Afghan Who Saved Me

Longreads Pick

“We saw the city full of these strange armed men. With strange clothing and hair styles. We are back in the nineties, you can’t believe these people are back.” The last time the Taliban had seized power, in 1996, their reign had begun with relative calm, but they quickly started conducting house raids, making arrests, and inflicting other abuses.”

Source: New Yorker
Published: Aug 17, 2021
Length: 10 minutes (2,539 words)

The Spine Collector

Longreads Pick

“For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?”

Source: Vulture
Published: Aug 17, 2021
Length: 27 minutes (6,877 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

The North Tower reflecting pool of the National September 11 Memorial at night in New York City.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Jennifer Senior, Aaron Hutchins, Molly Ball, Diana Hubbell, and Vauhini Vara.

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1. What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind

Jennifer Senior | The Atlantic | August 9, 2021 | 13,254 words

“Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.”

2. Forgiving Jaskirat Sidhu

Aaron Hutchins | Maclean’s | August 4, 2021 | 5,045

“Who deserves absolution, and when, is one of humanity’s most vexing questions—one families devastated by the Humboldt Broncos tragedy can’t seem to avoid.”

3. What Mike Fanone Can’t Forget

Molly Ball | Time Magazine | August 5, 2021 | 5,745 words

“There is a thin blue line between order and chaos, and at that moment, Mike Fanone was it.”

4. There Has Been Blood

Diana Hubbell | Eater | August 3, 2021 | 6,471 words

“For more than five decades, the Thai palm oil industry has been marred by rampant exploitation, violence, and corporate greed. Thailand is the world’s No. 3 producer of palm oil.”

5. Ghosts

Vauhini Vara | The Believer | August 9, 2021 | 5,992 words

“I didn’t know how to write about my sister’s death—so I had AI do it for me.”