Search Results for: tech

Beyond the Simply Salacious: Five Stories on Adultery

Longreads Pick

Here are five stories born of adultery. Read about technological advancements for philanderers and their cuckolds, personal perspectives from the cheater and the cheatee, a forbidden lust-fueled crime story, and a piece on how adultery became bedfellows with American popular culture and music—back in 1909.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 30, 2014

Beyond the Simply Salacious: Five Stories on Adultery

Here are five stories born of adultery. Read about technological advancements for philanderers and their cuckolds, personal perspectives from the cheater and the cheatee, a forbidden lust-fueled crime story, and a piece on how adultery became bedfellows with American popular culture and music—back in 1909.

1. “The Cuckold” (James Harms, Guernica, February 17, 2014)

“The cuckold knows betrayal as a form of revision: here is the life you thought you were living; now here is what really happened.” Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo by jbergen

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled

Longreads Pick

Examining the gender gap in the tech industry through the lens of Stanford University’s pioneering class of 1994.

Published: Dec 23, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,797 words)

Longreads Best of 2014: Business Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in business writing.

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Max Chafkin
Writer focusing on business and technology.

Schooled (Dale Russakoff, New Yorker)

This piece explores the failed attempt by Mark Zuckerberg and Corey Booker, among others, to fix Newark’s schools—and in doing so makes clear just how hard education reform is. Most shockingly, it exposes the huge sums of money spent by the city and its supporters on education consultants who managed to extract huge fees without, apparently, doing a whole lot. It’s pretty hard to make a dense story about education reform read well, but Russakoff amazingly manages it, while managing to be fair and incisive. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Longreads Best of 2014: Science Stories

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.

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Virginia Hughes
Science reporter and soon-to-be science editor at BuzzFeed.

The Itch Nobody Can Scratch (Will Storr, Matter)

I’ve thought about this story (an excerpt from Storr’s book, The Unpersuadables) many, many times since reading it. It’s superficially about Morgellons, a disease in which people think that they’re infected with bugs or fibers. But it’s really about the nature of disease and diagnosis, evidence and belief. It’s creepy, fascinating, and profound. The best part about it is the way Storr describes these patients and their delusions. It would be easy to make them seem stupid or crazy or worse. But Storr’s writing creates empathy and understanding. The not-insignificant downside of this piece: it makes you feel itchy. Read more…

The Rotten and the Sublime: A Reading List on Fermentation

Fermented products occupy a strange spot in contemporary food culture, being at once some of the most enduring staples of our diets — and some of the most faddish. From the fizzy kick of kimchi to avant-garde culinary experimentation in Copenhagen, here are five stories about our fascination with (and, sure, addiction to) deliciously rotten food.

1. “Why Bakers Love Their Mothers.” (Dana Goodyear, Food & Wine, November 2013)

Some of the oldest sourdough starters, dubbed mothers — “the bubbling, breathing slick of wild yeast and Lactobacillus bacteria that feed on flour and water” — date from the 19th century and are passed, like a heirloom, from one generation to the next. In this piece, Goodyear lingers on the moving emotional connections bakers develop with the bacteria in their kitchens.

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The Cost

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Rilla Askew | 2014 | 21 minutes (5,065 words)

 

Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks)

 
When my godson Trey was a toddler growing up in Brooklyn, every white woman who saw him fell in love with him. He was a beautiful child, sweet natured, affectionate, with cocoa-colored skin and a thousand-watt smile. I remember sitting with him and his mom in a pizzeria one day, watching as he played peekaboo with two white ladies at a nearby booth. “What a little doll!” the ladies cooed. “Isn’t he adorable?”

I told Marilyn I dreaded the day he would run up against some white person’s prejudice. “His feelings are going to be hurt,” I said. “He won’t know it’s about this country’s race history, he’ll think it’s about him. Because so far in his young life every white person he’s ever met has adored him.” Marilyn nodded, but her closed expression seemed to say I was talking about things I didn’t really understand. Read more…

Recognizing the People Who Work Backstage Via Webcomic

I don’t think that every strip I’ve written is so backstage elitist that it’s inaccessible for everyone. You don’t have to be an expert in any field to get it. I’m hardly a sound design expert, I’ve stage managed once, and I’ve hardly even touched a light board. But I’ve been around it and I’ve got a sense of the culture that I’m trying to reflect. So much of what I’m poking fun at is situational. I’ve got friends that are not theatre people who have read my strips and tell me that it reads like a bunch of jokes you had to have been there for, which I suppose is why it works for my readers because most of them have been there. Sometimes the situations are funny on their own, and the barrier is very low, and other times the situation is exceedingly specific, so specific that Google isn’t going to help you.

One of my favourite parts of making this comic happens right after I update and the comments roll in with people saying they’ve been in those situations before or they’ve always wanted to say or do whatever I’ve written. It keeps the tech experience from being isolating. There’s only one stage manager in a show and it is sometimes difficult to find and develop a sense of community among others who have shared similar experiences. That Q2Q provides that for some people makes me supremely happy…

There’s not a lot of recognition out there for the people that work backstage, and I like that my comics help to let those people know that what they do is appreciated, and they are not alone.

– In theatre, a “cue to cue” is a long, technical rehearsal. The lighting and sound designers practice and polish effects and transitions. Q2Q is a webcomic created by Steven Younkins that illustrates the unexpected humor and unforeseen obstacles behind the scenes. Instead of actors, Q2Q focuses on the techies responsible for light, sound, stage management, set design and more. Exeunt Magazine interviewed Younkins about his niche audience, his love of comics and his artistic philosophy.

(Disclaimer: I know Younkins personally; we work at the same theater. I am not a character in his webcomic.)

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