— In Wired, Adrian Chen travels to the Philippines to talk to employees who work at content moderation companies that do outsourced work for companies in the U.S., scrubbing objectionable content (sexually explicit images, gore, racism, solicitation of minors) from major social media sites. It’s a difficult job:
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Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Mysteries and Truths of Illness: A Reading List
In her essay “This Imaginary Half-Nothing: Time” (#10 on this list), poet Anne Boyer quotes another poet, John Donne: “We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew, and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Longreads’ Best of WordPress, Vol. 7
10 of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress: Featuring Guernica, Bklynr, Wired, Cincinnati Magazine, and more.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Autocorrect Doesn’t Correct Obscene Words
Gideon Lewis-Kraus talked to autocorrect inventor Dean Hachamovitch for Wired, and learned why some swear words don’t get autocorrected: On idiom, some of its calls seemed fairly clear-cut: gorilla warfare became guerrilla warfare, for example, even though a wildlife biologist might find that an inconvenient assumption. But some of the calls were quite tricky, and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Founder of Flickr and Slack on the Psychological Torture of Selling Too Early
Stewart readily admits he sold Flickr too early. “If we had waited six months we would have made much more money. If we had waited a year we would have made 10 times more money,” he says. He regrets it now. But at the time, after the dotcom crash, the Nasdaq plummet, and September 11, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A History of Scorpion Venom in Medicine
The new issue of Wired has a story about Jim Olson, a pediatric oncologist and cancer researcher whose lab is looking into whether a scorpion-venom concoction can help detect cancer cells in our bodies. Injecting our bodies with scorpion venom may sound somewhat outlandish, but it’s been used in medicine for quite a long time: […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
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. * * * 1. Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing Meredith Broussard | The Atlantic | July 21, 2014 | 12 minutes (3,091 words) […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
What Happens When the Internet Takes Over Your Home: Virus Edition
I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don’t know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again. Technically […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Your Phone Was Made By Slaves: A Primer on the Secret Economy
On the new triangle trade, and the surprising connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
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.
