“Shortwave radio aficionados developed various hypotheses about the role of the station in Russia’s sprawling, military-communications network. It was a forgotten node, one theory ran, set up to serve some function now lost deep in the bureaucracy. It was a top-secret signal, others believed, that transmitted messages to Russian spies in foreign countries. More ominously, […]
Tag: longreads
“A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism. Internal company documents show that […]
“At Twitter, where anxiety and optimism are never far from one another, the leadership is surprisingly frank about these problems. To start with, the audience is alarmingly fickle. Nielsen estimated that user-retention rates were around 40 percent. Twitter was easy to use at an entry level, but after a while it was hard for some […]
“They accuse us of being misguided and of spreading half-truths. They accuse us of being emotional. Well, if we are emotional, it is because this pipeline threatens our water, our health, our homes, and our way of life. If we are misguided and spreading half-truths, it is because TransCanada has misguided us and told us […]
Remembering “Rapper’s Delight” producer Sylvia Robinson, who died yesterday. “He would say something every now and then, like ‘Throw your hands in the air,’ and they’d do it. If he’d said, ‘Jump in the river,’ they’d have done it.” Inspiration struck. “A spirit said to me, ‘Put a concept like that on a record and […]
“The real hourly median wage in New York between 1990 and 2007 fell by almost 9 percent. Young men and women aged twenty-five to thirty-four with a bachelor’s degree and a year-round job in New York saw their earnings drop 6 percent. Middle-income New Yorkers—defined broadly by the FPI as those drawing incomes between approximately […]
“Some people think that arresting Bosco would unravel the peace deal between Congo and Rwanda,” he says. “I think that that’s not true. You could certainly make a case that arresting him could be stabilizing.” He’s divisive within the former CNDP. He’s become an incredibly powerful mineral smuggler, the cause of much of Congo’s conflict. […]
[Fiction] One time we roadtripped across the country with Animal Brooks, and he almost got run over by a pickup truck partway through Alberta. It was me and my twenty-year-old girlfriend Vic and him, him in his cadpat jumpsuit, Vic in her flannel logger coat and her neon hair that glowed like a bush-lamp. We’d […]
“He felt something leaving his body. He felt forgiveness. What had been pure fear, pent up for years, was now compassion. He didn’t hate Mark Stroman. He pitied him. Thinking of this man sitting in a prison cell, counting down the days he has left on this planet, he wondered if he could help him […]
“This should have been Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s moment in the sun. But within days, researchers began to question Wolfe-Simon’s methodology and conclusions. Many of them cast aside traditions of measured commentary in peer reviewed periodicals and voiced their criticism directly on blogs and Twitter. Then, as the conflict spilled into the mainstream, the scientific community witnessed […]
“Bezos claims he doesn’t think defensively. ‘Everything we do is driven by seeing opportunity rather than being worried about defending,’ he says. Given Apple’s inroads into the media business, that’s hard to believe. Bezos is magnanimous toward Jobs. ‘On a personal level we have a tremendous amount of respect for Apple and Steve. I think […]
“Now, thanks to that pampering, upon his retirement in the winter of 1988 as the NFL’s alltime leading rusher, Walter Payton found himself burdened by a realization that had struck thousands of ex-athletes before him: I am bored out of my mind. When strangers asked, he talked about how thrilled he was to be free […]
“The junior executives’ office at Thinkscope Visioncloud was nicer than any room within a fifty-mile radius of the “Office” studio. After I finished pitching one of my ideas for a low-budget romantic comedy, I was met with silence. One of the execs sheepishly looked at the other execs. He finally said, ‘Yeah, but we’re really […]
“Yet, as a 2006 State Department report shows, U.S. officials have for years been aware of credible allegations that Raziq and his men participated in a cold-blooded massacre of civilians, the details of which have, until now, been successfully buried. And this, in turn, raises questions regarding whether U.S. officials may have knowingly violated a […]
“A great problem for the mad in the mid-20th century was that the sane were always trying to get in on their act. Sincere people who were not mad wanted to interfere with the mad in various ways in order to relieve them of their suffering and isolation, while others, equally sincere, wanted to get […]
“One recalled that as a girl, she would enact a nocturnal parental ritual in reverse: She, the child, would creep out from her bed to listen at her mother’s door for the precious sound of breathing. ‘She was just terrified,’ Morris says, ‘that her mother would die.’” “Parents of a Certain Age.” — Lisa Miller, […]
“There was a moment in sports when employing a coach was unimaginable—and then came a time when not doing so was unimaginable. We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.” “Coaching a Surgeon: What Makes Top Performers […]
I’m thrilled to announce a new partner in Longreads: Joyce King Thomas. Joyce is the former executive vice president and chief creative officer of McCann-Erickson. She created Mastercard’s “Priceless” campaign, among other outstanding work. Joyce will be working with me on advertising initiatives for Longreads. She and I actually go way back: She’s been a […]
UPDATE: This offer is now closed (as of 7/19/2011). Thanks to NYRB and all the Longreads Members who signed up! Last month we introduced the (completely optional) Longreads Membership, and we’ve been thrilled with the response so far. I wanted to personally thank everyone for their support and encouragement. We’re also excited to announce the […]
copymattt: Every time I think @markarms couldn’t get any more genius with Longreads.com, he goes and adds some brilliant piece of functionality I hadn’t even considered. Introducing automatic #longreads aggregation – No sign up, no reg, no passwords, no crap. If you’ve ever tweeted the hashtag, then you’ve already got an account. Just go to […]
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