Month: July 2021
-
-
The Chowchilla bus kidnapping: What happened all those years ago? – Vox
The ballad of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping In 1976, a school bus carrying 26 children and their driver disappeared from a small California town. Forty-five years later, we revisit the story. via Vox: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22570738/chowchilla-school-bus-kidnapping “I’ve been a fortunate guy,” he said from his home near Yosemite. “I was in the Merchant Marines with German submarines…
-
A Controversial Tool Calls Out Thousands of Hackable Websites | WIRED
A Controversial Tool Calls Out Thousands of Hackable Websites PunkSpider is back, and crawling hundreds of millions of sites for vulnerabilities. via WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/punkspider-web-site-vulnerabilities/ At the Defcon hacker conference next week, Alejandro Caceres and Jason Hopper plan to release—or, rather, to upgrade and re-release after a years-long hiatus—a tool called PunkSpider. Essentially a search engine…
-
Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here – The New York Times
Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here (Published 2021) Should news outlets contextualize false claims made by powerful people? Or ignore them completely? There is no consensus in the industry, but its thinking continues to evolve. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/us/politics/trump-false-claims-media.html In American life, truth is now contested. And while this has profoundly affected…
-
The Post-Dirtbag Left | The New Yorker
The Post-Dirtbag Left For years, “Chapo Trap House” and other podcasts have paired anti-capitalist ideas with the rhetorical style of social media. Is a new form emerging? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/02/the-post-dirtbag-left But, after Sanders’s loss, “Chapo” seemed to have nothing left to say. Instead of progressing through the five stages of grief, the co-hosts wallowed…
-
In Nagorno-Karabakh, Land Mines, Bulldozers and Lingering Tensions – The New York Times
In Nagorno-Karabakh, Land Mines, Bulldozers and Lingering Tensions (Published 2021) Despite the hurdles, territory seized by Azerbaijan from Armenia in last year’s war is being transformed with breathtaking speed. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/azerbaijan-armenia-nagorno-karabakh.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World%20News In Baku, on the gleaming Caspian Sea waterfront, the government has built a “war trophies park” of burned Armenian tanks, captured artillery and Armenian…
-
-
-
The Assassination of Haiti’s President
The Assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse’s family deserves justice for his horrific killing. So do all of the Haitian families who suffered during his rule. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-assassination-of-haitis-president There are close to a hundred gangs active in Haiti. According to Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense…
-
On the Trail of a Mysterious, Pseudonymous Author
On the Trail of a Mysterious, Pseudonymous Author Late last spring, a strange, beguiling novel began arriving, in installments, in the mail. Who had written it? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/on-the-trail-of-a-mysterious-pseudonymous-author Inside the envelope was a small, stapled book—a pamphlet, really—titled “Foodie or The Capitalist Monsoon that is Mississippi,” by a writer named Stokes Prickett.…
-
How a Mexican lagoon lost its colors
How a Mexican Lagoon Lost Its Colors Bacalar is poised to become one of the country’s great tourist destinations—if its ecosystem can survive. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/how-a-mexican-lagoon-lost-its-colors It’s hard to build a booming tourist economy atop an ecological attraction without destroying it. Some of the colonies of microbes in the lagoon are more than…
-
Opinion | Why Texas Democrats Can’t Stop Voting Restrictions – The New York Times
Opinion | Texas Should Be a Warning to Democrats Everywhere (Published 2021) America should pay attention to what has gone awfully wrong in the Lone Star State. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/opinion/texas-democrats-voting-rights.html Pretty soon, Texans will openly carry loaded firearms into grocery stores, gas stations and even airports. Women will effectively be unable to get a legal abortion.…
-
Here’s a Look Inside Facebook’s Data Wars – The New York Times
Inside Facebook’s Data Wars (Published 2021) Executives at the social network have clashed over CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data tool that revealed users’ high engagement levels with right-wing media sources. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html “Facebook would love full transparency if there was a guarantee of positive stories and outcomes,” Mr. Boland said. “But when transparency creates uncomfortable moments,…
-
Can the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right? – The New York Times
Can the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right? (Published 2021) The company doubled its sales last year by leaning into America’s culture war. It’s also trying to distance itself from some of its new customers. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/magazine/black-rifle-coffee-company.html “The Black Rifle guys are not the evil that everybody makes them out to…
-
Fear and Misery in an Afghan City Where Taliban Stalk the Streets – The New York Times
Selling Fruit Where the Taliban Stalk the Streets (Published 2021) For weeks, the northern city of Kunduz has suffered daily street battles. Times journalists were there to document a cat-and-mouse war for control. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/world/asia/afghanistan-kunduz-taliban.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World%20News The Afghan way of war in 2021 comes down to this: a watermelon vendor on a sweltering city street, a…
-
Who Owns Mike Disfarmer’s Photographs? | The New Yorker
Who Owns Mike Disfarmer’s Photographs? Strangers made his small-town portraits famous in the art world. Decades later, his heirs want control of the estate. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/who-owns-mike-disfarmers-photographs Like many of Disfarmer’s relatives, Stewart had grown up poor, on a soybean-and-rice farm. As a teen-ager, he’d worn secondhand clothes and taped up old pairs…
-
“Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian draws specific details from my life.
I’ve Always Suspected “Cat Person” Was Based on My Life. Now I Know It Was. Since I first read Kristen Roupenian’s viral story, I’ve wondered: How did she know about me? via Slate Magazine: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/07/cat-person-kristen-roupenian-viral-story-about-me.html What’s difficult about having your relationship rewritten and memorialized in the most viral short story of all time is the…
-
Fox News Hosts Smear Covid Vaccine, Despite Outbreaks Among Unvaccinated – The New York Times
Despite Outbreaks Among Unvaccinated, Fox News Hosts Smear Shots (Published 2021) Months after Rupert Murdoch got a Covid-19 vaccine dose, one of his network’s stars, Tucker Carlson, called a Biden vaccination proposal “the greatest scandal in my lifetime.” Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/business/media/vaccines-fox-news-hosts.html Opposition to vaccines was once relegated to the fringes of American politics, and the rhetoric…
-
The Scream | Mohammad Ali
The Scream | Mohammad Ali It was clear that Muslim journalists could no longer be objective, impartial observers. We were moving targets in Modi’s India. via The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-scream-ali The emotions I had repressed that day, and for long after, resurface three years later, in therapy. I am overwhelmed by raging helplessness and fear. I…
-
