Month: March 2022
-
How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student | The New Yorker
How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/mackenzie-fierceton-rhodes-scholarship-university-of-pennsylvania Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had…
-
Robert Eggers’s Historical Visions Go Mainstream | The New Yorker
Robert Eggers’s Historical Visions Go Mainstream “The Northman” may be the most accurate Viking movie ever made. It may also be the most ambitious. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/robert-eggerss-historical-visions-go-mainstream when Eggers was about ten, an aging Latvian American painter named Hyman Bloom, who influenced Jackson Pollock and was a friend of Eggers’s parents, gave him…
-
“A Childhood” Is One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written | The New Yorker
“A Childhood” Is One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written Harry Crews’s account of hard labor and hard living in the American South, first published in 1978, animates nostalgia and then annihilates it. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/a-childhood-is-one-of-the-finest-memoirs-ever-written A friend’s father routinely beats his entire family “until he had punched them all enough to make…
-
Stash-House Stings Carry Real Penalties for Fake Crimes | The New Yorker
Stash-House Stings Carry Real Penalties for Fake Crimes The undercover operations seem like entrapment, but their targets can receive long sentences—sometimes even harsher than those for genuine crimes. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/stash-house-stings-carry-real-penalties-for-fake-crimes In this era of mass incarceration, in which we already lock up more of our population than any other nation on Earth,” Stephen…
-
A Brutal Russian Playbook Reapplied in Ukraine – The New York Times
A Brutal Russian Playbook Reapplied in Ukraine The besieging of cities, the deliberate targeting of civilians — they are the tactics Russia used before, in Grozny. I saw it firsthand. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/world/europe/russia-chechnya-grozny-ukraine.html They were met by highly motivated units of Chechen fighters, armed with anti-tank rockets, who ambushed their columns, trapping and burning hundreds of…
-
How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London | The New Yorker
How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London From banking to boarding schools, the British establishment has long been at their service, discretion guaranteed. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oligarchs-bought-london The stark implication of “Putin’s People” is not just that the President of Russia may be a silent partner in one of England’s most storied sports franchises but also that…
-
Ghosts at the Liquor Store | The New Yorker
Ghosts at the Liquor Store None of us thought my dad was the enemy. Perhaps booze was. At the time, thick as we were with shame, the enemy looked like other people. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/ghosts-at-the-liquor-store have three children of my own now. When my oldest daughter was eight—near the same age I was…
-
China’s Information Dark Age Could Be Russia’s Future – The New York Times
China’s Information Dark Age Could Be Russia’s Future Russia and China have the tendency to learn the worst from each other: tyrants, famines, purges and, now, internet censorship. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/chinas-russia-information.html “When people ask me how info environment within the Great Firewall is like,” Yaqiu Wang, a researcher at the Human Rights Watch in New York,…
-
Who Killed Three Aid Workers for Doctors Without Borders in Ethiopia? – The New York Times
‘Finish Them Off’: Aid Workers, Found on Battlefield, Executed by Soldiers Three employees of Doctors Without Borders set out to rescue the wounded in a war zone in northern Ethiopia. Their fate shows the treacherous path for many aid workers in conflict zones. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-aid-workers-killed.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World%20News Hours later they vanished. The aid workers stopped answering their…
-
Opinion | How Life as a Trucker Devolved Into a Dystopian Nightmare – The New York Times
Opinion | How Life as a Trucker Devolved Into a Dystopian Nightmare Trucking used to offer good pay, decent benefits and normal hours. What happened? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/opinion/truckers-surveillance.html When I asked Mr. Knope and Mr. Fritts whether they were surprised that truckers had started the protest movement in Ottawa, neither was. “Trucking has been a keg…
-
Impunity for Syria War Crimes Casts Shadow Over Ukraine – The New York Times
Impunity for War Crimes in Syria Casts a Grim Shadow Over Ukraine Syria, with Russian support, used many of the brutal tactics now seen in Ukraine — and its dictator stayed in power. That conflict offers lessons for Russia’s leader, analysts say. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/world/middleeast/syria-ukraine-invasion-russia.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=World%20News “Creating a humanitarian catastrophe is part of the war strategy, not…
-
The Russian Military’s Debacle in Ukraine | The New Yorker
The Russian Military’s Debacle in Ukraine A series of strategic missteps has hampered Putin’s campaign. Will desperation make up for a lack of preparation? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-russian-militarys-debacle-in-ukraine I always tell people that military defense analysts focus on capabilities, but military strategy and the operational concepts really matter. It’s the force employment that really…
-
The Revolution Eats Itself in Nicaragua | The New Yorker
The Revolution Eats Itself in Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have crushed civil society and thrown their former comrades in jail. What remains of the Sandinista ideal? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-revolution-eats-itself-in-nicaragua A few weeks after the Sandinistas’ historic entrance into Managua, Ramírez told me, a meeting was called at a former training school…
-
Reëxamining Putin’s Military Interventions in the Middle East | The New Yorker
Reëxamining Putin’s Military Interventions in the Middle East Can Russia’s conduct in Syria and Libya predict what’s in store for Ukraine? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/reexamining-putins-military-interventions-in-the-middle-east So it got to a point where people in Idlib had to put their clinics literally underground. I saw hospitals that were underground because the Russians would target anything…
-
When and how should journalists interview autocrats? – Poynter
Opinion: When and how should journalists interview autocrats? An Atlantic interview with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman drew criticism — and raised important questions about journalism. via Poynter: https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/when-and-how-should-journalists-interview-autocrats/ There still isn’t a consensus on this. Some believe that The Atlantic handed Salman a megaphone and didn’t do enough to tamp down his…
-
Ukraine Becomes the World’s “First TikTok War” | The New Yorker
Ukraine Becomes the World’s “First TikTok War” Social media’s aesthetic norms are shaping how Ukrainians document the Russian invasion. Is it a new form of citizen war journalism or just an invitation to keep clicking? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/watching-the-worlds-first-tiktok-war as the Russian convoys outside of Kyiv continue attempting to penetrate the city center, traditional…
-
Opinion | In Russia, I Learned, Threats Were Always Real – The New York Times
Opinion | In Russia, I Learned, Threats Were Always Real (Published 2022) A sense of menace floats long enough to make you think you’re paranoid. Sooner or later, what was feared happens. And nobody makes a secret of it. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/opinion/russia-putin-nemtsov.html Life in the compounds was punctuated by ostentatious intrusions: household items conspicuously rearranged, computer…
-
‘Chained Woman’ Spurs Social Media Movement in China – The New York Times
Seeking Truth and Justice, Chinese See Themselves in a Chained Woman The woman became a symbol of injustice and authorities’ incompetence in fighting human trafficking, posing a credibility challenge to an omnipotent government. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/business/china-chained-woman-social-media.html Two women who tried to visit the chained woman were detained and beaten by local police officers in February. Their…