Month: October 2023
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A Russian Journalist’s Pained Love for Her Country | The New Yorker
A Russian Journalist’s Pained Love for Her Country
In a new book, Elena Kostyuchenko attempts to work through how she missed—or, rather, failed to adequately react to—Russia’s descent into fascism.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/persons-of-interest/a-russian-journalists-pained-love-for-her-country
The paper for which Kostyuchenko most dreamed of working was Novaya Gazeta, where Anna Politkovskaya, a fearless and revered reporter, filed dispatches telling the grim truth of the Russian war in Chechnya. Kostyuchenko describes the sensation of encountering Politkovskaya’s articles. “I’d feel like I was getting a fever,” she writes. “It turned out I didn’t know anything about my country.”
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From High Life Hackers to National Menace: The Rise and Fall of Digital Bandits ‘ACG’
From High Life Hackers to National Menace: The Rise and Fall of Digital Bandits ‘ACG’
Hackers ‘ACG’ popped champagne and bought sports cars. Then the group and its associates ushered in a bold new era of crime where anything is possible.
via 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/high-life-hackers-national-menace-acg-the-comm-braiden-williams/
A service economy emerged of people who were willing to perform these attacks for a fee or a cut of the takings. On Telegram, one group offered brickings, robberies, and kidnappings for a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Name the state, and they would see if they had people there. When the heists were digital-only, Searchers found juicy targets by rummaging through emails before bringing in a Holder to take over their phone number. Searchers now hunted for victims and then provided their details to new roles in these organizations: the Bricker. The Fighter. The Gunman.
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Book Review: Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried
Twilight of the Heroes of Capitalism
How Michael Lewis got duped by Sam Bankman-Fried.
via Intelligencer: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/how-michael-lewis-got-duped-by-sam-bankman-fried.html
It is easy to see why Michael Lewis might have wanted to write a book about Bankman-Fried and FTX — they were all so rich. It is equally easy to see why the book that Lewis wrote, which is called Going Infinite, doesn’t really work
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China’s Age of Malaise | The New Yorker
China’s Age of Malaise
Party officials are vanishing, young workers are “lying flat,” and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country. What does China’s inner turmoil mean for the world?
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise
The system is fumbling in search of an answer to the big question: Can Xi’s China still manage the pairing of autocracy and capitalism? “What do you do with an economy that can’t deal with unemployment created by mismanagement?
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The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet’s Resources | The New Yorker
The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet’s Resources
Our accelerating rates of extraction come with immense ecological and social consequences.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/the-real-cost-of-plundering-the-planets-resources
These days, Conway reckons, humanity mines, drains, and blasts more stuff out of the ground each year than it did in total during the roughly three hundred millennia between the birth of the species and the start of the Korean War. This comes with immense consequences, both ecological and social, even if we don’t attend to them
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Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power | The New Yorker
Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power
How the Ohio Republican built an insurgent bid for Speaker on the lies of Donald Trump.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power
Taibbi’s thread, which received more than forty million views, rearranged information that Stanford had already been making available. “Even though all of our work is public, they reframed it as a secret cabal,” DiResta told me. “I study rumors and propaganda, but that doesn’t mean we can do anything to stop them when we become the subject. It’s a problem for the field. What can you do when it happens?”
